"A Convoy Gunner" "Ten Were Sunk"
This graphic and psychologically astute portrait of convoy duty during the early days of the Battle of the Atlantic is replete with telling detail and even 60 years later remains a taut, gripping read. The story is the fictionalized account of a westbound trans-Atlantic convoy (the fictionalization most probably imposed upon “Convoy Gunner” by the exigencies of wartime censorship) which is attacked by Nazi warplanes and submarines. During the course of its journey 10 convoys ships are lost to enemy action, and hundreds of merchant mariners perish. “Convoy Gunner” writes:
“Every morning the same little convoy steadily ploughed its allotted course, getting gradually smaller, always re-forming – washing hanging out between derricks in the sun, breakfast bells tinkling down on the wind at eight bells, bright flags on the halyards.”
Compare that somewhat peaceful passage with a truly horrific description of the torpedoing of a tanker which soberly concludes:
“... that Norse funeral of living men held our attention until the glow of it was far astern, and the smoke from it had spread out until it blotted out the stars.”