In the Clear?
Day four,
morning rain,
cold and wet.
Once again my insides
pitch and plunge
in time with the waves,
but I’m lucky,
I don’t throw up
like the other kids.
Gale winds are starting to build.
The escorts say to stay below.
The day passes quietly,
reading, napping,
and playing cards,
but by dinner,
I go on deck to see
all the colors of a rainbow
arching over our heads.
Smiles and cheers
we must be in the clear.
“Are we, Officer Cooper?” I ask.
“Are we safe?”
“We’re six hundred miles out,” he says.
“Should be smooth sailing from now on.”
Huzzah!
Relief washes over us all,
kids and grown-ups alike,
like a rain shower
rinsing off the built-up grime
of worry and fear.
How we feast and celebrate,
eating extra ice cream tonight!
At eight o’clock, we head down to bed
turning thoughts
to our new homes
all over Canada
and our shiny new lives ahead.
Safe at Last
“We’re okay now,
aren’t we, Ken?”
who share my cabin.
“Can we take our life jackets off?
Can we put on our pajamas?”
“Yes! Didn’t the escorts tell you
today in the playroom?
They told us we could.
Hang up your vests.
Take off your life jackets.
We’re safe now.
We’re six hundred miles from England,
six hundred miles from war.
U-boats don’t come out this far.”
Like hermit crabs
shedding their shells,
we strip off our bulky life jackets
and pull on clean, soft pajamas.
I turn out the lights and say,
“Good night, lads.
Sleep tight.
Soon we’ll be in Canada. . . .”
I drift into dreams,
safe at last
safe at last. . . .
BAM!
jumping up in the dark.
The floor shudders,
the night split with sounds of
splintering wood,
creaking metal,
clattering glass.
Then . . .
nothing.
The world stands still,
silent and dark.
Was it a bad dream?
Seconds later,
panicked footsteps
outside in the hall,
rushing water.
Bells sound the alarm—
Emergency! Emergency!
Tearful gasps from my cabin mates,
“Ken? KEN! What is it? What’s wrong?”
I’m wet.
Am I bleeding?
sulfur,
explosives,
burning wood.
Bile rising,
I swallow it down.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
Then I know—
we’ve been hit!
Torpedoed.
I can’t see anything,
so I feel my way in the dark,
damaged door
shattered wall.
Blue bulbs cast a ghostly path down the hall.
I tell myself it will be all right.
I say aloud, “Boys, it’s okay.”
No fear.
We trained for this
every day, twice a day.
“Off we go, then!” I say,
keeping my voice chipper.
“Stiff upper lip, boys.”
Life jackets.
walk, don’t run
to the muster station.
Hurried steps echo
down the halls.
We trained for this.
We know what to do.
Cadet Critchley
“Boys, do not wait.
Go to your lifeboats.
You trained for this.
You know what to do.”
“Yes, sir!”
WAIT!
My coat!
I forgot my coat,
the overcoat my stepmum bought me.
“Ken, you must keep an eye on it!” she said.
Blimey, if I go home without that coat,
Mum will kill me.
I nip back to get it.
I have to push my way
against the surge of children
scrambling to the stairs
and wade through floating debris.
Water’s rising
as I step over
busted doors,
splintered furniture,
and a mass of broken glass
littering the halls.
Where is my cabin?
There!
I push open the door
to find the
room flooding,
water spewing
from broken pipes.
Cold, wet,
I wrap my warm wool coat around me,
remembering my family
back home
in trouble too,
braving the Blitz,
braving the bombs.
To the Lifeboats!
I struggle back down the hall,
up the main staircase,
through the dining rooms,
and onto the deck.
The hatches have been blown off,
the emergency lights are on.
Electrical sparks shoot up
from the ironwork.
The noise hurts my head—
steam, sirens, wind, rain.
“Watch it there, boy!” shouts an officer,
grabbing my arm.
I step carefully around a gigantic hole.
Where’s my lifeboat?
Lifeboat 8.
Am I late?
Too late?
I trained for this.
I knew what to do.
I look fore and aft.
Going fast,
I crash into others
wild-eyed, open-mouthed,
racing the other way.
I catch sight of an escort
carrying a girl covered in blood,
hear shouting,
whimpering,
calling,
bawling.
It was that way!
I dash down the decks,
wind whipping my hair,
rain stinging my face.
My lifeboat is gone.
Lost
I rush down
the starboard deck,
but all the lifeboats
have been launched.
I run over to port.
The winds howl,
I hear children crying.
Is anyone left
to save me?
Lifeboat 12
“Here, boy!
Here’s one with room,”
says Officer Cooper,
stationed at Lifeboat 12,
the rear boat on the port side.
and tosses me down
to someone else I recognize—
Ramjam Buxoo,
the young Lascar
who greeted us
when we first boarded the ship.
“Ken!”
I turn and see my friends
Paul, Fred, Billy, and Derek at the far end.
There’s a new boy nearest me.
“Sit down! Sit by Howard,” shouts Derek.
“Derek, Billy, where are your brothers?”
I yell. “Where’s Terry?”
But screams drown out
my questions as
the ship starts to roll.
The crewmen on deck
brace themselves and struggle
to hold the ropes on pulleys
that keep the lifeboat level.
A lady on deck—
the escort
who told us stories under the tree—
wants to wait,
won’t let us leave.
“I don’t see the girls in my care!”
“Mary! Mary Cornish!”
calls another escort. “They’re safe.
They’re in another boat
with Mrs. Towns.”
“Prepare to abandon ship!”
yells Cooper.
And still Miss Cornish hesitates.
The ship lurches farther to port.
Lady, c’mon! I think. We’ve got to go!
Cooper says, “Miss, Steward Purvis
checked the playroom and the cabins.
No one else is coming, Miss,”
he adds in his gentle Scottish accent.
“It’s time to go.”
Miss Cornish catches her breath.
Cooper looks in her eyes,
then with a small nod of his head
gestures at me
and my friends.
She nods
and steps aboard.
She settles in the midst of us boys
and tries to reassure us,
discounting the danger.
“It’s all right,” she says,
rubbing our shoulders.
“It’s only a torpedo.”
Only!
Is she mad?
Abandon Ship!
“Steady, men!” yells Cooper.
“She’s slipping in the stern
and rolling to port.”
The crew
desperately tries
to level the lifeboat
swinging from the davits.
“Clear away the boat,
man the falls and reels,” orders Cooper.
“Stand by for lowering.
Lower away!
Handsomely now!”
I see Lifeboat 12 is one of the last to go.
my stomach dropping,
everyone screaming,
hands clutching the rails
like monkeys.
Down to the Sea
D
O
W
N
we drop,
falling,
frantic,
on a fiendish ride
bound
where?
To drown
in a watery grave?
But no,
we don’t tip
or flip
like so many lifeboats
seesawing down
flinging men,
women,
children,
officers,
crewmen and cooks,
screaming
forty feet down
to the sea,
to the roiling sea.
We hit with a thud,
but we don’t swamp
or flood
like so many lifeboats we see
with passengers
sitting waist deep in water.
Purvis and four Lascars
who had lowered the boat
from the deck
now scramble down a rope ladder
to join us in the lifeboat.
Last to come is Cooper.
“Pull away from the ship,”
he orders.
But wait!
Four more Lascars
scramble down the ropes.
“Back!” says Cooper. “Pick them up.”
They jump into the boat.
“Now lay off, get clear!”
Rescue Will Come
In the hail and gale,
our boat surfs up
and sleds down the swells,
each wave high as a house.
Water slops in
and the crew bails with buckets,
hands, shoes, and hats.
I tell myself it will be all right.
The Royal Navy will come
as they did for the Volendam
where all were saved but one.
Our convoy will be here soon.
The other boys and I
clutch the gunwales,
white-knuckled,
open-mouthed,
and yes,
half enjoying
the thrill ride
of slamming up and down
better than
any ride at the fairground.
Paul huddles in the bow
with Miss Cornish,
watching us shout.
Soaked to the bone,
stoked with suspense,
I tell myself this is IT!
This is the story
I’ll tell my friends
if I don’t die first.
A ship will come
to rescue us.
Just hold on, hold on, you’ve got to hold on.
Horror
Two more explosions
flash in the night,
the light
exposing a horror show—
people clinging to
overturned lifeboats,
swimming to
overloaded rafts,
grabbing at
with flailing arms
beseeching hands.
Voices snatched by the wind—
“Help me please!”
“Grab my hand!”
“Bachao!”
“I’ve got you!”
“Dear God, have mercy!”
“Allah!”
“I can’t swim!”
“There’s a raft. Grab on!”
“Lord, help us!”
“Let go! You’re pulling me under!”
“Madat kar!”
“There’s no more room! You’ll drown us all!”
“It’s cold, so cold.”
“Mummy! I want my mum!”
Billy throws up over the side.
“We’ve got to help them.”
But there are so many people in the water,
in the dark,
in distress—
SOS! SOS!
Twenty-foot waves
cresting,
crashing,
smashing.
Rain turning to sleet.
It hurts to look.
People are swimming and sinking,
slamming into boats, rafts,
jetsam and flotsam,
slipping and surfacing,
sliding and
OH!
sucked under. . . .
Up from the Sea
I see something rise in the water,
something ahead.
It’s the fine red rocking horse
from the children’s playroom.
It rears up from the sea,
the red horse of war,
silently screaming
at all it sees,
rocking up and down
in the waves
past the bodies of those
I now know
are already
dead.
Heroes
Our lifeboat is nearly full,
but our captain Cooper steers
through the wild waves,
through the hail,
through the gale,
to the rafts and pulls people aboard.
One’s Cadet Critchley.
There’s Signalman Mayhew
and six Indian Lascars
I haven’t met.
“Peard, over here!”
yells Cooper.
But Peard
refuses a hand up.
Splashing, thrashing
through the water,
rescue a boy,
pull him to a raft,
hand him up,
then swim off
to rescue another.
He’s a hero, he is,
saving all those children.
I want to be just like him.
But then
watching him struggle
through the waves,
I think,
heroes can’t die.
Can they?
Get Away!
The Benares shudders and groans,
slipping farther down
into the water.
“She’s going down!” shouts Cooper.
“Man the Fleming gear!
Get us away
or she’ll suck us down with ’er!”
“I can help!” I say. “I know how.”
“That’s the stuff, young man,” says Cooper.
to sit with the sailors
working the Fleming gear.
Push! Pull!
Push! Pull!
We work the levers
that move the bar,
that turn the gears,
that propel our boat
away
away
away from the sinking ship.
Blues on the Run
We row and row and row.
Far off we hear sounds high on the wind—
voices from another lifeboat.
They’re singing!
“Rule Britannia! rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. . . .”
I sing too as I row . . .
“Roll out the barrel. . . .”
Then loudly, defiantly, everyone joins in.
“We’ve got the blues on the run. . . .”
Blankets
we stop rowing.
Steward Purvis
pulls out blankets
from lockers under the floorboards.
“How many are there?” asks Cooper.
“Fifteen,” says Purvis.
I look around the boat.
There are nearly fifty of us,
wet and shivering.
Not enough. Not enough.
Most go to the crewmen in cotton tunics
who have no coats,
and we boys will share two.
Fireworks
Suddenly
all the Benares’ lights
blaze on,
dazzling in the night.
Some electrical fault
has tripped the switch.
“She looks just like a Christmas tree!”
says Fred.
Reflections,
dot the water
as hissing red flares
dash upward
to the clearing skies
and the gaping moon.
One ghostly torch moves
round the top deck and bridge
of the ship.
“Look!” says Fred.
“I’ll bet that’s Captain Nicoll
making one last round.”
A huge searchlight
on the horizon
sweeps the seas.
Is it the U-boat
looking to finish us?
I quickly crouch down
and work faster—
pushpullpushpull
getawaygetawaygetaway—
as the moon ducks
behind a cloud.
Going Down
of twisting metal.
“Look! There she goes!” I shout.
“Ohhh!” gasps Miss Cornish,
covering her mouth.
We sit helplessly
about three hundred feet away
watching as the Benares—
our getaway ship,
our adventure,
our “floating palace”
with its playroom of toys
and its shops of jewels
and its feasts of chicken and lobster and chocolate
and peaches and melon and pineapple and . . .
oh! . . . ice cream,
and its Captain Nicoll
up,
up,
and upends
and slick with oil
slides down the waves
with a bang and a groan.
Gone.
Shock
at the place
where the waves close over the ship.
“We should record the time,” says Cooper.
“Who else has a watch?”
“Here,” says Father O’Sullivan. “I have 10:34.”
“Half an hour,” says Cooper, grimacing.
“That’s all it took.”
It’s like the Benares went to its own grave.
It’s hard to believe that
our big beautiful ship
and our glorious life aboard
ever really existed. . . .
Yo!
A cry from the water
brings me back to life.
Cooper spots one last man,
the one who refused a hand up.
He’s finally spent.
Cooper calls out,
“Gunner Peard! Harry!
Here! Over here!
Take my hand!”
“Thanks, mate,” says Peard.
“Did your lifeboat swamp?” asks Cooper.
“Dunno. Never made it to ’er,” says Peard.
“Was at my gunner station
when the torpedo hit
and I went straight inter the drink
on impact.
Been swimmin’
for half an hour now!”
And yet Peard straightens up
and yells, “Chins up!”
From that moment on,
Peard is on the move,
forging his way through the crowd,
foul-mouthed and loud
bossy, unbowed.
Strong and tough,
short and gruff,
he’s a salty sea dog
straight from my storybooks.
I gaze up at Cooper
and think about the quiet bravery,
the kindness,
that saved Peard—
who rescued all those children.
One man reserved,
one raucous.
Neither much taller than me.
Heroes both.
Questions
Where are the eighteen ships
in our convoy?
Where is our destroyer?
Our corvettes?
When are they coming to fetch us?
What if they’re not?
I Can’t Move
So many arms and so many legs jammed crammed together no leaning no slouching no room to stretch or twist or turn or lay back except for
Father O’Sullivan, weak with flu, sprawling in the bottom of the boat.
Squashed side by side,
elbow to elbow,
knee to knee,
like our lifeboat rations
of sardines in a can,
we try to sleep.
A Light in the Night
A torch, then two! Here they are—
At last!
Our rescue.
Ahoy!
It’s not a ship,
it’s another lifeboat.
They call to us.
The waves have calmed,
so the boat can pull up alongside.
“The name’s Paine,”
says their lifeboat captain.
“We’re from the Marina,
part of the convoy.”
“Where is the convoy?”
asks Father O’Sullivan.
“When are they coming
for us?”
Cooper clears his throat.
“Might as well know the truth, Father,”
he says. “No one expected
we would be attacked this far out.
Our destroyer left last night
to help escort another ship.”
“But where are all the other ships?”
Paine sighs.
“After a U-boat attack,
naval rules require
all convoy ships
to scatter to avoid further casualties.
The Germans sank the Marina, too.
But don’t worry.
I’m sure Captain Nicoll
radioed an SOS to high command
and a rescue ship is on its way.
Seen any other lifeboats?
We had two
for our crew.”
We have only found each other.
Cooper and Paine agree to stick together
till dawn.
I try to go to sleep.
We’ll be picked up tomorrow
or the day after that.
The Royal Navy will save us
and we’ll go home heroes. Right?
A wave hits me in the face.