Hoffmann noted in his log: "I perceive from this that he is no longer in the picture over Scharnhorst's position." At 11:30 p.m. Ciliax cancelled his "urgent need of help" message. This was because a few minutes earlier Hermann Schoemann's searchlight had illuminated a dark shadow ahead—Scharnhorst.
Now the battleship kept close on Hermann Schoemann's stern as they steamed together towards the channel and the pilot ship which would guide her into Wilhelmshaven. She proceeded at reduced speed, as the special mine-sweeper to clear the way would not be ready until 7 o'clock next morning. They did not want to take any unnecessary risks in this mine-infested area.
Scharnhorst was safe but in a bad way. She reported: "(1) Starboard and middle engines operational for fourteen knots. Port engine temporarily inoperational. (2) Limited oil and water supplies but sufficient for returning to the River Elbe. (3) Greatly restricted supplies of shells including heavy A.A. shells. (4) Flooding causing no vital failures. (5) One man badly wounded."
But what about the rest of the Squadron? If they had sunk the operation had failed. In fact Prinz Eugen and Gneisenau were also safe.
Just before midnight Gneisenau made contact with Prinz Eugen and was ordered to go with her to the coastal town of Brunsbuttel on the north bank of the Elbe, sixty miles northwest of Hamburg. It was at the western terminus of the Kiel Canal, which connects the Baltic with the North Sea.
As the night wore on, the British admitted the Germans had made it. At 1 a.m. in London, First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound lifted the private telephone which connected him with 10 Downing Street. While embarrassed senior staff officers gazed intently at maps on the War Room walls he made one of the worst reports an English admiral ever had to make to an English Prime Minister.
Pound said, "I'm afraid, sir I must report that the enemy battle-cruisers should by now have reached the safety of their home waters." Churchill growled, "Why?" and slammed the phone down.
XII
THE SHIPS CRAWL HOME
While the German ships were steaming slowly through the black night towards the safety of their home ports, in another part of the North Sea HMS Worcester was crawling painfully like a wounded animal towards the east coast of England. With smoke pouring from the after-funnel, steam belching from a great rent in her starboard side and her engines noisily clanking and thumping, she went ahead at six and a half knots — until 7:15 p.m., when steam was lost for several minutes. At 9:30 p.m., after steam had been lost again, she began to move at three and a half knots, working gradually up to seven knots.
As the ship staggered through the night, "Doc" Jackson still tried to tend the wounded. He performed emergency operations with his hands torn and bleeding, and his instruments blunted. All the time came the call for help.
Eventually all the bad casualties had some sort of first aid. The next task was to place them in some reasonable comfort. The holes in the bulkhead between the cabin flat and the ward-room had been plugged with wooden leak stoppers and someone had managed to make the lights work. So the doctor decided to use this as a temporary sick-bay. But the cabin flat was at the bottom of a vertical steel ladder, which was very difficult to get a wounded man down, and many of them had compound fractures of the legs making it difficult to move them at all. While the doctor tried to cope with them, sick-berth attendant Shelley dealt with the minor casualties who were eventually coming aft for treatment after repeated orders.
Even the unwounded were still dazed and tense. When Gun-layer Douglas Ward went to report to the wheel-house he was told, "Shut the door, you bloody fool! Someone will see the light." He replied, "There is no door, sir."
Then he went to man the starboard Oerlikon and found the gun position a bloody mess of torn flesh where the crew of two had been killed. At least he thought there were two. He covered the pieces with an oilskin and stood watch.
The cook had been killed, but someone volunteered to go into the galley and open tins to make a stew, throwing everything into a pail. The crew ate it hungrily.
Commander Coats said, "I think I would have gone stark raving mad if I hadn't had to concentrate on getting my ship home. It was a tragic disappointment. You cannot get any closer in daylight, and at least two of my three torpedoes should have hit the Gneisenau, but they missed and all these lives were wasted."
It was bitterly cold. The wind was rising and the smoke from the funnel driving into the mist over the dark sea made everyone aboard the ship feel lonely and deserted.
This feeling was increased when Engineer Griffiths told the captain that if the ship stopped for any length of time there was a good chance she would sink. He was not being pessimistic. When the salt water in the boilers stopped the ship every hour or so, she immediately began to loll about in the waves. Every time she seemed to go farther over to starboard and hesitate before righting herself frighteningly slowly. Before she did so everyone thought, "This is it. We are done. We are finished."
After seeing all the wounded were fairly comfortable, Jackson climbed painfully up the shattered ladder to the bridge to give Commander Coats his report. After he had told him the number of wounded and dead he broke down. He opened his mouth but no further words came. Coats looked at the doctor and said gently, "You had better get on with your job, Doc."
It was a terrible tale. Out of the ship's company of 130, over half were either killed or wounded. The total of dead was seventeen and there were six men missing. According to Admiralty figures, there were eighteen seriously wounded and twenty-seven slightly wounded — though Dr. Jackson claims to have dealt with nearly a hundred dead and wounded. Most of the slightly wounded were able to carry out their duties and help man the ship after being attended by Jackson.
He returned to supervise the more severe cases, whose shipmates had gently carried them to such shelter as they could find. While he was doing this he realized the noise of the engines had ceased once more.
This time they drifted for an hour and a half, in heavy seas off the Dutch coast, alone, disabled and probably sinking. With everything in darkness and wounded men lying groaning everywhere the listing ship seemed doomed as she wallowed in the heavy swell. The seas curled and broke over her decks strewn with jagged wreckage and peppered with splinter holes.
The doctor's chief horror was what would happen to the wounded if the ship sank. He tried not to admit it to himself — but in those icy seas survival even for the unwounded would probably be brief.
But the destroyer did not sink. Just before midnight, Griffiths and his men started the engines again and she began to creep slowly forward. They were also able to pump out some water, making the list less dangerous.
It was a moonless night, but the wind began dispersing the mists to give reasonable visibility. Every attempt was made to preserve naval discipline. Making smoke in wartime was a terrible crime in the Royal Navy and while Worcester was crawling at seven knots across the North Sea with a 20-degree list, a sailor arrived from the bridge with a message for the Chief Engineer, "Captain's compliments, but he would be obliged if you would reduce the amount of smoke."
Griffiths sent back a message, "Owing to the holes in the ship there is a complete air passage through the engine room and I cannot stop the smoke."
With most of his navigational aids gone, the only way Coats could bring his ship home was to endeavour to steer back along the exact track on which he had come out, based on the magnetic compass course Campbell had given him. This meant he had to cross the minefield once again. This seemed a minor worry now. In their disabled condition, the tides and sandbanks were even more dangerous. As he was unable to signal, no one knew where he was or when he was likely to arrive.
After midnight silence fell on the ship, broken only by the labouring of the engines and the creakings of the battered wreckage as she rolled in the rising wind. Except for those on watch everyone seemed to be asleep. Even the wounded were asleep and fairly comfortable. Four never woke.
The doctor still toured the ship seeing that all the
wounded were well covered with blankets, especially those lying on deck. The badly wounded who could not be moved lay in ones and twos in all parts of the ship from the wheel-house to the engine room. The sick-bay was still too damaged to use and the lobby outside it smelt of burning and cordite fumes. But the little cabin forward gave shelter to a few men. Others lay in the galley.
While the captain was busy navigating the ship, First Officer Dick Taudevin came to him and said, "We ought to bury our dead at sea. It will help to keep up morale. And all these dead will cause consternation when we arrive."
Coats agreed. Following such an action, not only did it seem to him fitting to bury his sailors at sea, but he thought grimly to himself, "As our return is still by no means certain at least some of us will get a decent funeral!"
The dead were wrapped in weighted hammocks and one after another pushed over the side to splash into the waves, while Taudevin hastily read out the burial service. The ship could not heave-to for a proper funeral service as she might have sunk.
In wartime, lighthouses and lightships were darkened, but the Admiralty ordered the Orfordness light on the Suffolk coast lit up as a guide to Worcester in case she were still afloat. As he had no other means of navigation, Coats had to depend on this light to confirm his position.
At four o'clock in the morning, the weary doctor fell asleep with his head on the captain's table. At the same time the look-out saw a lighthouse beam and Commander Coats realized he had arrived where he ought to be.
Just before dawn, a bleary-eyed Taudevin shook the doctor awake saying, "We are just coming up to the Sunk." This was the Sunk Light Float at the entrance to Harwich Harbour. It was still dark when they climbed on deck together and the doctor went round the wounded again. The sky began to turn to grey. Dawn broke on the port bow and they could see the low misty coast of England.
Although the sea was much calmer, because of their slow speed in the fast running tide, they were nearly swept on to the sandbanks as they approached the harbour entrance. As they cleared them, they saw a convoy steaming out of Harwich and Coats turned to Taudevin and said, "Am I glad to see them!" A Hunt Class destroyer signalled: "Do you need assistance?" A winking lamp aboard Worcester proudly replied, "We have come from Holland and we can manage the rest of the trip alone." The signal added a request for ambulances to be ready to take off her wounded.
Refusing all help, Worcester steamed slowly up to the anchorage. She struggled into the harbour, listing heavily, full of holes with steam trickling from them. Her broken mast was still leaning against the funnel and her torn, smoke-blackened battle ensign was flying from a broomstick over the bridge, as all the ships in the harbour sounded their sirens. Whistles piped as they cleared lower deck and fell in aft to pay tribute to her. They stood cheering as Worcester drew abreast. When they approached nearer to land her crew also saw lines of sailors and Wrens standing cheering outside Shotley Sick Quarters. The Worcester's crew did not reply. There were too many dead.
Two waiting tugs were laid off until she was ready for berthing. All through the night Griffiths had wrestled with the oil pump, which had repeatedly broken down. But somehow he had managed to patch it up. Yet as the first hawsers were thrown across from Parkstone quay at Harwich the pump broke down again. This time he could not start it. It had packed up for good.
Then the ambulances began taking off the seriously wounded and the four men who had died during the night. In fact, they brought the total of dead to twenty-seven. There were only fifty-two unwounded survivors.
For the last time the doctor went wearily to his wrecked sick-bay, littered with torn bandages. His jacket was stiff with dried blood up to the elbows. The tops of his white sea boot stockings and the knees of his trousers were blood-soaked. The two lower jacket buttons were missing and he saw one of them battered and slightly splayed lying in the cabin. He instinctively picked it up and slipped it into his pocket.
It was only when he was lying in a hot bath in a Harwich hotel that the significance of the battered button dawned upon the doctor. For in the corresponding position on his stomach was a circular bluish-green bruise, two inches across, where the button had stopped a piece of shrapnel.
Last off the ship was Commander Coats, who pulled down the blackened battle ensign and carried it ashore.
Because of the magnitude of the disaster the crew were kept incommunicado for days. Douglas Ward, whose namesake E. Ward had died of wounds on the ship, was so worried in case there was a mix-up with the telegram that he obtained special permission to go to the police station to get a message through to his wife to say he was safe.
Chief Engineer Griffiths was afraid that his wife would think he was a casualty. To avoid giving her a shock he asked the Post Office to send her a greetings telegram. They did not do so. When she received an ordinary telegram she was so afraid of the news it might contain she asked her landlady to open it.
The rest of the flotilla was back at sea. Campbell and her sister destroyers had returned to Harwich by midnight to take on torpedoes to replace those fired, and replenish their ammunition. The destroyers searched all night but found no further trace of the German ships. This was fortunate for the Germans because the two battleships were partially crippled and all three still vulnerable.
Scharnhorst was ordered by Group North to make for Wilhelmshaven, Germany's chief naval base. As she made her way there at 3:50 a.m., a cipher message was received on Scharnhorst from Gneisenau reporting that, although damaged by a mine, she had reached the Heligoland anchorage with Prinz Eugen and they were both making for Brunsbuttel.
Though so near safety the Germans still had to face a period of near-disaster. Until they could reach the German ports all three captains were still worried about mines and air attacks. Yet no tugs or pilot boats were available to meet them after their gruelling voyage. It was one of the most inexplicable scandals of the operation from the German point of view.
Group North had made no arrangements and left them all night hanging about outside the harbours. It was almost as if they did not expect them to make it. Nor had they been supplied with any special charts of the approaches to the German coast. Captain Fein of Gneisenau recorded in his log: "It would have been very useful in this situation to have had a chart prepared on a large scale for the navigational approaches of the Elbe, like the one given by Group West for the navigational approaches of harbours of refuge."
After lengthy signal exchanges, Fein established that no pilots were available. Due to thickening ice and the uncertainty about his position, he decided he dare not sail into the Elbe without a pilot. Afraid to make a radio signal in case it alerted the British, he sent a small ship, barrier breaker 138, up the Elbe with the order to meet him at daybreak with pilots.
Although there was danger from the air, he considered that if he steamed to and fro on a dark night with poor visibility the danger of mines was greater, so he decided to anchor.
Prinz Eugen, following Gneisenau into Brunsbuttel, was also in the same dangerous situation. Fein signalled by a lamp to Brinkmann that there was no pilot but that one had been ordered for first light in the morning. While Gneisenau dropped anchor east of her, Prinz Eugen sailed at slow speed up and down all night. Her commander, Captain Brinkmann, refused to anchor, fearing torpedo or bomber attack more than Fein feared mines.
It was not until dawn that tugs and ice-breakers with pilots came out and Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen began to enter Brunsbuttel roadsteads. Even so the situation was still perilous.
Renewed air-raid warnings shortly before the tugs arrived made Fein afraid that the British would now, without regard to the consequences, employ all available aircraft to wreck the ships in the river estuaries. As a south-west wind was still blowing and high tide had still about two hours to run, it was not a good moment to try and bring the battleship into port. But in view of the alarms, Fein decided he must try and go in. He did not feel able to take responsibility for remaining at anchor and possibly being hit by b
ombs or torpedoes without at least making an attempt to secure his ship in the locks.
As Gneisenau slowly edged towards the mole her stern swung strongly in the current towards it. Fein ordered: "Emergency — full speed astern!" But as his ship backed away from the mole she began to drift towards a wreck that was lying at the entrance. Fein hastily tried again to bring her to a stop in order to manoeuvre her clear. But he did not succeed in doing so. The racing tide smashed Gneisenau against the wreck.
He tried to go astern to disentangle his ship but did not succeed at first. Then the tide and wind came to his rescue, and with a rending crash the ship swung clear. The starboard propeller shaft tunnel was flooded. It had already been making water as a result of the mine explosion but they had been able to control it. Now the engineers feared this new situation might be dangerous. So Fein anchored outside the locks to await slack water and more tugs. Once again no tugs came, so he weighed anchor and Gneisenau, cautiously using only her middle and port propeller shafts, slowly reached safety at last.
Prinz Eugen, following astern, almost ran into the same wreck lying at the harbour entrance, but managed to get clear at the last moment. Then she too tied up at Brunsbuttel North Locks.
Aboard Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen most of the crews slept for the first time in twenty-four hours. But officers paced their quarter-decks wondering what was the fate of Scharnhorst. There was still no news of her. Hooters and fog-bells were rung in Wilhelmshaven at two-minute intervals to guide Scharnhorst to the anchorage.
Group North failed her as they had the two other ships. At 6:43 a.m., the tug Steinhock met her but in spite of frequent calls no pilot boat came out, so the tug tried to pilot her in. At 7:00 a.m. Scharnhorst arrived at lightship "Fritz," where she took aboard the coastal artillery guard party. At 9:30 a.m. another tug arrived with Admiral Ciliax aboard. He and his staff were returning to the flagship.
Breakout Page 21