TRIGG V.C. AWARD

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 November 1943, Page 2

TRIGG V.C. AWARD

GERMAN CREW’S STORY (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) LONDON, November 15. The Australian commander of the corvette which picked up the survivors of the U-boat sunk when Flying Officer L. A. Trigg won the Victoria Cross, has reached England. He is Lieutenant-Commander S. Darling of Melbourne, Commander of His Majesty’s ship Clarkia, which was diverted from patrol off the West African coast and instructed to pick up survivors of the Liberator, which was located by another aircraft. Just before dawn, one morning, the Clarkia’s searchlights found a rubber dinghy. It contained three German officers and four German ratings from the U-boat' which had been sunk. They had spent 48 hours in the dinghy. R.A.F. aircraft dropped them food and water on the previous day, thinking 'they were the Liberator’s crew.

The German captain told Darling that Trigg attacked, towards mid-day. The Liberator made two attacks and was then burnihg around the tail. As it approached for a third attack, the U-boat’s ack-acks hit it, the Liberator power-dived into the sea and disintegrated, but a stick of depth charges exploded around the U-boat’s hull near the batteries. Chlorine gas killed half the crew of the U-boat, which circled for twenty minutes and then sank. Twenty-four men were left struggling in the sea. One German sighted a small packet half.a mile away and began swimming towards it. He reached it hali-an-hour after the U-boat sank, and discovered it was the Liberator dinghy inflated. Then began the tragic, horrifying ordeal. ; The sea was full of sharks. Only seven Germans succeeded th reich-

ing the dinghy, two of whom were bitten by sharks. One had. a large amount of flesh torn from his thigh, another an arm lacerated, showing he had wrenched it from the shark’s jaws. The last man aboard the dinghy was the captain. The retnainder of the crew of the U-boat were either drowned or killed by sharks. Men in the dinghy paddled round and round, but could” not find any more of their comrades. The captain was only 26 years of age and the four ratings were under 20. It was their testimony of Triggs’ determined attack on which the award of the Victoria Cross was made, ■ . x