I set out my position—I was an officer lately joined to Admiral Stark’s London staff. Recently I had commanded the Allied forces, afloat and ashore, engaged in harbor clearance and salvage in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean. The pending invasion had a harbor problem, as he well knew. Admiral Stark had sent me to the Channel to become thoroughly acquainted with the artificial harbors involved, now at Selsey Bill, shortly to be moved to Normandy, where we Americans were to operate one of them. I should appreciate his assistance in my task. And I should further appreciate being informed as to whether he foresaw any difficulties in his task wherein the specialized knowledge of a salvage officer might assist in getting the Mulberries on their way to France.
No, I learned, neither the Colonel nor the Royal Engineers needed any assistance—the matter was nicely in hand. Though there had been, for a time, the Colonel unbent enough to inform me, a sticky problem involved which was none of their making—he would get to that in a moment. Meanwhile, so I might understand that problem, now solved, there was a bit of history I should know.
The Royal Engineers, it seemed, had been given originally the design problem of the Mulberries. That, under their Brigadier Bruce White, they had done well with; that he took it, was beyond question? I nodded assent.
Very well, then. The production and fabrication of the mountain of diverse materials it took to turn the designs into reality, the Royal Engineers had further handled through Brigadier Sir Harold Wernher, operating in conjunction with the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Supply—a task in which Sir Harold had practically set over-strained Britain on its head to bring the Mulberries to the point I now saw off Selsey Bill. I appreciated Sir Harold’s results, did I not? I expressed my deep appreciation most enthusiastically—no one looking at what lay off Selsey Bill, could possibly feel otherwise regarding Sir Harold’s work.
Good. We could come then to that sticky problem he had alluded to—none of it of the Engineer’s making, I must understand. The Royal Engineers had designed the Phoenixs, and built the Phoenixs, and had had the Phoenixs towed from all around England to the invasion departure point at Selsey Bill, all as proposed. And always with the idea that they were to be left swinging to their moorings at Selsey Bill till D-day, then to be towed behind the first wave of invasion to the Far Shore. There for the first and the last time in their careers those Phoenixs were to be sunk once and for all to form the indispensable breakwaters in Normandy.
So far, so good. But the assembly at Selsey Bill of all that material would take some months till the Phoenixs were to move on to France. Meanwhile, who, by the way, was to provide the heavy mooring buoys dotting the surface of the sea off Selsey Bill like raisins on a cake, to which the arriving Phoenixs were all to swing till departure on D-day? Moorings? There seemed to have been a regrettable lapse of liaison respecting that mooring matter—nobody was providing any moorings!
Since the seagoing tug which was to bring the first Phoenix to Selsey Bill could not be kept indefinitely off an open beach to hold its tow from drifting away, an agonized cry went out from the tugboat people for the moorings. The Royal Engineers passed—mooring Phoenixs had been no part of their picture, they had provided none. Let the Admiralty, which had been mooring everything afloat for four centuries, tend to that.
The Admiralty hurriedly totted up the number of huge anchors, the astronomical amount of chain cable, and the quantity of mooring buoys and accessories involved in mooring a hundred vessels—and the Admiralty passed also. It neither had them, nor could the Admiralty now possibly wring them out of Britain’s impoverished economy in time to make any difference.
But something had to be done. After all, the Phoenixs were intended to be sunk—off Normandy, to be sure. There could be no harm to them in giving each a preliminary sinking off Selsey Bill, where it could rest quietly on the bottom till wanted across the Channel. So Phoenix Number One was shoved in by its tugs till it grounded on the sands, and then flooded internally to hold it down on the bottom till needed. In the face of so happy a solution to the mooring dilemma, it seemed to have occurred to no one to question the incongruity of the Royal Engineers assuming the resultant task, come D-day, of getting afloat again that and all the succeeding Phoenixs—about a hundred of them.
I had listened intently. So that was how it came about the Phoenixs were sunk—no moorings. I had before assumed they had been sunk so that in the long interval till D-day, they might be safer from Nazi air attack—less of them was thereby exposed above water to bomb damage, while their flooded interiors would far better resist shock waves from the underwater explosions of near misses than would their empty compartments, if still afloat.
But why they had been sunk was now immaterial. They were sunk. How did the Royal Engineers, who had so nonchalantly taken on the task, propose next to get them all afloat again?
My attention was invited offshore to a pair of small coasting vessels anchored out beyond the parked Phoenixs. Did I see them? They were the answer—those two Dutch schuits.
Dutch—what?
Dutch schuits. Schuit was the Dutch word for a small steam freighter intended to work the coasts and canals of Holland. Those two schuits out there had fled across the Channel from Holland when the Nazis had invaded their country—the British had them now, Dutch crews and all. The Royal Engineers had previously conceived the bright idea of fitting up the capacious cargo holds of these two with special boilers and electric generators, making them floating powerhouses to service a captured French port—Cherbourg, for instance—should they, as was most likely, find the local utility plant sabotaged when the port was captured, and no electricity available for harbor needs.
So with those floating powerhouses in the works anyway, till they had need of them in France, the Royal Engineers felt it no greatly added strain on them to make their two Dutch schuits useful at Selsey Bill by installing also in their holds some electric-driven pumps for pumping out the Phoenixs; there was plenty of electricity available below decks in them. So those schuits now had installed in them a terrific pumping capacity—just what the lifting task needed for rapid completion. No, the Royal Engineers wanted no assistance; everything was well in hand. Should I like to see those double-purpose installations on the two schuits—the Colonel was, apparently, very proud of them—he had a Captain of the Royal Engineers—fine chap, Scotch, good man—aboard them with the Dutch. He would be glad to show me about. But as for transportation out to them, there was a rub there. The Colonel had no boat.
I looked dubiously out to sea, feeling more and more that perhaps Captain Clark had a basis for his doubts—two clumsy Dutch tubs only, no matter how powerful their special pumps, to float up a hundred sunken hulks in a hurry? There was more to raising a fleet of sunken wrecks than just providing pumps. Was it possible the Royal Engineers didn’t know that?
Exactly that might be possible, but I repressed my doubts. With Flanigan’s warnings fresh in my ears, I must jump to no conclusions. Yet, if those two Dutch schuits were now the nub of the problem, the sooner I was aboard them, the better. So the Colonel had no boat. No news now in that. However, there was still that Lieutenant Barton—
I thanked the Colonel. Yes, I wanted to see the schuits. No, I wasn’t concerned over his inability to put me aboard them. I’d arrange that myself. Goodby. I went to look for someone in the uniform of a lieutenant in our Navy—that Lieutenant Barton.
But this time I was baffled. I could see everyone there was out on the beach—British sailors, English soldiers, some nondescript merchant seamen off the tugs, perhaps, even a few American Seabees. But in spite of NOIC’s statement that I should doubtless find Barton on the beach, there was on the beach no American naval officer with the two gold stripes of a lieutenant on his sleeve, through whom I might get a boat.
It occurred to me finally that the rest of NOIC’s vitriolic comment on Barton had some significance—he might not be in naval uniform. Perhaps in spite of being an officer, he might not be in any unifo
rm at all, though both NOIC and the Colonel, the only two officers I had so far met, had been most formally and correctly decked out in the regalia of their ranks. As, for that matter, as a visitor, so was I. Still, Barton might be in working clothes—anything at all.
From that point of view, I resurveyed the sands, looking now for someone more like a workman, and the answer was obvious. That huge figure in a white sweatshirt some hundred yards off at the water’s edge, bawling orders through a megaphone to a Dukw heading offshore and the only person in sight supervising anything, must be Lieutenant Barton. I went in that direction.
It was Barton, all right. Even before I got within ten yards of him, I understood better how NOIC, uncertain of himself, uncertain of his task, had abdicated to Barton. There was nothing whatever uncertain about Barton. He had a voice like a bull, a figure like Samson in its massiveness, a solid assurance in his rough manner that any Englishman (let alone a decrepit one like NOIC) would have difficulty facing up to, and a garb that was generously free of any implication of the subordination that is inherent in the livery of a naval uniform. Clad in baggy trousers that defied classification, in a sweatshirt that once had presumably been white, soaked now in perspiration, and in no cap at all, Barton very obviously looked like neither an officer nor a gentleman—simply like a man striving vociferously and profanely to get something conveyed across a widening stretch of water and never mind any amenities, naval or otherwise. That was Barton.
I accosted him.
Barton turned, looked at me. Down went the megaphone in his left hand, up went his right hand in salute. Uncouth though his appearance was, an American Captain, apparently, rated with him. But I saw instantly there was more behind it than just that, for I didn’t have to introduce myself. Barton knew of my coming, guessed immediately who I was, greeted my arrival with unfeigned joy. High time, too, he grumbled belligerently. London should long ago have sent down someone with rank and savvy enough to straighten these limeys out on Mulberry. What could he do to help me that way?
I indicated the Dutch schuits out beyond the Phoenix park—I’d like to board them.
“Sure, Captain!”
Up went his megaphone again, aimed at that Dukw he’d been talking to when first I’d spotted him, now so much further out from the beach that to me it seemed to be beyond range of any communication save by radio.
But in that Dukw they heard him, all right. And they wasted no time, either, in obeying his stentorian order to return. In a moment, the Dukw, looking like an awash 3-ton truck, had come about and was swimming toward us. In a few more minutes, with all the lack of grace of an actual duck waddling ashore, its wheels emerged from the sea, its useless propeller ceased whirling, it quit being a boat, and like any well-behaved truck, it rolled up the sand to stop alongside us. With some difficulty, since it seemed to have neither the steps of a truck nor the side ladder of a boat, I clambered up over its side to a seat beside the driver—one of Barton’s Seabees.
Barton waved nonchalantly to his driver.
“Take the Captain wherever he wants to go,” he ordered airily. The driver, that hybrid between soldier, sailor, and mechanic which was denominated a Seabee, looked at me hopefully. There was all the latitude in the world in that tantalizing order. Where did I wish to go? By land, to Chichester, perhaps, the nearest inland city and a blessed haven for Seabees from the toil under Barton on the barren beaches? Or by sea, somewhere out on the water into the maze of Mulberry units?
“To those Dutch schuits,” I replied, pointing.
Not too happily, the driver turned his clumsy vehicle and headed it for the water—for me a new experience, since I’d never been shipmates with a Dukw before.
In a moment, amidst a weird shifting of multitudinous gears and clutches and a partial deflating of tires, we rolled down the sand into the water. Our conveyance started to float, ceased being a truck, became a boat. With whirling propeller and rudder in action now instead of drive wheels and steering knuckles, and with my chauffeur metamorphosed into a coxswain, we were on our way. And a damned queer way, I thought, for a sailor to get about in a harbor, but it certainly had its advantages. In calm water only, I hastily qualified, as I noted the not so generous freeboard of our practically unloaded vehicle. A little nervously I looked about in the truck till I spotted some life jackets—they might be useful now that it was a boat, should we have the hard luck to strike rough water.
Even in that calm sea, the Dukw proved to be no speedboat; that way, it more resembled its near namesake in rate of locomotion. But we were making progress though our truck body was not so streamlined. Soon we were well offshore, threading our way amongst the Mulberries. And very swiftly, close-up views of Phoenixs, Lobnitzs, and Whales, towering high above our squat hull, made me forget my uncouth conveyance altogether. Like Alice-in-Wonderland, I stared, mouth almost agape, at the monstrosities covering the waters all about me. It was hardly believable they were real. And even less, when viewing them at close range, did it seem possible anyone not in on the secret could ever guess their purpose.
A mile or so of dodging nightmares and we were out on the seaward side of the Channel. There, anchored rather closely, as if huddling together for more normal companionship in the lee of that grotesque assemblage, lay the two schuits. We ran close aboard the nearer one. A Dutch sailor came to the rail.
“Is there a Royal Engineer Captain aboard?” I shouted.
The sailor shook his head, pointed to the other vessel. We headed for that and this time with no more hails, ran up along its side ladder. I told the coxswain I should be aboard some hours, most likely. He was to tell Barton to have his signalman keep an eye on the schuits. When ready, I would have the schuit signal him with an Aldis lamp for a Dukw to take me ashore. And with that, I stepped from my seat to the side ladder, ordered the Dukw to shove off, and clambered up the side of the schuit. She was just an ordinary coasting freighter, so far as anything visible indicated on deck.
There a mate met me, but he spoke no English. By the captain, to whose cabin I was escorted, and whose English was infinitely above my Dutch, I was taken to an adjacent stateroom intended normally for some one of the mates, assigned now to that Captain of the Royal Engineers whom I was seeking. The skipper peeked through the curtains shrouding the door, satisfied himself my officer was within, nodded to me, and departed. I knocked.
No answer.
I knocked again.
Still no answer.
Feeling I was entitled to at least as much latitude as the Dutch skipper had allowed himself, I also peeked through the curtains. There stretched out on the bunk at the far side of the little stateroom, fully clothed in his olive-drab uniform, shoes and all, lay that Captain, back to me, sound asleep, apparently.
I was not surprised. It could well be that his working hours with his charges being most irregular, he snatched sleep whenever, day or night, he could get some. So with no more ado, I shoved aside the curtains, entered, seized him by the nearest shoulder, and gave him a vigorous shake.
“This poor devil must certainly be worked to death,” I thought, for in spite of the vigor of that shake, he rolled over toward me only sluggishly, very slowly opened his eyes, and stared at me apparently unseeingly for a considerable interval before finally he slid off the bunk and stood up.
I told him who I was, why I was there—his Colonel had suggested I see him about the schuits, about their mission. Would he kindly show me?
Apparently shaking off his doze, he began slowly to come alive. A fairly tall young man, somewhere in his early thirties, I figured, he became quite cordial as he seemed to wake. Yes, he would be quite happy to show me what he had below decks in these schuits. Would I mind waiting though, till he got hold of his sergeant to see the holds below lighted up, and his men stationed?
Every army is the same, I muttered—no sergeants, no action. I nodded assent.
Shortly he was back again. Together we descended from the poop to the middle hold of the schuit cont
aining most of the newly installed machinery. He presented his sergeant, a very husky Englishman, whose slow, thick speech I could hardly decipher. Behind the sergeant were ranged his enlisted men, all about as big as the sergeant. I looked them over with interest. If these were average specimens, the Royal Engineers needed no machinery to destroy their enemies—their brawn alone appeared quite adequate to the task.
I gazed about me in that cavern. What had once been the bleak main cargo hold of that old freighter was jammed now with the modern machinery the Royal Engineers had recently installed there—boilers, turbo-generators, condensers, feed pumps, circulating pumps, fuel pumps, air ejectors, forced draft blowers, and a set of electrical distribution and control panels glistening with ammeters, voltmeters, wattmeters, circuit breakers, switches, and a dizzying array of regulating gadgets.
Here was a complete power plant in all its complexity, all right, but what I was interested in was only some simple salvage pumps, which might indeed be driven by steam off that old schuit’s original boilers without any of all this vast complication of newly added machinery. Where were all the salvage pumps? It was indicated to me that they were forward.
We clambered up again to the deck, down the ladder on the forward side of the next bulkhead into the adjoining hold till we were again down on the floor plates just above the ship’s bottom. There, the Captain proudly indicated to me his salvage pumps; massive centrifugals, electrically driven, with ponderous steel suction pipes running vertically up to the deck far overhead, for connection there to the rubber suction hoses intended to be run athwartships over the side to the Phoenix being pumped and then down again into the Phoenix’s flooded holds to wherever the waterlevel there happened to be. Unavoidably, with the set-up necessary to pump out the Phoenixs, the water inside them would first have to be sucked upward ten to fifteen feet or more before it could pass over the gunwale of the schuit alongside doing the pumping, and then flow downward inside the schuit to the pump. It would take a pump with a first class suction pull indeed to lift the water that high up over the hump between the Phoenix and the high side of the schuit, before it could start flowing downward to the pump in her hold. And what had the Royal Engineers provided for pumps requiring so fine a suction lift?
The Far Shore Page 5
