September 1942, Atlantic Ocean

By George Leonard Hirsch

In Memoriam: For Paul S. Hirsch and his mates on the S.S. Hurley

The S.S. Patrick J. Hurley loaded her cargo and crew at Aruba Island of the Netherlands Antilles on Aug. 12, 1942, the day my father put aboard with other Naval Armed Guardsmen and exactly one month before she went down.

Veteran Captain Carl Stromberg received the routine “Instructions for Scuttling Merchant Ships,” and armament installations were completed. Three days later U-512 sailed from Kiel toward a deadly rendezvous in the southeast Atlantic.

In those early, desperate days, German U-boats were in complete control of the seas, sinking 33 ships a week. They ranged with impunity along the Atlantic coast, destroying 70% of Allied shipping. German Admiral Doenitz called it “The American Shooting Season.”

By June 1942, losses were so high in the American Defense Zone that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cabled President Roosevelt: “I am most deeply concerned at the immense sinkings of tankers west of the 40th meridian.” It was into this maelstrom of death at sea, feared by every sailor, that the Hurley carried 75,000 barrels of aviation gasoline and 65,000 barrels of oil bound for England.

They embarked on a mild, tropical day under a Caribbean sky and navigated through the Windward Islands into the Atlantic. No convoy escorted the Hurley for support or rescue. Therefore Captain Stromberg tacked on course, preferring the evasive maneuver to a more direct, faster route that could never outrace a U-boat in any event.

On the night of September 12, she was running properly blacked out. The Captain chose to point into the wind rather than zigzag, perhaps because the night was so completely dark; perhaps because it was impossible to distinguish the diminishing horizon skyline; or perhaps because it was a night of watching, listening, waiting.

Men in the bunkers played poker indifferently, not caring what cards would be dealt them but knowing what hand might be their lot, and that the ante in that game was very high. Some fretted for their cigarettes while the smoking lamp was out; others wrote letters home, quickly.

Eight lookouts took their stations, two at each gun fore and aft, two on the upper bridge, two on the after house, two on the flying bridge, the highest 50 feet above the waves. All radio transmission was shut down, conversation ordered curtailed or muted. They were 950 miles northeast of Barbados at 46.15º west of the 40th meridian. The ship was a silent ark sailing on an empty sea. Except for one other.

Paul S. Hirsch, Seaman 2nd Class, was the watch on the bridge at the 50 caliber machine gun starboard, scanning the blackness, eyes and ears strained for something that lurked out there, shouldn’t have been out there this far south, but was.

He saw it at 2030 hours, flicked the intercom, and hit the alarm as the submarine opened fire.

“Light 4 points starboard! 100 yards parallel! Battle stations!”

Huge 6” armor piercing shells slammed into the ship. One after the other smashed the cabin amidships, snapped the radio antenna like a stick, obliterated the combustion control board, blew the starboard life boats to pieces, exploded the engine room at the water line enflaming other tanks that had been ruptured, and demolished the forward 3”50 gun.

The Captain swung hard to port but the U-boat closed in for the kill. Everything was on fire! Burning oil and gasoline from the burst tanks engulfed the ship in a wall of flame and blinding smoke. The sub circled closer. Machine gun fire and rapid-fire green tracers raked the deck, mercilessly cutting down the men on the catwalks racing to their stations or just to jump ship.

My father’s 3”50 gun station at the bow was a twisted pile of wreckage. He ran back to the bridge to reach the port side when he found the Executive Officer lying on the deck, his mid-section ripped open and bleeding. A pressure bandage was futile.

“Hey, Paul,” the Exec gasped, “it’s no use. I’m gone. Get out of here. Save yourself!” His eyes closed and his head fell to the side.

Stunned and sick my father got up, trying not to slip on the bloody deck, and made it to the hatchway toward the port gun where Lt. Walsh was attempting to return fire. He turned the corner, saw Walsh take shrapnel in the throat and almost reached him when an armor piercing shell blasted out the starboard bulkheads, obliterating the bridge, the Captain, the crew’s quarters, and blew him away into the burning water.

“Next thing I knew I was spinning head over heels a thousand fathoms down; but my life jacket slowly raised me to the surface where I saw a scene from hell. The heat and the sounds were unreal. Flames danced on the waves slick with burning oil, the ship was cracking to pieces, men were screaming. I groped my way trying to keep away from the fire, gagging on sea water when I heard ‘Over here! Over here! This way!’

“I swam toward the voice, but when they pulled me up on the raft a searing pain flashed through my head. I felt the left side where the blood was pouring from a shrapnel wound; yet I was lucky, Walsh never made it.”

While his mates cleansed the wound with sulfur powder and bandaged him, the ghastly light from the ship illumined their determined but furtive search for survivors.

“Hey, over there! Look!”

Three men clinging to a capsized life boat managed to come alongside with another not far behind. The men righted the overturned craft and climbed into the lifeboats: 23 in the first, 22 in the other, each one with room for only 10 men.

“Quiet men! Down!”

The sub prowled like a beast seeking more blood. The men could hear voices from the conning tower. They crouched low, not moving a muscle, not daring to breathe. They had heard stories of survivors machine gunned in the water. Finally the putt-putt-putt of the U-boat’s engines died away. Drifting away, they saw their ship sink stern first. Exhausted, lost, hurt and grieved, they slept the sleep of the dead.

Dawn came with the flotsam and jetsam of a wreck that was once a ship, a home away from home. The stench of burning oil and gunpowder still soiled their nostrils. The roiled waves, as if punishing the stupid pollution of men, lifted them to the top of huge swells and plunged them down 20-foot walls of water.

My father’s wound ached terribly. “I can’t stand this whistling inside my head!”

“That’s not just in your heard, Paul,” the Third Mate said. He was the ranking officer among them, therefore the Officer of the Day (OD). “Listen, men!”

Since life jackets had been equipped with a whistle, even amidst the rough slaps of the white caps they could hear the faint, high-pitched sound of another man alive. Toiling with their burned and bruised hands through the heavy sea, they finally spotted him at the bottom of a swell going under. Somehow they reached him and pulled him aboard.

“Thanks, guys!” he hawked and wretched and spit out the sea. He continued, barely catching his breath: “I was in the water all night … sure I was done for … if you hadn’t found me … I was gonna give up.”

The look in their eyes prompted his answer. “I didn’t see … anybody else … I don’t think … nobody left but us.”

At first they tied the boats together, but in that choppy sea both were liable to capsize. So, reluctantly, they cut the line and bid farewell. The first boat was out of sight at once due to the high waves of the current. They were rescued a week later by the S.S, Etna, a Swedish freighter out of New York.

The situation of the men in the other boat was precarious. They had to ration 26 ounces of water, hard tack and malted milk tablets per day for 23 men, they had to care for their personal hygiene, and they had two wounded men and no pain killers.

Although my father cleansed his wound with sea water, the Chief Engineer was in bad shape. A machine gun had severed an artery in his right ankle; pressure bandages only exacerbated his terrible agony. When he struggled and kicked off the wraps, the blood shot out like water from a hose. Hygiene in the boat was critical. Each time the bilges became filled with it, the men pumped out the blood by hand and cleaned it off in the sea.

And that brought the sharks, huge killers as big as 18 feet and almost as wide. Several times the bigger ones would nudge the lifeboat. The sailors had nothing to drive them away, and even if they had a gun a wounded shark in the water wound send them into a feeding frenzy that would surely capsize the boat.

“OK,” the OD gave the order. “No one moves without saying so first, got it? One false step and we’ll all land in the drink with these man-eaters.”

By the third day the sea had calmed enough to hoist a sail. There were two; yellow meant quarantine, red was “The Pink Lady”: survivors in need of rescue. There was a good wind blowing, and the OD set a course due west with the hope of reaching the free islands of the Lesser Antilles.

They made good progress at first, doing 10 knots, but they awoke on the 12th day to a morning of no sharks and no wind. They had reached the dreaded horse latitudes where subsiding dry air and high pressure literally evaporate the winds.

“We’re in the doldrums,” the OD said grimly.

The sail hung slack, the sea was a sheet of glass without a ripple on the water. The days went on as hopeless as the sameness of the sea; no sound, no movement, no sight of plane or boat. The rations decreased with each bite, each sip, and the sun burned hotter and scorched them without relief. The Chief Engineer lay very still, not even rubbing his left foot against the wounded ankle. They fashioned a makeshift canopy for him from the yellow sail, but it shielded him little from the fierce, unrelenting rays.

“Why is it so dark?” He moaned repeatedly.

They took turns applying a wet cloth over his eyes. He didn’t protest at all. They saw that he had no hope; he was past it, he was just going to die, and it was then that they really began to pray for him and for themselves because they had reached the end of the world where the ancient mariners believed that one falls off into endless space.

On the 21st day the men were awakened by gunfire. Some thought they were dreaming, but the ship coming toward them was H.M.S. Loch Dee.

“She was a rusty old tub,” my father said, “but the most beautiful ship we ever saw!”

Captain White, who was also a doctor, said that C.E. wouldn’t have lasted another day. When they asked him why he had his sharpshooters hail them with shots from their bow, he answered in his delightful Scottish brogue: “We didna hold with any sharks comin’ round ye in the rescue at all!”

C.E. received medical treatment on board and regained his sight. He walked again, too. My father recuperated in a hospital at Charleston, South Carolina, and received a Purple Heart and Commendation, as did his shipmates.

Those who didn’t survive are still remembered.

“There were 23 of us in the boat,” said George Goldman of Jersey City. “We looked for survivors, but the sea was too rough. You could hear whistles that were attached to their lifejackets, long high plaintive notes. We lost our Captain, our Executive Officer, 13 crew members, and four Navy gunners. I can still hear those whistles blowing over the water.”

George Leonard Hirsch is a professional freelance writer, and probably the only person living in Toronto who enjoys the snow.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, January 19th, 2007 | Email This Post

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