On Christmas Day in forty-three
The Nazi Scharnhorst put to sea,
For word somehow had reached Berlin
An Allied convoy was within
Two hundred miles of where she lay
In some Norwegian, hidden bay.
She went ahead, two-thirds her speed,
A mighty, master-monster steed,
She left the fjords, mountain walled,
Where oft her echoing bugles called,
She cleared the channel, marked the land
Drop far astern on either hand.
She steamed through fog and arctic day,
And then at night, when darkness lay
Completely over all the waste,
The Scharnhorst charged with fuller haste
To intercept the Allied ships
Which dared these bold Murmansk-bound trips.
Meanwhile the convoy, slow, serene,
Behind an escort naval screen,
Proceeded eastward off North Cape.
The Scharnhorst sensed the coming rape,
And manned her guns that early dawn,
But this is what she came upon:
The cruisers Norfolk, and Belfast,
And Sheffield, all the long night past
Had known the wild sea horse was free
To terrorize the Northern Sea,
And they had placed themselves between
The charging Scharnhorst and the screen.
The winter’s dawn was blackboard gray.
The Scharnhorst held her plotted way.
The Norfolk, Sheffield, and Belfast
Were tense with waiting. Hours passed
As closer these two forces drew,
Determined ships, determined crew.
The British sensed the approach of doom.
The Scharnhorst paused within the gloom,
But then a star shell, bursting high,
Illumined her against the sky.
The great seabeast began to snort
From every nostril turret fort.
The Sheffield’s guns belched smoke and flame;
Belfast’s quick turrets did the same,
The Norfolk’s screaming shell bursts bit
The monster’s triple hull, a hit!
The Scharnhorst screamed, she turned and fled
To mend her wound, to count her dead.
Belfast forbade his ships pursue.
He judged what Scharnhorst meant to do,
Pretend retreat and then renew
Attack upon the convoy later.
Scharnhorst’s speed he knew was greater,
So he kept his course the straighter.
Scharnhorst circled east and nor’ward,
Hoped to bring her power forward.
But the convoy changed its course
To shun this grim, abhorrent horse.
The cruisers cut the arc and then
Awaited Scharnhorst’s charge again.
When, hours later, tense with rage,
The Scharnhorst, plotted to engage
Just merchant ships and escort craft,
Had reappeared to run the raft,
She met instead the concerted blast
Of Norfolk, Sheffield and Belfast.
Once again the salvos thundered.
Scharnhorst knew that she had blundered,
While her gunners cursed and wondered
Shells and fire as before
Through the gloomy twilight tore,
Swiftly, surely, more and more.
The Norfolk’s afterdeck was hit,
A blaze of flame, the air was lit.
The Scharnhorst did not wait to see
What damage or what victory.
She turned once more in fearful dread,
Homeward set her course and fled.
For Scharnhorst was a worthy prize.
Correctly had she made surmise
That other ships, the British fleet,
Would steam to intercept or meet,
And so she fled, a wounded beast,
To seek the dark, protective east.
But all this while, to interplace
Between the Scharnhorst and her base,
To cut the Nazi monster’s course,
To bridle all her vicious force,
To leave a wreck of twisted torque,
There steamed the mighty Duke of York.
Two hundred miles away or more
The Duke and her destroyers bore
When first the battle message came.
Belfast continued to proclaim
The Scharnhorst’s course, and from this plot
The Duke, her speed, position got.
For brave Belfast, and Sheffield, too,
And Norfolk this time did pursue.
The Scharnhorst turned, she headed south,
And flung herself into the mouth
Of Duke, Jamaica, and the horde,
Saumarez, Savage, Scorpion, Stord.
“Illuminate the enemy!”
Belfast’s bright shell broke high and free.
The heavy night with heavy haze
Had been descending, but the blaze
Of light and brilliance caught the steed,
Betrayed her form, her frothing speed.
The Duke’s great turrets boldly spoke,
Belched shell and fire, fume and smoke.
Concussion tore the night around.
The shells went screaming through the sound
And landed close aboard the Hun,
A “straddle” salvo number one.
The Duke corrected plot and range
And there began a fierce exchange
Of shell and suffering. Scharnhorst blazed
Where blasts and flame her structures razed.
She turned to east in panicked fright
And sought the dark, descending night.
The Duke sped after, sending shell,
Fired havoc, roaring hell
Raining down upon the fleeing
Battered, bruised and barely seeing
Nazi supership which sped
Ever more and more ahead.
At last the Duke had lost the range.
Her guns were silenced, but a strange
New battle lit the horizon’s edge
And smote the Scharnhorst like a sledge.
She reared and tossed and bellowed toward
Saumarez, Savage, Scorpion, Stord.
She did not flee as fast, for they,
More swiftly speeding on their way,
O’ertook her and on either bow
Engaged the bleeding Scharnhorst now.
Her voice was wild, her aim was bad;
She fought with all the guns she had.
At forty knots the destroyers came.
Ten thousand yards, they took their aim;
Six thousand yards, without a change
Of course or speed they closed the range.
Two thousand yards, they launched their dread
Torpedoes, and away they sped.
The Scharnhorst snorted, scored a hit.
Saumarez felt the blast of it.
But then the launched torpedoes struck,
And Scharnhorst’s inner heart was stuck.
Her guns began a wild, red fire,
She’d lost her speed, could not retire.
By now the Duke of York had closed,
And with another force composed
Of Sheffield, Norfolk, and Belfast,
Jamaica, and come up at last,
Four escorts from the convoy screen,
Began a new approach routine.
The Scharnhorst shuddered, shell on shell
From eight destroyers upon her fell.
From four crack cruisers she sustained
The heavy, horrid fire they trained.
Each salvo from the Duke of York
Left her unsteady as a cork.
Around and round the battle raged,
On every side she was engaged
By greater force and stronger will,
A broken thing of beauty still;
And then the ships received command
To stand well clear on every hand.
The battle paused. The night returned,
And in that dark the Scharnhorst burned.
The swift and final act began.
Jamaica left the cruiser van
And headed toward the trembling pile
Where life and metal burned the while.
A neat destroyer trained her lights
Upon the target and the sights
Aboard Jamaica, set to kill,
Could pledge the beast her final thrill.
Jamaica swung. Torpedoes leapt,
Their course and their appointment kept.
A last great roar the Scharnhorst gave,
Then rolled her fires beneath the wave,
A wretched, moving, dying thing
Within the watchful naval ring.
The black, salt sea her vitals drank,
And, quenched her thirst, the Scharnhorst sank.