By Saturday evening, Sept. 2, 1939, German ground and air forces had been pounding military and civilian targets in Poland for more than 36 hours. Despite an agreement calling for Britain and France to come to Poland’s aid in the event of such an attack, neither country had taken any action to counter the German aggression.

That evening in London, the House of Commons convened to hear from the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. If the members were expecting a rousing call to arms, they were sorely disappointed. Chamberlain recounted his Cabinet’s discussion to reject an Italian peace proposal because it anticipated negotiations while Germany occupied Polish territory. But, he added, if Germany were ready to withdraw its forces, England would be “open to discussion between the German and Polish governments on the matters at issue between them…”

Several of Chamberlain’s cabinet ministers were stunned by his remarks. They had expected the Prime Minister to announce a midnight deadline for German withdrawal from Poland. At the same time, members of Parliament were aghast. They feared Chamberlain was about to back away from the Polish agreement in accord with his practice of appeasement, a move they believed would prove disastrous for British foreign relations.

After the session adjourned, several of the cabinet ministers met with Chamberlain and warned him of the members’ concerns. Chamberlain was surprised by Parliament’s shift in mood. He noted the difficulty of synchronizing Britain’s efforts with the French, who wanted another 48 hours before taking any action against Germany. His ministers insisted that if Chamberlain wanted to dispel the members’ negative impression of his remarks, he needed to act swiftly. The situation would not “hold” for 48 more hours, they told him.

Chamberlain returned to his residence at 10 Downing Street. Following a phone call to the French Foreign Minister in Paris and a meeting with the French ambassador in London, the Prime Minister called a meeting of his cabinet ministers for 11 o’clock that night. The session began with an angry demand for action by several of the ministers, who warned they would “destroy” him if he failed to act. The meeting only calmed down when Chamberlain acknowledged the depth of his ministers’ convictions. He vowed to act the following morning, with or without the French.

Sunday morning, Sept. 3, 1939, at 9 o’clock Berlin time, the British ambassador to Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson, delivered his government’s ultimatum to the German Foreign Minister’s office. In essence, the notice stated that unless Germany was prepared to cease hostilities in Poland by noon, Berlin time, that same day, a state of war would exist between Britain and Germany.

The noon deadline (11 a.m., London time) came and went without any word from the German government. Fifteen minutes later, Chamberlain went on the radio to tell his fellow citizens that Britain and Germany were once again at war, bringing to a sad close the most agonizing 48 hours of deliberation in the Prime Minister’s political career.

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Image courtesy:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/schoolradio/subjects/history/ww2clips/speeches/chamberlain_declares_war

September 27, 1939

A cold, drizzling rain greeted Orizaba sailing into New York Harbor on the afternoon of September twenty-seventh. As the ship tied up to a berth at Manhattan’s West 18th Street Pier, young Russell Park was surprised to see cheering crowds as big as those that had welcomed the Athenia survivors in Glasgow three weeks earlier.

“Can you see my parents?” Russell asked Father O’Connor, who stood behind him at the railing. The priest had promised to accompany the boy safely home to Philadelphia if there were no relatives to meet him in New York.

“No I don’t, Russell, but it’s a big crowd,” O’Connor said. “Once we get off the ship, I’m sure we’ll find them if they’re here.”

Russell was glad the priest stayed with him as they walked down the gangway and into a large terminal building. O’Connor steered him to a line of people that ended at a booth with a man in a blue uniform seated inside. It took several minutes to reach the front of the line, which the priest told him was an immigration checkpoint. The man in the uniform checked Russell’s name on a list then asked him where he was born and where he lived.

“Welcome home, son,” the man said after Russell answered his questions. “If people are meeting you here, they will be in a waiting area to the left after you go out the door.”

Past the booth, they walked through a door and into a large room filled with people and noise. A crowd stood on the left side of the huge hall and Russell saw several men with notepads and pencils talking to some of the passengers. Here and there flash bulbs burst in tiny explosions of light. He scanned the people hoping to see his parents, an aunt or an uncle, someone he might know. Before he could study all the faces carefully, Russell heard someone shouting to him.

“Sonny, over here.” There were two men holding notepads and wearing raincoats with shoulders darkened by the drizzle outside. “Were you on board the Athenia, son?”
Russell nodded as he tried to look beyond the two men, searching for his mother and father.
“Great. What were you doing when the torpedo hit the ship?” one man asked.
“Yeah,” said the other man, a pencil poised over his notepad. “What do you remember about the attack and your rescue?”

Russell wanted to find his parents, but the two men seemed very interested in talking to him. He looked around for Father O’Connor’s advice, but the priest was talking to another man holding a notepad.
“Come on over here, son. Tell us what you saw.” He decided he shouldn’t be rude to the men, so Russell stepped closer to answer their questions.

“I was with my dad in the lounge when the torpedo hit,” he said. The two men began scribbling hurriedly on their pads. “I was thrown and hit my head against something. All the lights went out, but I got up again and saw that something made dad limp.” Russell couldn’t remember exactly, but thought his father might have been hurt when the torpedo exploded. “Then dad went to get my mother, who was sick in bed, and I didn’t see my parents after that.”

“What’s your name, son, and where do you live?” asked one of the men, who didn’t look up from his pad. Russell responded, adding that he was eleven years old.
“Now all I want is to go by train with somebody who will let me off in West Philadelphia. Then I can find my own way home.”

“Russell!”

He looked up at the sound of his name and saw the stout figure of his mother hurrying toward him. She was followed by four aunts and uncles all rushing to greet him.

“Mom,” he called, feeling an overwhelming happiness that made his eyes water. He told himself he couldn’t cry in front of all these people, as he ran to his mother, threw his arms around her and felt her warmth envelop him. He was safe and no longer alone. Over his mother’s shoulder he saw his Uncle Robert and Uncle Bill and the familiar faces of a few other family friends, but his father was not among them. Before Russell could sort through his jumble of emotions, Rebecca bent toward him with tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry to tell you this, darling,” she said. “Daddy’s gone.”

It took Russell a few moments to understand what his mother had just told him. Confusion, disbelief and a profound sadness washed over him in quick succession as he realized he would never see his father again.
“I’m sorry, Mama, so sorry,” he sobbed. It was all he could think to say, and he hugged his mother even tighter. Russell had often daydreamed about adventures he and his father might share that would be the envy of the other boys in his neighborhood. It never occurred to him that adventure could come with such tragic consequences.

It would take several years for Russell to give up the faint hope that his father might somehow reappear, but for the rest of his life he would wonder what might have happened to Alexander Park on that fateful September night in 1939.

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HMS Electra, the sister ship of HMS Escort, which rescued Russell. Electra assisted Escort in the rescue of the SS Athenia survivors.

Monday, September 4, 1939

A gnawing hunger roused eleven-year-old Russell Park from troubled dreams. He rolled out of his hammock and stood, unsure how long he had slept, but keenly aware food was now a priority. Adapting to the ship’s roll, he moved carefully among several swaying hammocks to exit the temporary sleeping quarters. In the narrow passageway, he found a sailor who escorted him to the ship’s galley where a tall man in a white apron handed him a corned beef sandwich and a hot mug of tea.

Seated at a long table with a few other Athenia survivors, Russell ate his sandwich and learned he was aboard H.M.S. Escort, that the explosion on Athenia had been caused by a torpedo, and that the ship finally sank an hour ago. All of this was of passing interest to the boy, who took his last sip of tea from the white china mug and headed up on deck to look for his parents.

Russell stepped onto Escort’s busy main deck in a hazy noonday sun. Looking up and down the narrow gray ship, he saw little room to spare for the Athenia survivors standing on its main deck. They congregated on its bow and stern, smoking and talking in small groups, and stood two by two in the destroyer’s narrow walkways along her port and starboard railings. He sidled through the crowd, taking his time and looking carefully into doorways and down passages to make sure he didn’t miss anyone. A half-hour later he returned to his starting point, certain his mom and dad were not on deck.

He went below decks again to the forward compartment where he had slept. Checking each of the occupied hammocks, he quickly determined his parents were not there. When he began his search, Russell had been certain his parents were aboard the ship. Now his disappointment at not finding them sent a queasy sensation through his body. He walked back out on deck to search again for his parents, but this time he had to brush away his tears as he looked for their familiar faces.

“Here now, what’s this all about?” A sandy-haired man in a blue-black double breasted officer’s uniform approached him.

“I don’t know where my mom and dad are.” Russell choked back a sob.

“Were they in the lifeboat with you?”

Russell shook his head.

“What are their names, son?”

“Alexander and Rebecca Park.”

“Do you want me to look with you?”

“No sir.” Russell swallowed hard. “I’ve already looked everywhere, even the people sleeping downstairs.”

The man stepped forward and put a hand on Russell’s shoulder.

“They’re probably on another ship, son,” the man said. “There are three others besides us.  We’ll sort it all out when we get back to Glasgow. You’ll probably find them there.”

The sound of the man’s voice, his words, and his hand on Russell’s shoulder all reassured the boy that someone cared about him.

“Listen, I have a few minutes before I go on duty. Would you like me to show you around the ship?”

“Yes, sir,” Russell said. “Thank you.” He welcomed the opportunity to see the ship, but the absence of his parents tempered his excitement.

“Good,” the officer said. “What’s your name, son?”

“Russell.”

“Very nice to meet you, Russell.” The officer shook Russell’s hand. “I’m Leftenant Christopher. I think I’ve got something you might find interesting.” He steered Russell through the crowd until they were standing by a long gray cylinder half as tall as the boy. Lieutenant Christopher explained that it was a torpedo tube and that the destroyer sometimes used torpedoes to attack enemy ships. They walked to the open end of the tube and Russell looked in to see the front of the torpedo, a steel missile painted the same gray color as the rest of the ship.

“What’s that bump?” Russell pointed to a round knob on the middle of the torpedo’s nose.

“That’s the detonator. When the torpedo hits a ship, the detonator causes the warhead to explode. That’s what causes the ship to sink.”

“Is this like the torpedo that hit our ship?”

“Quite likely, I’d say.”

Russell felt a chill looking at the same kind of device that had hit Athenia and caused so much chaos. For a moment, he recalled the loud roar and the terrifying feeling of flying through the air. He heard the screams of the people in the darkened room where he had been reading with his father. The officer’s hand on his shoulder brought Russell back to the present.

“I’ll bet it was pretty frightening, wasn’t it? Do you want to hear a secret?”

Russell nodded, as the image of his father walking away from him on the stairs faded from his imagination.

“I’ve been in the Royal Navy for nearly three years, and I’ve never been torpedoed. Never even been shot at. When the time comes, I hope I can be a brave as you.”

Russell smiled. Maybe he had been brave, at least some of the time.

“I have to go now, Russell. We’re taking on some passengers from the yacht over there and I’m in charge of the boarding operations.” He knelt to look the boy more squarely in the eye. “We’ll find your parents. Don’t you worry.”

“All right,” Russell nodded. The officer stood, brushed the boy’s dark brown hair from his forehead, and headed away in the direction of Escort’s stern. Russell looked over a slate gray sea of splashing whitecaps in the direction of the large white yacht. He wondered if it was the other rescue ship whose lights he had seen last night. With a start, he realized his parents might be on that white ship.

Maybe they will be coming with the passengers transferring to the Escort. 

His hopes soaring once again, Russell ran to the ship’s railing where he would be able to watch the transfer operations.

In our next blog: Russell comes ashore in Scotland and a new friend looks after him.

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