THE DAY DAWNED COLD AND GREY. WITH WHITE HORSES AND A CHILL WIND.
EIGHT KNOTS!! One engine gone. The other badly damaged.
I stretched my stiffened body, looked for the sun and found a dull ominously threatening cloud.
SUDDENLY A CRY “TORPEDO ON THE STARBOARD BEAM”
I, startled, shook my companion. Then watched and waited.
EIGHT KNOTS. “OH GOD” in heaven can you save us.
Suddenly I saw them like innocent Dolphins at play, streaking towards the ship.
Hard a port came the order but what could be done.
A minute a lifetime. I breathed with relief, it would pass, yes pass by the bow, by feet.
Then another and another. Stunned I looked. Insidious lightning fleet.
Beneath the blue Mediterranean they struck and all hell was loosed.
A might crash and roar. Struck forward!! Another struck aft!!
She struggled in mortal agony and I like some crazed shuttlecock I was flung back and forth on my gun.
Oil, splinters, clothes, bodies!! The heavens showered this bloody rain.
Then quiet----------------------
Inside me a voice "don't panic" it said.
Now the moans of the dying men, ringing in my ears.
Now the calm voice of Jimmy, THE ONE, Pos James Rylands Captain.
"Prepare to abandon ship".
I started to inflate my life belt. Ran over beams under rigging, down two ladders, slipped, blasphemed, recovered, dragging out my knife.
Two floats away. The water is calm.
A boat away.
Our bow blown off, drifts by, a futile gesture to heaven. (prayer)
A body, just arms and a head, burned and choked with oil.
Another boat away. I dived recovered it from the oceans greedy grasp.
Oil, fuel in my eyes, my ears. I can't breath, or see.
Why doesn’t that bloody Hun give us another.
But no, a destroyer is hunting, hunting and revenging.
Another body, no clothes, with stumps for legs.
My God dear Jesus is this the honour, the glory. The bloody fate of man.
MUTILATED DEAD.
Maimed, moaning, injured.
She is going like a ducking taking its first dive. Slowly with fear of the unknown depths.
THE MOTOR BOAT. We transfer. Our own boat is waterlogged, but now at last, Rescue.
Our loss, revenge, the destroyer stops.
In the oil, the wreckage and blood, that was once a fighting unit and we the delivered.
By the mercy of god. But 60 souls of a whole ships company.
This then is war.
The glorious fight, the heroic struggle. My god I turn to thee, for the hand that guides and stay the insanity that is teasing at my brain.
For I hear from the radio.
THE ADMIRALTY REGRETS TO ANNOUNCE THE LOSS………………………………