The Laconia Incident Read online

  Among the homes destroyed in the raid was the Dalmuir home of Howard and Mary Cotton. Both Howard and Mary and their three daughters were asleep inside the house when the bomb struck, and all five were killed. Their eldest son, Robby, was not at home at the time. Robby was in Glasgow on the night of the 13th and 14th, just eight miles away. He would have seen the flashes and heard the bombs going off in the distance, had he only been watching and listening.

  * * * * *

  A sweaty Robby Cotton was lying naked atop the covers when he awoke that Friday morning, 14 March. He had the urgent need to piss. Sunlight filtered through the dusty window at the foot of the bed, and the room was stuffy and hot. Sometime during the night, the electric fire must have been turned way up to counter the chill of the Glasgow night. As it was, and in contrast to the inside temperature, the hazy morning, outside air was just above freezing. Robby’s head was pounding, the hangover a result of all the alcohol he had consumed the evening and night before. His mouth was rank and dry, his every tooth feeling like it had been swathed in cotton nappies—and his aching bladder was full.

  Only when he finally opened his eyes wide enough did Robby become aware of the woman sleeping next to him. In contrast to his own spare, lean body, this woman’s naked body was large, with wide hips and thick legs. She was lying on her side, facing him, and like him, had slept atop the covers. He looked at her hard, but, try as he might, he could not remember her from the night before. All he could recall was that Harlan, Donald, and he were drinking and having a grand old time. Yet, there she was. She’s got to be old, he thought, she looks like she’s really old. At least thirty.

  Her tousled hair was black and dull, her face in repose peaceful, but unremarkable. Her breasts were large in keeping with the rest of her, nestled one atop the other, right upon left, two brown nipples set in tan areolas—two owl’s eyes staring at him. What struck Robby as truly remarkable was her skin. It was flawless, the color of clotted cream, and totally unblemished. Without thinking, Robby reached out, and, with the back of his hand, stroked the flawless skin just above the woman’s hip. It felt every bit as good as it looked: soft and warm—and yielding.

  Upon feeling his touch, the woman sighed, and turned over on her back, the owl flown.

  Mustn’t wake her, Robby thought, and, remembering again his urgent need to piss, eased himself off the bed. He searched the room for the chamber pot, and finally found it in a cupboard in the near corner of the room. The cupboard open, he relieved himself into the chamber pot. His flow made some noise, but the woman slept on.

  He found his clothes among hers, scattered on the floor of what must have been the woman’s flat. Once dressed, he tiptoed out of the flat, closed the door quietly behind him, and made his way down four flights of stairs and into the street below. The icy air greeting him sucked the breath from his lungs, and make his head pound ever harder.

  Robby had no idea where he was, but thought he’d best find someplace to get some aspirin, and perhaps, if he could hold it down, some breakfast. He thought then about Harlan and Donald, wondering where they were. But they don’t have to catch their train ‘til noon, he mused So they’ll probably be just fine.

  He started down the street, his back to the not yet risen sun, the faint light fighting hard to bite through the city haze. It was at the street corner where Robby saw the headlines at the newsstand there. In utter disbelief, he bought the paper, the Daily Record and Mail, and read about the nighttime bombings. His home had to be in the thick of it.

  Now all he could think about was getting home.

  * * * * *

  Hard times had fallen on all of Scotland with the Great Depression, but had passed over the Cottons. Howard had steady work throughout those lean years as a steelworker at the William Beardmore and Company Shipbuilding Works in Dalmuir, on the River Clyde. The Cotton family, while hardly living high on the hog, had never suffered economic hardship during those prewar years. The Cottons always had food on the table and a roof over their heads—and there was even just enough money to send their children to the Catholic school. Now, with the war, and with Howard taking a supervisory job at the Beardmore works, things were actually looking up.

  The only sticking point in Mary and Harry Cotton’s marriage was their eldest child and only son, Robby. Robert Miles Cotton was born five years after his father began work at the shipyard. That was on 17 January, 1924.

  Robby had been a difficult child, strong-willed and rebellious. He preferred roaming the Clyde River estuaries downstream of Dalmuir with his mates Harlan and Donald, all three playing hooky from St. Stephens School and the demanding nuns who taught there. And when he did go to school, it seemed that Robby was always getting into scraps with his schoolmates. He got along well only with the likes of Harlan White and Donald Conklin, ne’er-do-wells just like himself.

  “There’s a job for you at the Works, Robby,” Howard had told his now 17-year-old son, “a good one—apprentice ship fitter. Pay’s good, even to start. You’ll learn a trade, and with a job like that—working for the national defense—you’ll be kept out of the shootin.’”

  But Robby Cotton wasn’t interested in working, and though his mates were set on joining up, Robby was not. And an indulgent Mary Cotton slipped enough spending money to her beloved only son, that he could afford to defy his father, at least for the time being. When he turned eighteen, he figured, then they’d come after him for the Army or whatever, and then he’d worry about the national service. Maybe then he’d sign up for the Navy, like Harlan and Donald. Besides, that wasn’t for months yet, and, in the meantime, Robby intended to enjoy life. However, the events of 13 and 14 March did for Robby what his father’s efforts could not. Robby Cotton suddenly grew up.

  * * * * *

  The recruiter, a ruddy-faced, portly chief petty officer, addressed the lean, blond, likely-looking young man that had shown an interest in joining the Royal Navy. “Well, if it’s shootin’ at Jerry airplanes you’re wantin’, then the Navy’s the only place for you, Lad,” the Chief assured Robby. “You’ll be trained to shoot down Jerry planes just as soon as you’re sent down to a ship. That’s what the Navy does with likely lads like yourself!”

  “Yes, Sir,” Robby explained, “it was them Jerry airplanes that murdered my family asleep in their beds, and all I want’s a chance to shoot back at the bastards.”

  “Don’t ‘Sir’ me, boy, I’m just a petty officer, but you can call me ‘Chief,’ as is proper. Now when did you say you was born?”

  “It was 17 January, 1924, Chief.”

  “You say you was born on 17 January . . . 1923?” the chief corrected.

  “No, Chief, 1924,” Robby said to the recruiter, who then scowled back at him. “17 January . . . 1924,” Robby repeated for emphasis.

  “Now you see, m’boy, there’s this,” the chief explained patiently, just as Robby had seen the nuns do at times, “If you was born in 1924, you’d be just seventeen, and you’d be too young to enlist without your parents’ permission—and which you can’t really get now, after all, with them being killed by the bloody Jerries and all . . .”

  “Ah, yeah,” Robby replied, as the light dawned, “you heard right, Chief—1923 it is!”

  “That’s what I thought you said,” the chief replied.

  With that, Robby Cotton signed up in the Royal Navy for “the duration of hostilities.”

  Within the week, Ordinary Seaman Robert Miles Cotton reported aboard the Royal Navy Barracks in Plymouth, HMS Drake, for training. For whatever reason, Robby discovered, the Royal Navy considered shore installations “stone frigates.”

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  2

  Nine Months Earlier, HMT Lancastria, June, 1940

  A full two weeks after the British had extracted their forces from the beaches of Dunkirk, on 16 June, 1940, Royal Merchant Navy Captain Rudolph Sharp, master of the troopship HMT Lancastria, anchored his ship some eleven miles southwest of St. Nazaire, in the Loire Riv
er Estuary, in what was, technically, German-occupied France. Sharp and Lancastria had been dispatched to St. Nazaire to take part in Operation Ariel, the evacuation of British and Allied forces and nationals from western France.

  The merchant ship, RMS Lancastria, a Cunard-White Star Line ocean liner, had been requisitioned by the British government in April, 1940, and was hastily converted for use as a troopship. The 578-foot-long ship, displacing 16,200 gross tons, was originally commissioned RMS Tyrrhenia, and had been built in Dalmuir, Scotland, by William Beardmore and Company in 1920.

  The Tyrrhenia was the first vessel on which Howard Cotton, a newly-hired apprentice steelworker at the Dalmuir Shipyard, had ever worked. Howard Cotton’s only son, Robby Cotton, and Rudolph Sharp were destined to have their fates intertwined, even though they would never actually engage in face-to-face conversation.

  In 1924, Tyrrhenia was refitted and rechristened Lancastria, and placed in service on the regular Cunard-White Star route between Liverpool and New York. Now, in St. Nazaire, instead of well-heeled transatlantic passengers, Lancastria was tasked with transporting refugees from the Nazi juggernaut that had swept across France in just forty-six days.

  Once at anchor in the estuary, Lancastria began to take on refugees as soon as they could be ferried out to the anchorage. The ship’s official capacity was 2,200 passengers and crew, but Sharp had been ordered to disregard international law and load aboard “as many men as possible.”

  It was a clear night with a waxing full moon, and the visibility was excellent. The inky harbor waters were quiet, with only gentle swells. Boats small and large moved back and forth, carrying passengers from the docks throughout the night. Before morning on the 17th, the ship was already loaded with human cargo well beyond her rated capacity. And still the boats shuffled back and forth from the port.

  The Luftwaffe began attacking the shipping assembled for Operation Ariel on the early afternoon of 17 June. It was, unfortunately, perfect flying weather: clusters of billowy white clouds high against a clear, brilliant blue sky.

  The Germans had quickly set a nearby vessel, HMT Oronsay, aflame, when Captain Sharp was given leave to get Lancastria underway for England. Lancastria was now loaded with an uncertain number of passengers, later estimated at somewhere well above 4,000 souls, possibly even as many as twice that number. But after the enemy planes had departed, Sharp, wary of enemy submarines, elected to stay put and wait for a promised destroyer escort rather than getting underway immediately. That soon proved to be an unfortunate decision.

  Later that same afternoon, a second wave of Luftwaffe Ju 88 fighter bombers hit the port.

  The first bomb to hit Lancastria struck at 3:48 PM. The ship immediately began listing to port. The first hit was followed closely by two more. Captain Sharp ordered the ship abandoned—the order superfluous, since a panicky, undisciplined, crew had already begun lowering lifeboats. Not long afterward, a fourth bomb went down the ship’s funnel, exploded in her engine room, and released about 1,200 tons of fuel oil into the estuary.

  His ship broken apart and aflame, Sharp did his best to continue supervising an orderly abandoning of the ship, while strafing attacks by German aircraft, directed at the swimming survivors, set the floating fuel alight. Survivors not killed by the strafing were either burned alive or choked to death by the fumes. In the end, of the passengers who were aboard Lancastria, only 2,477 survived. Among them, and the last living being to leave his ship, was Captain Rudolph Sharp. In the fog of war, Lancastria’s exact death toll was never determined.

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  3

  HMS Valiant, October, 1941

  Seven months after the Clydebank Blitz, on 23 October, 1941, ordinary seaman Robby Cotton reported for duty aboard the battleship HMS Valiant, in Malta.

  “Ordinary seaman’s mess is three decks down, port side, aft. Find yourself an open spot and hang your hammock there, for now,” the petty officer on the quarterdeck told Robby, after he had presented his draft chit.

  Lugging his hammock and duffel bag, Robby strode across the main deck to the port side, and headed aft, looking for a passageway that headed belowdecks.

  The ship was huge, 33,000 tons displacement, and when he had learned she was to be his new home, Robby had gone to HMS Drake’s library, looked her up, and memorized her particulars. Valiant was 644 feet long, and 91 feet across. And there were sailors everywhere—everyone headed somewhere on some very obviously important mission. Robby gazed up and marveled at the size and number of Valiant’s guns. Again, the memorized statistics were recalled: eight 15-inch guns, fourteen 6-inch, and two 3-inch anti-aircraft mounts. It’s them AA guns I’ll be wantin’ to shoot, Robby mused, if only they’ll let me!

  Making his way aft, Robby had to work his way around two torpedo tubes (he knew there were two more just like them on the starboard side). Gazing up and about, he marveled at the height and complexity of her superstructure, the maze of doors and passageways aboard Valiant.

  Robby located a ladder (actually a staircase, but aboard His Majesty’s ships stairs are called “ladders,” just as walls are called “bulkheads”) and made his way down into the bowels of the great warship. Counting the main deck as the first deck, he went down two more decks and found a compartment with hammocks strung throughout. There, as the petty officer on the quarterdeck had instructed, he found an open spot and strung up his hammock.

  “Hello, Mate, welcome aboard.”

  Robby looked for the source of the greeting.

  “Here, man, over here.”

  Robby spied a prone form, lying partially hidden, two hammocks inboard. “Hello! I’m Robby Cotton, and you?”

  In a practiced maneuver, a smiling figure rolled out of the hammock. The man’s smile lit the place up. He had a shock of wavy brown hair, bright brown eyes, straight nose, and a lantern jaw—overall, Robby thought, quite a good-looking fellow.

  “Able Seaman Jim McLoughlin. I hear a Scots brogue. You wouldn’t be a Scotsman, now, would you, lad?”

  Robby laughed. He’d been regularly teased about his accent during training at HMS Drake. “Born and bred I am,” he replied, “from just outside Glasgow.”

  “Right, Minnow,” McLoughlin said, spying the rating patch on Robby’s arm. “I’m from Liverpool, myself. But here, lad, you’re in the wrong place. This here’s the Able Seamen’s quarters. Ordinary Seamen are on the deck below.”

  “The Petty Officer on the quarterdeck said ‘port side, aft, three decks down,’” Robby pleaded in his defense.

  “Right, that,” McLoughlin allowed, “but you’re only two decks down. This here’s the third deck, but it’s only two decks down from the main deck. You’ll be wanting the fourth deck.”

  “I think the Navy arranges things just so’s they can drive a man potty!” Robby exclaimed.

  McLoughlin laughed. “C’mon, Minnow, I’ll get you settled,” he offered, still smiling. He then led Robby down one level to the ordinary seaman’s mess, and found him an open spot to string up his hammock.

  * * * * *

  Robby’s first duty station outside the UK was not at all what he had expected. When he reported aboard, nobody had bothered to tell him that the Italians bombed Malta practically every afternoon. He discovered that shooting at enemy aircraft involved being their target in return, and while his battle station was to his liking—the port-side mount 31, one of the ship’s two three-inch AA guns—he was just a loader. If I’m gonna get shot at, he thought, I at least want to be aiming the bloody gun!

  He was happy to discover it was also Tom McLoughlin’s battle station, and it was McLoughlin, also a loader, who showed him how to hustle a shell from the ready locker and into the gun breech, just in time for it to be rammed home and fired—without losing a finger or two in the process.

  “You’re every bit as important to the running of the gun, and shooting down of the enemy,” McLoughlin had assured him, “as the bloke what aims the gun, Robby. It’s the teamwork tha
t shoots down them Dago bastards.” (Not that Robby particularly wanted to shoot at Italians—it was Germans, after all, who had killed his family—but until given the opportunity to shoot at German planes, their Italian allies would have to do.)

  During their stay at Malta, Robby’s gun crew managed to shoot down two Italian Fiat BR.20 bombers, and take partial credit for a third, since one of the six-incher crews also claimed that kill. Robby felt then that he had somewhat evened the score for what the Germans had done to his family, even if just a little.

  With such regular afternoon practice, Robby soon became a proficient loader, almost the equal of his mentor, Able Seaman McLoughlin. Despite the disparity in age (McLoughlin was almost twenty) and in their ratings, the two men quickly became friends.

  Robby made other fiends as well. One of them was Ralph Tinsdale, a mate from HMS Drake, who had reported aboard Valiant a day after Robby. He hardly knew Tinsdale while at Drake, but Ralph’s freckled face was at least a familiar face, and the two had sought each other out. Ralph was from Bath, had a slight build much like Robby’s, and was the first in his family to serve in the Royal Navy. Besides McLoughlin and Tinsdale, Robby’s immediate circle of friends eventually included three other ordinary seamen: Charles Martin, James Fellows, and Arthur Kinkaid.

  Charlie Martin was from Harrow, heavy set, and like Ralph Tinsdale, a redhead. James Fellows was sallow-skinned, tall, and gaunt. He was from Dover. Arthur Kinkaid was a lean Londoner, with an athletic build, fair skin, and jet-black hair. Counting Robby, all five ordinary seamen looked up to Jim McLoughlin, somewhat in awe of his advanced skills (for them) and his abilities.