by James R Benn
“Enter,” came a sharp voice from within the captain’s quarters. Ensign Weber held the door and announced us to Captain Victor Spencer, US Coast Guard, commanding. It was all very formal. Spencer didn’t look up from the paperwork on his desk. The wood and brass fixtures all sparkled, a testimony to the navy’s affinity for busywork.
“Tell the kid to beat it,” I said. With men adrift in the Channel, I had no patience for spit and polish.
“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on my ship?” Spencer said, his words echoing off the steel bulkheads. He had a booming voice, the kind you get when no one except an admiral can tell you what to do, and even he has to be nice, since it’s your ship.
“Captain Boyle,” I said, answering his first question as I handed him my orders. Then, in answer to the second: “And whatever the hell I want.” I watched him read, the fury on his face turning to irritation as his eyes darted back and forth, taking in the name of his Supreme Commander.
“Dismissed, Ensign,” Captain Spencer said, and Weber did an about-face that almost spun him off his feet.
“I need a boat to take us out to Lyme Bay, where the transports went down,” I said. “Ideally with someone who knows the tides and currents.”
“This is a United States Navy vessel, Captain Boyle,” Spencer said, his lips compressed as if holding back an order to bring out the cat-o’-nine-tails. “Manned by Navy and Coast Guard personnel. We have a nodding acquaintance with the sea. And I will get you out there and off the Bayfield as fast as possible.” He bellowed for Weber, who must have been gripping the door handle, he was in so fast. “Ensign Weber, take these men to Lieutenant Raffel.” Then, turning his eyes on me, he said, “Raffel can take you out on the PA 12-88. It’s already in the water, so you can leave as soon as possible.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” I said, and followed Weber. Sometimes I wise off too much, I know. But the senior brass—most of them—rub me the wrong way. When a mere captain has the authority of the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force behind him, it’s hard to resist letting the shit roll in the opposite direction once in a while.
“What about this lieutenant?” I asked Weber. “Does he know the local waters?”
“Sure, he has a little sailboat he picked up. Goes out when he has time and zips around the bay. He’s got a good ship and crew. What’s this all about, Captain Boyle?”
“Sorry, kid. Need to know.”
“Yeah, and I don’t need to know,” Weber said. “Same old story.” And here I thought it was our exclusive little joke. He led us down a gangplank running alongside the ship. Bobbing in the water, tied to the Bayfield, was a small craft, sort of a cross between a Higgins boat and a speedboat that had aspirations to grow up and be a PT boat one day. Winches were lowering other landing craft into the water from the decks where they were stored.
“What is that, exactly?” I asked, pointing to the boat riding up and down on the swells, dwarfed by the five-hundred-foot Bayfield.
“Landing Craft Support, Small,” Weber said as he led us onto the vessel. And the accent was on small. “It’s a rocket boat. See those launchers on either side? They can fire twenty-four rockets each.”
“That’s what we saw firing at Slapton Sands,” I said. “Pretty impressive. I didn’t realize the boats were so tiny.”
“They pack a lot of punch for their size,” Weber said proudly as the crew looked us over.
“Lieutenant Keith Raffel,” a guy in rumpled khakis said, holding out his hand. I introduced myself and Big Mike, and Weber gave him the word from Captain Spencer that he was to take us out into Lyme Bay. Raffel was tall and gangly, his face tanned from the days on his sailboat or the open bridge of this odd little craft. “We were just about to head out and shake down our new engine,” he said. “Glad to have you aboard.”
“You heard about the attack on the convoy last night?” I asked.
“Sure, everyone has. We were told mum’s the word.”
“Still is, but I want to see how the rescue operation is going out there,” I said.
“Recovery is more like it,” Raffel said. “But sure, we’ll take you out. Can I ask why?”
“We’re assisting the army investigation,” Big Mike said. “Orders from SHAEF.” Raffel shrugged, not all that interested in why the army was investigating a navy catastrophe. He probably knew he had no need to know.
“Okay, we’re almost ready to shove off,” Raffel said, turning to one of his crew. “Yogi, get these men some lifejackets, willya?”
“Sure, Skipper,” a young seaman said, coming up from belowdecks. “All we got are lifebelts. You guys know how these work?”
“Yogi?” I said, taking the lifebelt from him. He was stocky and dark, with a ready smile and sharp eyes. “What kind of name is that? You look Italian, maybe.”
“I am,” he said. “Gunner’s Mate Lawrence Berra, but they call me Yogi.”
“Why?” Big Mike asked, taking his lifebelt and trying to cinch it around his waist.
“No, no, that ain’t right,” Yogi said. “Not around the waist. You put it around your chest, right up under your armpits. Then if you gotta go in the water, you inflate it with these CO2 cartridges, here. See? If you wear this around your waist, you end up head over heels in the water, which don’t work so good as far as breathing goes.”
“Okay, got it,” I said as I tightened the belt as high as I could. Big Mike managed to get his on, extending it as far as it would stretch. “But what’s with the name?”
“I played some baseball with the Norfolk Tars in the Piedmont league right before I was drafted,” he said. “I used to sit on the field cross-legged, you know? Like those guys in India? So they started calling me Yogi. A guy from the league was in boot camp with me, so the name followed me into the navy.”
“Okay, Yogi,” I said. “You been on this rocket boat long?”
“Hang on,” Yogi said, as the skipper eased her away from the Bayfield and gave her some throttle. “Yeah, I volunteered back in basic. They asked if any guys wanted to get into the rocket boats, and I was readin’ a Buck Rogers comic book at the time. I guess I thought it was going to be something like that, you know? But here we are, on dry ground, except it’s water. I was kinda disappointed, but I don’t mind. The future just ain’t what it used to be, you know?”
“But …” Big Mike began, and then shook his head, thinking better of it.
“So how do these work, Yogi?” I asked, patting the rocket-launcher tubes as we cleared the harbor.
“Well, you don’t have to worry, they ain’t loaded,” Yogi said. “But when they are, we got twenty-four rockets on each side. All forty-eight go off at once when we get three hundred yards from the beach. They set off mines, blow barbed wire, and generally scare the hell out of the Krauts. Then we got twin fifty-caliber machine guns and two thirty-millimeter cannon, to hit machine-gun nests, or whatever. We go in before the infantry lands, right up front.”
“That’s why the boat is armored,” Big Mike said. The sloping front of the bridge was covered in steel plate, with thin vision slits.
“Yep,” Yogi said. “Gettin’ killed would make our job a lot harder.” There was no arguing with that.
The skipper picked up speed as we got out into the Channel. There wasn’t much room aboard with the crew of seven. The boat was maybe thirty feet long, and with the rocket launchers and all that armament, there wasn’t much space for sightseers. Big Mike and I hung on to the gunwale as we began to bounce over the chop in the grey waters, leaving the shore behind us. The crew manned their weapons, keeping eyes peeled for the Luftwaffe. The wind whipped us, salt spray feeling like sand against our faces.
After five minutes running at full throttle, Raffel eased up and checked with his Machinist’s Mate. The new engine was holding up fine. We proceeded at a slightly slower pace, but fast enough that we still had to hold on as we crested each wave and drove on to the next.
“Port bow,” one of the gunners ye
lled, and Raffel eased the boat into a turn. There were two Royal Navy corvettes about half a mile out, close in to each other. As we came nearer, I could make out nets in the water, as if they were after fish. But the nets weren’t filled with fish. There were bodies caught up in the netting, most with packs on their backs and many with rifles still slung over their shoulders. It was a gruesome tangle of the drowned and the devastated, some missing limbs, protruding bones stark white amidst the soaked khaki green.
“Keep going,” I said. Raffel turned the boat away, his engine muffled as if the sound might disturb the dead. “What I’m looking for is where the tides might bring the bodies. What do you think?”
“Tide’s coming in along the southwest coast,” Raffel said. “So this is about right. They would have drifted in from the site of the attack, which is about twelve miles out.”
“Okay, let’s head along the line the tide would take them,” I said. I turned, noticing Big Mike’s eyes still fixed on the men in the nets, even as our boat picked up speed and left them behind. I hoped we wouldn’t run into any more of that.
We spotted other small craft moving slowly, looking for bodies, some close to shore, maybe watching for corpses on the beach. Others were farther out, and I wondered whether there was a chance of finding a survivor in a raft or on a piece of wreckage. And whether the Germans might come looking too. An hour passed, maybe more. It was like a day out fishing, when you head to where the other boats are in hopes of a good catch, but they disperse before you get there. I was about to suggest we head back when Raffel pointed ahead of us, beckoning me to come up on the bridge.
“Look,” he said, his hand outstretched to one o’clock off the starboard bow. “What’s that?”
“A debris field?” I guessed. He looked through his binoculars as I tried to focus on what lay ahead. Small specks floated on the water, maybe a hundred or more, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was seeing.
“Oh my God,” Raffel said, handing me the binoculars. As soon as they came into focus, I saw. Boots. Toes and heels floating along, the tide taking them home. I counted, giving up when I hit fifty, and there were more coming in on the current.
Raffel eased up on the throttle as we drew close, and a crewman reached out with a gaff and pulled a body in. GI boots clunked against the hull as he tried to right the dead weight. The guy had his full pack on, and had put his lifebelt around his waist. With all the top-heavy weight, the lifebelt had turned him upside down as soon as he inflated it with the CO2. It was the same with all of them. They’d gone into the water with all their gear on, even helmets. With field packs on, there’d been no room to put on the lifebelts properly, even if they’d known how to. If Yogi hadn’t told me, I would have put mine around my waist, no questions asked. And I wasn’t wearing a helmet and a full pack, with an M1 and ammo belt slung over my shoulder. These guys hadn’t stood a chance.
“What do we do, Skipper?” the crewman asked as he pushed the body away from the boat. There were simply too many for us. It was too overwhelming, too awful, too unbelievable.
“We call it in,” Raffel said. “And stay on station until they get here.” He got on the radio and requested assistance. He cut the engine and we waited, drifting with the tide, bodies keeping pace with us as the Channel pulled them in, ever closer to the shore, a pathetic parade of the dead. The rest was silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IT WAS DARK by the time we made it to Greenway House, well past seven o’clock. Raffel had stayed with the bodies, like a shepherd with his wayward sheep, until a destroyer escort and a tug from Dartmouth had relieved him. We left as they lowered nets, searchlights playing over the grisly scene. The GIs must have gone in the water together off one of the stricken LSTs. In the dark, with machine guns firing and explosions all around, they must have thought it was safest to jump overboard with a lifebelt on. But the water was cold, and the shock was probably instantaneous and disorienting as the inflated belts pushed them underwater. Cold, shock, panic, fear, death. A quick death, I prayed. It had been a slow ride back to Dartmouth as the crew played searchlights on the water, looking for more bodies, dreading finding them.
The guard at the door told us Harding was back in the kitchen with a Polish officer and a bobby. As we walked through the house, I kept my eye out for Peter Wiley, but he wasn’t to be seen. Nor was anyone else, for that matter; our footsteps echoed through empty halls. The flotilla must have put to sea. I followed the smell of coffee until I found the three of them seated at a long trestle table. It was a large room, white tiled and cheerful, brightly lit with a double stove of blue enamel. A nice place to have a meal, if the day had left me with an appetite.
“How’d you do?” Harding asked as we entered, tapping the ash from his cigarette and sipping his coffee.
“We didn’t identify anyone yet,” I said. “But I can report the navy is working hard at recovering bodies.”
“They’re using nets, like trawlers,” Big Mike said, sitting himself down at the table. There was a plate of Spam sandwiches at the center, but he didn’t make a move for them. Harding poured coffee for us both and set a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey on the table.
“We found maybe seventy or eighty GIs,” I said. “All floating upside down.” I poured equal parts coffee and whiskey for myself.
“Lifebelts worn improperly,” Kaz said. “We have been hearing the same thing all day. No one instructed the soldiers on the LSTs how to use them, or what procedures to follow if torpedoed.”
“No one expected it,” Tom Quick said, his hands cupped around his coffee as he stared into it. “You never do.”
“Expected what?” Big Mike said.
“To have to bail out. Jump into the darkness, whether it’s over Germany or in the Channel. That’s what happens to the other chaps, not you. It’s what I always thought. I’m sure Freddie felt the same way before he bought it. Maybe some men know they’re going to die, but I think we really can’t imagine it until the last second. Those soldiers, going into the water with all that gear on. They didn’t expect it.” Tom’s eyes didn’t move from his cup. “It’s worse than you’re letting on, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “No need to answer. I don’t want to know the details.” Silence settled over us as Harding gave a small shrug. No reason to deny what was plain as day.
“We did have some luck, if you can call it that,” Kaz said. “We found the one noncommissioned officer at the first stop. His body, that is. Sergeant Frank Thompson. Which makes it easier, since we don’t have to search through all the enlisted men.”
“Anyone else?” I asked.
“Yes, a Major Ernest Anderson,” Kaz said, checking his clipboard. “That leaves seven.”
“Four lieutenants, two captains, and one colonel,” Harding said. “They’ll probably be bringing in bodies all night. Make the rounds first thing and report back here.” He reached for a sandwich and bit into it, chewing mechanically as he stared at the list of names. Big Mike seemed to finally take notice of the food and joined in, a bit more enthusiastically.
“Better than bully beef,” Tom said, taking a healthy bite and pouring himself another whiskey. “Hardly edible, but better.” We all laughed, not that it was so funny, but because we were alive and could. We ate and drank. I didn’t drink so much that I couldn’t drive, only enough to take the edge off the day. Turned out it was a damned sharp edge that didn’t dull easily with fortified coffee.
“When you see him,” Harding finally said, forgoing coffee for straight whiskey, “tell Peter Wiley to get his butt back here. He wasn’t missed today with all the commotion, but he’s AWOL at this point.”
“I heard he’d left Ashcroft,” I said, turning to Kaz. “Yesterday, right?”
“Yes. Early in the morning. He left an unfinished painting, so perhaps he returned to Ashcroft while we were all busy today, thinking he would not be noticed.”
“Maybe he’s snuck back in already,” I said. “Let’s check his quarters befo
re we hit the road.”
Harding showed us Wiley’s room upstairs. It had a fine view across the lawns and down to the River Dart. The bed was made, and there was no sign of the bag and paints Wiley had brought to Ashcroft.
“His office?” I said to Harding.
“No, I checked. It’s off limits for security reasons. But I saw nothing missing or unusual. Look around back at Ashcroft. Maybe he wanted to finish that painting. These Coasties are liable to let things slide if a guy’s doing his job. Wiley usually works day and night, so the captain may have turned a blind eye.”
“They’re all out?” I asked.
“More maneuvers and practice landings,” Harding said. “One disaster doesn’t stop the war.”
“If it did, the war would have been over long ago,” Tom Quick said. “Let’s go.” He tapped his hand repeatedly against his leg as we walked outside.
“Your constable pal seems kinda jumpy,” Big Mike said on the ride back. He was driving slowly, the only illumination seeping out of the slit in the taped headlights. Blackout driving was dangerous, especially for pedestrians.
“He is,” I said. “He did thirty missions in a Lancaster.”
“That would make God Almighty jumpy,” Big Mike said. I filled him in on what Tom Quick had been through, losing his family, his friend, and very nearly his grip on reality.