German aircraft bombed and sank the troopship Lancastria near Saint-Nazaire, France, in June 1940 during the evacuation of Allied personnel and civilians. The overloaded vessel sank rapidly, and estimates of the dead range into several thousands. British authorities initially restricted reporting of the disaster.

Poems by survivors and relatives challenged the silence surrounding Lancastria and restored individual identities to an uncertain casualty total. Its literary memory centres on suppressed grief, overcrowded escape and the difficulty of mourning an event deliberately kept from public view.