Twelve Desperate Miles (30 page)

Over on the
Augusta
, George Patton worried “
that I should be doing something but there is nothing to do.” His relationship with Hewitt continued to improve, and he cracked open the Koran and read sections including “Three Harbors,” “The Raft,” and “The Sun is my Undoing,” which he describes in his diary as “pretty sticky.”

He worked the rowing machine some and jogged in place at the dresser in his cabin—three hundred steps—and started to worry that he might not get in a fight at all. Messages from intelligence sources had
been arriving that intimated that the French army and air force would not put up a fight. He wrote to Beatrice that he hoped they would, “
for it would sort of pull the cork of the men—all steamed up to fight and not have to.” He admitted that “also it would be better for me to have a battle,” which was no doubt an unnecessary postscript for his wife.

Two days out of Hampton Roads and about halfway between Bermuda and Nova Scotia, a strong wind blew up from the southwest, pounding the ships in the northern group of the task force as they headed west to east across the ocean. Among those getting rocked were the old four-piper destroyer, the
Dallas
, and René Malevergne’s
Susan B. Anthony
, which were tossed by the swells pounding against the starboard stern. “
Only the
‘Texas’
does not budge,” Malevergne recorded in his diary. “She is like a rock, and sheds the swells that break upon her.”

By midmorning, the total convoy began forming. First came the group from Maine, led by the second battleship in the armada, the
Massachusetts
; soon after came the southern group from the task force, sailing from the southwest in the wake of the
Texas
and her entourage. George Patton and Admiral Kent Hewitt’s central group would round out the convoy the following morning, painting an impressive panorama across the horizon. On board the transport
Allen
, trailing just behind the
Texas
, General Lucian Truscott was moved by the sight of the gathering ships.

“
A great convoy at sea is a magnificent sight,” he would later write. “One thinks of stately swans gliding across some park lagoon, or of waterfowl in precise formation winging their way against leaden skies, or of a great herd of cattle undulating across western plains under watchful eyes of guardian cowboys. But none of these matches the grandeur of a convoy at sea in war time. Forward of us was the battleship
Texas
, broad of beam, bristling with guns, a symbol of power. We followed at a distance of perhaps half a mile. Behind us spaced at similar distances followed other transports. Off to the right, or starboard, there was a similar column; beyond it another, another, and still another.… To the rear as far as we could see the formation extended—transports, cargo ships, aircraft carriers, tankers—all with white waves curling back
beneath the bows, and a shimmering wake trailing out behind. And everywhere the tossing of signal flags and the incessant blinking of signal lamps as the ships communicated one with another. Now and again far out across the tossing blue waves polka-dotted with white caps, one caught glimpses of the sleek destroyers speeding along like outriders protecting a moving herd. No sound but that of wind and waves and the faint hum of driving motors. No smoke by day, no lights at night, and the faintest indication of either brought a quick reprimand from watchful eyes.”

By and large, the two services were joined as one for the crossing, but each branch obviously had its own worries. Of deep concern to the Navy was the difficulty of navigating some three thousand miles across the ocean, not just to reach three specific points on the long and twisting coastline of continental Africa but to find these areas at a scheduled hour in the dark of an early morning. And, of course, that was to say nothing of the fickleness of the weather and the difficulties of negotiating the subsequent embarkation and landing of the craft carrying Patton’s army to the shores of Morocco; nor did the two services need to be reminded, once again, that these amphibious landings had been practiced by army and navy together for the first time just weeks earlier.

There was also the fear throughout the voyage not only of discovery but of attack. Karl Doenitz’s wolf packs were continuing to wreak havoc among the merchant convoys plying the Atlantic from the Murmansk run down to the shores of South America. Truscott, for one, was thinking of how the “
grim possibility” of “the loss of a transport with an assault battalion” would disrupt the plans for the whole invasion. By his calculations, if one battalion were lost, the attack would need to be seriously revised, but it could go on. If two were lost, “the plan would not be practicable.”

Doenitz had actually devised the strategy for attacking a convoy of this size at the very end of World War I, when he realized that by sending
U-boats in packs “the more favourable would become the opportunities to each individual attacker.” While individual submarines could and did cause much damage at the advent of World War I, when the convoy system was put in place in 1917, “the oceans at once became bare and empty; for long periods at a time the U-boats operating individually, would see nothing at all; and then suddenly up would loom a huge concourse of ships, thirty or fifty or more of them, surrounded by a strong escort of warships of all types.”

A pack of submarines, however, strung out over a span of ocean and working in concert once a convoy was located, could wreak maximum havoc on Allied shipping. “In the darkness of the night sudden violent explosions and sinking ships cause such confusion that the escorting destroyers find their liberty of action impeded and are themselves compelled by the accumulation of events to split up.… Against the massed ships of a convoy, then, obviously the only right course is to engage them with every available U-boat simultaneously.”

The realization that this was the best strategy for future U-boat campaigns at sea came at a particularly disheartening moment for Doenitz. It was the second-to-last month of the war. His submarine was supposed to have been joined in the Mediterranean by another German U-boat that wound up never appearing. When Doenitz came across a British destroyer that he knew to be an “outrider” for a convoy, he began to skulk after it. But “soon more shadows loomed up in the darkness, first more destroyers and escort vessels, and finally the great solid silhouettes of the merchantmen themselves.” He tried to slip all the way through the convoy to attack the leading ship on the outside column and actually struck one of the merchant vessels with a torpedo. But a power failure on board the U-boat in the midst of a dive sent the vessel into a tailspin. His only means of recovery was to surface as quickly as he could, and when he did, Doenitz found himself in the middle of the convoy. Sirens howled around him and ships bore down from all sides with guns blasting. His submarine was soon hit and started taking on water. Doenitz gave the order to abandon ship. He and his men were left floating in their life
jackets as the British convoy continued on its journey, leaving one ship, the
Snapdragon
, to pick up the German seamen left behind.

Doenitz was pulled from the ocean like a fish. Though he had no particular recollection of his saviors, there was a young lieutenant commander named William John on the
Snapdragon
who would remember him for years to come.

S
oon after the
Contessa
took to the sea, a radio message was sent out across the ocean from Norfolk: “
Contessa
flying Honduran flag departed. 2030 October twenty-sixth unescorted. Mixed crew. Clearance for Gibraltar. Naval guard. Lieutenant Leslie in charge. Direct Route. Speed of advance 14.5 knots.”

From Gibraltar a couple of days later came a curious response: “What is cargo ship mentioned? Nothing in plans indicate she is expected by British at Port given. They now inquire.”

Quickly the operators in Norfolk sent a reply: “[
Contessa
] departure delayed. Cargo for task group. Ship to join en route. Lieutenant Leslie directed to change destination after departure.”

Despite the clarification, it was evident that after all the attention given her by the command of the Western Task Force in Norfolk before she sailed, the
Contessa
was now on her own.

One hundred ships stretched twenty by thirty miles across the ocean leave an obvious memory of themselves. Oil slicks and floating garbage mark the trail for any vessel passing in a convoy’s wake. It was a good and bad thing for the
Contessa
that her more direct course across the ocean meant that she wasn’t traveling precisely in the path of the task force. Bad because she was on her own, which made her easy pickings for any U-boat that happened by. Good because the convoy was more likely to attract the attention of a pack of submarines.

When he had first been given his assignment back in Hampton Roads before the ship set sail, Lieutenant Leslie had busied himself accumulating and studying the intelligence that he would need for the mission, including sortie and communication plans. In the chaos of the departure,
Leslie was not fully briefed on some of the finer points of his mission, but the knowledge of these holes was yet to be discovered.

For now, however, Leslie kept the U.S. Navy orders for the ship to himself. In the meantime, he directed Captain John to set a course to a point abreast of the Azores, suggesting, as the radio messaging going back and forth between Virginia and Gibraltar indicated, that the
Contessa
was heading toward the Pillars of Hercules. Though John remained in the dark about their ultimate mission, he was enough of a military man to take his orders without question. What others on board speculated about their path is unknown.

The amount of cargo stored in the
Contessa
’s holds was calibrated to afford her a draft of seventeen feet, six inches, which was the estimated clearance that she would have entering the River Sebou. The gasoline and munitions stored below provided the
Contessa
a steadying load, and her freshly tightened rivets and welded seams revealed no leaks as she set out at a daytime clip that would average more than fifteen knots.

The weather was cloudless for the first several days of the voyage, which calmed crew jitters to a degree. During daylight hours, the ship assumed a zigzag course across the ocean, which was standard procedure in U-boat territory. Almost immediately, however, a number of false alarms, prompted by phantom submarine sightings, set sirens ringing on the
Contessa
. Nerves were still wired despite the clear skies.

Leslie set up a radio watch schedule using two operators whom he’d brought along from the armed guard unit, along with two commercial operators who were already part of the
Contessa
crew. The dozen remaining members of the guard crew were placed on rotating watches at their gun stations, while Leslie, Lieutenant Cato, and an ensign assigned to the trip took turns on the bridge in shifts of four hours on, eight hours off.

Whether or not Leslie made any indication to his unit that they should keep a special eye on the behavior of the Norfolk inmates is unrecorded. In fact, Leslie himself was as unknown to the company as they were to him. There was acquainting to do there as well.

Ambrose Schaffer, a signalman, enlisted in the U.S. Navy and got assigned to this armed guard unit when he was ordered to report to the
Contessa
for its second voyage to England in September 1942.
An up-and-coming young welterweight boxer from Norwalk, Ohio, prior to the war, Schaffer was headlining a fight card in a local auditorium along with his younger brother, Herb, on a dreary April Fools’ Day in 1935, when their father, Harry Schaffer, watching in the stands, keeled over from a heart attack. Ambrose, who fought under the name “Kid” Schaffer, wasn’t told about the coronary until after the fight. The next day his father died in the hospital, and Kid Schaffer, who won the bout, went on with his boxing career. They were tough times; he was a tough kid. Through the rest of the decade, Schaffer established a solid 8–1 record with four knockouts, but he and Herb, who would eventually fight under the name “Marine” Schaffer, in honor of the path of service he would take in the Second World War, both found their careers put on hold by the start of the war.