Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  Keith finished tightening the final nut, fingered the magneto coupling a moment to satisfy himself as to its free alignment, then painfully dragged himself up off his stomach.

  “O.K., Captain,” he announced soberly. Hastily I threw on the ignition switch, retarded the timer. The mechanic sprang for the crank, fumbled about a moment for something to brace his feet against, then cranked madly.

  Thank God, the engine fired!

  In another moment, the pump picked up a suction (an easy matter since the water level in the flooding bilges was close to its base) and the laboring engine slowed a bit as it started to push water from the bilges far overhead to the open air to throw it over the side into the sea.

  Engulfed as we three were far down in the bowels of the Liebenfels, we could still hear cheers from all over her as the salvage crew, down in the other holds or on the topside, caught the roar of that engine exhaust and the music of that heavy stream of water splashing overboard.

  I swung the flashlight upward toward the first steel ladder.

  “Come on, boys!” I sang out. “It’s time we got the hell out of here!”

  CHAPTER

  35

  THE “LIEBENFELS” WITH HER MASTS and stack lying over at a horrifying angle, had heeled down to 21° port I found when I got to the topside again. Only a little freeboard remained before the port gunwale went awash, when suddenly the heavenly music of water cascading overboard again had ended everybody’s agonies.

  The heeling of the Liebenfels stopped, then very gradually, she began to right herself.

  In the hours that followed, by baking out the grounded magneto in the galley oven to remove the grounds, and then interchanging it continuously with the other magnetos to be similarly baked out, we finally got most of the other pumps running again.

  Night came, the fourth night. All during the dark hours we worked endlessly beneath the tropic moon, all hands shifting magnetos and servicing pumps, but at least we were spared the need of lowering pumps any further. At odd hours during that night, I managed to snatch three more hours of sleep, a total for me of five hours’ sleep in four nights and days.

  By late morning we had the Liebenfels light enough to go on the dry dock and listing only 13° to port—to all of us now, a mere trifle of a list, though once I should have considered it very bad.

  Once again I sent Steele in the Lord Grey for the pilot and the tugs. About an hour later the tugs came into the south harbor, and Lieutenant Fairbairn boarded us from his pilot boat. Dubiously he looked up at the masts of the Liebenfels—13° port heel was nothing to be laughed off.

  “This is unsafe for towing, Captain,” Fairbairn gravely advised me. “I’d rather not assume the risk. And you can’t dock her at all with any such list, so why bother to move her?”

  I didn’t have to look at the masts to estimate the list—my aching feet told me all I wanted to know. I could stand now on deck without having to hold on to anything; to me any such list was negligible. Besides I was dead on my feet; I couldn’t possibly spend any more time working on the Liebenfels without collapsing; neither could my knocked-out salvage crews.

  “You tow her, Fairbairn,” I ordered, “and leave the docking of her to me. It’ll be my funeral, not yours. Get her under way!”

  Fairbairn, having warned me, like a good sailor objected no further. He started whistling signals to his two tugs to come close in and pass us the tow lines.

  That didn’t take long. Meanwhile, we on the Liebenfels unshackled the heavy anchor cables on her forecastle, ready to let slip the chains, for we had no means of weighing the two ponderous anchors the ship had down forward. Similarly we stood by to slip our stern hawser when the tugs had hold.

  In thirty minutes we were ready, with the panting tugs straining on their tow lines, hauling the high out of water and stinking Liebenfels well up to the eastward, clear of the line of wrecks where she had so long rested on the bottom. Fairbarne nodded to me he was ready to go.

  From the bridge of the salvaged ship, I waved to Brown on the forecastle and Reed aft on the poop.

  Instantly sledge hammers came down on the pelican hooks to knock them free, releasing the preventer gear, and with a terrific banging the freed ends of the two anchor chains flew out the hawse-pipes. At the same moment, the stern hawser was slipped and the Liebenfels was under way again at last.

  Simultaneously, with the halyard aft manned by Bob Steele, amid the feeble cheers of the men who had salvaged her, up to the peak of the mainmast went her colors, the Stars and Stripes floating proudly out above the Nazi swastika under which the Liebenfels had always sailed before.

  And with those two flags, one above the other, streaming out over our salvaged wreck, we slowly towed the Liebenfels out of the south harbor into the Red Sea past Massawa. There everybody, British, native, and Italian, turned out to watch the procession—the light but listing Liebenfels with her flags flying high above her barnacle-covered decks and sides, the tiny Intent which had raised her steaming alongside like a duckling trying to convoy a swan, and the two tugs towing.

  Slowly we all steamed around Massawa and through the entrance gate between the wrecks into the naval harbor. There I boarded the Persian dry dock, flooded it far down, and (against Spanner’s violent protests) heeled it over to a marked port list, almost causing the port side of the dock to disappear beneath the sea. But I had got to the point where, if a few inches of anything showed above the water, it was safely afloat so far as I was concerned.

  Then back again I went to the Liebenfels which I carefully brought up to only a few degrees port list, to match the list I had given the dry dock. Hurriedly I dragged my ship onto the drydock, landed her on the inclined keel blocks before she could flop over to starboard, and started to pump up the dry dock, a very tricky docking which left the timid Spanner aghast that I should try such a thing.

  It happened to be the Fourth of July when we came in with our prize of war. That parade at sea with the American flag flying in triumph over Hitler’s on the once scuttled Liebenfels was our Fourth of July celebration. I never had a happier one.

  Once the Liebenfels was safely landed on the keel blocks in the dry dock and well started on her way up and out of the water so nothing further could happen, I left her to the dockmaster and the Eritreans. I went ashore, covered with the grime and sweat of four nights and five days’ constant labor, to tumble wearily into bed, with Ahmed ordered to guard the door and see that I was not called for anything till next morning.

  I needed a rest.

  CHAPTER

  36

  NEXT MORNING, I TURNED OUT AS usual at 5:00 A.M. My first concern was for my salvage crews. They badly required a vacation from Massawa after those last five days and four nights on the Liebenfels. So I locked up the Intent, put a Sudanese sentry aboard to guard her, and sent Edison Brown and his entire crew, together with Bill Reed and all his salvage men, up in the hills to Asmara for five days to recuperate.

  My next concern was what had happened at El Alamein, for I had been completely out of the world for nearly a week. To my intense relief, I learned that Auchinleck and the Eighth Army were doggedly holding their positions; Rommel had failed to achieve a breakthrough on his first assault. For the moment at least, the Middle East was safe. No one was particularly optimistic over the future, however, for since Tobruk, Rommel was a name to conjure with. But I felt better; if the British Eighth Army had pulled itself together enough to withstand the first shock, they would hold at El Alamein. No soldiers in the world could excel the British in a pure slugging match, and El Alamein was a position naturally guarded on both flanks (by the sea to the north, by the Quattaro Depression to the south) which could be taken only by a frontal assault—all strategy was out, the best slugger would win.

  Rommel, with all his tricks, had been too smart. He had thrown away his golden opportunity to win the war immediately, by giving the Eighth Army a chance to dig itself in at El Alamein while he took relatively unimportant Tobruk
in a grandstand play. For that feat, Hitler had instantly made Rommel a Field Marshal; if Hitler had had any real military sense, he would have ordered Rommel shot instead for letting the main objective slip while he grasped at baubles.

  But Rommel, likely to renew his assault at his own moment, still hung like a threatening cloud over Egypt. Alexandria remained shut down under the rain of bombs from his Stukas. The “flap” from Egypt was slacking down only because hardly any Allied personnel were left to flee. In Cairo, the Egyptians confidently awaited the coming of the Axis, and Rommel, grandstanding as always, was radioing en clair to the manager of Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo to reserve the whole hotel for himself and his staff; they would arrive shortly.

  Once I had learned that Rommel had not broken through at El Alamein, my mind came back to my own job at Massawa. I had been away from the shore base five days; it urgently needed attention and I turned to at once, mainly on repair matters afloat. With all my salvage forces gone to the hills, I couldn’t undertake more salvage for a while even if I had wished to.

  First there was the matter of the damaged Liebenfels, now high and dry on the Persian dry dock, tying it up. It was imperative that I repair that bomb hole in her port side and get her off the dry dock as swiftly as possible; two supply ships already were waiting outside the harbor to go on that dock; more would be coming. Repairing the Liebenfels was strictly a shipbuilding mechanics’ job, but there were none such in Massawa, either South African or American—all the ironworkers there were simply structural steel men with no experience on ships. Still they would have to do it.

  So while a horde of Eritreans turned to in cleaning the entire Liebenfels, inside and out, of mud and barnacles, I shifted all the South Africans to her to cut away the bomb wreckage and that concrete patch the divers had installed in the number one hold. Williams who, alone of all those who had salvaged the Liebenfels, had elected not to go to Asmara for a rest, was put in charge. He wasn’t a ship man either, but he was the best superintendent I ever had anywhere. I marked out for him where the damaged plates around that gaping hole in the Liebenfels’ side and bottom were to be burned away. With the South Africans, he started in.

  And then I had a bit of luck. The contractor’s new construction superintendent ashore decided that Bill Cunningham, his ironworker, wasn’t worth the trouble it took squabbling with the British M.P.s to keep him. Unless I wanted him, he was going to be shipped home. It seems some unidentified American had slugged a British M.P. in the Torino Bar the night before and broken his jaw with a single punch. While the American involved was unknown, Cunningham was strongly suspected by the British and the contractor was through with him. Did I want him?

  Concealing my elation, I accepted responsibility for Cunningham with seeming reluctance lest any over-eagerness spoil the deal, and Cunningham officially joined my salvage force—a gift. Had the contractor only known it, I would have traded practically all the mechanics I had for him, so badly did I need ironworkers.

  “Bill,” I said to him, once he reported, “now you’re a salvage man you’ve got to keep out of trouble. I can’t be spending all my time keeping you out of British jails. What did you slug that M.P. for last night anyway? Why didn’t you let him alone?”

  “Honest, Captain, I tried my damnedest not to,” pleaded Cunningham, “but he just wouldn’t let me be. It being the Fourth of July, I was celebrating by having a beer in the Torino Bar just as quiet as a lamb, not bothering anybody, when in comes this limey M.P., and seeing I was an American, he starts to razz me about Pearl Harbor. I know I got a bad reputation ’round Massawa and can’t stand getting in trouble, so I only shoves my beer farther down the bar to get away from him. What does he do but follow me up, harping on Pearl Harbor, so to quiet him, I told him what I thought about the surrender of Singapore. Then he lunges at me and I let him have it on the jaw. Honest, Captain, I only hit him once as light as I could so’s I could stop him and get away without a fight, and then I hauled out of there! Nobody but you knows for sure I did it. How’d you find out?”

  I didn’t tell him, but it was easy. No one in Massawa but Cunningham could have broken that man’s jaw with one punch, “light” or otherwise.

  “See here, Bill, I’ll be honest with you. I need you badly. You’re no good to me in jail. I’m not blaming you for this so I’m saying nothing. Now for God’s sake, do me a favor and behave! But if you do get in trouble, let me know. I’ll do what I can for you, and you do the same for me.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” answered Cunningham. “You watch me. What d’ye want me to do now?”

  “You report to Lloyd Williams on the Liebenfels. He’s got plenty of use for you.”

  So Bill Cunningham, a fiend for work when any steel was in sight, turned to with the South Africans on the bomb damage.

  To repair that huge hole, I had to take practically all the scanty stock of steel I had accumulated in Massawa. But there was no alternative; I couldn’t keep the dock tied up with a wreck; I couldn’t take her off with a hole in her.

  Lloyd Williams, Bill Cunningham, and the South Africans went at that damaged ship like demons, cutting away wreckage, then heating and bending to shape the new steel framing required. Most of the new ship plates went on flat, but with one of those new plates, I was in a dilemma. The hole went through the bilges, where the steel plating (called the bilge strake) joining the side and the bottom was bent round in a 90° curve. To get that curvature into a new steel plate one inch thick required passing it through heavy plate rolls, normally the biggest and most massive piece of machinery in any shipyard since the plates are thirty feet long and the heavy iron rolls have to be even longer.

  But the longest set of plate rolls the Italians had left in Massawa (sabotaged, of course, but since repaired) would take a plate only five feet long; it couldn’t start to take a plate thirty feet long. There was nothing for it, except to cut my long bilge strake plate into five-foot pieces, roll each piece separately to the required curved shape, and then weld the six curved pieces together again into one plate; an operation which vastly added to the work, since I had only a few welders. Then assembling all the new plating for the sides and the bulkheads so they would be watertight, with only ironworkers who knew none of the tricks of the trade in the shipbuilder’s art, was a heart-breaking task.

  Still we did it. In eight days, the Liebenfels, with all trace of that huge hole vanished, with her sides cleaned and painted and her underwater hull once more sleek and fair and completely watertight, as sound a hull as ever, went off the dock, erect and safely afloat once more.

  But Lloyd Williams, who had moved from the salvage of the Liebenfels to her repairs with never a break between, was practically dead. I shipped Williams to Asmara to cool down for a week, together with all the ironworkers, who also were in a bad way from the extraordinary exertions required of them in that furnace of a dock in the middle of a Massawa July.

  I should have known better. The fourth day of their vacation, Williams telephoned me from Asmara at 3:00 A.M., with bad news. Bill Cunningham and another ironworker, one of the South Africans, a corporal, were in the military jail; eight British M.P.s, who had recklessly tried to arrest them, were in the military hospital; and most of the other M.P.s in Asmara were in bad shape. What should he do?

  I thought hurriedly. When morning came and those two were dragged up before a British military court, that would be the end; I would never see either one of them again. No charges could possibly have been filed yet; there hadn’t been time, and probably no complainants in good enough shape yet to file a complaint. At that moment my two ironworkers were probably booked on the night ledger as just two drunks in the jug.

  I told Williams to get hold of the American military provost marshal in Asmara immediately, tell him there were two drunks belonging to the Massawa Naval Base whom I wanted released at once to American custody for the severest punishment I could inflict in Massawa, and if it worked and he got his hands on them, to put them instant
ly in a car and start with them for Massawa before dawn. He must not delay. If ever the wheels of justice started to grind on those two men, I was out two ironworkers, and so was Williams. As for the two culprits, I would punish the pair of them, all right; I would turn them to again at hard labor on the Massawa dry dock, a punishment which in any other jurisdiction would have been barred by law as cruel and inhuman. He could assure the provost marshal they would both be punished terribly. Nothing a military court in Asmara could do to them would equal what I was going to hand them for massacring all those M.P.s, only he wasn’t to say what the punishment was to be—just say it would be swift and adequate to their heinous offense.

  As for the British M.P.s, after their assailants’ punishment had started, I would apologize to the British Military Governor for the conduct of my men, and extend my sympathy to the victims.

  Williams said he understood and would get to work. He must have been a persuasive talker, for by 7:00 A.M., just in time for breakfast, he rolled into Massawa with my two bad boys. I looked them over. They were somewhat under the weather, somewhat bruised, but not badly, and in fair shape to go right back to work. Neither looked as if he had been in a bloody riot, such as must have occurred.

  “Well, Bill,” I said as I welcomed my lost sheep, “can’t I even send you on a vacation without your causing me trouble? What happened this time?”

  “Honest, Captain, nothing at all, so far’s I know,” Cunningham explained in his lamblike voice. “Tom here,” indicating the South African corporal with his thumb, “and me had just been circulating down the Viale Mussolini last night, having a few drinks to quiet our nerves after that repair job on the Liebenfels, when we figured finally we’d both had enough an’ started for the hotel. But we was too tired to make it, so we just lay down in the gutter in the dark, out of the way o’ everything, for a nap. I don’t remember no fight. The next thing I knew, there was Lloyd shaking me to wake me up, and I was surprised as Tom was to find I was in the jug instead of still sleeping somewhere along the Viale Mussolini. Lloyd said you wanted him to drive us down here, and that’s every blessed thing I know about it. Thanks, Captain, for getting us out o’ that jail; I don’t like jails.”