At All Costs

by Sam Moses

  “I went towards Bowdory. His arms were outstretched, like this. And he was being pulled into the flames, by the ship going down, the water, sucking towards the ship. And he was yelling and screaming, and…”—he fumbles over words—“…the flame.”

  Treves is asked how far away Bowdory was. It’s not a simple question. It’s been haunting him for sixty-three years. Too far for me to save? Or not? Could I have swum into the sucking water of the 13,000-ton sinking freighter, wearing my waterlogged kapok, into the flames that were closing around Bowdory’s raft, and tied a line from the raft around my chest and swum with all my might, towing the raft and Bowdory to safety, against the powerful pull of the sinking ship, before the flames closed on us? Could I have talked the nonswimming and panicked Bowdory into diving into the water so I could drag him kicking and screaming away from the closing flames to safety?

  It’s the question that haunted him through his breakdown afterward, still seventeen years old, and through his service on a destroyer, after he joined the Royal Navy the next year, until the war ended. Never mind the clear impossibility of reaching Bowdory. The question still haunts him, as he sees Bowdory on the raft through his glistening eyes, from the couch of his home in Wimbledon.

  “Quite a way,” he answers, his voice drifting quite a way back, “…but not too far. I think I could have made it, I got medals for swimming at school. But I…turned back. Just…swam away.”

  He swallows. “They decorated me, which is nice.” The king gave him the British Empire Medal at Buckingham Palace, for saving Jackson. “At least I got Jackson.”

  Only Treves considers that swimming into the fire in an attempt to save Bowdory might have been the better thing to do. Only he would.

  All the world is old, my friend

  Yet all the world is new.

  And all the dead are dead, my friend

  Saving me and you.

  And all the dead are me, and you

  And all the future too.

  The Waimarama blast was so intense that the crew of the Melbourne Star, four hundred yards behind, thought it was their own ship that had been hit. Thirty-three jumpy men leaped over the side, mostly army gunners at the six-inch and Bofors aft. “Mad bastards, they were,” said a sailor who watched them go. “The gunners around me just disappeared overboard. It was 50 bleedin’ feet down to the water.”

  They were mad, yes. All night at the guns they had watched the funeral pyres and listened to the screams of burning sailors carrying over water. “No one could say he was not frightened by now,” said Dickens. “We had seen too much.”

  “It was impossible to avoid going through Waimarama’s flames, although the Captain, who was conning ship from Monkey Island above the bridge, ordered helm hard to port,” reported the liaison officer. “The Second Officer, who was in the Wheelhouse with the helmsman at the time of the explosion, rang on full speed, and this undoubtedly in my mind saved the ship.

  “Remainder of men onboard tried to find the best means if any of escape, but ship came through the burning oil of Waimarama which was spreading rapidly, and men returned to the forecastle and so back to their action stations, the whole episode taking about three minutes.

  “On coming out of the flames, a destroyer was seen to be attempting to rescue the men who went overboard, and at the time I thought it was a hopeless task. Subsequently it was found that this destroyer was H.M.S. Ledbury.”

  Roger Hill had just rescued the Ohio by leading her through the narrows and back to the convoy with his destroyer Ledbury, but his next job was what he was there for.

  Admiral Burrough had known Hill for a long time and was well aware of how he felt about having been ordered to abandon the merchantmen during PQ17. Burrough knew that the Ledbury was near Waimarama and that Hill would rescue any survivors whether or not he was told to, so he sent the signal with some resignation. “Ledbury was ordered to pick up any survivors from the Clan Ferguson [sic], although it seemed unlikely that there could be any,” he reported.

  “The Admiral made [signaled] to me, ‘Survivors, but don’t go into the flames,’” said Hill. “It was the biggest explosion I have ever seen. It was terrible. The flames were hundreds of feet high, and a great expanse of sea was covered in rolling smoke and flames. I took the ship to the edge of the flames but did not think anyone could have survived. As we approached, there were heads bobbing about in the water, waving arms, and faces blackened with oil.”

  Hill could hear the cries of the ghosts of the PQ17 sailors whom the Ledbury had left to die in the Arctic Sea. His soul had gone down with theirs, as he felt the doom and despair of their voices over the radio. Now he could hear the screams of the men in the fire around the Waimarama, and he could see their mucky heads, as if these were the PQ17 sailors risen from the bottom of the sea for a second chance to be saved. But it was more the chance for Hill to save himself.

  He whipped his destroyer around as if it were a Jet Ski plucking fallen surfers away from big waves. “I can not speak too highly of the sheer guts of these men,” he said. “They were singing and encouraging each other, and as I went through them explaining by loudhailer that I must get the ones nearest the flames first, I received cheerful answers of ‘That’s all right, sir. Go and get the other chaps.’”

  Mines were falling from the sky under parachutes, and a few Junkers continued to attack. Said Freddie Treves, “I remember Bunny Hill shouting through his loudhailer, ‘Be back in a minute, I’ve just got to shoot this bloody German down!’”

  Because Hill had leaped off the bridge of the Ledbury on the way to Gibraltar in his failed attempt to rescue the crew of the Sunderland downed by friendly fire, the Ledbury men now felt free to copy their captain’s style. “All sorts of people were jumping over the side with lines and bringing survivors, some seriously burned, to the landing nets,” said Hill. “The flames were spreading outward all the time—even to windward—and at one time spread the whole length of the ship, picking up two men close to the after nets. I had to take the ship after, and these men were supported by my rescuers who themselves were clinging onto the nets.”

  He nosed the Ledbury into the flames as hoses tried to push back the fire. “On the bridge, the flames and smoke towered over us,” said Robin Owen, a young officer. “The first lieutenant had hoses rigged, and they played on the upper decks, as the captain maneuvered the ship with the engines and rudder to get as close as possible to the survivors while a boat was lowered.”

  They picked up survivors for two hours. There was one more man in the water. Hill couldn’t leave him.

  The coxswain reported up the voice-pipe, “There’s a man on a raft in the flames.” I hesitated, wishing to ignore what he reported. Then I wondered if the ship would blow up if we went right into the heat. The density of the smoke changed, and I saw a man sitting on some debris surrounded by leaping flames, and he raised his arm to us. I took the ship in and shouted to Number One, “For Christ’s sake, be quick!”

  The flames were higher than the mast, and the roaring noise and choking fumes were all around us.

  “Jesus,” said Yeoman (who had been forbidden to go over the side),

  “it’s just like a film.”

  The cook came out of his galley aft, saw the man, took off his apron, kicked off his boots and over he went.

  Charles Henry Walker is ninety-one years old now, built like a bull and living life to the full in Reading with ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. He shows off the pictures on the wall of his room. “There’s me and the queen, there’s me and Margaret Thatcher, there’s me and Prince Philip. Who haven’t I met?” he says with a spark in his eye and a poke in his guest’s arm. “The queen called me Charles Henry, so you commoners can call me Charles Henry too. I met her after I gave a fella a little help in the water.”

  Petty Officer Walker, the ship’s cook, was the strongest swimmer on the Ledbury, captain of her water polo team. For two hours he rowed the whaler with chief gunner Musham and
three more men, working in the channels and pools between the flames, picking up survivors. Some couldn’t swim, and all of them were burned. When the rowers could go no closer, Walker went over the side of the whaler and swam the backstroke, splashing away the fire, to reach the last couple of men. Reginald Sida, a steward, also swam for survivors, connected to the Ledbury by a line.

  “One chap I picked up, oh he was really bad, he was burned to hell he was,” said Walker. “He was really cooked in diesel oil. His nose was like a little pear drop, and he was cooked in diesel, and he was going, ‘Water, water…’

  “When you see bodies floating around the ocean like that, and you can’t do a thing about it…

  “I saw a body in the water, we rowed out to get his dog tags off him. His jacket was full of air, keeping him up. I touched him and he rolled over in the water, went blub blub blub. Things like that stick in your mind.” They stick in his throat, and his eyes begin to take on water, as if to splash away the memory.

  “Somebody’s son, somebody’s dad. Somebody’s sweetheart. That’s the nastiest thing about war, isn’t it.

  “Musham said, ‘All right, let’s get going,’ Flames were getting on the boat, he was pretty worried. I was too. I see a hand on the gunwale, I see this bloke, and I say, ‘Give me your hand, I’ll pull you in,’ and I turn away for a second to put the oar down, and the hand is gone. I could see the hand on there, even now when I go to bed, late at night, I see the hand, I see his eyes. Christ yes, ooh wee. We survived, we survived. When you come to think of it, why? Why was it us who survived?”

  Walker earned the George Cross Medal, the highest civilian honor the monarch can bestow, for what he did next. “Ah, you’d like to hear that story, would you?” he says with the spark in his eye returning.

  He hasn’t told the story many times. Few of the veterans have told their stories many times. When they got back from the war they didn’t want to, and nobody wanted to hear them. They didn’t even tell their children. Decades have passed, and now they’re beginning to tell them, these eightysomethings who don’t want to carry the reality of war to their graves. If anyone asks. The children are fifty and sixty years old, and they’re astounded. They never knew their fathers were heroes.

  “We picked these boys up out of the water, we didn’t think anything,” continues Walker. “I was on the upper deck and my mate was rubbing diesel off me because I was covered in diesel. The skipper give the order ‘No more men over the side, we’re getting under way.’ I didn’t hear the order, because I was over the side when he gave it.

  “The flames were coming over the ship. There was Alan Burnet, he was only a young lad, someone saw him having difficulty on a raft in the flames, and I went over the side again and got him. He starts yelling, ‘There’s something around my legs!’ I said there’s no bloody sharks on you, he bloody finds his trousers had got around his ankles. So I pulled the buggers off and they sank to the bottom, and I push him alongside the ship to the scrambling net, and he’s got a big bare ass, isn’t he? You should have heard them on the boat. He’s only sixteen years old. Lovely white bum, I can see it now. He was quite knackered, had been in the water a long time, and I had to push him up: like this.”

  “I felt like I could not wait any longer,” said Captain Hill, “and called through the loudhailer, ‘Hold on like hell, I’m going astern!’ We came out fast astern, and I was sure the cook and the man would have been washed away, but he had one arm round the man’s neck and the other through the net and had held on.”

  “I was still in the water,” says Walker. “The skipper said, ‘We’re getting under way.’ I’m in the water. ‘Throw the line for Christ’s sake!’ I nearly go mad.

  “The yeoman, oh a nice chap, really nice chap, he said to Hill, ‘Excuse me sir, petty officer Walker is still in the water.’ Bloody hell! Put the Ledbury astern! Picked us up, and that was it.”

  “We had been two hours picking up forty-five survivors, one of whom was dead,” said Hill. “I told the admiral I was thirty miles astern and set off to rejoin the convoy.”

  CHAPTER 38 •••

  SWERVING TOWARD MALTA

  Captain Mason conned the SS Ohio hard aport, around the flaming gold sea over the sinking Waimarama. “Weather was fine with good visibility, smooth sea, and light airs, and we were steaming at thirteen knots, steering approximately East, in position a hundred miles west from Malta,” he reported. The tanker continued swerving toward Malta, shadowed by two dozen Ju 88s.

  “At 0800 the heavy bombing attacks started again,” said Mason. “Ohio seemed the main objective, as always. The planes never flew over in any particular formation, and appeared to adopt the same technique each time. Ten or twelve planes would appear over the horizon to the southward, and all guns would open fire, then the real attack would develop from the opposite direction, i.e., northward. We had got used to this method of attack by now and were ready for the enemy. Our gunners brought down a Stuka with one of the Oerlikons.

  “At about 0900 we shot down a Ju 88 that crashed into the sea close to our bow and bounced onto our foredeck, making a terrific crash, and masses of debris were thrown high into the air.”

  “We saw it come down in the sea and fly off a swell onto the main deck,” said Allan Shaw. “Luckily nobody was on the main deck at the time. A lot of the aircraft just fell back into the sea, but what stayed on deck was afire. Hot machine-gun bullets from the plane were all over the place. We put out the fire and threw it over the side.”

  Continued Mason, “A little later the chief officer telephoned from aft in great excitement to say that a Stuka had landed on the poop. Apparently this plane also fell into the sea and bounced onto our ship. I was rather tired, having been on the bridge all night, and I’m afraid I answered rather curtly, saying, ‘Oh, that’s nothing, we’ve had a Ju 88 on the foredeck for nearly half an hour.’

  “The bombing attacks seemed to go on for ages, and we were constantly receiving orders by wireless to make forty-five-degree emergency alterations. It was quite impossible to execute these in the time given. These orders were also transmitted over the radio telephone, and the wireless orders were always several seconds behind, thus causing misunderstanding and confusion.

  “The enemy planes were dropping parachutes with an object suspended which looked like a seven-pound tin of marmalade, and these fell at a considerable speed into the middle of the convoy as we were executing the emergency turns. It appeared to be impossible to avoid them, but I never saw any actually hit a ship.”

  With the Ohio finally back in the convoy, Admiral Burrough was keeping an eye on her. “The air attacks that were carried out by Stuka dive-bombers were of a most determined nature, being chiefly directed against Ohio, who suffered several near misses,” he said.

  “A large plane flew right over us at a height of about two thousand feet, banked slightly, and dropped a salvo of six bombs, three falling close to the port side and three close to the starboard side,” said Mason. “The vessel seemed to be lifted right out of the water and shook violently from stem to stern. One near miss right under the forefoot opened up the port and starboard bow and buckled the plating, filling the forepeak tank and shaking the vessel violently forward to aft, amidst a deluge of water.”

  “We were standing around the end of the poop deck and the whole deck just heaved up in the air,” said Allan Shaw. “Your feet left the deck and you were like shuddering, back down again. If it wasn’t happening on one end of the ship, it was happening on the other. There was so many near misses we couldn’t count them all.”

  The steam turbine engine room of the Ohio was the most beautiful place its chief engineer, James Wyld, had ever seen. After decades at sea in tubs, he had finally been rewarded with a masterpiece like the Ohio. He had restarted the engines just thirty minutes after the first torpedo hit, twelve long hours ago, and was dealing heroically with the 600-square-foot hole in the pump room. But the near misses kept knocking the engines out. Captain Maso
n counted six separate whacks.

  Wyld’s report:

  Approx. 9.15 a.m. Violent explosion at stern of vessel, causing severe concussion.

  Approx. 9.20 a.m. Engines stopped. Investigation showed that trip gear on Fuel Pump had disengaged owing to concussion.

  Approx. 9.30 a.m. Full ahead.

  Approx. 10.30 a.m. Violent explosion at stern of vessel, causing severe concussion.

  Approx. 10.35 a.m. Engines stopped. Investigation showed that Circuit Breakers on both Fuel Pumps disabled.

  Approx. 10.50 a.m. Engines started. Unable to maintain vacuum. Investigation showed no apparent cause, but most likely caused through fracture in Condensing system. Utmost available 3 inches of vacuum, and engine speed of 20 R.P.M. [4 knots].

  The lighting system in the engineroom and stokehold were put out of commission by the severe concussions, so that all illumination in the engineroom, stokehold and auxiliary engineroom was hand lamps and emergency lighting, though some of the emergency lamps were also out of commission, so that work in the engine room was carried out under extreme difficulty and very trying circumstances.

  Approx. 11.30 a.m. Port boiler gave out. Severe explosion inside furnace, and escape of steam, putting out fires.

  Approx. 11.50 a.m. Starboard boiler gives out. Severe explosion inside furnace and escape of steam putting out fires.

  Approx. 11.52 a.m. Informed Captain Mason no steam on boilers and no likelihood of getting under way again. All burner valves shut tight and manoeuvring valves shut.

  Approx. noon. Engineroom staff left engineroom.

  The Ledbury had come back to the side of Ohio—her massive, heaving, kerosene-leaking, ripped-up hull—about an hour before noon, while the tanker was struggling at 4 knots in fits and starts. Her funnels blew out alternating clouds of black and white smoke, from oil in water and water in fuel. Hill had offered to tow the tanker—some 30,000 tons of deadweight, half of it seawater—in the same spirit that had invited his fantasy of the little Ledbury ramming a battleship. He reckoned that together they could make 12 knots.