Egra
On Friday, Feb. 18, 2005 at 12:58. I turned on the history channel and heard
"The Rohna is still at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea". I had
missed the hour program but knew and was somewhat involved with knowledge of her
sinking. After 62 years, memories came back to me of the attack and subsequent
sinking of the Rohna. The following is the best as I can remember of that
occurrance.
My name is Herman Pruskin, a WW11 Army Veteran and eye witness to the sinking of
the HMT Rohna. It all started in Oran, North Africa! We boarded, as I remember,
12 British ships. We were told we were headed for Salerno, Italy. My ship was
called the Egra. We were alongside the Rohna, and just in front and, in between
our ships, was a British submarine. The Egra was the last and outside ship of
our convoy. To the rear was a British corvette. We left Oran at noon time. The
following day at about 3:30 pm we heard sirens which the British called "
stand to" ( battle stations) My company was one level below the deck and
parallel with the water. I was assigned to care for a fellow in my company who
had a broken leg with a cast to his hip. I put two life preservers on him and
escorted him up the stairs to the deck and near the edge of the ship in case of
evacuation. I then saw a formation of German planes 30-50 in the distance. Our
British gunners were already firing in their direction, the tracer bullets still
falling short of the formation. I then started to drag cartridge cases of 50
caliber machine gun ammunition from a shed which was about 30-50 yards from my
gunners. A group of planes peeled off and attacked the British corvette. At one
point I thought I saw smoke with every gun blazing at the planes. At that point
the planes dispersed and started to attach our convoy some to the front and some
at mid-ship. My gunner shot one plane down, still in the distance. Two more
planes got closer to us and our guns got a second one. As the third plane
approached, we hit him and I noted another ( I thought) plane go straight over
my ship. It actually was a radio controlled glider bomb the Germans were testing
for the first time. I heard a tremendous explosion and turned to see the Rohna
with a 6o foot or so hole in her side.
People were immediately jumping into the water, as we were zigzagging. The
British corvette was heading for us and the people in the water. As they
approached us, they were spraying smoke around us and the area with the poor
souls in the water. The British sub, which was in between us, was firing with
her gun and did not dive below the surface. I saw other planes up front get shot
down, 8 all together, as we continued to go as fast as possible, until we
finally saw British spitfires join the fight. Then as the sun started to go
down, one spitfire came straight at us and twisted his wings vertically as he
went between our smoke stacks. I saw his hand and fist with thumb sticking up,
telling us they had chased the Germans back to Crete where they came from. As
darkness fell our motors stopped and we floated thru the night. The following
day we heard a communiqu‚ that "WE" shot down 8 planes and our
losses were "light" (We knew better)! We continued the following day
and were attacked again and I saw 3 German planes shot down. We continued and
arrived at Port Said, Egypt.
Postscript: When issued our life preservers, we were instructed, for evacuation
of ship, to remove helmet and blow up 2 cylinders around our waists after
landing in water. We learned later that victims on the Rohna turned upside down
from top heaviness- preserves should have been under our armpits. After the end
of WW11, 25 or so years passed. One Friday evening ABC program showed 20/20 with
Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs. They related a story of American troops
stationed in England in a training amphibious landing. The ship carried the
troops off England and turned in a mock invasion landing. A German sub was there
and torpedoed the ship. Seven hundred American troops died. They all
drowned-turning upside down when their preservers were around their waists and
not under their arm pits.
This tragedy occurred eleven months after the sinking of the Rohna and still the
life preserver incident wasn't corrected, from the knowledge of the sinking.