No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  We ran alongside the King Salvor at the quay with our horn shrieking to get quick attention aboard her. We got it. Captain Harding came tumbling down from his cabin to meet me at the rail almost before the jeep jerked to a stop there.

  “Where’s Ankers?” I asked.

  Harding motioned toward the harbor. A quarter of a mile away on the floats, I could make out Ankers with some of his divers down, working on the Spahi. It would be an hour at least before he could safely break enough men away to do me any good, or even safely leave them and come ashore himself. I gave that up.

  “Who’s ashore of that party?”

  “Ensign Aldrich and a storekeeper, there in the shack, Captain,” Harding replied. “What’s up?”

  “The Porcupine’s torpedoed and sinking, skipper,” I explained hurriedly. “They’re trying to get her into Arzeu before she goes down. No use sending out the King Salvor. That destroyer’d be gone before you could ever get there. She’s probably gone anyway unless something’s done quick. I’m starting overland to board her from Arzeu and see if there’s anything’ll keep her afloat till she gets in. I’ll be aboard her in an hour. Got a good man I can take along to lend me a hand?”

  “There’s Jock Brown,” he suggested, indicating his Fourth Engineer, who along with most of his deck force was lining the King Salvor’s port rail, listening eagerly. “He’s good!”

  “O.K., Captain.” I was willing to take Harding’s word for it. “Hop aboard here, Jock,” I sang out to Brown. “Just as you are. We’re getting underway!”

  Brown, clad in khaki, cased in his raincoat, hurdled the gunwale to the quay, started to wiggle past me into the back seat of the jeep. The driver began to set his multitudinous levers to back clear. I had one more concern.

  “Harding,” I ordered, “tell Ensign Aldrich to get a big army truck, load it with all the portable salvage pumps you can give him off the King Salvor, get himself a dozen men, a couple of divers and their rigs, and start for Arzeu as soon as he’s loaded.” The sergeant jammed home the last lever, let in the clutch, the jeep started to back away from the quay. “And tell Aldrich to wait for me on the quay at Arzeu, ready to work the minute the Porcupine comes in—if she ever does!” I shouted as the jeep hauled away. Captain Harding waved he understood.

  We bounced down the harbor road, up the incline, through the city traffic of Oran, and out on the open highway to the eastward with no stops for anything. That colored sergeant knew not only his driving but his M.P.’s—all of them waved us along. We raced for thirteen miles through the countryside, then through the village of St. Cloud in whose main (and only) street a column of our infantry advancing on Oran on D-day morning had been trapped and heavily machine gunned by the “friendly” French from the thick-walled houses still pock-marked by our return fire. Finally after some eight miles more of open road we reached our destination. In thirty minutes all told, we were in Arzeu, scene of the major Army landings on November 8 for the assault on Oran.

  The jeep squealed to its first stop since leaving the King Salvor’s side, in front of the stone building housing the local Port Commandant’s office. Lt. Comdr. Dickey, who had gone through hell on the Hartland, now in charge at Arzeu, was waiting for us in front of his office. He jumped on the running board to guide us. We threaded our way along the Arzeu waterfront to the massive Grand Quay, which like every quay in every French port, great or small, was built of heavy masonry, apparently intended to last down the ages. Alongside the quay, engines running, lay the MTB I had asked for.

  Thanking Dickey and asking him to take care of Ensign Aldrich’s party due to arrive in a few hours, Jock Brown and I jumped from the jeep to the MTB, which immediately cast off. With over a thousand horsepower pushing on that quivering 70 foot hull, we roared out of Arzeu harbor, throttles full out, and headed north into the Mediterranean.

  Three miles out we cleared the rocky point of Cape Carbon. No longer sheltered by its lee, we met a fresh breeze and a choppy sea with waves running some four feet high. The MTB began to pound heavily as she smashed into it, still at full power. I looked glumly down from the low hull to the waves alongside—such a sea, while nothing to an undamaged destroyer, might well break in two and finish off the weakened Porcupine laboring through it in tow, even if somehow she managed not to sink first still in one piece.

  It was a little past one o’clock in the afternoon on a typical winter’s day off the Algerian coast—dull, overcast skies, a chill wind, a gray sea running moderate whitecaps which would make it difficult to spot a U-boat periscope and its fine feather of foam. The solitary offset to all this was that it didn’t happen to be raining and the visibility was good—a real advantage I decided when a few miles further along through my binoculars I first made out masts on the horizon ahead with a large patrol plane circling low above them. So long as daylight lasted, that plane would be a great help in spotting the U-boat periscope, and perhaps even the barely submerged U-boat itself, if it came in for another attack on the handicapped flotilla.

  It was startling how fast our racing MTB raised above the horizon the hulls beneath the mastheads we had first sighted. We were swiftly in the midst of them, to see one destroyer at high speed zigzagging constantly about two others which seemed barely to be moving. And now even disregarding the fact that she was the one being towed, it took no high I.Q. to distinguish which of this last pair at opposite ends of a long towline, was the Porcupine.

  Even from some distance, it was evident she was in a bad way; close aboard it seemed astonishing the wallowing Porcupine didn’t roll over and sink any second, for her stern was awash, she had a terrible list to starboard, and next to no freeboard left amidships on that side.

  That list to starboard both puzzled me and caused me some delay as my MTB slowed down to starboard of her, and started to circle round to land me there as I had ordered. We had purposely made our approach down the starboard side of the tow, expecting to find that the high side and the Porcupine heeled down to port, which was the side on which the radio message had reported her torpedo damage. However, someone had apparently blundered; she must have been hit to starboard instead.

  It was obvious we had better not attempt laying the little MTB alongside the Porcupine’s heeled down side, if for no better reason than that it was highly undesirable to be on that side should she roll over while the MTB was there, as seemed probable. The British sub-lieutenant commanding her looked dubiously from the Porcupine’s starboard side to me. I was about to suggest to him that I had changed my mind and that he keep on past the destroyer’s stern before he made his turn, when I heard an officer on the destroyer’s bridge bellowing to us through a megaphone to keep off their starboard side.

  That made it unanimous. The sub-lieutenant reversed his helm, came back to his original course for perhaps half a minute longer. Clear then of the Porcupine’s stern, he started a wider circle to bring him up on her port side, parallel to her course, and fairly close aboard.

  We swung round astern of her, crossed her wake, and started to head back in the same direction as the destroyer was going, sheering gradually in towards her port side and easing the engines to dead slow to avoid overrunning her. Owing to the starboard list, her port side was very high out of water, exposing her bilge keel, and except near the stern, making her difficult to board from the low deck of an MTB. I spotted a wide “Abandon Ship” scramble net hanging down her port side right abaft her bridge in way of the smokestack and was about to indicate we should come alongside there, when my eyes traveling further aft, I saw after all she had been torpedoed to port. Practically amidships and a little abaft that scramble net, for a considerable distance the port side of the Porcupine just wasn’t there any more!

  That exploding torpedo, running deep evidently, had done a terrific job. From the line of her shattered deck, now high above the sea, down to the water, there was a gaping cavern in the Porcupine’s port side some twenty feet or more long, with the waves washing freely in and out the vast ho
le as she rose and fell in the seaway. It seemed miraculous that that destroyer, even though she was a very new and a large one, around 1900 tons, should still be afloat at all.

  Without any word of caution to him about it being necessary to take it gingerly, the sub-lieutenant made his approach on the Porcupine, with Jock Brown and me at his starboard rail, ready to leap from his deck for the scramble net the instant he came close enough. I warned the MTB skipper to sheer his craft away the moment we had jumped, lest impact with his boat rising and falling in the waves alongside, be the last straw wanting to break the Porcupine’s back. He nodded acquiescence.

  With some six feet of water still between the two vessels, we jumped together to land on all fours in the scramble net, catching its heavy rope meshes with both hands and feet and very much helped by the circumstance that the destroyer’s high sloping side was heeled sharply away from us. Some British seamen above, rushing to stand by with lines and life preservers should we miss our grip, now dropped them as unnecessary and lent us a hand to help drag us over the port gunwale on to the destroyer’s oil-covered deck while the MTB sheered off, never having made contact.

  The Porcupine’s captain, Commander George Scott Stewart of the Royal Australian Navy (as I soon learned), hurried to meet us at the rail. Like most Australians, he was a big chap, but one glance at him showed he was nearly as much on his last legs as was his ship. His eyes were sunken, his face haggard and deeply lined, his uniform streaked with oil and water. In a moment we were joined by his Chief Engineer. Between the two of them, they swiftly informed me of their situation.

  The torpedo some hours before had caught them low squarely in the middle of the engine room, a perfect shot. They had made no contact before by Asdic with any U-boat; they had seen no track of the torpedo. Neither had any of their sister destroyers. Nor had any Asdic contact been made since by anybody in the flotilla in spite of a very thorough underwater search by their sisters backed by the certain knowledge that there was a U-boat very close aboard. After an hour’s fruitless search, seeing she was still afloat, one of her sisters had taken her in tow while the other had continued about as guard, and best of all, a British patrol plane had come out to watch from overhead.

  Where the U-boat was, nobody knew. But it must still be close, regardless of whether its future intentions were to escape or to attack again, for being compelled willy-nilly to stay submerged, it could not have traveled very far from its point of attack, and they hadn’t either. Most likely it was close about, looking for a favorable chance to evade the circling destroyer and sneak in another shot at them or at their sister towing, both of them now practically sitting ducks, unable to maneuver. So much for the U-boat, from which at any instant we might expect another torpedo—the only reason Stewart could see it hadn’t come already was that the U-boat captain saw no need as yet to expend another torpedo on him.

  His ship, he continued, as I could see, was in desperate condition. The explosion had completely torn away his port side amidships and his bottom, and instantly deprived him of all power and light. His port engine, the heavy high pressure turbine there, with no foundation any longer under it, had simply dropped through the hole in the bottom of the ship and sunk. That, I saw, explained the puzzling fact of the starboard list instead of a port heel—with such a heavy weight gone from the port side, the unbalanced ship had no option but to heel immediately to the opposite side. And she had.

  He had lost his whole engine room watch below at the time of the accident. Not one man had got out alive. The blast of the exploding torpedo had killed them all, but if it hadn’t the result was the same anyway. What was left of the engine room was wholly flooded all the way across the ship from port to starboard, and looking down through the deck hatches into it, a few dead engineers could be seen just under water trapped amongst broken pipe lines and machinery. The others were invisible, probably caught even lower down. Very somberly, Stewart told me he hoped the explosion had killed them all outright and at least saved them the agony of being drowned somewhat more slowly trapped amongst the wreckage or, worse still, of being cooked by escaping steam till the water rose over them.

  When he and his Chief Engineer, Lt. Comdr. Robert Bartley, R.N. (for Stewart’s crew, except for himself, were all Royal Navy as was his ship), had seen, immediately after the explosion, that their ship promised to stay afloat even a few minutes, they had turned to with the remainder of their crew to see if they could save her. Left helpless without any power and with all the ship’s pumps submerged in the engine room, there was little they could do, but that little they had tried. Forward and aft of the shattered engine room they had closed all watertight doors and hatches, hoping in spite of the bad list, the damage amidships, and numerous leaks aft, that the ship might hold together and they might keep her afloat till they were towed in.

  But the situation had grown increasingly hopeless in the hours following. Water steadily coming into the after compartments had sunk the stern lower and lower till now it was awash. The list to starboard had continuously increased, apparently increasing the leakage in proportion. With the vessel still from four to five hours away from port, it seemed unlikely now she would last till she got in. And they dared tow no faster or the ship, almost broken in two and already working badly in the open sea, would certainly break in half.

  And that was it, Commander Stewart concluded soberly. They had had already some terrible hours, he and his crew were badly exhausted, all hands fully expected to be torpedoed again. But they were still perfectly willing to fight for their ship and had no thought of abandoning her till she went from under them. If there was anything further I could suggest, they would gladly tackle it.

  But Stewart’s bitter disappointment was evident enough, though not expressed, that after all his desperate struggle to keep his ship afloat till help came, he saw his ship boarded by two men only, outfitted with nothing but their bare hands, when unquestionably he had expected a fully equipped salvage ship, loaded with pumps and jammed with fresh seamen, to come racing to his aid. I saw no point, however, in adding to his depression by telling him that neither his country nor mine had provided any such ship; that the only ship I did have was so slow that she could arrive only after he had sunk, and rather than engage in any useless gestures, I had not bothered to send her out, coming instead myself with Brown the fastest way. So I told him only that Brown and I would first look around, then do what we could to help.

  Ordering his engineer officer, Lt. Comdr. Bartley, to do whatever I said, Commander Stewart went back to his bridge to keep in touch with his lookouts and his gun crews for whatever good they might do in warding off another attack, while I took Bartley and started aft to see for myself.

  Getting aft on the Porcupine was not simple. The deck was listed and fouled with heavy black oil blown from ruptured fuel tanks below by the blast, making footing very unsure. Amidships, the port side had to be avoided, for the deck plating there was buckled up and fractured all the way to the fore and aft center line. Even to starboard (on which side we passed aft) the deck plating was badly corrugated, and what little I could see of the starboard side shell plating still showing above water, was corrugated also. It gave me an eerie feeling as I passed over it, to see those steel corrugations working like an accordion there amidships, as that precariously held together destroyer rose and fell in the sea.

  Once past the damaged section, Bartley, Brown, and I hastily clambered up the sloping deck to the high side again, for a little aft the waves were already lapping over the starboard gunwale onto the deck. We wiggled by a multiple torpedo tube mount, still with all its torpedoes in it, then continued aft to port outboard of the after deckhouse. Atop that, I noted the gun crews all in life-preservers, at action stations ready at their loaded guns. But I knew as well as they, this was hardly more than a morale-building gesture—against a submarine attacking submerged, guns are next to worthless. Only rapid maneuvering and the dropping of depth charges are of any value and the wounded
Porcupine was now helpless to do either. Being literally now in the same boat with them, however, I had some inkling of the nervous strain they were under. Perhaps I felt it even a trifle more, for if another torpedo came, they at least would be on the topside in the clear while I, most likely, would for a while be below where a life-preserver would do me very little good.

  “Down here, Captain,” said Bartley, a much chunkier individual than his skipper, indicating through a door in the deck-house, a ladder leading below. “There’s our trouble.”

  I squeezed through the deckhouse door, looked down, lighting the space below with my flashlight. I was looking down into the destroyer’s wardroom, forward and aft of which apparently were the officers’ staterooms. I went some steps down the ladder for a better view. The deck below me was flooded, deep on the starboard side, shallower to port, with the whole surface covered by a thick layer of black oil. On the ship’s center line, the water seemed as yet only about three feet deep, not too deep for wading. So followed by Bartley and then by Brown, I descended the rest of the way down the ladder, to find myself in water not quite to my hips. That oil-covered water felt rather messy; to make matters worse, the surface was dotted with oil-soaked pillows, mattresses, and other debris floating out the stateroom doors to swash about aimlessly.

  I flashed my light forward. There was a long passage there, terminating in some storerooms forward, with, so Bartley told me, the ship’s main fuel oil tanks beneath those storerooms. I started forward up the passage, with the water shoaling as I went, for the ship was decidedly down by the stern. By the time I brought up against a solid bulkhead which stopped me, the deck in the passage was dry.

  “That’s the after side of the engine room bulkhead, Captain,” Bartley volunteered. “She’s all flooded for’d of that. And the main fuel tanks are right under us.”