Along with Lieutenant Tillie, the officer in charge of our draft, we joined a small Royal Navy contingent on Laconia. The once spic-and-span Cunard lady wasn’t quite the ship I remembered. The war had changed her like it had changed all of us. She appeared tired, overworked, unkempt and utterly functional. Gone were the garden lounges, potted palms and smoking lounges, replaced by the austere fittings of war. But underneath her ugly grey paint, she was the same ship I’d been on with my father. I’d forgotten much about her, so, along with my mates, I spent the first few hours aboard having a good look around.
‘I just saw a woman,’ Johnny reported in astonishment.
‘A woman! Bollocks, you’ve been at sea too bloody long.’
‘She was no ordinary woman, either. She was a nurse.’
‘We’ve joined a pleasure cruise by mistake,’ I suggested.
‘And there are kids here as well,’ Peter said. ‘Mothers with babies and all.’
‘That’s something different.’
Our navy contingent had been tossed into the sort of melting pot of humanity that only a war can conjure up. For a start there was Laconia’s crew. Then there were 1800 Italian prisoners-of-war and their Polish guards, a group of women and children from Palestine, some nursing sisters, and hundreds of army and air force personnel fresh from duty in Malta and the Middle East. There were 2700 people on board, all sailing for England. In peacetime Laconia only ever carried 2000 passengers at most, so it was going to be a very crowded voyage.
We were allocated quarters in the stern, on one of the lower decks, and assigned our on-board jobs. Unlike the army and air force types, who were taking passage home, we had to work. In the navy there’s no such thing as a free ride.
‘If we’ve joined a pleasure cruise,’ Peter grumbled, ‘the pleasure is going to be everyone else’s.’
‘Bloody typical, that is,’ we moaned.
Lieutenant Tillie assigned Johnny, Peter and I to augment one of the DEMS gun crews. DEMS stood for Defence Equipment Merchant Ships, and Laconia’s gun crew was responsible for manning the big six-inch gun bolted to the deck on the stern. We were pretty fed up with guns by then, but they were our orders and that was that.
After we’d settled ourselves in, I got to thinking about Fred Eyres, who had been Laconia’s pantry-man when I was a lad. I asked one of the crew if he was on board.
‘You mean Fred the pantry-man?’
‘That’d be him,’ I said.
‘Why do you want to see the pantry-man?’
‘He was a neighbour of mine in Liverpool.’
‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’
Fred soon appeared on deck and cast a puzzled eye over our group of sailors.
‘Do you remember me, Fred?’ I asked. He looked me up and down and eventually smiled.
‘You’re Benjamin’s boy, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right. It’s Jim.’
‘Well I’ll be … young Jim McLoughlin.’
We shook hands warmly. I was pleased to be in the company of someone who knew my family. He was in his 50s by then, an old man to me, but he seemed glad to see me. I told him about my time serving on Valiant, and we chatted about the war and going home. Then he said: ‘You can always come down to my station and have a meal, you know.’
‘I’d like that,’ I said.
‘You’ll eat better with the pantry-man than anywhere else on this ship.’
This was no idle promise. Eating on a ship’s mess deck was always a mad scramble, the food usually best forgotten. But the pantry-man, well, he had the food stores at his fingertips. So here was something to look forward to, a decent meal with someone who knew where I came from, someone who’d worked with my father on this very ship.
‘I’ll come and see you when I’ve got some free time,’ I promised.
‘Two decks below, forward on the starboard side.’
Laconia slipped out of Durban at the end of August, heading for Cape Town where she tied up for two days and we were given some shore leave. After our wonderful stay in the hills behind Durban, I had grown fond of life in South Africa. It seemed a place of plenty to me, untainted by war, and especially beautiful with its stunning landmark of Table Mountain forever at its back.
Laconia sailed from Cape Town on Friday 4 September and commenced its voyage north-west into the Atlantic. As the first few hours passed, I was filled with expectations of home. Then the old anxieties surfaced again, because we were not part of a convoy. Laconia was sailing alone in the Atlantic, which I knew was a dangerous place indeed. To make matters worse, the ship was belching a huge black stain of smoke from her funnel.
‘The U-boats’ll see that smoke before we even appear on the horizon,’ someone said. ‘We may as well broadcast our exact position.’
‘She’s zigzagging, though.’
‘What, and that’s supposed to shake off a U-boat?’
Bloody hell. Here we go again.
The passengers, it seemed, were blissfully ignorant of the danger, and it was probably just as well. We mentioned it to various members of Laconia’s crew, but they just shrugged.
‘Can’t do anything about it,’ they said. ‘She just smokes like that all the time. She’s an old ship. What do you expect us to do, stop and drop anchor?’
As if the thick black pall wasn’t enough of a giveaway, our gun crew had to conduct practice drills every day which meant blazing away at an imaginary target in the water. Our six-inch gun fired shell after shell into the sea, sending up great plumes of white water.
‘Here we are!’ the gun proclaimed. And in a very loud voice at that.
The familiar tight knot returned to my stomach, but I settled into the shipboard routine well enough. The days grew hot as we steamed north-west, and the nights passed without much happening. Our contingent didn’t mix with the other passengers at all. Because the ship was so crowded, we mainly just stayed in our stern quarters. Occasionally we’d chat to the crew or watch groups of Italian prisoners getting fresh air and exercise with their Polish guards.
On the night of Saturday 12 September we were far out into the Atlantic, approximately north-east of Ascension Island and approaching the equator. It was a clear night. I hadn’t yet had my meal with Fred, so I decided to see him that evening. I was very hungry because I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and back then I was a big lad, about 13 or 14 stone. I was looking forward to that meal, I really was. I didn’t tell my mates where I was going.
Remembering Fred’s directions, I went down a wooden staircase, past a lot of troops sitting around smoking and playing cards without a care in the world. I had just reached the bottom of a second staircase when there was a brain-numbing explosion as a torpedo struck the ship.
The noise was crushing. I felt like I’d been punched in the head by a powerful fist of sound. It turned my head to putty. Then it wrapped around me, lifted me off my feet and hurled me backwards into a steel bulkhead, leaving me gasping and crumpled on the deck. The lights went out and there was an eerie silence that lasted for perhaps a few seconds. Then pandemonium erupted. People were screaming and crying out. I was on my hands and knees, trying to get up, but there was a rush of bodies all around me. Everyone was pushing and shoving and trampling and cursing in the blackness, trying to reach the staircase I’d just come down. I had to get back up that staircase.
I got to my feet and even though I was dazed and shocked, I could tell that the deck was sloping to starboard, mere seconds after the torpedo had hit. She was going down already. I made for the staircase.
But then came another huge, rumbling explosion, this time further along the ship toward the bow. Laconia shuddered beneath my feet. A new wave of terror swelled and rushed through the blackness. The confined space of the stairwell was awash with people screaming for their lives, calling out names, swearing. It was chilling.
I got up that first staircase very quickly and made for the second. Even in the darkness I knew where it would be. But when I arrived, swept along by the desperate, seething humanity around me, the staircase had gone. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could make out vague shapes and people around me, looking up at a dim square where the staircase had been. I started feeling around for the Jacob’s ladder that I’d seen when I first came aboard.
On many ships, there was often a Jacob’s ladder shackled to the rim of the stairwell and hanging behind the permanent stairs, just simple wooden rungs between two pieces of wire. They weren’t easy things to climb at the best of times because the wires tended to twist around on themselves. But in the darkness and surrounded by jostling, screaming people, it would be doubly difficult. It had to be climbed from the side, with one of the wires between the legs. That way it stayed straight.
I was fit and strong and knew I could climb it. The alternative was being trapped below. I groped frantically in front of me and found it within seconds. Other people were swarming around, grappling with the awkward ladder, trying to work out how to climb it. I just went straight up, like a monkey on a vine. It was no time for saying: ‘No, please, after you.’ People started following me up, clutching at my legs as I went, but some of them fell back into the darkness below, all the time screaming and yelling. It was hard to pull myself clear of all the clawing hands.
I emerged from the stairwell on the starboard side of the ship, the low side, and it was absolute bloody mayhem. Big unrestrained objects were sliding and tumbling down the deck. Some of them were screaming people. Human shapes were stumbling about as if they were walking around the side of a steep hill, because the deck was already at a pretty sharp angle. The bow was down as well, so I struggled to stay upright. People were crawling to get up higher. Panic-stricken voices were yelling into the night. There were no deck lights at all so it was a maelstrom of noise and frantic shapes rushing and stumbling.
Amid all the chaos I noticed strange, sharp little explosions that didn’t belong on a ship, like fireworks going off. It was small arms fire ricocheting off Laconia’s superstructure. The Italian prisoners had found their way onto the deck and their Polish guards were trying to keep them under control. It was a totally unexpected danger. I had to get somewhere safer, if there was such a place.
I started to think a bit more clearly, and focussed on mustering at my station. That says plenty about my training, I think. My ship was sinking, but I didn’t think of getting to a lifeboat. Instead, I groped toward the stern and eventually got to our six-inch gun. It was a little quieter back there, and Johnny and Peter had already arrived. We agreed it was pointless manning the gun. There was nothing to fire at. The U-boat that had blasted our ship would be long gone. The stern was rising as Laconia went down further at the bow. There was absolutely nothing we could do.
‘Bugger the gun,’ Peter said. ‘I’m going back to get me photographs.’
‘Your what?’
‘Me dirty photographs. I can’t just leave ’em, I’m going back below.’ Johnny and I looked at him in total disbelief as he started to move off.
‘You’re bloody mad, come here!’ I yelled, grabbing him. But he shook me off as he headed below to find his photographs. I couldn’t believe it. I was convinced he was going off to a watery grave. It was by far the craziest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.
Johnny and I knew the lifeboats would be chaotic and that we’d have a better chance if we just went over the high side. That was the port side. In our training they had always said to us: ‘Never go over the low side when a ship’s going down. Always go over the high side. That way, if she rolls over, you won’t be trapped underneath.’ That seemed like wise advice, so we set off along the deck on the high side. There were people flying around everywhere in the darkness. The turmoil was getting worse as everyone realised she was sinking steadily. Then, in the blink of an eye, Johnny disappeared. One moment he was there beside me, the next he had vanished.
I looked over the port-side railing at the water a long, long way down. The stern was incredibly high. Terror gripped me in a deep, ice-cold dread.
There’s no bloody way I’m going down there.
In a split second I decided to ignore the navy’s good advice, and slid down the sloping deck to the starboard side where the water was much closer. I found a rope trailing over the side. Someone had obviously gone over before me. That was good enough for me. I took off my boots and lowered myself hand over hand into the sea. I had to get as far away as possible from the doomed ship because as soon as she went down, the boilers would explode and the concussion would spread through the water like a battering ram. It could kill me. And when she sank there would be a massive circular eddy of water that would suck everything down with it. I swam for my life.
Oddly, I’ve never been able to remember whether the water was warm or cold when I first got into it. It simply didn’t register. I could taste oil and there was debris knocking into me, but I kept swimming because I didn’t have a lot of time. There were people flaying about, lunging at one another, desperately trying to hold on to anything and anyone. I didn’t want frantic hands grabbing on to me and dragging me under, so I kept swimming strongly away from the ship. Fairly soon I came to a lifeboat. It was crowded, but I hauled myself in anyway. I was shocked to find myself knee-deep in water. Someone had forgotten to put the drainage bungs in before it was launched. The people in the boat weren’t saying or doing anything while the water poured in. It was useless.
No bloody future in this. She’ll go to the bottom before Laconia.
I got back into the water and looked over at Laconia. She was still too close for comfort, and her massive propellers were visible as her stern heaved further out of the water. They were turning slowly but the ship was strangely quiet. All the noise and commotion was coming from the water around her as people grappled with their own unthinkable situation. I turned and swam further away from the ship and finally came across a raft. When I first went on board Laconia in Durban, I’d noticed a number of wooden rafts lashed to the deck, obviously for just this kind of catastrophe. They weren’t very big, just a few square feet really, nothing more. I joined a lot of other people clinging to loops of rope along each side of the raft. Everyone was covered in oil. Lieutenant Tillie was near me. He seemed to be badly injured.
Eventually I lost my grip and the raft drifted out of reach. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime, so the strength was draining from my arms. A short time later I came across another raft that was much less crowded, so I hung on to that and watched Laconia go down. It was terrifying and dreadfully painful to see such a wonderful ship in her death throes. She had been like a figurehead to me, a great source of pride during the carefree days of my boyhood in Liverpool. I was so mesmerised that I forgot my own predicament. I couldn’t draw my eyes away because there is a terrible, grim fascination about a sinking ship. The need to watch it is inexplicably compelling.
Laconia’s stern rose higher and her bow slid into the Atlantic at a steep angle, still listing heavily to starboard, the sea swallowing her emergency lights one by one. Then suddenly she heaved up almost to the vertical, before continuing her shocking plunge. I dragged myself onto the wooden raft to protect myself from the imminent explosion, leaving just my legs exposed in the water. As she dived, the boiling cacophony of hissing bubbles and groaning metal was incredible. There was a deep, evil guttural rumbling, then, when she had vanished, a huge booming blast as the boilers exploded below the surface. I felt the concussion through the timber of the raft as it swept by my legs like an invisible wave under the water.
It was weird. One moment the massive bulk of Laconia floundered mortally wounded beside us in the water and then, within seconds, there was nothing except debris and people floating about. Despite the shapes and ghostly reflections of hundreds of other people around me, I suddenly felt fearfully lost. The loneliness was devastating. I didn’t have a bloody clue what to do next.
More and more people were scrambling around in the water, grabbing at the ropes and pulling on my legs as they jostled for a precious spot on the raft.
This is no good. You’ll be safer by yourself.
I swam off again, desperately uncertain, and started bumping into dozens of dead bodies floating face down. I was swimming through a graveyard. It was a scene from a nightmare, except it was real and happening to me. Out of the ghostly darkness, another wooden raft drifted close to me, with just one bloke sitting on it. I called out to him and when he answered I thought I recognised the voice of my mate, Davey Jones.
‘Is that you, Davey?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s Mac!’
‘Well, bloody hell.’
We couldn’t believe our luck, meeting up with each other in all the dark chaos. I hauled myself onto the raft and sat next to him with my legs dangling in the water.
I had no idea what the time was. It had been just after eight o’clock when I went below to find Fred. The torpedoes hit Laconia just moments after that, so she might have gone down an hour later, but I wasn’t sure. The night seemed suspended, as if holding its breath. Everything was dreamlike. I half expected to wake up and find myself safely back on the ship. Things were happening in slow motion and I began to feel a bit detached. It was the shock of it all, I suppose.
I was wet, numb with cold and fear, and utterly miserable. To this day I can still feel the complete numbness that spread through my body that night. But I also felt a rush of relief because someone reliable was with me and I didn’t have to swim anymore. So there was a thin thread of hope.
Davey and I sat on that raft all night. The screaming and yelling around us subsided as the night dragged on, but we could still hear the occasional vague cry for help in the distance. We couldn’t tell exactly where they were coming from. Once we thought we heard the throbbing of an engine close by. We couldn’t work that out.
Dawn arrived like a curtain opening on a scene of total devastation. There were scores of bodies floating face down, bloated and grotesque, and there was debris everywhere. Boxes and tins drifted by. We were ravenously hungry and thirsty, so we started to pick some up in the hope of finding food. We weren’t saying much, just commenting on what we were finding.
‘What’s in this box here?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Try that one there.’
I picked up a box and opened it carefully. There’ll be food in here for sure.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Bloody coffee beans.’ Neither of us fancied chewing on those, so I threw it back.
When we weren’t trying to pick up food, we tried to reassure one another.
‘We’ll get picked up,’ Davey said.
‘For sure,’ I agreed. ‘Laconia’s crew would have had plenty of time to get a distress signal out before she went down.’
‘That’s right.’
‘There’s no harm in this. We’ll just sit here and wait.’
‘We’ll be all right.’
But soon it grew extremely hot because we were near the equator. The morning sun began to sear our faces and arms through the salt and oil that had caked onto our skin. My legs were cool, though. I’d been wearing overalls when I went over the side of Laconia, but they weren’t on me anymore. I had no idea what happened to them. So my bare legs were dangling in the cool water until I felt the most excruciating pain in my left calf. I drew my legs back onto the raft in a blind panic. At first I thought I’d been bitten by a shark, but the calf had gruesome fang-like puncture marks that made me think it was a barracuda. Atlantic barracuda can grow up to six feet long. I’ve never known for sure if that’s what bit me, but I certainly know I was in agony. And I’ve carried the bite marks around with me ever since, as a grim reminder of my time on that raft. The pain was intense and penetrating for a long time before it eased off into a dull, aching numbness.
After that, Davey and I sat back to back on our pathetic little raft with our knees up to our chins, wondering what the hell was going to happen to us. Our sombre thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of an English solider on another raft quite near us. He was in tropical uniform, khaki shirt and shorts, and sitting next to him was a tiny dog. We waved to each other.
‘You all right?’ we shouted across to him.
‘Yes.’
‘Seen anybody else?’
‘No. There’s nobody else around.’
‘Thought so.’
‘At least I’m sitting on something.’
‘Better than swimming,’ we agreed.
‘Yes. Much better than swimming.’ Then he went drifting off and we didn’t see him again. We were left with our own thoughts.
‘How the hell did he get that dog on board ship?’ I asked Davey.
‘Buggered if I know. How’d he get it onto the raft?’
‘Something to think about, that is.’
‘Yeah.’
The day wore on and we didn’t see another soul. No one who was alive, anyway. My left leg was badly swollen and aching terribly. We were painfully thirsty and tired, absolutely shattered and drained by what had happened.
Then we heard the same engine-like throbbing we’d heard during the night, but this time it didn’t go away and suddenly a sinister shape appeared quite close to us. It was the shape every navy man knew and dreaded. A German U-boat. It was painted a dull green-grey colour and as it got closer we could see the number 156 on its conning tower.
Davey and I didn’t say anything. We just sat there on the raft feeling utterly helpless as a group of German sailors emerged from the conning tower and ran along the hull casing toward a large deck gun. Overwhelming terror came over me in a wave of crippling mental agony.
So this is how it’s going to end.
We’d been told about atrocities perpetrated by U-boat crews against survivors of the ships they’d torpedoed. Machine-gunning people while they were still in the water was common, we’d been led to believe. As the U-boat crept toward us, diesel engines rumbling, I wanted to curl up into a ball, but I was frozen solid with fear. There was nowhere to hide.
I don’t want to die like this.
The U-boat slunk closer and closer, but instead of crashing bullets there came shouts in German. We didn’t understand what they were saying but soon realised that the crew hadn’t been running to the gun after all. They’d been making for a rope on the bow. They threw it to us and we held on tight while they pulled us alongside their boat.
The relief I felt when I grabbed hold of that rope was really something special. The terror just slipped away. They pulled us in until our raft was scraping against the curved hull casing, and I saw two or three officers peering down at us from the conning tower. One of them was wearing a white cap with a peak. The others had forage caps.
A couple of sailors reached out to haul us up the sloping side of the submarine, but I couldn’t move because of the pain in my leg. So they dragged me carefully over the casing and eased me onto the deck like a limp fish. I could tell by their genuine concern and sympathy as they got us aboard that they were going to treat us well.
The U-boat was quite small, which surprised me. Davey and I were just lying there on its narrow deck, face to face with the German sailors, an enemy we thought we’d never meet, let alone have a group of them help us aboard their U-boat.
I had trouble standing, so several of the sailors half carried me to the base of the conning tower and the narrow steel ladder leading to the top. They motioned that I should climb it.
‘You’re bloody joking!’ I said.
They ignored my protest and gently manhandled me onto the first rung. It was agony, that climb. I don’t know how I managed it, but next thing I knew both Davey and I were being bundled over the rim of the conning tower and into its command post. One of the forage-capped officers spoke to us. His English was quite good.
‘What are you?’ he asked us. ‘Italian?’
‘No, British.’
‘Are you army?’
‘No, no,’ we said. ‘Navy.’
‘Your names, please.’
We each gave him our name, rank and serial number. We weren’t obliged to tell him more than that and he didn’t ask us anything else. He wrote our details down.
Then the officer in the white cap turned to us and, my goodness, he was an impressive looking man. I can see his face quite clearly, even now. It was very lean and tanned, with a deep furrow from an old scar running down one cheek. He had thin lips, a narrow, prominent nose and piercing eyes. They were sharp and very distinctive features. He was the epitome of the German U-boat commander. There was a classic, officer-class look to him. But while he exuded authority and a slight whiff of arrogance, there was a warmth and humanity in his face, which impressed me immensely. His name was Werner Hartenstein, the man who torpedoed Laconia. I’ll never forget him.
He was wearing an old leather jacket that might have once been brown, but was streaked with green and white from exposure to sea salt. His white officer’s cap was battered, and the gold oak leaves around its peak were tarnished green. They were the telltale signs of a man who lived a hard life at sea, exposed to the elements. He spoke to Davey and me in excellent English and with the utmost courtesy.
‘So, you are navy?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Merchant navy or Royal Navy?’
‘No, not merchant,’ we were quick to tell him. ‘Royal Navy.’
‘Ah, Royal Navy! Excellent, excellent,’ he said, appearing genuinely pleased. ‘We’ll put you down below. Please don’t worry, you will be all right.’
Even though he was the enemy, I instantly liked him and believed what he said.
I stepped through the conning tower hatch with Davey, and climbed down into the bowels of the U-boat. It was dim, cramped and awfully claustrophobic. It reeked of diesel fumes, oil and body odour. The crew directed us to a pokey corner near the boat’s two diesel engines. I noticed a metal plate on them that declared they were made in Augsburg. We were in the control room, beneath the conning tower and just to one side. There were a lot of dials and switches and levers. The German sailors controlling the submarine’s systems were going about their business efficiently and didn’t speak to us at all. From the sound of the engines I got the impression that the boat was slowly under way on the surface.
I sat down beside the vibrating engines and tried to absorb what was going on. It was hard to concentrate. My head felt dull and mushy. The diesel fumes and the way the submarine wallowed in the sea swell was bringing on a dose of seasickness. I’d never felt seasick in my life, so this was something new. Through my dull haze I realised there were other survivors down there with us. They were all filthy, streaked with oil and caked-on salt. I was shocked when it finally sank in that some of them were women. There was a British Fleet Air Arm officer, too. I recognised the wings on his tunic. Those people looked at Davey and me with vacant eyes. They didn’t speak to us and we didn’t speak to them. We just stared at each other, too exhausted and shocked to do anything.
The crew brought us bread, jam and warm ersatz coffee, but the very sight of food brought me to the verge of vomiting. What an irony. Fifteen minutes earlier I’d been starving and desperate for a drink but, when it came, I felt sick. I had to force myself to eat. I nibbled at the bread and it tasted all right, but the coffee was pretty terrible.
After a while it dawned on me that I was a prisoner-of-war and strangely that didn’t upset me at all. I was simply relieved that I was alive and someone would soon look at my leg. I didn’t mind the thought of being a prisoner because anything was better than slowly dying on that dreadful raft. My situation became clearer still when the officer who’d taken our names came below and spoke to us again.
‘We are going to radio the Vichy French in Dakar,’ he told us in his very precise English. ‘They will send ships out to this place here. There are other U-boats in the area with us and we are looking for more survivors. We will pick up as many as we can carry. We have found a number of lifeboats. The French will come and they will take you to French North Africa.’
‘All right,’ we said.
It didn’t occur to me that what the Germans were doing was most unusual. U-boats generally didn’t bother with picking up survivors. We were the enemy after all. I wasn’t in any condition to work it out.
I gradually slid into a semi-comatose state. Physical pain, mental exhaustion, the stench of filthy bodies and the diesel fumes all combined to overwhelm me. I was beyond caring, my mind like mush. We were sunk on the Saturday night, picked up by Hartenstein on Sunday, and it was Wednesday when a German officer came and told us we could go topside for some fresh air. We didn’t have to think twice. In a daze I struggled up the conning tower with Davey and, heavens, the air was beautiful up there!
I was astonished to see, astern of U-156, three of Laconia’s packed lifeboats, all linked to the submarine by a line. It didn’t make sense. Hartenstein was taking a huge risk by remaining on the surface, towing three lifeboats and looking for more survivors, but he didn’t seem concerned. The submarine was completely exposed and horribly vulnerable to air attack, yet he was standing there with a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck, eating from a plate heaped with meat and noodles.
‘Ah, hello Royal Navy,’ he greeted us pleasantly.
‘Captain,’ we acknowledged.
‘You must have this,’ he insisted, holding out his plate of food. He urged me to take it. ‘Share it with your comrade.’
We were amazed at his generosity in giving up his meal. My appetite had returned, so we gratefully accepted the plate and took it in turns to spoon down the noodles and meat. It was delicious.
‘That is better?’ Hartenstein asked when we’d finished.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Good, very good.’ He was more than an officer. He was a gentleman. Then, to our surprise, he spoke to us candidly about the sinking while we stood in the confines of his bridge.
‘I am very sorry for your situation,’ he said, ‘but we sighted the gun on your ship’s stern and that told us it was an armed merchant ship. We have no alternative but to sink armed merchant ships.’
That bloody gun.
Davey and I exchanged knowing glances, but we weren’t about to tell the U-boat commander that we were the crew of the gun he’d seen.
‘I was not aware the Italians, our allies, were aboard your ship,’ Hartenstein went on. ‘I did not know about them or the women and children.’
I felt no resentment toward him as he explained why he had done this to us. I never have. I’ve always completely understood that it was his duty in a time of war. Then he told us that Laconia had broadcast a distress signal and that U-156 had sent out its own messages, in English, asking all ships in the area for help. He confirmed what the other officer had told us, that they had notified the Vichy French and that ships were being sent. So I felt confident we’d be all right.
‘With these lifeboats,’ Hartenstein said, ‘we’ll work it in shifts. Some of you people who are on this boat with us will take turns to go back into the lifeboats, and those people will come on board here to have a rest. We will do this until the French come.’
I was enormously impressed by that. He was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people in the lifeboats, even his enemies. He knew there were women and children in them, exposed to the elements.
After our chat with Hartenstein, he sent us below again, so it was back to the noisy, stinking diesels and the other silent survivors. For a time, Davey and I talked about being prisoners, and then we just watched the crew going about their work. They were fit-looking blokes, those German sailors. They were working hard and continuing to ignore us when a klaxon horn sounded and they started reaching frantically for the levers and switches on their control panels. I just about shot out of my skin. To a sailor, the sound of a klaxon can mean only one thing: something urgent is going on, something big. Orders were being barked out in German. Crewmen were rushing about in the confined space beneath the conning tower. Davey and I stared at each other with widening eyes.
Jesus, what the hell’s happening now?
The Fleet Air Arm pilot hurried into the conning tower clutching a hand-held signalling lamp and a white sheet with a red cross on it. The Germans must have given them to him. Then he disappeared and the fear started rising in my throat again. When he came back he spoke to all the survivors.
‘There’s just been an American aircraft circling overhead,’ he explained. He’d flashed a signal to it, saying not to attack because there were survivors from Laconia on board. ‘It circled and then flew off,’ he said. We didn’t understand the significance of that and he didn’t elaborate.
We soon saw him make a dash for the conning tower again, and he had just disappeared from view when there was an ear-splitting explosion. The U-boat seemed to lift straight up and then fall down again. It was an incredibly violent movement. Then the entire boat started shaking. Brisk, sharp commands were being exchanged among the crew.
Oh, please, no. Dear God, not again!
I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then there was another explosion and the U-boat leapt and shook again. My ears were ringing and I was close to choking on my own fear. Through it all I connected the circling American aircraft with the explosions. We were being bombed.
‘Raus! Raus!’ The Germans began yelling at us. ‘Raus!’ They were pointing to the conning tower. I knew we had to get out but I didn’t want to go. I was safe. I had food. I wanted to stay right where I was, thank you very much.
Davey and I got to our feet and the crew started pushing us up the ladder inside the conning tower. I couldn’t move quickly because of the pain in my leg, but I got to the top somehow and Hartenstein was there.
‘I cannot jeopardise the boat,’ he said urgently. ‘You must go. We are damaged and we are going to dive. Go, go!’
From the conning tower I thought the U-boat was a little down at the bow. The deck was awash. There was a large group of other survivors splashing along the deck and diving overboard. There was no sign of the American aircraft.
I looked astern for the three lifeboats, but I could only see two of them. I didn’t know it then, but the third lifeboat, the middle one, had taken a direct hit from a bomb. It had been full of people. I would have to swim to the remaining lifeboats and they had already drifted hundreds of yards away from the stern.
Davey disappeared over the edge of the conning tower. I never saw him again. I half climbed, half fell down the ladder on the outside of the tower until I reached the deck. I stumbled to the edge, dived overboard and started swimming for my life again.
That was a dreadful swim. It was the hardest physical thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I set my sights on one of the lifeboats in the distance and swam for it with a frantic energy I didn’t know I possessed. I was totally exhausted before I started out, and I didn’t think I could do it, but a desperate kind of strength emerged from somewhere. The swell was quite big and it was punishing me, thrusting me up and backwards the moment I felt I’d made a bit of progress. It was hard to keep a rhythm going, but I kept focusing on the lifeboat in the distance and thrashed away at the water with my arms and legs. This isn’t happening. I simply couldn’t grasp that I was in the water again, struggling to survive for the second time. It just didn’t seem real. My entire body was shrieking with pain and my left leg felt as if it belonged to someone else. I went on like that for more than half an hour.
When I finally reached the boat I’d been aiming for, I found a desperate crowd of other swimmers already there. They were clinging to the ropes that were looped along the gunwale. The boat was already hopelessly overcrowded. People were standing up, shoulder to shoulder. I couldn’t see how they would fit me in, but I couldn’t go anywhere else. I couldn’t swim another stroke.
But those already in the boat had different ideas. ‘Can’t get any more in here,’ they were yelling. ‘Too full.’
‘Pull me in!’ I begged.
Some of them were roughly pushing the people in the water away from the boat. A sailor who’d been part of our navy contingent on Laconia was peering over the edge, carefully surveying all the soggy bundles of humanity clinging to the side. His name was Gibson.
‘One of ours here!’ he suddenly called out. ‘One of ours here, I’m taking him in.’
Through a blur of exhaustion I realised he was looking at me when he said that, and then strong hands pulled me into the bow of the lifeboat. I was a dead weight after that swim, so utterly exhausted I couldn’t move a muscle. I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but I couldn’t because there was no room. So I stood. That boat was absolutely packed with what I can only describe as human wreckage. We were all filthy, covered in oil, soaking wet and shaking with fear.
We began to drift away from the poor souls still struggling in the water, leaving them to face certain death. As we huddled together in the lifeboat with no room to move, everything fell silent. There was an overpowering sense of disbelief and shock. Our situation seemed utterly hopeless.
Within minutes of me being pulled into the lifeboat, U-156 rumbled alongside. I was surprised that she was still on the surface, given the bombing attack by the Americans. Hartenstein was leaning over the rim of the conning tower.
‘Take up a course north-north-east. That is the direction of the coast of Africa. It is seven hundred miles away,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but I cannot give you any food.’
No one said anything back to him. We were too shocked, too stunned. Seven hundred miles to the nearest land! It was just too much to absorb, totally crushing.
Then Hartenstein brought himself to attention and saluted us, a solitary figure in his conning tower, showing us the greatest possible respect.
‘I do not think you will make it,’ he called out. ‘But good luck to all of you.’
And that was my last glimpse of Commander Werner Hartenstein. U-156 pulled away and I didn’t see it dive. At that moment, Hartenstein’s U-boat seemed like an apparition to me, a dream. It just faded away.
Then there was just the lifeboat and our one common enemy, the sea. The sea, by its very nature, does not distinguish between friend and foe. It is forever the irreconcilable enemy of ships and men. I was about to discover what a cruel enemy it could be.