"Some
merchant ships carried Spitfires and Hurricanes and these were
launched by catapult. More often than not outside of the range
of an aerodrome, so that the pilots, mission completed, had to
ditch and hope they were plucked out of the sea before they drowned
or died of exposure. So by no means was The Battle of the Atlantic,
just a Navy show.
We
lost ships in convoy that probably would have escaped torpedoes
if they had sailed independently and at their top speed, as the
Queen liners did. But merits of convoy far out weighed disadvantages.
City
of Benreas torpedoed 56 degrees, 43 minutes north, 21 degrees,
50 minutes west, sinking, proceed immediately. The position was
200 miles from us. We reached it on the afternoon of September
18th.
|
|
| Two
German ships on parade. |
First
we saw a raft, there were two girls on it in pajamas and a man
with a smashed leg. One of the girls lay almost senseless, her
hand clutched by the man. They had been on that raft, drenched
by the sea, chilled by an icy gale and stung by hale stones for
19 hours.
We
saw an upturned boat. Two school girls were clinging to it. There
was a boy aged 9 sharing another raft with two men, one of them
with his head split open. How can you not weep when you see something
like that.
The
little boy on the raft, he was a Londoner, Jack Keely. When he
was carried up the netting, which had been flung over the destroyer鈥檚
side, he grinned and said "I say, thanks very much". You stand
abashed at courage like that.
