Charles C. Patton Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

oadside to the seas and capsized. They lost almost all. She
had been aesigned to a coastal convoy by Cinclant, and that's why
she was there, south of Bermuda. I had arranged for a friqd of
mine who I had met at the Anti-Submarine Warfare Instructors
School to go aboard this ship to help them with their anti-
submarine warfare practices and to help them with maintaining
their equipment and their depth charges and that sort of thing,
and he was lost.
[After the war, I was talking with a friend in Springfield
about the SS WARRINGTON, and he said he remembered the incident.
He had been on a baby flat-top at the time and his ship was sent
aut to rescue, and as a matter of fact, when they arrived on the
scene, he was ordered to command one of the lifeboats thqt was
put over the side to pick up survivors. He said the sea was full
of sailors in their life jackets and they all looked to be alive,
but when they pulled alongside each and hauled him aboard, there
was nothing left below the waist. The sharks had gotten them
all.] Anyhow, we went into the Mediterranean, and at that time,
the Germans were in France, and we had to go through the Straits
of Gibraltar of course, to get into the Mediterranean. Morocco
was across the Straits from the Rock of Gibraltar which was held
by the British, but Spanish Morocco was neutral. Of course it
was full of German spies and these spies, of course, would see
these convoys coming through the straits, and they'd radio up to
the German Air Force up in Brest of France, wherever they were to
say, "There's a big convoy coming through the Straits". Well,
the next night, we'd get hit every time by these bombers that
would come down from France.
I remember one time when we got hit one night and this was
when I was on the TILLMAN, and we had a troop ship that got hit
in the stern by a torpedo. It was launched by a German bomber
and she was disabled and she was in a sinking condition, and it
was a dark night, you could barely see the moon through the haze,
and there was a heavy swell which was the aftermath of
storm, but the sea was oily, slick with those huge swells, d we
$ had to proceed along the coast of North Africa past Or big and
Algiers through a channel that was marked on our maps th@t was
clear of mines, as so we were restricted as to where we could go.
I expect this channel was maybe a mile wide, but we had to stay
in the middle of the channel, and I remember. . . the radar
picking up,these aircraft coming in to attack the convoy, and I
remember the ships firing with tracer bullets. The air was just
full of tracers. Every ship was firing and they were even firing
at the moon because they couldn't see the aircraft. They just
knew that the radar was saying that it was at such and such a
bearing.
But, at any rate, this troop ship was hit at the stern with
a torpedo and began to sink, so they began to abandon ship. The
ship I was on was not the flag ship. We were sent to go aver and
rescue these people, do what we could. They were trying to
abandon ship and they had gotten life boats aver in heavy spell,
they'd gotten a lot of life rafts out, and we pulled along1 side