The Far Shore

by Edward Ellsberg

  The problems were various, depending on whose problem it was. The one that was bothering Lieutenant Barton most, now that the Royal Engineers were out of the picture, was the crews of his small tugs, the ST’s. These were the tiny 86 foot long harbor tugs furnished by the Army to handle the Phoenixs in shallow waters—that is, in berthing them first on the Near Shore, and in sinking them finally on the Far Shore when the ocean-going tugs (which Captain Clark was still striving frenziedly to get) should deliver them there.

  Barton’s tribulations with the crews of those ST’s would have driven a less impassive officer to suicide. The Army, which owned them, had built, furnished, and manned those tugs, but their crews weren’t soldiers. It was just as obvious they weren’t sailors either, though they were classed as merchant seamen. Neither they nor their merchant officers knew much about handling tugs or for that matter, about handling ships of any kind. If they had, they would probably all have been at sea on something more impressive than a trifling harbor tug.

  Even landlubbers can be trained, however, given a little time, provided only they are subject to some discipline to hold their noses to the grindstone while undergoing training. But these crews weren’t under any discipline of any kind—they weren’t in the Army, they weren’t in the Navy, they were civilians, free and equal citizens of the United States, and war or no war, subject to no man’s domination. Even the usual peacetime fear of losing their jobs was nothing to them. They could swiftly get others at still more fantastic pay. If how they were handling, or rather mishandling the tugs, didn’t suit, that was your hard luck. If you complained too much, they could walk off the job.

  The result was that whenever Barton sent a tug from Selsey Bill to refuel at Portsmouth (incidentally, a fine liberty port, far more exhilarating to a sailor than the dismal sands at Selsey) it came back when its crew damned well pleased. And when he didn’t send one, it was just as likely to desert Selsey Bill during the dark hours and go to Portsmouth anyway.

  Barton, now full of faith in me for the changes I’d brought about on Selsey Bill, came to me almost with tears in his eyes. Couldn’t I help persuade the Army to provide him more dependable crews for those ST tugs? They were bad enough to cope with at Selsey Bill. Where would he be on the Far Shore when he desperately needed not only competent men but men on whom he could rely to stay on the job?

  I promised I’d try. I started in by phone on the Army Transportation Corps in London to see what better men might be available for Barton. To my horror, I learned that not only could the Army not furnish us any better men to man those tugs, but that those we did have, the Army had been able to hire in the United States solely on the understanding that they were abroad only for noncombat duty!

  Noncombat duty! How did the Army define that? We wanted those tugs mainly for use on the Far Shore in sinking Phoenixs on the Omaha Beach, starting on D-day; otherwise they were completely useless to us. Was that noncombat duty, as the Army saw it? There would be plenty of combat going on all around while we were sinking those Phoenixs. We couldn’t at that critical time have the operation tied in a knot by our tugboat men’s deciding then we were using them for something that they hadn’t signed on for. How about that? What was noncombat duty?

  The Colonel in the Army Transportation Corps at the other end of the line informed me that the term had never been precisely defined. So long as we placed no guns of any kind on the tugs, and their crews were never asked to take any part in manning weapons, it all looked to him like non-combat duty, whether the tugs were handling Phoenixs on the Near Shore, as they now were, or on the Far Shore, where shortly they would be.

  It wasn’t so hot on that late May day, but nevertheless I hung up the receiver literally in a sweat. Not only were we being given dregs as seamen to handle our tugs during the nerve-racking maneuver of trying to hold in position against the tidal currents those massive Phoenixs while we flooded and sank them off Omaha. Now it turned out that should what was going on all over the beachhead while our troops stormed ashore look like combat to them, they could quit! And having had a good look at them, I was sure they would. I gnashed my teeth in sympathy for Barton. This was one hell of a way to expect anyone to run a war!

  After digesting this sad sidelight on how weak was the reed on which we were leaning, I started in higher up in the Army Transportation Corps to see what might be done to improve the situation. Would the Army object, seeing they could do no better themselves, if perhaps the Navy found some more reliable crews to man the tugs assigned us?

  I could get no immediate answer. The Army, while sympathetic, had scores of other tugs, similarly manned, round about Britain and would have to consider the probable effect on their over-all tug picture. It was a very involved matter. They would let me know.

  I called attention to the fact that D-day, while not yet announced, must be very close. They couldn’t take too long about it; the new crews must have at least a little training on Phoenix sinking at Selsey Bill before having to carry it through under fire on the Omaha Beach.

  At this juncture, Dr. Goebbels took a hand and solved that problem for us—the only thing I ever had cause to thank him for. The Germans had taken endless air reconnaissance photographs of what we had off Selsey Bill—no air raid ever went by without chandelier flares being dropped for an illumination that could have no other purpose. But other than that (and the bombs, of course), in all their programs on the air they had religiously ignored our existence. Now abruptly they changed that policy. Dr. Goebbels put his star performer, Lord Haw-Haw himself, into the middle of an “Invasion Calling” broadcast, with a special message to us.

  After “Lili Marlene” as usual had put all her listeners into a trance, came Lord Haw-Haw, to jolt at least all those involved in Operation Mulberry rudely back to reality with his personal greeting:

  “To those United States Navy Seabees and soldiers on the concrete caissons off Selsey Bill.”

  And while Commander Stanford, listening in Portsmouth, as surprised as anybody, hurriedly seized a pencil and took it down, the Seabees at Selsey Bill, gathered round their mess hall radio, listened also thunderstruck at being singled out as the specific objects of Haw-Haw’s attention. In the most cultured tones of an English gentleman, Haw-Haw went soothingly on to assure his Yankee listeners.

  “We know exactly what you intend to do with those concrete units. You think you are going to sink them on our coasts in the assault. Well, we are going to help you boys. We’ll save you the trouble. When you come to get underway, we’re going to sink them for you.”

  The effect on the Seabees listening in was not good. If Haw-Haw, and with him naturally also the Nazi U-boats and their E-boat torpedo flotillas, knew that much about our Top Secret project at Selsey Bill, here was no threat to be laughed off. More particularly as very shortly before, as we all knew, a Nazi E-boat flotilla had caught our Exercise Tiger (a full scale night rehearsal by Rear Admiral Moon’s assault forces of their coming landing on Utah Beach) steaming eastward off the coast of Devon during the dark hours. And in spite of the destroyer convoy provided, they had got in undetected, torpedoed and sunk two LST’s and badly damaged a third, and after drowning 700 G.I.’s aboard those torpedoed LST’s, had made a clean getaway, unharmed themselves. That disaster had badly shaken G.I. confidence in the Navy’s ability to protect them.

  If those lightning-fast Nazi E-boats could do that to a major convoyed assault force, rehearsing close in on the English side of the Channel, what couldn’t they do if they put their minds on it to all those Seabees manning a lot of floating blocks of concrete, moving unconvoyed across the Channel directly into their jaws, on the end of a towline at hardly three knots?

  Every Seabee took that broadcast practically as his personal obituary notice. A deep gloom descended on all in that mess hall as Lord Haw-Haw concluded his broadcast to them. Nobody spoke; nobody had to. Fatalistically, each man turned in. His number was up now and he knew it. But there was nothing any Seabee could do about
it. There was a war on, he was in the Navy now, orders were orders. His were to man those Phoenixs and start with them for the Far Shore, come what might, Haw-Haw or no Haw-Haw.

  But the effect on the ST tugboat crews was markedly different. Suddenly and virtually unanimously it occurred to all of them that service with the ST’s on the Far Shore was not the noncombat duty they had signed on for—they weren’t going to the Far Shore. Almost en masse, they quit and went ashore. Handling Phoenixs came to an abrupt halt.

  Barton’s first reaction to that (and mine too) was to organize a firing squad. But more sober second thought showed us we were in luck. Thanks to Dr. Goebbels and Lord Haw-Haw, our crew problem was suddenly solved, now that the ST’s no longer had any crews. For no longer would anybody have to beg permission of the Army to allow the Navy to substitute better seamen, could it at this eleventh hour get them.

  Now that their crews had quit, declaring that service on those ST’s was not noncombat duty, it was the direct obligation obviously of the Army Transportation Corps to man them again with crews to whom staying around even with hot steel flying about, was part of their job. And while the Transportation Corps was doing that, it might as well also furnish us men who knew something of shiphandling.

  Trying not to seem too cheerful over it, we conveyed the news of this sudden change in the ST crew situation at Selsey Bill to the Transportation Corps Headquarters in London. Would they please take care of it—immediately?

  Manfully, they did. If there were ever any arguments with the ex-crews of the ST’s as to what was and what was not noncombat duty, we at Selsey Bill were never bothered with them and with surprising speed, the tugs were remanned—where the Army got those crews, it was none of our concern to ask. But some of them were better seamen than those before, and now like the rest of us, all of them were willing to take their wars where they found them. Barton was swiftly back in business again.

  A second problem that was thrown into my lap was even less mine than that of the tugboat crews, and I should gladly have ducked it completely, had I been able.

  It so happened that except for the soldiers assigned to man the pair of anti-aircraft guns mounted on each Phoenix, the crews of the Phoenixs were all Seabees. These men of the Construction Battalions, somewhere far up the chain of command, came under the wing of Rear Admiral Wilkes, Commander of Landing Craft and Bases (to be) on the Far Shore. Wilkes, however, was himself far away in Plymouth, buried in more urgent matters in his command and practically a stranger to all at Selsey Bill. Locally, at Selsey Bill the Seabees came under Commander E. T. Collier of the Civil Engineer Corps—it was in that branch of the Navy that the brilliant idea of the Construction Battalions (the CB’s—colloquially, the Seabees) had originated.

  Part of the Seabee idea had been to gather together as Construction Battalions for naval bases abroad men skilled in various trades who were above draft age—that is, to build up essentially from mechanics considered too old for the rigors of the fighting line, at least so far as the draft age limit was any criterion of that, an experienced volunteer naval support force. So, generally speaking, the men in the Seabees were middle aged or even more; most were above draft age—real volunteers.

  Now with D-day coming up in what seemed like giant strides to those still trying to whip their outfits into shape for the jump-off, it occurred to someone with importance enough in SHAEF to get his idea made official, that actual battle was something only for the young in years. This came down from above toward the end of May in the shape of an order to every unit preparing to take part in the assault, to weed out all hands (except officers) above the age of fifty—none older than that were to go to the Far Shore to face the Nazis.

  The effect on us at Selsey Bill was devastating. While in the average rifle company there might have been one man in a hundred beyond fifty who might have to be eliminated, with the peculiar composition of our Seabees that percent age was away up. Commander Collier, who was organizing from his Seabees the riding crews to handle each Phoenix on its tow to the Far Shore and the sinking crews there to take over and sink them, found himself with a sizeable chunk of his force made suddenly ineligible to leave the Near Shore.

  Collier was in a pickle. All he could do was hurriedly to get in touch with his own direct senior in the Seabees, Captain Coryell in Plymouth, and arrange a deal with him by which the overage Seabees at Selsey Bill should be traded for younger men combed from other Seabee tasks in Britain not immediately involved in the assault. But it would all take time, and meanwhile Collier’s training program for the Phoenix crews was thrown for a bad loss.

  And now began my troubles. One by one Collier called in his bumped-off men and informed them they weren’t going and why. Whatever they had to say to Collier, I never heard—no doubt, plenty.

  But shortly I commenced to receive a liberal education in psychology—a subject I’d never had a course in, either at the Naval Academy or in any of my postgraduate work thereafter. Obviously, to all hands at Selsey Bill, with my four stripes I was senior to Collier, who had only three. So almost immediately every Seabee who had failed to get anywhere in his argument with Collier came to me to get Collier overruled.

  Each man commenced by assuring me his case was most exceptional, to which SHAEF’s order shouldn’t apply. I listened to all sorts of reasons, all. different, all showing conclusively that for the man before me, an exception must be made—he, although others of his age were perhaps unfit, must be allowed to go. I must overrule Collier.

  Some offered to prove to me their fitness to go as against any younger man I might choose in any contest I cared to suggest—from running the 100 yards to doing handstands. Others rested their cases on their superior judgment in handling Phoenixs—no young man could possibly have the experience their years had given them in doing the right thing the right way at the right time—in sinking Phoenixs, that was of top importance. Still others put it on humanitarian grounds—why should a young man with his whole life ahead of him be sent to face Nazi fire, when he, who already had pretty well lived his, was ready, willing, and capable of going instead?

  How could I combat those arguments, honestly set out, vehemently presented, and frankly for the most part, the incontrovertible truth? I couldn’t and I didn’t try. All I could say after patiently listening as each man presented his case was that I wasn’t overruling Collier—first, I had no authority to, even if I so felt; and second, I was as much under obligation to see that order enforced, regardless of what I thought of it, as Collier was. SHAEF had so ordered; neither Collier nor I was in any position to flout the order or to make exceptions to it. I was sorry; though in each case, I had to add, I was also proud of the man before me—he was a real American, even if he did have the hard luck not to be so young a one any more.

  But I swiftly found that that never ended the argument. Practically every man, as I turned down his plea to go, looked me over quizzically, and then asked the same question,

  “Captain, how old are you?”

  “Fifty-two,” I had to reply.

  Invariably the questioner’s eyes lighted up triumphantly.

  “Fifty-two, huh? Well, since you’re going, why can’t you take me?”

  Somewhat embarrassed over the unfairness of the situation, I had to explain that officers were excluded from the application of that order. And then somehow I had to maneuver that still unconvinced Seabee out to make way for the next one waiting to see me.

  But intermingled with the stream of older Seabees pleading with me for the chance to carry through on what they’d volunteered for came some others who presented the other side of the coin.

  That so many of the older men were not bamboozled by Goebbels’ propaganda as to want to grasp the chance of an easy way out was a little surprising to me but understandable. They had all lived long enough already to know they didn’t care to live on in the world if it had to be to Hitler’s specifications.

  From some others, however, I got the reverse picture—
they didn’t want to go—they wanted me to order Collier not to send them. These I listened to just as patiently as to the others, and I think, with as much understanding. For every one of them was young—very young. Not one was over eighteen. How they ever got into an organization like the Seabees, intended mainly for artisans, which they weren’t old enough to be yet, and for middle-aged artisans at that, was beyond me. But there they were—children almost, they seemed to me, and terrified beyond measure by all they’d heard on the radio, culminating with that direct message to them from Haw-Haw himself.

  There weren’t so many of them—for everybody’s good, I was thankful there were only a few. From each one of them, I heard the reasons why I must order Collier to take him out of the Phoenix crews—reasons, not one of which was the very evident real one—that I had before me a very scared boy, not old enough yet to realize that most of the terrors one saw ahead in life dissolved altogether or didn’t look so bad on closer approach, not mature enough yet to stand up and look real danger in the face.

  The reason most frequently advanced as making it impossible for that particular boy to go was seasickness—the boy talking to me would be worthless once he got out into the Channel and the waves had a chance at him. Somebody else who could stand it better ought to take over his job. Or it might be that he had recently been sick and hadn’t really fully recovered his strength. Or that he never had, nor had then, the muscle it took to manhandle those heavy wire tow-lines on the tow or the massive valve wheels to be twirled swiftly open in the sinking operation.