Barney Earl Maloy

Conflicts & Campaigns

• Atlantic
• Crew member of merchant ship that was sunk by torpedo 1943.

Notes

Seaman Maloy tells the story as follows; "The first warning we had came when the ship shuddered and jolted to a halt, like an automobile does when the brakes are applied quickly. I had come off watch less than an hour earlier and was lying in my bunk half asleep. I grabbed a raincoat and a life-preserver and headed for my station. There was no panic. Everyone knew what had happened and what they were suppose to do. Only, we didn't know how it had happened. We were to find out soon enough. On deck there were 77 men, the whole crew. We got two boats away, one with 41 men aboard, and the other, in which I went, with 36. In putting over the second boat the forward fall released, but the aft fall held fast and the boats rudder was damaged. Finally, we got away from the ship, rowing hard to put distance between us. One of the men yelled and pointed. He had sighted the periscope of the sub that got us, and presently the craft came to the surface some distance away. From it's conning tower an officer hailed us, and soon a boat was coming out with another officer and several men. They wanted our captain, who was in the other boat. The submarine officer spoke English almost without an accent. He kept asking. Somebody spoke up and said the last time the captain was seen was right after the ship was hit. We were sort of worried, because the captain was in that other boat and we knew it, but nobody intended for the sub crew to know. It took them until ten o'clock to decide that we were telling the truth. Meanwhile, the men from the submarine managed to salvage the name plate and some of the supplies left floating on a life raft after the ship went down. After a while the two boats were allowed to pull away and hoist their sails. The men in them knew they were facing a terrible ordeal, with perhaps death waiting at the end of hopeless days, or maybe just over the crest of the next wave. There was no panic, for panicky men don't go to sea in wartime. One of the officers in my boat had served aboard a sailing vessel, and he knew the sea and navigation. He set a course and held the boat to it. " And that was about all. Fourteen days of short rations, varied occasionally with a diet of fish caught overside. Fourteen days of eye straining search for a shadow on the horizon or a plume of smoke in the sky. Fourteen days of waiting. On the last day land was sighted. That officer was a good navigator, and he brought his boat into port. It wasn't much of a boat by then, a dirty, battered little life-boat with a sail, but the men it carried were still fighting men, and as you read this, it may be that some of them are at sea again, manning cargo boats on the South Atlantic run, or in a convoy bound for Russia. The other boat? Nothing much happened to them either. They landed in nine days. Maybe they were just lucky.