Autobiography

The two men lowered themselves through the
narrow opening and wriggled on their
stomachs to where the bomb lay.
If it exploded, the submarine and all her crew
would be lost. Furthermore, Thrasher was off
an enemy coast and the enemy knew there
was an Allied submarine in the area. If surface
vessels or aircraft were sighted, Thrasher’s
captain, Hugh Mackenzie, who later became
Vice Admiral Sir Rufus Mackenzie, would have
to dive and the two men would be sacrificed
and left to drown.
Thomas lay flat on his back in the pitch dark
with the bomb in his arms while Roberts lay in
front of him, dragging him by the shoulders as
he crawled along. By the faint light of a shaded
torch, the two of them worked the bomb along
the narrow casing, easing it up through the
grating. The bomb made a disconcerting
twanging noise whenever it was moved and it
took fully 40 minutes before the two men had
it clear and could wrap it in a sack, carry it
forward and drop it over the bows.
‘I never expected to get the VC,’ Thomas said.
“When we came down from the casing that
night, we were soaking wet and all the captain
said was, ‘You’d better get yourselves dried’
Mackenzie did not make much of the ‘bombs
incident’ in his patrol report, merely
commending Roberts and Gould for their
‘excellent conduct’. The incident was virtually
forgotten until several months later when, as
Mackenzie recalled, he was ‘surprised by the
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