| BENJAMIN CONTEE (August 16, 1943)
Only twenty-three minutes out of port, en route to Oran, the US freighter Benjamin Contee was hit by an aerial torpedo a few miles off Bone, Algeria. On board were 1,800 Italian prisoners and 26 British guards. The torpedo blew a hole fifty feet wide and twenty-one feet deep on her port side. The prisoners, filled with panic, broke out of the holds and rushed the lifeboats but didn't know how to launch them. When the shouting and screaming subsided the prisoners were assured that there was no immediate danger. The Benjamin Contee did not sink and she returned to Bone under her own power. Of the Italian prisoners on board, 264 were killed and 142 injured. None of the crew or British guards were lost. She later returned to service only to be sunk as a block ship at Normandy ten months later.
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On weald of Kent I watched once more
Again I heard that grumbling roar
Of fighter planes; yet none were near
And all around the sky was clear
Borne on the wind a whisper came
'Though men grow old, they stay the same'
And then I knew, unseen to eye
The ageless Few were sweeping by
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