The precious convoy he had sworn to protect was as good as lost. Even if relief came immediately, the American wolf packs would have sunk or damaged so many of the transports that the effort would be useless. It was already useless! Now his only alternative was to fight for survival. His survival and that of his ship and the Imperial Navy were at stake. The future of the Reich’s navy was going to be decided this day in the North Atlantic.
He and his ships had been betrayed and were outnumbered, he thought bitterly. It would take a heroic effort, hard and desperate fighting, to drive off the Americans. Could they do it?
“The Americans have opened fire!”
He nodded, having caught the winking of lights from the distant lead ships. Too far away. They were just barely in range. They were wasting ammunition. Automatically, he counted off the seconds and waited for the fall of shot. When it came, he was stunned to see how close the opening salvos were to the leading German ships.
“They’ve fired again.”
“Impossible!” he snapped, trying to refute the evidence of his eyes that beheld the line of lights again flashing from the still-distant but rapidly closing shapes. Experience told him ships cannot fire that fast. Yet they were. This time the first two German battleships were straddled by giant splashes that lifted dirty, wet towers into the sky. Bracketed, he moaned, bracketed already and we haven’t yet fired.
On board theAlabama, the opening salvos shook the ship and deafened Terry and the others despite the wads of cotton in their ears.
“My God,” said Sloan. “Look for splashes.”
Terry nodded and held the binoculars tightly against his face. The ships ahead had fired first and, as he looked, let off a quick second salvo. There were splashes ahead of the German line taller than the ships themselves. Soon, as the enemy steamed on, hits were scored on the lead ships. Within moments, all the American ships were firing away with their main batteries while the secondary batteries, with their shorter range, waited their turn. Terry could not believe the noise and vibration. It was beyond anything he had ever thought possible.
The Germans began returning fire with a vengeance as they found the range and scored repeated hits of their own on their tormentors. For salvo after salvo the ships closed the range and hurled tons of hot and angry metal at each other. Terry was buffeted and thrown to the deck of the tower several times by the impact of shells striking theAlabama, and once he was almost thrown over the side. He wondered if the ship would sink as clouds of smoke engulfed him.
As the battle reached full fury, the Germans continued to press closer while the Americans maneuvered to maintain more distance, trusting in their better long-range firing skills. As the two lines of ships passed starboard side to each other, the three monitors, armed with 10- and 12-inch guns, broke out of line and turned sharply starboard. The effect was to execute a crossing of the German T while still keeping the line of battle essentially intact. Caught between two fires, the lead German battleships were literally blown to pieces. One of the monitors exploded under return fire and sank quickly. Terry thought it was thePuritan. The monitors’ sudden maneuver broke the German line, and the remainder of the battle became a swirling melee as ships sought and battled each other, sometimes as pairs, sometimes as clusters of three or four.
Terry nearly screamed when it appeared that theAlabama was actually going to ram a badly damaged German cruiser, but theAlabama veered and missed the German vessel by only about a hundred yards. With something to do at last, the smaller guns on theAlabama raked the burning and distorted German cruiser, theFurst Bismarck . Terry watched in horror as unprotected sailors were blown to bits, some tumbling into the cold water. Wherever Terry looked, battles like this were taking place.
A German shell landed in the water beside theAlabama and lifted a huge column of black water filled with metal high over Terry’s head. When it came down, the crow’s nest was drenched in heavy foam and raked with steel splinters, slamming Terry to the floor of his post. He started to say something when he realized he was lying on his side and couldn’t move. His vision blurred and then blackened.
Terry screamed as a heavy foot came down on his injured shoulder. As consciousness returned, he thought the shoulder was either broken or dislocated; it felt as though knives were ripping into his bones as he lay on the floor of the tower. “Watch out,” he moaned.
The response was the sound of an animal in agony. Terry forced himself to look up at the man who’d stepped on him, and he recoiled in horror. It was one of the enlisted men, and there was nothing but raw meat where his eyes and nose had been. Terry used his good arm to pull the man down to him and tried to wrap a cloth about his head to protect the wound. The sailor screamed once, tried to say something, then collapsed unconscious across Terry’s waist.
Terry managed to wriggle out and pull himself upright. He was covered with blood, but apparently not much of it was his. Was he the only one left alive? No. Thank God, no. Others in that cramped space were moving as well, but a couple were ominously still. He heard sounds and picked up the phone. Dead. He tried the voice tube and heard the distant plea of the executive officer yelling for someone, anyone.
“I’m here, sir, Ensign Schuyler.” He immediately thought it was a banal thing to say.
“Where’s Sloan?”
Terry looked at one of the bodies and recognized Jim Sloan. A piece of metal protruded from the top of his skull. “He’s dead, sir. I think I’m the only officer left.”
There was a pause, then the executive officer continued, his voice firm. “All right, Schuyler, can you handle your duties?”
Terry looked about the ship. The two guns of the stern turret were pointing in different directions, and smoke was pouring from several holes in the turret around them. Everyone in there, he realized, had been reduced to ashes. There were other fires on the ship, and flames were pouring from one part of the bridge below him. It looked as though the ship had big problems. “I can handle it, sir.” He glanced down and saw that someone had started pulling bodies from the bridge.
“Good, Schuyler. Now, tell me what you can see from up there. We’re blind down here.”
Blind? thought Terry. What about the sailor without eyes?
Terry had wanted to see history, and now his wish had come true. How much time had elapsed since the great guns first roared? An hour? Two? Eternity? He tried to sort out his memories and put them into some sort of context so he could develop his report.
He looked about at the American ships. The water was covered with debris, both human and material. He was appalled by the number of corpses bobbing like toys in some giant tub. Where were the other ships? TheTexas was settling by the bow, and a score of lifeboats were already in the water around her. TheKearsarge had simply disappeared. There was some burning debris approximately where he had last seen her before blacking out. Was the debris all that was left? Other ships like theIowa and theIndiana were still under power while flames consumed portions of them. Was it possible they weren’t as badly hurt as they looked? Then he realized theAlabama was still plowing strongly through the seas, her engines evidently undamaged.