Wartime enemies make contact 67 years later
Nearly 70 years after a famous Second World War incident in which a Canadian ship rammed and sank a German submarine in the Mediterranean Sea, the only survivor of the doomed U-boat and perhaps the last living sailor from HMCS Ville de Quebec have rediscovered each other via the Internet -- two former enemies now forging a poignant, long-distance friendship via e-mail.
The remarkable reunion came about after a California newspaper published a story last November featuring the wartime reminiscences of Frank Arsenault, an 86-year-old Canadian veteran now retired and living in Santa Cruz.
The highlight of the P.E.I.-raised Arsenault's four years aboard HMCS Ville de Quebec was the corvette's fateful encounter with U-224, a German submarine that was menacing a convoy of Canadian ships on Jan. 13, 1943, off the coast of Morocco.
The enemy sub's presence was detected by a Ville de Quebec sonar operator, and 10 depth charges were dropped into the ocean. One of them struck and damaged the U-boat, which surfaced as the panicked Germans plotted their next move and one officer-- Lt. Wolf Danckworth -- reached the conning tower to size up their plight.
That's when the Canadian ship's captain, Lt.-Cdr. A.R.E. Coleman, wary of the U-boat's deck guns, gave the order to ram the wounded sub.
"I saw this guy coming out of the conning tower," Arsenault recalled. "That's when the captain realized we could hit the sub and he called out, 'Stand by to ram.'"
The impact submerged him so deeply that he momentarily blacked out, but Danckworth was the only German to reach the surface as U-224 was swallowed by the sea....
Read entire article at Vancouver Sun (Canada)
The remarkable reunion came about after a California newspaper published a story last November featuring the wartime reminiscences of Frank Arsenault, an 86-year-old Canadian veteran now retired and living in Santa Cruz.
The highlight of the P.E.I.-raised Arsenault's four years aboard HMCS Ville de Quebec was the corvette's fateful encounter with U-224, a German submarine that was menacing a convoy of Canadian ships on Jan. 13, 1943, off the coast of Morocco.
The enemy sub's presence was detected by a Ville de Quebec sonar operator, and 10 depth charges were dropped into the ocean. One of them struck and damaged the U-boat, which surfaced as the panicked Germans plotted their next move and one officer-- Lt. Wolf Danckworth -- reached the conning tower to size up their plight.
That's when the Canadian ship's captain, Lt.-Cdr. A.R.E. Coleman, wary of the U-boat's deck guns, gave the order to ram the wounded sub.
"I saw this guy coming out of the conning tower," Arsenault recalled. "That's when the captain realized we could hit the sub and he called out, 'Stand by to ram.'"
The impact submerged him so deeply that he momentarily blacked out, but Danckworth was the only German to reach the surface as U-224 was swallowed by the sea....