by Gary Moore
It was a hot day, and the baseball field was in terrible shape. Gene was amazed at the color of the soil. It was hard packed and red. Being a farm boy from the Midwest, he was used to the rich black dirt of corn country.
He walked across the diamond on the way to the team tent. Hot winds blew the sand in drifts that nearly obscured the neatly drawn base lines and the pitcher’s mound. Third base was completely buried. There was lots of work to do to prepare the field for play. Lots of men from an American tank division were already gathering, even though the game was not scheduled to begin for two hours. One guy in particular had been standing on a tank that had rolled into the area thirty minutes earlier. He was standing now on the back of the monster machine, his hands on his hips watching while Gene walked along the diamond and examined the ground behind home plate. Gene lifted a hand and waved at the soldier. The soldier only nodded in return.
“Gene?” The catcher turned to discover who was shouting his name. It was Buck. “There’s a tank crew looking for you!”
Ray was standing next to Buck. “Some guy says they are gonna roll into Berlin, and he has an extra seat. He wanted to know if you’d like to ride along!”
Gene began walking toward the two men. “What in the world are you talking about?” he asked.
“You heard them right, little brother.”
Gene whipped around and dropped his mouth wide open in surprise. The soldier who had been watching him from the top of a tank was now halfway onto the field and striding purposefully toward him. “Wanna ride in to Berlin with us? I am personally going to kick Hitler in the ass!”
“Ward Moore! What are you doing here?” Gene yelled out as he trotted to meet his brother halfway. The two looked awkward in their reunion, unsure whether to shake hands or hug. They decided on both. It was the first time they had been together in more than two years.
“Well,” Ward laughed, “we’re gonna take that tank right into Germany, if I get my way. But I’m here to watch a baseball game first. Army pride is very high in our division. Word is the Navy has some hotshot catcher from some hick town in ‘Little Egypt.’ We hear he’s been giving our Army team a bad time, so they asked for reinforcements. In fact, they called us and said to bring a tank! So, I volunteered. It took a lot of scraping to let me drive this thing here, and a whole lot of gas, too!”
“I can’t believe you are here!” answered Gene. “Mom wrote in her letter that you transferred into a division here in North Africa, but I never thought I would actually see you, let alone play a game of baseball in front of you!”
Ward nodded and swallowed. For a long minute the brothers just looked at each other. “I’m sorry, Gene,” he finally stammered. “I was pretty hard on you before I left and I didn’t tell you goodbye before I caught the train. I’ve been afraid that something would happen to you before I could tell you what a horse’s behind I was. I’m sorry.”
Gene nearly fell over. It was the first time he had ever heard Ward sincerely apologize for anything. “No sweat,” he lied. “I’m just glad we are both safe and sound. We need to stay that way. I think we’ll be back in Sesser before we know it.”
“And I’ll buy the first round at Bruno’s when we get home! You get ready for the game, and I’ll see you afterward. I hear we’re leaving right away, but we should have a few moments. This time I aim to actually tell you goodbye.” The older brother smiled widely, his dimples set deep in his ruddy cheeks.
“Okay. Damn, it’s good to see you, Ward.”
“Good to see you, too, little brother. Just take it easy on Army today. Remember, you are outnumbered!” Ward laughed as he walked off the field to return to his tank and watch the game.
The sign blowing in the hot breeze on the backstop read “Yankee Stadium,” so Navy was first up to bat. The tank crews were loud and rowdy, which made the game that much more fun to play. Naturally, they were all rooting for Army—all that is except one tank crew. Ward and his comrades were the proud recipients of a wide chorus of boos and Brooklyn cheers from the rest of the men of their division on hand to see the game, but everyone took the razzing in good form.
Gene was batting clean-up and stepped up to the plate in the top of the first inning. There was one out, with men on first and second. Army knew Gene’s brother was in the stands, so the catcher stood up and pointed his hand out to the right, signaling an intentional walk. Gene jumped out of the box, mad as could be.
“Come on! This is baloney!” he yelled. “I want you to pitch to me!” The catcher burst out laughing and Gene turned to look at him. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he demanded. When he heard laughter erupt from the audience, he turned back around to find the pitcher on his knees, grabbing his sides to keep from busting a rib.
“Moore, it’s just a joke,” the Army righthander finally responded after catching his breath. “Courtesy of your brother Ward. I’ll pitch to you, because you’ll only strike out anyway. In about two minutes you’ll wish you had taken a walk!”
Gene felt his face turn red in embarrassment, but had to admit it was a funny prank. He turned around and pointed his bat at Ward, who was standing on the tank while clapping his hands above his head. The joke could not have come off any better. Gene stepped back into the box. The pitcher was no longer smiling. Now it was for real.
The first pitch came in high for a ball. The second was low and away. Ball two. Gene stepped out and took a practice swing. He glanced down third line to the coach standing there. The signal was as he expected: hit away. He stepped back up to the plate. The third pitch was low and just caught the outside corner.
“Strike!” yelled out the umpire, making a fist and pumping his right hand to thunderous applause from the Army-heavy audience.
Gene glared at the pitcher, who smirked at him before checking the runners and going into his windup. Gene cocked back, ready for a high fast ball. The pitch came in slightly inside. He turned hard and fast on the ball and connected, sending it sailing deep over the left field fence. Gene raised both arms in the air and slowly trotted the bases. The booing from the Army team was loud and hard. As he turned toward third on his trot toward home plate, he made out one face that was beaming from ear to ear. Ward Moore finally got to see his little brother hit a home run. The feeling was almost as good as the day Gene turned to see his Pop sitting in the stands back at “The Lumberyard.”
Navy won the game 9-8. Although the Army spectators were disappointed with the final result, everyone knew they had seen one heck of a ball game. The brothers from Sesser spent a few moments chatting about small things and ignoring the bigger issues before Ward finally stuck out his hand and said goodbye. Gene grasped it firmly, gave his brother a hug, and watched as he jumped onto the back of his tank and waved goodbye. It was a day neither brother would ever forget.
Later that evening in the mess tent, Buck approached Gene and said softly, “Help me quietly gather the men for a meeting in the team tent.”
“What’s up, Buck?”
“See you at the tent,” was all Buck would say.
Gene gathered the men. Some were eating; others were in their own tents reading or writing letters home. Everyone knew a gathering after dinner was unusual.
“Sorry to disrupt your dinner,” Buck began once everyone arrived, “but I knew you would want to hear the news directly from the horse’s mouth.” Buck screwed a big smile on his face and announced, “Pack your seabags, gentlemen! You’re headed back to the States!”
Before he had even finished speaking, every man was on his feet screaming with enthusiasm, shaking hands, embracing, and patting one another on the back.
Buck raised his arms and tried to quiet them down. “Unfortunately, there’s more news.” That dropped the yelling down several notches.
“The reason I didn’t want to say anything out there is that it’s not all good news for both teams. Our partners and friends on the Army team, they’re not going home.” A few of the men groaned aloud. “They’ll continue t
heir deployment as we advance into Europe.” The tent was deathly quiet. “I didn’t want anyone celebrating out there, which is why I called all of you in here.” Buck sighed. “They’re getting the news now.”
“Who will we play in the States, Buck?” Jim Riordan asked.
“I don’t know who you’ll play, if anyone. All I know is that you are shipping out late tomorrow afternoon.”
“What do you mean ‘you’ll’ be shipping out?” Ray asked. “Don’t you mean ‘we’ will be shipping out?”
Buck looked at the floor, his hands on his hips. No one said a word. When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes. “Gentlemen. Being your manager, your friend, and your superior officer over these last twenty or so months has truly been one of the highlights of my life. It has been my honor and privilege to be on your team. You guys have played some of the best baseball I have ever seen. But that’s over now—it’s over for the rest of the war for us. So, I’ve requested duty at sea. Most of you have a Major League career waiting for you when you return. I don’t. I just think it best that I stay over here and see this thing through.”
“But Buck, we’re a team!” Gene exclaimed. “We’re not leaving here without you!” Everyone joined in to protest his decision.
Buck shook his head vigorously. “I’ve requested sea duty. It’s what I want. You guys need to get home and out of harm’s way. I truly believe each and every one of you can have an outstanding career in baseball. Quite frankly, I think we have future Hall-of-Famers sitting in this room. I’ll be home soon. This thing’s moving in our direction, and I want to help get it done. Who knows? When I return, maybe I’ll be your manager someday, somewhere. Regardless of what the future holds, I’m grateful for all you have done. You played hard, and gave your all. Be proud of your contribution to the war effort. You made a lot of soldiers happy men, if even for just a couple hours at a time. I think you—we—made a difference.”
With that, Buck walked over to a large piece of canvas and pulled it away to reveal a very tall stack of beer. It was sitting on ice. “I’m buying the first round!”
The United States Navy North Africa Exhibition Baseball Team celebrated throughout the night and left North Africa late the next day. The team stopped for one final week in the Azores Islands before heading by ship to Norfolk, Virginia.
Chapter 14
U-505
On March 16, 1944, a gray submarine with streaks of rust and cracked top decking threw off her lines and motored slowly away from her berth in Brest, France. Although constructed as work order 295, she was better known as U-505, a large Type IXC designed for long lone patrols to distant waters. Her hull had first felt water on Saturday, May 24, 1941, when she slid laterally off the ways into the muddy Elbe River in Hamburg, a product of the Deutsche Werft shipyard facility. Less than three years had passed, but she was already considered an old boat. This was her twelfth, and final, war patrol.
The double-hulled U-boat (or unterseeboot, meaning underwater boat in German) stretched more than 250 feet long, was 22 feet wide, and displaced between 1,200 and 1,800 tons submerged. Powered by a pair of 4,400 HP diesels, U-505 could cut through the water on the surface at a top speed of 19 knots. She was much slower under the sea, where giant banks of batteries fueled electric motors that pushed the boat quietly at speeds of up to eight knots. The batteries had a limited capacity, which meant the U-boat had to eventually surface and run the diesels to recharge them.
Type IXs like U-505 carried between 22 and 25 torpedoes (some in special containers outside the hull on the upper deck) that could be launched from six separate tubes, four forward and two aft. On and behind the bridge were anti-aircraft guns, which offered at least some protection against the deadly planes that had sunk so many U-boats. Earlier in the war, a 10.5-cm. cannon had been mounted in front of the conning tower on the main deck to sink surface ships. The gun had long since been removed. Those “Happy Times” of riding waves and shelling merchantmen were a distant memory by 1944. The Allied control of the skies, radar, and the cracking of the German Enigma code—a secret the Germans never learned until long after the war ended—made travel on the surface a deadly proposition. Those boats that risked prolonged stays topside invited their own destruction.
U-505’s commissioning ceremony on August 26, 1941.
No one was sure exactly how deep a boat like U-505 could dive, because when crush depth was reached, no one returned to the surface to reveal the secret. The maximum safe diving depth was reported between 150 and 200 meters, but some boats survived much deeper plunges into the dark depths—usually not by choice—and were lucky enough to make it back to sunlight. Type IX boats like U-505 rarely patrolled the seas in packs, preferring instead to sail as “lone wolves.” U-boat Command usually assigned them to a geographical area of operations, but the captains were allowed considerable leeway to deviate from the patrol zone, if circumstances warranted.
Four officers (including the engineer), 15 senior and junior petty officers, and 29 ratings (enlisted men) made up the standard Type IX crew strength of 48. Extended missions often included additional personnel, such as a medical officer, war correspondents, cadets-in-training, extra gunners, and officers tapped to command a boat of their own, but who needed to acquire frontline experience before doing so.
With her lines removed, and with a small plume of bluish diesel smoke wafting above her stern, U-505 eased into the channel leading to the Bay of Biscay off Frances’ western coast. Heinrich Mueller was a helmsman sitting at his post in the control room, thinking back to the day in August 1941 when he and the rest of the young energetic crewmen had stood quietly on deck to listen while Kapitänleutnant Axel-Olaf Loewe, the boat’s first captain, addressed them during the commissioning ceremony. “Comrades,” began Loewe, “as commandant of U-505, I have come here to Hamburg in order, with your help, to take our boat to the front after our short shake-down and combat training exercises. It will be a hard life—have no illusions about that. But with a well-disciplined crew, we’ll have our successes.”
U-505 had enjoyed some success over the years, but by 1944 she was looked upon as a hard-luck boat. Patrols had been cut short when equipment failed to work as designed, neutral shipping had been accidentally sunk, and sabotage by French dockworkers had triggered mechanical failures that nearly sent the boat to the bottom. On one occasion, an aircraft dropped a bomb that ripped apart the top of the submarine. She nearly sank. How U-505 managed to make it back to port stunned everyone who examined her once she reached Brest. And then there was Peter Zschech, the only captain known to have committed suicide during a patrol. He did so in U-505’s control room under what are still to this day mysterious circumstances. Seamen are a superstitious lot, and the men of U-505 had a lot to be superstitious about.
U-505 was leaving Brest at 1835 hours under her third and last skipper, Harald Lange, a reserve officer with an undistinguished career. With him motored U-373 and U-471, a pair of Type VIIC boats. There was still strength in numbers, even in 1944. The boats entered Biscay and separated from their escorts the following morning. The beginning of what was to be U-505’s last war patrol was officially underway.
The smaller Type VIIs running with U-505 submerged to cross Biscay, which was known as the “Valley of Death” because so many boats and crews had been lost there to enemy aircraft and naval forces. Lange decided to increase his watch and make the journey on the surface as much as possible. To him, the risk of extended diesel sprints was better than inching along submerged beneath waters that were heavily patrolled by Allied aircraft and destroyers.
His plan worked. U-505 emerged from Biscay on March 25. Lange turned his bow south and set a course for the hunting grounds around Freetown, a major shipping port off Africa’s west coast. Although he hoped for good fortune, Lange’s reward would be a fateful rendezvous with a United States Hunter-Killer task force.
Even though he was born in a small Hessian farming community north of Frankfurt in central Germany, Hei
nrich Mueller had been in love with the sea for as long as he could remember. Tales of sailing and exploration captivated him in his youth, which made his decision to join the German navy (instead of the Luftwaffe or infantry) understandable. His family had a rich military tradition that stretched back several centuries. His father, Erich Mueller, had been decorated for heroism during the First World War, just as his father before him, Jürgen Mueller, had for service during the Franco-Prussian War. An avid reader, the younger Heinrich especially enjoyed stories about the U-boats. As the world slid toward war in the 1930s, his thoughts were increasingly preoccupied with joining the navy and serving beneath the sea.
Deep in tropical South Atlantic, some of U-505’s crew lounge above decks while a watch scans the horizon for enemy planes. Hans Goebeler (standing, center) wrote the only full-length account by an enlisted U-boat sailor, entitled Steel Boat, Iron Hearts: A U-boat Crewman’s Life Aboard U-505. Something he and his comrades could not have envisioned was that in the not-too-distant future, many of them would come to know Gene Moore well.
Turned away by recruiters in 1939 because he was only 16, Heinrich returned to school and completed an electrician’s course and learned two foreign languages, one of which was English. Because learning to speak the language of one of Germany’s enemies was viewed by some as unpatriotic, he quietly studied an English textbook in his spare time.