Under the weird light of the few electric bulbs we had illuminating the canyon between the side walls of the dock, Reed came to me again. His men were all practically dead; so was he. Did I object if they all went ashore to try to get a night’s rest? I had no objection. I knew they needed it. So did I. They went ashore. So did most of Perrin-Trichard’s men, except Perrin-Trichard himself—he was young. Perrin-Trichard and I picked out some coils of wet hawsers on the dock floor. We would sleep there. After assuring myself that Perrin-Trichard had relief engineers enough in the compressor barge to keep on going, and warning him the compressors must not stop, I crawled on top my coiled down hawser and curled up myself.
The compressors kept on pounding, more audible now in the quietness of the night. Nothing happened to that canted dry dock. The hours dragged along, midnight came again. I couldn’t sleep. For the first time, I felt like going to Admiral Cunningham and throwing up my command; I was through; I couldn’t stand any more. None of this need ever have happened; a few gauges, not over a thousand dollars’ worth, would have avoided it all. I was sick of working in an area of British responsibility, a complete orphan so far as America and its tremendous war resources were concerned; I was sick of everything; I’d had enough. In the morning, I should do it. Let them get someone else to try to make for them bricks without straw. I couldn’t any longer; I was through helping to kill off other men trying it.
The compressors kept on pounding, the air whistled down, somewhere forward of me, I could hear it gurgling upward through the sea. Nothing was happening, nothing now could happen to the bow of the Grand Dock to lift it. Finally the medley of unceasing noises put me to sleep.
Dawn broke again, the third day now. Across the water came the hammering of the air compressors, near by was that everlasting foaming on the sea where the air was bubbling up, nothing had changed. I rolled stiffly off the top of the coiled hawser.
A small boat soon brought back Captain Reed and all his men, all the French contingent. They boarded the floating stern of the dock, looked eagerly forward at the marker poles sticking up through the sea over the sunken bow for any sign of its having risen a little during the night. There wasn’t any symptom of a rise; not the slightest. Apathetically they broke up into small groups to wander disconsolately over the steeply sloping deck at the stern.
We kept on pumping. But nobody had any hope any more, save I, who, wholly without reason for it, now that it was day again began once more to hope and to pray for a miracle. The morning dragged along. The men looked at me curiously as they passed near the coil of rope against which I leaned, too tired to stand upright any more. How much longer did I mean to keep up this useless pumping? If any one of them had dared ask me directly, I couldn’t have answered him.
Midmorning came. My eyes, as nearly always, were fixed on the marker pole rising through the sea over the starboard side of the sunken bow. It seemed to stir a trifle. I rubbed my haggard eyes to clear them a little, looked again. Yes, undoubtedly it seemed to me to be wavering a bit. But I doubted my eyes—they were worn and red and bloodshot from lack of sleep and plenty more besides these last three days. Reed was near by; I asked him to look.
But there was no longer any need of confirmation. When I turned back again, that pole was rising, and I could feel the steel floor of the dock under my feet moving also.
Very slowly, that pole and its mate to port rose through the sea to be followed at constantly increasing speed by the high steel sides and then by the massive bow of the Grand Dock. In seconds thereafter, there was the Grand Dock, fully afloat from end to end in all its majestic bulk, overshadowing all else in Oran harbor, lazily rocking on the surface, risen at last from the depths!
A prayer of thanksgiving poured from my heart. I had witnessed a miracle.
CHAPTER
35
THE GRAND DOCK CAME UP ON JANuary 13. Two days later, I was back in Algiers, with the urgent salvage work in Oran all completed except for the raising of the Moyen Dock, on which Reed was to start next.
Reitzel, now officially Executive Officer, already had an office set up for our salvage headquarters in the St. George; a bare room across the hall and a few doors down from the office of the Admiral of the Fleet. Ours was the only office on that long corridor holding Americans. All the others on both sides of the hall housing the naval staff contained only British officers and their office personnel, mainly Wrens, the British equivalent of our Waves.
I looked at my new office. It was completely bare of everything—bare walls, bare windows, bare floor—a totally barren room except for a telephone, a battered desk and three rickety chairs Reitzel had managed to procure, and a portable typewriter which was his personal property. We needed another piece of furniture. Out of a few rough boards and with the assistance of a British marine, we knocked together a long table on which we might spread out plans of damaged ships (if we ever got any plans).
Finally there was only one thing more necessary for a really efficient office—someone to do the office work and answer our telephone when both Reitzel and I were out. I looked around Allied Headquarters. It was hopeless to expect a navy yeoman; Jerry Wright, liaison officer, had the only one in Algiers. I asked the army; after all we were running a co-ordinated war. Could the army give me anything from a private, second class, up to a sergeant, who could handle our simple office work, and possibly also type a report?
I learned the army hadn’t a single man who had ever even looked through an office door, who wasn’t already battling with the mountains of reports in the adjutant’s offices; they couldn’t spare one. But, the adjutant assured me, they were anxious to help; salvage meant something to the army. That day a company of WACs, the very first to be sent to Africa, was arriving in Algiers; sorely as the strictly army paper war required the services of all of them, I should be assigned a WAC for Salvage Headquarters. I thanked the adjutant wholeheartedly; it was obvious to me how much it meant to him to release even one WAC.
Next morning our WAC reported. Reitzel introduced her to the portable typewriter, instructed her in the simple routine of our new office. He carefully impressed on her that her number one job was answering the telephone and swiftly getting hold of him or me, wherever we might be in Africa, whenever a new wreck was reported.
She turned to on the typewriter to copy a brief longhand report on the raising of the Grand Dock. It was evident she was only a so-so typist; I sighed and hoped she might show at least average intelligence when it came to the telephone. I turned to studying the problem of the Thomas Stone.
Several hours later, the first report was typed; it was passable. More to make conversation than otherwise, and to make this girl just dumped down in Africa feel a little more at ease, I asked perfunctorily where she came from. She told me.
Her answer took all the perfunctoriness out of my question.
“Well, isn’t that fine!” I replied. “Your town’s hardly ten miles from my own home; I’ve been through there often. Maybe I know your friends there?”
But her face fell. Apparently she didn’t consider it so fine. To come all the way from the Atlantic seaboard to Africa and then to find herself assigned to the office of a middle-aged and cadaverous-looking captain who lived only ten miles away from her own parents, took all the romance out of war. She made no comment at all.
Lunch time came. Our WAC went. Lunch time was over. Our WAC didn’t come back. I gave her a couple of hours’ leeway to get back on the job, then called up the head WAC, a sergeant, to find out what had happened to our new office force. Didn’t the WACs have any better discipline than to join immediately The Three Hours For Lunch Club?
I learned from the head WAC that our WAC had reported herself as not elated over her assignment with the navy; she thought she might do more effective work elsewhere, preferably on strictly army matters.
Huh, I grunted. So I hadn’t misinterpreted that look when my WAC discovered I lived practically next door to her family.
The
head WAC continued. I was not to worry. She would consider carefully all the girls she had in her company, and I could rest assured that tomorrow morning I should have another WAC. It was too late anyway that afternoon to send me a replacement. Could I get along till tomorrow? I thanked her, told her I’d try. And inasmuch as I’d managed to survive with no help at all since coming to Algeria, I thought the chances of holding out through one more afternoon were fair.
Next morning came. Shortly after Reitzel and I, who were very early birds, had unlocked the room and started working, in came our new helper. I looked up.
A right hand swung smartly up in the most military salute I’d ever received, a musical voice announced,
“Private Stacy reporting for duty, sir.”
I stared at Private Stacy. Lovely blond hair protruding in intriguing curls beneath her military cap, a slim figure strikingly set off by her uniform, a complexion such as women spend fortunes at Elizabeth Arden’s trying to achieve, sparkling eyes—a beautiful girl if I’d ever seen one. I looked her over glumly; no girl with all that would ever be worth a damn doing prosaic salvage office work or hammering a typewriter. I sighed; no help after all; war was certainly hell.
Gruffly I indicated the portable typewriter. She removed her cap, revealed fully her honey-colored hair (all natural, too), and once again Reitzel turned to explaining what our office work required. She could start by typing from my crude longhand notes a detailed inventory of the salvage equipment—pumps, hoses, compressors, diving rigs—we had scattered over Algeria from Oran to Bône.
I went back to studying the Thomas Stone. Reitzel went out. She started typing.
By and by the steady rhythm of typewriter keys and of her flying fingers began to penetrate my concentration on the Thomas Stone. The girl was good as well as good-looking—she was an excellent typist and she was certainly exceptionally intelligent too—confronted by a technical list of wholly unfamiliar machinery and strange terms, she was arranging and hammering it out without constantly asking me a myriad of questions, or indeed, any at all. Apparently she was just as good as a helper as she might be as an illustration on a magazine cover.
Well, I figured, I might as well know the worst. If it turned out that she too lived only a few streets away from me back in the U.S., she was bound to learn of it soon anyway, and I’d be out a second WAC, a good one this time. So I interrupted her.
“Where’re you from, Miss Stacy?” I asked.
It was all right. She was from Honolulu—about as far from my town as possible, and still be under the American flag.
“So you must have been there Pearl Harbor day?” I quizzed her.
Yes, she’d been there the day the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and seen the aftermath of that massacre; she’d joined the WACs as soon thereafter as there were any WACs to join; she had a brother in the army fighting in the Southwest Pacific with MacArthur, where things were pretty tough. She went back to her typing; I leaned back in my flimsy chair and, much relieved, went back to considering the case of the Thomas Stone. I wasn’t going to have this girl walk out on me. She was good, and to her the war had a deep personal meaning; it was evident if she’d been put to scrubbing floors, so long as it might help the war effort, she’d scrub them cheerfully, and clean too.
Soon thereafter I went out, first informing Miss Stacy of where to look for me if the phone rang. The corridor, not very wide, was crowded with Royal Navy personnel; I had to elbow my way through to get to the stairs on my way to Jerry Wright’s office, where I hoped to pick up some recent information on Algiers.
About half an hour later, I came back. Scarcely had I descended the last stair to my own floor, when out of an office near by popped Captain Shaw, R.N., one of Cunningham’s top aides, to buttonhole me. Evidently he’d warned the Royal Marine on sentry duty there to inform him the instant I hove in sight again. What ship’s stopped a torpedo this time, I wondered?
“What’s wrong now?” I asked him.
“Cast your eyes on that!” he replied, pointing down the hall. I looked. “You see that mob in front of your office?” I saw it, all right, the same crowd I’d elbowed my way through on my way out without paying any particular attention to it then. But it was still there, only bigger now.
“See here, Ellsberg,” he continued, “you’ll have to do one thing or I’ll have to do another, or we’re going to lose the war. That girl in your office has completely disrupted the Royal Navy. Every officer we’ve got from commander down to sub-lieutenant has been standing in a trance outside your office door all morning looking at that girl, and though she doesn’t even look up at ’em, we haven’t been able to get a blasted thing done. The war’s stopped on dead center around here, and I leave it to you what we do to get it underway again. Either you’ll have to keep your office door closed so they can’t see her, or the Admiral will have to station a Royal Marine sentry outside your door with orders to see everybody goes by there on the double! Which’ll you have?”
I looked down the hall at the jam blocking it in front of my office. There were dozens of Wrens in the Royal Navy offices all up and down the corridor but I saw no moonstruck groups at the other doors peering in—apparently the Wrens weren’t giving Private Stacy much competition.
“I’ll keep the door closed, Shaw,” I decided. “We won’t call out the Marines unless I need help to keep it closed. You tell the Admiral the war can now proceed.” I went down the hall a bit, shoved my way again through the gaping crowd, entered my office, and slammed the door in the faces of practically the whole Royal Navy banked six deep outside.
Private Stacy, still pounding expertly away on that inventory, didn’t even look up. I thanked my stars it was not my obligation, once she was off duty, to keep either Americans or British, no longer allies, shooed away from her doorstep. Personnel problems, especially international ones, could be more racking even than wrecks, as I’d already learned in Oran. I looked at her. I decided I needn’t worry. Private Virginia Stacy, T/5, was just as deeply interested in helping win the war as I was; maybe even more so, seeing that she had a longer-term stake in the outcome. I concentrated once more on the Thomas Stone.
Already I had Lieutenant Ankers and Captain Harding of the King Salvor working with Captain Bennehoff of the Thomas Stone on the problem of getting his ship off the beach. Considering the elaborate equipment needed for such a task, most of which we didn’t have and couldn’t get, the chances looked poor for success till someone somewhere furnished us the wherewithal to go about it properly. Meanwhile, I was willing to try with what we had, but success in that case would depend not so much on us as on what the floor of Algiers Bay turned out to be.
A three ring circus was in full swing around the Thomas Stone.
Somewhat offshore from her in deep water, Ankers and his divers were blasting holes in the solid rock floor which we had discovered comprised the bottom of Algiers Bay, so that into those holes we might drop anchors which would hold when we commenced pulling on the Thomas Stone.
On the stranded ship itself, Bennehoff’s crew were working day and night lightening up and barging ashore everything they possibly could get out of her without tearing her hull apart—stores, water, fuel oil, boats, heavy guns, concrete ballast, ammunition—everything removable except her A.A. guns and the ammunition for them.
Roundabout the Thomas Stone, every small boat Bennehoff had was out with quartermasters and leadlines, sounding carefully each few feet the waters between his stranded ship high on the beach, and a line offshore with water deep enough to float his stranded ship.
Every part was important. With a multitude of anchors, steel hawsers, and heavy four-fold sheave blocks, rigged luff on luff to multiply the purchase, we should be able to exert a pull on the stern of the Thomas Stone equal to that pushing along the Queen Mary with all her engines going full power at 30 knots. But to take such a terrific pull, the bottom of Algiers Bay as holding ground was worthless; that was why we needed the holes blasted in the solid rock
beneath a thin cover of a few inches of sand and mud to give our anchors a solid grip.
Lightening up to the limit the scarcely waterborne Thomas Stone was obvious. But even with everything out of her, so little was the sea buoying her up, she would still be resting with a weight of 2000 tons on the bottom—a bottom of solid rock with the sand cover nowhere over six inches thick. Whether she would move or not, even under the 1000-ton pull we could exert on her, depended on the friction between her bottom and the rock and sand forming the bottom of the bay. If that friction was less than 50 per cent, she’d move; otherwise not. But we’d never know till we’d tried; it couldn’t be computed in advance.
Finally and most important of all, were the soundings to seaward. Unless they showed a reasonably fiat surface over the rock bottom in some direction all the way out to deep water, it was useless to move her. If, with all that weight on the bottom, we straddled her over even one moderate ridge of rock, we’d break her back and then she would be only scrap iron.
It was a very complicated situation, to be handled with great tenderness if the valuable Thomas Stone were not to be wrecked completely instead of saved in the salvage attempt. On this, all hands were working like beavers above and below the sea—blasting, laying out hawsers, lightering weights, sounding, and not least important, pushing slide rules to compute where all of it might get us.
The third day after my return to Algiers, a little before noon I was with Jerry Wright, discussing the possibilities of a tow home for the Thomas Stone if we dragged her clear. His telephone rang. He answered it, listened a moment, growing more red in the face each instant, hung up the phone. He turned again to me.
“Sorry, but I’ve got to cut this short and get down to the Thomas Stone four bells. Want to come along?”
“Certainly!” I answered. After all, the Thomas Stone was my own major problem. We started out. “But what else is wrong now on the Thomas Stone?”
No Banners, No Bugles Page 34