The Last Lady from Hell (15 page)

“DO UNTO OTHERS…”

[Transcribed from Ian MacDonald’s recording]

T
he Olympic lurched forward, billowing smoke from its stacks, as the two fifteen thousand horsepower engines were pushed to their limit by Captain Hays and his crew.

The torpedo was heading directly for the mid ship of the Olympic and was closing far too quickly.

We were collectively knocked off balance and stumbled to the right as Hays applied full left rudder. Our eyes were locked on the approaching steam trail of the torpedoes as the great ship listed over to the starboard in a desperate attempt to reduce its eight hundred eighty-foot profile.

Captain Hays called for full aft on the port engine and maintained full ahead on the starboard. The port propeller shuddered and cavitated as it reversed its direction against the onrushing water.

More quickly than I or anyone else had imagined, the Olympic turned toward the torpedo and we all watched with relief as the steaming tube of death passed along the port side of the ship and harmlessly away to our stern.

We collectively gave a cheer, and some of the men were even slapping each other on the back for making it successfully through our first brush with death. Then someone noticed that instead of turning away from the submarine and speeding away, we were
continuing our left turn toward it. Several of us looked back at the bridge. We could plainly see Captain Hays and his officers at the helm.

“Why aren’t we turning away?” Sean asked. “A U-boat only travels at about twelve knots, that’s half our speed. We can easily out run it.” It was a good question to which none of us had a good answer, but we were about to find out Captain Hays’ intention.

The Olympic continued her high speed turn powering back just slightly so as not to overshoot. The men on deck had gone from noisy jubilation to quiet trepidation as they saw the Olympic steam toward the deadly U-103 at high speed. Her low profile slithering across the water was clearly in sight.

We could see its Captain and his men, who, it dawned on us as well as them, had hesitated a moment too long in determining Captain Hays’ intention. Now they were scurrying below and closing hatches. Huge plumes of water blew into the air as the U-103 began to vent its air tanks and replace it with water to make ready for an emergency dive. It was clear now that the Olympic had every intention of ramming her and the tables had fully turned.

The deck of the Olympic was awash with men, all silently watching, unwilling participants in this life and death event. U-103 was a mere fifty yards away with Hays aiming squarely for her mid-section. The U-boat, however, was sinking fast and the churning, frothy water was quickly rising around the tower as she desperately dove for safety.

As we watched the 103 disappear beneath the waves, the crowd let out a frustrated moan. Twenty yards ahead of us was now empty water where the U-103 had once been. What was unknown to us, and even to the U-boat crew, was that the Olympic drew a solid forty feet of water.

We stumbled forward as the Captain demanded all engines full reverse from the engine room. The ship would normally take hundreds of yards to slow from twenty knots to ten knots. However,
the maneuver was not intended to slow the ship but to thrust another fifteen feet of bow down into the water.

The Olympic shook from a loud and distinct impact far below the surface of the water. We could feel it through our feet. We all knew that the Olympic had tagged the U-103.

Running to the rails, we began to scour the water to the aft for debris of the U-boat to confirm the collision. Suddenly, Bill Lewis pointed and yelled. “There! Some life vests and oil!”

The water to our aft erupted into a boiling cauldron of oil, debris and bubbles. We broke into a spontaneous cheer at the knowledge that the Olympic had taken out one of these German demons of the deep. In fact, the double hull of the Olympic had cleanly cut the U-103 in half and quickly sent her to the bottom with little damage to the RMS itself.

I looked up to the bridge and could see the Captain looking aft with his binoculars. He lowered them and gave some orders to First Mate Spader who saluted him and marched away.

Moments later, as the ship slowed to a crawl, the deck hands began to man the life boats.

“Hey Ian, you think we’re sinking and they forgot to tell us?” Sean asked, half in jest.

“I hope not,” I said and looked at the others to see if anyone else found this a little unnerving. Dan McKee stretched out his mace and stopped a deck hand as he was running by.

“What’s cooking pal?” he asked.

“The Captain has ordered us to lower boats away and retrieve survivors,” the young man said. McKee raised his mace and allowed the deck hand to proceed on his way.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dan said.

The water astern was thick with oil and flotsam but, amid the floating debris, we could see men flailing in the icy waters. As the Olympic sat steady waiting for the completion of the rescue mission, it dawned on me that we were sitting ducks for any other German
U-boats that might be in the area. I noticed First Mate John Spader nearby and mentioned my concerns to him.

Spader smiled and said, “The Captain is a good Christian which compelled him to retrieve survivors. He is, however, not a foolish man and had ordered us to radio for British Naval assistance which is less than fifteen miles away steaming toward us at twenty-eight knots.” He excused himself and walked off.

We were left there to discuss the wisdom of putting the ship and ourselves at risk to save the very people who had just tried to kill us.

“I’d leave them,” Dan said. “Nothing personal, it’s just war.” Bill Lewis and Terry Manning both surprised me by siding with Captain Hay’s decision.

“Besides,” Bill said. “We stand a chance of getting some valuable information from our guests.”

As our argument about Captain Hays’ move continued, I was relieved to see three British battleships clearly in view on the not too distant horizon. They looked like three giant knights charging forward on their steeds, their stacks billowing black smoke and their bows sending cascades of water thirty feet into the air on either side as they cut through the seas at battle speed.

The first of the survivors were being escorted aboard and we all clamored over to catch a glimpse of our enemy. They were soaked and slimy with oil.

These were young men, our ages, looking very scared clutching to woolen blankets, shivering and keeping their heads down, lifting them only occasionally to steal a glance at their captors or saviors, a topic for another discussion. The enemy, I now realized, looked very much like any of us, not evil or sinister as I would have liked them to look.

“Why do they want to destroy Europe?” I asked my quiet friends. I was hoping that someone would give me a good reason to hate these men. It was much easier to wish them dead when they were just the hard cold U-103, now they had faces and looked frightened.

“Don’t look so tough now, do they?” Terry commented. I nodded.

Captain Hays had joined us on deck as the last of the survivors were brought aboard. He stepped forward as the final two men came up the ladder. The first was a young man with a stocking hat. He was taller than the second man but, somehow seemed shorter. His head hung down in defeat.

The second man had a white captain’s hat on with a soaking wet dress jacket hanging awkwardly askew. He stood straight and looked taller than the young man ahead of him, although he was not.

Captain Hays stood before this man and the two exchanged a long, silent stare. Finally, the U-boat Captain stood slowly to attention and saluted Hays clicking his heels as he did it. Several moments later Hays returned the salute.

Never taking his eyes off the U-boat Captain, Hays ordered a blanket for his enemy and had him escorted below to be cleaned up and given dry clothing. We sensed we were witnessing an ancient protocol that followed a battle, when one leader would submit and the other would honor his submitting. We looked on silently in awe and respect.

LIVERPOOL DEBARKATION

W
e disembarked The Olympic the next day in the dingy port city of Liverpool. Tired, but exhilarated after our voyage from Canada, we looked forward to joining our fellow countrymen on the Western Front.

The Olympic was being tugged into the dock, where crews were standing by to inspect the hull to determine the extent of the damage from the collision with U-103 and begin immediate repairs. The hull had not been breached, so the repairs were hoped to be minor. There were also several members of the Royal Navy waiting to escort the ten surviving crew members to a proper place for interrogation.

Terry Manning, always ready to play his pipes, hurriedly organized a marching band for our debarkation.

We marched off The Olympic in a two-man file playing “The Maple Leaf Forever,” leading a mass of men down the gangplank to a large crowd of cheering Brits on the dock. There was a brief discussion between our Canadian officers and British officers, which was followed by an order to Terry to have the pipe band lead the men through town to a temporary billet area about three kilometers march from the dock.

Terry called out the tunes, Dan set the cadence and we were off, like pied pipers leading children through a town of cheering
onlookers. It was a brisk march on solid ground, a welcome jaunt after a week at sea.

Our billets were in small tents, six men per, and the accommodations were spartan, but as we were only to be here for twelve hours, it was considered a brief inconvenience.

The next morning we were awakened at the crack of dawn, lead through some calisthenics and fed a quick breakfast consisting of coffee, porridge and buttered toast. Then we gathered our gear and made a quick march to the rail yard where we boarded the troop transport bound for East Sandling training camp. This was not the old Kingston Pembroke Line. We were packed into boxcars with wooden benches nailed to the floor enabling every seated occupant to experience the true feel of the rail.

It was a bum-numbing seven and a half-hour ride that was further enhanced by the rattling and clanking of the old boxcars and the billows of black coal smoke that belched from the laboring engine and enshrouded the cars behind.

The day had gone from sunny and warm in Liverpool to cool and rainy as we approached East Sandling. Someone had opened the door and we were quickly made aware of how damp and chilly it really was. Around the camp were fields filled with recruits being lead through various training endeavors. They were climbing over barriers, crawling under barbed wire, shooting and bayoneting straw-filled German soldier uniforms.

As we all jumped out of our boxcar, one Sergeant barked out that this was standard weather for the time of year, so we had better get used to it. We formed into long lines by regiment and ordered to cue up in front of a tent for our assignments.

Assignments were generally given with consideration of one’s life experience, qualification, and education. Because the men in our
band had some higher education, the probability that we would be ordered to be a sapper or an infantryman was low.

As our group approached the table in the tent at the end of the line, we could hear a fellow asking a series of questions designed to help them place you in the position you were suited for. I looked past the shoulder of the man ahead of me and saw that the fellow sitting at the table was a small man with thick hair and enormous bushy eyebrows.

“Name, religion, education, qualifications,” he growled out mechanically in a thick Irish brogue.

“He’s a leprechaun, or perhaps a troll,” I thought cheekily. But before I could sort it out for myself, it was my turn.

I had been reciting the information for three men ahead of me and was going to impress him with my efficiency. “Ian Macdonald. Protestant. First-year university. Bagpiper,” I said.

The leprechaun never looked up as he scribbled the information onto a form. But as he was writing “bagpiper” on the form, he stopped and looked up at me with one great eyebrow raised.

“Did you say bagpiper?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. We–”