Missed Athenia connection saved their lives

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

In a dark, quiet corner before a comrade’s funeral service two years ago, two Berwick area men found their own wartime connection.

Through fate, fluke and circumstance, both were set to sail from England to Canada on the Athenia as young lads. This ship, with 1,400 women and children on board, was the first sunk by enemy fire at the start of the Second World War. Neither Ian Robb nor George Brannon were aboard. “I had given a picture of the Athenia to the Legion, and It caught George’s eye - he said he was supposed to have been on it,” Robb says. “So was I.” “It was amazing,” Brannon says.

Quick return

In 1939, Robb was seven years old, in Edinburgh with his mother visiting family. They’d come from Canada for an extended stay, and saw enough of pre-war life to know they needed to get home. “We went through the blackouts, I remember going up to the town hall to get my gas mask. We were staying on the edge of town, and my family was in the building trade. It was my job to hold the sandbags for my uncle to fill to shore up the garden shelter in case we were bombed.”

Robb’s and his mother’s trunks were packed for their train trip south September 1 to catch the Athenia. “I can still see the telegraph lady coming down the lane: ‘Mrs. Robb, Mrs. Robb” and waving her paper, ‘Your crossing has been cancelled’.”

They missed their connections.

A long war

In 1938, Brannon and his parents went to Scotland to visit his mother’s family and “show me off,” he laughs. “I was five.”

They visited everyone, and Brannon’s dad took a part-time job as they stayed on. Finally, they decided they’d better get home “because of the turmoil” in Europe.

We were to be on the Athenia and I took sick and gave it to my dad. The ship sailed without us.”

She sunk

Just days later, September 3, 1939, the Athenia was torpedoed by a German submarine. War had just been declared, and this was the first ship lost to enemy fire. “They spent six miserable hours in wet nightclothes, 250 miles west of Ireland,” remembers Brannon. “They got a lot off.”

But 112 people died. “I remember the whole family - we were just in shock,” Robb says. “Our family in Scotland was relieved, and we telegraphed them in Canada to let them know we weren’t on board.”

Home and away

Robb and his mother found passage to Canada soon after on the SS Duchess of Athol, painted grey to be a trooper and armed. “I was in school when we got word to go, and my mother came right up and got hold of me, I had a fast wash, a change of clothes and we were off for the train. I sat on my trunk in the corner to South Hampton and, on the ship, the cabin had six bunks. My mother was seasick the whole way, and I was all by myself.”

They finally landed in Montreal, where a family took them in and they settled for the war years. “My mother sent parcels continuously, hiding treats and other things in the middle of the package. We had left a budgie, and she would sprinkle bird seed in the letters. Well, the budgie finally died of starvation - the next day, her letter arrived.”

For Brannon, there was no way home. The family stayed in Edinburgh until 1948. “It was hard, hell, a long haul. We gleaned fields - I remember my cousin and I were looking for potatoes, and the field was on the way to the shipyards, power and chemical plants for the enemy planes coming in. They strafed us, and I don’t know if we went over the hedge or through it getting out of there.”

Brannon remembers backyard shows, though, where people would gather and raise what money they could for “an airplane or something. “People were like that,” he says, knitting his fingers together. “There was shrapnel in all our walls. My sister was born in an air raid shelter. We saw whole streets that looked normal after a bombing, but all that was standing was the front wall of the house.”

Sharing a story

The two men met by accident at the Berwick funeral service, 67 years later and their stories are now a bond. “You start wondering, did someone take a shine to you? Is it divine intervention?” asks Robb. “I’m just thankful when I look back,” says Brannon.

A local survivor shares her story

To hear an Athenia survivor’s tale, visit with Wolfville resident Heather Watts Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. at the Wolfville fire hall. Watts was a passenger - just a a toddler, travelling with her family overseas from England when the liner was struck in a U-boat attack and sunk in 1939.