By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

LINDSBORG -- The Danielson siblings were terrified. They feared getting herded into lifeboats and separated from their mother, Lillian.

"Mother said to us, 'Now you stay here ... I'm going to run back to the cabin to get our Bible and our passports,'" Eleanor Danielson Anderson remembers.

No, no, the children pleaded. Don't leave us. All around the ship, adults shouted in confusion and concern for the sinking Zamzam.

The Egyptian passenger ship was steaming toward South Africa with the Danielsons aboard when, at dawn on April 17, 1941, the captain of the German raider ship, the Atlantis, thinking the Zamzam was a British troop ship, ordered his gunners to open fire.

One of the first shells took out the Zamzam's radio shack, cutting off any way to send out an SOS. Fifty-five, 6-inch shells were fired at the rickety old steamer, and nine found their mark, sealing the ship's fate.

The ship's sinking drew headlines around the world, and it remains a vivid memory for the Kansas family who survived the attack, almost 70 years later.

The Danielson siblings returned to Lindsborg on Sunday to attend services, and to share with the congregation at Messiah Lutheran Church the story of their dramatic odyssey. The event was part of the church's celebration of its 100th anniversary.

The Danielson's parents -- their father the Rev. Elmer Danielson, a Lutheran missionary, and mother Lillian, chose Lindsborg for their retirement years. Lillian attended Bethany College in the 1920s and was a church member at Messiah. Elmer was, years later, the co-chaplain at the Bethany Home adult care center.

Lillian Danielson and her six children, ages eighteen months through nearly 11 years, boarded the Zamzam in New York City on March 20, 1941, to travel to the east African nation of Tanzania to reunite with her husband.

Even though World War II was raging throughout Europe and Africa, the United States had not yet entered the war and the Zamzam maintained neutral country status, plus it would sail south across to Cape Town, South Africa, to avoid sea attacks that were occurring between Germany and Britain. About 150 of the 200 souls aboard were religious missionaries.

When the shelling that morning had stopped, a ship's officer bid the Danielsons to get to the lifeboat station as quickly as they could.

The ship was already taking on water. Their mother chose not to leave and retrieve the passports and Bible.

"She said later, she thought, well, maybe where we were going, we won't need a passport," Eleanor Anderson said. "Mother was very brave and calm, but in her heart she knew there was danger."

The Zamzam's captain had ordered a total blackout of the ship. The decision upset many of the passengers, said Anderson, who was 9 at the time, because they feared it would make the Zamzam appear to be a warship.

"Remember Jesus loves you," Anderson recalls her mother saying as shells struck their ship. "No matter what happens, be brave in Jesus."

Because the radio equipment was disabled, the Zamzam's captain could not signal the German ship that they were firing on a neutral vessel. Finally, the captain grabbed a flashlight, and with it, signaled in Morse code to stop firing.

Later, it was found out that if a radio message had gotten out, the Germans would have torpedoed the Zamzam and not stuck around to pick up any survivors.

Their lifeboat, riddled with bullet holes, sank. Survivors bobbed about the warm waters of the south Atlantic for about 45 minutes until the German captain realized they were innocent civilians and had them pulled aboard ship.

Their mother held on to Lois, who was only 20 months old at the time, as she attempted to keep 3-year-old Wilfred's head from being pulled under by his life jacket. Eleven-year-old Laurence, the oldest of the bunch, meanwhile, dove under the waves to rescue his 4-year-old sister, Luella, from under the legs of another passenger.

Of the 201 passengers and 137 crew members of the Zamzam, only one person subsequently died of injuries received in the attack.

The Germans took what they could off the crippled Zamzam before they set three time bombs aboard, and sent the ship to the bottom of the sea.

They wanted to sink it fast because British forces were looking for the German warship, Eleanor Anderson said. It went down in eight minutes.

The surviving Zamzam passengers and crew were the next day transferred to the German blockade runner the Dresden, their quarters for the next month.

Aboard the Dresden, the Americans never experienced anything but kindness from the Germans, who sometimes called the Americans their "guests," another Danielson sibling, Evelyn, said.

The Germans shared their crew rations, which consisted of a lot of coarse bread and thin, gruel-like soup.

"For what they had they did the best they could," she said. "The men were separated from the women and children and kept in the hold of the ship."

"We all thought about food and what we would want to eat whenever we got back to land someday," she said.

Six weeks passed and no one in the outside world knew what had happened to the Zamzam. In Africa, Rev. Danielson finally heard that the ship had sunk and all were presumed lost.

The very next day, the Rev. Danielson's prayers were answered when he got word via a BBC broadcast that the survivors had landed in occupied France.

Citizens of other countries became German prisoners of war, but the 140 Americans -- who were being held illegally by the Germans as the U.S. hadn't yet entered World War II -- were taken to Spain and eventually reunited with their families in the United States.

There have been six reunions of the remaining living survivors of the Zamzam sinking. The Danielson siblings today are scattered throughout the U.S. -- Laurence in Boulder, Colo.; Eleanor, recently relocated back to Lindsborg; Evelyn in Walnut Creek, Calif.; Luella, in Hot Springs Village, Ark.; Wilfred in Arlington, Va., and Lois in Russellville, Mo.

The first reunion was 50 years after the fact, when Eleanor researched and got them all together. A Life magazine photographer was on hand to record the event.

At the last one, there were only two survivors among the adults still alive. Still, historians and ship lore buffs still clamor for tales of the event and it makes her appreciate now, at this stage of her life, what her family went through, Eleanor Anderson said.

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.

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