76 years ago today, on April 21, 1943, the US Victory Ship 'S.S. John Drayton', under Ship's Master Carl Norman, was returning from Bahrein under ballast after dropping off supplies.  She was off the coast of Durban, South Africa, when she was hit by two torpedoes fired by the Italian submarine 'Leonardo Da Vinci' The sub then surfaced, and finished the attack with machine gun fire. The last lifeboat wasn't picked up until May 21, with only 8 of the original 24 men still alive. In all, 21 merchant crew and 6 Armed Guard sailors were lost.

     And now for the REST of the story! Captain Norman survived not only the sinking, but the war, returning to his home in NYC. After losing his wife to cancer, he remarried, this time to a woman employed as a secretary/translator by a large American company. She was also my father's cousin. I first met Capt. Norman, now Uncle Carl, around 1970. He was one of the most fascinating people I have ever met, and the stories he told were spell-binding. But not one word about his time during the war! He DID tell me that he had lost 'some good men' off the coast of Africa, but that was all he would say. I only managed to put the story together when I started researching my family history, and out of curiosity I 'Googled' his name. While his story may be largely lost to time, he will always remain a hero to me.

John

Thank you for posting this, ordinary people, under extraordinary circumstances, show what they’re made of. 

Thanks for posting the story, John. I suspect there are many, many such stories that never get told. Its always good to ask.

By Jorge Milian

Posted Nov 10, 2015 at 12:01 AM Updated Sep 4, 2016 at 8:34 PM

In 1942 during the height of World War II, Morton Deitz attempted to enlist in the Navy, Coast Guard and Army Air Corps.

Each of the military services deemed Deitz unfit to fight. Too scrawny, Deitz was told.

So it’s ironic that the Boynton Beach resident survived one of the most physically grueling and emotionally harrowing experiences of any soldier, sailor or airman during the war.

For 31 days in April and May of 1943, Deitz and 24 other Merchant Marines drifted in a lifeboat in the middle of the Indian Ocean after their vessel, the U.S.S. John Drayton, was torpedoed and sank off the east coast of Africa. With no food, water or supplies, some drank blood and even urine to survive the ordeal.

By the time a Greek freighter spotted their boat, only Deitz and seven others were alive. Some committed suicide by jumping off the boat. Others died of exposure and, Deitz said, at least one sailor was killed by the boat’s first mate after the man “went off his rocker.”

Of the eight survivors picked up by the Greek freighter, three died on the way to shore in Durban, South Africa.

Deitz fell into a coma late in the month-long ordeal and doesn’t remember his rescue. He weighed 155 pounds when he jumped into the lifeboat on April 21, 1943, but only 90 pounds when he was taken off. Deitz spent more than three months in a hospital and still manifests some consequences of the experience, including light sensitivity resulting from eye damage caused by the sun.

So how did he survive?

“Let me be facetious with you,” said Deitz, 94. “Who the hell knows?”

Torpedoed in the Indian Ocean

Wanting to serve his country after the bombing of Pearl Harbor but unable to pass a physical, Deitz enrolled at the Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point, N.Y., in June 1942. The all-volunteer Merchant Marines ferried troops and supplies around the world, but were not considered part of the U.S. armed forces even though they regularly navigated in war zones and took heavy losses.

Deitz’s first assignment was on the U.S.S. John Drayton. Its mission was to deliver 10,000 tons of airplane parts, tanks and other munitions to a port in the Persian Gulf. After delivering its cargo, the John Drayton began making its way back to the United States when it was blasted by a torpedo delivered by an Italian submarine near Madagascar.

The order to abandon ship was given and Deitz, whose assigned lifeboat was damaged by the explosion, and 24 other mariners crammed into a lifeboat designed for 12 men. Some of the crew on the John Drayton not on Deitz’s lifeboat were rescued within days of the vessel’s sinking.

“We were not so lucky,” Deitz said.

Instead, Deitz’s group ran into a ferocious storm that capsized the lifeboat. It took eight hours for the men to right the boat and get back in. But by then, all the food, water and supplies they carried were lost to the ocean. Worse yet, the lifeboat’s mast was broken and its engine destroyed.

Some of the men began to lose their mental grip. Deitz said the first to go was the boatswain.

“He started muttering and ranting,” Deitz said. “They were afraid he was going to capsize the boat. So they threw him over.”

Before the man was tossed overboard, his chest was cut open. Mad with thirst, a cup was used to collect the man’s blood, according to survivor Herman “Hank” Rosen in his b0ok about the ordeal, “Gallant Ship, Brave Men.”

“The crazed sailors, like in a primitive ritual, solemnly line up, dip and drink, passing the cup from man to man,” Rosen wrote. “Not everyone in the boat participates.”

Deitz declined to say whether he participated, but said he never drank his own urine as many of the other men did to fight off dehydration.

‘Worst part was the weather’

One by one, the men on the boat perished. Deitz said the first mate got up from where he was steering the boat one day, did a backflip into the ocean and was never seen again. Another sailor, suffering hallucinations, pointed to what he said was his wife and stepped off the boat.

“I don’t have an answer for that,” said Deitz, when asked how he managed to keep from going insane. “I guess I’m very stoical. I knew it was beyond my control. I just looked at it in the face and said, ‘Here I am.’”

For more than three weeks, all the men had to eat were some small flying fish then fell into the boat one fortunate day.

“But the worst part of it was the weather,” Deitz said.

Blazing hot in the day, the South Indian Ocean turned winter cold at night. Deitz said he stills suffers from vascular problems caused by the temperature extremes he endured.

It’s only lately that Deitz has opened up about his experience. Rae Nadler Friedenberg, Deitz’s long-time friend, hadn’t heard the full story until Deitz related it last week to The Palm Beach Post.

“He doesn’t talk about it,” said Nadler Friedenberg, 87. “It’s too emotional. He’s an incredible man. I admire him. But it’s very difficult for him to talk about these things. He just wants to forget it.”

Sherri Twer said she and her sister, Kathi Wachtenheim, never heard a word of their father’s World War II survival story as kids.

“It was almost taboo, as if it never happened,” Twer said. “I felt uncomfortable asking him questions because I got that it was too sensitive of a subject to bring up.”

No veteran’s benefits waited for him at home

As if spending a month adrift on a raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean wasn’t traumatic enough, Deitz faced more tribulations when he returned home.

Nearly 9,000 Merchant Marine seamen were killed and 11,000 injured during World War II, but the mariners weren’t considered veterans even if they served in combat areas. Deitz was also part of the Naval Reserve, but that was discounted because he had never been placed on active duty.

When Deitz applied for the GI bill and other benefits, he was turned down. It didn’t matter that the U.S. government exploited Deitz’s death-defying story by having him appear around the country with a traveling troupe of movie stars and military heroes to sell war bonds.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” Deitz said.

Without veterans benefits, Deitz had to pay his medical bills and put himself through Rutgers Law School — he finished first in his class — while raising a young family. Deitz fought the government for decades, but it wasn’t until 1988 that a federal court ruled those who served in the Merchant Marines in combat during World War II were veterans.

“It speaks of the survival mode that drives him to this day,” Twer said.

Deitz doesn’t speak of regrets. A great grandfather of three, Deitz made the most of his second chance at life by raising a devoted family and enjoying a successful professional life that included a long stint teaching law at Princeton University.

“I consider myself very fortunate,” Deitz said.