Hi Tom,

Yeah there is a lot in that story: The Armed Guard trying desperately to hit a small moving target only marked by (probably just the tip of) a periscope from a sinking ship, the U-boat at close range maneuvering to get another shot under fire from the merchant ship when even one hit would surely mean their destruction, men, women and children abandoning a sinking ship at sea into twenty foot waves with others dying all around them, the Armed guard bravely staying at their post until the lifeboats were gone and the ship had sunk to the point that the water reached the after deck and then jumping into a raging sea, a pregnant woman giving birth in a small, crowded lifeboat being violently tossed about by twenty foot waves, a wounded doctor delivering a baby when it was probably all he could do just to keep from getting washed overboard and a new baby being born amongst all that death and destruction.

Who needs fiction when the truth is that terrifying? And to top it all off all that really happened is that everybody simply did their jobs under the most difficult circumstances imaginable and some of them gave their lives in the process. Just another day in the war.... In my mind they were all heroes.

Regards,

Ken Dunn