One of the German prisoners was a petty-officer, the other a leading-stoker. The latter, Duncan's black-gangers found, happened to be a good hand at making duff, which is the generic term for pudding or dessert. Two days after he was picked up, when he was feeling a bit cockier than he had been, he placed a nicely browned apple tart on the stokers' mess-table, then stood back arrogantly with his arms crossed. On the crust of the tart, made with left-over pastry, lay a large swastika.
But the stokers laughed at him, and offered, in addition, some unsubtle remarks on the parentage of one Adolf. Instead of the anger and abuse he had patriotically braced himself to bear, the submarine man heard grunts of appreciation as the British sailors wolfed his swastika.
Next day an Australian-manned Liberator swept out of a cloud bank, circled the convoy, then headed northwards on offensive patrol. A few minutes later Gretton was handed a W/T signal to the effect that she was attacking a surfaced U-boat with depth bombs.
"Would like assistance." Duncan hauled off to help.
Her bridge got the story from the five Australians she picked up from their rubber dinghy.
The plane had swooped in to attack, but had been met by a hail of bullets and cannon-shells. These weapons were not secret, but, on Atlantic U-boats, most surprisingly unexpected. And effective.
The big bomber, so low, made a target the German gunners on their stable platform couldn't miss, and she was badly mauled. But her bombs were way, and the submarine was lifted almost out of the water. The pilot had time to see her turn turtle before his own craft skidded into the sea.
Some weeks later it was officially announced that U-boats in the Atlantic were now equipped with improved anti-aircraft armament. Two Australians airmen paid the price for this knowledge.
The convoy moved on along its lengthy course, and was granted only a brief respite before the old routine started again.
This time Duncan bloodied her quarry early; the oil gushed up in a swirling, spreading patch, with a clearly defined trail leading from it, as telltale as the bubbles from a diver's helmet.
With the rest of the escort screen temporarily disengaged and on the alert, Duncan followed him leisurely, sitting right on top of him. Gretton cupped his duffle-coated chin on his hand and stared down over the edge of the bridge.
"Look at the fool," he said disgustedly. "They must be sending `em out raw these days. Why the devil doesn't he sneak back and lie under the big patch?" Then, turning to the Rover: "We'll have the stoker depth-charge crew up, Number One. Give `em some practice."
"Aye aye, sir."
The stokers got their practice.
Next day Gretton revised his comment on the rawness of U-boat commanders, with sound reason - one of them was smack in the middle of the convoy!
Gretton's reaction was natural and immediate. Everything he had ever learned was used in the twisting and probing which sent Duncan careering through the line of merchantmen. Given even seconds of destroyer-free time the Germans couldn't miss.
In the middle of his gyrations Gretton noticed his signal yeoman frantically jabbing his outstretched fingers down over the side of the bridge, he was mouthing speechlessly. Gretton jumped to the side, craned over, and stared down.
Directly below (and my informant, who was in Duncan at the time, swears to the truth of this), not a dozen feet from the ship's side, and travelling with it, was a U-boat periscope! It was trained with dreadful intentness on a big tanker abeam. Underneath, Gretton saw his conning-tower clearly, beautiful fluting lines of movement flowing symmetrically from each leading edge.
In perhaps seven seconds the charges were over, pattern after blasting pattern.
When the thunder had ceased the tanker winked a startled yellow eye at Duncan. Gretton took the pencilled message from the yeoman, started to curse, then laughed. The tanker captain was complaining that a photograph of his wife and children had been brokenly blown from his cabin bulkhead by the blast!
There were other attacks from those four savage packs, but the one with the most dramatic result occurred just before the convoy reached safe waters.
A sister-ship to Duncan sighted a hump-backed object momentarily surfaced on the horizon. She increased to thirty knots and swung towards. Her engines had just reached the ordered revolutions when without warning, and probably through bad handling, another U-boat broke surface dead ahead! The captain had time to bellow "Hang on!" before the thrust of 36,000 horsepower hit the submarine full amidships.
That fierce meeting pushed the U-boat bodily sideways in a smother of white foam, cut her almost in two, and sheared the destroyer through and over the stricken remnants, on into clear water. The destroyer dropped a charge or two, but they weren't needed.
When she docked in Londonderry her nose looked like a shark's, with the underneath waterline part under-slung backwards in a crumpled mess of steel plates and girders.
So the convoy ended, and Gretton's married life began. That month of May, 1943, saw forty-one U-boats sunk, a terrible toll. In Churchill's words, "The Battle of the Atlantic never again reached the same pitch of intensity, nor hung so delicately in the balance."
Those hard Atlantic years developed a peculiarly tough `creed of British seamen - men who will not have forgotten to teach their successors how to deal with any other sub-sea rats which might consider gnawing at Britain's lifeline. For, modified weapons regardless, it will still be destroyers against submarines, and the basic principles. - find, attack, destroy - still remain.
CHAPTER SIX
For even the most seasoned seaman, it is a medically shocking thing to be sunk. You live in a ship, eating and drinking, sleeping and playing and working there, while your main object of existence is to see that she remains afloat. Then, suddenly and violently, you are in the water, and your ship is under it. This is the most alien thing that can happen to a sailor. It saddens and in some cases frightens, but above all it numbs him.
My best friend in the Service, a man with whom I later served in the prototype for Bentley's Wind Rode, told me about the following sinking.
H.M.A. destroyer Waterhen, predictably called the "Chook," was of much the same vintage, build and experience as the rest of those fighting "Vs" and "Ws", those "rust and wire" contemptibles of Goebbel's sneer: Stuart, Vampire, Voyager and Vendetta.
Being a flotilla-leader, Stuart differed from the others in her 4.7inchers, as opposed to their 4-inch. Waterhen differed from them all in that she was the only one commanded by a Royal Navy officer Lieutenant-Commander J.H. Swain.
She first met the Luftwaffe at Sollum, a port east of Bardia and Tobruk, when a convoy of Stukas, cunningly biding their time, bombed to a useless mess all the stores she had just finished landing.
From then on she was caught up in the direful pattern of those vicious Mediterranean days - ferrying to Tobruk, anti-submarine patrolling, screening the Battle Fleet on its sweeps of the inland sea, at sea six days out of seven; taking punishment in the form of rocking near misses, nerves strained almost to snapping point, minds wondering dully when all the uselessness of it would end; dishing it back in the shape of falling dive-bombers, depth-charged submarines and broadsides flung at shore fortifications.
Through all this mould of harsh adventure, periods of intense nervous excitement and fear mixed with the exultation of victory, was threaded the ugly fibre of those runs to Tobruk, when, with helpless wounded crammed aboard, the enemy's bombing developed with the certainty of the sunrise which presaged its commencement.
It was on one of these runs to the Rats that the Chook met her fate.
The time was about 7.40 of a calm evening on June 30th, 1941. The sun had set, but in the still-blue bowl above them there remained more than enough light to curse.
Waterhen slipped easily through on her way to Tobruk, this time carrying, in addition to the ususual supplies and ammunition, the Provost Traffic Control Branch of the Sixth Australian Division. She was in company with a British destroyer, disposed to port, cruis
ing at 25 knots.
The Chook was closed up in the fourth degree readiness, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine lookouts posted; the ship's company having fallen-out from checking through everything at dusk action stations. Men were beginning to feel relaxed, for with full darkness their worries would be lessened by about 90 per cent. At this speed and unhindered by any convoy, submarines presented not much of a threat, but while the light lingered aircraft, their main enemy, could get at them.
Yet it seemed this night as though the Diggers would have to wait for their own element to provide their baptism of fire. Until, at 7.45, the action bells shrilled their summons. The men of the little ship closed-up and waited, fearful and brave. My friend, one of the control team in the director, counted thirty Stukas before he gave up the pointless exercise.
The flock of vultures came over quite high, then dived to draw the defenders' fire. But these men were too seasoned to leave themselves with empty guns when the attack really developed. They just watched and waited, and prayed for the light to fail.
The Stuka leader was also conscious of time. Every minute lost meant a lessening of the target's clarity. They saw his gull-winged shape tilt on to one wing and come plummeting down. The rest followed, their engine notes a rising scream of menace.
Designedly, the howl of a Stuka dive-bomber could strike fear into the most experienced mind, no matter how many times you had heard it. Familiarity bred fright. So it was here, but no man ran.
The ship did, deliberately. Twisting and weaving at full speed the Chook strove to escape the deluge. On either side of her the sea was being continuously convulsed into gouting columns of white, shaded a dirty and ominious black at their bases. The uproar, too, was continuous; scream of planes combining with thunder of bombs to form a hellish cacophony which would have had lesser men cowering in fear.
But these brave men in their private, confined war blocked off their fear and with steady fingers of tracer clawed at the attackers. One Stuka, its bomb still clasped to its belly, blew up in mid-air in a brilliant and satisfying flash of light. Another, the pilot dead or wounded, kept on its near-vertical course and smacked whitely into the sea.
Then a Stuka let go his load from astern. The bombs hurtled low over the quarterdeck, twin streaks, and exploded at the base of the foremost funnel. The ship shook like a suddenly tightening towing wire. When the smoke had fled down-wind there was no motor-boat left at the davits, and an upper-deck food store was a splintered mess.
More bombs flashed towards her. Swain snapped an order. She heeled suddenly to port, over further, until her lee gunnel was almost level with the rushing seas. Down they came, a stick of four, and all landed ahead of the bow. Except the last.
This 250-pounder, as heavy as an 8-inch cruiser's shell, struck near the side which was lifted from the sea. The blast shook her aged plates open to the sea - in a most vital place. Water poured into the engineroom, and she slowed down while a black scum of fuel-oil flowed from her wound.
The bombers drew off, either with their loads expended or else to a more important target, but the gutsy little Chook had had all she could take. There had been many near-misses, all shaking and damaging. She leaned over further, tired unto death, seemingly ready to go.
Relatively unhurt, the British destroyer nosed up to take in survivors. It was then the first Lieutenant uttered his famous last words. Someone had suggested souveniring the ensign before she went.
"Pipe down, you bastard!" shouted the Jimmy. "We aren't sunk yet!"
Incredibly, every man was taken aboard the Britisher, which then drew back to watch her go. Numbed, near exhaustion from the concentrated ferocity of their fight, they looked across the darkening sea. Their ship made a sad picture, rolling sluggishly on the oily sea, guns pointing at all angles in the direction of their last target, boats smashed to splinters, jagged holes in her funnels and upper-works; finished.
And she refused to go.
At full dark she was still afloat, and it was decided to attempt a tow. This offered sound possibilities, for if she could hold up, then they had almost the whole of the night to drag her towards Alexandria and safety.
With a group of volunteers, my friend amongst them, the first lieutenant pulled across in a whaler and crawled up the sloping side on to her foc'sle. Suddenly he stopped and whispered: "Quiet! There's somebody aboard!"
With drawn weapons - taken in case an E-boat happened along they crouched there, their throats tickling with the combined stink of cordite and fuel-oil, their eyes striving to pierce the blackness. Whoever it was could have come from an E-boat which had sneaked up on the blind side, or even a submarine.
Yet no sound came - nothing save the occasional clink of empty cartridge cases and the flap, flap of a torn canvass screen. Then, abaft the captstan, jolting their taut minds with its suddenness, a torch flashed on, and off. The first lieutenant shouted.
"Who's that? Answer or I fire!"
No answer. Quickly he loosed four shots in the direction of the flash. The result was another flash.
"Rush!"
Guns at the ready the towing party scrambled over the tilted deck, and found the interloper - a torch, flicking on and off as the ship's roll took it over the switch-button. Number One uttered predictable words, and then uttered orders.
Warily conscious of the instability of their platform, the boarding party set to work swiftly, and soon the tow was passed. The whaler returned, was hoisted, and the British captain ordered his ship slow-ahead.
All the hands stared aft, to see the Chook once again move through the water. But only for a few yards. The tow-wire tautened suddenly and alarmingly, warning them to slip it.
The strain of movement was too much for her. Weakened bulkheads had given in against the sea's impatient pressure. Her slim bow lifted in the air, far above any angle it had reached in the roughest sea, then quietly and gracefully, without fuss, she slipped under. Her men silently watched her go, many of them with dimmed eyes. A warship is more, much more, than just a home.
For the survivors there followed three weeks in a camp in Alexandria. One rainy afternoon a merchantman pulled alongside Princes Pier in Melbourne and a line of sailors filed ashore. There were no bands or plaudits to welcome them - only the thankful arms of wives and sweethearts.
Waterhen had stayed behind, but she had sent her men back. She was the first ship of the Royal Australian Navy sunk by enemy action.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Find, attack, destroy. Not always. The Bismarck, sure, and Graf Spee and such commerce-threatening monsters. But sometimes it can be of incalculable value if an enemy warship can be captured alive, and especially so if it belongs to a new class of ship. If you learn what advanced equipment and weapons an enemy ship - a submarine, say - carries, then that knowledge helps enormously in the matter of improving your own counter-measures against similar vessels of her type and class. This, of course, could be of crucial importance.
But due to the over-riding need for intense, swift and destructive retaliation against a submarine attacking your convoy, very few of them were captured U-110 was. This is the story of her attacks on a British convoy, of the attacks on her by the escorts, and of the consequent descent into her deserted (he hoped!) and dangerously wallowing innards by a brave sub-lieutenant aged twenty.
U-110 was commissioned at Bremen on November 21st, 1940. She was a brand-new type, of the class which the Germans called "Atlantic boat," and which were to prove extremely efficient fighters.
Displacing 1,050 tons on the surface, while there she could move at 18.2 knots - faster than our corvettes and not much slower than our frigates. On diesel-electric motors she had a range of 12,400 miles and could dive to 330 feet. She carried six torpedo tubes, nineteen torpedoes, a 4.2-inch quick-firing gun (very handy against any unconvoyed merchantmen), one 37 millimetre and two 20 millimetre shell-firing cannon (very handy against aircraft).
Her commanding-officer was Kapitanleutnant (Senior Lieutenant) Frit
z-Julius Lemp. The main personal characteristic of Lemp was an unaltering dedication to the welfare of his crew, among whom he was extremely popular. Even before taking command of U-110 he had achieved a notable state of notoriety in the German Navy, possibly the reason why he was given this brand-new boat; for it was Lemp who, in U-30, on the very first day of the war, sank the liner Anthenia with the tragic loss of many of her passengers and crew; this is at a time when even Hitler had not declared unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant ships.
More legally, and with undoubted efficiency, Lemp had planted one of U-30's torpedoes in the side of battleship Barham, though luckily with smaller effect than that of the second torpedo Barham was to take in the Mediterranean.
With six sunken merchantmen on his tally, and the Knight's Insignia of the Iron Cross on his chest, Lemp took his worked-up U110 to sea in March, 1941, for her first war cruise. Time passed, along with several more merchantmen which fell victim to Lemp's torpedoes. Then, out on patrol to the south-west of Iceland, he brought U-110 to the surface during the afternoon of May 8. Almost immediately, at about four o'clock, he sighted smoke ahead. This betraying skim of black came from convoy OB (Outward Bound, Liverpool to Newfoundland) 318. Lemp's sighting signal to U-boat headquarters brought the order: "Attack if possible."
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