No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  I was too far gone myself to help him any further. The British salvage ship Salvestor, which I had sent for, had just that day arrived from Algiers. Wearily I got hold of Commander Hewett, R.N.R., her salvage officer. I told him to take over with his divers the task of cutting away with underwater torches or with wire cutters the steel wire anti-submarine nets in which the Pozarica’s skipper had succeeded in enmeshing himself, so the ship could be towed to Algiers for docking and repairs. Hewett took over. I went ashore.

  There was little more for me in Bougie. I personally thanked the lieutenant of Royal Engineers and every one of his soldiers for what they had done for their country and for their Allies. It is a keen regret to me I have no record of that young Scotch engineer lieutenant’s name—he was an honor to the Royal Engineers, to Britain, and to his comrades in arms, of whom I felt proud to count myself one. He was a man.

  Lieutenant George Ankers, as soon as I was able, I should recommend for a Navy Cross. No man in action had better earned one. But I doubted that, in spite of my most earnest recommendation, he’d ever actually get it. There had been no banners flying, no bugles blowing, nothing at all of the glory of war about the setting, nothing at all but danger when Ankers had taken his life in his hands far down inside that sinking ship to save the torpedoed Pozarica. Not one man in thousands would have had the strength and skill to do it; not one in millions would also have had the courage to dare it. But it was only salvage; in Washington that wouldn’t seem worth a major decorafion.

  I ordered Ankers to stay in Bougie, and when he had recuperated sufficiently, to take over the salvage of the half-sunken Glenfinlas, aided by the local Royal Engineers. I left him my jeep, as the only help I could give him. I may add that between him and that Scotch lieutenant, the Glenfinlas’ bow was shortly floated on a bubble of air and she went westward for dry docking.

  As for myself, I crawled into Captain King’s car when I left the Pozarica, and behind his chauffeur, the two of us were shortly on our way back over the road to Algiers, to report to the Admiral of the Fleet that H.M.S. Pozarica had been saved, no thanks to her captain. The Fleet Naval Constructor for the Royal Navy, who was my companion on the ride back, had arrived in Bougie shortly after me, just in time to witness the scene there when the Pozarica’s skipper had endeavored to persuade me not to go out to his abandoned ship. Captain King had seen most of what had gone on afterwards. He told me he was going to recommend to the Naval Commander-in-Chief that the Pozarica’s captain be tried by court-martial.

  I hardly heard him. In my condition, I cared no longer what happened to that skipper, to me, to anybody.

  CHAPTER

  40

  WE GOT TO ALGIERS. I LEFT ALL the reporting to Captain King. I went straight to my quarters and sprawled out on the bed. I needed a rest.

  But I didn’t get it. I couldn’t sleep, not then, not that night, not the next day. The Pozarica had been one wreck too many. Now all that ran in a jumble through my dazed mind, driving me wild for want of sleep, were wrecks. All kinds of wrecks—wrecks about to break in two, obstinate wrecks that wouldn’t come off the beach, wrecks wrapped in flames with ghostly guns firing from them, sabotaged wrecks that wouldn’t come up, wrecks torn wide open in collision, wrecks torpedoed and on the verge of sinking, teetering wrecks about to capsize, wrecks in port, wrecks at sea with U-boats skulking about, angling for a finishing shot. I struggled subconsciously with all of them as my worn out body tossed on the mattress, while consciously I tried to put them all out of my mind so I could get some desperately needed sleep.

  It was no use; I couldn’t sleep.

  The second day, I went to the sickbay to be given something so I might obtain a little rest. The army surgeon there took a look at me, promptly put me on the sicklist and off duty, and carted me over to deposit me as a patient in the Algiers army hospital. There they stowed me away in bed, gave me something so I might sleep, and then spent the next four days going over me—all sorts of army surgeons and all sorts of tests, concluding with a special examination by the senior surgeon himself of General Eisenhower’s staff.

  The net result was that on February 8, the colonel commanding the hospital reported to General Eisenhower:

  “It is our opinion that the condition is the result of excessive strain upon the heart … and in view of the possibility of complete cardiac failure, we advise that the patient have absolute rest of from four to five weeks completely away from the theater of operations.”

  I looked at the copy of that report furnished me. That “complete cardiac failure” caught my eye; what did that mean in plain English? To me it indicated that he meant I might suddenly fall dead. I doubted it; I didn’t feel that bad; if only I could get a real rest, I’d be all right again.

  A little later, with that report in his hands, General Eisenhower sent for me. They let me up out of bed; I went to his office; the Admiral of the Fleet was also there.

  Both Eisenhower and Cunningham agreed with the surgeon that I needed the absolute rest and was entitled to it. Where did I prefer to be sent—to Marrakech in Morocco where there was an army hospital fairly well out of the war zone, or home to the Naval Hospital at Bethesda near Washington? It was completely a rhetorical question; they knew the answer even before I could get a word out of my mouth.

  General Eisenhower considered the question further. Evidently he had the future of my naval career at heart. He didn’t want to do anything that might affect it adversely. He said it would be inadvisable to send me home a hospital case; that wouldn’t look good. It would be better if I were merely detached, duty completed. He’d get Washington unofficially immediately so it would be all right; I could go home simply as detached; in Washington I’d be hospitalized on arrival. If, for the record, I’d request a change of duty, he’d handle everything else. Cunningham agreed that that was best.

  I went back to the Algiers hospital and wrote out a request for a transfer. After that, things moved with amazing rapidity. The Admiral of the Fleet forwarded it with a letter of his own:

  COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, ALLIED FORCE.

  1. I forward herewith, with the liveliest regret, the application of Captain E. Ellsberg, U.S.N.R., to be relieved of his duties as Principal Salvage Officer in the Torch area.

  2. Captain Ellsberg has performed immeasurable service in the last 15 months, both during his performance in salvage in the Massawa area and in the last months in the Torch area, where I have had the opportunity of seeing his work at first hand. Not only has the work itself been of the highest order, but it has been accompanied by a display of great energy and consistent courage; the latter most noticeably in the attempt to save the burning S.S. Strathallan.

  3. In face of this record I feel that Captain Ellsberg has a right to a change of appointment if he so desires and I feel that I must not stand in his way, however much I regret his loss. I trust that he will be given an appointment in keeping with his fine record.

  4. If, however, Captain Ellsberg finds that his need is primarily a rest from his recent arduous duty, I should welcome his return to this station at any time and the sooner the better. Matters may for the moment be on a more routine basis as regards salvage, but that state of affairs is unlikely to continue and we shall badly need the services of so outstanding a salvage expert, if his services can possibly be spared.

  A. B. CUNNINGHAM

  Admiral of the Fleet.

  General Eisenhower acted at once. Before that afternoon was out, there was laid on my hospital bed a letter from him:

  ALLIED FORCE HEADQUARTERS

  Office of the Commander-in-Chief

  8 February, 1943.

  MY DEAR CAPTAIN ELLSBERG:

  It is with the greatest regret I approve your request that you be relieved from your duties as Principal Salvage Officer of the North African Theater of Operations, but I concur with Admiral Cunningham that the immeasurable service you have rendered in the past fifteen months entitles you to a change in assignment when you request i
t.

  Your work here has been crowned with outstanding success and speaks for itself as a job well done, from which you must derive great satisfaction. Through your untiring efforts the ports of North Africa, which are so essential to our efforts here, have been cleared, and numerous ships have been salvaged.

  On the eve of your departure may I offer you my personal thanks for your outstanding efforts and wish the utmost success in your new assignment.

  Sincerely,

  DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER.

  Sitting up in bed, scanning those letters from the Admiral of the Fleet and from the Allied Commander-in-Chief, I felt almost as if I’d received a stiff shot of adrenalin; well enough, in fact, to tackle immediately another torpedoed wreck.

  But I wasn’t going to have a chance to try that—there accompanying Eisenhower’s letter were the orders detaching me from Torch and the flight schedule made out for me by the Army Air Transport Service for my return, starting from Algiers next morning.

  I examined that flight schedule. My eyes lighted up. Last New Year’s Day, I had been on my way back by air from Casablanca to Oran. Recalling at that time that on the previous holidays, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, I had been also in the air kiting about Africa, I had wondered vaguely where the next holiday, Lincoln’s Birthday, would find me bound. Now I knew.

  On February 12, Lincoln’s Birthday, I should be in the air over the South Atlantic, with all Africa far behind me, bound home!

  THE END

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  THIS IS THE STORY, MOSTLY ON THE sea, of a few men fighting with no arms in their hands and with very little of anything else, to help keep the first front in the European war a front. It is the story of the war at sea, under the sea, and in harbor to open and to keep open the way for the bridge of ships without which there could be no front.

  This is that story as seen through the eyes of the Principal Salvage Officer for General Eisenhower in North Africa. It is set down from memory mostly, because the author, along with hundreds of thousands of other cogs in the machine, was prohibited from keeping any diary, lest it fall into the hands of the enemy if he were captured.

  The author does not presume to believe that he has made no errors, though he believes they are few, as most of the events set down are thoroughly burned into his memory. Nor does he believe that some of the happenings described may not to a few others have seemed different; their point of view was not his. He can only remember them as one of a little group of men, mostly British and American, struggling in desperation to make bricks without straw that the invasion edifice might have a more solid foundation, or indeed, any foundation at all.

  No pretense is made that the conversations as put down are verbatim; there were no stenographers about on torpedoed and bombed ships nor on scuttled wrecks, to take them down. He has attempted to set them down in such manner as most faithfully reflects the gist of what was said. Here and there, particularly ashore, in a few minor instances a remark attributed to one man may actually have been made by another.

  The names are those of the actual participants; the identity of no one has been masked under a fictitious name. When no name is used, it is because the actual name was either never clearly known or in the intervening years has faded out in the rush of events of the later war campaigns. To a few individuals who must therefore here remain nameless, the author owes an apology.

  The names of ships are all actual, with one exception. Of the name of the French vessel designated as the Ardois, the author now has no record. For convenience, he has in this account called her the Ardois; he trusts that no delver into Lloyd’s Register will bother to write him that no such French vessel existed, least of all in Oran.

  For those who may be interested in the subsequent history of the U.S.S. Thomas Stone, which the author under compulsion of military surgeons was forced to leave behind him still stranded on the beach outside Algiers harbor, it is here related. After his departure from Africa and the detachment of her devoted and heroic captain, an attempt was made by others who then took over to drag the Thomas Stone off the beach without awaiting the arrival from the United States of the pontoons promised. As a result, still resting far too heavily on the bottom for safety, she was dragged across a ridge of rock and her back was broken, leaving her only junk. She was later sold as she then lay, to be broken up by the French as scrap iron.

  The reactions under stress of a few figures of varied nationalities in this narrative and the conditions imposed on some others, were not wholly in promotion of the war effort. As this account is history and not fiction, it has seemed best to set them down nevertheless as the author witnessed them, that those at home may better realize what went on, and what, if anything, may be done in the future to improve conditions on the war front for the great majority striving their utmost to do the job their countries may toss again into their feeble arms.

  EDWARD ELLSBERG.

  About the Author

  Edward Ellsberg (1891–1983) graduated first in his class from the United States Naval Academy in 1914. After he did a stint aboard the USS Texas, the navy sent Ellsberg to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for postgraduate training in naval architecture. In 1925, he played a key role in the salvage of the sunken submarine USS S-51 and became the first naval officer to qualify as a deep-sea diver. Ellsberg later received the Distinguished Service Medal for his innovations and hard work.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 1949 by Edward Ellsberg and Lucy Buck Ellsberg

  Cover design by Barbara Brown

  Cover photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museums

  ISBN: 978-1-4804-9377-3

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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