![]() It means hearing only one voice on that whole twisting little ship- your own-and knowing that 29 other lives depend on what that voice says and when it says it. I learned that it means seeing your shipmates flat on the deck with helmets pulled down and life jackets pulled up and seeing those vicious splashes slamming up the wake. I learned that it means more than being called “Captain.” sleeping in the best bunk, and not standing watches. It was the day before my 25th birthday, but in that one afternoon 1 learned about the responstbi ity of command. e end of the longest 25 minutes of all our fives, we rounded Punta Blanca behind the two LCMs an slowed to idle speed. Yet, a couple or times, brown geysers of water gushed up precisely where we had been a few seconds earlier. We went back to a radical zigzag atĪs we approached Punta Blanca, the enemy became slower and less accurate. Shrapnel chunked into the side of the pilothouse and zinged through the canvas weather screen encircling the flying bridge where I stood. The dirty, cordite-smelling water rained down on our decks, soaking the sailors who were flattened around the portside 20-mm. Then, like a bolt of lightning, a pair of enemy projectiles shattered the water surface about 50 feet to port. Each time we turned, I prayed that he had notįor about five minutes, we played this game, taking us about a mile closer to Punta Blanca. It is not a game to be played for long unless the enemy is slow wilted. When it did, 1 tinned shoreward, and when he corrected by increasing range, the next round would be long. When a splash was to seaward, I turned sharply in that direction, figuring the enemy gunner would correct by reducing his range thus, the next round would fall short. Then with a cotton dry mouth and strangely jumping kneecaps,ġ began to “chase the splashes.” It was an old trick, but I gambled that the enemy artilleryman didn t know it. ![]() to abandon their useless guns and hit the deck. I ordered the crews of the forward 40-mm. Twice shrapnel buzzed through our rigging and lodged in our sides. Quality, and the rounds fell in pairs, indicating a dual mount. The roar and slap were louder with a vicious, personal Now the splashes were higher-twice the height of our stubby mast. We resumed our maximum speed of 14 knots, zigzagging violently but staying between the LCMs and the cemetery-now well out of our range.Īs soon as the two landing craft turned eastward, the enemy gunner shifted targets from the LCMs to us, and a new battery opened up. Around that corner we would be out of sight from Empedocle. The cape was either in friendly hands or unoccupied. Our course from Gela to Empedocle had taken us close in to Punta Blanca, and we had drawn no fire. In a few, very long minutes, we overtook the churning LCMs, and I megaphoned them to head for shelter at Punta Blanca, a high cape we had passed while coming west from the five-day-old U. Yet, the shell splashes still chased the LCMs. Firing back takes a lot of sweat out of being fired upon. ![]() The long barrel pumped at one-second intervals, and the brass clattered to the deck. Although it was an extreme range, I gave the target to the gun crew members and they gleefully opened fire, thumping out some 20 rounds of armor-piercing projectiles. ![]() ![]() About two miles east of Empedocle a light haze of blue smoke hung over a hillside cemetery. The little harbor of Empedocle looked empty and deserted. Our two big diesels rumbled up to full speed, and the stern slid in a long foaming arc as we turned to put ourselves between the unseen guns and the two landing boats.Īs we reversed course, I searched the coast through my binoculars, looking for flashes or smoke that would give us a target. gun, swung its long muzzle toward the shore, searching for a target while the hull pounded with the feet of men scrambling to their battle stations. Our main battery, a forward single 40-mm. The LCM coxswains reacted instantly, separating and heading offshore at full speed. We could hear the buzz of shrapnel and see the jagged patterns of its splashes on the calm surface of the Mediterranean Sea. The rounds came in with a roar then a flat slap as they impacted. It was followed at intervals of a few seconds by several more, walking purposefully toward the pair of LCMs. We were only five miles from the breakwater at Porto Empedocle, Sicily, inbound in late afternoon with two landing craft astern, when the first dirty brown column of water suddenly sprouted a couple of hundred yards to seaward. July 1943 and I was a reserve jaygee on a little wooden subchaser, the USS SC-692. ![]()
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