The S.S. Leopoldville Disaster

Leopoldville: A Tragedy Too Long Secret, 2008 edition, by Allan Andrade

Allan Andrade

One of the exceptional people I met at Longwood Gardens is Allan Andrade, a retired New York City Police Lieutenant. In our casual conversation, I learned he had written a book during his retirement documenting the sinking of the S.S. Leopoldville, a Belgium troopship ferrying American soldiers across the English Channel from Southampton to Cherbourg near the end of World War II to reinforce the troops fighting the Battle of the Bulge. The ship was torpedoed and sunk by a new snorkel-equipped German submarine within sight of Cherbourg on Christmas Eve, 1944, with a loss of 805 American soldiers. The huge loss of life, mainly from bungled actions by the Belgium crew and British escort vessels, was initially kept secret to avoid aiding the enemy, then continued from embarrassment of the debacle and the desire to protect our allies.  The story remained hidden from even the victim’s families until recent times, and many family members never lived long enough to learn the circumstances of their loved one’s death.

The book itself is fascinating, but I was mainly interested in how an ordinary retiree could gather all this information and organize it into a book—on his own, with little guidance. I have met many retirees with the vague idea of someday writing a book, but they never begin the actual work.  Andrade did.  He credits his police investigative skills in coordinating the information, but it is still an amazing accomplishment. It must have cost him far more money than he can ever make on the book, and I jokingly told him if he only made a nickel an hour, he would be a rich man. All he really got financially from his effort was a trip to Belgium as a consultant for a TV documentary being made of the sinking.

In his book, Andrade builds heart-stopping realism by overwhelming detail gained from the survivors and the families of those involved. A single, one-paragraph quote from just one serviceman’s letter must have involved many letters back and forth with the family to earn their trust—and his book has many of them. The detail includes where the servicemen grew up, who they selected to marry, quotes from their letters home, and memories of survivors during those last moments. With all of that, you feel you know them, and it hurts when you learn how they needlessly died so young.

One chapter describes the rescue attempts by a British destroyer. The soldiers had to jump from the Leopoldville onto the destroyer in rough seas as the ships were rising and falling, swinging apart and banging together. Those who mistimed the jump landed in the freezing water and were crushed an instant later when the ships slammed together. Many could not swim and wore their heavy equipment that dragged them under.  They were never told the troopship was in immediate danger of sinking, and many stayed on board too long, waiting for rescue that never came. They were then either sucked down by the sinking ship or, because of their numbers, died of hypothermia before they could be pulled from the water. The Belgian crew abandoned the ship early on without helping the servicemen. The British destroyer pulled away, assuming many other rescue ships were on their way from nearby Cherbourg, but those other ships did not realize the troopship was going down and did not respond. Tugboats arrived in time to tow the stricken ship to safety, but could do nothing because the ship had dropped anchor to keep from drifting into allied minefields. With all of the confusion, soldiers lived or died by the shear luck of being at the right or wrong place, or by simple actions of themselves or others.

Since I know Allan Andrade, I read the book from the very beginning: Acknowledgements, Foreward,  Introduction, everything.  The publisher is Xlibris, a company that specializes in self-publishing.  Andrade even had to publish it himself with little chance of earning back his expenses. But it is a book that will still be gratefully read a hundred years from now by the expanding families of the victims and survivors—and by anyone seeking a historic wartime story that is a microcosm of the needless sacrifices demanded of World War II, and, indeed, of all wars.

Bottom line, writing a book takes lots and lots of work, so much so that it has to be a labor of love.  In today’s market, you will have to initially shell out some of your own money that you may eventually recoup, but you are very unlikely to get rich.  You will probably not become famous, either, but may, like Andrade, earn the gratitude of a select group.

The book is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, either in paperback or  e-book.

RWalck@Verizon.net