I read: “German Third Army Advances to 12 Miles from Moscow, Heavy Soviet Casualties.” I read on. “All Available Men Drafted to Fight for the Capitol.”
I put the newspaper down.
“Looks like you took to the sea just in time my friend,” I said.
The Russian, Arkay, spit over the rail, we watched it freeze as it fell. “I knew it would come to this,” he said. “Many men from my village signed up for the Naval fleet. We remember the last war, out of close to a thousand men from our area that left, eighty-two came back wounded.” He glowered at the water. “My father was killed, at Tannenberg. When the Bolsheviks ended the war we all thought that we would never fight again. But that’s all we’ve done since. Fighting to protect communism.”
The full moon reflected off of the water upon his broken face. I turned away to give him privacy. To the stern we could see the white wake of the ship plowing up on either side. The men on duty stood near their anti-aircraft guns and silently scanned the skies. Occasionally I heard a soft chuckle as one laughed at something the other said. I decided to take a turn about the deck. I walked past the anti-aircraft guns and the gunners in their helmets and life jackets. The signaler above me was turned on as something was flashed to another ship in Morse code. The 10-inch beam lit up the water near me for an instant before it was turned off. It was a lose-lose situation, signaling. If we communicated with radios, the Germans would tune in to the signal and use it to home in on us. If we used signaling lights like the one above me, the numerous U-boats patrolling with their periscopes up might see it and call in reinforcements, or a reconnaissance plane might see us from far above and relay our course to the enemy. We tried to signal as little as possible at night and only use flags during the day.
“Just like Nelson did,” I said quietly to myself. I thought of his famous signal, England expects every man to do his duty. Ours aren’t like that at all I thought. Ours are close up or the jerries will get you. I heard a plane engine far above and quickly looked up. No telling what it was though. “Probably one of ours,” I heard a gunner nearby tell his mate. I looked up at the signaling lens again, one of ours or not I didn’t like how fast he peeled off after that signal. I continued my walk, peering over the stern at the dark shapes of the other ships keeping their places around us. Unluckily for us we had been assigned a position on the outside of the convoy, there were only the escorts between the enemy and us. If there was an attack it was usually the outside ships that were hit. They protected the inner ones. And there were always attacks. Sometimes the jerries would send in a few U-boats and then a bunch; we were sometimes bombed continuously for days. Often as not the jerries would send in U-boats and bombers at the same time so we were under attack from below and above. So far however it had been one of the quietest voyages. But that worried me even further. My walk brought me back to where Arkay was standing near the rail. I looked at him for a while but then I started to feel the cold creeping through my seven layers of clothing. I flicked my cigarette butt into the sea, and called, “Arkay! Let’s get back to the mess, the jerries will be back before to long and I want to get some sleep.”
“I’ll be in, in a moment,” he sighed looking up at the sky as if he was searching for something.
I went below and waited in our cabin. These trips were absolute hell. No way around it. Continuous attack, freezing temperatures and not enough sleep. I laid down on my bunk and was about to fall asleep when Arkay came in. I watched him as he rummaged about in his things. He was probably 6’ 2”, and had the traditional Russian look of brooding. His face with its prominent nose and sunken, small black eyes was well-suited to this look. I had known him for about five months and had made several of these trips across the arctic to Murmansk with him. We had been in the same cabin together on the H.M.S Navarino the whole time and so we got to know each other well. “You know I lost my dad in the Great War, too,” I told him. “He died in the trenches.”
I looked at him, and he appeared interested. “Why is it that you fight?” I asked.
“I suppose because I would be in the army if I didn’t volunteer immediately for the Naval Fleet.” He looked at me quizzically. “Why did you?”
I was silent for a while. I thought to myself why was it I was fighting. I knew it wasn’t for my sake.
“I suppose it is for my family.” I replied.
Arkay was silent for some time before he said, “I guess it was to revenge my father, I hoped I would be assigned to a destroyer, something I could kill Germans on.” He looked away, “I never thought I’d be stuck on a merchantmen getting beaten by the Germans daily,” he said bitterly. He looked away.
I heard a burst of cheering from down the hall as a hornpipe was struck up on a fiddle. The sound of the sailor’s voices echoed along the passageway. The rest of our cabin mates were on duty so ours was one of the quietest. “Sounds like John has got his fiddle out,” I told Arkay. I hoped to lighten him up, his face was even darker than usual and he usually loved the music. He didn’t move. From down the hall I heard a horn join in. The swinging tune clearly indicated who was playing it. “Charlie’s really swinging it,” I told him. Still no response. Most of the time, I could work it out. My laid back attitude and jokes often made Arkay roar with laughter. Usually Arkay would talk with me every time he was off duty but it was clear that today wasn’t that kind of day.
“How many more of these trips do you think that we will have to make?” he asked suddenly. “Do you think the Soviets will fall before all of these supplies can help them?”
“I don’t know much, the report I was reading earlier also said that all the German units were depleted as well.” I studied him, he seemed like he was pondering something deep.
“Hey guys, why aren’t you part of the party?” a sailor asked us, peering in.
“Maybe in a while.” I told him. We heard him continue down the passage and enter the noisy cabin.





“I had a dream last night.” Arkay said. “And I never dream.”
I studied him he seemed worried but I couldn’t help teasing him, “Was it a nightmare?”
I hooted with laughter but Arkay just glared at me.
“Well then, what was it?” I asked.
“I dreamed that I was boarding a bus,” he said.
“That’s it?” I couldn’t believe that he seemed so disturbed concerning such an apparently trivial dream.
He continued, though: “I felt that the bus was significant, that I was supposed to understand something.”
“Maybe you were supposed to marry a girl on the bus!” I broke into laughter again.
Arkay glared yet again. “It was for me, now I can’t think of anything else.”
He seemed genuinely bothered so I stopped needling him. “Do you remember the place that the dream took place in?” I inquired.
“No, but that’s not what bothered me about it,” he said. “What bothers me is that I wasn’t allowed to board the bus, I tried to but I had no change to pay. I asked a man in the front seat if I could borrow the fare but he said that he didn’t know me. Then the driver shut the door on my face and I was left in the cold. That’s the part that bothers me.” As he finished he looked at me.
I stared at him. “Arkay, I haven’t the foggiest…
“ALL B RANGE PERSONNEL REPORT TO YOUR POSTS!” A call over the address system interrupted me.
“I don’t know.” I finished.
“I think it’s about my father.” Arkay said in a tone that invited no further comment.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he was on the bus.” Arkay said.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No, but he was there along with other people I knew.”
“Maybe you can send a letter to one of them and ask them if that happened to them.” I told him.
“I can’t.” he replied, “They were all dead people that I once knew. Every one of them.”
I sat silently for a while. “Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be about, death,” I said.
“O thanks now! What a way to make me feel great!” Arkay said. “I have a dream and think it’s significant and you tell me it’s about death.” He rose from his bunk and began to pace the narrow confines of our cabin.
“I think it’s about the afterlife,” I said. I shrugged.
Now it was Arkay’s turn to laugh uproariously.
“Think of it in the terms of your dream: you’re at a bus stop. Okay, you’re waiting in the freezing cold, right?”
“Right,” he said still chuckling.
“You’re waiting for the bus in the freezing cold and you don’t know when the next bus is because you don’t have a schedule. You wait in anguish because it’s so cold, and then right as you’re about to leave the bus arrives. You can see the windows are foggy from the warmth of the heater, and are anxious to get on. As you are going up the stair the driver stops you and asks for your money. You dig all over in your pockets because just that day you were full of it. But you don’t have any, not even a bus fare. You’re at the farthest stop from home and would die from the cold If you tried to walk, and you don’t have any money. Then a friend of yours notices you from the bus and goes to the driver. Your friend pays the fare for you to ride and takes you by the hand inside. Isn’t that like your dream?” I finished triumphantly.
“Well sort of, except in my dream the man wasn’t my friend and didn’t pay for my fare,” Arkay said, dismissing me.
“Maybe because you don’t yet know him or know him as a friend.” I replied.
Arkay stared at me grimly. “Since you seem to be the dream interpreter who do you think the man is?”
I was about to answer when a Klaxon blared general quarters. We threw on our life jackets and grabbed helmets off of the pegs before running to our gun. The other two gunners were already there and we readied our gun. To the east the flak from the escorts could be clearly seen, as could the planes coming through it. We watched as the bulk of the planes made it through and headed straight for us. They were soon within range and I felt our guns leap as we opened up on them. All around me I could hear the crash of the guns and the yells of the seamen. I watched as the plane I was aiming for trailed a stream of smoke and exploded. Now we could hear the Jericho’s Trumpets of the dive-bombers as they drove for us, the splash of 500 lbs of TNT as split the ocean twenty-five yards from us. We saw the larger planes, the Heinkels and Junkers as they flew over, the air reverberating with the sound of props. To the stern I saw an HE 111 drop 6,608 lbs of bombs on the ship behind us. With a roar that I will remember forever I saw her explode, the ammunition in her hold destroyed her completely; you could tell that there would be no survivors. I heard another dive-bomber and looked up in time to see the kaki bomb fall close enough to me that I could see the blur of the serial number on the side. On all sides I was sounded by noise, the noise that I was sure I would never survive. It was the largest attack I had ever seen, we were getting more that our returns for our so far quite voyage. Another wave of aircraft came into sight even as the last continued to attack. By their unique shape and the mini-plane looking shape under them we could tell they were a whole flight of DO 217’s which meant we were in for hell because the strange shape under them were HS 293s, guided bombs. We greatly feared these and had only ever before seen a few at a time, now there appeared to be at least a hundred of them. The escorts could only down a few and the first few planes launched their insidious payloads once past them.
Other ships weren’t lucky. The H.M.S Egret, a corvette straight out on the starboard beam from us took one amidships and blew up; one of the other gunners threw up when a helmet no doubt previously worn by one of the Egret’s sailors hit the steel side near us. We heard the scream of a bomb and then the ship shuddered with an impact. We looked forward and saw number one gun in shambles with dead and wounded around her. The bow had taken a fifty pound bomb. We got off lucky, that was about as small as they come, no doubt some planes lost. We heard the Captain through the intercom telling us that the damage was slight and we were still under way, he told us to continue to ply our guns and God willing we would survive. As we cheered we noticed something beyond what escorts were left, a large underwater explosion that threw up tons of water, with all the planes past them that meant only one thing, U-Boats. More and more depth charges went off indicating that there were many subs. Then to our stern we saw a white wake as a torpedo missed us by a hair. The Starlight on the other hand was not and took it to the stern. We could do nothing but watch after it hit as she fell farther and farther behind, left as the rest of the convoy ran on. We saw the planes strafing her, not wanting to waste bombs, until she too exploded. We watched as pieces of her rained down from the air. And we fervently prayed that we weren’t next.
Most planes passed us. That’s all we could do: watch as wake after wake sped by us and as ships blew up around us. We watched the battle between the U-boats and the escorts. Then, we saw a massive underwater explosion, a u-boat was hit! We cheered the lads in the Edenton for their work. It appeared that the attack was all but over; we had been fighting for close to two hours straight, the darkness of the night only punctuated by fire and explosions.
Then just as the Klaxon blared all clear, another flight of planes appeared.
They were fighters, Messerschmidts and Fokker-Wulfs. They sped high over the escorts and broke off into groups, one headed straight for us. We started to fire as they did. One of our men who was coming back from his cabin after the alarm had blared again was torn apart by machine gun fire as the planes strafed. We poured in the 40mm and one of them blew up just past us. The other flew over us low with a roar and circled around. As we hit a large swell our other gunner’s body was about to fall into the sea and Arkay ran to catch it. Just then a Messerschmitt flew around the stern and flying sideways and parallel to us strafed down the whole length. I heard the man next to me cry out as a bullet hit shredded his arm and the sound of them ricocheting off of the gun that was in front of me. I saw Arkay double up as he was hit in the midriff. The plane pulled up and then came in along the water for another run. I turned from Arkay and sighted my gun on the external fuel tanks. I pulled the trigger and the plane exploded fifty meters away raining flaming wreckage upon the water. I distantly heard the all clear but didn’t care.
I ran over to Arkay and held him. He was still breathing with difficulty. He attempted to smile as I leaned over him. “You got him. Good shot, my friend—” he trailed off.
“I’ll get you to the corpsman, just hold on,” I told him, the tears running down my face. “You will be fine, he’ll patch you up.”
There was no way. . . .
“Corpsman! Corpsman! Good Lord somebody get the medic!” I cried.
“No, no he cannot do anything by me,” Arkay said.
“Shut up, Arkay. You’re going to get doctored up,” I said. The next instant, I was frantic again. “Medic!” I shouted, but there was no answer.
“I can see the bus down the road,” Arkay said. “There it is!”
As he finished he gave one last sigh and a little blood slid from the corner of his mouth.
The corpsman appeared, “Dead” was all he said as he looked over my shoulder at Arkay. “God bless him,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I told him, falling back against the bulwark with a sob and a tiny chuckle. “He’s on the bus.”
With that I left Arkay’s body with the confused corpsman and stretcher-bearers and went below to dream of my family, it would be a long wait till I saw them again, but—I decided—most waits were worth it.