The Press: Nazis Outwitted

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One of the picture scoops of World War II appears this week in LIFE : pictures of the sinking by a German raider of the Egyptian motor ship Zamzam with 138 Americans aboard (two dozen of them ambulance drivers bound for the British Army in the Middle East).

From a transatlantic Clipper when it landed in Queens one morning last week LIFE Photographer David Scherman and FORTUNE Writer Charles J. V. Murphy, hustled to the office of LIFE Managing Editor John Billings. On his desk slight, boyish Photographer Scherman deposited: one tube of tooth paste, one tube of shaving cream, two rolls of surgical gauze. He looked like the cat that had just swallowed a whole cage of canaries.

And well he might have. For tucked away inside his little drugstore were four smuggled rolls of film. They were pictures taken aboard the Zamzam in the dawn of April 17 after the Nazi raider fired ten shells into her, pictures of the passengers abandoning ship, a picture of the raider (a commonplace looking merchantman refitted as an armed cruiser), pictures of the sinking Zamzam, pictures aboard the prison ship, pictures taken 33 days later as the prisoners caught sight of the Spanish and French coasts.

Says the accompanying story by Writer Murphy of his awaking on the fateful morning:

"The atmosphere tightened into a tense, spiraling scream, and even as I shriveled against the bones of my body the water directly abeam, less than 100 yards away, rose up in two or three crackling columns and subsided. There was another salvo, after which the ship shook and trembled, and I heard a tearing, rending noise. I crossed over to the port side, and the moment I stepped out on deck I saw the German raider. She was broadside on, so close I could count her bridge decks. . . . Even as I looked several long red flashes spurted forward and abaft the funnel, and as I raced back to the cabin the passageway behind me heaved and filled with smoke. . . .

" 'The thought came over me,' Captain Smith told me afterward, 'the bloody bastards are going to sink us without trace.' "

Photographer Scherman had already prepared for the worst. When the shooting started he stuffed his emergency supplies in a camera shoulder case, busied himself calmly with evacuation shots until the last passenger was ready to go overside. He took more while the boat was pulling toward the raider.

Aboard the German ship he sneaked the roll out of the camera, slipped it and two others into. Murphy's pajama pockets as the Zamzam passengers were lined up for registration and made to empty out their pockets. Murphy had burned his hands badly sliding down a rope, and Photographer Scherman asked whether he could sign for Murphy and remove his wallet and passport for him. The examining officer, a tall, smiling lieutenant who spoke perfect English, nodded. The films stayed in Murphy's pajama pockets —even while he was being interviewed by the raider captain.

Meanwhile, Photographer Scherman went on taking pictures without inter ference. Indeed, as the Nazis prepared to sink the Zamzam with time bombs, a Nazi lieutenant showed Scherman the best place to stand. Said he in precise English: "Sometimes they die quite gracefully and always they are different."