No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  Unable to extinguish the fires in the boiler rooms (though they were pretty well confined to those spaces) he had concluded that with his engine room flooded from the torpedo damage and his boiler rooms aflame, the ship was a total loss. When the destroyers came alongside, he had abandoned her with the troops. For some reason I never got, he had himself boarded the Laforey, instead of going in on the other destroyers. And that was it.

  I turned away. Apparently it had never entered the skipper’s head that even a desperately wounded ship is still the captain’s business to fight for while she floats, even if it no longer is necessarily considered the captain’s business to go down with her.

  I shuffled forward through the darkness to the bridge windows where, till I could go to rejoin them, I could at least watch some men fighting to save the ship, even at the eleventh hour.

  But in a moment I received another jolt. For on the very stern of the Strathallan, dimmed somewhat in the smoke, a signal lamp started to blink at us. A signal quartermaster took down the message, passed it to the Laforey’s captain. The latter, shielding his flashlight, stooped low beneath his bridge rail to read it, then passed it to me. I did the same.

  “CONSIDER IT TOO DANGEROUS TO REMAIN. REQUEST PERMISSION TO RETURN LAFOREY.”

  It was signed by the Laforey’s lieutenant in charge of her fire party.

  I was so stunned, I could hardly pass the message back once I had read it. Too dangerous to remain on the Strathallan after we on the King Salvor had got over the worst of it and established a solid bridgehead inside her superstructure from which to battle that fire? How could any sailor claim so? Dangerous, yes; nearly everything in wartime was dangerous. But too dangerous? I couldn’t believe my eyes!

  “Sorry, Captain; I’ll have to withdraw my men,” I heard as I handed back to the skipper of the Laforey his signal.

  “You can’t do that!” I objected vehemently. “It’s no more dangerous for your men than for mine, and mine’re willing to stick it! If you take yours off, it leaves us with no reliefs at all and the Strathallan’s lost! You just can’t do it!”

  But he could and he would, in spite of my arguments and my pleas. If his lieutenant, whom he trusted, felt it was too dangerous, then it was too dangerous. He couldn’t hazard his forty men—he might be in action the next day, any day. He couldn’t fight the Laforey without those men; he wasn’t going to hazard them and his ship to save the wreck of the Strathallan.

  Bitterly I regretted that I was up against another four-striper, my equal in rank and possibly even a captain senior to me, rather than a commander or a lieutenant commander. One of the latter I might have overawed by an assumption of responsibility due to greater rank; whatever happened would be on my head, not his, as I was Senior Officer Present. But with this four-striper, it wouldn’t work. I had to rely on argument and even on pleading with him.

  I tried to point out that the Allies had several hundred destroyers about equal to the Laforey; they had not over a dozen transports as good or better than the Strathallan. Even to sacrifice the Laforey to save the Strathallan was worth it. He couldn’t see it; to him the Strathallan was only a torpedoed and burning wreck, not worth much even if towed in.

  In desperation I launched my last argument. He might lose some of his men; he certainly wouldn’t lose all of them. We were gaining on it all the while; the fire wasn’t as bad as his lieutenant thought.

  The skipper of the Laforey crouched down to look once again at the signal in his hand, then straightened up to gaze a moment at that volcano of flame that was the Strathallan, twice as lurid now against the blackness of the night skies. Then I got his last word.

  My men and I could do what we pleased about the Strathallan. Salvage was our business but it wasn’t his. He wasn’t hazarding his men on her. He had to keep ready for action. Sorry. His blinker lantern started to flash out through the night the answer,

  “WITHDRAW IMMEDIATELY.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  ON MY WAY BACK IN MY BOAT TO the King Salvor, I passed close aboard in the darkness her other boat going in the opposite direction, laboring heavily through the seas, deeply loaded down with the ex-fire party, their lieutenant in the sternsheets alongside the coxswain. Silently the two boats passed each other in the night.

  I had salvaged a little of the situation in a final compromise with the Laforey’s skipper, but not much. I had persuaded him this time not to order the trawlers to cut the Strathallan adrift again; they were to keep on towing her, even though we could no longer fight the fire. If the King Salvor’s men ever recuperated enough, we’d tackle it again by ourselves when we could. And if they never did, the Strathallan was to be towed anyway till we got to Oran where I could get help from ashore to fight what of course by then would be a far worse fire even than we had first encountered. We would save what then was left of the burning troopship.

  Wan and worn in body but far sicker even at heart, I sheered my boat in alongside the port counter of the King Salvor. Captain Harding himself caught the painter the engineer tossed aboard, made it fast. I clambered wearily up over the low rail. I had left for the Laforey an hour before confident of victory; I returned wholly crushed. I had lost, we had lost. Danger, DANGER, DANGER! Run away from it, keep away from it! What, I wondered, was danger anyway? Harding and all his seamen on the King Salvor were apparently too stupid to discern what all sensible men, like the skipper of the Strathallan and that lieutenant off the Laforey, recognized instantly they saw it, even from a distance.

  I looked up from the King Salvor’s low fantail to the high side of the Strathallan against which, as usual, the King Salvor’s superstructure was pounding heavily. Everything was about as I had left it an hour before, including, to my astonishment, those twelve hard-as-iron fire hoses still writhing continuously as the King Salvor’s engine room pumps pounded the water at high pressure through them to the Strathallan.

  “How come, skipper?” I questioned, pointing to the hoses. “What’s the good of pumping more water through those hoses? We’re just wasting fuel. Shut down and salvage the abandoned hoses if you can. The Laforey’s men who were manning those nozzles last must be just about boarding their own ship by now.”

  “Those hoses ain’t abandoned, Captain; they’re still manned with my own men still hanging to ’em! There never was a Laforey man on a single one o’ those hoses. They never touched ’em an’ they none of ’em ever got near the fire!”

  “They never manned the hoses? Why, I personally ordered their lieutenant to do exactly that the minute he got aboard here; that’s all we needed ’em for! What, for Christ’s sake, did he do then with all those men all that time they were aboard here?”

  “He went four bells for that after deckhouse magazine no sooner he was aboard. He seemed to know all about it, an’ he says to me he’s going to jettison the ammo before it blows up. I told him not to worry about that magazine; we had it well cooled down with our fire monitor; it’d never blow up; for the love of God, let that magazine alone an’ relieve my poor lads on the hoses! But I might as well ’ve saved my breath. He an’ his men went at that magazine door with a sledge, smashed off the lock, then the whole lot of ’em turned to pitching powder cases an’ shell over the stern.

  “I thought, well, at least when they finish that, they’ll turn to on the nozzles, so I kept my lads who’d been a’thinkin’ they were about to be relieved, hangin’ on to ’em. But I’ll be goddamned, Captain, if that lieutenant, when the last case o’ powder went over the side, didn’t grab the signalman he’d brought along with him and start signaling his ship it was too dangerous to remain! I could hardly believe it! And then they get an affirmative from their ship, and the whole bloody lot of ’em, fire equipment an’ all, shoves off again without ever having done a blasted thing to help us, leaving my crew still on the hoses!”

  I gazed at the captain of the King Salvor. Poor devil! How much, I wondered, is a man supposed to have to stand before he’s led off in a str
ait-jacket? I really didn’t know.

  “So your men are still on those hoses!” I muttered wearily. “Well, now let’s see if we can get ’em out o’ there before they all drop and burn to death!”

  But Harding couldn’t see it. He was berserk now—he and his crew were going to stay with that fire and save the ship; they were not going to drop the hoses, reliefs or no reliefs, till we got her in!

  Over Harding, at least, I had real authority; I didn’t have to argue. If killing his men and himself too would put out that fire in the superstructure and assure me of getting that 25,000-ton troop-ship into port, it was worth the lives of fifty men. After all, commanders in wartime have sacrificed the lives of far more than that for far less gain—sometimes for only a few miles of worthless sand in the desert.

  But the gain wasn’t there to be won by the sacrifice; an hour more, probably less, and Harding and all his men would have collapsed in the flames; at best it would be fourteen hours yet till we could make port. And when we got in with the Strathallan, if we ever did, I needed most of all Harding and his men to resume the fight.

  I ordered Harding to withdraw his men.

  Broken-hearted, Harding obeyed. With hardly any life in him any more, he scaled the high sides of the Strathallan once again, there to get hold of Teddy Brown on the boat deck, Sid Everett on the next below, and Jock Brown on the main, and order a retreat. I went with him to see he didn’t double-cross me in the order and tell them to stand firm instead.

  We got all the men out, singed, blistered, blinded, bleeding—hardly men any more—just horrible looking seared carcasses barely able to stagger to the lower rail, there to be helped down onto the King Salvor’s deck. The roaring fire, with the wind ahead, followed us aft in our retreat off the boat deck, down the passageways. The King Salvor’s fire monitor was swung forward to cover the withdrawal; the hose nozzles were all left going for what little good they might do thrashing about spurting water to help check the advance of the flames while the men stumbled aft, too weak to drag the heavy fire hoses backwards with them. When the last man of the fire party was lowered over the side down onto the King Salvor, the few seamen on her deck were thrown aboard the Strathallan to drag back what hoses they could from the burning corridors and the boat deck. We managed to salvage about half the lines in the face of rapidly advancing flames.

  With the unrestrained fire sweeping down on her, hanging on alongside on the lee quarter was now becoming impossible for the King Salvor; Harding needed what few seamen he had left to cast loose. The rest of the hose was abandoned, the pumps below hurriedly shut down except to the fire monitor, the mooring hawsers cast off the troopship’s bitts, and the last seaman on her deck made a wild leap for the King Salvor’s topside before the sea opened too wide a gap.

  A bell clanged below. The propeller started to churn astern, dragging us clear, while at the starboard rail, the signalman and a few others hacked furiously with axes at the remaining hose lines to free us of the Strathallan. Over all, our fire monitor, pointed vertically upward now, showered the King Salvor herself in a heavy spray to keep her from going afire till she was clear.

  CHAPTER

  23

  ABOUT A QUARTER OF A MILE TO leeward of the Strathallan and dead abeam her, the King Salvor steamed slowly southward through the night on the troopship’s port side, her low side. We were making about four knots; so also was the tow, which had speeded up a little once the trawlers ahead were relieved of the slight extra drag of towing the King Salvor as well as the torpedoed liner.

  All was quiet as well as dark on the blacked-out salvage ship, short-handed both on her bridge and below in the machinery spaces, running only with the few men as watch standers who had not been on the hoses. The latter thirty, worn even beyond the power to groan over their miseries, were all silently stretched out in their bunks, though I doubted that any might be enjoying the blessed mercy of sleep.

  Harding had the watch on the bridge, where I had taken station also to keep an eye on the Strathallan. Somewhere, far out in the darkness where the glare from the troopship would not give her away, the invisible Laforey must be zigzagging through the night, listening endlessly on her Asdic for any echo of a ping coming back to her from beneath the seas. I had not seen the Laforey again since I had left her. Astern of us dragged both our small boats; we had not men to spare to hoist them aboard. Ahead, at the end of the two long hawsers, the trawlers were clearly visible straining on the towlines, dragging their flaming burden through the seas toward faraway Oran.

  The Strathallan, off to starboard of us where we could observe her better, was now a sight almost beyond description. In the two and a half hours we had been aboard her, we had driven the fire forward about a quarter of the distance to her bridge. Within ten minutes after we had quit playing our hoses on her superstructure, it was all aflame again from end to end.

  And now that fire rolling upward in the night was unimaginable. It had seemed horrible enough to look upon when we had first come to grips with it during the last fading hour of daylight; now against the night sky, it was truly terrifying to behold, even from a distance. My feelings toward that young lieutenant off the Laforey eased a bit—perhaps it had been too much to expect of him that the sight of that seething sea of fire at close range for the first time against the darkness of the night, would not paralyze him altogether.

  All roundabout the Strathallan the breaking waves were gleaming red and orange, reflecting as in countless moving mirrors the leaping flames above. Overhead the rolling clouds of smoke glowed on their under sides a more fiery scarlet than any sunset I had ever seen. And in between the reddened sea and the ruddy clouds, flamed the Strathallan, her dark steel hull an immense devil’s cauldron from which a mass of erupting flame leaped skyward, to envelop superstructure, smokestacks, and masts alike as it roared upward.

  And as the last touch, now that the night skies furnished a better background, long streaks of fiery red tracers darted off in all directions to cut the sky to pieces and give the whole the appearance of a gigantic setpiece at a fireworks display—the ack-ack guns were still firing on the boat deck, with minor stores of explosives occasionally going off en masse.

  We steamed on through the night. I wasn’t much worried over torpedoes any more—at least not on the Strathallan. If the U-boat were following us, the Laforey might have cause enough for worry about herself. But if the U-boat captain were using as a criterion the amount of fire visible on the Strathallan as he eyed her through his periscope, then he certainly was justified in withholding any further torpedoes for a long time yet.

  Midnight came. There was no changing of the watch. We had nobody to change with. We kept on southward. Thirty-six more miles to go yet; nine more hours.

  Completely sick at heart, I watched the Strathallan as we plodded along by her side, to my sad eyes no spectacle, but an irreplaceable troopship which meant much to us in the winning of the war. Steadily she was being consumed in the unopposed flames gutting her, while I wondered how much of her, aside from her bare hull, might finally be left to fight for once we had men enough to resume the fight again.

  For now the fire was slowly working its way forward of the bridge toward the foremast and the forecastle, even in the face of a moderate head wind. And of course she was aflame all the way to her stern in which direction the wind was pushing the fire.

  Two a.m. Still we plodded southward. Still twenty-eight more miles to Oran; seven more hours.

  The flames below her main deck were spreading forward and aft now to compartments and holds other than her already flaming firerooms, lighted off without doubt from above by the newly ignited upper hull above them. For the first time something I had never observed before, became startlingly prominent. Long horizontal rows of airports in the dark sides of her lower hull began to glow like a hundred rising suns, each illuminated from inside by the fire spreading there.

  A new fear clutched my heart. Before I had never doubted (saving always more tor
pedoes) that we should at least get the hull of the Strathallan into port, badly burned out though it might be. But now I was no longer so sure, as I stared at that multitude of newly lighted up airports. One row especially, the lowest row, could hardly be a foot above her waterline on the side toward us, her port side, the torpedoed side, and the side toward which she was listed and deepest in the water.

  For the fiery glow now showing through all those airports proved that the heavy inside metal battle covers (which every ship carries on her airports) were not swung down over the glass airports and dogged down hard, as they should be always on every vessel entering the war zone. And especially should that be so on a troopship at night, which had been the Strathallan’s condition when torpedoed.

  But they weren’t—not one, high or low. And with the list on the port side of the ship bringing the lowest row of glass ports there practically to the water’s edge, a danger I had never imagined had leaped suddenly into prominence. For when the cold waves lapping the hull outside hit those glass ports, the glass would shatter after it got hot enough from the fire inside, leaving a row of large open holes right at the waterline through which the heaving seas would pour through and soon end everything. Those ports should every one have been sealed inside by their metal covers. What kind of officers had she had to let her enter the war zone with thousands and thousands of troops aboard and not a battle port in her lower hull sealed down?