No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  She made the rail on the port side abreast her boat. She was late for the boat, most of those in its assigned load were there before her. But confusion there (and on the next boat astern) was, if possible, worse than anywhere. Most of the passengers were huddled just inboard of the gunwale, refusing to get into the boat, pleading with the few sailors manning it and the davits to do something.

  She swiftly found out why. Her boat was full of water up to the thwarts! The boat astern was even worse. With some sixty to eighty people loaded into each of them, they were likely to sink the moment they hit the sea; they would certainly go awash to their gunwales, swiftly then to swamp with the first wave that washed over them. Apparently the exploding torpedo, hitting the engine room directly below, had shot an immense geyser of water into the air; coming down, it had practically filled those two lifeboats as they lay in their chocks on the open boat deck.

  All around her, nurses and doctors, whom she couldn’t see except as vague shadows in the night, were pleading with the ship’s officers loading the boats, even with the few sailors in them and at the lowering lines, for God’s sake to do something about all the water in those two boats before they lowered them.

  They got nowhere. Amidst cries from all around that the ship was sinking and gruff orders to quit bellyaching and get in or the boats would go without them, they were pushed into the waterlogged boats. She and all those with her, mostly women, found themselves jammed amongst the thwarts, packed so tightly they could hardly move, in cold water over their hips. The boatfalls started to whine, the boatblocks over their heads began to groan. In the blackness, that already flooded and overloaded boat, swaying drunkenly as the boatfalls ran out, dropped swiftly down the towering side of the ship toward the black sea far below, with the boat astern of them starting down just after them.

  They hit the sea; as expected, they nearly submerged immediately. A prayer of thankfulness went up from the passengers; there remained, thank God, an inch or two of freeboard at their gunwales! While the seamen at bow and stern, badly hampered by lack of elbow room in which to move, strove to cast loose the massive disengaging blocks and get free of the boatfalls, off the heads of every woman and the few men in that boat came their tin hats. Those who could somehow bend over enough to reach down, started frantically to bail the boat with those tin hats to help gain freeboard.

  Their prayers of thankfulness almost immediately turned to curses and shrieks, even from the women. Down into their boat, almost at the point of foundering anyway, came, from overhead a solid stream of water, almost like a hose stream, to add to their peril. Looking up, even in the darkness they could see it was shooting down on them from the bottom of the next boat aft, beneath which they had drifted the moment their boatfalls had slacked a little. Someone had knocked the plug out of the bottom of that boat, already halfway down the ship’s side, trying to drain it out before it hit the sea!

  From far over their heads, they could hear agonized feminine shrieks from that boat, crying to the sailors on the boat deck of the Strathallan above them to quit lowering, for the love of God to hold the boat there till it drained out and they had the plug back in!

  In their own boat, the sailors got the blocks disengaged, pushed frenziedly off with boathooks to get clear of the ship’s side before either they swamped from the water coming down or the other boat dropped on them. They came free, drifted away in the darkness.

  Still looking up horror-stricken, they could see the lifeboat abaft them, water still pouring down in a heavy jet from the open hole in its bottom, inexorably being lowered toward the sea. The sailors on the boat deck above either had not heard or had paid no attention to those piercing screams to hold that boat! Then everything faded wholly from their view in the dark night and they were alone on the heaving ocean, bailing madly as best they could with their tin hats to try to gain a little freeboard before a real wave hit them and they swamped.

  But if they could see nothing at all, they could hear plenty. Aside from the wild uproar coming across the water to them from the listing Strathallan, somewhere in the blackness not so far away they began to catch the heartrending shrieks and piercing screams of drowning women, mingling with the agonized groans of a few dying men, all strangling and freezing in spite of life preservers in the cold seas breaking over them. For the lifeboat astern of them, lowered without a stop with its drain plug still out (it had been impossible for anyone in that flooded and jammed boat ever to replace it), had been pushed clear only to drift off into the night, fill completely, and swamp.

  There was nothing they could do about it save listen and shout to make their own whereabouts known. So packed was their boat that no one could get out any oars to go to the rescue, let alone swing them if ever they got them out. Gradually the screams of the drowning nurses died away and they were left at last in silence as well as in darkness to bail their own boat. It was more necessary now than ever; clinging to the gunwales of that waterlogged boat were perhaps half a dozen women and a man or two; strong swimmers who guided by cries in the night had managed to get to the side of their boat. But they couldn’t be taken aboard yet; first, there was no room for a single added passenger, and second, till the boat was bailed completely, any extra load would swamp it altogether.

  So those hanging to the gunwales over the side had to stay there in the darkness, trying to strike a hairline balance between keeping enough out of water not to drown and keeping as much as possible submerged so as not to sink the last straw between themselves and quick death for everybody.

  Finally, after an anguished eternity in that precarious position, what water could be reached by those inside was all bailed out, a few more inches was added to the freeboard. One by one, the exhausted hangers-on were cautiously dragged over the side, somehow packed in with the others. Motionless then, wet, cold, and heartbroken for the friends they had lost, those in the boat, mostly nurses, waited in the darkness for the dawn.

  Day came at last. They looked about them. From their low position, their horizon extended only a few miles. Here and there, not so far away, drifted the other boats, all jammed as full as theirs. The Strathallan was no longer anywhere in sight; they could only conclude she must have sunk. Nobody commented. Helpless to help themselves, they drifted forlornly over the empty ocean. In some of the boats, all loaded with G.I.s, a pair of oars was somehow got out and some very awkward rowing attempted to get closer to the others; possibly by propinquity to lessen the general misery. Hours more passed.

  Along about noon, two destroyers showed up on the southern horizon, guided to them perhaps by radar. Shortly the destroyers were among them, one after another emptying the jammed boats till finally all were rescued; then the destroyers headed directly for Oran. Those must have been the first two destroyers I’d seen returning; only the other three, then, could have gone directly to the Strathallan to take off the mass of troops still on her.

  As for Margaret Bourke-White, some surgeon in her boat had loaned her his coat to keep her from freezing to death; when dawn came, she had got a few pictures of the other boats. They would be worthless she thought; packed in as she was, it had been impossible to get decent camera angles or composition. Anyway, it didn’t matter much. The censors wouldn’t let her use them for months yet and even then the ship’s name and the location and what finally had happened to that troopship would all be suppressed. Everything about the Strathallan was strictly hush-hush, including the fifty American nurses, more or less, who had been pushed over the side in an obviously unseaworthy boat to perish in the sea. They, most of all, were strictly hush-hush.

  As regards the air force uniform she was wearing, when she got to Algiers one of the surviving nurses had drummed up this captain who was about her height; he had loaned her a spare uniform till she could get some women’s clothes somewhere in Algiers.

  And that was everything.

  And that was everything about the Strathallan and her passengers. It was many a long week before, either day or night even
amongst the newer and fresher horrors of the war on sea and land, the Strathallan, though a thousand fathoms deep beneath the sea, quit haunting my thoughts, waking or sleeping.

  CHAPTER

  26

  NEXT MORNING WAS THE DAY BEfore Christmas, my first in the war zone.

  I started early up the hill to G.H.Q. at the St. George. Christmas morning I was returning to Oran; I should have much to cover on this day in Algiers. I had lain awake most of the night, with vivid images of blasted ships, some I’d seen and more I hadn’t yet, fighting each other for the undivided attention of what confused and worn-out senses I had left.

  I had tried to concentrate on the Cameronia, that 16,000 ton transport just torpedoed off Bône. Admiral Cunningham, much against his own better judgment, had reluctantly consented to send her to Bône to carry almost up to the fighting line thousands of troops who could never get there in time overland, so that in the imminent offensive other thousands of G.I.s and Tommies should not be slaughtered for want of all possible reinforcements. The result had been what was almost certain. Off Bône the Cameronia had stopped a Nazi torpedo.

  That torpedo had hit far aft, missing all the machinery spaces, to explode in and flood the after lower hold, not a large one. Fortunately the hit was not far enough aft to injure either rudder or propellers. The Cameronia had been able to limp the last few miles into Bône to discharge her troops and practically all their fighting equipment close up to the front lines where Eisenhower needed them.

  So far as the army was concerned, the Cameronia’s mission was accomplished. But so far as Admiral Cunningham was concerned, it looked as if he had expended a big 16,000 ton troopship in the accomplishment. For staying in Bône even a few days (the normal turn around for a transport was in and out the same day and don’t wait for darkness) was for a big ship equivalent to sure death from bombs. On the average, forty high explosive bombs came down every night on Bône harbor. And the Cameronia, so it was reported to Algiers, couldn’t move out as she was.

  With the Cameronia, it wasn’t any case of seaworthiness or of certificates as it had been with the larger Scythia. The flooded hold aft wasn’t large enough to affect her seaworthiness seriously in anybody’s mind. The difficulty was that flying shrapnel from the exploding torpedo had pierced the steel bulkheads of the propeller shaft alley passing through that flooded after hold. As a result those holes had solidly flooded the shaft alley also. That had immersed completely in sea water the long propeller shafts going down that tunnel and had made it impossible for anyone to get in there to oil the numerous bearings carrying those massive steel shafts, as big around as a man’s body.

  And that was what was immobilizing the Cameronia in Bône. If she went to sea seeking safety, she would melt out all the babbitt metal in her unlubricated shaft bearings, freeze the shafts in the bearings, and unable to turn her propellers, become a helpless target for the first U-boat or the first flight of Axis bombers which discovered her. And there would not be much of an interval in that front line area before she would certainly be discovered by snooping planes and subjected to all the bombers which both near by Sicily and Bizerte could send out till she was finally sunk. That was the dilemma. Another night or two in Bône and she would be sunk there. And injured as she was, if she went to sea in that condition, she’d break down and even more surely be sunk.

  Over that dilemma I had tossed sleeplessly all night long. Unless the salvage forces in Bône could do something for her swiftly, she was lost. But the negligible salvage forces in Bône couldn’t possibly do anything for her in that short time available.

  For poor Lieutenant Commander White, whom I’d sent to Bône, had no means whatever to patch up the big torpedo hole in the after hold and pump out both the hold and the shaft alley. That didn’t even warrant discussion.

  There was no solution. The salvage forces couldn’t save her.

  But nevertheless as I went up the hill toward the St. George, I wasn’t particularly unhappy over the Cameronia. Assuming she had managed to survive the usual bombing of the night just passed, she wasn’t lost. Nobody could do anything for her, but all that was necessary to get her to safety was to discard all orthodox thinking on what lubrication and lubricants were, and what they weren’t.

  Shortly I was elaborating on that theme to Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham, to Rear Admiral Murray, his Fleet Engineer, and to others of his aides. It so happened it was a topic I could talk about with some authority. Aside from having been myself, along with various deck duties, a marine engineer in our Navy, after I had left the regular service I had been for nine years Chief Engineer for The Tide Water Oil Company. In that task, I had personally had a hand in making more barrels of fine lubricating oil than all the ships then in the Mediterranean, including the Cameronia, could possibly carry if all their holds were loaded with nothing but barrels of lubricating oil.

  My point was peculiar for one who had always felt the best lubricant was none too good. Now I was urging that any liquid was in a sense a lubricant; the question at issue was only whether that liquid was reasonably satisfactory for the lubricating task in hand. We couldn’t get oil to the shaft bearings on the Cameronia. Granted; let’s forget the oil then and use instead sea water as a lubricant there. There was plenty of sea water available for the job—in fact, the apparent difficulty we faced was that we couldn’t keep it out of those bearings if we tried. So let’s all quit trying to do the impossible and make that sea water serve us. It would do the job if only we gave it a chance.

  The bearings couldn’t possibly get hot enough in that flooded shaft alley ever to melt or wipe out. There was now a whole ocean of cold sea water with access to those bearings submerging them to keep them cooled down. And the water would certainly get into the bearings continuously to give them that very necessary film of protection. It had behind it all the pressure of the sea rising high above those shafts, to force out all the water which might get heated in the bearings from friction as the shafts turned and constantly to replace that heated water with heavier and colder water right out of the sea.

  Sea water didn’t have as low a coefficient of friction as oil. Consequently, more heat would be generated in the bearings. But to offset that, there was a whole ocean of water (instead of only a few gallons of oil) to carry away the heat that was generated, and the extra power lost in turning the shafts we weren’t worrying about. I wasn’t recommending to His Majesty’s Navy (or to the Anchor Line either) that they save money by quitting the use of expensive oil and flooding all their shaft alleys with sea water instead as a regular thing, but I was strongly recommending that nobody worry over doing it on the Cameronia for one 250 mile voyage from Bône to Algiers where she could in more safety stay the week required till British divers could take care of her there.

  As for the Cameronia, heavily convoyed, of course, she ought to move at the slowest speed possible during her passage westward, not to press matters too far on her bearings. But if she were attacked either by planes or U-boats, as long as it was necessary to maneuver at full speed to avoid danger, she could go all out and I would stake my life those water-lubricated shaft bearings would stand up under it. The only sensible thing to do was to give the Cameronia a strong escort and order her immediately out of Bône, just as she was.

  Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham, as willing as any man to try the unorthodox in a tight place, ordered exactly that. In a few days the Cameronia was safe in port far to the westward of Bône, having her shaft alley made watertight by divers. From there, running on oil again and able to make full speed all the way, she went back to England to have the torpedo hole repaired. Now, years later, the Cameronia still plows the ocean, none the worse for having demonstrated that when necessary to escape bombs, sea water (as long as there is plenty of it) makes a perfectly good lubricant.

  That finished my discussion at Allied Naval Headquarters. As I left, I was invited to come back during the afternoon; the naval staff were having a sort of day before Christmas
tea.

  I dropped in on the next floor to see Jerry Wright again; Jerry, as liaison between Allied Force Headquarters and Washington, always knew what was going on in both places.

  Jerry wasn’t particularly happy that morning over what he knew. Things in Washington might be as good as could be expected, but right there in Algeria, they weren’t; as a matter of fact, they were terrible. That big Tunisian offensive, for which Eisenhower had strained every nerve and stripped the back areas, including Oran, of all soldiers possible to make them available on the fighting line and crush the enemy before he became too powerful; that offensive, for which Cunningham had just hazarded the Cameronia, which had been jammed full of those troops, to get them up to the line; that offensive, which was due to be launched that very morning, December 24, with high hopes of overrunning all Tunisia by New Year’s Day, was already a complete fiasco—it wasn’t even being launched.

  For the word had come back two days before from General Anderson of the British Army, overall field commander, that everything was bogged down in the mud—planes, tanks, artillery, even such light equipment as dispatch rider’s motorcycles, not to mention the poor infantrymen themselves who stuck helplessly in the mud simply trying to cross an open field. Orders or no orders, there could be no Allied offensive; nobody could possibly move forward on the Tunisian front.

  Eisenhower realized that mud conditions could only get worse over the ensuing winter months, not better. If he delayed that offensive till spring came to dry the ground, it could result only in a junction of von Arnim’s forces with those of Rommel and a buildup during the winter from near by Sicily of both those Axis armies so that by spring the military problem he would have to face would be infinitely worse. Instantly on hearing from Anderson, Eisenhower had himself departed posthaste from Algiers for the front, determined that if any man could even drag one mud-clogged foot after another, he should drag it and the offensive would be launched.