The Last Reunion
It is Saturday 17 September 2005, sixty-five years to the day since evacuee ship the SS City of Benares was sunk in the middle of the Atlantic. The last child survivors line up for a photo-call in the grounds of a picturesque hotel in the village of Southam in Gloucestershire. There are nine of them - all well into their seventies and eighties – and they have held reunions every few years for more than two decades. This will be their last.
'What began as a great adventure...ended in terrible tragedy'
They are scattered all over England and most are now too old and frail to meet up again to commemorate what was undoubtedly the most dramatic event in their lives. They survived the worst ever sea disaster involving British children. On 17 September 1940, their ship fell victim to a German U-boat. What began as a great adventure as the child evacuees were sent overseas to the safe haven of Canada, had ended in terrible tragedy.
The reunion has always been organised by Bess Cummings, a former junior school head teacher who lives in a village nearby. She is well known locally for her survival story as a child, clinging to an overturned lifeboat in the middle of an Atlantic storm. She has told it to generations of eight- and nine-year-olds.
Published: 2005-11-15