War Heroes

One of my favorite sea captains at USLines was a large, amiable Norwegian, Captain Arnt Jorgensen, Master of the S.S. PIONEER COVE. His ship called at Philadelphia every seven weeks and was dedicated to the Bordeaux/Bilbao run and this was circa mid 1950s.  But in an earlier life he made another visit to Bordeaux which was related to me via Capt. L. Don who followed Capt. Jorgensen in command of the COVE.  Capt. Don  joined the COVE in Savannah in 1968. Capt. Jorgensen had just died and Don was collecting his effects which included a letter from Eric Severeid dated June 23, 1940. Severeid was one of Ed Murrow's boys and later an anchor with CBS/ABC. The letter is a transcript of a broadcast from London BBC and is quoted below in its entirety.
"If I'm in England tonight I owe it to a young Norwegian American Captain, Captain Jorgensen of the steamship VILLE DE LIEGE. His was the last ship out of Bordeaux, and to this captain two hundred Czechs and Poles certainly owe their lives. At the last moment he took them too, and his crew clambered one after another up that swinging Jacobs ladder with the children clinging to their necks. The Captain slept on the bridge, gave up his room to them. The crew doubled up. The steward fed them all on the little food we had. There were a hundred too many for the lifeboat space, so the men were sent off the boat deck, except soldiers posted with our sole defense - those ancient French army rifles.
While we were anchored in the river the first night I stood on deck in pajamas and a steel helmet watching a British cruiser 500 yards away blazing at a German bomber. In the morning streaks of oil, loose spars and oars floated past us. One ship had been sunk. An hour later we left the mouth of the river (Gironde) and a bomber got one more. Our sister ship VILLE DE NAMUR was torpedoed near us and sank. The refugees never knew that. They didn't know that every time the Dutch radio operator climbed to the bridge with a sheet of paper another ship had gone down around us. Five or six in all, but we moved in a wide circle up to Northern Ireland. At first the Poles and Czechs acted toward each other like Poles and Czechs, but the last night, in the messroom, a Czech played the piano and a Czech woman sang peasant songs. The wounded Polish general with the tired, white face was present to indicate officially that all was forgiven. On the bridge next morning they went together and gave their respective army badges to the Captain. When the tender pulled away with them on it the ship blew a farewell blast and all of them cheered the Norwegian American who had eluded the German army and German submarines and got them to England for one more chance at life."
Eric Severeid, June 23, 1940.
tjs
Next - War Heroes sequel.