Introduction: Meet Anne Henry. She was a college student at Mary Washington College during World War II, but her hometown was, and still is, Virginia Beach. She was there during the summers when the German U-Boats were along the coast of the United States. This is her story in her own words. Today, Anne tells us about witnessing the explosions happening offshore due to German mines.
Anne Henry: I came home from school and immediately went to work at Jard’s Drugstore, which was on the southwest corner of 25th Street and Atlantic Avenue. I lived on 23rd as I said. I’d left home, I walked down 23rd Street, to Atlantic Avenue, turned left…and when I was ready to cross 24th Street, to continue on towards the drugstore up at next corner, I noticed a number of vessels, primarily tankers, but then some smaller craft, sort of milling around. I had a good, clear view because the end of 24th Street at the time was totally open. It was used, that little stub street was used for parking of cars, and the Coast Guard Station, which, the yard was next door to that, just a nice yard. I had a very clear view, and I stopped for a minute, I recall stopping and taking a look out and wondering what in the world they were doing, because usually you would see vessels, you know, taking a straight track, but they were sort of…the only thing that came to mind at the time was “Well, what are they doing, playing Ring Around the Rosie, or what?” But, you know, I didn’t know what was going on, so I went on up to the drugstore at 25th Street. And it must have been, when I was at the foot of 24th Street there, I guess it was maybe 11:30, because I was supposed to be on duty that day, that was my short day, at noontime, and I always went ahead of time. And of course, we had the usual lunch hour, because that was one of the main things at Jard’s Drugstore. It was called a drugstore, but it had no pharmacist. It was, you know, like the OTC’s of today…had lots of those, but not a pharmacist. And, about, I think, probably 2:30, the lunch crowd began to clear out, so that was a time to, you know, sort of clean up, straighten up, and so forth. And then, a little later, I went to the front counter that, at that time, was the one in which cigars and all were kept...glass top, of course, and glass so the people making their selection could look in, and a cigarette rack was behind me, and I was wiping off that countertop, making sure it was clean. Prior to that, when I had a moment, I had looked out at the foot of 25th Street, which was wider than, the street itself was wider than 24th Street because it was a two-way street, and saw then some ships beginning to go by, heading into what I knew would be the Chesapeake Bay, the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And, I didn’t have many times to glance up or anything, but when I did, when I was up there wiping off the counter, I noticed there was a ship just beginning to come into my line of vision, and in a very short time after that, a minute or two, there was a big, loud explosion. And of course my head snapped up, I could tell the sound was from the ocean side, and a plume of water was going up near the bow of this tanker, and she began to go down a little bit, in the head. When you see something like that, and it’s right here in your own front door, you sort of freeze…and then everything came alive. People that had been on the streets began to rush towards the boardwalk. A couple of boys who were helping out a little bit there in the drugstore to make a few little bucks, they dashed out the door. It appeared to me, it was the strangest feeling…I felt as if, if everybody ran to the boardwalk, we’d tip into the sea, which I knew was totally illogical, but it was still that crazy thought that passed through my mind, and nobody knew what really had happened. Of course, immediately the buzz was “Oh, a German submarine has torpedoed that vessel.” No one thought, at that time, it could be anything but a torpedo. Very quickly, there were vessels that deployed, came out, evidently, from Norfolk. Aircraft came out, and depth charges were dropped, so it was a constant boom, a boom, a boom, and this didn’t take too long, maybe a half an hour before that response began, with the craft coming out. And then, not long after, about an hour after the first vessel had this explosion, and she was sort of drifting a little bit there in the water, we heard, I heard, another explosion. I did not see anything there, because, as it turned out, that was sort of between 23rd and 24th Streets, right offshore there. And by five-ish, there was another explosion, a bit further away. We learned later on that that vessel, down around the foot of 17th Street offshore there, had gone down with nearly everybody. We didn’t know, for sure, what any of this was, or what the ships were. A loose lip could sink a ship. No, there was no news coverage, no TV stations down running around, and, I mean, I think all of us were just sort of stunned, but we didn’t know anything to do about it.
