Survivors
Battleford, Shediac, Milne and Meteor were released on 30 December to refuel in the Azores. With only four escorts remaining and as many as twelve U-boats in contact with the convoy, St. Laurent's captain, as commander of Escort Group C-1, suffered a nervous breakdown at the scale of the losses. Following the loss of the convoy commodore, he invited two fast ships with large passenger complements (Calgary and Advastun), to escape if they found an opportunity. HMCS St. Francis and the V class destroyer HMS Viceroy reinforced the convoy escort before nightfall on 30 December, the U-boats were ordered to disengage. Shediac and Meteor ran out of fuel before reaching the Azores. Battleford towed Shediac the last 40 miles and Meteor was towed the last five miles. All four refuelled and joined the search for survivors. HMCS Prescott found and rescued the eight men aboard MTB-105 on 1 January; but, aside from the 2-man Kingfisher crew rescued earlier by St. Laurent, there were no other survivors from Fidelity's crew of 325 and the men rescued from Empire Shackleton. Prescott also saved 26 crewmen from President Francoui, but the recovery effort found no other convoy survivors. The remainder of the convoy reached New York City on 12 January 1943.
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Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)