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"At this time, let me make mention of the drydock which will come into focus a little later on in the story. The drydock was a concrete structure with a three-foot retaining wall. The subs would come in. Very, very simple. The yard people would flood the drydock. When pressure inside reached the pressure outside, two giant steel doors about forty-five feet in height, would be opened. The subs would be pulled in, the water would be pumped out, the subs would settle to the bottom, coming to rest on their cradles. That was it.

At any time of the morning, noon or night - you could walk up to the drydock, lean against the concrete wall, look down in the drydock and see the yard work being very productive. If my memory is correct, and we are talking about 40 years later, I believe that the holding capacity of that drydock was four units. It was a pretty big affair.

Well, I finally got my duty assignment. My work load would be the signal tower, and Portsmouth was on the four duty section with plenty of liberty, the food was good and every fourth day I would have to stay aboard and pull duty. When I arrived at the signal tower, I found out that there was about ten or eleven Signalmen there. I was the only one who had been overseas. Everybody was walking around, trying to look busy. Nevertheless, there was nothing to do - no signals sent - no signals received. All we had to was log in and log out the subs by unit number and by time, and then report to the Duty Officer.

Finally, after about three weeks, somebody woke up and these guys that were over-flooding the signal tower were being ordered out. When they cleared the deck, there was three Third Class Signalmen left, and myself. I was the Senior Signalman, consequently I was in charge of the signal tower.

When the deck cleared, we still had nothing to do. The training boats and the fleet boats that had been in for repairs would leave at 0800 hours, return at 1700, and you would dutifully record the hull numbers and the time in the logbook, report to the Duty Officer - that was it. The fleet boats being sent to Pearl for reassignment would leave at 1700 hours to avoid any collisions with the incoming boats.

One night, date unknown, I was in my bunk reading before the lights went out, when one of the sailors came in and said that somebody was looking for me. I climbed out of my bunk, went out of the sleeping compartment into the passageway - and there was two officers in full dress uniform, both were full Lieutenants....unfortunately, one of them was a woman! I turned around, went back into the sleeping compartment and while I was dressing, I said to myself "This guy must have been a jerk! Why in the Hell didn't he tell me that two officers were out there?" I should have kicked his ass.

Fully dressed, I went back out, apologized and they asked was there someplace that we can talk. I pointed to a small room off to the front entrance that was used mainly by the Duty Chief, the Master at Arms and in case of fire, a telephone.

After we closed the door, the two officers did all the talking; I did all of the listening. At no time did they identify themselves, nor do I know what activity they were attached to - Base Commander's Office, or Naval Intelligence, or Base Operations - I don't know.

My orders for the next morning - at 0400 hours, the Duty Master at Arms would call me. I would go to the mess hall for early breakfast; arrangements had been made. I would report at 0500 hours to the signal tower, at which time I would clear out all personnel. The door to the signal tower would be bolted from the inside and under no circumstances would anyone be allowed to enter - no enlisted men, no civilians, no officers. My duty assignment would be to keep a close watch.

Facts: The War had ended; there were German submarines on the high seas; I was at a signal tower stationed at a submarine base.

The only thing that I could considerably think of was that some time during the course of this morning, following that there would be a German submarine coming up the channel.

At my disposal, I had Navy regulation binoculars, a long-range maximum power scope, and twenty-four inch signal searchlight. I swiveled the scope around until I covered the channel entrance and watched.....and watched.....and watched. Unfortunately, the eyepiece was at a level where I had to keep bending over, and pretty soon I started to get a kink in my back. I'd get up and walk around, go below and get coffee, come back, look, walk around.

The time was somewhere between 0700 and 0800. Clouds were low in the sky and there was fog rolling in from the Atlantic. It was pretty dismal. It was pretty hard to see, but I kept on looking. Finally, I spotted something in the distance. It was at maximum range, but I was absolutely positive it was something. What it was, I couldn't tell. It was a low object far on the horizon, but I kept watching.

Pretty soon, I decided to light up the twenty-four inch searchlight about forty-five degrees, so that whatever message I would send would bounce off the clouds and not have the light directly in the face of whoever was on that ship, boat or whatever. I kept sending "A" "A" "A" "A" in Morse Code. Nothing!

I don't know if they were using a small hand-held light or whether the fog was strong enough to black out anything that they might be sending, consequently no answer to my "A" "A" "A" "A".

Finally, there was a light. I finally picked up a light in the distance, and it was the Morse Code "R". I had something! What it was, I didn't know, but I was going to find out in a hurry.

I sent the following message: "Please identify yourself."

Return message: "German U-Boat 805."

More: The Way It Was: US Navy

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