Torpedoed !

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 187, 4 May 1940, Page 15

Torpedoed !

V’OU know the usual broadcast we hear'at night? You must have listened to it,” writes Mr. H. M. Tomlinson in “Reynolds News.” “It is, so often, a brief recitation of more ships that JL have disappeared. To most listeners, they are names, and no more. Nothing is seen, as the words are spoken. Even survivors are anonymous, as is the point of foundering. We don’t know where it happened. “But to be paying attention to the cool, impersonal voice of the announcer, and then to catch the name of a familiar ship, and to be left wondering what happened to some men you knew were aboard her when she foundered —‘only one boat could be launched, she sank a few minutes after the explosion’—to hear that is a shock. “You can merely keep wondering, while waiting for the next words. The impersonal voice proceeds. But it tells you no more about the ship you know. So much for that one. You can but stare at the wall. Anyhow, you have something to think about. . . .” “The young merchant officer whom I was examining had been torpedoed, and was ruefully amused about his underpants, which reached almost to his neck,” says a writer in “The Lancet.” “He explained that he had been fitted out on his return to port from the stores of .some charitable organization, and that he had lost everything except the scarf which he was wearing. “ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘everything, including a typewriter that I’d just bought. Worse, however, than the loss of the typewriter was the leaving behind of two ‘forty-quid accordions’ which belonged to members of the crew. “They were torpedoed early one morning, their wireless smashed and useless, and inside a quarter of an hour they were in their boats, in freezing weather and heavy seas. Their ship did not sink, however, for though the

bow went under, the bulkheads held, and the stern stayed tilted above the surface.

“They rowed about keeping themselves warm, but in the afternoon they decided that rather than freeze they would chance going back to the ship, for they could find a fire in the galley and food. “They made their lifeboats fast to the ship and clambered aboard, and almost immediately the small boats were smashed to matchwood against the sides <sf the ship, so there they were, aboard a crippled ship, which they could not leave, waiting to be seen and rescued. They made themselves a hot meal, and felt better.

“A foreign vessel came in sight; it could not get near them because of the big seas, but it wirelessed their position and asked for help. It proposed to stand by till help came, but something went wrong, and it drifted out of sight. Their own ship was groaning and creaking, as they kept its stern to the wind.

“At night they had another good hot meal, and then most of the little company gathered in the stern, below deck, and had a ‘grand concert.’ The two forty-quid accordions were brought out, they sang choruses, and everybody did something—singing, reciting or telling a story. They they took it in turns to keep the watch and to get some sleep. “The next day, in the late afternoon, a destroyer came up and stood by till morning. The sea was too heavy for close work, so rafts were floated from ‘the destroyer, and one by one the men jumped into the sea in their lifebelts, struggled to the rafts, and were hauled aboard. “The officer was suffering severely from exposure, and I laid down the length and details of his convalescent leave. ‘An old chap in our village,’ he remarked, ‘was torpedoed four times in the last war, and before I went off this time he bet me that I wouldn’t beat his record. He can win his bet, as far as I am concerned —once is quite enough for me. But I shall go back, of course. In these days you’ve got to be a hero, whether you like it or not.”