Ankers, a giant of a man whom I soon learned to respect as a very competent salvage officer, had been taken from the wrecks at Pearl Harbor for this invasion. To help him, he had been assigned a small group of divers of whom two were good, and the two ensigns, Victor Aldrich and Leo Brown, both experienced ex-warrant officers. This little group had trained together at Rosneath, Scotland, before their departure for North Africa, the idea being apparently that they should cope with what little ship sabotage in Oran harbor occurred after its seizure by the Walney and the Hartland. They had been drilled and equipped for that only, since Ankers himself was given no salvage ship, no salvage equipment except a few hand tools, and only the diving rigs needed for his men.
Unfortunately, the anti-sabotage assault of the Walney and the Hartland had been a bloody fiasco. When Ankers and his men entered Oran with the troops of General Fredendall who had forced its surrender on the afternoon of November 10 after two and a half days of hard fighting ashore, they found a sad and completely unanticipated situation. All over the harbor, half-flooded ships and floating drydocks were on their way down, but as yet mostly unsubmerged, scuttled with their sea valves hastily opened by orders of Capitaine de Frégate Duprès, Commandant du Port d’Oran. On most of these vessels, nothing at all could be done to keep them afloat, even if Ankers had had several times his actual force, for their opened seacocks were already under water.
But at the one spot which vitally mattered, the situation might yet have been saved. Across the entrance to the inner harbor, from the head of Môle Ravin Blanc to the outer breakwater opposite, six ships had been strung roughly in two parallel lines, one inside the other, and there hurriedly scuttled to block the port. However, so hastily and unprofessionally had the job been done that only a few valves had been opened on any of these ships. As a result, they flooded and went down slowly. Several, with one end or the other already resting on the bottom, still had their bows or sterns afloat, which buoyant ends were flooding even more slowly.
This gave a heaven-sent opportunity to frustrate the French intention. There was still time to lash to these still floating ends, let the ships pivot on their sunken opposite ends, and turn the wrecks 90° to the right or left to leave a clear and unobstructed channel through between them, wide enough for ships of any size to enter or leave Oran.
Lieutenant Ankers saw this, of course, but he was helpless. He had no salvage ship. If he had had rank enough to carry any weight, he might have commandeered some of the British naval mine-sweepers outside Oran and done the job with them, for he knew how. But with two stripes only, his chance of commandeering anything, even a rowboat, was nil. And every vessel outside Oran was busily engaged in a preassigned task. Ankers had neither the rank nor the prestige which might have persuaded the mass of generals and admirals, both American and British, about Oran to break a suitable vessel away from its task and give it to him.
Apparently a message was sent to Admiral Cunningham, at that time with General Eisenhower at invasion headquarters at Gibraltar 220 miles away, indicating the situation and asking a salvage ship to clear the entrance. Admiral Cunningham instantly dispatched the King Salvor, then stationed at Gibraltar, with Lt. Comdr. White, R.N.V.R., its salvage officer, to Oran. It took the King Salvor eighteen hours, steaming hard, to get there. Meanwhile the golden opportunity was steadily dissolving in the sea rising about the sinking ships.
The arrival of the King Salvor unfortunately only muddled further an already very muddled salvage situation. She carried no divers of her own, and without them was handicapped in handling the situation which was now desperate and requiring instant action if anything at all was to be achieved before it was too late.
Ankers, the American lieutenant, had divers but no salvage ship. White, the British lieutenant commander, had a salvage ship but no divers. Which should take charge of everything? Ankers, who had been sent initially as the salvage officer for Oran but without proper equipment for the task as it stood, or White, sent there later on an emergency mission but lacking badly needed divers in his crew? They could not agree; each felt his instructions empowered him to take full charge.
While White was senior, the difference was not enough of itself to settle the matter. For mere seniority in no service of itself entitles a newcomer to take over from a junior in rank a task assigned the junior unless his orders unequivocally so require and state. White’s orders, probably oral, were of necessity only general. To make matters worse, the two disagreed radically as to how the job should be tackled, though I have myself little doubt that either, if given everything and left alone, would have made a success of his plan even at that eleventh hour.
As a final touch to complete this tangled situation, Commodore Troubridge, R.N., commanded all naval vessels (all of which were British) engaged in the Oran operations, and undoubtedly the King Salvor came under him. Rear Admiral Bennett, U.S.N., was to be Flag-Officer-in-Charge, Oran, once it was taken, and undoubtedly Oran was now taken. But Bennett had no vessels whatever under his command, and, though senior to Troubridge, no control over the forces afloat. Whether an appeal by either Ankers or White to their respective seniors would have swiftly resolved the situation is unknown. It might have, and of course it should have. But neither Bennett ashore nor Troubridge afloat could be reached quickly in the confusion reigning around Oran.
What actually happened I don’t fully know yet. Ankers wanted to hook on to one vessel first; White preferred another. More time was lost. Ankers apparently took the bull by the horns and with his men secured hawsers to his choice, the barely visible bow of the not yet quite wholly submerged Boudjmel, a vessel in the inner row of blockships. White, apparently left with no other choice, heaved on the hawsers with the King Salvor, and between the two of them, they swung and dragged the Boudjmel on her already submerged stern before she sank altogether on them, enough to uncover a partial opening in the outer line of sunken ships between the bow of the Spahi and the stern of the Pigeon sunk just ahead of the Spahi.
But by the time that was achieved, there was no longer any chance of anything further. The Spahi on the removal of the Boudjmel became the cork in the harbor bottleneck. For a long time she had been partly afloat but meanwhile she had rolled to starboard and gone down completely, lying on her side—the worst position possible for future salvage. And with the complete sinking of the Spahi ended all chance of clearing the harbor entrance without extended salvage operations.
The sequel was what might have been expected. When matters in Oran had settled enough to give opportunity, both salvage officers complained to their respective seniors of the unsatisfactory command situation still existing. Admiral Bennett’s Chief of Staff, Captain Spellman, outraged by what might have been accomplished but wasn’t, took matters into his own hands and without reference to the British higher command, ordered White out of the King Salvor, putting everything in Ankers’ hands, a procedure which in the overall international command picture was bound to have repercussions and did.
And there I was with peremptory orders to put White back on the King Salvor as salvage officer and take Ankers out. The orders admitted of no dispute by anybody—Admiral Cunningham was Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief to whom everybody in anybody’s navy, British, American, or French, afloat or ashore in North Africa, was subordinate. And the orders were in themselves wholly reasonable. If a British naval commander had ordered an American officer out of his ship without approval higher up, he also would certainly have been reversed.
But all this did me little good. Orders may be orders and in the naval service must be obeyed, but if I were ever to open Oran harbor with next to nothing to do the job, I had to have everybody’s good will and co-operation—Army and Navy, whether British or American. For only God knew to which of these diverse forces I should continuously have to appeal (I couldn’t command them) for every little thing in the way of men, materials, and equipment I might have to improvise into salvage gear.
I couldn’t begin by antagonizing
the American admiral commanding the port, nor his Chief of Staff. Still less would I get anywhere by antagonizing the British vice admiral afloat who had succeeded Commodore Troubridge in that area. And of course if I failed to satisfy Admiral Cunningham in the matter, I had no further worries at all—I should promptly be on my way home in disgrace. I was in considerable of a dilemma. Whose toes had best be trodden on and still give me a chance for success in Oran and later all over the Mediterranean?
Everybody’s feelings were on edge. White was deeply incensed over his removal. The local British admiral afloat and the overall naval commander in Algiers felt the Royal Navy had been insulted. Admiral Bennett and his Chief of Staff, Captain Spellman, felt strongly that the local situation had warranted the summary action taken. I, as the designated executioner, felt worse than any of them. Whatever I did or didn’t do spelled trouble which would ruin my mission in Oran. Only Lieutenant Ankers, whom I had orders to fling off the King Salvor, seemed to see nothing either personal or national at stake and appeared unconcerned over what I did about him.
A few days spent cautiously feeling out this tempest in a teapot and getting at first hand some knowledge of the personalities involved, only made the situation seem more hopeless. I had to have the wholehearted co-operation of both White and Ankers, for they were the only two experienced salvage officers available to help cover a thousand miles along the Barbary coast. Restoring White might be a way out, for it would mollify White and not enrage Ankers, regardless of how much it angered the American higher command in Oran. And of course it would save my official neck.
But while it seemed that Ankers himself would take no offense if I took him off the King Salvor, there were his American divers, the only ones at hand. It was certain that they would take considerable offense if ordered now to serve under White, the British salvage officer. Long experience with divers had taught me plenty. On the surface, disgruntled seamen can be made to do something at least under fear of punishment. But not divers. They work unseen and alone. Success with divers depends wholly on their willingness and desire to risk their lives inside wrecks, solving the problems they encounter by feel in the black waters amidst unseeable and unknown entanglements likely to trap them. Of these the salvage officer on the surface knows nothing at first, and later knows only what the diver on coming up chooses to tell him of what he has learned and what he has done, if anything.
The result is that a salvage officer for whom his divers are not willing to gamble their lives, not only gets nowhere but he has no means of doing anything about it. That salvage task is simply added to the long list of previous salvage failures.
Such was the situation in Oran. Of everybody from Admiral Cunningham down, the last individuals I could afford to antagonize were a few American enlisted men, the divers, if vitally needed Oran harbor were soon to be of any good to General Eisenhower and his fighting troops. Admiral Cunningham, a four-star admiral, had gold lace on his sleeves reaching from his wrists to his elbows and could chop my official head off with a word, but still what worried me most was not what he thought but what a few common seamen thought, though they could do nothing to me officially.
After a few days’ study on the spot, I found a solution which when presented to Admiral Cunningham he heartily approved and immediately acted on. An order was issued by Allied Naval Headquarters, and given wide public notice in Oran, restoring Lt. Comdr. E. White, R.N.V.R., to his position as Salvage Officer on H.M.S.V. King Salvor. This took care of the honor and dignity of the Royal Navy. Then Lt. Comdr. White, together with the King Salvor, was ordered to leave for Bône, the Algerian port nearest Tunisia, and only some forty miles short of the actual fighting line. Bône was getting a terrific nightly bombardment from Axis bombers with fields only twenty minutes’ flying time away. Already half a dozen ships had been sunk inside its harbor, badly needing attention. Two thousand Axis bombs fell on Bône within a period of seven weeks. White was radiant over his assignment to Bône—it was certainly the post of honor in the campaign. That took care of White.
However, the King Salvor was still badly needed at Oran, for without her and her equipment there was little chance of handling the situation in that harbor. Therefore White departed immediately for Bône without his salvage ship, which was not to join him in Bône till some time later. The King Salvor was ordered to remain in Oran temporarily till the harbor was fully cleared, meanwhile to work there with Lt. Ankers as salvage officer and with his divers. Since that physically preserved the status quo in Oran, it satisfied the divers, Lt. Ankers, and the American higher command in Oran.
Since everyone now seemed satisfied, I was left free to turn my attention to getting along with the war.
CHAPTER
11
THERE WAS LEFT FOR THE MOMENT only the problem of what to do about Oran harbor. I had now to work with, a British salvage ship, an American salvage officer and some divers, and, oddly enough, a French salvage officer and some French divers also.
I found soon after my arrival in Oran that the French contingent was going to be of little immediate value to me. Having been cut off by the Axis from access to the world since the Fall of France, they were meagerly equipped and their diving suits were so worn out, with patches now being patched in pathetic attempts to keep them watertight, that it was amazing men could still be persuaded to risk their lives in them. And at the moment I had no extra diving suits at all to give them.
But what really concerned me over my new French assistants and allies was not so much their lack of decent diving equipment as their totally incomprehensible point of view. I knew, of course, that in North Africa, the French whom recently we had been fighting, were now not conquered enemies who must take our orders as the Italians in Massawa lately had to do, but our allies. As our allies now, the French admiral lately in command of Oran and that Capitaine de Frégate Duprès were still in their previous posts even though it was under their sole orders (both Darlan and Pétain stoutly disclaimed ever having ordered it) that Oran harbor had been thoroughly sabotaged. And every man and officer in the French Navy around Oran was still responsible directly to them. If those two Frenchmen had in any way changed their ideas since sabotaging the harbor on their own initiative, nothing I ever saw indicated any sign of it.
Now I found to my astonishment I was in the midst of a regular Alice-in-Wonderland situation. If it seemed plain as day to me (as it did to General Eisenhower and to Admiral Cunningham who had sent me there) that the first order of business was fully to open Oran harbor, and the second to restore the harbor facilities, that wasn’t the way the French high command in Oran saw it. Not at all.
Without any thought to the future they had deprived themselves of all their warships, first by sending out their destroyers after the Walney-Hartland episode, which destroyers Commodore Troubridge’s waiting cruisers had thoroughly and swiftly shot to pieces, and then by scuttling all their submarines. Now they found themselves in the peculiar predicament of having not even a rowboat to go to sea in or to hoist an admiral’s flag on. That, not the Allied need for the use of Oran harbor, was what seemingly concerned the local French high command deeply.
When Lieutenant Perrin-Trichard, the French salvage officer, a very pleasant, a very studious-looking, and a very eager young man, first reported to me, I received a shock. He informed me that it was the desire of his superiors that I concentrate the American and British salvage forces available in Oran on lifting immediately the French submarines they had recently scuttled!
I stared blankly at Perrin-Trichard. Did he mean it? He did. I soon learned that badinage was far from the thoughts of this very serious lieutenant who, fortunately for me, spoke excellent English. When the situation dawned on me at last, I had difficulty in not insulting him and all France by laughing outright. With a pressing war situation requiring the swiftest possible reopening of the harbor, I was instead to turn to on lifting three scuttled French submarines which even when lifted would take six months or more to refit
for any service! It was too ludicrous for words.
As dispassionately as I could, I explained to Lieutenant Perrin-Trichard that much as it broke my heart (for lifting sunken submarines had in my younger days been my forte), the unfortunate submarines Cérès, Pallas, and Danaë must remain submerged for the present on the bottom of Oran harbor while all of us went about more urgent business. First, regrettably for the needs of his superiors, must come that prosaic scuttled freighter, the Spahi, blocking the entrance, and then that even more prosaic huge floating drydock they had also scuttled. Of all things around Oran,. what meant most in winning the war in North Africa was the Spahi out of the harbor entrance and the return of that huge drydock once again to the surface ready to repair torpedoed ships. He must convey my profound regrets to his superiors, M’sieu I’Amiral and M’sieu le Capitaine de Frégate, his Commandant du Port. I could not possibly do what they wished. Woebegone at having to be messenger for such unwelcome news, Lieutenant Perrin-Trichard left me.
He must quickly have concluded I had descended on Oran as his special nemesis, for next day when I got hold of him again I asked him what he and his French divers were then engaged on. His answer nearly floored me. He had been and was still engaged in attempting to raise the capsized French battleship, la Bretagne, sunk in Mers-el-Kebir harbor.
La Bretagne? This was the last straw. When Oran harbor was shrieking for attention, he was still engaged in working on that useless heap of junk, that thirty-year-old pre-World War I French battleship lying upside down in Mers-el-Kebir where she was doing no harm. Even if recovered, it would require two years’ work and priceless skilled labor and materials badly needed elsewhere to refit la Bretagne.
Even if refitted, so ancient was her design it made her practically valueless as a battleship in this war. Her history was tragic. After the Fall of France in 1940, the British, in desperation lest the French warships in Mers-el-Kebir harbor fall into Nazi hands, had appeared in force off Oran and served an ultimatum on the French admiral there. He must either join them and continue the war against the Nazis as de Gaulle was doing, or sail with his warships to the French West Indies for internment, or surrender, or—take the consequences.
No Banners, No Bugles Page 7