War is Hell…Much like Getting There
Staff Sergeant James Hantzis, shoved off from Wilmington, California on December 10, 1943, aboard the converted ocean liner, S.S. Mariposa. He and 5,000 GI Railroaders sailed west and south for 15,000 miles en route to India. Few had ever been to sea, let alone this sea.
1 January 1944—S.S. Mariposa, Southwest of Tasmania
The Skuas were grounded, hunger gnawing at them. Birds at the mercy of nature. Like all of God’s beasts, they cack-cack-cacked about the weather unable to do anything about it. They huddled in pairs and the pairs in colonies. Some tended their speckled eggs on the mossy cliffs in their nests of rocks and pebbles, and others stood close for companionship.
Fierce winds blew for two days and even hearty, pesky, pilferers had to put off their raids. This was good news for unborn Adelie penguins still in their eggs, as it was for weak or lame penguins. It was by all counts a good thing for any beast, fish or mammal on the windswept shores of Antarctica clinging to the margins of life.
Vulnerability is opportunity and the voracious Skua seized it, but only when they could fly. If they could fly, their razor-sharp beaks could find the flesh of the weak and convert prey to calories. If they convert the weak to calories, they can breed and fulfill the evolutionary imperative and fill their niche. Why else would any creature be in Antarctica?
The sun would not set on the Skua today, the first day of the New Year 1944. It was austral summer and shoreline temperatures had reached a clement minus twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit. This was as far south as life went on the planet. Beyond these few hundred yards of glacial shoreline, life couldn’t make it. Conditions were harsh and simply too cold.
Some would say the planet itself was alive and celebrating New Year’s Day with relish, roaring with exuberance. Count among those the men on the Mariposa.
The cold of Antarctica is a wind machine. It cools the air above it. The cold air sinks because of its high density and the force of gravity. As the air sinks, it flows across the planet’s southern ice-dome and over the flat frozen plate of the continent, rushing northward unimpeded by topological obstruction. It rushes off the Antarctic shorelines sometimes with the force of a hurricane, a problem for Skuas and seafarers alike. The winds that leave the ice of Antarctica are katabatic or, in Greek katabatos, meaning descending. They are downdrafts that would make an angry Poseidon proud.
Warmer air from the ocean mixes with the frigid katabatic air as it travels northward. This combination creates powerful low-pressure systems spawning polar cyclones that stalk the Southern Ocean, especially in January and February. Long ago, before anyone bothered to write it down, sailors named this part of the world, the ocean below Tasmania and Australia, the Roaring Forties. Forties for the south latitude and roaring for everything else.
Aboard the Mariposa, the railbirds of the 721st also sought cover. Seas broke across her foredeck like water from a fire hose and the only safe place was below. Fierce westerly winds swept the sea before them and the sea was ready to sweep anyone or anything in its way.
Below deck was packed. When the men tried to walk the corridors, it was like an amusement ride, only not amusing. The men who had developed sea legs coped and the men who hadn’t, endured.
The Roaring Forties were the roughest patch of ocean the ship had yet encountered, and the safest place to be was below deck, hunkered. Below, with the men who had stopped using soap. Below, with the reek of disinfectant used to clean up seasickness. Below, with the overtaxed turbines trying to deliver the Mariposa to Bombay and safe harbor. The worst of it lasted five days and when the ship finally escaped into the calmer waters of the South Indian Ocean, everyone onboard breathed a little easier, figuratively and literally. The railbirds returned to their perches on deck, and the jokers in the crowd slowly became more humorous than irritating.
