Babes in the Sea (Cont'd)

Last week the crudest episode in the war against civilians had a happy sequel. A lumbering Sunderland flying boat on convoy duty sighted a lifeboat 600 miles off the Irish coast. Aboard were 46 survivors of the City of Benares, in the sudden sinking of which fortnight ago 83 children and 210 adults were thought lost. The 20-ton flying boat, running short of fuel, signaled her relief plane, which in turn signaled a warship.

The survivors had been adrift eight days while heavy seas broke over the boat. Six of the lifeboat's occupants were children. Hero of the group was a 21-year-old nurse, who stowed the children forward under a tarpaulin, continually massaged the chill from their bodies and told them wild adventure stories to keep them happy. Said one of the rescued children: "We didn't have breakfast any day. The first meal was lunch. Each of us got half a biscuit. Sometimes with it we got a piece of sardine, or a little bit of meat, and one day each of us got one-eighth of a peach."

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