Charles Louis ‘Lou’ Barron

On July 15, 1942, Lou Barron was a 16-year-old merchant seaman on board the passenger and general cargo ship SS Gloucester Castle off the Angolan coast.

That night, the ship was attacked and sunk by a German commerce raider. Of the 152 crew and passengers on board, only 51 survived to be taken to Singapore and handed over to the Japanese.

Lou Barron takes up the story.

To start with, the sinking of the Gloucester Castle was a very savage affair. It was on a pitch-dark night when the raider attacked on our starboard bow without any warning - firing her 5-inch guns and machine guns and setting the drums of petrol on fire in the well deck. All the starboard lifeboats were blown away so we had to go to the port side. We had to go through the fire to get to the lifeboats.

The Germans also had a small torpedo boat that attacked on our port side firing machine guns. We managed to get one boat in the water but the raider had fired a torpedo into the starboard side that caused a list. The lifeboat I got into overturned, throwing us into the sea. I had a lifejacket on and managed to get away from the ship as she was sinking. I was picked up by the only lifeboat that got away.

The lifeboat was full of survivors. It was a calm sea with just a slight swell and warm but pitch-black. We did not know what had attacked us. We could see the ship sinking at that time. There were people in the water. We could see the little red lights we had on our life jackets bobbing up and down. We were picking some of them up.

Then we saw the raider. She had a searchlight going as she approached us. A voice rang out that they were going to pick us up. They told us to get alongside the raider and at that time I found out I was wounded in my right hand and it was giving me a bit of pain. We got alongside the ship and they lowered a Jacob's ladder. They asked if there were any wounded.

I must mention that we had 12 passengers in the lifeboat. We had two women and one boy so they went up first with the rope tied round them. Then I went up on to the deck of the raider. Lo and behold we were surrounded by the German sailors armed with guns. I don't know what they had guns for as we were in no fit state to do anything. We were soaking wet and shaking. Then they asked if there were any wounded a couple of us stepped forward.

One of the Germans took my arm. Then they put a blindfold on me. I was bloody scared. The German sailor took me down through the raider. I was still blindfolded. The next thing they took the blindfold off me. I saw that I was in a hospital. They sat me down in a chair. The next thing a guy came and asked me would I like a cigarette. I nodded my head. Then he came back with a smoke and a mug of soup, I think.

Another guy came [and] had a look at my hand. The next thing I got a needle stuck in my arm. After that I don't remember a thing. The Germans treated us very well while we were on the raider. The only thing was when they sank another three ships in the next few days. Hearing the guns go off was not very nice. But things were about to change.

After about two weeks on the raider, the Germans met up with their supply ship, with another raider the Stier and two U-boats. The supply ship was an oil tanker called Charlotte Schliemann.

In calm weather they transferred us to the tanker. There must have been about 250 seamen off different ships the raiders had sunk. They stuck us down in the bottom of the hold that was in the forward part of the ship. They gave us a blanket and a mattress. Not very clean. The food was lowered down to us in large containers. It was mostly stew and black bread and ship's biscuits full of weevils. After the raider, this was a bit of a comedown because on the raider it was very clean and the food was not too bad.

We still thought they would take us to Germany but they told us we were going to Japan via Singapore. They sailed right down to the roaring forties and boy was it cold at night. The rats would run all over us. We were on the tanker for about eight weeks.

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