Close to the Wind

by David B Hill

  ‘Bastard seats. How long’s this bloody journey, anyhow?’

  ‘Too bloody long if I have to listen to you bleating, Lofty,’ cried a voice from the seats behind.

  A tiny, smile-like curvature rose at one corner of Lofty’s mouth. He did ‘grumpy’ well. He leaned back and raised his brows to his mates. As they raised theirs back, he repositioned his cap to cover as much of his face as he could, folded his arms and lapsed into silence. The others fell silent too. As the train lurched into motion and slowly gained speed, Len thought about Haami’s last words.

  Fight like a shark.

  Ururoa. The word kept invading his thinking. He repeated it silently to himself, fascinated by its lyricism, and by the paradox that it concealed within it something sinister, something dangerous. Before long the noise of the wheels clattering along the tracks in a regular tempo began to match the word itself – ururoa, ururoa, ururoa – but neither the noise nor the motion of the train was enough to prevent him or the others from eventually falling asleep.

  They were woken in the middle of the night, when the train stopped at Carlisle, and they were given a supper of a cold bun and black tea. Then they continued.

  The journey in daytime was captivating. The train passed through countryside that Len and the others had only ever seen in books or at the cinema. They found it invigorating to travel through the landscape with the windows open, especially after six weeks at sea. The smell of newly turned soil drifted through the train from time to time, and the coal smoke took Len straight back home. He watched the scenery pass, rolling hills crowned with coppices of oak, beech or birch trees, all bursting with fresh foliage. In the fields, the new season’s planting was beginning to thrive, greening the landscape in neat rows. They passed along thickly wooded valleys, beside slow moving streams spanned by simple, stone-arched bridges. Sometimes they crossed over valleys and large vistas opened up, allowing Len to look down on sleepy villages clustered at intersecting rivers or roads. A marvellous church steeple passed by as the train skirted a large town on some sort of viaduct. Somebody said it might be York.

  As they travelled south, through the industrial Midlands, things changed. They met other troop trains stopped at a siding. On each occasion the troops of both trains shouted and cheered each other loudly in passing. Once they stopped to let another troop train pass, but the cheering stopped when it was realised the train was full of wounded. Then they began to see evidence of destruction, smoke on the horizon, and new works where rails or bridges had been repaired. Everywhere, military activity imposed itself: vehicles, men in uniform, covered signage and the cryptic military substitutes. Once they came to a railway junction that had clearly been a target of heavy bombing. They stopped for quite a long time before the train was allowed to continue, grinding slowly past a crater where the train’s wheels came perilously close to the edge. Somebody picked up from one of the navvies working on filling the crater that this was Birmingham. On another occasion the train stopped in a cutting, to avoid observation from enemy aircraft thought to be in the area. At this point, most of the men were asleep.

  To arrive into London was to arrive into the centre of the storm. Everybody quickly roused themselves. It was early morning, and in the rising light, the cost of war became vividly apparent. The sky was sown with anti-aircraft balloons, and bomb damage scoured sections of the cityscape, cutting swathes through suburban housing. When they ground into Euston Station and jerked to a stop, the boys found themselves descending onto a busy platform to be immediately formed into squads. The ratings were to disperse to several destinations, and the officers to another.

  The group of Reservists that had left Auckland almost seven weeks previously, many of whom had sailed and trained together for years, was now about to divide. They knew they had been called to serve His Majesty’s Navy. How and where had been unknown, and, up until this point, very little had been spoken about the subject, even though they had known throughout the train journey that they were soon to be dispersed. The conversation had been mostly about the convoy experience, a sort of review since it was now behind them. It did not leave them much time to talk about the future, which may have been the intention. There had already been plenty of goodbyes for the boys. They were beginning to realise the merits of just moving on in such circumstances. It was part of growing up, like drinking or picking up bad language. So there wasn’t much ritual on the platform now, although no little sentiment was hidden in the casual words of farewell.

  ‘See you, Johnno. See you, mate!’

  ‘Cheerio, Don. Stay out of trouble.’

  ‘Not bloody likely.’

  ‘Yeah, right. See you, mate.’

  ‘Good luck, Jackie. Good luck, boys.’

  ‘See you out there somewhere.’

  ‘Not if I see you first.’

  Called to order, the boys were directed to buses and driven across the city to board more trains. Driving across London, the boys could see a lot from the top deck of the bus. It was clear that the stations had been prime targets of German bombing. All around them was destruction. People in helmets swarmed over piles of still-smoking rubble, while in the street people hastened about their business with looks of grim determination on their faces. They reminded Len of the Māori on Wellington wharf. There was a clear resolve about them.

  At one point Lofty nudged Len and the others to look out their window. A shopfront had suffered from a bomb blast; its masonry and windows had been blown into the shop. This had been tidied up, and placed in front was a sign: ‘More Open than Usual’.

  Lofty muttered, ‘The Poms are taking a beating.’

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ replied Tim. ‘But they’re taking it well.’

  ★ ★ ★

  Len, Tim and Lofty – A1888, A1889 and A1895, still together – were among a complement heading to Portsmouth and HMS Victory. They arrived in Portsmouth in the mid-afternoon and were offered another classic makeshift meal, this time prunes and custard.

  ‘Somebody should be writing a recipe book,’ grumbled Lofty.

  The evacuation of Dunkirk was placing impossible stresses on the authorities, who were feverishly trying to maintain morale, provide order and discipline, and manage transport, shelter and sustenance for thousands of evacuees. At Victory, the authorities responded to the arrival of the New Zealanders by sending them on again, this time to another training base across the river in nearby Gosport, HMS St Vincent. There, at last, they were settled.

  Selected for Scheme B as officer candidates, the Kiwi Reservists would have to spend time training and meet certain criteria to achieve promotion. They settled into St Vincent easily and adapted quickly. When the New Zealanders presented for drills, it was recognised – equally quickly – that they had a significant skill base already, and as the boys began to pull together as a cohesive unit, it was not without reward. Within a short time, they were allowed to attend divisions in the morning, then spend the rest of the day under the control of their own non-commissioned officers, much to their delight. It was a gesture of confidence. Out of sight of the authorities, it also allowed a return to the familiar pleasures of swimming, rowing and open-boat sailing instead of the classroom. For several weeks through July and into August, they relished the joys of the Hampshire coast and the best of a beautiful English summer.

  In spite of the casual atmosphere, there were constant reminders of the war. The sky overhead was filled with contrails. They saw vessels returning to port with clear signs of damage, and at night they could hear the sound of enemy bombing and see the glow of fires in Portsmouth itself and even some of the lesser ports along the south coast. They thought themselves lucky. Very occasionally they were hauled in for actual training.

  When the boys applied for a fortnight’s leave, they received a rude awakening. There would be no leave. Instead, they learned that the whereabouts of the New Zealanders had been lost by the Naval authorities, but now that they had identified themselves, eleven of them were to report for duty,
immediately. They were to report to a merchant vessel called Alynbank that had been reconfigured as a convoy escort, sailing out of Belfast. The draft included Len, Tim and Lofty. They were for active service at last – but on a converted merchantman? Was this to be the fate of the lowly Reservists? Even before they left St Vincent, rumour had it that Alynbank was bound for Scapa Flow, to protect convoys on the exposed eastern coast of Britain and the North Sea. For the small boat sailors from the South Pacific the prospect could not have been more miserable.

  ★ ★ ★

  The group returned to Scotland by train, travelling back to Glasgow then across the Irish Sea to Carrickfergus. Dismounting from motor transport onto the wharf in Belfast on 19 August, they gained their first impression of Alynbank. She was not pretty: an armed merchant ship, square in the bow like a dreadnought and freshly clad in marine camouflage paint. She had a single funnel, but she bristled with anti-aircraft weaponry, in which regard she at least looked like a warship. Apart from four turrets each with twin four-inch-high angle guns, she also had mounted two multi-barrelled pom-poms, and two four-barrelled machine guns of .50 calibre, to defend against close attack. Furthermore, she was equipped with a director control system, which linked an early warning device attached to friendly aircraft to gunnery control on the ship. This was highly innovative. It was also classified technology, as Lofty would shortly discover.

  The voyage via Greenock to the Orkneys functioned as a shake-down cruise, for both the reconfigured vessel and its reconfigured crew. A tribal culture existed below decks, a hierarchy that was largely Royal Navy Reserve then British merchant mariners who had signed on for the duration of hostilities. The Kiwis were a conspicuous minority: distant cousins. Overall the crew was a solid mix of age and experience, and the boys enthusiastically fitted into the duty and watch regimes.

  They were dispersed among the ship’s messes. Len and Tim and Jackie Hayward joined a mess with a dozen British Royal Navy Reserve seamen who were also gunnery ratings. They slept in hammocks, of course, in perpetual red lighting that allowed watch members to sleep at any time. Each man had a standard locker barely big enough for his kit, so there was very little room for personal items. At mealtimes the boys had to remind themselves they were still getting better food than many people were putting up with on shore.

  Alynbank was to operate between Scapa Flow and the Firth of Forth, an area that was particularly vulnerable to German aircraft flying out of Stavanger in Norway. As qualified gunnery ratings, Tim and Len were disappointed to find they had been placed as far away from the guns as they could possibly be, locked with four others in a magazine below the waterline, tasked with loading the elevators with ammunition for the four-inch guns overhead. At first they were indignant at being denied the opportunity to engage with the enemy, having come 12,000 miles to do so. However, they prudently decided to take the view that there had been a mistake, an administrative error, and sought permission to address the issue with their Chief Petty Officer. He kept them waiting for five minutes before allowing them into his presence, and he barely raised his eyes from his desk while Len put a bold case for his and Tim’s immediate transfer to an actual gunnery team, preferably in A-turret. All the while the CPO shook his head. ‘Is this an official complaint?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ answered Tim. The CPO’s head jerked up.

  ‘No, sir!’ corrected Len.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Unsure how to answer, Len hesitated. Tim started to speak, but Len nudged him.

  ‘There’s no bargaining for jobs around here!’ the CPO told them. ‘You’ll go where you’re told, my lads.’

  ‘Sir!’

  The CPO added sharply, ‘You volunteers are going to have to learn your place.’ He looked Len in the eye. ‘Dismissed.’

  Len was stunned at first, but Tim was angry. ‘Learn’? Not ‘earn’? He was standing a little behind Len, and murmured under his breath. ‘Pricks. We’ll show ’em.’

  ‘What was that, sailor?’

  Tim snapped back to attention. ‘We’ll show you. Sir!’

  The CPO saw straight through the ambiguity, and scowled at them both. ‘Get back to your stations. Now!’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  It was insulting, but what could they do? They did not want to risk being labelled as uncooperative, and so resisted the idea of taking the issue further. They resigned themselves to the circumstances and returned to their duties with intent. Signalman Neville, ever capable of navigating his way through rough seas, found himself back on the bridge with the plum job of Air Defence Position. Virtually all communications onto the bridge passed around him, and as a consequence the Kiwis knew more than most about what was going on during their time aboard Alynbank.

  The role of the ‘Bank class’ of auxiliary anti-aircraft ships, of which Alynbank was one of three, was challenging and dangerous, a fact that became obvious to the boys the moment they found themselves on their first convoy patrol out of Scapa Flow. Anti-aircraft equipped vessels were the first target for German bombers seeking to eliminate risk to themselves, and over time, a pattern emerged whereby the Germans would make their observations of the convoy during the afternoon, then attack at dusk, when diminishing light would add to the confusion and impede rescue. Between discovery and attack, the ship would change its position within the convoy, hoping to avoid the close attention, but in Lofty’s words, ‘That never bloody worked.’ They were constantly hounded by attacking aircraft, notably the Condor, a long-range maritime patrol and anti-shipping aircraft. Condors were solitary, attacking alone with an array of mines or bombs and the capacity to strafe isolated ships.

  Fortunately, the gunnery control system gave Alynbank some advantage. It could detect air activity for about forty miles and enabled gun crews to prepare a barrage to meet any enemy with a curtain of fire at 3500 yards. It was highly technical for the time, and integrated into another system known by the acronym IFF, meaning ‘Identify friend or foe’. While this expressed exactly the nature and purpose of the device, you weren’t allowed to talk about it. Loose lips sank ships. Lofty was reminded of this when on duty he took a call announcing the approach of friendly aircraft.

  ‘How do you know they are friendly?’ asked Lofty, who thought the question perfectly logical.

  ‘Because they are using IFF,’ was the reply – intelligence which Lofty dutifully repeated to the officer of the new watch. He was immediately reprimanded for using classified jargon.

  ‘Damn it, man!’ exclaimed the officer. ‘When are you people going to learn?’

  ★ ★ ★

  The first time Len and Tim saw action was terrifying. But in fact they saw nothing. When the alarm sounded ‘Action stations!’ they donned boots and anti-flash gear, slid down the ladders and took station with another four men in the magazine, located in a chamber on the lowest of the ship’s five decks. Then they followed instructions to close all watertight doors, leaving themselves locked in isolation and bathed in red light. In the magazine, shells and charges were stacked separately to minimise the risk of spontaneous explosion, in wooden racks ‘like a bloody wine cellar,’ said Tim, as if he knew about these things. Three teams of two men each had to retrieve shell and cartridge from their respective racks and manhandle them onto separate elevators to be delivered to the turrets overhead. It was not a big space, and they had to brace themselves somehow against the vessel’s movements while carrying shells weighing over thirty pounds. Furthermore, bracing in anticipation of cresting or troughing became impossible when the ship began evasive manoeuvres at the start of an attack. Pitching was one thing, but yawing, which flung them from side to side against the walls of the chamber, was a particularly bruising experience. And there was no escape. This was more than goosebumps. Len’s gut contracted involuntarily. Dread flooded his internal cavities like iced water. This was fear as Haami had described it. Wehi. Hine Nui Te Pō dragged her fingernails down his backbone. And he struggled to master it.

  The wor
ds of the haka came to mind.

  Ka mate! Ka mate!

  I die. I die? He needed to shift his thinking.

  He focussed on the confines of the chamber, and the sudden clarity that he had to survive this place for the next few minutes only. That was all that mattered. Unconsciously, he began to breathe in short bursts, blowing through his lips in a silent whistle.

  He looked at Tim and saw that he was probably as scared as he was, with his eyes narrowed and his breath drawn through clenched teeth. They began to harmonise their movements, Len in rhythm with the haka once more, but with renewed vigour.

  Ka ora! Ka ora!

  I live! I live!

  What did Haami call power? Ihi? His fear had become power, if only in small portion.

  They were not to see any of the battle, but they heard it. The big guns fired first, each blast causing the ship to hesitate in its passage and adding hugely to the noise. Below decks, there was no longer time for thinking about what they were doing. Len and Tim steadily and mechanically loaded, hoisting shell after shell onto the elevator to be carried up to where the guns pounded away. Above the rising cacophony, the pom-poms joined the battle – pom-pom-pom-pom – their empty shell casings cascading onto the decking, adding to the noise. Sometimes they could feel a compression blast from the turret above. The air reeked of cordite, and the smoke from constant firing forced its way down into the chamber.

  Another big report.

  Ka mate! Ka mate!

  Their anti-flash clothing was cumbersome and suffocatingly hot. Their senses were assailed, and when the bombs started falling, it was difficult to distinguish the noise of defence from that of attack. It was exhausting and deafening.

  Then, as quickly as they’d come, the planes left, their load delivered, and the guns fell silent.

  Ka ora! Ka ora!

  The All Clear was given, and damage assessment began to be called, station by station. When the boys eventually emerged on deck and shed their gear, their ears were still ringing. Everyone released the tension of the moment in his own way: a cheer, a curse, a punch in the air. Len could hardly hear a thing.