I looked at it. It was an intelligence report, giving in some detail recent data on what was going on in French circles in Oran, and it certainly waved a red flag respecting actions which denoted a marked lack of enthusiasm in some of the top figures in the French naval command for real co-operation in the Allied cause. I was no intelligence expert, but it seemed important to me. I looked up inquiringly at Reitzel after hastily scanning it.
“I wanted your opinion on whether I should turn that in, Captain,” he explained.
“I don’t see why not, Reitzel, though that’s no longer your job. If what you say here is true, it looks important to me.”
“It’s true, all right,” Reitzel assured me.
“It’s O.K. with me then. Turn it in.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Reitzel. “I’ll send it right along.”
We parted, Reitzel in his ramshackle collection of French junk to see about getting the compressors delivered, I in my jeep to do some more work towards setting up at least a semblance of a salvage organization in the ports to the eastward of Oran.
Having no other office (and, of course, no yeomen nor other office help at all, nor any typewriter) I turned to in my cramped room at the Grand Hotel on writing longhand letters. First came some instructions and encouragement to Lt. Comdr. White, already among the bombs in Bône and facing a tough task there practically bare-handed. A few British divers had been raked out of the British forces afloat; they should shortly report to him if they hadn’t already. And I was sending him a little other salvage equipment, some from the King Salvor, more that had been arranged for in Algiers to be turned over to him by the Royal Engineers. But it wasn’t much; I could send him mainly only my faith in him and my best wishes till my salvage squadron arrived from the Red Sea and we really had decent equipment to work with.
Then more instructions to the other assistants I had picked up. In Algiers, I had been given two young British lieutenants, both earnest enough but of little salvage experience. In Philippeville, I had another British youngster, Lt. Strange, little better off for acquaintanceship with his job but struggling wholeheartedly on it. In Bougie, a bad spot, I had nobody, but I intended to send there the King Salvor’s sister, the Salvestor, whose arrival I was optimistically expecting any day. At any rate, I could write to my British assistants at Bône, at Philippeville, and at Algiers to let them know they weren’t forgotten and to cheer them a little with the thought of all the salvage gear aboard those three ships circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope from Massawa in the Red Sea. (I never learned till much later that not one of those ships had yet left Massawa and that the first one didn’t even get started till practically January.)
By the time I had those letters all written, it was evening and time for dinner. I climbed down a few flights of stairs to the mezzanine to the special dining room run as a mess for the American naval officers stationed in Oran. Dinner, a fairly boisterous event with most of the naval staff present, was the one relief in the usually hectic day, since the conversation, for security reasons due to the French civilian waiters, was always on home (meaning, of course, the girls we’d left behind us, married or unmarried), never the ordinary shop talk of the war either by land or by sea. This evening was no exception, save at its end. As I was leaving the dining room, one of the other captains drew me aside.
“Say, Ellsberg, can I talk to you about that intelligence report your Lieutenant Reitzel turned in this afternoon?”
“Why, certainly,” I replied. “I gave him permission. I’m no judge, but it looked like hot stuff to me. What about it?”
“Just this. Will you tell him he’s to lay off intelligence for good? He’s been warned already; maybe you can make him believe it and keep him out of trouble. Do him a favor and convince him it’s meant, if he wants to stick around here, and maybe avoid a court for disobedience of orders besides. Intelligence is being handled otherwise. Here’s that report he turned in. Mind giving it back to him and telling him he’s to lay off? This is unofficial, but it’s the straight dope from the top down and the last word before the ax falls.”
I took the report, thanked him for the tip, promised to convey it and do my best to make Reitzel, over whom I had no actual authority, see it. I climbed the stairs back to my room deeply puzzled. What could there be so different about the ramifications of intelligence that made a serious report, no matter what the source, unwelcome? It was all beyond me. But it was nevertheless perfectly clear Reitzel was going to have to stop or, without any gain to anybody, there’d be trouble both for him and for me—for him, because he’d certainly be shipped home, if nothing worse; and for me, because I’d lose him when he was adaptable enough to be of considerable help to me in many ways in salvage. And heaven alone knew how badly I needed help in every way. Even a fresh-caught seaman, 2c, as a messenger boy, would have been highly welcome, and Reitzel’s capabilities were infinitely above that. I hoped he’d see the light and lay off, difficult as it might be for him with his training to ignore what was going on in Oran under his very nose.
Next morning early I caught Reitzel on the quay and passed the word along to him, at the same time returning his report. His face fell.
“I’m sorry, Reitzel. I can’t understand it any more than you do, but do me a favor and quit,” I begged. “At least that way you’ll still be able to do your bit with the salvage gang. Otherwise you’ll get nowhere at all and catch it in the neck besides. I’d hate to see that.”
Reitzel swallowed the blow, promised me faithfully he’d do nothing more in intelligence, no matter what he learned. We separated, Reitzel to shepherd the hired compressors down to quay, I to board the King Salvor and check Harding’s arrangements to secure them to his deck for use next day.
Within two hours, Reitzel had broken his solemn promise to lay off intelligence. He came rushing back to me on the salvage quay, full of what he had put together out of a few stray bits of casual information picked up from some French stevedores, and was pouring it into my ear. Immediately I was boiling with rage, but not at Reitzel, to whom I felt deeply grateful. In a moment, madder than hell, I was on my way to see the American Captain of the Port.
For what Reitzel had deduced was that the French Commandant du Port was arranging to bring the French passenger ship Ardois into the inner harbor that afternoon. She was a large but completely empty and light Mediterranean passenger vessel which had been brought from some other minor port to Oran after its capture, and had since been lying there idle with no steam up, moored in the outer harbor. Now the French were preparing that afternoon to tow her through the gap between the Pigeon and the Spahi into the inner harbor for some purpose Reitzel had been unable to learn, but which obviously could not be of any great immediate importance.
I was determined it shouldn’t be done. The Ardois was much broader in the beam than any Liberty and required more clearance for safe passage. Besides she was much longer and much higher out of water than the Libertys and consequently considerably more difficult for tugs to handle with any assurance in the tight channel. That any French pilot and the tugs available would bring the Ardois through without hitting something I considered highly unlikely.
Whether the Ardois herself got hurt was none of my business, and about what happened to the scuttled Pigeon, I cared even less. But if the Spahi, which we were preparing to raise within two days, was damaged in her watertightness by collision with the Ardois and we consequently couldn’t raise her, that was my business—it was everybody’s business from General Eisenhower’s and Admiral Cunningham’s on down. Nobody was going to gamble with our chances of quick removal of the harbor bottleneck stopper, just to get a French passenger ship which hadn’t done anything for months and wouldn’t do anything for months more yet, from the outer to the inner harbor a few days sooner. Let them wait till we had the Spahi out of there—after that the French could take whatever they pleased through; so could anybody—even the Queen Mary could safely pass then.
Once again my jeep leaped like a mount
ain goat from pothole to pothole as it took the bumps racing down the road to the Port Captain’s office at the head of the harbor. Unceremoniously I burst in on him to ask whether he knew if the Ardois were to be shifted inside that afternoon. He looked blankly at me; his office had heard nothing of it. He would inquire. An aide called by telephone the office of the Commandant du Port, in a few minutes reported yes, it was so. But we needn’t concern ourselves; the French were handling the matter themselves completely as she was a French vessel, they were using their own tugs and pilot, and (implied but not so stated) Oran was a French port so why not? He hung up.
I explained to the Port Captain, a four-striper very much junior to me, why not. He saw the point, himself called the Commandant du Port, the gentleman who had scuttled everything in the harbor, to request him to wait a few days. There ensued a lively conversation in French, but I suspected my request was falling on very unsympathetic ears.
When the Port Captain finally hung up and again turned to me, he confirmed my suspicions. The Commandant du Port refused to delay the movement of the Ardois—all preparations had been made on the ship, with the tugs, with the pilot, at the berth inside the harbor. But we need have no cause for worry; the Commandant du Port had every confidence in his French pilot who had assured him it was easy—there was no danger.
I swallowed none of it. I had seen over-confident pilots before strand ships in tight places. In fact, I had learned by sad experience that the more confidence in himself and the less fear of the hidden dangers a pilot exhibited, the less confidence I was entitled to put in his ability to avoid them. I told the Port Captain it wouldn’t do, I wasn’t having any part in gambles. As he was as Port Captain responsible for ship movements, he must stop it. He could go to Rear Admiral Bennett, he could go to the French vice admiral (the Commandant du Port’s one and only superior), but the Ardois must not be moved till we had cleared the Spahi out of the entrance. I’d leave it to him. But he must bear in mind that stopping the Ardois was very important.
I went back to the salvage quay, where the commandeered air compressors were beginning to be delivered in army trucks. One by one, Harding picked them off the trucks with his cargo boom forward, and swung them aboard the King Salvor’s forecastle. I watched, never getting far from the salvage shack on the quay, where our solitary telephone was installed. The morning slipped away, there were no calls. Distrustful of how matters might be going, I called the Port Captain’s office myself shortly before noon.
I learned Rear Admiral Bennett was working on the problem, endeavoring to persuade the French vice admiral to delay the movement. There was no decision yet; the vice admiral wanted to discuss it further with Capitaine de Frégate Duprès, his Commandant du Port. We should know early in the afternoon.
I had lunch on the King Salvor with Harding, Ankers, and Reitzel. To all of us, what might happen to the Spahi if the Ardois were brought through was of first importance. I brought the others up to the minute on the situation. Reitzel listened, frankly pessimistic. He knew best the personalities involved.
“I tell you, Captain,” he said bitterly, “the Ardois will move. That French vice admiral is a complete nonentity; Duprès will wind him round-his little finger and do what he pleases. Duprès is the French high command around here. Unless Bennett can issue a flat order stopping it, the Ardois will move because Duprès wants to move her.”
“Why,” I queried, “should Duprès insist? Why can’t he wait a few days? Who’s hurt by any delay?”
Reitzel shrugged his shoulders,
“Who knows Duprès’ motives? But the Ardois will move.”
Reitzel was correct. A little before one o’clock, I got a telephone call so informing me. Admiral Bennett had done his best in persuasion, but unsuccessfully. The French insisted. I must remember the French were our friends and allies, Oran was not occupied enemy territory, we could not order them to do or not to do anything. Short of issuing a peremptory order and then backing it up by force, which would cause widespread repercussions all over North Africa in our relations with the French, Bennett could do nothing further. We must hope the French pilot was as good as he claimed and that no damage to the Spahi resulted. The Ardois would move at 2 P.M. Sorry.
I hung up the telephone, went back aboard the King Salvor to break the bad news, reflecting cynically on the old adage,
“God save me from my friends; my enemies I can take care of myself!”
Long before 2 P.M., every officer in the salvage party was out on the diving float over the Spahi. Diving was discontinued, the float itself hauled well away from the channel toward the Spahi’s stern to keep it out of danger. Beyond in the outer harbor, we could see the French tugs puffing round the Ardois, getting their lines aboard. At 2 P.M. as per schedule, the Ardois cast loose, the tugs began heaving. After some pushing and hauling, they got her swung about, pointed fair for the channel, started her for the narrow entrance.
They hadn’t far to go, not over a quarter of a mile, so our anxiety in watching didn’t last long. It was perfectly obvious as she came on that the pilot, whether intentionally or not, was holding her over to port, away from the sunken Pigeon whose masts and stack he could see, and towards the Spahi, of which he could see nothing whatever save the marker buoy over her indicating the limit there of safe navigation.
In a few minutes more, there was nothing for it but to watch in horror as the massive Ardois came on, so far out of the center of the safe channel that it did not seem possible it could be by accident. On she came, light and high out of water, towering majestically far above us, looking like the biggest ocean liner afloat. She couldn’t miss the Spahi below her now.
She didn’t.
Not fifty feet from where we stood on the float, we heard a grating and a screeching and the noise of tearing steel as the protruding port bilge keel of the Ardois cut into the submerged Spahi’s side. Simultaneously the Ardois slowed, lost her momentum, came swiftly dead in the water in spite of the laboring tugs. She was stranded hard and fast on the torn Spahi.
Far up on the bridge of Ardois, now nearly abreast us, I could see the French pilot, blowing his whistle and waving both arms for the tugs to stop heaving ahead, to start hauling her astern. On the float Ankers, Harding, Reitzel, and I looked at each other, livid. About us the divers and the mechanics who had struggled to make the Spahi watertight and airtight were shaking their fists at the pilot above, wholeheartedly and obscenely cursing him.
The tugs ahead stopped pulling, those astern started to heave madly. There came again through the water the screech of tearing steel, a sound causing us to whom the Spahi meant so much as keen anguish as if it were our own bleeding bodies that were being cut to pieces by the relentless Ardois. With some difficulty, the Ardois was dragged free and about a hundred yards astern.
There the pilot straightened her up again, a little more now to the starboard side of the channel, and came on once more. This time, as he might as well have done the first time had he so intended, he came squarely down the middle of the marked channel, passed clear of the Pigeon and over the bow of the Spahi without touching either, and continued on up the inner harbor to his assigned berth beyond the Môle Millerand. There, I presume, he was able to report,
“Mission accomplished,” or whatever its equivalent was in French.
As for us, we dragged the diving float back to its working position, Ankers dressed one of his divers, sent him down below to learn what had happened to the Spahi. In about half an hour the diver was back on the float, his helmet off, describing what he had found. He had walked or crawled all over the port side of her hull, her high side. There was, thank God, only one hole in her uppermost side, but that was bad enough. It was about two yards wide, rather long, with the edges of the remaining steel plates badly jagged.
Ankers and I looked glumly at each other. The Spahi would now no more than a sieve, hold any of the air from the compressors we had been gathering up. We would not raise the Spahi and clear the harbor ent
rance next day. We couldn’t tell yet how long it might be before we could get that gaping opening in the hitherto undamaged side of the Spahi patched reasonably airtight so we could proceed with her removal. But there would be a substantial delay. Ankers put the helmet back on his diver, sent him down again to get more accurate measurements of the hole and a better idea of the broken steel around it, so we might go to work on figuring out how to patch it. I went up the harbor road to make a vitriolic report to our local top command as to what had happened and to demand that the French pilot at least be permanently disqualified and imprisoned for gross incompetence, if not shot out of hand, as seemed well warranted, for deliberate wartime sabotage.
A few days went by. Ankers and his divers struggled in the chilling water below, lacing reinforcing steel over the new hole in the Spahi, building a large wooden form to hold the cement that we would pour all over the cavity to form a thick patch which we earnestly hoped would prove reasonably tight when the compressed air was pumped in. We had neither the means nor the material to burn away underwater the jagged and bent edges of the broken steel below and fit a tight steel patch.
A continuous stream of oaths enveloped our diving float—no diver went down without first cursing the pilot who was the cause, nor came up after tangling with the sharp edges of the broken steel which the Ardois had left without cursing him even more luridly. Nor was this situation helped any when we learned the second day that that pilot was continuing actively to pilot—the only punishment he got (if he really got that even) was a slap on the wrist in the form of an oral admonition from Capitaine de Frégate Duprès that he must be more careful in the future.
Four days from the accident went by. It was now mid-December and increasingly cold. By working inhuman hours in the cold and foul harbor waters off that dismal float, Ankers and his men, driving themselves feverishly, finished the interlacing steel, completed the wooden form to hold the cement for the patch. Reitzel had somewhere commandeered a cement mixer and procured the necessary quick-setting cement and gravel. That fifth afternoon we would mix and pour the cement. Giving the cement two days after that to set, we hoped on the seventh day, a week later now than we had anticipated originally, to raise the Spahi, clear the entrance, and be free then to go about other urgent wartime business.
No Banners, No Bugles Page 13
