Spirited Scriveners

Philip Bosshardt

Onboard the U.S.S. Bentham Cole

Convoy HX 245

Lat 48 North, Long 28 West

July 5, 1944 (Wednesday)

0235 hours

Roy Gates was nervous, apprehensive, wary and anxious, especially since he couldn’t get the damned cigarette lit in the wind gusting across Bentham Cole’s bridge deck.  

Gates swore and kept trying his lighter.  Cole was running without exterior lights, in radio silence, and the sky was slightly foggy, with a crescent moon low on the horizon, bracketing the faint orange and yellow tendrils of the Northern Lights.  He knew they were in the middle of a darkened convoy, surrounded by dozens of other freighters, escorted by US Navy destroyers and they were only an hour from being in range of RAF Coastal Command patrol aircraft.  The ASW carrier USS Mission Bay was also nearby, with her F6F Hellcats and SB2U Vindicators aloft for ASW duty nearby.  Still, Gates was apprehensive, knowing they were cruising through prime U-boat waters.

Finally, with help from his XO, Russ Sherman, Gates got his cigarette lit.  He puffed, strained his eyes to see through light night fog—the sea was calm tonight, which should make U-boat spotting a little easier, but he was uneasy nonetheless.  His stomach churned…maybe it was the damned midrats he’d tried to eat, maybe not. 

He tried to visualize for the hundredth time the convoy formation they were sailing in: a square nearly six miles wide, four miles in depth, some forty ships, freighters, tankers, other Liberty ships loaded to their gunwales with precious cargo and foods bound for Bristol, England.  Spacing was set by their Navy escorts; Gates could just make out the darkened shape of their nearest destroyer escort, the Lake Superior, some three thousand yards abeam of Cole’s starboard bow, circling like a shepherd dog guiding her flock.  The Escort Commander—what was his name, Bekins somethingorother, was a sticker for tactical discipline while in convoy.  Stay in formation, keep your position, discipline in maneuver, the old windbag was always screeching at the convoy captains.  Five hundred yards bow to stern, a thousand yards abeam.  Easy to say as long as you didn’t have a U-boat sniffing up your ass.

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