One Common Enemy

by Jim McLoughlin

  More and more people were scrambling around in the water, grabbing at the ropes and pulling on my legs as they jostled for a precious spot on the raft.

  This is no good. You’ll be safer by yourself.

  I swam off again, desperately uncertain, and started bumping into dozens of dead bodies floating face down. I was swimming through a graveyard. It was a scene from a nightmare, except it was real and happening to me. Out of the ghostly darkness, another wooden raft drifted close to me, with just one bloke sitting on it. I called out to him and when he answered I thought I recognised the voice of my mate, Davey Jones.

  ‘Is that you, Davey?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Mac!’

  ‘Well, bloody hell.’

  We couldn’t believe our luck, meeting up with each other in all the dark chaos. I hauled myself onto the raft and sat next to him with my legs dangling in the water.

  I had no idea what the time was. It had been just after eight o’clock when I went below to find Fred. The torpedoes hit Laconia just moments after that, so she might have gone down an hour later, but I wasn’t sure. The night seemed suspended, as if holding its breath. Everything was dreamlike. I half expected to wake up and find myself safely back on the ship. Things were happening in slow motion and I began to feel a bit detached. It was the shock of it all, I suppose.

  I was wet, numb with cold and fear, and utterly miserable. To this day I can still feel the complete numbness that spread through my body that night. But I also felt a rush of relief because someone reliable was with me and I didn’t have to swim anymore. So there was a thin thread of hope.

  Davey and I sat on that raft all night. The screaming and yelling around us subsided as the night dragged on, but we could still hear the occasional vague cry for help in the distance. We couldn’t tell exactly where they were coming from. Once we thought we heard the throbbing of an engine close by. We couldn’t work that out.

  Dawn arrived like a curtain opening on a scene of total devastation. There were scores of bodies floating face down, bloated and grotesque, and there was debris everywhere. Boxes and tins drifted by. We were ravenously hungry and thirsty, so we started to pick some up in the hope of finding food. We weren’t saying much, just commenting on what we were finding.

  ‘What’s in this box here?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Try that one there.’

  I picked up a box and opened it carefully. There’ll be food in here for sure.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Bloody coffee beans.’ Neither of us fancied chewing on those, so I threw it back.

  When we weren’t trying to pick up food, we tried to reassure one another.

  ‘We’ll get picked up,’ Davey said.

  ‘For sure,’ I agreed. ‘Laconia’s crew would have had plenty of time to get a distress signal out before she went down.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘There’s no harm in this. We’ll just sit here and wait.’

  ‘We’ll be all right.’

  But soon it grew extremely hot because we were near the equator. The morning sun began to sear our faces and arms through the salt and oil that had caked onto our skin. My legs were cool, though. I’d been wearing overalls when I went over the side of Laconia, but they weren’t on me anymore. I had no idea what happened to them. So my bare legs were dangling in the cool water until I felt the most excruciating pain in my left calf. I drew my legs back onto the raft in a blind panic. At first I thought I’d been bitten by a shark, but the calf had gruesome fang-like puncture marks that made me think it was a barracuda. Atlantic barracuda can grow up to six feet long. I’ve never known for sure if that’s what bit me, but I certainly know I was in agony. And I’ve carried the bite marks around with me ever since, as a grim reminder of my time on that raft. The pain was intense and penetrating for a long time before it eased off into a dull, aching numbness.

  After that, Davey and I sat back to back on our pathetic little raft with our knees up to our chins, wondering what the hell was going to happen to us. Our sombre thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of an English solider on another raft quite near us. He was in tropical uniform, khaki shirt and shorts, and sitting next to him was a tiny dog. We waved to each other.

  ‘You all right?’ we shouted across to him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Seen anybody else?’

  ‘No. There’s nobody else around.’

  ‘Thought so.’

  ‘At least I’m sitting on something.’

  ‘Better than swimming,’ we agreed.

  ‘Yes. Much better than swimming.’ Then he went drifting off and we didn’t see him again. We were left with our own thoughts.

  ‘How the hell did he get that dog on board ship?’ I asked Davey.

  ‘Buggered if I know. How’d he get it onto the raft?’

  ‘Something to think about, that is.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The day wore on and we didn’t see another soul. No one who was alive, anyway. My left leg was badly swollen and aching terribly. We were painfully thirsty and tired, absolutely shattered and drained by what had happened.

  Then we heard the same engine-like throbbing we’d heard during the night, but this time it didn’t go away and suddenly a sinister shape appeared quite close to us. It was the shape every navy man knew and dreaded. A German U-boat. It was painted a dull green-grey colour and as it got closer we could see the number 156 on its conning tower.

  Davey and I didn’t say anything. We just sat there on the raft feeling utterly helpless as a group of German sailors emerged from the conning tower and ran along the hull casing toward a large deck gun. Overwhelming terror came over me in a wave of crippling mental agony.

  So this is how it’s going to end.

  We’d been told about atrocities perpetrated by U-boat crews against survivors of the ships they’d torpedoed. Machine-gunning people while they were still in the water was common, we’d been led to believe. As the U-boat crept toward us, diesel engines rumbling, I wanted to curl up into a ball, but I was frozen solid with fear. There was nowhere to hide.

  I don’t want to die like this.

  The U-boat slunk closer and closer, but instead of crashing bullets there came shouts in German. We didn’t understand what they were saying but soon realised that the crew hadn’t been running to the gun after all. They’d been making for a rope on the bow. They threw it to us and we held on tight while they pulled us alongside their boat.

  The relief I felt when I grabbed hold of that rope was really something special. The terror just slipped away. They pulled us in until our raft was scraping against the curved hull casing, and I saw two or three officers peering down at us from the conning tower. One of them was wearing a white cap with a peak. The others had forage caps.

  A couple of sailors reached out to haul us up the sloping side of the submarine, but I couldn’t move because of the pain in my leg. So they dragged me carefully over the casing and eased me onto the deck like a limp fish. I could tell by their genuine concern and sympathy as they got us aboard that they were going to treat us well.

  The U-boat was quite small, which surprised me. Davey and I were just lying there on its narrow deck, face to face with the German sailors, an enemy we thought we’d never meet, let alone have a group of them help us aboard their U-boat.

  I had trouble standing, so several of the sailors half carried me to the base of the conning tower and the narrow steel ladder leading to the top. They motioned that I should climb it.

  ‘You’re bloody joking!’ I said.

  They ignored my protest and gently manhandled me onto the first rung. It was agony, that climb. I don’t know how I managed it, but next thing I knew both Davey and I were being bundled over the rim of the conning tower and into its command post. One of the forage-capped officers spoke to us. His English was quite good.

  ‘What are you?’ he asked us. ‘Italian?’

>   ‘No, British.’

  ‘Are you army?’

  ‘No, no,’ we said. ‘Navy.’

  ‘Your names, please.’

  We each gave him our name, rank and serial number. We weren’t obliged to tell him more than that and he didn’t ask us anything else. He wrote our details down.

  Then the officer in the white cap turned to us and, my goodness, he was an impressive looking man. I can see his face quite clearly, even now. It was very lean and tanned, with a deep furrow from an old scar running down one cheek. He had thin lips, a narrow, prominent nose and piercing eyes. They were sharp and very distinctive features. He was the epitome of the German U-boat commander. There was a classic, officer-class look to him. But while he exuded authority and a slight whiff of arrogance, there was a warmth and humanity in his face, which impressed me immensely. His name was Werner Hartenstein, the man who torpedoed Laconia. I’ll never forget him.

  He was wearing an old leather jacket that might have once been brown, but was streaked with green and white from exposure to sea salt. His white officer’s cap was battered, and the gold oak leaves around its peak were ­tarnished green. They were the telltale signs of a man who lived a hard life at sea, exposed to the elements. He spoke to Davey and me in excellent English and with the utmost courtesy.

  ‘So, you are navy?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Merchant navy or Royal Navy?’

  ‘No, not merchant,’ we were quick to tell him. ‘Royal Navy.’

  ‘Ah, Royal Navy! Excellent, excellent,’ he said, appearing genuinely pleased. ‘We’ll put you down below. Please don’t worry, you will be all right.’

  Even though he was the enemy, I instantly liked him and believed what he said.

  I stepped through the conning tower hatch with Davey, and climbed down into the bowels of the U-boat. It was dim, cramped and awfully claustrophobic. It reeked of diesel fumes, oil and body odour. The crew directed us to a pokey corner near the boat’s two diesel engines. I noticed a metal plate on them that declared they were made in Augsburg. We were in the control room, beneath the conning tower and just to one side. There were a lot of dials and switches and levers. The German sailors controlling the submarine’s systems were going about their business efficiently and didn’t speak to us at all. From the sound of the engines I got the impression that the boat was slowly under way on the surface.

  I sat down beside the vibrating engines and tried to absorb what was going on. It was hard to concentrate. My head felt dull and mushy. The diesel fumes and the way the submarine wallowed in the sea swell was bringing on a dose of seasickness. I’d never felt seasick in my life, so this was something new. Through my dull haze I realised there were other survivors down there with us. They were all filthy, streaked with oil and caked-on salt. I was shocked when it finally sank in that some of them were women. There was a British Fleet Air Arm officer, too. I recognised the wings on his tunic. Those people looked at Davey and me with vacant eyes. They didn’t speak to us and we didn’t speak to them. We just stared at each other, too exhausted and shocked to do anything.

  The crew brought us bread, jam and warm ersatz coffee, but the very sight of food brought me to the verge of ­vomiting. What an irony. Fifteen minutes earlier I’d been starving and desperate for a drink but, when it came, I felt sick. I had to force myself to eat. I nibbled at the bread and it tasted all right, but the coffee was pretty terrible.

  After a while it dawned on me that I was a prisoner-of-war and strangely that didn’t upset me at all. I was simply relieved that I was alive and someone would soon look at my leg. I didn’t mind the thought of being a prisoner because anything was better than slowly dying on that dreadful raft. My situation became clearer still when the officer who’d taken our names came below and spoke to us again.

  ‘We are going to radio the Vichy French in Dakar,’ he told us in his very precise English. ‘They will send ships out to this place here. There are other U-boats in the area with us and we are looking for more survivors. We will pick up as many as we can carry. We have found a number of lifeboats. The French will come and they will take you to French North Africa.’

  ‘All right,’ we said.

  It didn’t occur to me that what the Germans were doing was most unusual. U-boats generally didn’t bother with picking up survivors. We were the enemy after all. I wasn’t in any condition to work it out.

  I gradually slid into a semi-comatose state. Physical pain, mental exhaustion, the stench of filthy bodies and the diesel fumes all combined to overwhelm me. I was beyond caring, my mind like mush. We were sunk on the Saturday night, picked up by Hartenstein on Sunday, and it was Wednesday when a German officer came and told us we could go topside for some fresh air. We didn’t have to think twice. In a daze I struggled up the conning tower with Davey and, heavens, the air was beautiful up there!

  I was astonished to see, astern of U-156, three of Laconia’s packed lifeboats, all linked to the submarine by a line. It didn’t make sense. Hartenstein was taking a huge risk by remaining on the surface, towing three lifeboats and looking for more survivors, but he didn’t seem concerned. The submarine was completely exposed and horribly vulnerable to air attack, yet he was standing there with a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck, eating from a plate heaped with meat and noodles.

  ‘Ah, hello Royal Navy,’ he greeted us pleasantly.

  ‘Captain,’ we acknowledged.

  ‘You must have this,’ he insisted, holding out his plate of food. He urged me to take it. ‘Share it with your comrade.’

  We were amazed at his generosity in giving up his meal. My appetite had returned, so we gratefully accepted the plate and took it in turns to spoon down the noodles and meat. It was delicious.

  ‘That is better?’ Hartenstein asked when we’d finished.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Good, very good.’ He was more than an officer. He was a gentleman. Then, to our surprise, he spoke to us candidly about the sinking while we stood in the confines of his bridge.

  ‘I am very sorry for your situation,’ he said, ‘but we sighted the gun on your ship’s stern and that told us it was an armed merchant ship. We have no alternative but to sink armed merchant ships.’

  That bloody gun.

  Davey and I exchanged knowing glances, but we weren’t about to tell the U-boat commander that we were the crew of the gun he’d seen.

  ‘I was not aware the Italians, our allies, were aboard your ship,’ Hartenstein went on. ‘I did not know about them or the women and children.’

  I felt no resentment toward him as he explained why he had done this to us. I never have. I’ve always completely understood that it was his duty in a time of war. Then he told us that Laconia had broadcast a distress signal and that U-156 had sent out its own messages, in English, asking all ships in the area for help. He confirmed what the other officer had told us, that they had notified the Vichy French and that ships were being sent. So I felt confident we’d be all right.

  ‘With these lifeboats,’ Hartenstein said, ‘we’ll work it in shifts. Some of you people who are on this boat with us will take turns to go back into the lifeboats, and those people will come on board here to have a rest. We will do this until the French come.’

  I was enormously impressed by that. He was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people in the lifeboats, even his enemies. He knew there were women and children in them, exposed to the elements.

  After our chat with Hartenstein, he sent us below again, so it was back to the noisy, stinking diesels and the other silent survivors. For a time, Davey and I talked about being prisoners, and then we just watched the crew going about their work. They were fit-looking blokes, those German sailors. They were working hard and continuing to ignore us when a klaxon horn sounded and they started reaching frantically for the levers and switches on their control panels. I just about shot out of my skin. To a sailor, the sound of a klaxon can mean only one thing: something
urgent is going on, something big. Orders were being barked out in German. Crewmen were rushing about in the confined space beneath the conning tower. Davey and I stared at each other with widening eyes.

  Jesus, what the hell’s happening now?

  The Fleet Air Arm pilot hurried into the conning tower clutching a hand-held signalling lamp and a white sheet with a red cross on it. The Germans must have given them to him. Then he disappeared and the fear started rising in my throat again. When he came back he spoke to all the survivors.

  ‘There’s just been an American aircraft circling overhead,’ he explained. He’d flashed a signal to it, saying not to attack because there were survivors from Laconia on board. ‘It circled and then flew off,’ he said. We didn’t understand the significance of that and he didn’t elaborate.

  We soon saw him make a dash for the conning tower again, and he had just disappeared from view when there was an ear-splitting explosion. The U-boat seemed to lift straight up and then fall down again. It was an incredibly violent movement. Then the entire boat started shaking. Brisk, sharp commands were being exchanged among the crew.

  Oh, please, no. Dear God, not again!

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then there was another explosion and the U-boat leapt and shook again. My ears were ringing and I was close to choking on my own fear. Through it all I connected the circling American aircraft with the explosions. We were being bombed.

  ‘Raus! Raus!’ The Germans began yelling at us. ‘Raus!’ They were pointing to the conning tower. I knew we had to get out but I didn’t want to go. I was safe. I had food. I wanted to stay right where I was, thank you very much.

  Davey and I got to our feet and the crew started pushing us up the ladder inside the conning tower. I couldn’t move quickly because of the pain in my leg, but I got to the top somehow and Hartenstein was there.

  ‘I cannot jeopardise the boat,’ he said urgently. ‘You must go. We are damaged and we are going to dive. Go, go!’

  From the conning tower I thought the U-boat was a little down at the bow. The deck was awash. There was a large group of other survivors splashing along the deck and diving overboard. There was no sign of the American aircraft.