No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  We swung low over it, not fifty feet above the surface. It was a U-boat, all right. There was the chariot bridge, completely out of water, and even about half of the conning tower exposed; so much exposed I could make out the insignia painted on it—some sort of griffon, claws ferociously upraised. That seemed to express the spirit of its late commander; his spirit as long, anyway, as he had his U-boat under his feet, though not on land.

  The U-boat was badly heeled to starboard; so considerably heeled down that its port handrail showed occasionally as the surf broke over the deck. That was all that was visible.

  The pilot circled it three or four times, banking heavily to keep it in view as much as possible, with a final pass directly over it at about 500 feet altitude so that I might get a good view directly down on it through the water. I surrendered my seat, with many thanks to both pilot and co-pilot for their help, and retired to my aluminum bench aft in the fuselage to think and to make a. few notes for future reference.

  It was evident to me that that U-boat captain had been either a very smart chap indeed, or had profited by an extraordinary stroke of dumb luck, which was unlikely—he could not possibly have scuttled his U-boat in a position which both better suited his needs and at the same time made it more difficult for divers to go through his boat for search purposes.

  If he sank his sub in water deep enough to be beyond any diving depth, he would have jeopardized his own escape after the scuttling with only a small rubber boat to get his crew ashore. And running her hard up on the beach, while it would have made escape very simple, would have left the vessel an easy object of search.

  Instead he had elected to scuttle her in about twenty feet of water, where escape was still simple, but where, in the midst of even everyday surf, diving was almost impossible even though the depth of itself was nothing for any diver. There in that surf, the radical-and rapid variations in pressure on the diver below as the waves rolled in to break over him, would immediately burst his eardrums and subject him to intolerable agony under which he couldn’t possibly work.

  Even if I had had divers galore (which, of course, I hadn’t) there could be no internal search of that U-boat without first dragging her closer inshore into water shallow enough to expose her deck hatches fully; or dragging her farther offshore into such deep water we would be clear of the surf; or waiting for a day so calm there would be no surf at all; this last, a hopeless event until summer came. Under any conditions, regardless of Cunningham’s desires, it was clear to me there was going to be no search inside that U-boat for months yet, if ever. A very versatile officer, that U-boat captain; evidently he knew all about diving and divers, too.

  CHAPTER

  30

  WE GOT TO TAFARAOUI AIRFIELD about noon. As usual, it was a sea of deep mud off the runways. There was my own jeep waiting, not very close. As always, I had to flounder through clinging mud to get to it. We drove off to the Grand Hotel d’Oran.

  Hardly had I entered the lobby than a sentry informed me that under orders from Algiers, Oran was in a state of extreme alert. Every military unit was standing to under arms; all passes for Christmas had been canceled. No officer was to leave his quarters except on the most urgent business. He was to stand by there awaiting orders, and he must stand by always armed, even inside his quarters.

  Inasmuch as I had no firearms at all, I was nonplused as to how I might comply till the corporal of the headquarters guard offered to lend me a spare rifle from the guard room rack till next day I could draw a pistol. I checked the rifle to make sure it was fully loaded and at the “Ready”; then after a bite of lunch, with a few extra clips of rifle cartridges, I clambered up the dingy stairs to my cold room.

  So this was Christmas Day! A Merry, Merry Christmas to us all, I muttered cynically. There being nothing else I could do, first I carefully locked the door so that the assassins evidently anticipated by the higher command from all their precautions, might be delayed a bit in breaking in on me. Then I took off my shoes, climbed into bed to avoid freezing during my enforced long stay in that room, and placed my loaded and ready rifle close alongside my pillow so there might be no seconds lost in going into action with it if required.

  There was one offset. Now at last, for the first day since my arrival in North Africa, I had plenty of time to finish a letter home to my wife, which letter I had started in pencil in the plane, expecting it as usual to be brief. Propped up on the pillows, covered by all the blankets I had and my overcoat, fountain pen in right hand and rifle muzzle nuzzling comfortingly into my left side, I started.

  By the time midnight arrived, with time out only for dinner, that haltingly written letter which poured out my heart that Christmas Day in yearnings for home had run to ten closely written sheets of ordinary business size paper. Finally on sheet number ten, my paper having given out, I closed with,

  “And now it being practically midnight, and Christmas nearly over on the most un-Christmaslike Christmas I have ever seen, I shall end by saying with Tiny Tim on Christmas Day, ‘God bless us, every one!’ and may He give us Christmas Days to come on which we may be merry.”

  I felt a little better. Words were not much as substitutes for a living and loving presence, but at least they were a slight tie and all that remained available to me. I rolled over, made sure that rifle was still conveniently close alongside me on the bed, and wearily went to sleep.

  Next morning I rose to learn that the state of “Alert” was over. Nothing else untoward had occurred anywhere in North Africa; no signs of any real conspiracy had been unearthed; apparently Darlan’s murder was an act of personal vengeance, for which indeed shortly after Christmas Day the murderer paid with his own life. Giraud had taken over after much bickering among the exVichyite governors, admirals, and generals who still ruled in French North Africa, as to who should succeed Darlan. Certainly Giraud was the best choice; he, at least, was not tarred with the Vichy stick. But the only reason he was finally agreed upon was apparently that other more powerful candidates feared to expose themselves to Darlan’s fate. Giraud, on the contrary, really was a French military hero with few enemies, though to counterbalance that, he had little influence and few friends, and except Eisenhower, no powerful supporters at all.

  At any rate, the fears of a widespread plot to assassinate all Allied officers and turn the country over again to Axis control, were past. I gave my rifle back, with thanks, to the corporal of the guard. Nor was there any need now for me to draw a Colt .45, which if left in my room, would certainly and swiftly be stolen for resale on the black market, and if worn, would be a damned incumbrance to me in getting about wrecks, and fine ballast to help sink me in case I fell overboard.

  I went down to the salvage quay for an inspection. Everything appeared to be going as well as might be expected. On the Spahi, Lieutenant Ankers’ second string divers were busily engaged below the sea in rolling out the barrels. These, now piling up in a large storeroom ashore under armed military guard, began to give the place quite a bonded warehouse appearance. I told Ankers my figures showed about 500 hogsheads should be enough, they were so large. Long before his first string divers finished with the patch, Ankers assured me he would have that many out; there would be no delay on that account.

  Captain Harding and his crew on the King Salvor I found all still nursing their burns, their blisters, their bruises, and their wounds, but all up on deck again. They had turned their salvaged Hindoo in to the military hospital ashore, but all hands were very much down in the mouth that they didn’t have the Strathallan there in the outer harbor to go with him.

  I gave Captain Harding a letter of commendation to his crew to be read out at quarters, each man then to be furnished a copy of it for his record. As for Harding himself, I told him I’d recommended him to Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham for a decoration, which Cunningham had assured me he was certain His Majesty, the King, would be happy to bestow on him. He’d earned it.

  The rest of the day I spent out over the Grand Doc
k with Bill Reed, his crew, Perrin-Trichard, and his French contingent. Except that Reed had discovered that the wooden plugs I’d furnished him wouldn’t drive in solidly enough to plug the air vents tightly and consequently he’d have to build forms and pour cement into the whole lot of vent pipes to seal them off, he was getting along all right.

  He had the job nicely organized on an international basis. PerrinTrichard and his French divers, much happier now with their two much worn but serviceable Made-in-America diving suits, were doing all the plumbing work on the vast system of air lines that had to be laid at the bottom of the sea to carry compressed air to the fifty widely spread compartments in that vast dock. Meanwhile, Reed and his American divers from Massawa had assumed the burden of sealing up the innumerable openings all over the dock which required to be made airtight so as to retain the compressed air to be pumped in ultimately to lift the dock.

  Both tasks were tough on the divers, but Reed’s was the more dangerous—his men would have to get inside the compartments of that wrecked dock to get at much of what they had to seal off. And in some cases, it was going to be terrible; some spots to which the men would have to worm their way amongst the criss-crossed steel ribs inside that dock were next to impossible of access even in an unfiooded condition to a man unincumbered by a ponderous diving rig.

  But all hands, American and French, seemed satisfied with their assignments and were going at them hammer and tongs. They wanted, all of them, to see the Grand Dock speedily afloat again.

  Reed had only one grievance. His diving air compressor hadn’t shown up from Yum Dum and he’d lost all hope. Glumly he admitted to me he’d been swindled by a silver-eagled sharper; his faith in human nature had suffered a sad shock.

  I made no comment; there was no gain in rubbing it in. I simply congratulated him on how well he had things going—his job was certainly one spot in French North Africa where Allied co-operation was 100 per cent.

  Bill Reed’s face lighted up at that; he explained,

  “Y’see, Cap’n, it’s simple; all y’ have to do is to treat ’em as if y’ were one of ’em. I just talk French to ’em all now and they appreciate it. I always say ‘Monsour’ to that French lieutenant and ‘Bon swar’ to all his divers and we all get along fine.”

  I thought so. I had noted in Massawa that after long months of contact with the Eytie prisoners of war who made up most of our labor force, Bill’s Italian had never with them got beyond “Bono!” and “No bono!”; this last phrase usually with some profane English expletive inserted between the two Italian words, more clearly to express his meaning to some Eytie who was botching the job. I should have fallen dead of heart failure if in only one week in Oran he had really gone much further in French.

  But I only looked at him in admiration.

  “Bill,” I said, “you’re doing wonderful! You’ve certainly got it on me! I can’t talk to ’em myself in French at all, and I’ve been here four times as long as you. When I’m up against it, all I can do myself is to talk to ’em in Spanish; lots of ’em here in North Africa understand that. And that’s my limit. But French! That’s something!”

  Bill’s one eye gazed at me dubiously. Was I kidding him? But I gazed back very soberly; he decided not. So we parted for a few days. I should be busy next day with other matters; after that I had to go to Casablanca to look over the situation there.

  The following day, December 27, I spent mostly on doing my own office work, finishing up finally with Commander Robert Bell, U.S.N., who had recently been rushed over from the United States to take charge in Oran of the repairs to damaged vessels, once the salvage forces delivered them where they might be repaired. He had just completed bracing up the two halves of H.M.S. Porcupine for their voyage back to England. Now he had another damaged limey to cope with on the Petit Dock, which was just lifting it out of water.

  That vessel, H.M.S. Enchantress, ex-Admiralty yacht, stripped now of all her yacht-like fittings and converted to use as an armed sloop, was somewhat smaller than our own destroyer escorts, but intended for the same purposes—convoying and anti-submarine patrol. The Enchantress, badly damaged but still fully able to get into port on her own for repairs, had just come in with a convoy.

  She needed repairs all right, but for once before I was through, I eyed with pleasure the damages to a friendly warship.

  As the Petit Dock floated her up completely out of water, her whole bow was exposed to my gaze, as badly smashed in from her waterline all the way down to her keel as if she had hit a stone quay going full speed. She looked terrible.

  Alongside me at the head of the dry dock were a number of her seamen, stout-looking fellows, all staring with evident relish at the wrecked bow, crumpled up like a folded accordion for at least twenty feet back from where her stem once had been.

  “What did you hit?” I asked of the nearest British seaman. Collisions were common in convoy work, especially at night.

  “Oh, we just rammed a U-boat,” he replied.

  A U-boat, eh? That was better. I took another look at what was left of that bow, then observed,

  “Bad smash you got out of it. What happened to the U-boat?”

  “She’s down below,” was his laconic reply. And that was all I could get out of him or any of his mates. But I didn’t doubt him; not only must that U-boat now be down below, but unquestionably it must be down there in two well separated pieces.

  I looked again at the slim, yacht-like lines of the graceful little vessel called the Enchantress. Everything fitted her name. But the terrific punch she packed in her bow? What’s in a name? I wondered. She should have been named the Joe Louis.

  CHAPTER

  31

  NEXT DAY, WITH EVERYTHING IN Oran going all right, I took off from Tafaraoui to go westward this time. Casablanca on the Atlantic was the western limit of the Torch theater and of my responsibilities, though by now it was not of great military value or importance any longer. Georgie Patton, tough, swaggering, belligerent, had seen to that very swiftly, both with his actual French antagonists in its taking and with his potential antagonists, the Spaniards, to the north of it directly afterwards. If peace existed, even nominally, when Patton arrived anywhere, it existed thereabouts in fact thereafter. But since I knew I should be working shortly mostly from Algiers eastward up to Tunisia, I seized the opportunity to check on Casablanca before I left the Oran area.

  It was a moderately long hop to Casablanca, about 500 miles. Not having started very early, I didn’t arrive till late afternoon. Casablanca had one advantage on both Oran and Algiers which I noted the moment I disembarked—there was no mud to bog down in. It certainly was unfortunate for Eisenhower that his campaign now against the Nazis had to be fought out in muddy Tunisia instead of in dry Morocco.

  But in what for me at the moment was of major importance, Casablanca in Morocco resembled its sister cities of Oran and Algiers in Algeria; it was just as jammed. By the time a billet was finally arranged for me on the eighth floor of the Hotel Plaza, directly overlooking the harbor and all its shipping, it was completely dark and too late for any inspecting. I could do nothing more than report my presence to Rear Admiral James Hall, U.S.N., Flag-Officer-in-Charge, Casablanca.

  Jimmy Hall, whom I had known ever since both of us were midshipmen, big, rangy, slow-spoken, an excellent commanding officer, faced what physically was a very dismal outlook in his command, though he wasn’t unduly wrought up over it. He was getting along all right, he felt, though it was depressing to look at all the wrecks dispersed about Casablanca. Fortunately, the harbor was unblocked and to a high degree usable; that was the major point. Removing wrecks in his harbor was only a convenience, not a necessity.

  All the wrecks in Casablanca harbor were the results, not of French sabotage as in Oran, but of French resistance. One of the most powerful battleships in the world, the French Jean Bart, had been lying in Casablanca ever since the Fall of France. As big and fast and intended to be about as heavily armed as anything afl
oat at that time, she had been sent hastily, not yet quite completed nor wholly armed, to Morocco when France started to crumble before Hitler’s onslaught in May, 1940. There, able to steam but as yet fitted only with half her main battery turret guns, she had since been berthed against a quay in Casablanca harbor, with her forward turret, carrying four 15-inch guns, pointing directly seaward, still a formidable antagonist.

  To take care of the Jean Bart, the fleet convoying Patton’s assault forces had been given our own new battleship, the Massachusetts, flagship of Rear Admiral Giffen, of exactly the same size as the Jean Bart but, of course, carrying all of her own nine 16-inch guns. As matters stood, the Massachusetts had over twice as powerful a battery as her presumed antagonist.

  Admiral Michelier, the French commandant at Casablanca, refused personally to see our emissary on D-day and scornfully spurned our statement that “We come as friends.” His reply was in the form of salvos from every battery he had afloat or ashore, including the main battery guns of the Jean Bart.

  As they let go at our ships, one of Michelier’s aides remarked to our emissary bearing the friendly invitation to Admiral Michelier to join us and co-operate against the only enemy France really had, the Nazis,

  “Voilá votre réponse!”

  Very well then. Rear Admiral Giffen on his flagship, the Massachusetts, well out at sea, opened up on the Jean Bart at ranges varying from ten to fourteen miles and fired some seventy 16-inch armor-piercing shells at her. The Massachusetts’ gunnery was excellent as to range, but unfortunately as a target the Jean Bart was very poor. She was completely lost to view from seaward amongst all the other shipping on both sides of her in the inner harbor. In addition, the high buildings directly behind her and only across the street from her (amongst which my own billet, the Hotel Plaza, was one) gave no background against which even her masts stood out.

  So to insure hitting the Jean Bart, the Massachusetts played her salvos all up and down the inner harbor on both sides of her objective. She hit the Jean Bart all right—five times—and silenced her. The shell which did that within fourteen minutes of the opening of the engagement, the fifth and last hit, struck the Jean Bart’s forward turret which was then busily engaged in firing at the Massachusetts, a much better target. That shell jammed the turret, put it out of action, ricocheted off still unexploded, and finished up practically intact lying in the city streets behind. There Admiral Michelier, still full of fight, retrieved it, promptly set it up in front of his office building on shore, and lest anyone in Casablanca should doubt his estimate as to who really were the friends of France, sarcastically placed against that shell a placard bearing (in French, in large letters) the inscription,