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Halfway through a peaceful night, this Normandy- bound convoy had its sweet dreams shattered by long range fire from a surface combatant. (Inset: front row, R to L—the author; CO Bill Scammell;
XO Carey Harrell of the LCI [L]-320.)
The time comes to every person during a war when, after being trained to kill, he comes face to face with the possibility that he may be the victim.
My time came, oddly enough, after the original assault °f the Normandy Invasion in 1944. I was a lieutenant (junior grade) in the Coast Guard, and a deck officer on the 'Ending craft infantry, large (LCI [L]-320), attached to the Eleventh Amphibious Force.
, I wondered how I would feel when the first shot was f*red at me. Would I be like the ultra-brave men we read ^Eout in our history books? Or would I be so scared that d try to crawl under the paint on the deck? The rest of the Crew had been with the ship during the invasion of Sicily,
U. S. COAST GUARD (S. WlGLE)/INSET; COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
while I had come on as a green ensign at the end of the Salerno operation. They told vivid tales of how rough it was at those beaches.
My night came when I least expected it. We had already taken our infantry passengers into Utah Beach on D-Day. threading our ship through the mines, and disgorging our 200 troops into small boats just offshore. All the while, German shells plopped around us, and the air was hazy with gunsmoke. But it didn’t seem personal, because the operation was so massive. A week later, however, it was a different story.
We sailed from Southampton with a shipload of replacements for the 30th Division. We were in convoy with a
'“ceedings / December 1988
French Q-boat, another U. S. LCI, and about eight British landing craft, tank (LCTs). The French ship was the only one carrying radar or recognition signals, so she was the convoy leader. It promised to be a quiet trip. Our planes controlled the skies, and we were following a patrolled, mine-swept channel all the way across the English Channel to Normandy. The German submarine fleet hadn’t been heard from in months. But we were in for a surprise.
As the junior officer, I had the midwatch. This particular night, when I relieved Lieutenant (junior grade) Carey Harrell, the executive officer, at 2345, it seemed as though we were on a peacetime moonlight cruise. The moon hung big and silver in the sky. I checked our course.
Our eight diesels roared steadily, a rather soothing sound. The peaceful swish of our bow against the steady channel groundswell almost put me to sleep. I checked the other ships in the convoy. All were in position, and observing blackout. I made my 0100 entry in the ship’s log. It was hard to believe there was a war going on in the midst of this peaceful scene.
Then I saw them. Three sleek craft, roaring along in the moonlight, half their hulls out of the water. Speedboats out here? I did a double-take. Speedboats hell! “Sound general quarters!” I called down the voice tube.
The helmsman acknowledged my command.
“Steady as you go,” I said. My voice shook. Now I knew how it felt to have the buck within range, and not to be able to squeeze the trigger.
Then I heard the calming voice of Lieutenant (junior grade) Bill Scammell, our skipper, who had just reached the bridge. “What’s the trouble?”
I didn’t have to answer. The French ship opened fire on the three German E-boats with her three-pounder. The E-boats responded with their 20-millimeter and 40-millimeter guns. It was so terrible, yet so beautiful. Red and yellow tracers streamed through the night sky, as though sprayed from garden hoses.
“Hold your fire,” the skipper said. “We’ve got 200 soldiers to watch out for. Besides, they’re out of range of our twenties.”
Behind us, a British LCT opened up with her 40-millimeter. The LCT abeam of us started firing, throwing steel right over our bridge toward the Germans. I wanted to duck so badly, but what good would a quarter-inch of steel do if one of those high-explosive rounds hit?
Suddenly, it was quiet. The E-boats roared away into the darkness. “Get it all in the log,” the skipper said, yawning. “I’m going below. Call me when you need me.”
I looked at my watch: 0125. The whole engagement had taken less than 20 minutes, but it seemed like all night.
“Secure from general quarters,” I told the boatswain’s mate of the watch.
An hour later, I was startled by a muffled roar on the horizon, and then a loud, eerie whistling overhead. This was followed by another roar, and a rugbeater sort of a slap. There was a popping like a roman candle overhead, and we were bathed in bright white light. We had all the wide ocean, and no place to hide. There was just that light hanging from a parachute, floating down, exposing us like deer transfixed by auto headlights. I tried to keep my voice steady: “Sound general quarters!”
Now we learned what it was like to be hunted. A big ship—probably German—was stalking us. We never stopped to ask ourselves what a German ship was doing the Allied-controlled seas around the beachhead.
The firing pattern was the same. Three muffled roars, the screaming of the shells, and the three splashes, moving ever closer. Then another star shell would burst, with that bright ghostly light that left us feeling naked.
The skipper stood beside me again. “Flank speed,” he said.
“All engines ahead flank,” I repeated. Three seconds later, we spurted ahead, our engines roaring a louder tune- All around us, the ships scattered away from the bright light centered over our ship. The Q-boat dropped a smoke pot. The skipper swore. “They’ll zero in on that smoke- Let’s get out of here. Left 30° rudder!”
The helmsman eased the helm over. But at flank speed we nearly heeled over. Then we were off on our new course, scrambling from the bright light of the star shelf
The big guns roared again, stringing three splashes oft our stern. Everyone probably was saying his own private prayer. Below decks, the combat-ready infantrymen stood a chance of never being able to fire their rifles at the enemy. But most of them slept through the whole business.
Then someone’s prayer was answered. The firing slowed down to an occasional shot. We were all alone now, but the smoke pot still smoldered on our starboard beam. For the next hour, we played cat and mouse, with an occasional shot and star shell.
At 0330, the signalman called up the tube, “Ship two points off our port bow.” A big ship, at least destroyer- size, loomed forebodingly out of the morning mist. This is it, I thought. A German destroyer had gotten through our screen.
I looked at the skipper. He was smiling! “One 0 ours,” he said. “You can never mistake our two- stackers.”
We all felt like kids let out of school. She hove to and hailed us. “Follow me,” came the order. We signaled “Roger” on our blinker, and followed the destroyer.
“Rough night,” the skipper said. .
“Yeah,” I said. I climbed down the ladder, and went n1 the galley. The cook grinned at me. “This was even rougher than Salerno,” he said. That was what I wanted to hear.
Out on deck, the story was being pieced together via blinker code between our ship and the destroyer. She was the USS Hobson (DD-464). She had picked up our convoy on her radar screen. We were outside the swept channe where we were supposed to be, probably because of a combination of the strong channel currents and a naviga' tional error by the French Q-boat. Therefore, the Hobson had assumed we were the enemy and opened fire by radar from five miles away. Only a miracle, and Bill Scaro- mell’s skill, had saved us from taking a direct hit.
Those who believed we had nine lives figured that we used up about eight of them that night.
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Proceedings / December