Disobeying Orders, but Saving Lives!

“LOST MUSKET DIARY” August 14, 2014

Cloudy 65F/ 18C in Rancho Las Musket

Buongiorno,

70 years ago today, August 14, 1944, Allied convoy EBC 72 was en route from Milford Haven, Wales to Falmouth, England when it was attacked by the German submarine U 667. The first torpedo hit the Landing Ship Tank LST 921, breaking it in half, sending the aft section to the bottom of the channel with half the crew. The memories of this August day were seared into my father’s memory. Memories that remained with him until the end of his life, and reverberated through the lives of the generations that followed him.

The second torpedo headed toward the LST 920, a sister ship to the ill-fated 921.   My father, Lt. Charles Botula, Jr. watched from the bridge as the speeding torpedo’s trail headed toward him. There was no time to order a change in course. The outcome seemed inevitable. At that moment, a British escort vessel came up between the U-667 and LST 920 and took the full force of the torpedo. That ship  was blown out of the water. The entire crew was lost. The Skipper of the 920 was Lt. Harry Schultz, one of three career Navy men among a crew of about 100 “90 day wonders,” the newly minted sailors who had started their training about the same time as the keel for their new ship was being laid at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard at Hingham, Massachusetts. Schultz had been a Petty Officer aboard the USS Jarvis, a destroyer that escaped from Pearl Harbor during the attack on Dec. 7, 1941. Now he had his own command and a sister ship had been torpedoed, leaving survivors struggling in the water.

While Charlie Botula talked freely about his wartime experiences in the Navy, Harry Schultz was very closed-mouth. He said little to his family or friends. My dad resumed his civilian life after the war, raising a family, and started a business. Harry Schultz stayed on in the Navy and eventually worked his way up and retired as a Commander, never talking about what drove him to defy his superiors and do what he did on that long ago August 14^th.

Under wartime convoy rules there were standing, inviolable orders that no ship could leave the convoy, for any reason. If a ship in the convoy broke down, it was left behind. As soon as the Captain took the bridge after the torpedo struck and survivors were seen in the water, Schultz ordered the communications officer to send the command a request for the 920 to “come about” to pick up survivors. The reply came back moments later, “stay in formation. Do not come about.” The word was relayed to the Captain. He ordered the request to be sent again. A few more minutes passed and the reply came back again, more emphatically. “Stay in formation. Do not come about.” After a few long moments while he pondered his next action, Schultz bellowed his order, “The hell with them! Bring this ship about. We are going to pick up survivors!” Every officer on that bridge knew that their skipper had probably just ordered an end to his Navy career and might even face prison. But, they followed the command and the LST 920 was brought about to pick up survivors.  Over the remaining daylight hours and into the night the 920’s crew rescued dozens of floundering sailors from the cold waters of the Bristol Channel. About half of the LST 921’s crew was saved. Schultz was court-martialed, but later exonerated and he went on to a successful Navy career. He never talked about his wartime experiences, but years later as I researched my dad’s service on the LST 920, I finally figured it out. Schultz’s original ship, the Jarvis did survive the attack at Pearl Harbor, but was sunk by the Japanese off Guadalcanal the following year with the loss of almost the entire crew. Schultz, along with a handful of shipmates were the Jarvis’ only survivors. Everyone else died. Now that he had his own command, Schultz was not going to leave fellow sailors behind if he had anything to say about it. Ironically, two weeks later, the U 667 struck a mine en route back to it’s base. The U667’s Captain, Karl-Heinze Lange and his entire crew went to the bottom of the English Channel.

My dad talked about this incident many times over the years, but, he never knew the real reason the captain disobeyed orders, or the fate of the enemy submarine. The surviving crewmen from the LST 921 certainly knew who they owed their lives to. They were still praising Captain Harry Schultz more than 50 years after that moment. By August a year later, World War 2 was all but over.

Ciao, MikeBo