World War II: The Autobiography (16 page)

But there was nothing we could do for him. We watched, horrified, as he suddenly raised himself to his feet on the side of the raft and hurled himself into the black water with a scream that haunts me still.

My fellow survivor was a Fleet Air Arm pilot, Petty Officer Leggett. As that last awful day dragged by he tried to work out our direction of drift. According to his deductions we were nearing the Gulf Stream, which would carry us down toward the Norwegian coast.

Some hundreds of yards away we could see another raft. Several times we waved, but there was no response and at last we gave up trying to establish contact with what were only too obviously dead bodies.

The weather now had calmed a little and once, through the slight haze, we thought we could see the British Fleet. But it disappeared and our hopes sank again.

Then, miraculously, there was the drone of an aeroplane. It sang out of the blue sky and roared over our heads while we waved and shouted like maniacs. I could see it was a Walrus such as we had on the
Glorious.
But it banked away and in a few seconds was lost to sight.

We settled back on the float, stupefied with disappointment.

After a while, another Walrus passed overhead, but we had convinced ourselves that it was just imagination – the first signs of the madness that had already claimed one of our shipmates.

We told ourselves we could last another day at most, and then took it in turns to snatch our first sleep for three days, in spells of a few minutes each. In that temperature, any lengthy inaction would have stilled the blood in our veins for ever.

As I lay there watching the spout of whales not far away, something else attracted my attention – something wispy and indeterminate on the horizon. I sat up and peered hard. There was no doubt about it. Smoke! We thought it might be a German ship, though we didn’t care much. But as the masts and then the hull appeared we saw it was a trawler. Frantically we waved.

Twice that ship stopped and changed course while our hearts choked us, but at last there was no doubt that she had sighted us. Oh, the delicious agony of those last moments as we saw her steaming straight for us!

The rest is any shipwrecked sailor’s story. A rope ladder came over the side and the husky Norwegians dragged my fellow survivor aboard. I remember trying to climb the ladder myself, then I passed out.

When I came round I was lying in front of the galley fire. A sailor passed over some hot spirits and I drifted back into unconsciousness for many hours. When I awoke, it was to find myself in a bunk with another survivor, a stoker.

Altogether, I believe that ship picked up about thirty men – the bulk of those who survived.

It took us three days to reach land – three days that seemed like three weeks. We drank the ship’s freshwater supply in twenty-four hours and then they started making it for us down in the engine-room. None of us could eat solid food, not even the soup those fine fellows made for us.

We were a sorry lot when we made the Faroe Islands. Some were able to walk ashore between two sailors. Others, like myself, came off on a stretcher.

It isn’t possible to describe how we felt as each stage of our rescue brought us nearer and nearer to home and those we loved, and I’m not going to try. Nor can any of us express our thanks to the many people, Danes, Norwegians, Scots, English, who looked after us with such care as we passed through their hands.

For my part, I spent fourteen weeks in hospital with hands and feet badly frost-bitten, swollen to twice their normal size and blistered into shapelessness.

But it was a small price to pay for deliverance. The pain that still sears periodically through my feet and the bitterness of my soul when I think of those three awful days are nothing.

Hundreds upon hundreds of my shipmates of the
Glorious
who did their duty, simply and straightforwardly as I tried to do mine, perished in those frightful waters while the Hun sailed by, unmoved.

I am alive. I thank God for it, though I do not pretend to understand His ways.

U-99 ATTACKS A CONVOY, THE ATLANTIC, 18–19 OCTOBER 1940

Kapitan-Leutnant Otto Kretschtner, U-99

Kretschmer was the leading U-boat ace of World War II, sinking 350,00 tons of Allied shipping. Below is Kretschmer’s log detailing U-99’s initial attack on convoy SC7. The U-boat did not operate alone but in concert with several others – a classic example of Donitz’s “wolf-pack” tactic.

18th October
9.24
PM
. Exchange recognition signals with
U123.
Convoy again in sight. I am ahead of it, so allow my boat to drop back, avoiding leading destroyers. Destroyers are constantly firing starshells. From outside, I attack the right flank of the first formation.

10.02
PM
. Weather, visibility moderate, bright moon-light. Fire bow torpedo by director. Miss.

10.06
PM
. Fire stern tube by director. At 700 metres, hit forward of amidships. Vessel of some 6,500 tons sinks within 20 seconds.
I now proceed head-on into the convoy.

10.30
PM
. Fire bow tube by director. Miss because of error in calculation of gyro-angle. I therefore decide to fire rest of torpedoes without director, especially as the installation has still not been accepted and adjusted by the Torpedo Testing Department. Boat is soon sighted by a ship which fires a white star and turns towards us at full speed continuing even after we alter course.

I have to make off with engines all out. Eventually the ship turns off, fires one of her guns and again takes her place in the convoy.

11.30
PM
. Fire bow torpedo at a large freighter. As the ship turns towards us, the torpedo passes ahead of her and hits an even larger ship after a run of 1,740 metres. This ship of 7,000 tons is hit abreast the foremast and the bow quickly sinks below the surface, as two holds are apparently flooded.

11.55
PM
. Fire a bow torpedo at a large freighter of 6,000 tons at a range of 750 metres. Hit abreast foremast. Immediately after the torpedo explosion there is another explosion, with a high column of flame from bow to bridge. Smoke rises 200 metres. Bow apparently shattered. Ship continues to burn with green flame.

19th October.
12.15
AM
. Three destroyers approach the ship and search area in line abreast. I make off at full speed to the south-west and again make contact with the convoy. Torpedoes from other boats are constantly heard exploding. The destroyers do not know how to help and occupy themselves by constantly firing starshells which are of little effect in the bright moonlight. I now start attacking the convoy from astern.

Over the next few hours Kretschmer sank another four ships in convoy SC7.

HUNTING U-BOATS, 17 MARCH 1941

Captain Donald Macintyre RN, HMS
Walker

In the next hour five ships were torpedoed. I was near to despair and I racked my brains to find some way to stop the holocaust. While the convoy stayed in impeccable formation, we escorts raced about in the exasperating business of searching in vain for the almost invisible enemy. Our one hope was to sight a U-boat’s telltale white wake, give chase to force her to dive, and so give the Asdics
²
a chance to bring our depth-charges into action. Everything had to be subordinated to that end and so, with binoculars firmly wedged on a steady bearing, I put
Walker into
a gently curving course, thereby putting every point of the compass under a penetrating prove. It worked.

As her bows swung, a thin line of white water came into the lens of my glasses, a thin line which could only be the wake of a ship. There were none of ours in that direction; it had to be a U-boat! I shouted orders increasing speed to thirty knots and altered course towards the target. Suddenly, the U-boat spotted us and in a cloud of spray he crash-dived. A swirl of phosphorescent water still lingered as we passed over the spot and sent a pattern of ten depth-charges crashing down. We could hardly have missed; it had been so quick we must have dropped them smack on top of him. Then the depth-charges exploded with great cracking explosions and giant water-spouts rose to masthead height astern of us. Two and a half minutes later another explosion followed and an orange flash spread momentarily across the surface. We had every reason to hope that this was our first “kill”.

Though we learned that this was not so, for our charges had exploded too deeply to do him fatal damage, we felt almost certain at the time when our Asdic search showed no trace of a contact.
Vanoc
came racing past to rejoin the convoy and offered assistance. I refused this, convinced as I was that we could safely leave the scene with a “probable” marked down in the logbook, and ordered her back to her station.

However, no U-boat was officially recorded as destroyed without tangible evidence and I continued the Asdic search until such time as wreckage should come to the surface.

It was just as well. For half an hour later we gained contact with a certain U-boat. Our prey had not been “killed”; he was, in fact, sneaking back towards the convoy, still bent on attack.

Recalling
Vanoc
to assist in the hunt, we set about our target with a series of carefully aimed patterns of depth-charges.

Taking it in turns to run in to the attack, pattern after pattern of depth-charges went down as we tried to get one to within the lethal range of about twenty feet of our target. But he was a wily opponent and, dodging and twisting in the depths, he managed to escape destruction though heavily damaged.

Soon the waters became so disturbed by the repeated explosions, each one of which sent back an echo to the Asdic’s sound beam, that we could no longer distinguish our target from the other echoes and a lull in the fight was forced upon us.

I had for some time past noticed in the distance the bobbing lights from the lifeboats of one of our sunken ships, but with an enemy to engage there was nothing for it but to harden my heart and hope that the time might come later when I could rescue the crews. This lull seemed a good opportunity and perhaps if we left the area temporarily the U-boat commander might think he had shaken us off and be tempted into some indiscretion. So, the
Vanoc
steaming round us in protection, we stopped and picked up the master and thirty-seven of the crew of the ss
J.B. White.

This completed, the time was ripe to head quietly back to where the U-boat had last been located and perhaps catch him licking his wounds on the surface.

We had hardly got under way when I noticed that
Vanoc
was drawing ahead fast and thought perhaps she had misread the signal ordering the speed to be maintained. As I ordered a signal to be made to her, Yeoman of Signals Gerrard said, “She’s signalling to us, sir, but I can’t read it as her light is flickering so badly.” I realised that
Vanoc
must be going ahead at her full speed and being, like
Walker,
an old veteran, her bridge would be shaking and rattling as her 30,000 hp drove her forward through the Atlantic swell.

Rupert Bray, on the bridge beside me, said, “She must have sighted the U-boat.” Even as he spoke,
Vanoc
came on the air with his radio telephone, with the laconic signal: “Have rammed and sunk U-boat.”
³

What a blissful moment that was for us, the successful culmination of a long and arduous fight. Something in the way of revenge for our losses in the convoy had been achieved.

There was grim joy on board
Walker,
and not least amongst the merchant seamen from the
J.B. White,
who felt they had a personal score to settle. But for the moment our part was confined to circling
Vanoc
in protection, while she picked up the few survivors from the U-boat and examined herself for damage. We were glad of this breathing space, as, with all the depth-charges carried on the upper deck expended, the depth-charge party, led by Leading Seaman Prout, were struggling to hoist up more of these awkward heavy loads from the magazine, with the ship rolling in the Atlantic swell, and often with water swirling round their waists. They were not a moment too soon, for, as we circled
Vanoc,
I was electrified to hear the Asdic operator Able Seaman Backhouse excitedly reporting, “Contact, contact.” But I could hardly credit it, for not only was it unbelievable that in all the wide wastes of the Atlantic a second U-boat should turn up just where another had gone to the bottom, but I knew that there were sure to be areas of disturbed water persisting in the vicinity from our own and
Vanoc’
s wakes. The echo was not very clear and I expressed my doubts to John Langton, but Backhouse was not to be disheartened. “Contact definitely submarine”, he reported, and as I listened to the ping the echo sharpened and there could be no further doubt. With a warning to the men aft to get any charges ready that they had managed to hoist into the throwers and rails, we ran into the attack. It was a great test for John Langton, for, with the maddening habit of the beautiful instruments of precision provided for us, they all elected to break down at the crucial moment. But much patient drill against just such an emergency now brought its reward. Timing his attack by the most primitive methods Langton gave the order to fire. A pattern of six depth-charges – all that could be got ready in time-went down. As they exploded,
Walker
ran on to get sea-room to turn for further attacks, but as we turned came the thrilling signal from
Vanoc –
“U-boat surfaced astern of me.”

A searchlight beam stabbed into the night from
Vanoc,
illuminating the submarine U-99 which lay stopped. The guns’ crews in both ships sprang into action and the blinding flashes from the four-inch guns and tracers from the smaller weapons made a great display, though I fear their accuracy was not remarkable. Destroyer night gunnery in such a mêlée is apt to be pretty wild and in those days, when flashless cordite was not issued to us, each salvo left one temporarily blinded. In
Walker
confusion soon reigned around the guns, for the enthusiasm of our guests from
J.B. White
knew no bounds. Joining up with the ammunition supply parties, shells came up at such a phenomenal rate that the decks were piled high with them till the guns’ crews were hardly able to work their guns. But fortunately we were able very soon to cease fire as a signal lamp flashing from the U-boat, “We are sunking” [
sic
], made it clear that the action was over. Keeping end on to the U-boat in case he still had some fight left, we prepared to lower a boat in case there was a chance of a capture, but even as we did so the crew of the U-boat abandoned ship and she plunged to the bottom.