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This collection consists of 86 letters written by Ellsberg to his wife, Lucy, from February 26, 1942-November 24, 1942. These letters are interesting because they are very descriptive of the landscape, his battles with the civilian contractors who oversaw the naval base, and the elements, where the temperature got as high as 160 degrees. You will be interested to see how Ellsberg dealt with conflict and managed the diverse groups he had to work with. The naval base had been all but wiped out by the retreating Italians. Ellsberg, with just a handful of men and no equipment, rebuilt it within a short period of time into a fully functional base. Using his ingenuity, he raised a sunken drydock in nine days that the British had given up on. This became known as the "Miracle of Massawa" and lead to his promotion to captain.
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February 26, 1942 - July 18, 1942 (Page One) you are here July 27, 1942 - Sept. 23, 1942 (Page Two) Sept. 27, 1942 - November 24, 1942 (Page Three)
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Letter #1 February 26, 1942 At Sea
Darling:
We have been getting along since I saw you, but rather slowly. The vessel wasn’t really ready so far as lifeboats were concerned, so we spent a few days before departure getting lifeboats in order, and training our passengers and crew on how to lower and handle them in a heavy sea. We are good at boat drill now.
When we did leave, it was only to steam a day or so for another stop to calibrate our degaussing system against magnetic mines.
Finally we sailed out through the same capes that 31 years ago I passed through on my youngster cruise.
Up to then we had very cold weather but moderate sea. Within a day we were in warmer water and well out on the deep sea, as I had persuaded our skipper the major dangers lay along the coast. We saw few ships (none at all after our first day out) and are I think well out of all sub zones for the present. We heard several radio reports of ships being sunk off Florida, and attacks on Aruba and Trinidad. I kept the ship clear of the coast, and I’m sure we’ll be directed well clear of all tropical dangers.
We should shortly make port (a safe one) to refuel and get our orders for our next leg.
We had a very bad storm for two days. The ship behaved well, but many of our passengers went under. I was fortunate enough not to miss a meal, which my sailing of last summer may have contributed to.
So far our closest contact with subs was a radio message early in the morning the day after we left the coast, stating the ship sending was being chased by a sub about 50 miles from us. As we heard nothing further, we presume she got away.
The vessel is not unduly crowded. She has about 25% above normal passengers aboard. The food I can only say is plain but wholesome. I think the chief steward is a washout on menus, and presumably on his record could get a job at Hollins (Ed: Hollins College in VA where Mary Ellsberg graduated).
I have been doing some navigating the last few days. As we should make a landfall in a few hours, I’ll have some proof of my navigation. I’m imitating my young hero in “Captain Paul,” as I should shortly be looking at the selfsame castle where Captain Paul brought him in the “Santissima Trinidad” to give up his command as a pirate skipper, and from which they sailed away in the “Two Friends.” (Ed: This refers to John Paul Jones).
There are a lot of censorship rules about dates, places, ship’s names, and routes, as a result of which not so much may be mentioned. My letters are not censored aboard, but I am bound to follow the rules.
I have been well, and busy with boat drills, instructing passengers in handling boats. I have also been brushing up on my nav, and studying the diving manual.
Judging from our progress so far, I believe our voyage to our ultimate port will take the longer time I once outlined to you, rather than the shorter. I believe we will step along now with stops only for refueling, but even so our route may be circuitous.
I see I am second in rank aboard, the general you may have noted in port being my only senior. The field officers (that is, majors and above) dine together, so I’m at his table.
The weather has warmed so much, I’ve been wearing khaki for three days now, and since we are now in the tropics, I anticipate even less will feel pleasant before long.
A little later.
Well, we picked up our landfall. On my position, the ship was nearer to her true position than by any of the ship’s officers’ positions. So it seems that though I have not navigated since 1916, I can still do a fair job. (Ed: Ellsberg was #1 in his class in navigation). In fact, I feel about as elated as Tom Folger was when he came in and picked up (under Captain Paul’s tutelage) this very same place.
We are proceeding in now, and will be permitted ashore until late tonight. This should go off from here (by airmail if there is any).
Still a little later.
We are now making fast to the dock. As the post office will shortly close and I have to get stamps ashore, I’ll have to finish this. If I can, I’ll write again from here before we love. (I meant to say leave, but I see I had something else subconsciously on my mind).
With much love my dear, Ned
Letter #2 February 27, 1942 In port
Darling:
This is letter #2. #1 went off by air mail this afternoon and this will go by regular mail the same night.
I’ve been ashore. This town reminds me very much of Las Palmas in general appearance, except everyone here seems to be selling lottery tickets.
It’s beautifully warm and sticky. Wearing only a khaki shirt, I came in after a few hours ashore with it thoroughly soaked.
If we stay here tomorrow, I may go ashore again, but I think I’ve seen nearly enough in one visit.
I learned a few items since leaving. One was that the Comptroller General decided that uniform allowance ($100) was payable to officers in my status, even if it was wartime. If you don’t get it by the time you get this letter, I would suggest you write the Bu. of S&A (I think their letter was left on my desk), referring to that letter and asking when payment will be made.
A second item was that Congress had raised the pay of officers in the military service on foreign service, 10%. I presume this includes the Navy. I’ll find out when I get to my destination. As usual, I suppose the increase (if any) will be in pay only, not in allowances, and may mean about $500 a year (maybe).
I wrote Mary this afternoon, but somewhat more briefly. You might pass along most of the news, such as it is, to her.
I doubt that our stay here will be long, as we are fueling tonight. What our next destination is, I suppose we’ll learn only after we sail. I can only say our itinerary has been changed from the original one. I presume our next leg will be a long tropical hop.
I sent you a brief cable from ashore an hour ago. After reading the censorship rules about what I couldn’t include, that was, I found nearly all I could say – “Well and busy.” I am well and busy and very much in love with you, my dear.
Ned
P.S. I see no harm now in advising the Westfield Leader somewhat as follows: “Commander Edward Ellsberg, U.S.N.R. (be sure they include the “R”) who was promoted again to his former rank of Commander shortly after reenrolling (for Heaven’s sake, see they don’t say “reenlisting”) in the Navy for active service, has now gone overseas for duty.”
It is not necessary for them to know or to state where, and I think some such statement will help to clarify matters among our acquaintances and friends in Westfield.
Letter # 3 April 10, 1942 (post marked) March 5, 1942 (written) Still en route
Lucy darling:
We have been a week at sea today since leaving our last port. On the whole the weather has been surprising. We started practically at the edge of the tropics and tomorrow morning we will cross the Equator, but it has been pleasantly temperate at sea, with no hot days. And that in spite of the fact that the sun is higher overhead than it ever gets in Westfield in mid-summer. It must be the tradewinds, which blow steadily here, are tempering our climate. At any rate, instead of baking at sea, we are having really remarkable weather, with beautifully deep blue water and some really heavenly evenings under the stars and the moon that make it a crying shame to spend alone. No question, for those who are good sailors, this trip would make the ideal honeymoon. (And I think we are both good sailors).
I regret to say that I’d hardly recommend the ship itself for the voyage, and still less, her officers and crew. I think this voyage all around is the damnedest I have ever been on.
Part of the trouble lies in the fact the vessel is not operated by the Navy nor by the government – she is simply a merchantman on which the government has bought all the passenger space and furnished the passengers. Consequently she is manned and operated by her owners, the Agwi Co. (the Atlantic, Gulf, and West Indies Co.), and so far as I can judge, they are doing a first class job of gypping the government, and the passengers.
The service is terrible and the menu reminds one of what might seem appropriate to a gang of laborers building a railroad in winter – frankfurters and cabbage, corned beef & cabbage, beef stew, baked ham – more or less in rotation twice a day with soggy potatoes, thoroughly awash spinach, and lots of carrots. And this in the tropics!
Frankly I don’t eat much of it and get along nicely, but it is a damned waste of the government’s money and an imposition on the passengers.
There have been complaints galore, and the Chief Steward is (under Army advice) going now to try to devise a more sensible menu, though he is much handicapped by the lack of variety in the provisions given him in New York.
Aside from the above, the crew appears surly, inefficient, and unwilling to work. This, the ship's officers assert, is a result of the C.I.O. union which controls the crew. It is certainly obvious that the ship’s officers do not control the crew. As a result the dining room service resembles a lumber camp, and the decks never get cleaned. The latter got so bad, the passengers are washing down decks themselves. The crew apparently claims they can’t do it in their regular 8 hour day, and want overtime if they tackle the job.
Taking it all in all, I should say this voyage between Agwi officials, ship’s officers, and crew present the American merchant marine in a very sad light.
Fortunately, we have an unusual passenger list aboard, perfectly capable of doing everything from navigating the ship to washing the dishes and quite ready to take over and run the ship if necessary. As a fact, since the vessel is on a military mission in wartime, the ship’s officers have been warned that if necessary exactly that will be done.
Friday, March 6
We have seen very little traffic since the start of this leg of our voyage, not over three ships in seven days, and we sheered away from all of them. Yesterday afternoon, however, when a little north of the Equator, we sighted two warships on the westerly horizon and they both started for us. Considering our location, I never had any particular doubts as to their nationality. In about thirty minutes they both overhauled us and signaled us to stop for identification. The destroyer (one of our large destroyer leaders) came fairly close alongside covering us with all her guns, while the cruisers (one of our light cruiser class) lay about a mile off, similarly aiming at us.
We passed inspection, of course, so the destroyer signaled us to proceed, with a parting “Good luck.”
At 4 AM this morning, we crossed the Equator. Consequently, at 10 AM, we had the traditional ceremony of initiation into Neptune’s kingdom of all those who had not previously crossed, (including me).
Neptune’s Court was quite something, with Amphitrik’s breasts (made of two large glass balls, green to starboard and red to port) giving her quite a startling feminine appearance. The neophytes were shaved with a wooden razor, lathered with God knows what, and washed clean of all earthly taints in lots of salt water. Quite an effective ceremony. So now I’m a shellback.
About all I have to do to complete my marine education is to round the Horn. We had a heavy tropical rain this afternoon.
Saturday, March 7
Another gorgeous day at sea – marvelous blue water, balmy breezes and a clear sky. At noon the sun was practically vertically overhead but it has not been hot.
The Southern Cross is now fairly well above the horizon at night and we have sunk the North Star. However, the Southern Cross has not much to commend it for beauty, being neither very brilliant nor a very good cross.
Sunday, March 8
We are heading now for our port at the end of our second leg (and longest one). 2700 miles since leaving our last port. This next port is in the country Isabel Rockwell recently graced with her presence, but much north of where she stayed. (all the above to avoid mentioning the name of the port, which probably, will be nevertheless postmarked on this envelope (Ed: it was not). It is the port which originally we were scheduled to make in this country, and our last before we shove off for our final seaport.
Today is again a marvelous day, with a slight sea only, a clearcut horizon, and everything blue overhead as well as round about in the water.
If we get in early enough, this letter should be posted this evening. We should make port about 6 PM, and may possibly get ashore tonight. About one day, I judge, will be our stop.
For the present, that is all about what is happening to me. I wonder how everything is going at home and how you are. I trust since my departure you have been able to rest somewhat and settle down into a less nerve-racking state than when I was scheduled to shove off every other day.
It is too bad we were not better advised as to our itinerary, for then I might have had an airmail letter waiting me in our pending port. As it is, I suppose I have to wait till I get where we left the sheiks awaiting our return.
Later Sunday
We are now off the port.
Much love, Ned
Letter #4 March 10, 1942
Sweetheart:
Dropping all pretense since I now know that all mail going out of here is postmarked, we are in Pernambuco.
We arrived late Sunday afternoon but did not actually get alongside a dock and disembark until Monday.
I found Pernambuco a far pleasanter place than our last port – much cleaner, far more modern, and, oddly enough, cooler.
We arrived here on what we were told were the hottest days of their summer, but found the place reasonably comfortable.
The usual South American architecture is here, with most of the buildings stucco or cement in pastel shades. There is nothing startling in Pernambuco in the way of historical places and the major cathedral seems unusually gingerbready inside.
They do have some modern hotels and various good restaurants, in which it was a relief to go for a change from the idiotic menu of this ship.
We had two days here really – Monday and Tuesday. We should have fueled Monday and been on our way then, but like everything connected with this blundering cruise, it appears the owners had made no definite arrangements to fuel her here, so the day was lost while various cables fled back and forth to the U.S. about the oil. Today that was arranged and we finished oiling the early part of the afternoon and might have sailed this evening if our skipper in a childish fit had not decided to hold the ship till morning. He has the most irrational fears, and I’ll be well pleased to see the last of him, his inefficient crew, his owners, and his Alice in Wonderland method of trying to run a ship – all of which should have come to pass before you receive this letter.
We should be about eight days on our next leg.
With much love, Ned
P.S. I mailed you a small souvenir from here today. E.E.
Letter #5 March 17, 1942
Lucy dearest:
We are about 2/3 of the way along on the last leg of our sea voyage – by Friday night we should make our African port. From our first day out on this leg, we have been running eastward just 21/2 degrees south of the Equator. For practically six days the Equator has been right on our port beam with our bow due east and the weather has been really remarkable – blue skies, blue water, flying fish, a phosphorescent wake at night, burning stars – and no moon.
This last is especially appreciated, as frankly I feel much better when we can run at night totally blacked out and unilluminated by moonlight. This is the general area where the Zamzam and the Robin Moor were sunk by raiders last year, and it’s just as well not to be visible at night at all. As for U-boats, this appears to be an unlikely spot for their activities, as I imagine they are unlikely to get so far away from Dakar where probably they refuel.
We still keep an active watch day and night at the guns – if we ever sight anything hostile we should be able to put up quite a scrap, though against torpedoes, guns aren’t worth much as the U-boats fire nowadays while submerged.
It is amazing how out of the world we are while at sea on this ship. We never get any radio news reports, for the ship’s radio set is kept constantly on the emergency SOS receiving wavelength and consequently is never tuned in on any long or short wave broadcasts. The use of all other radio receiving sets (portables) is strictly prohibited, as such sets themselves send out electrical waves while receiving, which a U-boat can pick up with a direction finder.
So we run along at about the speed of the old time sailing ships (11.5 knots) and know just as little about what is happening.
The friction between passengers and captain on this ship has increased if anything. I doubt whether the skipper of this ship has ever been on the deep sea before – he has spent the last 16 years anyway in the Merchants and Miners Line running up and down the coast between Miami, Baltimore, and Boston, where the second mate assures me, no one ever took a sight to his knowledge for seven years, and he didn’t even have a sextant.
Thursday, March 19
We have been heading northeast since yesterday afternoon, pointed at last for our last port. Judging from our position at noon today, we should make it by late afternoon tomorrow, as we are only 346 miles away.
We are now inside the Gulf of Guinea, which once was the center of the slave trade. The weather has warmed up, being now about 90°, and as the breeze is practically astern, we are getting little relative wind and the heat is more noticeable. However, it is still reasonably comfortable in the shade. That we have made such a long voyage in the tropics and been really cool until today is sufficient cause for thanks even if it now gets hot.
The skipper for some reason has become afraid of air attack, now that we are closer in, and requested of General Scott that the military lookout be doubled during the night. I volunteered and consequently stood a watch from midnight till dawn atop the pilothouse, but sighted nothing at all except a lovely array of stars which of themselves repaid the effort and the loss of sleep.
We are now getting concerned as to what will be the transportation situation out of port and overland to Cairo. Supposedly planes should take us out and according to our information in New York, I should shortly get out by plane. I certainly hope so, for I imagine we will find this port a damned hot place – just north of the Equator with the sun just getting into north declination and consequently starting summer there day after tomorrow by being practically overhead every day.
It seems a little unbelievable but we will have traveled about 6900 miles by a somewhat circuitous route when we arrive tomorrow – thirty-two days on the sea. And there is about 3000 miles more to go by air before arriving at Cairo and another thousand to Massawa.
Friday, March 20
In port at last!
We made a beautiful landfall at 2 PM today, coming in from the deep sea to hit the entrance to the harbor squarely on the nose. I got up at 3:30 this morning and got some star sights to fix our position exactly while still 129 miles at sea, and from that position (as palmed off on the Captain by the third mate) we changed course so that we hit this entrance exactly.
The African coast here has a beautiful stretch of beach and so far looks very inviting, with palm trees, lovely homes, a yacht club, and what other appurtenances of English colonial life you’ve read about.
We steamed some miles up the river to the port itself, arriving off our berth at 3 PM. The tugs are now engaged in pushing us alongside.
As a grim reminder of what’s going on, just at the harbor entrance were the two masts of a ship protruding from the water – just the tips of her two masts with some shrouds showing and nothing else. She struck a mine and was sunk there at the very end of her voyage.
Too bad I haven’t one of my salvage ships here. We could go right to work on her.
I suppose by tonight I may have some information about my departure for Cairo. I’ll write about that as soon as I learn.
With much love, my darling, Ned
Letter #6 March 21, 1942
Lucy darling:
We arrived safely at our last seaport Friday. To my surprise, efficient arrangements were made here on our arrival and I am going out this (Saturday) morning on the first plane to the city where Mary was invited to come back for her honeymoon. I should be there by Monday night (March -–censored).
I don’t know how long I’ll be there before moving on to my ultimate station.
I arrived here after the cable office closed last night. I’m leaving direct from the ship without a chance to make the one hour trip to the cable office this morning. I’m trying to make arrangements with another officer to send one for me, for I haven’t much hope of actual accomplishment. So if you don’t get a cable, you’ll know at least every effort was made to send one. And the same may apply to future cases. Don’t worry.
With love, Ned
P.S. We are now about to shove off.
Saturday morning.
Letter #7 March 22, 1942 Sunday En route by air
Lucy darling:
We got away by air yesterday morning (Saturday) from our disembarkation port. I went off in the first plane with General …….. and the ranking Army officers.
I may say I left the S.S.--------- with no regrets. That we got in safely was with no thanks to her skipper, who, thank God, says he is going to retire after this trip. He should never have left his coasting and gone to sea. (Pardon the blot – we have just finished climbing a few thousand feet over the desert, and it has affected my pen.)
We were cleared coming into port by the British seamen in the port, who seemed glad to see us, and as we passed the Governor’s mansion, the guard was turned out in our honor – four bare-footed blacks who stood most rigidly at “Present Arms.”
I saw very little of the port itself – getting ashore only after dark for the first decent meal in a month at the Hotel Grande (there’s one in every foreign city). Our last night on the ship was hot and humid. It was a pleasure to leave.
We took off by plane – all of us officers except one passenger, a Hindoo whom we picked up there in the port. He had just come by air via clipper from the ……., and we learned to our astonishment that this Hindoo, who was a dead ringer in appearance, age, and manner, for Mahatma Gandhi, had been with one of our lieutenants aboard a clipper bound west (the Hindoo for India) when they pulled into Hawaii the day the bombs fell, and the clipper ended its voyage then and there while the Hindoo wept. Apparently he was now going home the other way round the world, and as he hardly weighed 80 lbs. complete, they took him aboard our plane as involving practically no extra weight. Like the late lamented Chamberlain, he traveled firmly attached to an umbrella (though it’s drier than Hades around here) and a cane.
The plane, which had been stranding in the sun over an hour before we boarded it, was hotter than an oven inside, and before we took off, we were all wringing wet with perspiration. The pilot promptly went up to 9000 feet, at which elevation, it was cold enough so my shipmates started putting on their overcoats. I first stripped down to nothing and changed even my undershirt (which I hung up to dry) before I followed suit.
We moved along……and when we stopped for lunch it was …. miles inside the coast, at, what surprised me, was a town of perhaps a million people with all the domiciles huge apartment houses built of mud and resembling very much the Indian pueblos of the Southwest. And never have I seen the blacks so utterly black – so much so in fact they seemed to have a bluish tinge.
We had lunch at the officers’ mess of the air force (guess whose) and I managed from one of them to get a little news of what’s going on in the world. The place was hot (temperature 105° in the shade) but dry.
On our take-off, we stood inland again till late afternoon, with somewhat bumpier riding which gave me a headache (eye-strain, I think) and made some of the other passengers air sick.
We came down in the early evening for the night. (They do no night flying on this route). There was a town around but we stayed at the air company’s station outside of it, and slept outside under the stars in beds with real mattresses screened individually under mosquito nets (no mosquitoes, however). We had a grand dinner – spinach soup, creamed, fried chicken, roast beef………….and real apple pie with cheese! …….cooked and nicely served. Shades of the S.S……. How we fell on that dinner!
It grew dark quite early and I turned in at 8 PM under the Equatorial stars. It was already cool, and shortly I had to pull the blanket over me. I slept like a rock till 4:30 AM – the beds on our late ship had mattresses like rocks, (pardon the repetition), but they didn’t encourage sleep. After breakfast (pancakes and real maple sirup) we all gathered at a bus in the early twilight for our trip back to the airport. We counted noses to be sure all hands were there, but our Hindoo was missing. However, that did not seem to bother our bus driver who said it was OK to shove off without him – Mahatma Gandhi was staying there on business. All of which seemed odd, but we departed for the plane once more.
After boarding it, with the door shut, before the take-off the pilot informed us Gandhi would go no further – late the night before……….which they promptly did, and searched his baggage. What they found there I don’t know, but beneath the ferrules on the ends of both his cane and his umbrella, they found closely rolled up strips of paper with messages and in a little medicine box, some more in German. So there on the edge of the desert we left him – weeping worse, I’ll bet, than when his plane in Honolulu failed to carry him further along toward India and sedition.
Sunday
We took off just at sunrise and since have been flying mostly over desert country – nothing green whatever, with the earth looking dry and burned with only this continent’s version of sage-brush and desert trees. A little after the take-off with the sun well up, the pilot flew lower (at about 800 feet) so we could see the scenery. We saw a couple of lions loping through the brush, some half dozen ostriches, crossed a river with a few crocodiles, (the river seemed out of place, for Heaven knows where the water comes from) saw a few gazelles, and plenty of fine dry riverbeds all of sand.
We are now back at about 5000 feet and flying smoothly along going east with the southern edge of the desert spread out below us flat as a pancake.
We saw plenty of native villages once we got clear of the green belt near the coast – all the huts made circular of mud walls topped with a conical thatch and each little village set in a circular wall - to keep the animals out, I suppose. The blacks are black here, as well as tall, erect and with the most marvelous sets of teeth which positively glisten when they open their mouths. And the usual costume seems to be a white flour sack with three holes cut in it for the wearer’s head and his arms, though there are plenty of natives with long white (that is, once upon a time) togas. And every burden is carried on the head. The pilot told us he gave a black woman a note to carry into town. She put the slip of paper on her head, put a stone on it to hold it down, and off she went! You see a few fezzes, but usually everyone is bareheaded.
This letter goes to the pilot of our plane, who when we land for lunch in more or less the middle of this continent, promises to turn it over to one of the air ferry command pilots who’ll take it back home.
We are now flying over terrain which is beginning to be mountainous – our plane at about 7000 feet and the mountains so far, a few thousand feet high rising out of sandy desert, with the ridges treeless and quite rugged.
And now we are crossing a mountain range rising from 7000 to 9000 feet, with the peaks quite jagged, burned very brown, and no vegetation in sight. (No snow, either, they all look too hot for that.) We are at about 8000 feet, with the air quite bumpy and the plane bouncing around in a lively fashion. Whoever invented that one about riding on air had obviously never been up in a plane when the air currents were rising off hot mountain peaks.
And now we are mostly over with the desert stretching out again on either side – hot, yellow, and barren. Even the Mojave desert had much on this. (The air is still bumpy).
And now we are out in another country (which in a way includes our present destination of tomorrow night), and we are about to land for lunch.
With much love, Ned
Letter #8 March 23, 1942 Monday En route by air
Lucy dearest:
We are still underway for our immediate land destination, where I hope I shall in a few hours now find some letters from you. It seems (and is) a long time since I heard anything at all from you and Mary – the longest period by far since 1917.
We spent last …….. near which Chinese Gordon died and Earl Kitchener earned his title. We got in rather late, so it was dark by the time we were able to visit the city. The major attraction for me was a statue of Chinese Gordon astride, not a horse, but a camel – the first equestrian statue I ever saw which might claim any real novelty. As examined by flashlight (the one Ed Smith gave me) it stood boldly out against the night sky, a really magnificent bronze.
As regards the rest, what I could see of the city was not much. It seemed modern enough in its way, with street cars, a cinema showing Jean Arthur in “The Devil & Miss Jones” and a cathedral which (even closed) seemed quite impressive outside. As a change from the ….there was alongside the church….canteen run by the ….where, believe it or not, …..milk shakes! Good ones, too. …..influence, I think, of America…stationed in this region.
Aft…was nothing else open but a ….which had a performance very….of one we saw years ago in….at 11 PM the light went out,…..we departed for our quarters….miles outside the town, in what, I am told, was a girl’s college before the war. We slept in one of the ex-dormitories. They must have had the girls living on a high spiritual plane in that college, for the beds (cots) had rope for springs and the pillows consisted of short cylindrical rolls packed hard with straw which gave me a pain alternately in each ear as I rolled from side to side.
………is the ultimate in deserts – a wide spread ocean of hot sands glistening beneath the sun all yellow and red with occasional outcrops of barren rock rising here and there through the sands like little islands in the sea. Away it stretches in all directions for thousands of miles, with dust clouds drifting lazily along far below us. Where we are, at…………………with not the slightest sign………………kind on them. And we………….any sort of animal life since……….we parted from the river……sand in waves……… flowing down the……….. like glaciers…….. blown so high that……mountain tops are… completely buried in it to… I can well believe that nowhere on earth or in the sea or air can one find an area so absolutely devoid of any form of life whatever – no birds, no animals, no men, no vegetation – just burning sand and blackened rock.
Later
We arrived in the early afternoon to be met by personnel from the Army headquarters. Oddly enough I was then assigned to the Hotel Continental where rooms had been reserved for us, and I swear I have a room directly opposite the one we occupied back in 1936 when we were here before.
And now things are starting to move fast. I have an invitation to dinner with the general commanding for tomorrow night and I suppose I’ll be moving on in a day or so.
Much love, Ned
P.S. I found one letter from you (date Feb. 24) and one from Mary (date Feb. 20) awaiting me. I suggest you number your letters.
Letter #9 March 24, 1942 In Egypt
Darling:
Here I am back where we once all were together, even to the same hotel, and how I wish it were so again!
I have been busy today reporting, getting my pay accounts taken care of (I’m now on both Army and Navy payrolls), and seeing to a few other official matters. So I haven’t done any sightseeing at all, not yet at any rate.
I now know that I am leaving here Friday by air for my final destination, with probably an intermediate stop for a day or so in that higher and cooler city which will be our summer resort. They tell me they have a very nice house on the shore picked out for my residence and think I should be comfortable there. I trust so.
The weather here is delightful – as a matter of fact, I’m wearing blues today and feeling quite at home in them.
I understand that after a few weeks on my job, I am to be ordered to the city where Matt maintains his official residence, there to spend a few days getting acquainted with the fellow members of my service there and their problems, so that on my return to my own station they’ll know me and I’ll know them.
Several things have occurred in a financial way. I see that my per diem allowance here which will be $6 per diem and quarters, or $10 a day without them, should certainly cover my local needs. Consequently, I requested a change in my allotment home from $425, which it now should be, to $540 which it should become with the payment made you on May 1, provided of course the revised form gets to the appropriate bureau by April 20, which is by no means certain. If it doesn't the increased allotment should start the first of the following month.
I am now informed also that Congress has authorized an increase in pay for those on foreign service, which amount to 10% on base pay, equaling about $40 monthly. When that officially reaches the finance officer here, I’ll add that also to my allotment home.
March 26, Thursday
You can use your own judgment about what to do with the extra money, as to investing it when enough has accumulated or using all or part of it for current expenses.
I am also enclosing a Treasury Department form which gives you power to endorse and collect Treasury checks made out in my name. This may prove of some use to you. If used, the checks should be signed “Mrs. Lucy Buck Ellsberg, attorney”
You might see the bank about this before you use it. The original form should be mailed by you immediately on receipt to the Treasury Dept., Treasurer, U.S. Accounting Division and the duplicate kept by you for reference when needed.
I am enclosing also two Treasury checks totaling $353, one for my reimbursement for traveling (per diem) and one for my pay up to my arrival here. Please deposit them.
I sent you a cable (or radio) Tuesday about my arrival, which the Marconi office said would be delivered within 48 hours. I am also informed the Army people cabled a general notice to the mission headquarters requesting notice of arrival be sent to the homes of those in my party. You may get two notices.
For whatever reason, I found here a new notice about mail addresses for the members of this Mission. I come in the area indicated in the last paragraph, APO 815, %Postmaster, etc.
I had dinner Tuesday night with General Maxwell and a small party, including the American Naval Attaché. Pleasant time, with a long ride back alongside the Nile with the moon shining over it. Maxwell impresses me very favorably.
Yesterday I met Brigadier General Adler, second in the Mission, who heads its air corps activities. If I’m not mistaken, during peace time he owns and heads the New York Times.
Today, if I can get my things pulled together, I’ll try to get a few hours for a look at what’s around Cairo.
With love, Ned
Letter #10 March 29, 1942 Sunday Egypt
Lucy dear:
Just a line to let you know I am leaving here early tomorrow morning by air for…..via……This time I’m going in a British plane. I should be in……Tuesday.
Tonight I went out to look again at the Pyramids by moonlight, with some regrets for the lack of the company I had the last time I saw them so. Both the Pyramids and the Sphinx looked lovely beneath the Egyptian moon.
I’ll write more fully from…….
With love, Ned
Letter #11 April 2, 1942 Thursday
Lucy darling:
I am at last at my journey’s end. Having arrived here, Tuesday, March 31, just six weeks after embarking from home.
I came over the mountains by plane from …………….. flying at 11000 feet the latter part of the way to clear some really rugged (and completely barren) mountains. We landed at …………. last Monday afternoon, which city, at an elevation of 7500 feet, I found quite cool, quite modern (even modernistic), and rather green. ………….is headquarters for ……..and no doubt even………..summer, will be pleasantly………..
Tuesday I was driven down by auto to…………about 70 miles away. The road is quite an engineering marvel, dropping 7000 feet in 30 miles with some breath-taking switchbacks. Mussolini built it for his Ethiopian campaign, ………….via………….being the main entrance to Haile Selassie’s domain, and his engineers did a grand………..job - guarding all the curves just about as well as was done on the road up Cadillac (Ed: Bar Harbor, ME), and maybe better.
So Tuesday, about the middle of the morning I arrived at long last to get my first view of my station. Frankly, I was surprised. The location of…..(don’t look too closely at the)……lovely, with the…….all blue and green sparkling…….background and a cool breeze blowing off the water over the naval base.
………..domiciled temporarily at the naval station in a very modern officers’ quarters building right on the water’s edge – quite a pleasant room with a …….beautiful ocean view, and best of all, a breeze (usually).
I should say that right now we are having what would be June weather at home – I have long since discarded a coat and the uniform is strictly khaki shirts.
In……I laid in one of those pith helmets without which no tropical tale or movie is complete and now that is my standard headgear. It comes well down over my neck in back, which I find is very necessary, and is light and comfortable besides.
To complete my tropical setting, I now also have a houseboy, one Ahmed Hussein, who is an inky black Sudanese (not to be confused with American negroes who were west African). Now Ahmed and I completely don’t understand each other, since he talks Arabic and I don’t. I am however, getting pretty good at pantomime, and perhaps he’ll pick up some English. Meanwhile he makes my bed, shines my shoes, sees my laundry gets sent, and shines up my automobile (how he loves to shine that car). I should have mentioned that I have a new 1942 (aren’t you jealous!) Chevrolet sedan assigned me here.
There is a British naval captain (retired) in charge of the British naval station here, with a fair sized staff of British officers. They have taken over what……………………… ……………………………………………….
I went out yesterday in a launch to survey my salvage job for the first time. This should certainly be a salvage man’s paradise, for the wrecks are laid out in neat rows (as many as seven ships in line in one row) with all kinds of salvage jobs to suit all tastes. There are ships barely submerged with their masts and stacks upright, and others flat on their sides, partly or wholly submerged. I find there are several sizable ships sunk off the port which were not even previously listed, and then there are sunken drydocks, sunken lighters and plenty else.
We haven’t started any actual salvage work, since the first salvage ships won’t be here for a month yet, but I hope when some divers arrive to start submerged inspections in a few weeks.
Meanwhile I wonder what’s happened to the mail service. I have received a total of exactly one letter from you and one from Mary (dates Feb. 20 & Feb. 24) which I found in……..and nothing here at all.
You might try sending a letter via the U.S.M.N.A.M. office in Washington simultaneously with one via that trick address in the New York post office. The Washington letters are supposed to come by air service to Africa (you don’t have to put airmail stamps on them). Why it should take more than two weeks, I can’t imagine, unless the New York (and regular mail) post office letters are put aboard slow tubs like the………You might inquire at the New York post office as to how they forward letters; also whether if you put a transatlantic airmail stamp on, would they actually get transatlantic air service and air service across Africa to…..& then……(Mail certainly goes by air from…….to here, via……..
Meanwhile I should like to have the following items boxed up for ocean shipment to me here. The box can be turned over to Johnson, Drake & Piper in New York for shipment to me:
The small tool kit in a black leather case in my bureau drawer at home. (Or a better kit which you might purchase if convenient). An unbreakable thermos bottle, either a quart or a pint, if such things are still available. A regular thermos bottle, if unbreakable ones are not available. A thermos jug, if it seems such a thing can stand the trip. (About 1 pint size). ……electric coffee percolator. (About a two cup size). I’m getting more than fed up with the damned boiled to death continental coffee they serve here (and the awful boiled milk that goes with it. I’ll make my own and drink it black). About 3 one lb cans of sealed Maxwell House coffee. One hygrometer (or wet and dry bulb humidity indicator, similar generally to what Ed Smith has and which I once borrowed. Do not send the hygrometer I left in my study. One thermometer capable of reading to not less than 132° F. Two small brushes of the kind used to clean electric razors. (Jarvis should have these). One Navy cap device in gold and silver plate. These are now made completely of metal, (not embroidered on a black cap band as formerly) and should be available in military uniform shops such as the All-Bilt Uniform Co. on Nassau St., New York; Brooks Uniform Co., 43rd(?) St. & Sixth Ave.; and others. I want this to put on the front of my pith helmet. Two sets of service ribbons, made up on bars suitable for use on white or khaki uniforms. Each set to consist of the following three ribbons: Navy (not Army) Distinguished Service Medal. Navy Mexican Campaign Badge Victory (or World War) Medal In addition to the two bars made up, enough ribbon in addition to recover each bar when the ribbons on it wear out.
One ordinary, garden variety type of whiskbroom for brushing clothes.
Friday, April 3
I drove to…….this morning for a conference. It’s a lovely drive of about 21/2 hours, and cool most of the way……..is a queer town just now, mostly Italian, with Italian officers in full uniform (on parole) all over the streets, all the shops run by Italians, and Italian traffic cops directing traffic. It all looks very amicable, and on the surface as little…..a captured city as might be imagined. The one difficulty with it is that the shops have next to nothing to sell. (………is worse) so if one wants something, one gets it from home or goes without.
With much love, Ned
Letter #12 April 16, 1942
(Ed: This letter is heavily censored and it appears the bulk of it is missing).
………merely hot and reasonably…….freely. We are all starting to take salt tablets, which apparently have been found exceedingly helpful in hot places like blast furnaces in steel mills where the heat prostrations of workmen have been radically reduced by their use. Up to the present moment I have been very well and not particularly bothered by the heat. I find a sun helmet a highly practical headgear all day long, however. The usual daily temperature is now about 85° to 90° F in the shade. I understand we haven’t seen anything yet.
I spent last Saturday night…….where I had to sleep under blankets……quite an altitude.
Meanwhile our rest camp at………altitude……..is coming along, and should be available in about a month.
I found the two Star class racing sloops here for which I ordered sails in New York. The hulls need plenty of work as the paint is all gone; I hope to have them ready when the sails get here. After that, the ……..Yacht Club will be organized and we’ll start our summer series of boat races – with two entries. Tell Gerald Foster (Ed: an illustrator who illustrated some of Ellsberg’s works and did an etching of small sloops racing that is owned by Ted Pollard) if he wants a job out here, I’ll hire him and he can crew in one of the sloops. However, I think we’ll have no lack of candidates for crew. (Ed: the rest of the letter is censored).
Letter #13 April 19, 1942 Sunday
Darling:
Your letter of March 7 arrived Friday morning and I had meant to answer it that night only when evening came we had a tropical hurricane that nearly blew……..away. It rained in buckets and the wind blew so hard it took the roof entirely off our office building, soaked all our plans and papers, and left the roads roundabout the buildings looking as if the place had been heavily bombed, from all the debris from roofs. Of course we lost all the lights and power, and in the officers’ mess where I had gone for dinner you would think it was raining right through the roof. To cap all, it actually hailed – big hailstones, too. I guess it must have blown about 100 miles an hour while it lasted, which was for two hours.
Nobody got hurt though, and the next morning we managed to clean up and get our powerhouse going again so we looked reasonably respectable. I reacquisitioned all the roofing material in town, and the mechanics are all busy reroofing now. Fortunately none of our machinery was damaged and when we get new roofs on, everything will be all right again.
They say they haven’t had a storm like this in thirty years, so if it’s thirty to the next one, we’ll all be gone from here before we see the like. Which will be perfectly all right with me.
I did take my Westfield check book with me. The only stubs in it are #3875, spoiled; 3876, P.R.R. for $310.25; 3877, P.R.R. for $7.62; and 3878, Coll. Int. Rev. for $264.81. That’s all. They have all been deducted from your check book balance. I do not expect I’ll draw any more.
I’m glad your accounting worked out correctly. Mine usually required some search for errors before it balanced.
Your talking about spring in the air reminds me that we don’t have such a season here. Our April temperature is quite equable – it is remarkably steady, day or night, between 86° and 90°. But the humidity is high always. I don’t know what, having no hygrometer. However, between a sun helmet, salt tablets, and plenty of water, I haven’t minded the heat especially yet. What it will feel like when it gets above 100° regularly, remains to be seen.
We are busy as usual, repairing smashed Italian machinery and making fair progress, which should shortly improve with more men arriving.
……..has its points. It is really lovely looking out over the…….about noontime when there is usually a breeze blowing in from the ocean, while along the coastline are mountains about 3000 feet high and visible farther back are long ridges of peaks rising some 13000 feet. And all along the sea are Arab Dows under sail, which make you think you are watching a regatta in progress.
So far as I can see, there is no objection now to telling any of our friends where I am. The…………………………………………………in any way.
You might tell Ed Smith his gift of a flashlight has proved very useful. I used it in the ship blackouts, in Cairo likewise, and now I sleep with it under my pillow just in case.
If it’s all over with Mike, I have no regrets.
By the way, if you have not shipped the things I asked for, you might throw in a single slice Toastmaster.
Life is in a way a gay affair around here, even though there are no amusements. We employ Eritreans (some form of negro), Italians who are prisoners of war, and Americans. And we have our problems with all of them. The Eritreans are a shiftless lot, working under the………………… work at all, which is seldom, the Italians do a so-so job, most of them, though some seem to realize how lucky they are to get paid at all, and try to show it in their work; and the Americans are really working very hard, only some of them on Saturday night are inclined to get soused and smack the local MPs (who are British soldiers) and create international problems for me to solve, on which, being Sunday, I have been working all day.
…………now, it being 11 PM to bed.
With much love, Ned
Letter #14 April 30, 1942 Massawa
Lucy darling:
Your letter of Mar. 26 arrived a few days ago, just thirty days on the way.
About the cables, I sent one from San Juan; one (I believe I may be wrong on this) from Pernambuco; one from Lagos; one from Cairo; and finally another (probably also marked Cairo) announcing my arrival here. How many were ever delivered? You have only mentioned the 1st one from Cairo and none of those preceding it.
Thanks for the subscriptions to Life, the Reader’s Digest, and Newsweek. That will be quite sufficient. I don’t care for the New Yorker.
Thanks for the news on Ed & Sally. I’m sure Ed will do more good with Bethlehem than in Wall Street.
Sorry you said some time ago you couldn’t get a fourth tire retreaded for the LaSalle. I would suggest that if you still can’t get it, you tell Leo to put two good treads on the rear tires, and use as the front tires a pair of (recently) unretreaded tires that match each other, using perhaps your present spare and a match to it from the collection of tires in the basement.
As usual we are very busy here, but I can already begin to see results, which is heartening. However, my ships are still on the way, so the wrecks are undisturbed as yet.
We’ve had a lot of high-ranking British visitors about whom I’ve had to show over the place. If a few more come, I’ll begin to feel like a barker in a sideshow.
It’s hot as usual, but not bad yet. Average daily temperature, about 93°; nightly average, about 90°. It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
Yesterday I had a room air conditioner put in my room, and it went to work. It reduced the room temperature only about 4°, to say 88°, but it certainly did things to the humidity. The drip from the cooling coil is so large, that a pint of water is being removed from the air in my room every forty minutes. Meanwhile the room itself feels decidedly cool, and last night for the first time, since all the doors and windows were kept shut, I slept without a mosquito net canopy over my bed. Which was in itself a vast improvement, for it is necessary to use so fine a mesh here that being enclosed in a mosquito net is like being shut up inside a cabinet, so far as air circulation is concerned.
The air conditioner I am trying now is a York window type machine. We also have a more powerful machine, a Westinghouse floor cabinet model, which I’ll try in a day or two. It’s bigger and should do an even better job. Meanwhile, blessings on the air conditioner man. I woke up this morning not covered with perspiration, for the first time since reaching Massawa. (I hadn’t even been using pajamas lately, but last night I wore them and even slept under a sheet!)
With love, Ned
Letter #15 Massawa May 4, 1942
Lucy darling:
Your letter (#4) of Apr. 12 arrived today, the fastest delivery yet. Perhaps it was speeded along by your recollections (and mine) of the day long ago when I dropped my ring in the soup.
And speaking of that ring, I wonder what luck you may have had with Bailey, Banks and Biddle (Ed: Philadelphia jewelers) about getting me a duplicate? I think it would be of some real service here, where symbols seem to have more than ordinary importance. If you get it, better be sure it comes out via the diplomatic mail pouch through Washington, accompanied by a separate letter the same way and another via regular air mail advising me of its dispatch, so if anything goes wrong with the ring parcel, I can proceed to trace it back.
Meanwhile, if it’s not too much trouble, I could use the following:
3 pairs of khaki shorts, size 32 waist and not over 22 inches long from waist to end of leg. (I’ve shrunk somewhat about the stomach in the heat out here, and none of my trousers fit anymore. Thank God, I haven’t lost anything anywhere else, however).
6 pairs of white shorts, same sizes. These should be of some material similar to that used in white uniforms.
1 doz. white shirts, the open neck type, where the collar folds back in front, with collars attached. I have not been able to wear a single white shirt I have, since all have separate collars, and that type is quite impossible here. No one ever wears a necktie with any kind of shirt (it’s all open throat exposure for comfort) and without a necktie a separate collar is impossible for looks, let alone its other drawbacks. So I haven’t worn whites of any kind at all here yet – always khaki – though whites would go well on some occasions. The white shirts should be of some plain material and plain weave that will stand the scrubbing well – nothing fancy wanted.
1 doz. pairs of khaki socks for wear with shorts – the kind of socks that run up just under your knees. These should be of light weight material (but not thin silk). Lisle or light weight wool is all right, but I don’t want any heavy weights. Size of shoe, #7; length of socks from bottom of heel to top of fold under knee as worn, about 15 inches, and not over 16 inches.
1 doz. pairs of white socks for wear with white shorts. All the comment above about khaki applies to these also.
4 pairs of khaki trousers, waist 32, length of trouser leg from crotch to heel, 29 inches. ½ doz. khaki shirts, regulation uniform for Navy, size 151/2, sleeve 31 or 32 (it doesn’t matter since I have the sleeves cut off at the elbow here).
You can get all the above khaki things at the All Bilt Uniform Co., just off Broadway on Nassau St. (or Fulton or thereabouts, east of Broadway a few doors, second floor). You may also get the white shorts there and maybe the socks too.
1 doz. white handkerchiefs.
I imagine all the above had best go by parcel post via the N.Y. post office, though it might be well to check with Johnson, Drake & Piper to see whether they have a ship going which might get it here sooner.
It is next to impossible to buy any clothes here or I wouldn’t bother you with all the above.
We are getting along with our work here, though under some difficulties due to lack of personnel so far. It is a pleasure to see new things going into operation almost daily, however, and particularly the machinery the Italians thought they had sabotaged so thoroughly as to render it forever useless. It would give Mussolini a sharp pain if he could only see all the machinery of his we have so far restored to service in spite of the sledge hammers the Italians here wielded on it just before the place was captured. Already we have a young navy yard going just on rehabilitated Italian equipment.
We had a few more generals visit us today, and they left much impressed.
So far the heat hasn’t bothered us too much, though the outside humidity is running 92% tonight and the temperature outside somewhere about the same Fahrenheit. I now have another air conditioner (a Westinghouse) model FC-091 which is somewhat larger than the York machine I first tried. This one looks like a rather large radio cabinet and does a better job. I would suggest your getting one installed in the front of our living room if you are going to be there any part of June, and never mind the cost – it’s worth it. What surprises me about it however, is how beautifully cool this room feels, even though the thermometer inside the room assures me the temperature inside is all of 86° F! It’s the reduction in humidity that does the trick – that’s down to 65% as against about 92% outside. But if anyone had ever told me I’d feel cool and comfortable in a room at 86° F, I’d have thought them crazy. As Mary puts it, I should be boiled, but I’m not.
So far I’ve had poor luck with my camera – all the shots turned out so over-exposed they wouldn’t even print. I’ve learned now the sun is so bright here the camera shutter must be stopped down almost closed, or no picture. I’ll see if the next batch doesn’t do better. Meanwhile, an exposure meter of some type might be a help. If you can get a simple one, you might toss it into the box along with the khaki shorts.
I’ve played bridge a few times with some British naval officers here, but so far I have not held a decent hand. It’s a relaxation however, and there’s always hope the next hand will really be something.
I suppose by the time this gets home, it will be June. I should have liked to send you something for June 1 (Ed: their anniversary), but there’s just nothing so far I’ve seen but what would be a waste of postage to send on, so I must wait till I get back to Cairo again, and meanwhile send you only my whole hearted love for you and nothing else.
Affectionately, Ned
Letter #16 May 12, 1942 Massawa
Lucy dearest:
The package with “I Have Just Begun to Fight” (Ed: his latest book) came last night. It makes a fine looking book and the illustrations are excellent. Congratulate Gerald (Ed: Foster, the illustrator) for me. And now, for his sake at least, I hope it sells well. Let me know what the advance sale and their figures to date on it are.
I received your letter of Feb. 28 a couple of days ago and several days after your letter of April 12. Its comments on Captain Paul, 3rd, are not quite a shock to me. I hardly really believed D.M. (Ed: Dodd, Mead, his publisher) & Co. would go through with that book.
Speaking of packages, however, I may say that a package containing such prosaic things as socks for shorts, for instance, would have given me a bigger thrill.
Matters are beginning to look alive round here and today my three ring circus opens up with performers in every ring. The shops here I have had going for some time. May 8 we inaugurated our drydock by a successful docking and now the dock is busy with one ship following practically on the stern of another through that dock. We have received a congratulatory radio from the British Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, on that.
Today the third and last of the rings opens up with a troupe of divers, absolutely fresh from the United States, presenting a spectacle never before witnessed in any arena, least of all an African one.
So from now on life here should have never a dull moment. (It hasn’t had yet, anyway). I wish you might be here to see it, not to mention me.
With love, my darling, Ned
Letter #17 May 20, 1944
Lucy darling:
Today was rather a red letter day for me around here.
To start with, one of my salvage masters and five divers arrived eleven days ago and I turned to with them to salvage an unusually important craft sunk here by the Italians, who blew seven huge holes in her bottom with high explosives. The British, whose divers examined her last year, had officially abandoned her as unsalvageable.
I started on her as our first venture, and today, ten days after our start, we had her up from the bottom and afloat again, ready in a few days to start repair work on her in our own shops.
So now where a few days ago in the harbor there was nothing, she now rides at anchor, to the very great astonishment of all of our British friends, and over her waves the Stars and Stripes.
To make the day perfect, General Maxwell, head of the North African Mission, came down from Cairo to inspect our naval base, accompanied by the British general commanding in Egypt, the British general commanding Eritrea, and an assorted lot of colonels, both British and American. So we were able to stage quite a show for them, with our drydock housing a large ship, our salvaged vessel up from the deep, fresh in a thick coating of oysters and barnacles, and our ships all running on machinery the Italians thought they had thoroughly sabotaged.
Everything went off beautifully. For the first time, we had hoisted over our naval base the American flag, and I have never felt prouder of it than when this morning (after a very brief speech by me) it was hoisted over our highest building.
Then the visiting brass hats were escorted over the base and taken out in a boat to inspect our exhibits afloat, all of which made quite an impression. On the way back, the British general commanding, who was certainly deeply impressed by what he had seen, told me,
“Commander, I know of no one who is doing as much to help win the war as you!”
That is laying it on a bit thick, I’ll admit, but it was a pleasant compliment anyway, and our accomplishment on our first salvage job has created quite a sensation around here. As an added cause of amazement, we have been getting ships in and out of our drydock so fast the British have had trouble furnishing ships fast enough for us.
As a final gracious touch to the day, I was invited at lunch to sit at the head of the table with generals on either side and Heaven only knows how much allied army gold lace backing them up down both sides of a long table. So by and large, the Massawa Naval Base had quite a gala day.
Changing the subject somewhat, I was more than gratified to receive a cable the other day from Irita Van Doren & Ogden Reid, with the news of “I Have Just Begun to Fight” having received the Herald Tribune’s Children’s Book Award. That’s grand! And they stated you had represented me at their celebration. More power to Captain Paul, senior and junior. I am especially happy for Gerald’s sake, for I feel his illustrations must have been a powerful factor in getting the award.
I received a lovely letter from Mary with some news of her vacation (dated Apr. 13) today. When you get this, college will long be over. I hope you both go to Maine, at least for part of the summer. It would please me very much if you did, and I could almost feel as if I were enjoying the Maine breezes myself then.
It’s getting hotter here, but so far it hasn’t bothered me, and I can sleep beautifully in my air conditioned room, so I feel fine. I am down to about 150 lbs. Now, and it has all come off the waistline, so none of my trousers fit any more, and I have quite a figure, a model for Apollo almost now.
We are fitting out another building for quarters, into which we’ll move in a couple of weeks, where I’ll have a private kitchenette, replete with refrigerator, electric stove, and whatnot else (provided the things I asked for from the U.S. ever get here). And quite a grand room, with two air conditioners in it!
With much love, Ned
Letter #18 May 30, 1942 Massawa
Lucy darling:
This letter should be mailed in the United States by Colonel Claterbos, who is returning home by ship from here because of the recurrence of a former heart ailment. He has very kindly consented to take a letter for you, so you should have this by about July 20.
As your letter of May 13, delivered here May 25, stated you had as yet received nothing at all from me since I left Cairo, I may here repeat a few things to make sure you know them.
The mail system from the United States is fair, with most letters coming here in a month, though some take twice that. But the mail from here to the U.S. seems to be terribly slow.
So to cover the situation:
First, I really am well. In spite of everything that has been said of this place, much of which is true, the heat doesn’t bother me; the various diseases, mostly tropical, can be dodged by proper care, which we have; and I don’t drink, which is an avoidance of the cause why most white men disintegrate in the tropics.
Second, I’m busy, so I don’t have time to cogitate on how hot and humid it is, and so worry myself ill over that.
I have plenty to do. We have taken a naval plant which the Italians thought they had thoroughly wrecked, and we have that plant rehabilitated now and running today, so the Massawa Naval Base is in operating condition now instead of having to wait for American machinery, none of which has yet arrived. The Base is as good now as the Italians ever had it; when our new equipment arrives, we’ll have a navy yard that would be a credit to any yard in the U.S.
We have a drydock which the British brought down from the Persian Gulf and turned over to us. I’m running that on American principles, and I think it is the busiest dock in all the world. We’ve had it in operation since May 9. In that time (20 days) we have docked 12 large ships, better than an average of one every two days which was the goal set, though it seemed impossible of achievement with the untrained crew and the miserable native labor I had to work with. But we have beaten our quota, and have run the British ragged trying to send ships here fast enough to keep the dock occupied.
Finally our salvage work has started. On May 10, the first salvage master and five divers arrived by passenger ship from the U.S. We had only two diving suits and no other salvage gear at all, as none of our salvage ships had then arrived.
Salvage operations started therefore on a shoestring. For our first task, I picked out a sunken drydock, because of all types of floating craft today, drydocks are the most valuable and are literally priceless. This dock (larger than the one we are operating) was sunk by the Italians by exploding TNT bombs in the hull and blowing seven huge holes in the bottom sections, through which gashes you could drive a 5 ton truck.
The British had made a diving examination of this dock a year ago when they occupied Massawa, and had officially gone on record as saying the dock was beyond salvage. Possibly it was, with all those holes in it. But nevertheless, we tackled it with our trifling salvage crew and absurd equipment. Naturally I had to use somewhat unconventional methods.
As is usual, all the experts far and near, stood around and laughed. Wheeler, chief of the British Mediterranean Salvage Forces, bet another officer we couldn’t do it. But in nine days from the day we started, that drydock was afloat again, and it is still a nine days wonder around here! Now we are repairing it.
The North African Mission has done lots all over Africa, but nothing it has done has attracted as much attention as that dock.
To me it is a particular satisfaction as showing that I may be nearly seventeen years older than when I tackled the S-51, but I find I have all the energy I had then in running a job plus a great deal more knowledge.
The repercussions of that first salvage success have been considerable. I had quite a carefully built up reputation here before I arrived, which I had some fears I could never live up to, but now the British look on me with some awe, and the funniest thing of all is the enthusiasm which the Italians here have greeted the raising of the dock they sank, because it tickles them to see the Americans do something the British said they couldn’t do.
To go along, the first concrete result was that General Maxwell came here from Cairo with a galaxy of British generals to have a look, and he immediately sent a cable to the United States, a copy of which I enclose as furnished me by Col. Chickering.
(Ed: this is the text of the cable): USMNAM CAIRO FOR SAMS
USMNAM ASMARA US/228 5/21/42
SEND FOLLOWING RADIO TO WASHINGTON QUOTE COMMANDER EDWARD ELLSBERG IS PERFORMING MOST OUTSTANDING SERVICE WITH THIS MISSION STOP HE HAS REHABILITATED A BADLY SABOTAGED MACHINE SHOP AND PUT IT IN OPERATION IS DRYDOCKING A SHIP FOR SCRAPING AND PAINTING ON A SCHEDULE OF ONE EVERY TWO DAYS AND HAS RAISED A SUNKEN DRYDOCK WHICH OTHER EXPERTS SAID COULD NOT BE SALVAGED STOP HIS RANK OF COMMANDER IS BY NO MEANS COMMENSURATE WITH HIS ABILITIES RESPONSIBILITIES AND THE RELATIONSHIPS HE MUST MAINTAIN WITH SENIOR BRITISH OFFICERS STOP REQUEST THAT NAVY DEPARTMENT BE ADVISED OF FOREGOING AND URGED TO PROMOTE HIM TO CAPTAIN WITHOUT DELAY UNQUOTE FROM MAXWELL SIGNED CHICKERING
0500/21 GMT
(Ed: A cover memo was attached):
U.S. Military North African Mission Asmara Service Command Routing Slip (dated May 22 1942)
“General Maxwell desired that this copy of radiogram be furnished you. We all join in the chorus. WEC (Ed: Ellsberg wrote – this is Colonel Chickering)
(Ed: In addition to the above cable, the following letter was included in Ellsberg’s letter to his wife):
Copy of letter by Major General B.O. Hutchison, General Officer, Commanding Troops In Sudan H.Q. Troops in Sudan 20th May
My dear General Maxwell:
On the conclusion of my visit to Massawa, I should like you to know how much I was impressed by the excellent work being done by Comdr. Ellsberg.
I was delighted to see the initiative with which he was tackling the difficult jobs which others had been unable to do.
He is certainly doing a first class job towards winning the war.
Yours very sincerely,
/s/ B.O. Hutchison
A true copy: /s/ H. Kunzler 1st. Lt., A.U.S. Adjt. USMNAM
201-Ellsberg, Edward (OFF) Wrapper Ind. HK/kc
Headquarters, United States Military North African Mission, Cairo, Egypt. May 24, 1942. TO: Commander Edward Ellsberg, United States Navy, c/o Commanding Officer, United States Military North African Mission, Eritrea Service Command, Asmara, Eritrea.
Copies of the attached letter have been furnished the Commanding Officer, United States Military North African Mission, Eritrea Service Command, Asmara, Eritrea, and the Bureau of Navigation, United States Navy, Washington, D.C.
By command of Major General MAXWELL
/s/ H. KUNZLER
H. KUNZLER 1st Lt., A.U.S. Adjutant
1 Incl Incl 1 – copy of letter from Maj. Gen. B.O. Hutchison, 5/20/42
(Ed: Ellsberg penned at the bottom):
This just came in today. I see General Hutchison went farther than just telling me orally what he thought, though in writing he was somewhat conservative. Ned
What action the Navy Department may take on General Maxwell’s recommendation to promote me to Captain “without delay” I do not know. Whether I get it or whether I don’t will bother me little, after that accolade from the Chief of the Mission of being the only officer here to be recommended for promotion for “most outstanding service.”
And the General Commanding the British forces in Egypt, who accompanied Maxwell, told me “you are doing more to win the war than any man I know,” which compliment may be a little extravagant, but without question he meant it.
And in addition I have received also a radio from Vice Admiral Halifax, R.N. commanding the British forces in the Red Sea, which also I enclose. (He is F.O.R.S., who sent the dispatch, that meaning Flag Officer Red Sea).
(Ed: In a Naval Message came the following):
TO: NOi/c Massawa FROM: F.O.I.R.S.
Please convey may (sic) congratulations to Commander ELLSBERG U.S.N. on his success in raising the floating dock.
1220B/28/5.
NOIC NLO Cmdr ELLSBERG BAO C.O. LOG.
W/T CODE B TOR 1858z/28/5/42. GR 30 A.D. F.
(Ed: in Ellsberg’s hand: From Vice Adm. Halifax RN)
But all is not roses here. I have my troubles with the usual quota of damned fools, American and British, who forget there is a war on and obstruct instead of cooperating. So far I have rolled over them, sometimes by force, sometimes by diplomacy (of which latter I am better acquainted with than formerly) and then the labor I have to work with would drive anyone into an asylum. There are so far very few Americans. I work with English, British colonials, Italian prisoners of war, Maltese, Hindoos, Persians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Somalis, and Eritreans, which last are absolutely the world’s most worthless laborers.
I have kicked the English out of the habit of taking most of the afternoon off for tea, and I have even managed to get something in the way of work out of the Eritrean natives, both of which achievements should be ranked as minor miracles. But I long for the day when all the American mechanics promised me arrive here, and I can work with men who know their jobs. But whether that day will ever come I am beginning to doubt, because our own Navy Department is now insisting the British furnish the mechanics instead of our doing it, and I am afraid Britain is stretched so thin she just can’t. Meanwhile I don’t get the mechanics I desperately need, either from America or Britain, while Washington and London argue by cable as to who should furnish them, and I am left to make bricks without straw. However, a fair quality of brick is being turned out even so, but it could be better, and that makes me sick to contemplate.
To change the subject to something pleasanter. A few days ago, two people arrived from New York, one by ship and air, one by air direct, and God be praised, I received five letters from you all at once, the latest dated May 12, being #21. How can I say what a heavenly joy that was! I live now only for two things – one, to do what I may to help win this war, and the other, to come home again to Mary and you. And now for a while when letters must be our only tie, they mean so much!
I was intensely gratified at receiving the Herald-Tribune’s cable over the Children’s Book Award. May it mean more power to John Paul Jones in firing America! And I may say, as never before I understand now as I struggle with a medley of indifferent nationalities and scant equipment, what Paul Jones suffered in the fitting out and taking to sea for a victorious action of the worthless crew and rotten ship he had cajoled from the King of France.
As regards matters financial, I think I am entitled to something of a pay increase for foreign service, and as soon as I can get it arranged in Cairo, where my accounts are carried, I may be able to increase my allotment to you by about $40 a month. This will take several months. Meanwhile, I am in need of only a small part of the special subsistence and quarters allowance which is paid me here, and if the transfer arrangements can be made, I can soon start sending you perhaps $200 a month more out of that.
I believe that in spite of reduced dividends and radically increased taxes, we can pay all of Mary’s expenses in college without selling anything of hers, and I am sure that if good management can accomplish anything, you’ll succeed in doing that.
I am sorry to hear that gas rationing has made you decide not to go to Maine. At this distance, I can not suggest any means by which enough gasoline might be saved up for the trip, or otherwise obtained, but if it can be done by hook or crook (or even by train) I hope you and Mary can get up there if only for a month. I should almost feel as if I were enjoying the Maine breezes myself if only I knew that you were there.
I have mentioned air-conditioning in one of the letters which by now I hope you have received. If you must stay in Westfield any part of the summer, forget economy for once and get one for the living room, and not too small a one, either. I suggest a Westinghouse Mobilaire, model FC-091, which is what I have here, and which is doing a marvelous job here under tough temperature and humidity conditions. And perhaps a second unit upstairs in our bedroom would also be worthwhile. Never mind the cost!
I am shortly moving into new quarters here in a building left by the Italians which we are fitting out as officers’ quarters. I get a grand room, about 25 by 15 feet, with my own kitchenette, refrigerator, electric grill, and whatnot, and a private shower and toilet, all with two air conditioners! Don’t worry about my ability to keep comfortable and sleep in that. But to furnish the kitchenette I wrote you a month ago asking for some knick-nacks like a Toastmaster, a small coffee percolator, and some Thermos bottles, plus a miscellaneous assortment of clothes and other thing which are practically unobtainable here.
Please order the ring from Bailey Banks and Biddle, even if it does cost around $70. It’ll be worth it as a war souvenir afterwards, and meanwhile it will be useful.
My thanks to Gerald for what his illustrations did in helping “I Have Just Begun to Fight!” win the book award.
It is evident some of your letters telling of your mother’s pneumonia haven’t arrived yet. I’m happy to know she is now convalescing.
I haven’t received yet anything from my own mother. I believe it best if you suggest she send her letters to you and you forward them inside another envelope which you know is properly addressed.
So far I have received in your numbered series, letters #3, 4, 7, 9, 18, 19, 20, 21, and before you started numbering letters of Feb. 24, 28, Mar. 4, 7, and 26th. The others must be following diverse routes and ships over the globe, bus should someday arrive here.
Via a British naval officer who had to go to Cairo yesterday, I sent a message to be cabled you from Cairo for our twenty-fourth anniversary. I hope it got by the censor and was delivered in time. There is no cable service from here, and it takes a week apparently to get a message from here to Cairo, with no knowing what happens to it then.
I got up at three o’clock in the morning to write this, and it’s now six AM and I must get ready to take the first of my three daily baths and then get to work. Colonel Claterbos’ ship should take not over six weeks for the trip from here and delivery of this letter at least should be assured. (Ed: Unfortunately it was not postmarked from Washington until Sept. 16th).
With very much love, my darling, Ned
(Ed: the following note from Claterbos tells the story of the letter):
Trinidad, BWI 9/5/42
Dear Mrs. Ellsberg:
Your husband gave me this to mail when I reached the U.S. Its present condition is due to a dunking in the Caribbean when my ship was torpedoed.
I hope to call you when I can get up to New York – I want to tell you what a swell job Capt. E has done.
Sincerely,
Louis J. Claterbos Col., C.E., USA
Letter #19 June 2, 1942 Massawa
Lucy darling:
This letter will be taken to America by Mr. Embury of J. D. & P. who is here only for a brief inspection trip and should be back in New York by June 15. He came out here from N.Y. leaving there about May 15, and brought me a message that you had heard nothing from me since I arrived in Eritrea.
That is unfortunately due to what must be a terrible mail service to the United States since I’ve written often. The letters should start to arrive soon, if they haven’t already. I have received in one batch 5 letters from you dated from May 9 to May 12, which came out by a J. D.& P man who flew over.
But aside from that:
First, I am well now and have been since I arrived here. I see no reason yet why I shouldn’t continue so. The weather is hot and humid and will probably get much hotter, but it doesn’t bother me. I have an air-conditioned room in which I can sleep very comfortably, and next week I move into a larger one which is even better for size and comfort.
Second, I’m very busy and outdoors most of the time. As a result, I have lost my incipient bay window altogether, and I am down to about 150 lbs. My figure is the best I’ve had since my midshipmen days.
Third, I’ve had quite a grand time with important brass hats from both the American and the British army and navy passing through here to be shown what we’ve done. It’s interesting to watch their eyes pop out at what’s happened in the Massawa naval base.
Fourth, I’ve had extraordinary luck here. The Italians thought they had completely sabotaged all the shops by smashing the machinery, and I came out from New York hoping that by next December when new machinery arrived from America, I could get going. Instead of that, one look when I got here convinced me we could refit the Italian machinery, which we have done already. The result is every Italian shop is already running again with the smashed machinery repaired and doing as good a job as the Italians ever did. So the Naval Base is operating now instead of next December.
Fifth, the British sent down a drydock from Persia which we are operating on a scale to make one dizzy; and it has the British, who are groggy now trying to get ships here fast enough to keep our dock occupied. Thirteen ships have been docked by us in 24 days.
Sixth, there is salvage. I had no divers at all until May 10, when a salvage master and five divers arrived by passenger ship. We had only two diving suits and nothing else, as no salvage ships had then arrived. I borrowed some air compressors, and we went to work, choosing as our first task a large Italian floating drydock as that was far more valuable, if recovered, than any ship could be.
The Italian naval captain (who is in jail here) who sank her by exploding 7 TNT bombs in her hold, blasting out 7 holes big enough to drive a truck through in her bottom, had bragged to his British captors what a grand job he had done as that dock could now never be raised. The British salvage experts, after an examination of those 7 holes, agreed with him and officially abandoned the dock as unsalvageable. When he heard we were tackling it, the Chief of the British Mediterranean Salvage Squadron bet another officer we couldn’t do it.
To make a long story short, nine days after we had started on that drydock, it was afloat again, with its blasted holes exposed ready for repair work to begin (which it has). That has been a nine days wonder around here, and well it might be.
So as a salvage expert, I’m vindicated. The laudatory comments that have rained in on my head for that job might well have turned it completely, except that the S-51 job already had done whatever might be accomplished on my ego along those lines.
Briefly, both the British general and the admiral commanding in North Africa have sent their congratulations, General Maxwell of our Mission has been here to look, and all the lesser fry have joined in the chorus.
Now as a practical result, General Maxwell has cabled the Navy Department recommending that without delay, I be promoted to Captain “for most outstanding achievement.” Whether the Navy Department will act “without delay” or will even act at all, remains to be seen, but I don’t much care. I’ve always liked the title of Commander, and I don’t think I’ve done it any harm. And I’ve earned the only accolade in foreign service that General Maxwell has given anyone, so whether I ever get the promotion or not, I have the inner satisfaction of knowing I’ve done a good job, and the knowledge that those higher-up on this station know it also.
Meanwhile, it is a personal gratification to confirm to myself that I haven’t slipped back in any way since the day seventeen years ago, when full of youthful energy and armed with youthful ignorance of the difficulties, I set out to salvage the S-51. I may be older now, and this climate isn’t exactly the bracing air we had off Block Island, but if ever a salvage job was done with neatness and dispatch and no errors on a supposedly hopeless wreck, it was on this scuttled Italian drydock.
So now I feel all right. The war can go on and I know I haven’t ossified so far either mentally or physically so that I can’t do my bit.
We are of course, having plenty of difficulties. The heat is no joke. Neither are the English, who are so damned slow when I want any men or materials in a hurry. Then most of the men promised me from the United States for my Naval Base haven’t come nor have they even been hired in the United States, while Washington and London squabble by cable over who should furnish them, when it was all agreed before I left that we should. But I haven’t the men. And I must work with a conglomerate of nationalities instead that would be a good match to Paul Jones’ crew on the Bon Homme Richard. My force consists of a few American supervisors backed up by Italian prisoners of war, Hindoos, Persians, Somalis, Sudanese, Maltese, Arabs, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and some Englishmen. The American flag floats over this Naval Base (which daily gladdens my heart when I look up at it) but I wish to God America would do something for us in the way of men as well as in the way of the machinery which she is sending us. From its location, this Massawa Naval Base can be an important factor in our own naval strategy in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific, as well as being all important as a main base for the British Mediterranean Fleet.
Meanwhile, I do the best I can with what men (regardless of their race) that I can lay my hands on, and so far all who have seen have agreed that we have done well and far beyond any expectations.
I am writing more fully via Colonel Claterbos, who is shortly going home by ship and will carry another letter.
With love, Ned
P.S. Yesterday was our 24th anniversary. I sent you a cable, which I hope arrived.
P.P.S. In spite of gas rationing, I hope you and Mary find some way to go to Maine for a while.
Letter #20 June 2, 1942 Massawa
Lucy dearest:
I have just received your June 1 cable here. I sent you one via Cairo on May 28, which I hope arrived by June 1.
This letter goes by regular post from here and I hope arrives not too late. I have heard from a Mr. Embury of J. D. & P., who left New York by air about May 15, that up to then you had received not a single letter from me since I reached Massawa in late March. That is a beautiful tribute to what inefficient mail service and (perhaps) too efficient censors can do to hold up the mail. I have written plenty of letters in that time.
Meanwhile, briefly I can say that I am well now and have been continuously so since my arrival. I’m very busy with all the different things I have to do and I have been startingly successful on my first underseas job which was completed in an amazingly short time.
So here all is well so far as my work is concerned.
I hope you and Mary get up to Maine for at least part of the summer in spite of gas rationing. Please order my ring.
With love, Ned
Letter #21 June 8, 1942 Massawa
Lucy darling:
The mail came in bunches this week. I received your letter of Mar. 13, and also in one batch your letters sent via the Home Office USMNAM as follows: #5 of 4/14, #8 of 4/20, #10 of 4/23, #12 of 4/28, #14 of 5/1, #15 of 5/3, #16 of 5/7, and #17 of 5/8. That meant eight letters in one day, covering a period of nearly a month. Apparently the Army letters were forwarded from the U.S. all at once, but not till quite a lot of mail had stacked up.
The last word I had as embodied in your letters of about May 9 to 12, #18, 19, 20 and 21, showed you had not yet received any letters from here, which was also the information given me orally by the J. D. & P. man who flew over at that time. He is now on his way back with a message for you, which you should receive a long time before the arrival of this letter. In addition to that, an Army officer returning to the U.S. shortly (presumably by ship) will also have a little more information for you when he gets back to New York.
Meanwhile I am head over heels in work as usual. Our drydock has turned in a magnificent performance of ships docked for its first month, which ends today. My salvage forces are active (such as are here already) and we are well started on a second wreck. Also my dockyard shops are quite busy.
As regards other things, particularly financial, my expenses here are slight – nothing for quarters, only a moderate amount for a mess bill, and next to nothing for anything else, principally because there is nothing here that money can buy. I could use a number of articles of which I have long ago written you, and which by now I hope you have word.
I mentioned in my June 1 cable that my ring should be ordered, but how it should be sent I can’t say. The best way is to keep in touch with J. D. & P. and when they are sending someone by air to Eritrea, have him take it. But if no such bearer seems available, the next best bet is to send it via the Mission home office in Washington.
As regards this, I understand a certain vessel – (come to think of it she would have sailed long before you get this, so forget my half-spoken thought of that route).
The multitudinous articles I wanted can best be sent by J. D. & P. on whatever ship they send out next.
I have not yet received any copies either of Life or the Reader’s Digest, to which you subscribed for me. I would judge that over two months must elapse at least for their transmission.
I am happy to note your mother is convalescing well from her pneumonia and has presumably already visited you. Give her my love.
There seems to be a lot of miscellaneous misinformation going about concerning this country and its setup, such as you refer to from Raymond Clapper in his published articles. It is true that a large and expensive rest camp has been built in the hills some 40 miles from here at an elevation of 3500 feet, with the expectation that everyone would leave here each evening to sleep there and return in the morning to work. But it takes an hour and a half each way for the journey over a terribly hot intervening plain and then up a mountain highway full of sharp switchbacks. The problem of transporting several thousand men in buses daily over that road is quite insoluble, and I think myself the men would be completely knocked out by the daily journey, not to mention that the accident rate would undoubtedly be high. (There have been plenty of accidents to our trucks already over that road). So far no attempt has been made for daily commuting, and I doubt that it ever will be. The rest camp may be used by giving the men in batches a few days each month in the hills, but the dream of leaving Massawa nightly to the night watchmen is out. As for myself, I never expect to use the rest camp and I think it is going to be a washout, (and an expensive one). I rely more on air-conditioning the sleeping quarters here for everyone, which we will do when our equipment arrives. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t trade my air-conditioned room at night for all the rest camps in Ghinda.
It is getting quite hot, but between drinking huge quantities of water daily (between two and three gallons) and taking salt tablets with each quart, I don’t find the heat oppressive, though I work often out in the sun. It is interesting to find my shirt (when I dry it) frequently streaked with salt left there by sweat.
It’s hot. We are working now under the sun on repairing the blasted steel plates of the drydock we recently salvaged. Down on that dock floor, in spite of the fact it is well out on the water in the bay, there is little breeze but plenty of direct sunlight. I took a thermometer out there the other day. Laid on the wood keel blocks, at about the level where our heads are, the temperature that thermometer registered in the sun was 149° F. Of course that’s in the sun, but so are the workmen. The same thermometer laid on the steel plates of the dock floor, read 163° F. The steel we work with or on, gets too hot to handle without gloves.
My normal costume is shorts, a sun helmet, and half-sleeved shirts – all khaki, of course.
Inside the shops, where the men are shaded, it’s not so bad, though our blacksmiths have a tough time over their forges.
But all in all, so far we have managed to work steadily in spite of the heat and the humidity, and I think we can keep on through the summer. We are fairly well used to the heat and it doesn’t bother us much, though I notice that our Asmara crowd when they visit here (which is not frequently) get out of this place after about a two hour stay and it’s difficult to keep a single one here over night. They cause us plenty of trouble though, for the main office is in Asmara and attempts to direct many operations here without anybody ever staying in Massawa long enough to find out what anything is about. I fully realize now how Franklin, Washington, Adams and their associates finally decided to risk a war rather than submit further to remote control of their affairs by absentee landlords. And the telephone communication is so terrible that making a call to Asmara literally usually takes an hour for a call to get through and leaves one mentally washed up for the day and nearly fit for the nut house before it’s over. A force of American telephone men are working on the problem, but till they shoot half the Italian operators and put the rest in a concentration camp, I hope for little improvement.
I have a few other minor irritations. The chief of our mission cabled the Navy Department to send out seven naval officers as my assistants, and heaven knows I could use them. The answer he got by cable was that none would be sent. Apparently the Navy Department regards us as a step-child on the ground this is an “area of British responsibility.” Maybe it is, but we still fight here under the American flag, regardless of whose area of responsibility this is. At any rate, I’ll have to get along with a couple of Army lieutenants as assistants and some civilians (if I can ever get the civilians). Meanwhile I work with a heterogeneous mixture of all nationalities and get by mainly because the British and the colonial brass hats who have visited here have been so impressed by what the Americans here have done that they have lent me the hand that Washington refuses to extend. But if I only had more Americans, I could do a vastly better job. This is a American navy yard in the same sense that the Bon Homme Richard was an American warship – it has an American skipper and a few American lieutenants but as for the rest it doesn’t assay one American in every hundred. And yet we make it go and even the British regard it as an American establishment.
With love, Ned
Letter #22 June 13, 1942
Lucy darling:
Your letters #22, 23 & 24 (the last May 24) arrived here today, together with one of Mary’s of May 18. This is especially rapid delivery. I notice they all came via Amseg, which must be livening up its mail service very considerably. I suggest you send all your letters that way except when you can catch an air passenger at J. D. & P.
I am glad to see that my………letter of Apr. 2nd finally arrived by May 15. The others ought to follow with some regularity now. As regards sending my letters by air mail, I don’t think I can do anything about it. We can’t get any stamps of any nature here, and besides I think the mail all goes out the same way regardless of how the sender intends it shall go. It all goes by air from here to……….and after that, nobody seems to be able to find out what happens to it.
I sent you a message by Mr. Embury of J. D. & P., who should be back in New York by air about June 15. If you hear nothing from him by the time you get this, you might enquire at his office about it.
As regards Ahmed Hussen, whom you seem to fear as a possible rival, I regret to say he is no more around here. He was fired about 10 days ago for complaining to me he had never been paid and when I came to check up why not, I found he was on the payroll under another name and drawing just twice as much pay as he was supposed to get. Now I have another boy who is completely hopeless. I haven’t bothered to find out his name.
Thanks for sending me the clipping about Richard Hawes. As you probably remember, I managed to get him commissioned an Ensign after the S-51. I always knew he was a good man and he has proved it. But I’m sorry to know the Japanese have got their hands on him. Regarding the clipping, don’t hesitate to send more. I have not seen an American newspaper since the day I sailed.
I am glad to know we have some porch furniture at last which is satisfactory. It will be particularly useful this summer.
It just occurs to me (if you get this letter before October) that one way for you and Mary to get to Maine and still have a car there to drive, is to go by train and ship the station wagon the same way. You ought to get gasoline enough up there to get you around for the……things and you can make the telephone and Jackson’s save you from having to use gasoline for groceries. Or you might hire a car up there, which should not be difficult.
Sorry about the Argo (Ed: Ellsberg’s 27’ gaff-rigged A class sloop). I would give lots to have her here, with the whole Red Sea at my front door and Arab Dows sailing all over the place and I with no sailboat at all! I had hoped to fix up a couple of Star boats the Italians left when they evacuated, but my men are so few I can’t take them off essential war work to repair those boats. However, I still have hopes, and next December should be just as good a sailing season as this June.
Lovely hot weather we’re having. I hardly think 150° F we’re having where we work on our salvaged drydock can be beaten many places. But it is like many things you hear about – it sounds worse than it really is. So far we haven’t had a heat prostration case. Of course the story goes that this is nothing to what we’ll get in July and August, but I don’t believe it. It can’t get much hotter nor more humid. And we shade most of the spots where we have to work repairing the huge holes the Italians blasted in the steel plating so we get along. I understand this is about the time Massawa used to shut up shop and go to the hills, but we expect to keep right on working through. Wars aren’t won by taking four hours off in the middle of the day for a siesta, nor by closing up shop for a couple of months in the summer time.
Later June 21
This letter was somewhat interrupted by moving day. We have been converting a building the Italians used to use as an office building, into quarters for our officers, and we finally got it done so we could move in last Sunday night.
I now have a large room, 16 by 20 ft, with a private bath and a kitchenette attached. (That is, I will have a kitchenette when the refrigerator arrives next week, and I can manage to cabbage an electric grill somewhere and when that coffee percolator and toaster you are sending finally arrive. By the way, that reminds me that the trunk shipped after I left has not yet arrived, but may get here early in July. Maybe.) I have two Westinghouse air conditioners in this room, but they are having a tough time. Imagine feeling cool in a room where the temperature is 88° F, as it is here this minute. Outside it is 102° F in the shade. I suppose it’s the reduction in humidity as usual.
I really have quite a pleasant setup this time, with something of a view over our harbor and the Red Sea (we are not as close to the water as we were before). If only I could get an interior decorator in, I might make something really restful of the place, but I’ll have to do what I can myself between other work. As it is, there isn’t a curtain in the place, nor any pictures for the walls, which gives it a rather bare appearance in spite of some fairly decent furniture (all made in Eritrea).
But I can sleep here comfortably with no mosquito nets, and that makes a big difference. And speaking of mosquitoes, there are less here day or night than in Maine, and very few flies.
Colonel Claterbos, who was the district engineer, sailed here for home two days ago. Apparently an old heart trouble recurred, and he couldn’t stand the gaff, though his headquarters were not here but in Asmara. He should be home about the later part of August, and I mention him only because he is carrying a message for you which I wrote some weeks ago when he first expected to sail, but didn’t. It will probably seem quite stale when you get it.
The captain of the ship the colonel sailed on presented me with a radio set. It is a Pilot portable, about the size of Mary’s, except it has a cloth cover. Just now I am struggling to get an antennae wire long enough to get reasonable reception with it, for we are thousands of miles from most stations, and the reception here isn’t so hot, even if the weather is. Of course, short wave is all I can get on it, though it will take the long wave stations also. Imagine living only twenty miles from WJZ again and not worrying over reception!
Meanwhile, in spite of the heat and all the irritations of squabbling over a terrible telephone line with some civilians in Asmara who won’t come to Massawa because it’s too hot but still try to poke their noses into our engineering work, I manage to keep very well. I may go crazy here over the idiocies and interferences I have to combat, but the climate will certainly never put me away. And I just have an idea I can outlast those remote control directors, in spite of their cool Asmara climate.
Our surgeon (Capt. Plummer of the Army medical corps) continually keeps an eagle eye on me and constantly asks after my health. He says he gets so many inquiries from Colonel Chickering and from Cairo about how I’m standing it (I’m the one person they have no relief for) that he told me he thinks that if I got sick, he’d get a court-martial.
Our major work goes along very satisfactorily. I expect to celebrate the Fourth of July here by lifting another ship on which the crew of my first salvage ship have been working for a couple of weeks. (Most of our salvage force has not yet arrived).
The three snapshots you enclosed are lovely, and your smile in them is wonderful. I have the one taken through the car door on my desk and it seems as I look at it that I’m looking directly into your eyes! Darling, if only you could be here, Massawa could be Heaven!
Ned
P.S. Your letter of Feb 26 just arrived 6/20/42. Your letters #1, 2, 6 and 11 have not yet arrived.
Letter #23 June 24, 1942 Massawa
Lucy darling:
Yesterday I received a cable from the War Department dated June 19, announcing that I had been appointed by the President to the rank of Captain. This was the action taken as a result of General Maxwell’s cable of May 21 requesting I be promoted “without delay” for “most outstanding service.” Considering the slowness of communications, even by cable, it appears that Washington did act expeditiously on his recommendation.
So now I am a Captain in the Navy. That I received the promotion not in the regular order or simply because it was the turn of my class, makes it doubly gratifying. Every one here, American and British, has been most hearty in their congratulations, and even the British telephone operator (a seaman whom I have never seen) when I made my first phone call today, instead of getting my number for me immediately, took occasion to tell me first over the phone how pleased he was to see my work rewarded.
I have worked here, but no harder than on any other task. Still, either I’ve been luckier than usual or my judgment is better, for the results seem to have shown up sooner and perhaps against a war background have stood out more. At any rate, seeing that I had to come back in the Service only six months ago as a lieutenant commander, I have moved along quite handsomely.
There is no longer any particular need (I think I said this before) of keeping my whereabouts or what I am doing a secret from anybody. There is nothing particularly confidential about what the North African Mission is here for nor what its personnel is or is engaged in.
My salvage fleet should very shortly be considerably augmented and then we should be able to get to work on quite a grand scale. As it is, even with trifling forces we have pulled one near miracle on our first salvage job, and I expect that very shortly a large German ship that the Nazis blasted a huge hole in and scuttled here, will be floating again with the Stars and Stripes waving over her. Which job will be done by a tiny salvage ship smaller than a New York harbor tug, which came 12,000 miles to get here under the skipper I hired on the beach at Santa Barbara, assisted by a crew totaling only 14 men including the captain. The docking of that salvaged ship I hope to make our Fourth of July celebration.
It will interest you to know that in connection with my promotion I had to take another physical examination, which opportunity our medical officer seized on with alacrity as apparently he was itching to find out what effect my activities had had on my blood pressure, which I have an idea he expected to find sky high. Last January, on my last Navy examination, it was 105. Yesterday it was 100. (Ed: Ellsberg had such low blood pressure that often he was reexamined by the Navy doctors who couldn’t believe the results; he stated that if stress or some aggravating situation raised his blood pressure it “only went up to normal”). I don’t know just what that proves, but anyway not what he was afraid of. As for the rest of me, everything was OK, so I passed with no difficulty.
It is getting somewhat hotter and muggier around here, with our first sandstorm thrown in day before yesterday for good measure. The sandstorms are what is supposed to make a summer here really different. We’ll see.
I’m sending you a cable which should get off from Cairo next Saturday (June 27) as otherwise the major news in this letter wouldn’t reach you till the summer is fairly well over (that is, in the United States).
And I expect also in the next few days to send you a Treasury check for around $600, covering my Army allowances here for about two months (check enclosed with this letter). You can use it as you think best. In addition, I have something coming to me from my Navy pay since last March above the allotments made you, which sums I have never drawn. Those accounts are in Cairo, and as soon as I can get in touch with the paymaster there, I’ll try to get a check for that and forward it also. In the meantime, I have about $180 in the bank (Barclay’s) here, which will keep me going for a while yet, seeing that willy-nilly, I never get a chance to spend much here, much as I should like to buy some things but they just don’t exist around here.
June 25, 1942
The mail just came in, bringing your letter #29 of June 2, sent via J D & P, plus a letter from Mary sent the same way, dated June 5. Fast work.
I heard today that an Army officer, Major O’Neal is flying back to U.S. within a week, and he has promised to carry this letter for me, my second chance to get real air service back. (The first was via Mr. Embury of J D & P who should have arrived in U.S. about June 15).
Lest it wasn’t mentioned elsewhere, I got your June 1 cable on June 2, the same day you got mine.
As regards salvage, we have already salvaged a large Italian drydock, which was the main cause of my promotion. The ship we hope to raise soon is the ex-German Liebenfels, on which my solitary salvage ship so far, the Intent, is now working. When my other three ships get here, we should be able to make quite a dent in this job.
Glad you ordered my ring.
Sorry to hear about the passing of the Com. & So. dividend. That means the omission of a lot of money. Queer, because they should have a huge power demand, but I suppose labor & taxes have swallowed all their income. I’ll try to send all the money I can from here to make up. Meanwhile, I strongly advise against selling anything to meet expenses, yours or Mary’s. If necessary, quit buying bonds.
As regards my income taxes, please do nothing whatever about rendering any returns for me for 1943 to the Government. Of course, my payments for the rest of this year must be made, but as regards next year and the payments on it, let the Government look to me, not to you both for the returns and the cash. All I’ll want on that is a statement of what my receipts were i | |
