by David Black
They had all passed out eventually. Gilbert got a billet in Whitehall which was never quite explained. Jim, Howard and Ron went to minesweepers, Zack to a motor gunboat, and Clive, poor Clive, to an armed trawler; dead now, somewhere off the Blackwater Estuary, blown to pieces by a German mine within sight of Mersea Island; and Harry, the experiment, to that bloody battleship.
On his way to his berth in the boarding house, Harry had gone to look at the vast boarded-over swimming pool which had become the main hall for HMS King Alfred before he left for the night; it was there that the drills and the lectures and the exercises happened, and it was where, on the first day, the entire intake had filled the hall, standing to attention, as they recited the Royal Navy’s prayer for the first time.
‘O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens and rulest the raging of the sea; who hast compassed the waters with bounds until the day and night come to an end; Be pleased to receive into thy Almighty and most gracious protection the persons of us thy servants and the fleet in which we serve . . .’
Every echo of levity and youthful cynicism had evaporated before those words, delivered in a deep bellow that filled the vast space of the main hall. And in their place came the sobering sense that here, now, each and every one of them was being assumed into a great and noble enterprise; the humbling realisation that it was now their turn to share and shoulder the full majesty of that unbroken tradition, and with it, the first sense of just what it would mean to hold a commission in His Britannic Majesty’s Royal Navy in time of war. He had felt a pricking behind his eyes then, and he felt it again, now.
The next day he was in Commander Granville’s office. Granville, the 62-year-old destroyer Captain, and veteran of numerous scraps with Jerry in the ‘last lot’, was all paternal smiles. Harry remembered him well enough. Hard not to. He was Captain Pelly’s second-in-command. But unlike Pelly, Granville always seemed to be everywhere. You knew Pelly was there, Harry recalled, even if you didn’t see his ponderous, imposing features about the ‘deck’ very often . . . oh, and that was another thing you had to remember. To an outsider this might be a pavilion, but the navy called it a ship; when you went through the door, you weren’t inside, you were ‘on board’, and what you walked on was no longer a floor, but ‘the deck’. Pelly had that way of stamping his presence on the place without you actually having to see him. Granville, on the other hand, was always appearing round the corner. He was a tall, skin-and-bone creature with a pointy nose to match the point of his thinning, greying hairline and a smooth, chamois-like skin that looked as if it had worn well despite adverse weather conditions. He was never seen without his uniform jacket and a perfectly knotted black tie, and his shoes were so polished it was said that if he was standing close enough you could look up a Wren’s skirt in them. When he passed, it was always in a whirl of wise advice and un-forced bonhomie. But he had a knowing edge: always keeping his eye on the cadets and the instructors alike. Minding the shop, in other words.
‘Sit down, sit down.’ Granville gestured to one of the metal and canvas chairs on the other side of his equally functional metal desk.
The office was cluttered with filing cabinets and paper piles, and decorated with a class timetable chart and several enemy aircraft identification posters. The desk offered no concession to Granville’s personal life. In tray, out tray, three phones, and beneath Harry’s file, a blotter. The pens and pencils were in an old Ovaltine tin.
Granville opened the file. Gilmour, Harris John. Born, Dunoon, Argyll, 19 May 1920. (Harry had been named by his parents after the island where he’d been conceived. Many a time growing up, Harry had thanked every god he didn’t believe in that they hadn’t chosen Rhum, Eigg or Muck as their favourite Western Isles holiday destination.)
Educated at Dunoon Grammar School and the University of Glasgow. An undergraduate MA student, Humanities. Abandoned his studies before entering second year to volunteer for service as an officer in the RNVR. An only child. Father, a teacher, head of modern languages at Dunoon Grammar. Mother, a housewife.
Granville remembered Harry well enough. There had been a few who had stood out at the beginning. Now the fresh faces passing through tended to blend together. Anyway, here he was again, with a battle under his belt, and complete with that look. The look the ones still under training didn’t have. It had always been thus, he supposed. He certainly remembered it himself, all the way back to the last lot; young sailors returning from their first operation. Didn’t matter what their role had been; standing on the bridge amid shot and shell, or cowering under the mess deck table, counting out wound dressings. It always showed, like an excessive leeway. As if they had been pushed off course and had yet to apply a corrective helm.
‘You were at Narvik, I see,’ he said with a warm smile.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Splendid effort by all involved. Congratulations, Mr Gilmour. And well done.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Granville smiled at Harry approvingly. At least the young chap had learned brevity. For step one in the making of an officer was curing the little sods of the need to endlessly explain themselves. He eyed Harry appraisingly. A striking-looking young man, exactly the sort you remembered. Silly flop of hair though, needed cutting; far too affected for a junior officer of such negligible significance. But it wasn’t the look of him that had made this Gilmour fellow stick in Granville’s mind. Unlike many who had and would pass through here, Gilmour hadn’t been a moaner, more a jolly-along type. Granville was fond of ear-wigging telling chatter from his constant patrolling of the halls and messes. It was a technique he used, listening for the phrase that would define somebody. In Gilmour’s case there was no phrase. It was where he turned up. Granville had noticed that if anyone was falling behind, Gilmour had a knack of turning up, scooping them up and bundling them along.
Three months was a long time in a hothouse place like this. If you kept your ear to the ground and your eyes open, you could learn a lot about a cadet. Get a feel, not only for his character, but for how his fellows reacted to him. Gilmour had been the one his fellow cadets turned to for advice, had talked to; been a listener. Nothing major in itself but a handy attribute for a leader of men, if all the other attributes were there too.
Granville referred to the file. Written work: good. Concise. Gets to the heart of problems quickly, able to articulate workable solutions quicker. Good, but not entirely uncommon. A nice chap, Granville remembered thinking at the time, but if he was going to make a good officer he was going to have to get used to not being liked all the time.
‘Your request to join this special navigation class . . .’ said Granville, opening proceedings proper, ‘. . . let’s see. Approved by your former captain, signed by the Commander.’ A pause, and then a growing, knowing smirk. ‘Now what does he say? An unusually enterprising officer . . . but one whose talents and zeal find little outlet under the necessary routine of a capital ship. Good grief, Mr Gilmour, whatever did you do?’
Harry thought of coming clean, but Peter Dumaresq had been very specific on that point. ‘I cannot think, sir.’
Granville let his eye flick to the single wavy line of gold on Harry’s sleeves. ‘I can. But not to worry, where you will be going the beggars won’t be choosers. Now, I take it someone has spoken to you about the exact nature of this posting?’
‘No, sir.’ Harry was getting to like this monosyllabic cut and thrust. It made life so much easier when talking to big shots like a Commander.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well that’s . . . unusual. They should have. Before putting everyone to a lot of trouble just to have you get here, blanch, make your excuses and leave. It’s submarines,’ said Granville flatly.
‘Submarines, sir?’
Harry felt a distinct loosening in his innards. He had never thought about submarines, had never seen one in real life. He knew nothing about them, except that they were cramped and smelly;
everyone knew they were very dangerous and prone to killing their crews in any number of particularly nasty ways. The obscene newsreel shots of the stern of the new T-class submarine HMS Thetis sticking out of the waters of Liverpool Bay, sunk in a stupid accident just over a year before, were fresh in everyone’s mind. Thetis, bow down in the mud 150 feet below the surface, stern in the bright fresh air, with rescue craft fussing around her while ninety-nine men suffocated inside their steel coffin. Harry had refused to dream about where the navigation class might take him, lest he tempted fate. He hadn’t, in so many words, said the word destroyer. But to be punished so, for daring to dream!
‘Their Lordships are expanding the submarine service. They need properly qualified officers as a matter of urgency,’ said Granville, still smiling, despite being conscious of Harry’s shock. ‘Of course, you would have to undergo certain acclimatisation procedures, so the submariners could see if you measure up.’
‘Measure up, sir?’
‘That you don’t get claustrophobic, can stand the smell of sixty pairs of sweaty socks, and are imbued with the right amount of piratical spirit as is permissible in a Royal Navy officer. In return, Mr Gilmour, I think the service can guarantee you all the action any young man of adventurous spirit might crave. After all, submarines don’t do convoy escort or harbour patrols. They only go in one direction. Into the enemy’s back yard.’
And often never come out again, thought Harry.
‘Do you wish for some time to consider this, Mr Gilmour?’
Bloody hell. A long day and night spent brooding lay ahead if he said he wanted more time. And what if his nerve should fail him and he withdrew his request? All this for nothing. The thoughts winged through his head too fast for him to properly conjure up the moment of his own drowning in a dark oily steel casket, far from the surface and the waves and sky. All he could see was himself walking back into the wardroom of HMS Redoubtable.
‘If I say yes now, sir, I can go on the celestial navigation course? I get to do that?’
‘Subject to you not proving overly offensive to the submariners, yes.’
‘Then I don’t need to think it over, sir. I want my request to go ahead.’
The Commander smiled a crinkly, satisfied smile. ‘Excellent,’ he said, thinking, No faffing about there. Then, after more consideration, You’re still just a boy, but you’ll do.
And that was how Harry came to be walking up the gangway of the Gosport ferry on a drizzly spring night, heading for HMS Dolphin, the shore establishment headquarters of the Royal Navy Submarine Service.
Chapter Four
The three of them stood by what was little more than a plank, which extended from the jetty over the bloated belly of a submarine on to its preposterously narrow steel deck. Sub-Lieutenants Brown, Hardesty RN and Gilmour RNVR, in their dark-blue watch jackets, hats perched jauntily on heads; all identical, save for the geometry of the single rings on their jacket sleeves; mufflers against the early morning chill. Brown stood ostentatiously apart and Hardesty sort of tried to bridge the gap between him and Harry, who was sat on a bollard opposite the plank. No one spoke.
Harry, now heartily sick of this RN posturing, had his gaze fixed on his very first submarine, in all its gimcrack glory. She was an old girl, another legacy of the last lot. H57. No name, just the number, and she did look very very small, and not a little shabby.
They had been told to report to her at 06.15 sharp for their mandatory ‘acclimatisation’ dive. No point in them signing up, going through the six-week training programme only to shove off on their first patrol, and then find they had the screamin’ hab-dabs the minute they shut the lid. Or so said a rather lugubrious Lieutenant with a leather fist for a left hand and a scorched left face, who’d met Harry when he walked through the door at HMS Dolphin, briefed him on where he was expected the next day, pointed him to where he could disturb a steward into doing up ‘a couple of wedges, and a mug of tea’, and then directed him to his billet for the night.
Harry had arrived in the dark at HMS Dolphin, and had no perspective on the place until his walk down to the jetties. In daylight, the whole place looked lashed up. An encampment whose occupants had just arrived and did not intend to stay. HMS Dolphin, née Fort Blockhouse, was an old fort, and from where they stood now tucked in behind its bastions, the jetties abutting a little kiss-curl of oily water, it was like looking out through the mouth of a victim of chronic tooth decay. The glorious sunlight of a beautiful spring morning, the gulls soaring overhead, had to be viewed through a foreground of rusty cranes, open workshops and random little collections of stores that disappeared up the sides of sheds of varying vintage. The dockyard workers’ morning shift had yet to start and the deserted area seemed the epitome of neglect. Certainly, it was far from ‘military’. And the submarines themselves didn’t help. None possessed the majesty and presence that one might expect from a king’s ship.
There were several different shapes and sizes of submarines in the creek. But this boat – his boat – was by far the relic of the gang, and none held his attention more. She looked, on the surface, barely more than 150 feet long, her deck pocked with symmetrical holes and a recessed hatch arrangement which seemed to pose a danger rather than any useful function. Her flanks angled out to saddles running along either beam. Smooth, wen-like protrusions, looking for all the world like afterthoughts. And behind the gun was a tacked-on oval bridge structure with a thin, bevelled steel cowl on top, sheltering its fore-end before appearing to be bitten off and replaced by a run of stanchions. Poking out were the periscope housings and a steel mount, probably for the submarine’s anti-aircraft Lewis gun. She looked like a designed-by-committee tub, and she was going to take him on his first voyage beneath the waves.
He was thinking, What have I done? when suddenly a face leant over the little bridge a bare few feet above them. A grinning youth with an impossibly battered watch cap perched in a distinctly un-regulation fashion on the back of his blonde locks – locks being the first word that came to Harry’s mind to describe this chap’s hair.
‘Morning gentlemen!’ he boomed. He was wearing a white polo-neck pullover and no insignia of rank. ‘Brown, Hardesty and Gilmour, all aboard for the skylark, eh? I’m Andy Trumble, the Jimmy. Nice and early chaps, the Skipper will be pleased.’
As H57’s first Lieutenant addressed them, the forward hatch swung open and a string of sailors in similar pullovers, bell-bottoms, and ratings’ caps, ribbons embroidered with ‘HM Submarines’ came bustling on to the deck, heading for the mooring lines. Another head appeared on the bridge, fresh-faced and suspiciously young to be looking so grumpy.
‘You lot!’ he barked at Harry and his chums. ‘Stop standing about looking spare and get ready to cast off fore and aft!’
The Skipper, Harry concluded. Did Skippers really come so young?
Sub-Lieutenants Brown and Hardesty looked aghast, but Harry, used to taking barked orders from his years on a yacht’s deck, turned and ran along the jetty towards the after end of H57. He was already bending to the bollards as her Skipper yelled, ‘Single up on springs, fore and aft!’ The springs were the lines running from the bow to the shore bollards at the after end of the sub, and from her stern to the shore bollards opposite her bow; the tension in them prevented her ballast tanks surging forwards and backwards off the brickwork. The other lines held the submarine hull snug against the jetty. Harry had bent to free the after line, ready to throw it aboard, when he noticed the two ratings who had come aft were doing exactly that from aboard H57. Harry realised they were going to cast the line ashore. Well, there was a thing; they didn’t take their mooring lines with them on submarines. But there was no time to argue. Not under the watchful eye of H57’s Skipper, who would no doubt be making an assessment of their conduct once the day was over.
Harry caught the after line and was coiling it down before Hardesty had even begun to move to the forward line. Brown on the other hand, seemed rooted to the spot, a scowl on his
face. Harry could see the mental turmoil behind his eyes: an officer being expected to personally handle lines? Could such an order have been given? H57 was now secured only by the fore and aft springs. Hardesty caught the fore line and coiled it so that now only the aft spring ran from his bollard, towards the stern of H57. The Skipper yelled again, ‘Cast off after spring!’
It was obvious to an old yacht-hand like Harry what the Skipper intended now: to go slow ahead against the tension on the for’ard spring, to swing out his stern, and then back off the berth. Hardesty looked flummoxed, and turned to Harry, who mouthed to him silently, ‘You’re on.’ Hardesty immediately bent to take up the slack as the two ratings from the after end walked back the spring, and threw it to him. While this manoeuvre was being performed, the black-scowling countenance of the Skipper swung towards Brown. ‘Don’t just stand there! Get aboard if you’re coming!’
Brown, stung, skipped up the gangway. Hardesty, once he’d coiled down the spring, ran to follow him, and it was with a feeling of deep inner contentment that Harry came behind in a series of long strides and pulled the gangway smartly ashore. The Skipper, looking down, grinned at him, then raised his eyebrows in a question. Under his gaze, Harry stood opposite the two ratings on the deck aft.
With his big grin expanding, the Skipper yelled, ‘Cast off for’ard!’
One of the ratings, with a deft underarm lob, passed the spring across the widening gap to Harry as H57’s hull was swinging out. Harry gave it a turn round the dockside bollard, stepped smartly along the jetty to where the bow still touched, and leapt nimbly on to his first submarine.
