Bradbury, Ray "Undersea Guardians"
A peculiar, eerie convoy story which opens underwater near the wreck of the U.S.S. ATLANTIC, a sunken cargo / troop transport ship destroyed by a German submarine. Bradbury’s “guardians” are twenty ghost-like survivors of the vessel, who are neither dead nor alive. They “live” only to protect Allied convoy vessels and to destroy German submarines and surface vessels:
“We’re the Guardians,” one of these beings, an old woman, tells another. Though over 1000 perished with the ATLANTIC, “twenty of us came out, half dead, because we have someone to guard. You have a lover on the convoy routes. I have four sons in the Navy. The others have similar obligations. [Captain] Condon has sons, too. And Helene — well, here lover was drowned inside the ATLANTIC and never came out half alive like us, so she’s vindictive, motivated by a great vengeance. She can’t ever really be killed.”
We all have a stake in the convoys that cross and recross the ocean. We’re not the only ones. Maybe there are thousands of others who cannot and will not rest between here and England, breaking seams in German cargo boats, darkening Nazi periscopes and frightening German crewmen, sinking their gunboats when the chance comes.
But we’re all the same. Our love for our husbands and daughters and fathers makes us go on when we should be meat for fish, make us go on being Guardians of the Convoy ...”