Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  That evening Commander Davy started another wireless message on its way to Alexandria:

  Undocked Koritza 1800 today at Massawa. Athos follows 0700 tomorrow. Expected time on dock two days. What ship follows?

  By midnight we had our answer from the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet.

  Well done, Massawa. Schedule for next ten days will be communicated tomorrow.

  I read that message as, naked as usual, I lay stretched out on my bed bathed in perspiration inside the mosquito net in my darkened room, while just outside the netting the British seaman who had brought it to me from the decoding room held a flashlight shining through the net so I could read.

  Weary though I was that Saturday night with over five weeks’ continuous effort in getting Massawa under way, topped off by that sweltering day down in the dry dock, I smiled in contentment over that dispatch. Massawa had won its first accolade. Tomorrow I should see that those few Americans who had struggled with me to win it, saw that message also. They badly needed a little lift just then.

  Next morning, the Athos followed the Koritza on the dry dock. She also was finished in two days and departed. I had feared that the emaciated Eritreans could not keep up their fierce pace, especially as the weather was getting hotter. But I could have spared my fears. Over the next few weeks, one ship followed another at slightly less than two-day intervals over the keel blocks of that dry dock; twelve in the next twenty days. My only real concern turned out to be the naval staff in Alexandria controlling ship movements. Caught between the needs of ship movements to Tobruk and of furnishing empty ships for docking at Massawa, I have no doubt we nearly drove them to distraction by our urgent messages calling for ships lest the dry dock in Massawa remain idle a few hours.

  Once they had their teeth in the job after the first few weeks, the Eritreans speeded up instead of slowing down. In the hundred and twenty days allotted to docking merchant ships that season, including the worst summer months, we pushed eighty vessels across the keel blocks of that dry dock—a final average of a ship every day and a half. Soon Lieutenant Fairbairn had to have another British officer assigned as Assistant Pilot, and another tug also, lest he delay the job by the loss of time of transferring pilot and tugs from the outgoing vessel to the newcomer waiting at anchor in the outer roadstead. After that, the vessel to be docked passed the outgoing ship regularly just beyond the line of wrecks; the load of one ship was hardly off the keel blocks before the weight of her successor was compressing them again.

  No dry dock in the world in war or peace has, I believe, ever equaled the record made that year by that one dock in Massawa in taking full-sized ships. We not only ran the whole Mediterranean fleet of supply ships over that dry dock, doubling their speed at sea, but some of the faster ones we took again after a few months to keep them up to topnotch efficiency. And all of it was done by the worst labor in the world under the worst conditions anywhere in the world. The Eritreans in Massawa did their bit to win the war—it should not be forgotten when some day around some table the United Nations delegates meet to decide the future of Eritrea.

  The worst labor in the world? I often wondered how true that was as month after month in the Massawa heat I watched those puny Eritreans slashing away with scrapers, fiercely swinging paint brushes while all the time they danced and swayed to their barbaric chants. There is no worst labor in the world. Touch the proper chords-pride, incentive to produce, whatever fits the situation—and men will be found men, whatever their color, whatever their physique.

  CHAPTER

  23

  MEANWHILE, TROUBLE IN ANOTHER direction, which had been simmering some weeks, began to boil.

  We now had on the payroll of the Naval Base several hundred men, not counting the two hundred Eritreans on the dry dock whom, fortunately, I was hiring for the time being through a British company, by whom they were being paid daily.

  For several weeks there had been growing signs of dissatisfaction among our assorted workmen in the Naval Base shops. They had not been paid. The payroll for the Naval Base was being handled in Asmara by the civilian contractor there, along with the payroll for the hundreds of employees he had in Massawa on his various construction projects. To keep the time records and handle the accounts, the contractor had sent to Massawa one of his supervisors, a Mr. McDonald, together with several clerks, who were installed in an office on the ground floor of our office building.

  Our labor force, starting early in April, was small, cost accounting for it was simple. However, when the first pay day rolled around (the men were supposed to be paid weekly), there was no pay for anybody. The excuse from Asmara was that the time sheets were not yet worked out; they would be soon.

  Our labor force was growing rapidly. When the second pay day came around on April 18, and a sizable mob of natives and Italians gathered round the pay office for their wages, there was still no pay, either for the overdue first week or for the current week. The men started to grumble now in strange tongues; understandably enough, they wanted their money. I went to see McDonald about it. He shrugged his shoulders. The payroll was made up in Asmara from his time sheets; it hadn’t come down; he couldn’t pay off.

  I got the contractor’s office in Asmara over the telephone, with the usual exasperating delays in getting a connection and the usual trials in keeping it. Yes, they were working up the pay accounts there; next week they would surely be ready; I could assure all the workmen that next week they would be paid.

  I went out to assure the sheikhs for the natives, and the Italians and the other assorted races separately that next week they would certainly be paid. They looked a little dubiously at me, but they accepted the assurance and dispersed, muttering, I suppose, over how I expected them to pay the groceryman.

  Next week, April 25, came around and still no pay for anybody, not a lira. By now I was exasperated—it goes without saying what the unpaid workmen felt. McDonald blamed the office in Asmara; I got the Asmara manager and he blamed McDonald for lack of proper time sheets. I informed the contractor that the situation was getting both scandalous and dangerous; the men must be paid immediately, proper time sheets or not. All I got was a run-around; Asmara would handle the matter; by the following Saturday, May 2, they would pay off for the whole month of April; meanwhile, I should quit worrying them about it.

  I hung up the telephone in disgust with the contractor and all his works. Asmara was overrun with his highly paid executives (who rarely visited Massawa) and his large head office staff—so large an American civilian force they had taken over completely the biggest hotel in Asmara just to house these men. And yet with all that in the cool comfort of Asmara, they had not yet made up the payroll! How could I face again the growing mob of trusting natives outside the pay office and tell them that the wealthy and the efficient United States was not able yet to pay them their long overdue wages?

  To mitigate the blow, I sent an officer posthaste in my car to the town of Massawa to draw out in small bills and silver all the money I personally had on deposit in Barclays Bank there. It wasn’t much, $200, but in lira it sounded like a lot more, about 20,000 lira, approximately the payroll for one day for all the men we then had employed at the Naval Base.

  With that money at hand, ashamed of myself and enraged at the contractor for having put me in that position, I made the announcement—there would be no pay-off today; it would surely be taken care of the following week. Doubt, suspicion, and distrust showed in the mass of black and white faces before me when the statement was translated. Was the wealthy United States worse than the Fascist regime they knew—was it trying to deceive them with fair words while it swindled them out of their pay—a petty swindle, besides, since none of them was being paid more than a few cents a day?

  I did what I could to ease the situation and restore confidence with my own 20,000 lira. I advised the sheikhs and the other workers, not Eritreans, that I would personally lend any man who badly needed money up to 100 lira to help him out; I cou
ld not afford to go higher than that in order to try to cover as many cases as possible with the money I had. All that was required was to ask; I would trust them to repay me when finally they were paid themselves.

  In fifty-lira notes and in East African shillings, the money rapidly went out. I believe everyone who wanted help got at least fifty lira. Sick at heart over the whole spectacle, ashamed of some of my fellow Americans in responsible positions, I watched the unpaid laborers, their faith in the United States badly shaken, slowly disperse.

  Another week went by, another pay day, May 2, came round. Once more there was no pay-off, but this time, distrustful myself of the contractor’s promises, I had learned the bad news in advance by inquiring of McDonald some hours before quitting time. No, no money and no payroll had come down from Asmara; none was on the way.

  I got hold, by telephone, of Colonel Claterbos in Asmara, to learn from him that the situation in Massawa was being more or less repeated all over Eritrea. The contractor, claiming lack of help, was so enmeshed in the complications of his own accounting systems that pay to natives everywhere was in arrears. Colonel Claterbos was as much disturbed over the situation as I; in fact, disagreement with the contractor over that and other matters was literally making him sick and had already put him in the hands of the doctors; but the civilian contractor was a law unto himself, he could not force him to pay off.

  Getting this information from Claterbos over the Italian telephone system from Asmara was practically equal to a day’s work in itself. When, after many interruptions on the line, I finally hung up, I was thoroughly washed out. Claterbos, I supposed, had stood it better; at least he could telephone from a cool room—not from the superheated Turkish bath atmosphere of my office.

  The time for paying off, with the final blow to American prestige and good faith when words instead of cash would be all that could be offered our long unpaid workmen, was only a few hours away. I told Mrs. Maton to get hold, by telephone, in Asmara, of the top executive present in the contractor’s office there. After a while, she succeeded and handed me the telephone.

  “McDonald tells me no pay day today. Is that right?” I asked after the usual salutations.

  “Yes, Commander, that’s so. We’re still working on the payroll.”

  “Well, quit working on the payroll!” I burst out in exasperation. “You’ve been doing that for a month now! Send down some money! All the Eritreans and a lot of the Italians can’t buy anything to eat any more! They’ll quit on us and tie this Naval Base up in a hard knot just when we’re getting under way. Never mind the payroll; put enough cash for two weeks’ pay for everybody in a car and start it down here four bells! That’ll leave you a margin for safety when you get your accounts worked out, and it’ll save our hides down here till you finally pay off. Quit figuring! Send us some cash!”

  “Now, Commander,” I heard in a soothing voice from the other end, “we can’t do that. We’re short of help, but we’ll get it figured out by next week—”

  “Next week!” I exploded. “Don’t you know these natives can’t be told that again? You’ve already made a liar out of me with that story! To hell with next week! You pay these men something now!”

  “Calm yourself, Commander. We’ll take care of it. Keep cool, you’re getting hysterical—”

  “Hysterical?” I roared. “You’re damned right I’m getting hysterical! Damn your hide, you come down to Massawa a while and you’ll get hysterical, tool Don’t you tell me from Asmara how to keep cool in Massawa! Quit talking and get busy! SEND DOWN SOME MONEY!” and I hung up the telephone with a bang that nearly smashed that fragile Italian instrument.

  But no money came down and there was no pay day that Saturday. Nor the following one either. The foremen were continually besieged by sheikhs, by individual Italians, begging for their pay, asking why the Americans were breaking their promises. Even the Fascisti had done better than that. Wild rumors, all discreditable to the United States, flew about among the workmen, none of whom believed the real reason, that the contractor, his executives, and his employees were so inefficient they couldn’t work out the payroll.

  For myself, I kept away from my office and the naval shops as much as I could to avoid entreaties. I no longer had any faith in the contractor. I was making no more promises as to when the men would be paid. I warned the foremen to make none either. And I had no more money of my own in Eritrea to help anybody out.

  After May 2, a sullen air fell over all the naval shops to replace the enthusiasm with which the men had worked the first month. Men started to absent themselves, production began to fall off. It was evident an explosion was coming soon. I wondered what form it would take—more sabotage, a walkout, violence?

  The faith and honor of the United States with the Eritreans, the Italians, the Arabs, and all the other assorted races in Massawa stood infinitely lower than that of Mussolini. How the ardent Fascists, still unweeded out amongst our Italians, went to work behind our backs in hot Massawa!

  And all the while, 7500 feet up in comfortable Asmara, coolly, calmly, unhysterically, the contractor’s executives and his accounting force worked, short-handedly they claimed, on the payroll sheets. I never saw any evidence then or later that any one of them from the top down, lost any weight trying to make up for short-handedness in their office, or in trying to solve the problem any other way.

  CHAPTER

  24

  TIED UP AS I WAS ALL DAY LONG OF Saturday, May 9, 1942, with the completion and undocking of the Koritza, I was unaware until evening that that day at last I had received some reinforcements, opening up another field.

  In the late afternoon, invisible to me down in the dry dock, the S.S. President Buchanan, which had sailed March 21 from New York bound for Suez, had paused briefly in the roadstead outside Massawa harbor and had landed via a tender my first contingent of salvage men.

  At the same time, another small group, landed at Port Sudan by a different vessel, had arrived from there via Asmara by plane and car.

  I heard of all this only when I had come in from the dry dock after the departure of the Koritza. I hastened to greet the newcomers, though the added information that another week was ending with still no pay day in sight, somewhat dampened my enthusiasm for anything.

  I found I had received two supervisors and thirteen men altogether; not a very large contingent to tackle the huge salvage job before us. Heading- the party was one of the two Salvage Masters hired on the West Coast, Captain William Reed. With him were five divers: Melvin Barry, Jesse Enos, Ervin Johnson, George Kimble, and Alvin Watson. Accompanying the divers were Lloyd Williams, Salvage Master Mechanic, with eight salvage mechanics and tenders—James Buzbee, Jay Smith, James Riemer, Lew Whitaker, “Buck” Schott, Charley Hoffman, “Tex” Powell, and “Whitey” Broderick.

  Bill Reed I had first met seventeen years before, when as a civilian diver he was making a preliminary underwater survey of the sunken submarine, S-51, just before the Navy undertook the task of lifting her itself and I was ordered to the job as her Salvage Officer. Reed, still a civilian, and a number of years older than I, was too old for much diving now. As a matter of fact, he was too old for Massawa also and should have folded up there in a hurry, but as he was blind in one eye in addition, perhaps his failure to see that clearly and fold up swiftly, as most of the older men and many of the younger men soon did, must be excused.

  I greeted Reed, and Lloyd Williams whom I had with difficulty persuaded in New York to take the job as Salvage Master Mechanic, with great joy. None of the others I knew anything about. The divers, except Ervin Johnson whom I had engaged in New York, were the men I had hired in Hollywood. So were part of the salvage mechanics and tenders. How a salvage crew accustomed to the artificial atmosphere of movie studios would make out in the face of real wrecks, I was dubious of.

  I stowed Captain Reed and Lloyd Williams in one of the vacant rooms in Building 108 with me, to the intense disgust of the two Cable and Wireless men who loo
ked with horror at the increasing number of Americans invading the sacred precincts of Building 108. Then I found quarters for the others in one of the ex-Italian wooden barracks along with Cunningham and the other American mechanics employed by the contractor. I told them all to take Sunday to get themselves settled and get acquainted with Massawa and the Naval Base; on Monday morning, salvage operations were going to commence in Massawa.

  That Saturday night as I tossed about on my soaked bedsheet, for once I didn’t regret my inability to get a decent night’s rest. Even the wireless message at midnight from the Commander-in-Chief about the Koritza swiftly vanished from my thoughts.

  Weeks before, I had decided on which salvage job I should tackle first when my first salvage ship, its crew, and its equipment arrived. Now I was determined to tackle that same job, even though I had no salvage ship and next to no equipment, for nothing in the way of salvage gear had been shipped with Reed’s little party on the President Buchanan, except only two diving rigs and a small air compressor, which were Reed’s personal property and which he had brought with him on his own initiative.

  But I was itching to get to work on salvage. Now I had two supervisors, five divers, eight mechanics, and two diving suits—all my own. Nobody could tell me how I must use these thirteen American workmen, the first Americans I did not have to beg for as a loan. With them, I intended to tackle immediately the hardest job of all first, the task which officially had been rated impossible—the lifting of the large Italian dry dock. Impossible to raise though it was considered to be, that dry dock was by far the most valuable prize of war of anything scuttled in Massawa. The Italians knew that, too—that was why eight large bombs had been placed in it as against only one quarter that number placed to sink the ordinary ships.