Chapter One

At Sea

     Gray clouds scurried across the froth of the blue-green ocean before crashing into the shore. Ghost-like, the clouds roiled up and over the rocks, becoming streamers flowing eastward toward the hills known as the Seven Bens. Off shore, in 1000 feet of water, MTB104 continued her slow plodding northward following the wind and current. To the south of MTB104 and in deeper water, U124, an underwater vessel of the German Reich stalked the motor-torpedo boat, charting its movements.
  
     Watching the clouds from the relative safety of the torpedo boat’s galley, Lt. James Harant, U.S. Navy, Annapolis Class of 1935 watched the captain of the boat as he poured coffee. Leftenant John Adams wore the shoulder boards of the British Royal Navy on a crisp white shirt. Smiling to himself, Adams finished pouring the two mugs and set them down on the galley table.
  
     “Clouds coming off the Atlantic are heavy with moisture,” Adams remarked to Harant.
Harant smiled in return. After two weeks of sounding the bottom with their asdic array, Harant was fairly certain there were no mines in Galway Bay, and no mines in Bantry Bay, Dingle Bay or Shannon Bay, for that matter. Harant was ready to write a report, detailing the steps in mine searching, for his commander in the Office of Naval Intelligence. Adams had his mug of coffee up, and was tilting his head back when a brilliant flash of white light filled the galley.
  
     Harant, momentarily stunned, slowly put his coffee mug back on the table. The stern of the boat seemed to be tilting upward.
  
     Harant turned to look toward the front of the boat. Both of his heavy eyebrows went straight up at the sight of the sea rushing into the boat. The entire bow of the boat was gone, replaced by a gaping hole of splintered wood. Harant turned back to Adams and saw him struggling to speak, gesturing with his hands. A jagged two-foot piece of the boat’s rib was protruding from his neck. Fresh red blood was spurting, covering his shirt and flowing down the wooden rib of the boat.
  
     It was an image from a slow-motion nightmare. Adams shook his head once just as his eyes closed. His body began to slump and then he slowly tipped into the space to his left. Harant paid attention to these details. He watched his own right hand come up from the galley table, searching for the back of his head. Harant felt a sticky fluid in his hair, a fluid that was leaking onto his shirt collar. His hand felt the exposed bone of his skull. That was when he realized he hadn’t heard a sound for the last ten seconds. He dropped his hand to the table and watched blood seep from his fingers onto the royal blue felt of the table.
  
     James Fynmore Harant, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy grabbed the log books of MTB104, otherwise affectionately known as HMS Maclean, and put them in the oil cloth where they were normally stored. He started for the gangway to the deck, and realized he didn’t remember where he had last put his officer’s cap. He stood there a moment, shaking his head, trying to think through the pain.
  
     To the south and west of MTB104, the periscope of U124 slowly disappeared into the waves. Below the surface, the submarine slowly turned westward, leaving a barely discernable wake of bubbles in its path. The boat, under the command of Kapitanleutnant Georg Wilhelm-Schulz was making its way back to the North Sea. In approximately six hours, it would surface to send a report to Admiral Carnares at Naval Command, North Sea.
  
     A young naval lieutenant, Leutnant zur See Johann Mohr, who was at the periscope observing ‘MTB Maclean’ when the bow of the torpedo boat was blown skyward, would file the report that MTB104 had struck a mine. He would not report that Kapitanleutnant Wilhelm-Schulz put the mine into the path of the British boat. Waves were cresting at four feet when MTB104 hit the mine. Mohr, a determined officer with a firm jaw and steel-gray eyes, had arrived aboard U124 in 1934 with the rank of Cadet. In three years, while the German naval forces expanded, Mohr had been promoted twice.
  
     Mohr was born in Hanover in 1914 and grew up during the humiliation of Germany following the Great War. Just the day before the death of MTB104, the men of U124 had honored Johann Mohr with a small cake in honor of his 24th birthday.
  
     Leftenant John Adams, of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, had celebrated his 24th birthday the previous June, when he was on shore leave in Plymouth. Adams came from an American family of aristocrats, and was named for the second American president. His father had a falling out with the rest of the family and moved John and his mother to Plymouth, England in 1924.
  
     As a boy, John loved the ships that were constantly flowing in and out of the Plymouth and Southampton shipyards. He decided when he was barely ten to make a career for himself in the Royal Navy, and was sponsored by Vice Admiral Herff-Jones when he entered officer candidate school. As a midshipman, John served on a variety of warships, learning the ways of the Royal Navy. He received his commission and was sent to HMS Defiance two days before his twentieth birthday. Four years later, MTB104 became his first command.
  
     His boat, MTB104 was launched in April 1938 and completed sea-trials just before the newly promoted Lt. Adams took command. Motor Torpedo Boats were designed to mount a quick response to threats from warships and submarines. Wooden hulled, MTB104 was among the first of 300 or so built. She was crewed by two officers and eight men, and many of her “sister” boats saw active service in the English Channel in 1938 and 1939. All of England’s MTB’s were involved in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, making five and six trips to pull troops off the beaches.
  
     Lt. Adams applied to the Admiralty to have MTB104 christened Maclean, in honor of midshipman Rawdon Maclean, wounded at the battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. That was before an admiral informed Lt. Adams that ships had names and boats had numbers. MTB104 was the fourth in the series, designed to be fast and lethal. With a length of 68 feet, the boat had a draft of 3 feet nine inches. She was built of Honduras mahogany on Canadian rock elm, and was powered by three Isotta Fraschini 57-liter petrol engines, producing 1100 horsepower each and a top speed of 48 knots. Originally outfitted with a torpedo tube through her bow, she was about to be outfitted with two torpedo tubes mounted on each side. MTB104 also carried a 20mm cannon made by Oerlikon, a Swiss company.
  
     Adam’s boat was working in tandem with an older minesweeper, HMS Sapper. Built in 1893 by Armstrong, Whitworth & Company of Newcastle upon Tyne, HMS Sapper had a draft of 2.5 meters (8 feet) and was older and slower. HMS Sapper was working the deeper water and was north of the headlands at Connemara when MTB104 blew up. It would be almost one hour before they discovered MTB104 was missing, and another two hours before they could reach the area off Mason Island, outside Galway Bay

*****

     Harant jumped when seawater hit his feet. The boat was going down bow first. She was no longer driving herself into the ocean …the twin screws were clear of the water. He climbed up the rear ladder out of the galley and found the life jacket compartment. He was struggling to hold the logbooks when the rear hatch from the engine compartment burst upward. The hatch acted like an upside-down turtle and slid down the tilted deck. Two seamen were struggling to get out of the compartment. Harant threw two life jackets in their general direction.
  
     Both men climbed onto the sloping deck and said something to Harant. He couldn’t hear what they said. He guessed, and yelled ‘Lt. Adams is dead. Abandon ship.’ Off to starboard a body was floating. Twenty yards farther out a sailor was struggling to stay afloat. He was almost invisible in a blue pea jacket, but his white cap was bobbing regularly into sight. Harant grabbed a life jacket and threw it overhand in his direction. It landed well short of seaman Marsh, a twenty-four-year old tow-headed young man from the slums of Dublin.
  
     The water level in the galley reached half way up the ladder. An officer’s cap came floating towards Harant. He grabbed the cap and put it on his head, and winced when the seawater hit the raw bone and flesh of his skull. He followed the two seamen into the water, and tried to swim holding the logbooks. After ten feet he realized the logbooks were a problem. ‘I need your help’ he yelled at the two seamen …they kept swimming for the shoreline, a rocky promontory about 3000 yards to the east. They did not respond to his yell.

*****

     Harant let go of the logbooks …perhaps they would float to shore. He started to swim toward Marsh who was trying to float on his back and swim for the island. When he reached Marsh, he realized he should have grabbed the floating life jacket. However, the current had carried it away from both of them.
  
     “Can you swim?” he yelled. Marsh responded by pulling his arms down through the water in a violent reaction. His eyes were wide open …staring at Harant while he thrashed the water with his arms. After three strokes Marsh began to slow down. A good-looking lad with the brown hair and blue eyes of an Irishman, Marsh was not in the best of shape for an Able Bodied Seaman 2nd class. His lips moved, but Harant couldn’t be sure of what he said.
  
     “Try to lay flat in the water. I’ll pull you.” Harant reached out and grabbed Marsh’s shirt collar and began to swim towards shore. Marsh tried to float and kick at the same time …but every third stroke drove his head under water. He came up sputtering after the fourth mouthful of water and turned towards Harant. “Leave off …you’re pulling me under,” he shouted.
  
     “No …I’m not,” shouted Harant, looking quickly around for help. He let go of Marsh’s collar, and watched Marsh struggle, thrashing the water but swimming slowly away. He could hear the sound of the waves as if through a long tunnel. Marsh’s ‘Leave off’ sounded like ‘Weave off’ but Harant guessed the seaman didn’t want his help.
  
     Ten minutes later Harant noticed that Marsh was still swimming, but seemed to be farther away from shore. He yelled at him. Marsh did not react. Harant looked around for the other two seamen. They were perhaps 100 yards ahead of him …and they seemed to be working hard against the current. In this part of Ireland, the Atlantic flows to the north, into Galway Bay and out of the bay flowing north. Harant could see that the sailors were making little headway in their struggle to reach the shore.
  
     The waves seemed to be a little larger, the wind a little sharper, the light a little grayer. It was as if the Atlantic was reluctant to help. Lt. Harant had a brief vision of his mother in her tiny backyard in Plymouth, hanging wash. Then a wave hit him square in the face. He turned toward Marsh and yelled at him. Marsh ignored him and waved an arm that seemed to say, ‘bugger off.’ Behind him, the motor torpedo boat made little noise as it finally slid into the ocean. Harant turned towards shore and started swimming as hard and fast as he could.
  
     In fifteen minutes he had gained noticeably on the two sailors. They continued to struggle with the current …swimming for ten minutes and resting for five. When Harant swam up to them they were resting. The two engineer’s mates were known as the brothers McLaughlin, although they were not related. James McLaughlan (that’s ‘a-n’ mate) and Archibald McLaughlin (spell that ‘arch-I-bald’ and ‘McLaughlin with an I, sor!’). Their mates aboard MTB104 could not agree on which of the brothers had the correctly spelled name. Harant, over the three weeks they had been searching the coast for mines, had taken to calling them James M. and Archie M.
    
     “Where’s the Sapper, sir?” seaman James McLaughlan asked. Harant understood the question, although it was garbled. “Around the headland north of us …into that bay north of Carna,” said Harant. For the first time he realized that he had the beginnings of a massive headache. Seaman Archie M. was bobbing in the water, his jacket helping him to float. His blue eyes had red edges from the ocean’s salt. Looking at Harant, Archie M. asked if the Lieutenant was okay.
  
     “I’m doing okay,” replied Harant, rather formally. “I got the biggest damn whack in the back of my head and it’s a heller of a pain.” He turned slightly so Archie M. could see the back of his head.
  
     “It is not bleeding, sir. But I can see where it was bleeding earlier. You’ve got a flap of skin hanging down …you’ll need some stitches.”
  
     “Archie …we’re the lucky ones. Marsh is floating out to sea. But we’ve got to make it to shore. I don’t think Sapper can reach us. She’s too slow. And we are drifting out to sea. Let’s go …now! One of you on each side of me.” Harant started swimming in slower, measured strokes.
  
     The two seamen joined in the struggle. Over the first thirty minutes in the sea, they had used up much of their energy and their body heat. James M. swam slowest of the three, and fell behind Lt. Harant and Archie M. The young lieutenant turned and yelled back at James, trying to encourage him. For the next three minutes, James M. made a valiant effort to catch up to the other two. Then he gave up. He stopped swimming. Archie was pulling ahead and Lt. Harant tried to match him stroke for stroke. But the young lieutenant was feeling dizzy. His head hurt, and his hands were turning blue. After five minutes of hard swimming, Harant stopped to rest. He looked behind him. The sea was empty. He yelled at Archie and started swimming back to where James should have been. Archie quickly overhauled the lieutenant, and grabbing his shirt, brought him to a halt.
  
     “Sir …he’s gone. Archie started to pull Harant toward the shore. Harant looked seaward then turned toward shore. “Now, swim,” Archie commanded.
  
     Harant’s strokes were slow. He made little progress. A pair of waves rolled over his head, and he came up sputtering and gasping. Seaman McLaughlin swam back to him, and taking hold of his collar, began pulling him toward shore.
  
     The current eased off and began carrying them to the northeast. They swam with the current, and made some progress. James Harant grew weaker. The loss of blood combined with the cold Atlantic was quickly sapping his strength. He touched the back of his head and saw shooting stars and comets briefly. It hurt like hell. Archie tried to encourage him, telling him that this will be a shocker of a story when they make it.
On his back, with Archie pulling on his collar, Harant tried to use his arms to pull through the water. Each arm weighed a ton. And the seawater felt like battery acid eating the bone of his skull.
  
     “I need to rest for a minute,” he shouted at McLaughlin. He closed his eyes. And everything faded to black. There was no sound of the waves, no sound of the gull circling above their heads, and Archie wasn’t pulling on his collar.

*****

     In the mid to late 1930’s the Royal Navy began to prepare for war. Private conferences were held between Winston Churchill (the ex-Lord of the Admiralty) and a few of the more progressive of the stodgy admirals. The Royal Navy was expanding as it added warships and coastal defense vessels. Their largest concern was the possibility of a cross-channel invasion.
  
One of the progressive thinkers, Admiral Herff-Jones was a guest of the U.S. Navy in 1933. The American admirals had proudly showed him their biggest battleships, at anchor in Pearl Harbor on an island in the Pacific. The American officers were absolutely adamant that the surface navy …their battleships and cruisers protected by destroyers …would win the next war, which they expected to fight in the Pacific.
  
     Herff-Jones, for his part, kept an open mind. Until one day he met a young lieutenant in the officer’s bar. The lieutenant said he was going to make a difference if and when war came. He was transferring to a PT squadron. He explained that a “Patrol Torpedo” boat was a little thing of wood, carried two torpedoes, and was faster than a speeding bullet. The admiral didn’t understand the reference to a speeding bullet, but he came away from their meeting with an invitation to visit their base.
  
     After a day at sea with PTB Squadron 17, Admiral Herff-Jones knew what was needed for dealing with fast destroyers in the islands of the Pacific. It was PT boats, wooden, with a very small draft. What was needed for the thousands of miles of coastal patrol of England and Ireland was the same small boat …lethal when hiding in a shallow river estuary ready to pounce on an unwary German E-boat or even a U-boat if one came too close to shore. Herff-Jones returned to England with a mission …to build and expand the coastal defenses with torpedo boats.

*****

     When he raised one arm, it was to brush the dried and caked salt off his eyelids. He was slowly coming around. Harant found himself in the bottom of a small fishing boat …Archie McLaughlin sitting on a thwart wearing an old sweater which probably belonged to the man covered in oil skins at the helm of the boat.
  
     “Did we make it?” he asked. “No, we didn’t.” Archie looked solemnly out to sea. “We were lucky,” added McLaughlin softly. His voice was soft compared to the roar of the outboard motor the fisherman was using on his boat. With a start, Harant jumped and realized his hearing had returned, in full force.
   
     He tried to sit up, but felt dizzy. “Your head was bleeding a minute ago. I put a cloth on it. I think it stopped,” added Archie McLaughlin, a sad member of her majesty’s boat, MTB104. Archie looked down at his trousers, where a rip in the left leg revealed a three-inch gash in the white skin of his leg. “We are both gonna require some stitching,” he said while rewinding what was left of his shirt around his leg.
  
     “Lay still, please, sor. We are almost to the town dock.” Archie looked up at the small cluster of cottages and houses that faced the wrath of the Atlantic Ocean. Three small two-man fishing boats were tied up at an old, dirty black wharf. The larger commercial trawlers were at sea this early in the afternoon. “This man …O’Neill found us. I was about done in. You were dead weight. I was about to let you go when I spotted Johnny and he saw me waving. Johnny says they have a mid-wife in Carna who knows how to sew up fishermen …and she’s had lots of practice.”
   
     “What about the Sapper, did you see her?

     “Yes, and we yelled. They were steaming pretty fast south to the debris from our boat. They didn’t see us.” Archie McLaughlin reached up and grabbed the wharf to keep the fishing boat from banging into it. Johnny O’Neill killed the raucous motor. In the sudden silence, all three men sat quietly for a few seconds. Then O’Neill jumped up to the wharf and tied the boat’s line. Archie began to lift Lt. Harant, who required strong arms to help him step onto the wharf. The wharf was wet and Harant slipped, but Archie steadied him.
Harant passed out when the town midwife poured brandy across the bare bone of his skull. Closing his scalp required 16 stitches. When Harant returned to the land of the living, midwife Annie was still sewing on McLaughlin’s gashed leg. They were in the kitchen of her cottage, which doubled as an infirmary for the village of Carna.
  
     “Sure …and I’m twice as proud to be me helping you sailors. But this young officer had a great whack to the back of his noggin. He’ll have a headache as ugly as the Witch of Kildoon. You need to take him to the abbey near Galway. The monks will know if he has a concussion.” She finished her stitching on McLaughlin’s leg and began to wrap the leg with clean strips of cloth. Harant tried to sit up, and couldn’t, feeling faint. He lay back against an old couch, where McLaughlin had placed him. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the room. There was a teapot squeaking on the stove. A soft wind caressed the window behind the couch. He heard the midwife Annie washing up.
  
     McLaughlin stood up and gingerly walked over to the couch. “Do you think I should do something about notifying somebody?” Harant opened one eye, then the other. “Yes …ah …I do. Get to a phone and call naval operations in Plymouth.” He paused, trying to think. “Tell them we’re sunk. Tell them to radio HMS Sapper …two survivors at Carna. Continue the search westward from Carna. One survivor drifting westward.”
  
     “The only phone we have is in O’Reilly’s pub. I’ll take Mr. McLaughlin down there soon’s I finish me tay,” O’Neill volunteered.
  
      Johnny O’Neill was sitting quietly in a corner, stirring sugar into a cup of tea. Harant finally asked, “what about this abbey that she mentioned?” O’Neill looked up, and added “It’s a better place to take yoorself than that con-sarn hospital in Galway. I’ve had two cousins go to Galway, and nary a one of them came back.”
  
     Harant reached up to feel the bandage around his head. He looked at O’Neill, then back to McLaughlin. “Tell them that we will proceed to this abbey …what is the name?”
“Glenstal Abbey,” the midwife answered. She came over to the couch with an old blanket. She lifted his feet onto the couch and covered him. Under his nose, Harant recognized the scent of old fish within the blanket. Gradually, the warmth and safety of her little cottage lulled him to