When we got torpedoed, the Radiomen on duty told of their ordeal of trying to escape the room as they were almost waist deep in goodies, all made it safely out and survived the sinking. At the time we thought it was quite humorous and of course it got better with each telling.

When we abandoned ship, I climbed down a cargo net and dropped into the water with thoughts of swimming away from the ship to avoid being sucked under. Anti Submarine ships were dropping depth-charges around the area and two or three other ships were exploding from hits. I decided that I would rather have shore duty and started swimming for the beach a few miles away.

Some sailor had manned a Higgins Boat without his normal crew of two others and started picking up survivors, I was the first to be picked up by him and I still don't know how I climbed up the side of the boat as the swells were rolling pretty good and the Coxswain couldn't leave the tiller to help me. The boat had a freeboard of about five or six feet and straight sided with nothing to grip, I still don't know how I was able to climb into the boat without assistance. When we got a full boat he took us to the landing area and pointed us to an Army Medical Station about a mile away.

I had kicked my shoes and shirt off in the water and the road consisted of sharp cinders it was also getting pretty cold as we had been torpedoed just at sunset. The Medics took care of our wounded, gave us some blankets and pointed us to a field full of Army Duffle Bags and told us to help ourselves to some clothing. Of course the bags were under guard and we damn near got shot as Arab pilferers as the GI's didn't know who we were or why we needed to steal some clothing.

We got herded into a concrete church that had been hit by Naval bombardment and it had a pretty good coating of fine powdered dust which got stirred up by our presence. It was pretty miserable inside so four of us with two blankets located some bushes outside and crawled into them and bedded down. I woke up sometime during the night with a Thompson Submachine gun pressed against my forehead and a very nervous GI on the other end of it. It seems the Church had been abandoned and recaptured by the Axis forces. We were found by an Allied Army Patrol scouting behind the enemy lines, fortunately they escorted us back to the good guy side and took us to where the other survivors were being held.