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 he own words. Today, we learn about what the locals knew and did not knew about what the Germans were doing along the American coast, and the impact it had on their lives.
Anne Henry: Prior to Pearl Harbor, there was a lot of U-boat activity up in the northern Atlantic. News was not proliferated like it is today, and we knew that there were a lot of problems up in the north Atlantic when many U-boats were attacking American vessels that were carrying supplies, in particular, over to the other side hoping to keep us…supply them, to help them win the war, England and at that time, even Russia, so we would not be in it. And so there were men going over, but not any of our Army or Navy or any of that, except with the…we would pick up, being that we were a Navy town and a Coast Guard area, we would pick up from time to time a bit that we knew some of the Coast Guard ships were particularly up in the north Atlantic trying to offer protection to these ships going by, but it was not anything you knew anything in particular about. Now, in later years, I know that the Coast Guard class called the Treasury or the Secretary class was up in those northern waters where the 327-footers were trying to provide protection. And it was terrible up there. But the German U-boats were not down here trying to take out the shipping along our coast until Pearl Harbor. Then the Germans changed their mode, which we didn’t know then, but I know now. Up in the northern Atlantic, they used a procedure called “Wolf Pack,” where more than one German submarine would go out. It was a pack mentality. When they moved after Pearl Harbor and they came down along our shores, it was what they called “Operation Drumbeat.” In comparison, Drumbeat was one-on-one, primarily, and you’d “beat the drum” when you had a kill, the Germans did. So that was when the activity began to move down along our coast, which you did not see, you knew, because at that time, the first six months of World War II, it was quite a period in which there was no real protection for the coastline. Admiral Ernest J. King was in charge of it, and he had Admiral Andrews looking after this. They did not have the ships, the Coast Guard was supposed to be guarding the shore, and they had little surfboats and small boats. They were not armed for anything to come out from the shore, and the Coast Guard was totally inefficient in being able to do what they needed to do because they didn’t have the men, they did not have the boats they needed and all. So, but the main thing I knew was that, when I came home for the summer, I then began to see bits of oil on the beach, and all the things that have happened down in the Gulf and the tar balls and all have made me think of that time. My mother placed two jars by our back door. We lived on 23rd Street. One jar had a wee bit of kerosene in it. Kerosene, gasoline, and all those were rationed, but a bit of that that she had somewhere was in one jar, and little rags were in the other jar. When I came home from the beach, I had to go to the back door, take out a little rag, and dampen it with a bit of kerosene to get the tar and the oil off my feet before I went in the house, because if I’d tracked that stuff in the house, that would have been very bad news for Anne! And we really…as I say, that was the main way we knew that something was happening, and we knew that ships were going down, but so far as seeing submarines, that was not true in Virginia Beach, because they weren’t running on the surface here. They probably were down in Carolina, but we didn’t really know. So, that’s how we knew they were coming, because most of the shipping, the commercial shipping, that was going on were tankers, and a few troop carriers, but mostly tankers, because everything we operated in the war depended upon oil…tanks, trucks, everything. And ships. So this was in great demand. Some of the tankers we knew were loaded, coming past our shores. Some of the ships were riding light, which meant they were empty at the time, going back to get more.
