“I had asked the pastor of the Catholic church at La Couronne, a village slightly more than a mile from Carro, to say a Mass on Sunday morning for the five men we had lost. A High Mass was celebrated in the church, crowded to the doors, at 10:30.
“The pastor and local people had gone to considerable trouble to decorate the church with French and American flags and flowers. The choir sang, despite the broken organ, and the curé gave a moving sermon in French. Four FFI [Underground] men, gotten up in a uniform of French helmets, blue shirts, and white trousers, stood as a guard of honor before symbolical coffins draped with American flags.
“After Mass our men fell in ranks behind a platoon of FFI, and followed by the whole town, we marched to the World War I monument. There a little ceremony was held and a wreath was placed in honor of the five American sailors.
“We were told that a collection was in the process of being taken up amongst the local people, in order to have a plaque made for the monument planned for their own dead in this war. The plaque will bear the names of the five Americans who gave their lives here for the liberation of France.”
The people of La Couronne did not forget. In that tiny village, on the lonely coast at the mouth of the Rhone River, is a monument with a plaque reading: To Our Allies, Ralph W. Bangert, Thomas F. Devaney, John J. Dunleavy, Harold R. Guest, Victor Sippin.
One of the most brilliant Anglo-American teams was Lieut. R. A. Nagle’s 559 and the British MTB 423, both under command of the dashing British Lieut. A. C. Blomfield.
During the night of August 24th, the marauding pair entered the harbor of Genoa to raise a bit of general hell. Off Pegli, about five miles from Genoa, they sighted what they thought was a destroyer, and put a torpedo into it. The vessel was only a harbor-defense craft, but a fair exchange for the one torpedo it cost.
Two nights later the pair jumped a convoy of three armed barges, and sank two of them. For the next nine nights they tangled almost hourly with F-lighters (four sunk), armed barges (eight sunk), and even a full-grown corvette, the UJ 2216, formerly the French l’Incomprise, which they riddled and sent to the bottom as the top prize of their 11-day spree.
Hunting got progressively meager as winter came on. PTs prowled farther afield and closer inshore in a ferocious search for targets. On November 17th, Lieut. B. W. Creelman’s PT 311 pressed the search too far, hit a mine, and sank. Killed were the skipper and his executive officer and eight of the 13-man crew.
The last big fight of the American PTs with enemy surface craft came two nights later when Lieut. (jg) Charles H. Murphy’s 308 and two British torpedo boats sank a thousand-ton German corvette, the UJ 2207, formerly the French Cap Nord.