Winter Warriors

Cheers echoed around the bridge, spreading throughout the ship as the word passed from man to man. As always, shipboard rumor spread the word faster than even the most sophisticated communications system could manage. Vian shook his head sadly. “We’re at the end of an era gentlemen. After today, nobody will take battleships seriously any more. The Old Queen has handed her throne to her successor. What’s Halsey going to do now? Any offers?”

“He’s got to pull back, meet up with his support groups and get some replacement aircraft. Then, I guess, he’ll take a swing at the north of Ireland, just to remind the Huns it’s still business as usual, before going home to bomb up again. God knows how much ammunition he’s thrown at those battleships.”

“Sounds about right. Anyway, our way’s clear to Murmansk. Order the convoy to make full speed, we’ve got a Canadian division to deliver. And, by the sound of things, they’re going to be needed.”

Bridge Wing, USS Charles H. Roan, DDE-815, North Atlantic

Captain Hubert Wilkens knew that what he was seeing would haunt his sleep for the rest of his life. The sea was covered with wreckage, some shattered, some burned, some just strewn around. As Charles H Roan’s searchlight flickered across the scene it saw many other things as well. Bodies floating in the sea; hundreds, no thousands, of them. Some were just floating in the sea. Others were sprawled across wreckage.

“Air temperature is 15 degrees Fahrenheit Sir. With wind chill, it’s about ten below. Water temperature, 26.45 degrees. That’s a killing cold, Captain.”

Wilkens nodded. His eyes scanned across the dreadful scene. He could feel the bitter cold biting through him, even here in the shelter of the bridge wing, wrapped up in the warmest clothing the United States Navy could provide. Perhaps it was a mercy that the water was so cold, the sheer shock of going into it could kill a man and even if he survived that, his survival time was measured in a very small number of minutes. It was a quick death.

“Sir, movement out there!”

“Where away?”

“Directly on the port beam Captain.” The searchlight scanned across and illuminated a crude raft, made from timber strapped to what appeared to be oil drums. It had sides, giving whoever was on it some protection from the wind. Behind him, Wilkens heard the whine as the power-operated 40mm quad mount swung to bear on the raft.

“Taney Justice Sir?”

“No. These are surface sailors, not U-boats. Anyway, there’s a lot they can tell us. If anybody is alive on that raft, we’ll pick them up. Get scrambling nets over the side. Detail a rescue team to check the bodies there for survivors.”

The Roan pulled alongside the makeshift raft and four figures climbed down the nets. There was a pause for a couple of minutes then a voice came over the radio link. “Sir, twelve men here, three alive, just. An officer, two ratings. We’ll need some help to get them up. They’re literally frozen stiff.”

Wilkens gave the orders and looked at the scene. The sea seemed jelly-like somehow, as if it were on the point of freezing and only kept from doing so by its constant, restless motion. Already Roan was accumulating ice where the spray was hitting her rails and plating, freezing solid in an ever- increasing white coat that was adding to her topweight by the minute. The northern North Atlantic wasn’t a friendly place for destroyers. Across the TBS radio, he could hear other destroyers from the Battle Line screen searching the field of floating wreckage; hunting for any other sailors who had beaten fearful odds and survived long enough for the destroyers to pick up. There were a few triumphant calls as more isolated patches of survivors were found and brought on board. They were pitifully few. In his heart, Wilkens guessed that the death toll here had to be the worst in naval history. How many? Twenty, thirty thousand men? The Germans had overly large crews on their ships.

“Any idea how many?” His voice echoed around the frozen bridge.

The OOD knew what Wilkens meant. “We’re running a count Sir, so far, less than a couple of hundred. Message from Admiral Lee, Captain. The Battle Line is casting to the south east and east but they report no contacts. Looks like the fly-boys got the last of them. He’s ordering us to finish sweeping this area for survivors before rejoining the Battle Line.”

“Make it so.” Wilkens thought for a second. “Close up antisubmarine crews, maintain full sonar watch. If there’s a Type XXI around here, I’m not giving him a free shot. If the sonar crew as much as sniff a submarine, we go for it.”

“Very good, sir.”

Wilkens stood on his wing, looking out across the debris field to the dim shapes of the other destroyers methodically searching. After a while he felt his engines pick up slightly. They’d reached the end of the wreckage field. If there were other survivors out there, they’d lost out.

“Any sign of any of our pilots?”

“No sir.”

That figured. Most of the lost Corsairs and Skyraiders had either blown up in mid-air or plowed into the sea so fast their pilots had little chance of escape. The chances of survival when pressing home attacks from wavetop height were very poor. In this battle, ships, planes and men had survived together or died together. There had been very few who had found a middle way.

“Sir, Doc Tulley wants to see you, the German officer we picked up has recovered consciousness.”

Wilkens left the bridge and found his way down to the sickbay. Doc Tulley was waiting outside. “Captain, one man has come around, the officer. He’s in a bad way. Exposure, frostbite, you name it. His temperature is 81 degrees, it’s a miracle he’s alive. We’re trying to do core warming and we’re using a new trick, inhalation warming, getting him to breathe heated air. If it’s enough, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody has ever picked up men this frozen who were still alive.”

“Core warming?”

“Preferentially warming his body, with hot water bottles and bricks the boiler rooms have been heating, but not his arms and legs. The army has found if you warm those, cold, acid blood from the extremities flows back to the body and stops the heart.”

“Will he make it?”

“He might. If gangrene doesn’t set in. If he doesn’t develop a pneumonia we can’t control. We have some penicillin on board, so he has a chance.”

The sickbay was oven-hot; the heating turned up to maximum in an effort to get some warmth into the frozen men who had been brought on board. Wilkens sat down by the bunk. The man in it was breathing hoarsely, his face a mass of red chaps and cold-blisters.

“I am Captain Hubert Wilkens, Commanding Officer, the United States destroyer Charles H. Roan. Is there anything I can get for you?”

The voice was so distorted it was hardly recognizable, as if the cold had frozen and broken his vocal chords. “Captain Christian Lokken, battleship Gneisenau. My men, any saved?”

“A few, not many.” Wilkens decided to keep the news of just how few to himself.

“You picked us up.” The hoarse, faint, cracked voice sounded surprised.

“Admiral Lee, commander of the Battle Line detached some of his destroyers to search for survivors.” Again Wilkens decided to be economical with the truth, the orders had been to search for shot-down pilots. Nobody had expected any German survivors.

“The Battle Line.” Lokken seemed shocked. “Battleships also, how many?”

“Ten.”

The number seemed to stun Lokken although he should have know it. His voice faded even more. “It was all for nothing. If we had survived the jabos, we would still have lost. This was surely our death ride.”

Captain’s Bridge, KMS Lutzow, South west of the Battle Line, North Atlantic

There was no reason why they should still be afloat. Lutzow had taken three more torpedo hits and her superstructure was a mass of tangled, unrecognizable wreckage. She was still moving backwards. Her engines thudded with the grim determination to get her crew to safety. Her pumps strained beyond