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My mother Elsie Lester was booked by her father onto the evacuee ship City of Benares to sail from Liverpool to Canada in September 1940. Although living in Leicester at the time they were Liverpudlians. At the last minute her father (my grandfather) decided not to send her to Canada. On 13th Sept. 1940 the ship sailed with 90 evacuee children on board and four days later it was hit by a torpedo. Nearly all the children were killed. If my mother had gone I would not have been born nor able to write this short story. I am now married and have one daughter.
Geoff Shattock

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