PEOPLE

HENRY JOHN FUSTER (1939-2013)

Henry was my father-in-law and my inspiration for writing the FIGHTING FATE series.

Before I heard Henry’s story and conducted research for my book, I knew nothing about the evacuations of British residents from Gibraltar or the horrors the evacuees faced crossing the Atlantic in the middle of a war; nothing of families separated from their Spanish relatives or that many could never return to the ‘Rock’. But it was the belief and anguish of Henry’s Spanish father, Antonio, that a German torpedo killed his Gibraltarian wife and their three children that truly sparked the idea for my novel.

Before the Spanish Civil War, Antonio worked in a tapas bar in La Linea de la Concepción just across the border from Gibraltar. When hostilities broke out, the family fled to Gibraltar. Henry was born on the ‘Rock’ in March 1939. Then World War II began, and the British Crown Colony became a valuable strategic military installation where there was no room, food or protection for civilians. Under the compulsory order of the government, all Gibraltarian women and children, and the old and infirm were to be evacuated; a traumatic prospect for many who had never left their tiny community.

On 22 May 1940, infant Henry, his mother Elena, her brother Francisco, Henry’s older brother Leopoldo and his older sister Maria waited to board a Morocco-bound cargo ship that was ill-equipped to carry passengers. Accounts of evacuees have described how they sat for hours on the quay in the squelching sun before the Mohamed Ali el-Kebir set sail with its 1,000 passengers, and how the tears flowed with fright, confusion and the distress of leaving loved ones, like Henry’s Spanish father, behind. After a 13-hour voyage where rough seas made countless sick, the evacuees arrived at Casablanca.

While those who could afford it had decent accommodations, others found themselves in less desirable surroundings. Sometimes 10-12 in a room disturbed by dancehall neighbours or in the middle of a slum, the unfortunate slept on straw in the absence of mattresses and longed for adequate food. Inefficient lavatories led to buckets and flies. It may have been easier if they’d known then that they would only be there for a month.

With the capitulation of France on 24 June 1940, Morocco, a French protectorate, became enemy territory overnight, and the previously amicable treatment of the evacuees disappeared. Forced at gunpoint aboard the filthy British ships that had just brought loyal French troops rescued from Dunkirk into a now enemy-controlled Morocco, the evacuees were sent back to Gibraltar with no food or water for the 16-hour voyage.

At first prohibiting their disembarkation, the British authorities intended their homecoming to be short-lived. Days later, however, they were still there to hear the menacing drone of enemy bombers over the island, and to feel the terror of nearby explosions, a nightmare repeated several times before the government arranged their second evacuation.

On 30 July 1940, with the Battle of Britain well underway and the looming threat of a German invasion of the British Isles, the 24-ship HG40 convoy crammed full with 5,800 mostly women and children set sail. Two days earlier, Henry and his family, minus his father, had been tendered aboard the SS Swinburne, one of 12 cargo ships in the convoy, and had settled into the hold with the rest of the 300 passengers. After a 48-hour delay in port, they finally began their perilous journey through the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to reach their Cardiff destination before a German U-boat, bomber or fighter aircraft found them.

Not only would cargo ships, presumably loaded with supplies for Britain, be tantalising targets for the Germans, they were never meant to carry human passengers, which made the living conditions difficult. The evacuees had to sleep on mattresses filled with their clothes. Water required rationing and much of the food spoiled from poor storage. In addition, medical personnel rarely travelled with them, so the able-bodied had to help the wounded, the elderly, the seasick and the young mothers giving birth.

As the convoy approached the northwest coast of Ireland around the 9th of August, the seas grew angry, rough water and heavy rain squalls keeping everyone below deck. And with the foul weather came reports of enemy U-boats in the area, requiring countless emergency twists and turns of the ships to avoid them.

On 10 August, a cargo ship actually carrying cargo, the Libano, broke down and dropped from sight before a Luftwaffe plane peppered it with machine gun fire. Fortunately, the fighter failed to inflict significant damage.

But again, on the 11th, just off the northernmost coast of Ireland, another German aircraft approached. This time, the convoy’s sole escort, the HMS Wellington, warned it away with its guns.

However, worry these planes would alert enemy subs to the convoy’s position, coupled with the vulnerability of the cargo ships’ holds, the lack of lifeboats and preservers, and the frigid Atlantic waters, made for a fearful conclusion to the voyage before the each vessel detached from the convoy to sail to their individual destinations.

Greeted with dockyards devastated by repeated bombings, the SS Swinburne sailed into Cardiff on the 18th of August, 19 days after leaving Gibraltar. Refused disembarkation until the following morning, the evacuees endured late-night sirens and attacks of German planes zigzagging low while they sat as sitting ducks in the vulnerable hold.

The next day, after suffering administrative and medical processing, Henry and his family boarded a train to London, heading to a block of flats in Fulham they would share with other evacuee families.

A few months later, with communication lines disrupted from wars in the UK and Spain, Henry’s father reportedly heard of the torpedoing and loss of the SS Swinburne and thought he had lost his entire family. That it occurred on its empty return voyage to Gibraltar had failed to be communicated. Apparently, several months went by before Antonio learned the truth.

Allowed at last to join his family in London, Henry’s father found work in a pub. Sadly, he died of a heart attack when Henry was only 8 years old, leaving Elena to provide for her now four children on her own.

For more information on the Gibraltar evacuations, visit https://www.nationalarchives.gi/Evacuation.aspx, and download Joe Gingell’s two free books, ‘WE THANK GOD AND ENGLAND and BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA at https://www.nationalarchives.gi/NamesEvac.aspx