The Laconia Incident

by Gene Masters

  In addition to his native Italian, the handsome, five-foot, six-inch, dark-eyed Marco was fluent in English, French, Spanish, and German, and he could read and write Latin and classical Greek. He had been studying languages at the University of Bologna for almost three years, when, in the Winter of 1935, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini persuaded Italian King Victor Emmanuel III to invade Ethiopia (also known at the time as Abyssinia).

  The European states and the British had long since carved out vassal states in Africa, and Italy had been no exception, with colonies in Libya in North Africa, and Eritrea and Italian Somaliland on the horn of the continent. Between these last two possessions, and the only independent state left in Africa, was the 400,000-square-mile Ethiopia, whose head of state was Emperor Haile Selassie. Selassie claimed to be a direct descendent of the biblical King Solomon. Mussolini had in mind nothing less than the establishment of the new Roman Empire, and Ethiopia had to be conquered before it could be linked with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to form the new Italian East Africa.

  The British, who owned all the other surrounding colonies, had elected to stand apart from the fray in the hopes of keeping Italy in the British-French sphere of influence, and away from that of the Germans and Austrians.

  When it became apparent to the Ethiopian Emperor that an Italian invasion was imminent, and that there would be no aid forthcoming from the British and the French, Haile Selassie issued the following general order:

  All men and boys able to carry a spear go to Addis Ababa. Every married man will bring his wife to cook and wash for him. Every unmarried man will bring any unmarried woman he can find to cook and wash for him. Women with babies, the blind, and those too aged and infirm to carry a spear are excused. Anyone found at home after receiving this order will be hanged.

  The Emperor was able to mobilize some half-million men. There were only about 400,000 rifles available for them, however, and many of these were of dubious age and in poor repair.

  * * * * *

  For Marco Scarpetti, completing his third year of studies at the university, the siren call of Il Duce went completely unheeded. Dreams of military glory in North Africa and a new Roman Empire, together with the urgings of a certain Fascist professor for all his students to enlist, would never overcome Marco’s overriding desire to finish his studies. In any case, in January 1936, to the dismay of his physician father and doting mother, their only son Marco was drafted into the Regio Esercito, the Italian Royal Army. His new superiors, noting his three years of university, had urged Scarpetti to apply for officer training, but Marco, an unwilling draftee in the first place, elected to serve as a private soldier.

  The Ethiopian campaign served only to eliminate from Marco whatever illusions he might have remotely entertained about “a new Roman Empire.” The poorly-armed and underequipped Ethiopians, with some soldiers fighting with little more than spears and machetes, managed to hold off a mechanized Italian Army and the Italian colonial troops for over a year. (In contrast, Germany would later defeat a well-equipped and well-trained French army in less than six weeks.)

  It was then that the conquering Italians finally discovered that winning the war was one thing, while winning over the local populace was another thing altogether. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, forced into exile in Jerusalem, continued to hold sway over the Ethiopian people, even from afar. Rebellious guerrillas kept the Regio Esercito units continually looking over their shoulders.

  If Marco was an unwilling draftee, he nonetheless made the best of a bad situation. He threw himself into becoming a good soldier with at least some of the same zest with which he had pursued his studies. He gradually rose through the ratings, and while still serving in Ethiopia, Marco made sergeant.

  In May, 1939, Germany and Italy signed the “Pact of Steel,” formalizing the Axis Alliance, and pledging military cooperation. Shortly afterward, there came the news of the coordinated German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September, 1939. It was that invasion that initiated war between Germany and Italy, and Poland’s treaty allies, England and France. Soon afterward, Marco was transferred to serve in Libya with the Italian 1st Army.

  For Marco, fighting an expanded war against other Europeans for God-only-knew-how-long, was the stuff of nightmares. Japan joined the Axis in September, 1940, with the Berlin signing of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, and Marco knew in his heart that it would only be a matter of time before the rest of the world would be drawn into the fighting.

  Italy invaded Egypt from Libya almost coincidentally with the signing of the Tripartite Pact. Now Marco Scarpetti found himself fighting not Ethiopian spears and machetes, but British troops, and a trained and mechanized army. The following December, a British counterattack in the Libyan desert drove back the Italians, in the process decimating the Italian 10th Army. Marco was lucky to have escaped the initial British onslaught, as he and the Italian 1st retreated north to Benghazi.

  Now backed into a corner in Libya, Mussolini appealed to Hitler for assistance. Der Fuehrer, however, was much more concerned with the newly-initiated Russian campaign. Eventually, however, Hitler did respond to Mussolini, but only to placate his friend and Italian ally. He dispatched a small force to Tripoli under Generallieutnant Erwin Rommel in February, 1941.

  In the months that followed, British, Italian, and German fortunes in North Africa ebbed and flowed across the Libyan and Egyptian deserts.

  * * * * *

  The British captured Marco just two days before Christmas. He was herded along with twelve other Italian POWs into a hastily-erected compound. Pointing to Marco, the British private who had captured him said to the officer in charge, “This one speaks English.”

  As their ranks quickly grew, Marco became the official translator for his fellow Italian prisoners, always the one selected to relay prisoner complaints to their British captors. The British, in turn, attempted to use Marco to relay their orders to the prisoners, something he steadfastly refused to do. The British soon labeled the diminutive, scholarly-looking, Italian as a somewhat-useful troublemaker.

  What followed for Marco were five months of being shifted from prison camp to prison camp, as the fighting in North Africa raged on. Things were going badly for the British, who were being driven back into Egypt by the Germans, and the Italian POWs were only hindering the army’s freedom of movement. So it was, then, that Marco was among some 400 other Italian prisoners transported to Alexandria. In Alexandria, the Italians were placed under a guard of Polish soldiers and then loaded aboard an aged Polish cargo ship.

  After two days, the ship got underway, departing Alexandria for—where? The Italians had no idea where the ship was headed. Their Polish guards knew, perhaps, but none of the guards spoke any Italian. For once, Marco’s language skills were useless—he knew no Polish whatsoever.

  Conditions aboard the Polish ship were hardly ideal, with Marco and his compatriots confined to the ship’s cargo holds. There were no bunks per se, but room enough to stretch out on the deck. The sanitary conditions were, to say the least, also primitive.

  Nonetheless, the Italians were fed regular meals, and the fare, though simple, was reasonably nutritious. Each day, everyone was brought up on deck in small groups for two hours of sunlight and exercise. The Polish troops were not exactly gentle with their charges, but neither were they in any way brutal. Still, although many of the Italians became sick anyway, Marco managed to remain healthy.

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  7

  Port Said, Navy House, January 1942

  With three warships and an oiler sitting out of commission in Alexandria, the Royal Navy suddenly had about 1,700 excess sailors it needed to find billets for.

  In Alexandria, Robby Cotton and his mates, Ralph Tinsdale, Charles Martin, and James Fellows, were given draft chits that posted them to shore duty in Port Said, Egypt, at the mouth of the Suez Canal. (Their mate, Arthur Kinkaid, was ashore, confined to the brig, having come down with a dose of gonorrh
ea. He had contracted the disease in Malta, but kept it hidden until there was nothing left to do but report himself into sick bay. He was rewarded with a three-week course of sulfonamide treatments and three months in the brig. To his dismay, Arthur later found out that if he had reported his ailment immediately, he would only have been confined to the ship until declared cured by the medics.)

  For Robby and his mates, the 262-mile overland trip along the Egyptian Mediterranean coastline took six uncomfortable hours.

  Upon reaching Port Said the day after New Year’s Day, 1942, Robby, Ralph, Charlie, and James reported to Navy House, a large building that overlooked the wharf and harbor works.

  Jim McLoughlin, Robby’s other mate from Valiant, arrived several days afterward. There were no provisions for separating the ratings for sailors bunked at Navy House, and Robby was surprised and delighted when Jim McLoughlin threw his duffle down next to the empty bunk across from his.

  “Hey, Minnow,” McLoughlin said, “no telling what riff-raff they let in here, eh?”

  “Jim!” was all Robby could think to say.

  “In the flesh.”

  * * * * *

  “I don’t guess I’m much of a warrior, Jim,” Robby confided to McLoughlin as they both walked guard duty along the pier at Port Said. “I was pretty much frightened out of my wits when the Barham was hit. First she was there, going along just fine-like, and a minute later she was all aflame and coming apart! And—God help me, Jim—all I could think about was that Valaint was gonna be next. I mean, I can handle me own in air raids all day long, ‘cause at least we can shoot back at the bloody planes . . . but subs! There’s no knowing, no telling . . .” (Robby paused for a breath, as McLoughlin listened.) “The men in the water,” he continued, “dead bodies in life jackets floating—Barham just rolling over and disappearing like that—and all I could think about was, ‘It’s all over, I’m to be next!’ “ He paused again, and then said, the sadness palpable in his voice, “I’m just a bloomin’ coward!”

  “Bollocks, Minnow,” McLoughlin reassured him, “you’re no coward. You’re just normal is all.” McLoughlin paused for a few seconds, as if gathering his thoughts. “You’d be a lunatic not to have the shite scared out of you seeing a thing like that. You’re normal, is all,” he finally reiterated. “I was every bit as frightened as you was then, and I’ve seen a lot more of such then you. You don’t ever get over being scared, you just get used to it. And you’re always thankful that—for whatever reason—you’re the one what’s been spared. You just thank God for it, and move on.”

  “I sure hope you’re right about that.”

  “I am, Robby. Trust me, Minnow, I am.”

  * * * * *

  Robby, his mates, and McLoughlin would languish in Port Said for another five months, enduring what was a very hot and humid summer. With frequent liberty, they also got to know the city fairly well. Port Said offered many cultural venues to be seen in what was, after all, one of the more cosmopolitan cities in Egypt. Despite themselves, Robby and his friends couldn’t help but admire and absorb at least some of the city’s arts and architecture. They even learned a bit of Arabic. That is not to say that Robby wasn’t inclined to give in to his baser urges.

  He and his mates spent most of their liberty hours in the “recreational” parts of the city, partaking of its diversions. When Robby was at his weakest, McLoughlin was usually there to pound some sense into his head, warning him of the “billons of little bugs” that even the most alluring of the bar women carried, just waiting to infect him with all sorts of incurable diseases. As far as Robby’s other mates were concerned, though, McLoughlin was just some sort of monk—or perhaps he was planning on becoming a priest after the war. “You’re only young once, Mate, and there’s a war on. You gotta pick them daisies when you can,” was the advice that Ralph, Charles, and James proffered.

  But McLoughlin wasn’t always there. So, succumb Robby did, on occasion. He was never so drunk, nor so stupid, however, as to not wear protection.

  The officers who gave the monthly VD lectures had always said, “Don’t. But if you do, always, always, wear a condom. Piss right afterwards, and wash your peter down good when you get back to the ship.” Robby knew that the Catholic Church said using condoms was a mortal sin, but fornication was also a mortal sin, and so, if he was going to go to Hell anyway . . .

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  8

  Off Lorient, Vichy Republic, April, 1942

  U-156 motored out to sea leaving the submarine pens at Lorient behind. It was 22 April, 1942, and newly promoted Kapitanleutnant Werner Hartenstein was taking his boat out on her third war patrol. Behind Hartenstein, painted on the steel cowling that enclosed the boat’s conning tower, was his U-boat’s emblem: a silhouette of the boat riding a lightning bolt.

  Although it was April, and the sun was bright overhead, that Wednesday morning it was unseasonably cold. But Hartenstein, standing on the bridge of his command, was oblivious to the chill. He was in his element. He was taking his beloved boat, and a crew that idolized him, into the Caribbean Sea to do battle with the enemy.

  Beside Hartenstein on the bridge was his first officer, Oberleutnant zur see Paul Just. Just had served as Hartenstein’s first officer since the boat’s commissioning, and Hartenstein had grown to trust him implicitly.

  “It’s a truly beautiful day, Captain,” Just said, as he scanned the sky overhead with his binoculars, searching for their pathfinder escort. He could hear the aircraft’s engine, but he could not spot the plane.

  “Don’t bother, Paul, you won’t spot him. He’s in the Sun,” Hartenstein said, his boyish good looks somewhat distorted by his smile. (Whenever Hartenstein smiled, it seemed to somehow puff out his cheekbones, emphasizing the dueling scar on his left cheek and the sharpness of his chin. Whenever he smiled broadly, he looked, in a word, cadaverous.)

  “Ah,” Just exclaimed, “that explains it,” and he set the Zeiss binoculars down to let them hang at his chest. Oberleutnant Just, at just under six feet, was half a head taller than Hartenstein, and a good deal heavier.

  Lorient was on the Le Blavet River in West-central France. Once U-156 cleared the estuary, Hartenstein turned his boat due west, on course to pass the island of Groix, well to the south. What had been a calm sea outside the harbor, was now choppy, with white foam caps atop ragged blue-violet waves blown by a brisk wind.

  U-156 was a type IXC U-boat, a longer-range and more-capable version of the Kreigsmarine’s workhorse submarine, the type VIIC. On that April morning, she was making top speed on the surface, just over eighteen knots, as fast as her twin, 4,300 bhp, MAN 9-clyinder diesels would drive her twin screws.

  Before the morning was over, Hartenstein would exercise the boat and her crew, crash diving her to her maximum operating depth, 230 meters (750 feet). If he could, while submerged, he would live-fire a torpedo. However, the twenty-two G7e torpedoes U-156 carried to her patrol grounds were far too precious, so, instead, he would exercise his torpedomen and the boat’s six torpedo tubes (four forward and two aft) by firing water slugs from an empty tube.

  Once U-156 was back on the surface, her captain would have his crew exercise her armament: her 10.5 cm. deck gun, and her two (one 3.7 cm., and one 2 cm., twin-mount) anti-aircraft machine guns. But all that was for later in the morning. For the time being, Hartenstein would enjoy the crisp early morning air, the surging sea, and the sunshine.

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  9

  Ascension Island, June, 1942

  Wideawake Field was ready for business, and Colonel Ross O. Baldwin, United States Army, an infantry officer, surveyed his new command. The construction that had begun on Ascension Island the previous April, under a cloak of tight security, was now complete. Baldwin looked out over the airfield from atop its air control tower, the highest man-made structure on the island. Of course, it was dwarfed by the 2,800-foot high peak of Green Mountain at the island’s center, but Baldwin was of
a mind that if the Army had been tasked to build that as well, it too would have been built in record time!

  The 38th Engineer Combat Regiment, Baldwin thought, had done “One hell of a job!”

  All the construction materials and equipment—every last bit of it—had to be off-loaded from deep water cargo ships at anchor, offshore, and onto smaller vessels, to land them, because Ascension Island had no harbor. Everything—heavy construction machinery, even the guns for the island’s defense—had to be painstakingly ferried ashore.

  Baldwin looked out from the tower over the new 6,000-foot runway. Beautiful, he thought, just beautiful! Besides the runway, he surveyed the camouflaged fuel storage tanks, the desalinization plant, gun emplacements, barracks, a hospital, and the other support facilities. None of these existed just ninety days earlier. There were also, he knew (though they were outside his field of vision), even two radar stations in place, one on either side of Green Mountain.

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  10

  Port Said, June, 1942

  Robby Cotton, his mates, Ralph, Charles, and James, along with Jim McLoughlin, were sure that the Royal Navy had completely forgotten about them. They had had been posted to Navy House since the beginning of the year, and it was now the end of June. The duty had been light: limbering the shore defense guns daily; cleaning the barracks incessantly; and walking guard duty around the base perimeter and on the docks.