Medford mail tribune., July 28, 1963, Image 46

MY MOST INSPIRING MOMENT
nnHE S.S. Aghia Marina did not really belong
i in World War II at all.
A seagoing derelict, she was a 9,000-ton flush-deck
tramp built in a British shipyard in 1905 and traded to the
Greeks in the 1920s. Always relegated to the slowest con
voys, she continued to chug earnestly back and forth across
the North Atlantic long after she should have been broken
up. In this ship, I had the honor to serve through the great
U-boat holocaust of 1942-43. In her, too, I acquired the
philosophy which sustained me through the war and which
has guided me since.
The Aghia Marina and other ships like her were a joke
among Allied sailors during the war. Her hull was as thin
as tinfoil, and every time a depth charge was dropped in
her vicinity she sprang leaks. She had no refrigeration and
took her meat along with her on the hoof.
The master of the Aghia Marina was Captain Giorgios
Chrysochos, to whose gallantry this article is a tribute.
The captain, given to dramatics, was in his early 40s, daz
zlingly handsome and he knew it. Under him served a
polyglot crew of infinite eccentricity. There was an old
fireman who shared his bunk in the foc's'l with 15 cats.
There was an engineer who groaned all night from fright
ful diseases. There was a mate who had a fancy, wherever
Hie ship docked, to insert an ad in the local newspaper
offering i 'mself in matrimony. He spoke almost no Eng
lish, but he had a collection of hundreds of letters, many
from girls as pretty as Veronica Lake or Betty Grable.
We set out from Halifax, Nova Scotia, one morning in
the late fall of 1942. We were in a slow five-knot convoy
bound for Loch Ewe in Scotland, carrying general cargo,
including six U.S. Army tanks. Probable length of the voy
age: two or three weeks, U-boats permitting.
Our maximum Bpeed was 10 knots. On the second day
at sea, one of those white Newfoundland fogs which used
to be the mariner's nightmare rolled over us. In fogs like
this, convoys tended to keep together by will power more
than anything else. The ships' radios were silent so as not
to attract U-boats. The only communication was by fog
horn and by fog buoys trailed out behind the stern to give
the vessel following an indication of its distance.
After three days of fog, we realized the worst. We
,. heard no more foghorns. The lookout saw no sign of
the fog buoy of the ship ahead. We continued at half speed,
the fog now being our only protection from the U-boats.
When it dissolved into blue skies on the fourth day, we were
alone in the Atlantic. I was a wartime sailor, and I had
never sailed out of convoy. To be alone at sea for the first
ttme was a sensation that made one almost dizzy.
Captain Chrysochos stood with his chin in his hands at
the rail of the bridge, deep in thought. A desperate deci
sion was his alone. Behind us, a few days away, was the
safety of Halifax where we could wait for a new convoy.
Ahead of us was a 2,000-mile gauntlet of danger.
The U-boat war was at the peak of its intensity, drain
ing the strength away from the Americans and British.
The Allied tonnage lost at sea in the North Atlantic every
week was so sickening that the British Broadcasting Com
pany had stopped issuing figures.
The captain straightened from the rail. He pushed his
cap back on his curls, lit a cigarette, and took a long, lux
urious puff. It was a dramatic moment, and he had no
intention of throwing it away lightly.
The
Captain
Wouldn't Run
A deadly U-boat lurked beneath the sea,
but this decrepit ship and its
eccentric crew had an obligation
one all men face and few meet
"Full speed ahead for Scotland," Chrysochos said.
One or two of the Greek seamen crossed themselves, but
a feeling of exhilaration consumed us all. I believe that a
decision to return to Halifax would have thrown us into
a deep depression.
"Do you think we will ever get there?" I asked my re
lief watch.
He pointed to heaven : "It will be decided up there."
My own feeling was that it would be decided from quite
the opposite direction, but that was the Greeks for you!
Watches were doubled. We carried our lifebelts even to
walk 10 yards. Day after day, the Aghia Marina steamed
ahead. Our ship's radio was silent, but the radio operator,
who suffered from ulcers, reported a depressing number
of signals starting ....... Morse code for the letter U,
sent by ships that had been torpedoed.
Even the weather was against us. Rough seas would
have afforded a certain protection. But the weather, which
should have been bad at that time of year, was glorious,
the smooth silver sea merging almost without horizon into
the blue sky.
The exhilaration of the crew continued and even in
creased. The fine baritone of the chief steward rose to the
sky as he neatly slit the throat of a sheep and cut the head
in two as delicacies for the captain and chief mate. Al
though we had not realized it consciously, we had become
fed up with the mirth that the Aghia Marina always
aroused when she was in port. We joked about it ourselves,
but we really loved the old tub and her new heroic role.
Suddenly the idyll ended, and before we realized it we
were in the middle of a scene of pure horror. One moment
we were in blue water. The next, we were surrounded by
By
GEOFFREY
BOCCA
Author of "Bikini Uocti."
"lift and Dm of Sir Harry OokM,"
"Klngi Without TKronM," and
"TK Advonturovt lit of Wlmton ChvrtnllT
14
("rally WMkly, July M. IXJ