At All Costs (30 page)

The minesweeper
Rye
managed to tow the
Ohio
for about forty-five minutes. But at 0503, the ten-inch manila hawser parted. All the volunteers were transferred back onto the
Penn,
which steamed off to a distance. Larsen, Dales, and Allan Shaw tried finally to get some sleep, in steel corners of the
Penn.
As dawn approached, the
Ohio
was abandoned and adrift once again.

PART VIII •••

TWO MEN, ONE WARRIOR

CHAPTER 42 •••

BLACK DOG

A
s Larsen was climbing over the rails of the
Penn
onto the
Ohio,

Churchill was climbing the steps of the Kremlin to see Stalin. “The meeting was a flop,” said Sir Charles Wilson. “It was as if yesterday’s meeting, with its good humour and apparent agreement, had never taken place.”

“We argued for about two hours, during which Stalin said a great many disagreeable things, especially about our being too much afraid of fighting the Germans,” said Churchill. “I repulsed all his contentions squarely, but without taunts of any kind.”

Tobruk had fallen while Churchill was with FDR at a critical and delicate time, trying to secure support for his cause; there was little that could have been worse than that. But now Operation Pedestal
—Malta—
was going down while he was with Stalin, needing to show strength to argue his case. He needed all he could find. Before he had left, he had cabled FDR, “I should greatly like to have your aid and countenance in my talks with Joe…. I have a somewhat raw job.”

Churchill had requested daily reports on the progress of the convoy—he had insisted on them, to include just one subject: Pedestal. He sent the First Sea Lord, Dudley Pound, a “most secret” cipher telegram: “Shall be glad of early information about PEDESTAL if it can safely be sent to Moscow, but do not send to Teheran.”

He wanted something positive to show Stalin as evidence of his commitment to his own crocodile theory. The
Ohio
should have been in Malta by now. Churchill desperately wanted to be able to lay the tanker on the table like an ace-high straight. But when he looked at his hand he saw more humiliation, this time with the Soviet premier, after the American president. He looked deeper, and saw an empty chair at his desk at 10 Downing Street. Tobruk, PQ17, Harpoon, Pedestal/Malta: consecutive disastrous defeats, in just sixty days. His leadership wouldn’t be able to withstand it. “I was politically at my weakest, and without a gleam of military success,” Churchill said about this period.

Although Stalin was fighting Hitler, Russia was not yet an ally of Britain and the United States. This conference needed to change that, and the pressure was on Churchill to make it happen. Stalin was not impressed by defensive efforts. He understood two things: strength and sacrifice. “His experience showed that troops must be blooded in battle,” said Churchill. “If you did not blood your troops you had no idea what their value was.”

Churchill had received his first report from Admiral Pound that morning, and it painted an ugly picture.

MOST IMMEDIATE

Personal for Prime Minister from First Sea Lord

A. 3 Ships have arrived and between them carry 6000 tons of flour, 2000 tons aviation spirit and a considerable amount of ammunition besides other stores.

B. There is a possibility that the oiler and one other ship may get in but chances are not good.

C, D, E, and F report the destruction to
Nigeria, Kenya, Indomitable,
and
Rodney
.

G. All forces appear to have played their part well, but the odds which were concentrated against them were too heavy.

H. TORCH appears all the more necessary.

Churchill’s troops were bloodied, but he needed to show Stalin some power in the Mediterranean in order to seal the deal on Operation Torch. He still couldn’t point to a Malta capable of attacking the belly of the crocodile. Stalin’s open mind about Torch had snapped shut like a bear trap, and with no success from Operation Pedestal, Churchill couldn’t pry it back open.

“I am downhearted and dispirited,” said Churchill when he returned to his villa that night. “I have come a long way and made a great effort. Stalin lay back puffing at his pipe, with his eyes half closed, emitting streams of insults. He said the Russians were losing 10,000 men a day. He said that if the British Army had been fighting the Germans as much as the Red Army had, it would not be so frightened of them. He was most uncomplimentary to our Army. He said we had broken our word about a second Front.”

The prime minister squeezed his lips together. “I can harden too,” he said. “I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better to leave Stalin to fight his own battles.

“Losing all these British ships,” he muttered. “Only three of fourteen got through in the convoy.”

Churchill was sorely tempted to walk out and go home. He stopped just short of doing so. “No, that is going too far, I think,” he said.

CHAPTER 43 •••

THE BOFORS

R
oger Hill raced all night in the
Ledbury
from the Gulf of Hammamet back to the
Ohio.
He found her adrift in the ghostly daybreak. There was no sign of the
Penn
or the
Bramham.
The tanker appeared to be totally and finally abandoned.

“I asked for volunteers from the survivors we had picked up from the fire, and all the men who were not injured or badly shocked said they would go onto the
Ohio,
” he said. “I thought this was just about the bravest act I had ever known. If
Ohio
was hit she would go up even higher than the merchant ships they had been on, and they would not have a chance.

“I appointed the
Ledbury
’s gunner, Mr. Musham, Acting Master of the
Ohio,
and transferred him, along with the Merchant Navy volunteers, together with everyone we could spare from the action stations, to the tanker.”

“Another entirely unofficial boarding party also went aboard,” said the
Ledbury
’s first officer, Lieutenant Tony Hollings. “There were no members of the tanker’s crew on board at the time. She was deserted. We can not have been alongside more than five minutes, but in that time we acquired one very large typewriter, a number of sound-powered telephones of which we were much in need, two Oerlikons and 12 magazines, besides a variety of smaller stuff, including a very fine megaphone with SS
Ohio
stamped on it.”

“Some of the merchant sailors raided the
Ohio
’s larder to get food, because it was in short supply,” said Dr. Nixon. “So they went onto
Ohio
and took as much food as they could.”

“I’ve never told anyone this,” said Charles Henry Walker, glancing over his shoulder at the queen on the wall in his room, “but when I first boarded the
Ohio,
I went looking for a bottle of whiskey. Me and George Preston—he was decorated too—we boarded the ship and went below, looking for whiskey. I was young and stupid.”

Mr. Musham also went below and came up wearing Captain Mason’s hat, to crown his appointment as acting master. It didn’t help his shooting, said Walker. “We used to call him the Galway Bomber. If he’d see a seagull, he’d close up. He was like that.”

Miles away on the
Penn,
Captain Mason awoke. He ate a quick breakfast and conducted a misty burial at sea for the Bofors gunner Peter Brown, who had died in the night.

“I was there,” said Allan Shaw. “The destroyer’s engines were stopped for a brief service. The body was sewn up in a canvas bag covered with the red ensign and weighted down with a shell from the five-inch gun. The
Ohio
’s bosun tipped the stretcher, and ‘Gun’ Brown slid off into the sea.”

After the service, Larsen went to the bridge and asked Captain Swain to be returned to the
Ohio
with his gun crew. Swain agreed, and again the ML 121 carried the men over, where they found some of the
Ledbury
crew aboard the
Ohio.
Larsen and Dales went straight to the Bofors platform, where they were met with a rude shock.

“Musham had promptly dismantled their Oerlikons guns,” said Don Allen, who was a radar operator working on the bridge of the
Ledbury,
recalling the day from his home near Dover in 2005. “We’d been firing our own Oerlikons so much that the barrels were worn out. So Musham said, ‘We’ll take the
Ohio
’s Oerlikons and put them on our ship.’ So we changed the barrels over, and we gave them our worn-out guns.”

He laughs fairly heartily.

“A lot of looting was going on. She
was
slowly sinking.”

“There were some crew members from other ships going through the
Ohio
’s quarters,” said Larsen. “One man showed up with the chief engineer’s uniform jacket on. I questioned who he was, and someone said he was a messman. Another fellow brought some eggs. They were terribly spoiled, but I ate them just the same, not having had anything to eat for some time. I also found an undershirt on the
Ohio
that had belonged to one of the British soldiers, he didn’t need it any more. I didn’t have no shirt on when I went on the
Ohio,
so I was very happy to find that heavy undershirt.”

Ledbury joined the minesweeper
Rye
in tow of the
Ohio
again. A six-inch manila rope was passed from the tanker’s stern to the destroyer’s midship oiling bollard, but, said Hill, “I put on too much weight and
Rye
’s tow parted.”

Next they tried the
Rye
in tow of the
Ledbury,
with the
Ledbury
in tow of the
Ohio
off the tanker’s port bow. The
Penn
lashed herself to the
Ohio
’s starboard side and acted as a drag to keep her straight. “This was fine and we were off,” said Hill.

That morning, Regia Aeronautica sent its best Stuka pilots after the
Ohio.
All the two-man Ju 87 crews in Gruppo 102 were dive-bombing aces.

“At about 0800 the enemy air activity commenced and continued,” said Mason. “I was now in one of the motor launches, about three cables astern of the
Ohio.
”

“Suddenly they were over us, and peeled off one after the other to come screaming down,” said Hill. “There were nine of them, and it was horrible to be secured each end, to the
Rye
and
Ohio,
moving at two knots and quite unable to dodge.

“About the fourth plane released his bomb a fraction late, and this seemed to be coming exactly at us on the bridge. ‘Lie down!’ I shouted, and the 500-pound bomb whistled over the top of the bridge and landed with a great splash alongside the focsle. I waited for the explosion and then the ship to go up, but nothing happened. The water came all over the ship, and then we saw a large widening circle of oil.

“We were saved by Axis thoroughness. They were dropping oil bombs, in order to set the tanker on fire.”

The United States had invented napalm earlier that year but hadn’t used it yet. The oil bombs near-missing the
Ohio
were a primitive Italian version of napalm.

The
Ohio
’s Bofors was mounted on a platform over the poop deck, behind the funnel. The dive-bombers always came from the rear, where a near miss would knock out the ship’s screws. Larsen and Dales were dead center in the sights of the Stukas, which were diving from 10,000 feet.

“My back was badly damaged from these guys falling off the
Santa Elisa
on top of me, in the lifeboat,” said Larsen. “And we were sitting in steel seats at the big Bofors, a Swedish rapid-fire cannon. It took one pointer and one trainer, and a man to spot for us. The gunnery sergeant was the one that spotted for Dales and me, and gave the orders when to shoot. Dales’ arm was broken and it was bandaged up in a splint, but he never complained about it. We also had two guys from the British gun crew there, who helped us loading this gun. We showed them how to handle the ammo, and it was a very simple operation.”

The Swedish-made Bofors was the Volvo of antiaircraft guns. It was reliable under abuse and could whump out 120 rounds per minute. Churchill liked the Bofors and bought as many as Britain could afford. Arming the merchantmen had been his very first act when he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty on the day war broke out in 1939. Britain awoke to its need for him, finally seeing the truth in his relentless warnings that Hitler must be stopped at all costs.

The Bofors weighed more than two tons, nearly as much as a Spitfire. The 900-pound barrel was 10 feet long, elevated and rotated by two men belted into seats on either side of its base. Larsen, the pointer, elevated and fired the gun, while Dales, the trainer, traversed it, using a rotating crank identical to the pointer’s. Each looked through an open sight, like a spiderweb the size of a dinner plate, three feet in front of his eyes.

The shells were the size of Dales’s splinted forearm, with pointed steel tips for penetration, fused to explode upon impact. There were four shells in a clip with a total weight of 20 pounds, and the breech held two clips; the first loader slammed in the clips that were handed to him by the second loader. The Bofors was an ammunition hog, but good loaders could keep up with the gun, even as it fired continuously.

Larsen’s second loader scrambled down a ladder from the poop deck to the main deck and dipped buckets over the side to get water to cool the gun. He didn’t have far to reach, as water was lapping at the
Ohio
’s gunwales.

“The Stukas came in droves,” said Allan Shaw, “and with our guns back in action, we were busy running boxes of ammunition up to the Bofors. It seemed like they never stopped firing. There were a lot of very near misses, lifting the ship nearly out of the water sometimes. Larsen was up there at the Bofors over the poop deck.”

“I remembered what one of the instructors said at the antiaircraft school in Newport,” said Larsen. “He said when the planes were coming in, don’t open fire until the bullets are splattering behind you. He also explained the new gunsights installed in our guns, with the system of aiming off-angle for high-speed targets.”

“Some people seemed to have nerves of steel,” said Follansbee. “While the rest of us were petrified with fear, Larsen was blazing away at the bombers with a 40mm Bofors. He had a personal grudge against the Germans. I remembered the pictures of his wife and son in his wallet.”

“I fired at anything that came at us,” said Larsen. “One time some planes came directly out of the sun, which they were not supposed to do. I fired at them, and shortly after, someone called out that they were friendly. I hope I did not hit them.”

Musham was firing from an Oerlikon amidships, and he claimed a kill, but the bomber was more likely downed by Larsen from the Bofors—Musham didn’t use up much ammunition, because his Oerlikon was not in a good position; and, said Captain Hill, “He complained that he was forced to use hosepipe firing instead of eyeshooting, as the sights had already been stolen by another gunner of HMS
Ledbury.
”

“When the attack was over, we had four ships in a row,” said Hill. “The
Ohio
with
Penn
alongside, heading more or less for Malta, then the
Ledbury
alongside
Penn,
heading the opposite direction, and
Rye
alongside
Ledbury,
also heading the wrong way. The chaos of wires, ropes and cables hanging down into the sea had to be seen to be believed.

“And of course, as we lay four ships stopped in a row, down came the next Stuka attack.”