by Gene Masters
When Italy eventually capitulated that following September, 1943, the Italians in the camp were once again former POWs, but, once again, nothing much changed. Sicily was in Allied hands, as were parts of the southern mainland, but the bulk of the Italian peninsula itself was still in German, and die-hard Italian Fascist, hands. It wasn’t until the final German capitulation, in May 1945, that the Italians were repatriated, and only then was Marco able to return to Bologna.
* * * * *
Shortly after the Hecla was sunk, in mid-November 1942, and with Jim McLoughlin’s second bout with severe malaria ended, he was drafted to HMS Dragon, an aged cruiser. Dragon eventually brought him back from Freetown to his home in Liverpool in time to celebrate Christmas with his family.
The following June, now posted to HMS Drake in Plymouth on extended leave, he met a Royal Army Wren, Dorothy Field, who, at the time, was just nineteen.
When Jim McLoughlin’s extended leave in Plymouth ended, he was drafted to HMS Implacable, a newly commissioned carrier, fresh out of the shipyards. Before reporting aboard, however, on 12 September 1944, he and Dorothy were married. Aboard Implacable, Jim once again was hit with a bout of malaria—severe enough that he had to be detached from the ship and treated ashore.
Recovered yet again, Jim was drafted to HMS Golden Hind. But the Golden Hind was in Sydney, Australia. McLoughlin was unhappy to be separated so far from his new, and now pregnant, Dorothy, but he dutifully made his way to Australia to join his ship.
Once there, McLoughlin fell in love with Australia and her people, and, after the war, he and Dorothy sailed to Australia and settled there, and it was there that they remained permanently, and there they raised their family.
Whenever questioned about the Laconia incident, McLoughlin always admitted that he had been favorably impressed by Hartenstein, and was grateful for his kindness and gentlemanly behavior.
* * * * *
On 8 March 1943, fifty-two days into her fifth war patrol, and with Hartenstein still in command, U-156 was attacked from the air and sunk by four depth charges released from an American PBY Catalina. The attack occurred just east the Island of Barbados, in the Atlantic. There were no survivors.
Similarly, two months before U-156 met her fate, U-507 was attacked and sunk by another PBY off the Brazilian coast. Harro Schacht went down with his entire crew.
In July, 1943, U-506, sailing off southwest Spain, was attacked and sunk by a B-24 Liberator bomber. There were six survivors; Erich Würdermann was not among them.
* * * * *
The Armistice of Cassibile was signed on 3 September 1943, ending hostilities between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allies. A few days later, Luigi de la Penne was offered the opportunity to be released from prison by the British, provided he join the fight on the side of the Allies. De la Penne had no love for the Nazis. He accepted.
De la Penne went on to distinguish himself in a joint Italian/British operation against the Germans at La Spezia in 1944. After the war, he stayed in the Italian Navy, rising to the rank of vice admiral. A class of Italian frigates was later named after him.
* * * * *
The Commandante Cappellini was converted by the Italians into a cargo carrier and blockade runner, and renamed Acquilla III. She was sent to the Indian Ocean to smuggle material for the German and Japanese forces operating there. After the Italian capitulation, she was seized by the Germans, and rechristened UIT-24. Then again, with the defeat of Nazi Germany, she was appropriated by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and received yet another new designation, I-503.
When Japan capitulated, the U.S. Navy towed I-503 out to sea and sunk her. Thus it was that the Cappellini had the distinction of having seen service under all three Axis powers.
* * * * *
After the liberation of France, in late August 1944, the civilian prisoners held in an old French Foreign Legion Camp in North Africa were released. Among the first to be released was Violet Logan and her now toddler daughter, Helen, who made their way to Wales, and to her husband’s family in Ynysybwl. They arrived that Christmas.
For whatever reason, the British servicemen were not immediately released. So it was that Donald Logan was unable to follow Violet to Wales until months later.
Whenever asked, the Logans always stressed that their survival from the sunken Laconia was the result of the humane qualities exhibited by the U-boat commander, Werner Hartenstein.
* * * * *
Also released from the Internment Camp in Casablanca, in late November, 1944 was Stanislaw Kominsky. Upon their release, the Poles were instructed to arrange with the British authorities for transportation back to Poland. For Stanislaw, that would have meant return to military service. But Poland was, at the time, under the protection of the Soviet Union, and Stanislaw did not relish the thought of serving in a Polish army answering to Russian overlords; it was the Soviets, after all, who had raped his country, along with the Nazis, in 1939.
So Stanislaw never bothered to report to the British for repatriation, and decided instead to wait it out until the situation in Poland stabilized. Only then would he quietly make his way back to Poland on his own schedule. In the internment camp, he had developed passable French, so, he decided to settle somewhere in France for the interim. “Somewhere in France” became southwest France near the town of Auch, in Gascony. There, he obtained work as a laborer on a farm. The situation was, in Stanislaw’s mind, only temporary.
A year passed, and the situation in Poland only grew worse from Stanislaw’s perspective: the Soviet Union now exerted complete control over his country, and a puppet Polish Communist government had been put solidly in place. Meanwhile, he had met a young lady, the daughter of the owner of the farm on which he was working.
Kominsky family descendants can still be found in Gascony.
* * * * *
The military career of Captain Robert Richardson was not in the least way adversely affected by the Laconia incident. Richardson rose through the ranks, retiring as a United States Air Force Brigadier General in 1967.
* * * * *
At the end of the war in May 1945, before committing suicide, Adolf Hitler turned over the reins of the German government to Karl Dönitz. As the sole ruler of Nazi Germany, it was Dönitz who accepted the Allied surrender terms.
The Nuremburg War Crimes Trials followed the war, with indictments handed down by the four-power International Military Tribunal. Donitz was among those indicted. The tribunal had a very difficult time showing that Dönitz had behaved in any way contrary to the rules of war.
In the end, they pointed to the Laconia Order as proof that, in issuing the order, Dönitz had, in fact, directed his submarine commanders to behave contrary to the rules of war. In so doing, the tribunal ignored the fact that American submarines in the Pacific had waged unconditional submarine warfare against Japan throughout the entire war. Karl Dönitz served eleven years in Spandau prison before being released in 1956.
* * * * *
Robby Cotton left the Violet, and the Royal Navy, in September, 1945. He returned to Scotland, to Dalmuir, and even took a job as an assistant foreman at the William Beardmore and Company Shipbuilding Works, the very same shipyard where his father had worked. For a while he seemed content to work day-to-day and return to a flat he rented in Dalmuir, not too far from where his boyhood home once stood (now just open land cleared of rubble). He had even taken up with a young woman who had been four classes behind him at St. Stephans.
But Robby grew restless. He left Dalmuir, and made his way to Liverpool, where he took a job as an ordinary seaman aboard a merchant vessel. He crisscrossed the oceans several times before leaving the merchant service in 1953. He returned to Scotland, where he entered Prinknash Abbey, in central Scotland, some forty miles north of Loch Lomond. Robby took final vows as a Benedictine Monk at Prinknash just four years later. He died there in 1998.
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Acknowledgments
This novel has b
een written to coincide as closely as possible to the actual chain of events as described. The following reference materials have been invaluable:
The Sinking of the Laconia and the U-Boat War, James P. Duffy, University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
One Common Enemy, Jim McLoughlin with David Gibb, Wakefield Press, 2006.
http://www.uboataces.com/uboat-type-vii.shtml Type VII U-Boat
https://www.uboat.net/articles/index.html?article=33 The Laconia Incident, Gudmundur Helgason
https://www.gingkoedizioni.it/the-sinking-of-the-laconia-not-always-bad-and-good-are-on-one-side/ The Sinking of the Laconia – Not Always Good and Evil Are on One Side, Angelo Paratico, 29 Oct 2013.
https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-15012/medal-honours-the-heroics-of-wartime-ships-captain-1-761584 Medal Honors Heroics of Wartime Ship’s Captain, The Scotsman (newspaper), 23 July 2009
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/showbiz/baby-helen-story-laconia-1891494 Baby Helen and the Story of the Laconia, 28 Mar 2013.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/%27I+survived+German+torpedo+attack...%27.-a0168616643 I Survived German Torpedo Attack, 11 Sept 2007.
https://uboat.net/men/hartenstein.htm Top U-Boat Aces: Werner Hartenstein
http://wernerhartenstein.tripod.com/U156Laconia.htm Werner Hartenstein and the Laconia Incident
http://www.sath.org.uk/edscot/www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/20thand21stcenturies/worldwarII/clydebankblitz/index.html The Clydebank Blitz
https://www.scotsman.com/regions/glasgow-strathclyde/recalling-the-clydebank-blitz-76-years-on-1-4391237 Recalling the Clydebank Blitz – 76 Years On, The Scotsman (newspaper), 13 Mar 2017,
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C11676 Crew of the HMT Laconia During a Gun-Drill
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-33092351 Lancanstria: The Forgotten Tragedy of World War Two, Graham Fraser, 13 June 2015.
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About the Author
Gene Masters is a retired consulting engineer living in East Tennessee with his wife, Ruth. They have two grown daughters, and two grandchildren. He is the author of several technical treatises, including his doctoral dissertation, but Silent Warriors is his first serious attempt at fiction.
Masters received a commission in the U.S. Navy on graduation from Notre Dame, and his first tour of duty was aboard a transport in the Western Pacific. His second tour was aboard a recommissioned and updated diesel-electric submarine, the USS Angler. Angler was originally commissioned in 1943, and made seven war patrols in the Pacific before being decommissioned. Her updating to an SSK-class boat in the 1950s fitted her for operation against cold war submarine adversaries with advanced soundproofing and sonar. Masters left Angler and active duty after a Mediterranean tour. Later Naval Reserve assignments included the diesel-electric submarines USS Manta and the USS Ling.
After active duty, Masters pursued a career in engineering, and served in various companies until settling into a career as a consulting engineer. He retired in 2009. He has written two other novels: Silent Warriors and Operation Exodus. Readers interested in learning more about the author and his books can visit his website at: www.genemasters.net.
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