The Far Shore

by Edward Ellsberg

  Long before we got to Southampton, however, I had lost all interest in verdant fields. The endless caravans of drab military trucks loaded with war supplies going our way south, the huge dumps of military stores already covering field after field in Hampshire, and finally as we neared Southampton, the long strings of murderous-looking tanks parked nose to tail just off the pavements, alternating with more parked strings of heavy artillery, ammunition caissons, and God only knows what other ponderous military hardware, inexorably caught my eye and held it fixed on them to the total exclusion of sights no more exciting than the pastoral greenery which now was being wholly blotted from view anyway.

  The build-up for the invasion of military equipment of all kinds for a vast army was in full swing, all converging on this area for convenient transshipment, come D-day, to the Far Shore. Certainly, some millions of tons of it were plainly in sight. So much was there already, waiting only to be moved aboard ship for the last hundred mile water jump to Normandy, with more arriving every hour, it seemed that long before D-day should finally come round, all southern England must sink under that tremendous added weight.

  Had I been under any illusions as to how much tonnage army planners felt they had to have in Normandy to back up their invasion, that glimpse of County Hampshire would completely have dispelled them. Whatever the quantity might be exactly, the sight of it was stupefying. The whole vast production of America’s factories and farms was being funneled through right here to Hampshire. And it was truly no farfetched fantasy to wonder if County Hampshire, unless somehow shored up, might not collapse under the load.

  But for me, that sight brought me once again hard up against a very sobering reality—all this was destined for hurried unloading on the Far Shore. But in the absence of the Mulberries, how was that ever going to be done? Somewhere, tangled in that question, was why, evidently, Quiberon had so cavalierly been shoved aside and I sent on the way again to the Channel.

  We rolled through badly bombed Southampton and then down the easterly side of Southampton Water to Portsmouth. There was no use my going for the moment to Selsey Bill—around Selsey there were no hotels, or any temporary billets available, and how long I was to stay in the area this time was as yet nebulous. Portsmouth offered better chances for a place to rest my head till Admiral Stark should tell me what was expected of me—further, its communications with London, so that finally he could tell me anything at all, were far above what the solitary telephone line out of Selsey offered.

  The billeting officer in Portsmouth groaned at sight of me—accommodations for casual officers around Southampton Water, a major concentration center for invasion jump-off—were most scanty. But ultimately he managed to stow me away in the antiquated Queen’s Hotel. That hotel, when Victoria had just married Albert, might have been new and attractive. But now a century later, what with rationing, shortages, and blackouts superimposed on all its ancient inconveniences, it was depressing in the extreme. However, it was a place to sleep—if I saw no worse before D-day, I should be fortunate. And it had one great advantage—its none too desirable location, quite out of town and well away from the Royal Dockyard on the waterfront, removed it to the far outer circles of that target for Luftwaffe bombs of which the Royal Dockyard formed the bull’s-eye. Portsmouth and the Southampton invasion area, unlike London for the time being, was heavily bombed on the average about three nights a week. It would be at least some comfort to feel on turning in that if a bomb, dropped during one of these night raids, landed on this hotel, it would be merely by coincidence, not by intention.

  I started out next to insure my line of communication with London, which, considering what was most likely to be the subject of London’s communications to me, had better be kept wholly out of British hands. While Captain Clark’s own headquarters for Mulberry were in far-off Plymouth along with the rest of the American naval command afloat, I understood that Clark had put his Deputy Task Force Commander nearer to Selsey Bill, right there in Portsmouth. To keep this Mulberry squabble wholly in the family, it looked best to work with London through the local American Mulberry staff. So I’d better let that group know I was about, and have them inform London they were to serve as the sole pipe line to me for all messages.

  With some difficulty, once I had managed to work my way through the cordon of Royal Marines guarding entrance to the Royal Dockyard, I found the local Mulberry headquarters in a shed most cozily located in the lee of the latrine hard by Admiralty House—surely an efficient arrangement for a visitor having business requiring to be transacted in a hurry in several different spots. But unless so unlikely a location had purposely been chosen to throw snooping espionage agents off the scent of that “Top Secret” project by providing stronger scents nearby, it did not augur well for the importance attached to Operation Mulberry by Admiral Sir Charles Little, Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. And a further drawback was that the two tiny rooms in the skimpy shed turned over to Mulberry as its local headquarters could hardly house all at once Clark’s Deputy Task Force Commander, the few young officers who were his aides, his priceless telephone, his even more priceless typewriter, and the yeoman who manned it.

  However, wedging myself into this very compressed ménage, I introduced myself to Clark’s Deputy, Commander Alfred Stanford. Commander Stanford, I found, was an amateur yachtsman who had temporarily abandoned motor cruisers for warcraft. He was suave, tall, and good-looking, and was the complete antithesis in manner to his chief, Captain Clark. While Clark had already, by too much thinking on the hurdles besetting Operation Mulberry, certainly been given that “lean and hungry look” so much deplored in Cassius’ appearance by Caesar, Stanford, urbane and relaxed always in spite of Mulberry’s difficulties, still could closely have met Caesar’s specification that those about him be “sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.” A strange pair, I thought, this professional seaman and this amateur sailor, to be joined as chief and second in a major enterprise. But perhaps two such diverse characters might complement each other in getting the task accomplished.

  Stanford appeared heartily glad to see me. He knew, of course, of my recent visit to Selsey Bill, of the reasons behind it, of my trip back to London. To him, the speed of my return to the Channel looked promising. What were the results, he asked eagerly? Were the Royal Engineers on their way out?

  I could only shrug my shoulders. If there were any results, I knew nothing of them. I had merely been sent again to the Channel—this time just to await orders. Beyond that I had no information—I was just to wait for what might happen, if anything. A distressing situation, obviously, with D-day, as was most likely, hardly three weeks away.

  Stanford considered that thoughtfully. They were in a bad position because of those Phoenixs, he muttered. Unless a solution swiftly hove into view, his chief, he felt, would certainly crack up. And now nothing was in sight on the horizon except more delay?

  I had to agree.

  Stanford shook his head soberly, then asked what seemed an inane question.

  “You are on waiting orders only? You have no assignment meanwhile?”

  No, I had none; nothing at all to do, except to hang around, waiting.

  Would I mind then, queried Stanford, going back to Selsey Bill and showing his men something?

  No, I shouldn’t mind. Selsey Bill was certainly within my allowed waiting perimeter, perhaps at the very center of it. What was it he wished?

  Stanford explained. The core of that problem at Selsey Bill was, of course, getting all those Phoenixs afloat again. Neither Captain Clark, nor he, had ever had any great faith in the magical solution to the problem to be provided by the Royal Engineers with those two little Dutch schuits of overwhelming pumping capacity. I knew more about those schuits now than he, so he wouldn’t discuss them.

  But there was something else I didn’t know. Though no salvage men themselves, Captain Clark and he already had inside knowledge that there was more to raising those Phoenixs than just pumping them out.
And that knowledge was fast driving Clark wild. What it was, was this:

  Having little faith in the performance of the promised Dutch schuits, over a month before they had somehow purloined from the multitudinous naval forces arriving in the Channel, an American salvage tug, our very latest, fitted with the best American salvage pumps, all of which they had managed quietly to divert temporarily to Operation Mulberry. That salvage tug had undertaken to float up one of those Phoenixs for them, and it had failed ingloriously. The salvage tug (appropriately enough named the U.S.S. Diver, ARS5) was, by great good luck, still at Selsey; so, of course, was also that very Phoenix, still solidly on the bottom.

  Now, I was a salvage officer. Since I had nothing else to do anyway, would I mind going back again to Selsey to show that salvage tug how to raise it? They’d appreciate it on the Diver; so would he. And it could cause no possible complications in London; it would all be just amongst us Americans on the beach.

  Here, I thought, is certainly an intriguing way to keep from being bored silly while waiting—casually raising a 6000 ton hulk in my off hours. I was, of course, willing. But I did think it odd no one in Selsey had previously mentioned that episode of the Diver to me, not even that Scotch Captain. This American fiasco could prove very embarrassing. The Royal Engineers would find it excellent ammunition in the current battle as showing that when it came to raising Phoenixs, even sailors had their off days. Did the Royal Engineers know of this, I wondered?

  Stanford doubted it. The British equipment—those two Dutch schuits—together with that widely assorted lot of Royal Engineers, had not at that time yet arrived at Selsey Bill. And since the raising problem was officially wholly in the hands of the British anyway, Stanford and his men hadn’t ever felt called on to advertise their own very unofficial (and unproductive) activities in that same field.

  Good enough. However, there still were two additional minor points I wanted assurance on should I go to Selsey Bill again—one, transportation, and two, housing. How about them? Selsey Bill was a long way from normal habitations. I was getting a little old, I felt, to volunteer for a task where it seemed likely that, when night came, all I could do was to push aside some of that rusted concertina barbed wire, wrap myself in a tarpaulin jacket, and sleep on the beach. For from my slight observation of it from the sands, Selsey Bill was wholly lacking in hotels and boarding houses, nor did there seem to be there even any cottages open and willing to take in paying guests. Everything along that beach appeared tightly boarded up. If I were to go there again, someone would first have to undertake some firm commitments on my behalf.

  Stanford laughed jovially. Was that all? As for my transportation, he’d handle that himself. And as for housing, that was no problem either. Wait till I got to Selsey and saw how the unconventional Lieutenant Barton had solved that one. Barton would take care of me, also.

  I was satisfied. Commander Stanford got me a jeep. Without ever having slept there, I checked out of the Queen’s Hotel, notified the Portsmouth billeting officer that that bed was all his again, and headed out to box the compass almost, on the very circuitous route to Selsey Bill—only ten miles away due east across the water, over twice that distance in practically all directions, by land.

  When I arrived again on the Selsey sands, everything looked quite the same there, even to the negligently un-uniformed but very busy Lieutenant Barton, on the beach as before. But it wasn’t. Barton, already aboard a Dukw and about to roll away on an amphibious voyage, pointed out to me that approaching Selsey there loomed up against the horizon as odd a sight as I’ve ever seen afloat—one of his Phoenixs, light, with its sheer concrete sides rising abruptly full forty feet above the water, a huge rectangular box placidly moving along toward us, completely dwarfing the seagoing tug ahead of it at the far end of a towline, furiously churning up the water.

  That, I was informed, was a freshly built Phoenix, just arriving on its maiden voyage from its construction dock in the Thames. Barton was about to go out to it with a couple of his own little tugs, much lighter draft vessels than the ocean tug, take over the tow, and bring the Phoenix in to shallow water where he would open its sea valves, flood it down, and park it there amongst its mates.

  Would I excuse him? It would take him some hours.

  I acquiesced, of course. A monstrosity such as that, imperiously demanding to be parked, took precedence in anybody’s Navy over the housing needs of a mere captain.

  Barton shoved off in his Dukw. I remained on the beach, scanning with ever-growing respect that amazing sunken city in the sea which our British friends had conceived and provided as springboard for the invasion. But how, I wondered, was Admiral Stark getting along with his proposals for a change in the control of it? Would he go directly to the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, another American, who after all was responsible for the success of the invasion—every part of it—to force a change lest disaster ensue? Or might he feel it more politic to go instead to the British to persuade them to make a change themselves? And failing in that persuasion, what then might he do? Push it regardless, or let the matter drop and hope for the best?

  It was a question. How Flanigan, contemptuous always of higher authority, would handle it, I felt I knew. His method would be to cajole the British into acquiescence while steamrollering the American top command into pressuring the wavering British to make up their minds to accept the inevitable gracefully.

  But though everything else I’d witnessed around Com Nav Eu had been settled by Fanigan, this, I knew and Flanigan knew, was out of his hands. It was something that our Commander-in-Chief, U. S. Naval Forces in Europe, must handle personally—if indeed, anyone handled it at all. And that decision, too, must rest with Stark. How would Stark, when he’d had time to consider fully what was involved, handle that hot potato?

  Admiral Harold R. Stark, even with his four stars and all the gold lace on his sleeves, was in a peculiar position in this matter, not wholly free to take too much of a chance. He had already, at the very outbreak of this war, received one stunning blow over the head—undeserved, I thought, but terrible. Would he dare take a chance on getting another which might finish his career?

  For, on Pearl Harbor day, Admiral Stark had been Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, the top command in our entire Navy. And in the wake of the smoking and sunken debris of our shattered Pacific Fleet, the President had held Stark personally responsible for the disaster, had swiftly relieved him of that top command, and had sent him to vegetate ingloriously for the rest of the war in London as Commander-in-Chief of our Naval Forces in Europe, where we had no naval forces to speak of and were quite unlikely ever to have any. The naval war, as every child even could then see, was very obviously going to be fought out with the Japanese in the Pacific, where it would swallow up all the naval forces we could ever again muster.

  Bearing then on the probabilities of those sunken Phoenixs before me ever rising once more, was the injustice of what had happened to Stark. That any negligence on Stark’s part had in any way contributed to the Pearl Harbor calamity, I never believed—neither did most others in the Navy who had any access to the facts. But nevertheless, Stark had publicly been made a scapegoat. And further to add to the agony of that cruel blow dealt out to Stark, the disgrace was heaped on him alone; nothing whatever had been done to Stark’s opposite number, General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, who was far more responsible, if either of those two were, for whatever might have happened to the fleet in Pearl Harbor. For every naval man knew that by previously agreed doctrine of defense, the protection of a land naval base and of the fleet while berthed within it, was an Army responsibility. If there was negligence in anyone’s letting the Japanese air attack in on our ships, the negligence was Army’s.

  But had the Army’s Chief of Staff suffered anything as a result? Not visibly. There in Washington still sat as Army Chief of Staff the man who had had that post on Pearl Harbor day, while his naval opposite number had ignominiously and ostentat
iously been demoted to a then innocuous and practically nonexistent command where he might do no harm. Or any good, either.

  What might be the effect of all that on Stark, confronted now with the prospect of major controversy at the very moment when the Supreme Command was straining to achieve harmony? Stark, most of all those in the top echelon, had excellent firsthand knowledge that there was little justice and less equity to be expected in dealings with the summit, if the dealings got you in disfavor.

  It was easy to trace what could happen. The Major General in command of the Royal Engineers would stand by his subordinates, both Brigadier Bruce White in London and his juniors at Selsey Bill, all confident that they had the matter in hand. (Or should anything prove refractory, that shortly they’d rectify it.) The War Office would stand firmly behind their Major General. The British Secretary for War would back up his War Office. The Admiralty, as before, would discreetly refrain from any opinion reflecting on the abilities of the Royal Engineers. The Prime Minister would then, of necessity, support the cabinet official heading the War Office. And who was there in Britain, then, in such a case to challenge Winston Churchill, the colossus who had saved Britain in her hour of need? Obviously nobody.

  That being the case, what would Harold Stark do? Oppose the Prime Minister, and risk what would follow? Com Nav Eu, due to the exigencies of long months of Nazi U-boat warfare, had unexpectedly grown now to be a very respectable naval command, expanded still farther by invasion needs, a wartime command well worth having. And Stark had it, a command wholly unenvisioned when he’d been skidded out of Washington over two years before.

  Would Stark, with his head still aching from the unjustified bludgeoning after Pearl Harbor, risk another? All it would take, should he continue to oppose, would be a transatlantic call, easily imagined, from Prime Minister to President, both reported to be very blunt with each other in their exchange of opinions.