by Edward Kay
“Star shell!” I ordered.
Quickly the gun crew opened the breech and loaded it in, along with a bag of cordite explosive to propel it, and the firing plug to ignite the cordite. I calculated the upward angle of the gun barrel, then gave the order.
“Fire!”
There was a deep rumble, then the star shell exploded a thousand yards in the air, a mile to stern. We’d gotten lucky. Beneath the sudden explosion of brilliant white light, less than a thousand yards behind us, I saw the silhouette of a submarine’s conning tower and German sailors scrambling back inside as the submarine was already beginning an emergency crash-dive. The torpedoes hurtled past our stern, missing us by only a few yards. Ken opened up on the sub with the Lewis gun. But we were too far away. His bullets splashed into the ocean just short of the sub. I’d gotten lucky with the star shell, but time was working against us. A U-boat could crash-dive in less than thirty seconds, and they’d begun to submerge the moment the star shell exploded above them.
“I need a high-explosive shell!” I called out while we were still turning. As the gun crew loaded it in I could see the conning tower almost fully submerged. The torpedoes hurtled past us, just missing our stern. The burning magnesium from the star shell was still slowly, gently falling, so close to the waves that its light was reflecting back up into the sky. I had a clear view, calm seas and a good idea of the sub’s range. My crew was fast, but the old-fashioned manual breech-loading gun on our corvette was painfully slow. The crew slammed the shell in, then the bag of cordite. By now the periscope was slipping beneath the water. I decided to take the shot anyway.
“Fire!” I shouted. A couple of seconds later the shell slammed into the waves directly above where the U-boat had been, sending up a frothing column of water.
It was a clean shot, dead-on where the submarine had been. Five seconds sooner and I would have blown that U-boat into next week. But it came too late. The submarine had escaped.
It reminded me of times when I was a kid, out on the St. Lawrence, and a fish would nibble the bait right off the hook, then escape. Only there was so much more at stake now.
“Damn!” I muttered, holding back my urge to shout a torrent of swear words. I had been so close to sinking that sub.
Our captain wasn’t giving up though. Slow as the corvette was, we could still close that gap in less than two minutes. The depth-charge crews got ready to fire. But of course the German submariners weren’t going to make it easy for us by sitting there waiting. Their subs could only go 7 knots when submerged, but even so they could have gone hundreds of yards in any direction, unseen, by the time we got to their last known position, not to mention up to 200 yards or more straight down. We had to land a depth charge no more than 5 yards from them to make a kill.
“Contact!” shouted the ASDIC operator.
“Drop depth charges!” shouted the captain.
We dropped two patterns of 300-pound depth charges. The explosions from each one sent a shock wave of water churning up into the night sky. But it was apparently without result.
There was a pause after the explosions. Everything was silent except for the thrumming of the engines.
“Contact lost,” came the response relayed from the ASDIC cabin.
“Maybe we sank ’em!” an eager voice called out in the dark.
But minutes later there was no sign of debris or an oil slick to indicate that we’d hit the German sub, so we assumed it had survived. We sailed patterns through the area for another half an hour without picking up anything on the ASDIC.
The last of the convoy was by now disappearing over the horizon, so we were ordered to call off the search and rejoin the other ships. If not, there was a very real danger that the U-boat could slip between us and the merchant ships, and if we straggled too far behind, we couldn’t protect them from another attack.
I silently cursed Mackenzie King, the cheap bastard, living in his dream world, betting against all odds that war wouldn’t come — and that if it did, it could somehow be fought with hand-me-down equipment from the First World War. With a modern gun I could have gotten in the one critical shot that would have sent the U-boat straight down to Davy Jones’ locker. Instead, it had survived to kill Allied seamen and sink ships and their precious cargoes that so many people had put their blood, sweat and tears into, and that so many people were counting on both to survive and to take the fight to the enemy.
As we steamed toward the convoy I went off watch and down to my hammock. It was dry, and under any other circumstances I would have slept beautifully. But knowing that a U-boat was still out there, I had a hard time winding down.
The next morning the sun rose over another calm sea. The clouds were lit up golden and pink. It could have been a beautiful day on Lake Superior. But it wasn’t. It was a beautiful day in the Black Pit, so no matter how pleasant it looked, death was awaiting us at any moment.
All day long the convoy steamed ahead, and our ASDIC, as well as the radar that had been recently fitted, picked up nothing. Then again, neither had they picked up the submarine that almost sank us the night before. So I wasn’t feeling especially confident. From the gun positions and the crow’s nest, we scanned the horizon and all the water in between, looking for a surfaced submarine or a periscope. And all day long, all we saw was water. But we knew the U-boats were out there somewhere. After last night’s contact it was only a question of when and where they’d choose to strike.
The answer came not long after the winter sun set over the western horizon, and the darkness closed in around us. We were at the rear of the convoy, sailing a zigzag pattern to present a more difficult target, when I saw a flash of light in the sky about 2 miles ahead of us. A moment later there was another flash. It was followed by a rumble like heavy thunder — the sound of German torpedoes slamming into one of our merchant ships. Within moments flames licked skyward.
The alarm bell rang.
“Action stations!” called the cox’n.
We immediately accelerated to full speed. The ship that had been hit was on the starboard side of the convoy, on the outside edge of the front row — a position the crews called the coffin corner, because those ships often got torpedoed first.
Silhouetted by flames from burning bunker oil floating on the water, the merchant ship listed heavily. I scanned the sea for any sight of a submarine. When I looked back toward the torpedoed freighter, the only thing still showing was the stern, then it too slid under the waves.
Meanwhile the entire convoy behind it kept right on going, past where the freighter had gone down. We weren’t allowed to stop when the convoy was under attack. Those were the rules. If we had, it would have just made us sitting ducks and let the enemy escape. On the port side of the convoy another burst of flames shot into the sky, so high that I could see the red and orange reflecting off the clouds above us. An oil tanker. It ignited with a series of explosions so massive the shock waves rattled our rigging.
Now, in the centre of the convoy, another merchantman exploded. That meant a U-boat had penetrated the formation and was running at periscope depth between the columns, attacking our ships while making it almost impossible for us to counterattack, because our own merchant ships were in the way. The U-boat I’d scared off with the star shell the previous night must have been keeping its distance but tracking us the whole time, sending our position on to other submarines that were now lying in wait. I was madder than ever about the ancient 4-inch gun I had to use.
But there was no time for that because seconds later an alarm sounded.
The Wildrose came about hard to port. Then the depth-charge crew began rolling charges off the rails at the back of the ship. Our ship rattled as each of them exploded. An oil slick stained the surface, but the captain judged that it wasn’t enough to indicate a kill. We had probably just given them a good shaking up. The enemy hadn’t been vanquished, just chased away. And that was cold comfort. Because we were up against a relentless opponent, and we knew that even
if we drove them off tonight, they’d be back again tomorrow.
As we got close to where the first freighter had been attacked, a hellish vision emerged out of the night in front of us. Burning fuel oil floated on the water, the pulsating yellow light illuminating the faces of the survivors of a torpedoed freighter.
I heard their cries for help and felt sick that we couldn’t do a thing for them. Worse, as they bobbed helplessly in the icy ocean, a destroyer plowed right through them.
“Isn’t there anything we can do for them?” asked an ordinary seaman. He was baby-faced, probably new to the war, a tortured expression on his face.
“Not a damned thing,” I replied, “at least not yet.”
“Just doesn’t seem right,” he said.
“I know it doesn’t,” I replied. “But if we stop and give the Krauts a target, they’ll open us up like a can of tomatoes.”
The young seaman peered into the dark, hands gripping the railing, that tortured look on his face as we heard the moans, the cries for help, then the inevitable explosions of our depth charges — with fewer and fewer voices calling for help after each detonation.
It was horrifying to see, but it was no accident. When a combat ship made contact with an enemy U-boat, it was automatically under strict orders to press home the attack and try to sink the submarine. A commander could be court-martialled for disobeying that protocol. We knew it and so did the merchant sailors in the water. We had all received the same training: if we were ever unfortunate enough to find ourselves bobbing around in the ocean when our own ships were engaged in a depth-charge attack nearby, we didn’t expect help. Our own ships weren’t even allowed to help us. Instead, when we saw the explosives drop into the water, we were supposed to cover our mouths with one hand and our butts with the other. If we didn’t, and the depth charge exploded underneath us, the surge of water could literally blast upward through the anus and blow our guts out of our mouths.
Plumes of spray shot up into the sky where the depth charges were exploding. There were men everywhere in the water, screaming in fear and agony. Every instinct told me to help them. But until the attack was called off, there was nothing that I or anybody else could do.
Finally, when all of the escorts had lost ASDIC contact with the U-boats for more than half an hour, the area was assumed to be clear of them. There was no hope of us sinking any of the submarines now — and, we hoped, no chance of being torpedoed. So we and another escort ship finally set about picking up the survivors while the rest of the convoy and the escorts steamed on. The convoy never stopped for anything. It had to make it through no matter what.
We dropped scramble nets over the side of the ship and picked up the survivors as quickly as we could. We had never done this before except in drills. The reality was a lot grimmer than what we’d seen in practice. By now some of the men had been clinging to debris in the freezing water for a long time, and their hands were so numb they couldn’t hold on to the nets. Others were so badly injured that they didn’t have the strength to pull themselves out of the water. So the captain ordered a lifeboat to be lowered, and we began hauling the survivors out.
I had to remain at my gun station. We ran without lights, so I could barely make out the shadowy figures in the water. Some were calling out for help. But others, many others, were bobbing lifelessly, killed either by burns, exposure to the icy water or by our own depth charges. They were covered in thick, black bunker oil and looked just like the sailors I’d seen in the newsreel up in Port Arthur right before I joined the Navy. It was all reality now. And I felt sick.
When I came off watch, I saw several merchant seamen huddled under blankets in the forward mess decks. They were Norwegian and none of them spoke any English. There was another man on the mess table just underneath my hammock. He must have been among the worst, because they had to lie him down.
We didn’t have a doctor on board. Our ship was too small for that. We just had a tiny sick bay where one of the crewmen who had been trained as a medic gave the most basic medical care. The injured man seemed to be in his early fifties, but it was hard to tell. His face was burned pretty badly. His skin, hair and clothes were covered in black bunker oil as thick as molasses. Older guys like him didn’t have the physical stamina to easily survive such an ordeal. We got as much of the oil off him as we could, and our medic gave him some painkillers and disinfected his wounds, then wrapped him in heavy blankets.
The next morning when it was light enough, we transferred the survivors to a merchant ship, since they had far more room to spare than our corvette, which was already crammed with men, ammunition and food. Only the wounded merchant sailor on the mess table stayed behind, since he was too badly injured to be moved. The hope was to keep him alive long enough to get him to port, so he could be taken to hospital and get proper care.
He lay on the table for another two days. From time to time he moaned in pain, but otherwise remained unconscious. Once, during the night, I heard him mumbling excitedly. I thought he was coming round. But when I looked over the edge of my hammock, I saw that even though his lips were moving, his eyes were closed.
There was nothing I or anybody else on the ship could do for him, so I went back to sleep. When I got out of my hammock to start my morning watch a couple of hours later, his eyes were open, looking almost straight up at me. But they were glassy and lifeless. I put my finger on his wrist to check his pulse. His skin was cold and he had no heartbeat.
I found Petty Officer Jenkins. “That Norwegian merchantman. He didn’t make it,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll tell the captain,” was all Jenkins said.
We buried the dead sailor at sea later that morning. The shipwright sewed the man inside a canvas sheet, along with some heavy brass practice shell casings so he would sink quickly.
I was part of the detail that carried his corpse to the railing. The captain read a brief prayer. A few of the crewmen stood watch, keeping their eyes peeled for a periscope to make sure we weren’t about to be attacked. Then we slowed down just long enough to let the dead sailor slip into the water with some dignity. We were still in the Black Pit and couldn’t risk becoming a sitting duck for a German torpedo.
I heard the captain say, “We therefore commit his body to the deep,” and then the enshrouded corpse was released into the ocean. With the weight of the shell casings, the body plunged feet first into the water, barely making a splash as it hit the surface. The ocean always seemed dark and opaque, even during the day. I had never seen a burial at sea before, and I was surprised to notice that the white canvas shroud was visible beneath the water for a fathom or so as it sank, until it slipped away, disappearing into the vast emptiness of the North Atlantic.
It left me with a leaden feeling to think that a man’s life could be taken away so easily, and swallowed up so completely. Later one of the junior crew brought our lunch to the mess table, but I couldn’t eat. I kept picturing that dying sailor lying on the table, moaning in misery, far from home and loved ones. I couldn’t eat at that table again for the rest of the voyage.
That afternoon word went around that we were out of the Black Pit. An hour or so later the distinctive drone of the four engines of a Short Sunderland flying boat told me we had air cover again. It was no guarantee of safety, but it tilted the odds in our favour. And for now, that was enough.
Chapter Eight
January 1942
After we had escorted the remaining ships safely across, Ken and I took the train into Glasgow. But we didn’t immediately go to visit Aileen and Heather. Having witnessed so much death so close up for the first time in my life, I needed to sort out my feelings before I could be myself again. I didn’t want Aileen to see me like this.
“I know what we need, O’Connell,” said Ken. “I’ve heard that these pubs are fun places. Let’s go have a look.”
In Iroquois there was something disreputable about the notion of a place where people got together and drank. “My mother always said that
fire and brimstone would be my fate if I ever set foot in a bar,” I said.
Ken gave me a pained look.
“But I figure it’s too late for that,” I continued. “Might as well find out what all the fuss is about.”
“Amen to that,” said Ken with a grin.
We found a pub called the Crown and Thistle and entered. It was warm and bright inside, with dark polished wood, frosted glass and shiny brass fittings.
There were all kinds of people there: children drinking sodas and playing darts, ladies in their seventies nursing drinks that I later found out were gin and tonics.
“So, O’Connell,” said Ken, “does this look like the satanic den of sin that your mother warned you about?”
“Not exactly,” I answered. “I have to admit that those old ladies with the blue-rinsed hair are a bit of a surprise. Strangest looking demons I’ve ever seen.”
Besides the children and old people, there were Royal Navy sailors, a few Air Force personnel and several soldiers too, mixed in among the crowd of factory workers and other civilians. Everybody was just chatting and having some laughs.
We were quickly welcomed by the regulars with greetings of “Hello, Canada. What’s your pleasure?” Soon Ken and I had a couple of pints of reddy-brown Scottish ale in front of us. I took a sip. It was smooth and malty, and quite delicious.
People kept coming up to us and asking about Canada, wondering whether we knew their Uncle Angus in Saskatchewan, if people really lived in igloos, and what it was like on convoy duty. I spoke to a Royal Navy petty officer who sailed the convoy run to Russia through the Arctic Ocean in the worst winter storm conditions imaginable. I met a guy named Charlie who was a bomb aimer on a Royal Air Force Wellington. He’d flown missions into the heart of the Nazi Reich, over Berlin and Hamburg.
“The German flak is so heavy over those cities, you feel like you could get out of the plane and walk on it,” Charlie said. He described seeing British bombers explode in mid-air 3 miles above a burning city after taking direct hits from the anti-aircraft flak, bursting into fireballs before their crews even had a chance to bail out.
