The Murmansk Run

The Stukas and Messerschmitts would hit us anytime, day or night, but when the horizon was clear, they favored the hour after sunrise or the last glare of sunset, when they could hide in the star’s blinding disc, disabling my gunners and silhouetting the tankers against the black waves. Their cannon shells bounced around in the gun tubs like pinballs on fire. We buried what was left our sailors at sea, three or four a night sometimes… They were boys, like your brothers, with sugar-coated dreams and loads of life ahead.                                                           --P. 169

John Shea, our protagonist in The Commander, served nearly four years in America’s wartime Navy, achieving his final promotion at sea on his last station. His job, or MOS as the sailors called it, was to command gun crews protecting a variety of Merchant Marine vessels including gasoline tankers filled to their gunnels with high-octane airplane fuel. With good fortune he survived, allowing his remaining Naval service to present similar opportunities and ordeals that challenged, enriched, and refined his already remarkable character.

By far, Shea’s most dangerous voyages were Murmansk runs, round trips from Lock Ewe in Scotland to ports in northern Russia. The tankers were ineligible to sail in safer convoys for fear of sinking nearby ships from a massive explosion during German torpedo or aerial attacks. Navy and civilian crews manning those ships through the freezing Artic Ocean en route to Archangel or Murmansk were nicknamed “the expendables” by the British press for their sky-high casualty rate. Winter floats were more hazardous, when for fear of icebergs they were forced to abandon the Icelandic route and sail near the Norwegian coast where land-based Nazi submarines and aircraft were waiting.  

At war’s end, the discharged Commander returned to his family and career. He was promptly elected leader of his hometown V F W post, by coincidence an office bearing the title of Commander, making the moniker fit twice. From then on, his political cronies and adversaries, business associates, townsfolk, and all but the clergy addressed him as “Commander.” It was an apt handle for those who knew him well, connoting a composed, step-forward-and-take-charge trailblazer of hidden motives and few words.