Sink or Swim

by Steve Watkins

About the only members of the crew allowed topside were the officers on the bridge and the navigators. It was just too dangerous for the rest of us, and we had to figure it was too dangerous for the U-boats to surface or even to stay near the surface for very long, so at least that wasn’t a problem for the moment.

  That was what we thought anyway, until, the fourth day out, on a day that should have been safe, our convoy was rocked by two explosions, one right after the other. The call went out to general quarters and we scrambled—carefully because of all the ice—to our battle stations. There didn’t seem to be any way I could climb up to the crow’s nest, so I was in the sonar room and blind to what was going on outside. But I could feel it when the PC’s engines heated up and we lurched forward in search of the U-boats responsible for the attack—and the ships that had just been hit, and, hopefully, any survivors.

  I wasn’t in the sonar room long, though—there was already an operator in there, and I was just the backup—because they needed help tying off survivor nets on the side of the ship so we’d be ready in case there were survivors who could climb aboard under their own power, and fewer we’d have to lift out of the lifeboats.

  My fingers froze as soon as I got out on the deck. My face froze. Everything froze. Guys were slapping themselves to keep some feeling in their faces, clapping their hands to keep some feeling in their fingers as they loaded the guns and prepared the detonators in the depth charges—and as we tied off survivor nets and flung them down the sides of the ship.

  We inched our way back on the frozen deck, holding tight on to safety lines to keep from slipping and to keep from getting tossed over. The PC was pounded by waves as we gave chase to a U-boat we couldn’t see in a desperate push to get there before they could fix their sights on another ship and take that one out, too. It was a good thing the storm had pushed the ships in the convoy out of formation, making it harder for the wolf pack to find their next target.

  “Prepare to fire depth charges!” The order blasted out of the squawk box. The sonar must have homed in on a U-boat, and we must have been getting close. I braced myself—we all did—when the order came to launch, and then we held our breath and counted as the depth charges were flung forward and to starboard, then sank. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three …

  The explosions lifted our boat out of the water and then slammed us back down hard. A couple of guys fell and slid down the icy deck until somebody else caught them and pulled them to safety.

  No debris came up, and no oil slick, no evidence that we’d scored a hit on the U-boat. I thought we’d turn in the direction of the ships that had gotten hit—the storm had lightened up enough and visibility had increased through what was now just a light snow so we could see the twin spirals of smoke rising off the damaged vessels—but Lieutenant Talley ordered us farther out in pursuit of another U-boat instead.

  “What if there are survivors?” Straub said. I could tell he was exhausted from loading and reloading the heavy depth charges. “We can’t just let them drown.”

  Our ship plunged forward, following whatever route the sonar operator said. Rumor had it that there were a dozen U-boats in the wolf pack plaguing the convoy.

  “If we don’t chase off that wolf pack, there will be a lot more survivors who’ll need saving,” another sailor answered. “Can’t do anything about them right now.”

  I thought Straub was going to start crying. Instead, he started cursing like I’d never heard him curse before.

  “It’s just not right,” he muttered when he ran out of cusswords.

  Nobody had time to answer him this time because we got the order to fire again—depth charges and forward deck gun. Without being ordered to go there, I decided I needed to be up on the observation platform, even with the ocean as rough as it was, and the snow still swirling, and the ice still coating everything on board.

  I cautiously made my way up, just in time for the second U-boat to come into view and make an easy target for our deck gun. We fired round after round and scored hit after hit until I was sure it was going to explode and sink.

  But before that happened, yet another U-boat came up beside it. I saw the periscope and shouted down to the bridge. Lieutenant Talley ordered evasive action and also ordered us to fire away in the direction of the third U-boat.

  I wondered if we’d blundered into the middle of that whole U-boat wolf pack, and if we would find ourselves surrounded, sitting ducks, caught in a torpedo cross fire. Lieutenant Talley must have been worrying about the same thing because before I knew it we were hightailing it out of there and back to join up with the convoy.

  The U-boats didn’t try to follow us—probably too busy tending to the sub—or subs—we’d hit so bad.

  Twenty minutes later we approached what was left of the two bleeding ships in our convoy, which wasn’t much at all, but we were still hoping there were survivors.

  But there weren’t—at least none still in lifeboats or in the water. One of the corvettes was already there when we arrived, but we could tell by the looks on the faces of the crew that there wasn’t anybody left to save. They were staring helplessly around them at the debris. The ships were already gone. As we pulled alongside the corvette, I realized that a lot of what looked like debris from a distance wasn’t that at all. It was bodies.

  We all just stood where we were, as if we were frozen ourselves. I had never seen anything so horrible, but I couldn’t close my eyes, couldn’t look away. I felt faint. I wasn’t breathing. I told myself to breathe. To just keep breathing, keep breathing, keep breathing. But through that deep breath, I felt tears on my cheeks, and I was glad I was far enough above the rest of the crew that nobody could see or hear.

  In the distance, back where we’d chased the U-boats, more explosions ripped the horizon. One of the destroyers had turned back and was shelling the last-known place the wolf pack had been. We figured the Germans were long gone, but at least we’d managed to chase them off, away from the convoy—for now.

  The order came for us to abandon the bodies from the sunken ships, and most of the guys on board wanted nothing more than to get moving again. Sitting still, even in the remnants of an early winter storm and in heavy waves, made us an easy target. But Lieutenant Talley told us we were going to pick up as many of the dead men as we could in the next half hour and give them a proper sea burial before we caught up with the convoy. The Royal Navy corvette captain, once he heard what we were up to, gave the same order.

  It was sadder than anything, paddling out in our lifeboats to pull all those poor men out of the ocean. The boats filled quickly. Transferring the bodies back to the ship took forever. The survivor nets I’d helped tie on were useless, except for us, the PC crew, to drag ourselves back on board once the half hour was up.

  There were still bodies left, but we couldn’t risk staying any longer. The guy who’d replaced me on the observation platform was already seeing periscopes everywhere he looked—none of which turned out to be periscopes. But that was how scared and anxious and vulnerable we all were.

  The sea burials took a long time, too. By the end, Lieutenant Talley didn’t have to read the Bible passage and the prayer. He had them both memorized and could recite them by heart.

  * * *

  For the next week, all our days and nights were the same. The wolf pack probed our defenses constantly, unless the weather turned too ugly, and sometimes attacked, firing their torpedoes at the vulnerable underbellies of heavy, lumbering cargo ships and sometimes getting spotted by us first. If that happened, the chase was on, our PC hammering through the waves to catch up to a U-boat before it could get away, either by diving and sneaking off before we could lock in with our sonar, or else coming up and running away at surface speed, which was faster than ours. They wouldn’t stand and fight since our deck guns were a lot more powerful—unless they were damaged, like what happened on our first voyage, coming back up the East Coast.

  We didn’t catch any, but we might have damage
d a few. The same with the corvettes and the other PCs. The destroyers launched a lot of long-range shots that we were sure ran off a number of U-boats, but we couldn’t tell if they ever hit anything directly.

  Nobody slept more than an hour or two at a time. There was just too much ocean to cover, and too many ships to protect, and too many menacing U-boats, and too few of us.

  One evening, Straub and I and a bunch of other guys were in the mess, just off the dogwatch, waiting for dinner. The ocean was calm for once, so the cooks were able to muster up a real hot meal for us, and one that we’d all get to hold down since nobody was seasick. And since the ship wasn’t getting bounced around on choppy seas, we didn’t have to worry about everything sliding off the tables, even with the fiddle boards up. It had gotten warmer out, too, temperatures in the fifties, where just a couple of days before we were practically in the middle of an ice storm.

  On the downside, we were all pretty much falling asleep just sitting there waiting on the chow to be ready. I felt a thud on my forehead and woke right up—and realized I’d slumped so far forward that my head had hit the table.

  “Good thing there wasn’t a fork sticking up there,” Straub said, though I wasn’t sure how he could have seen what just happened with his eyes opened to a couple of narrow slits.

  I lifted my cup of cold coffee and drank some to wake myself up. “Wonder how Woody’s doing,” I said.

  “Yeah, I wonder, too,” said Straub. “Haven’t seen him in probably three whole days. You think he’s all right?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “All those snipes down there in the engine room, they’re all pretty tight with one another. Especially since Big Carrot got killed.”

  “They didn’t get a replacement for him, either. Just promoted a guy. So they’re all pulling extra duty,” Straub said. “I don’t think they mind, though.”

  The cooks brought out steaming pots of, well, something we decided was supposed to be beef stew. There did seem to be chunks of meat floating around in there, bumping into the occasional canned pea or carrot. And there was a lot of green stuff that could have been seaweed. Or colored moss. But we ate it, grateful for a calm ocean, and washed it down with more coffee.

  “Want to go see him?” I asked Straub when we finished.

  “Who, Woody?” he said. “They’d throw us right out of there. They don’t like anybody invading their cave. You know that.”

  “Maybe it’s more relaxed with the new chief motor machinist’s mate,” I said.

  Straub shrugged. “Worth a shot. I mean, I’d hate for Woody to think we’re not still his pals and all.”

  So we made our way back through the bowels of the ship to the engine room, and, as it turned out, nobody said anything to us. They just stared at us when we came in, as if we were aliens from another planet. Maybe it was the deafening noise of all the machinery necessary to turn and control the two giant screws that worked the propellers. Maybe it was the fact that most of the snipes hadn’t seen daylight, or anybody besides their fellow grease-smeared snipes, for a couple of days. Or maybe they were just as tired as the rest of us, as desperate for a good, long sleep, and knew they weren’t going to get it for weeks to come.

  Straub and I waved, taking the friendly approach, and then we went looking for Woody in their sleeping quarters, which was where we found him, asleep in his bunk, snoring, though we could barely hear him over the din from the main engine room on the other side of the bulkhead.

  We were just about to wake him when the squawk box blasted the call to general quarters. Woody sat up so fast that he bonked his head on the bunk above him, like in a cartoon. It should have been triced up since nobody was in it, but apparently they were looser about those sorts of things in the engine room.

  We shouted hi and good-bye to Woody, who seemed confused to see us, or maybe it was from hitting his head, then we turned to race back to our stations. But something stopped me. I turned to look at Woody again. He was rubbing his head but grinning at me, which struck me as odd.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, sure,” Woody said. “This isn’t anything. Down here, you hit your head all the time on stuff. Gotta have a hard head to get by.”

  I should have already been gone. We must have spotted a U-boat and were about to give chase, but I still held back. “Why were you grinning like that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Woody said, looking sheepish. “I just saw that you and Straub came down to visit, and it occurred to me that I ain’t ever had friends like you guys before. That’s all.”

  I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” And then I took off for my duty station and Woody took off for the engine room.

  I turned to wave to him for some reason, but I was too late. He was already gone.

  * * *

  Good weather and ocean for eating in the mess was bad weather and ocean for eluding the wolf pack. Once we made it to our stations, Straub and I joined everybody else scanning the horizon for ships on fire. Sonar had picked up something that might’ve been a U-boat and we were racing toward the spot, practically flying over the waveless sea. It was night, but there was a half-moon and enough light to see the shape of a couple of the cargo ships lumbering forward off to starboard.

  We’d had a run of false soundings on sonar the past couple of days and I was beginning to think this might be one more, but then the order came to prepare the depth charges, and the PC slowed. Straub and his depth charge crew went to work, while I helped with shells for the deck gun. I wished I was on the observation platform instead, because while I trusted the other guys, I was pretty sure I was better at spotting U-boats in open water, or even sometimes just having a feeling, a sense, for where one might be, even if there was nothing to actually see.

  Lieutenant Talley ordered them to launch the depth charges, and we all braced ourselves for the aftershock. Spouts of water shot up and caught the moonlight. For a second it was actually beautiful. And then the concussion jolted us up out of the water and slammed us back down. Guys staggered, slammed into rails, fell on the deck. The usual. And then another depth charge went off even deeper and it happened again. And then a third depth charge even deeper.

  I was picking myself up and back into position by the forward gun when the water next to the ship started frothing and churning. An oil slick formed nearby, coming from below the surface where we’d either hit a U-boat or they were trying to convince us we had. Lieutenant Talley ordered the engine room to back the ship off a little way, and we trained the forward gun at the still-churning water.

  We didn’t have to wait long before the bow of a U-boat broke through, and then the forward deck, then their deck gun, obviously damaged and half off the mount, then the tower, also damaged. Only half the sub managed to surface. So we’d hit it after all! Guys on our ship cheered until Chief Kerr ordered everybody to shut up and grab small arms.

  We kept the forward gun aimed at the U-boat tower. Guys with weapons crouched behind cover with their guns aimed there, too, where the Germans would climb out—if they were still alive, and if they were going to surrender.

  So we waited like that. Hardly breathing. Minutes passing. Knowing we couldn’t stay like that long because another U-boat in the wolf pack could be lining up to fire a torpedo at us at any time.

  “How long you think Lieutenant Talley’s gonna wait?” the guy next to me asked.

  “I say we go ahead and open fire. Sink this U-boat and get the heck out of here,” said another guy.

  “But they could still be alive in there. Some of them probably are. Wouldn’t you think?” asked the first guy.

  “So what if they are?” said the second guy. “What are we going to do with them? We can’t take on any prisoners, can we? Can’t slow down the convoy just for something like that.”

  Nobody answered him, because nobody could know the answer.

  * * *

  After five more long minutes that felt like an hour, a German climbed out of the tower a
nd down onto the sloping deck of the U-boat. Another followed. Then several more. They pulled an inflatable raft out with them, looking at us nervously the whole time.

  “They’re probably waiting for us to start shooting,” somebody said. “The way they’d do it to us if the situation was reversed.”

  We kept guns aimed at the U-boat. Lieutenant Talley and the other officers were on the bridge. He shouted something to the German submariners, but none of them answered. They inflated their boat, still keeping one eye on us to see what we would do, but not asking permission for anything, not saying anything, and then they climbed on board and began paddling away—away from the U-boat and away from our PC.

  “What the heck is this?” Straub asked. I hadn’t seen him come over to where I was stationed. “We’re just letting them get away?”

  “It’s not like they can do anything,” I said. “Except wait to be rescued by another U-boat.”

  “I say we start shooting,” a guy in the forward gun crew snarled.

  “Nah,” somebody else said. “Lieutenant Talley’s going to let them get far enough away, and then he’s going to sink their sub. And anybody else on board who didn’t come out.”

  “You gotta figure they’re all dead down there, or they’d have come out, too,” Straub said.

  “I hope that’s it,” I said. I didn’t want to think about men still alive on the U-boat when we fired on it, if that’s what Lieutenant Talley was actually planning.

  We never got the chance to find out, though, because suddenly the whole world was ripped apart by an enormous explosion—and we were in the middle of it, thrown off our feet, our ship swallowed up in flames.

  I don’t know if I blacked out, or if I was just so confused by the blast that I didn’t know where I was at first. There was smoke everywhere, and everything seemed to be leaning. I was lying down, a sharp pain in one of my legs. Everything was muted, like being underwater. I could still hear guys yelling, someone screaming, but they sounded really far away. Then the boat shook with a second explosion belowdecks, and I felt myself tossed again and slammed into something metal—the bridge. I pulled myself up to a sitting position and rubbed my eyes. It was hard to see. I wished I had some water to throw on my face. I blinked and blinked. There was more yelling. There were guys staggering around me. I could see them dimly. My hearing was coming back, too. Someone was screaming—I crawled toward the sound, more feeling my way through the smoke than seeing where I was going at times.