Word: seamans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Seaman Herman remembered it precisely. It was 11:30 in the morning, Sunday, Sept. 13, when the Germans opened their attack. The convoy was off Spitsbergen, in the Arctic Ocean...
Because he was fed up with coastwise tankers after two years, Seaman Federick Herman of Fayetteville, N.Y. had signed on for the Atlantic run. His thought that Sunday morning, when the alarm bell rang, was: "Here I am on a Liberty ship jammed to the gunwales with Russian supplies in the biggest convoy the British have tried to punch through. So the Germans will put on their biggest show." He ran on deck...
There was a low overcast. On the steel-grey ocean. Allied merchantmen were scattered from horizon to horizon. But some of the escort ships, tossing white water in their haste, had swerved from their courses to concentrate in one area. A Russian freighter, near enough for Seaman Herman to see the sailors on her deck, had already been torpedoed and was sinking. Astern of her another merchantman began to founder in the icy sea. Herman's ship could not wait. Rescue work, what there was time for, was up to the warships...
...game, the Yardlings were outclassed by the sailors and went down only after battling for three full quarters. Freshman offensive efforts were hampered by a lack of experience that was telling against a well-trained seaman outfit. The tars, who play soccer the way Americans toss about a baseball, were older, steadier, and trickier...
...Russian-born U.S. merchant seaman just back from Murmansk said last week...