Chesnaye shivered at the words. With Pickles and Beaushears he was already detailed for this work. For days they had exercised with boats and men, in pitch darkness and at the height of the sun, while telescopes and watches checked every phase of the operations.
But it was good that the waiting was over. Even being chased and harried through every phase of the preparations had failed to exclude Helen Driscoll from his mind, and his feeling of helplessness had prevailed rather than faded. He had tried to tell himself that their meeting was a mere incident, something he had had to feel for the first time, but not remember. It was all useless, and the more he relived those moments at Gibraltar, the stronger his emotions became, just as his contempt and anger for Pringle had hardened.
The confined stuffiness of the wardroom was making him drowsy and he had to consciously force himself to concentrate on what the army officer was saying about the dispersal of troops, landing marks and areas of bombardment. Heads of departments were writing in their notebooks, and Godden was nodding judiciously at various points made by the tall soldier. The midshipmen had nothing to do but listen. Their work was prearranged. If the rehearsals proved to be faulty it would be too late to change anything, Chesnaye thought.
He shifted his gaze to the Captain. Even his impassive features could not hide completely the inner feelings of tension and anxiety. Royston-Jones was carefully seated, yet informal enough to create his own atmosphere of unusual excitement.
Chesnaye tried to comprehend what the Captain must be feeling. The whole ship, her company of two hundred officers and men and the mission prepared for those two massive guns, all that responsibility lay on his slight shoulders. Yet he showed little sign of true uncertainty.
Chesnaye thought, too, of his father. This might have been his command, and he wondered how he would have reacted at this moment. A pang of regret lanced through him as he recalled his father’s flushed angry face.
Perhaps I should have tried to understand him more. Instead of worrying about the effect on my own career? He shifted in his chair as Royston-Jones stood up impatiently and faced the company.
‘There is nothing else to say at this juncture, gentlemen. The cards are down. We are committed.’ He allowed his words to sink in. ‘From the moment the sun rises over those beaches we will all be paying our way.’
He stepped forward, an erect figure in white against the sombre chart. Then he pointed slowly towards the ship’s crest above the empty fireplace, its garish warrior’s face bright in the lamplight. ‘Remember the ship’s motto, gentlemen.’ His voice was for once without an edge, almost sad, ‘“With courage and integrity, press on!” One quality is useless without the other, either for this ship or the Navy itself!’ With a curt nod to the Commander he was gone.
Some officers groped for their unlit pipes and then faltered, aware of the churchlike silence which seemed to have fallen around the glittering crest.
Beaushears said quietly, ‘An altar of Mars!’
But across the wardroom Nutting, the Chaplain, was not so cynical. ‘May God go with us,’ he said.
The army officer had gone with Godden, and Major De L’Isle clapped his massive hands across his breast and glared at the black-coated Chaplain. ‘Just contain yourself, Padre!’ He glared at the wardroom at large. ‘I think one last damned party is indicated, what? These bloody soldiers will need too much looking after for a bit to give us much time later on!’
Beaushears winked. ‘This is our cue to leave, Dick.’ He took a last glance at the chart. ‘Let’s hope the whole thing doesn’t get bogged down like Flanders!’
Chesnaye had a brief vision of a vast army, stale and unmoving, with the sea at its back. ‘It’s going to be harder than I thought.’
Beaushears shrugged. ‘A noble thought. You can put it on your tombstone!’
* * * * *
‘Steady on north eighty-five east, sir!’ Travis’s voice was hushed, almost lost in the Saracen’s sea noises as the ship crept forward at six knots.
‘Very well.’ Royston-Jones moved from his chair, his figure a white shadow against the grey paintwork.
Although the sea and sky still merged in darkness, the stars were already pale and indistinct, and there was a faint but steady breeze as if the dawn had started to find breath.
Chesnaye shivered, but ignored the chill in his body as he peered over the port screen towards a long white line which lengthened and rippled in time to the monitor’s own wash. A black, shapeless mass was moving in line abreast, and another beyond that, and another. Out there in the darkness he knew that an armada of steel was steering one fixed course, and somewhere ahead lay the barrier of the Peninsula itself. He remembered the previous afternoon and felt a lump in his throat. Because of her slow speed the monitor had sailed ahead of the main invasion fleet, and at one time had actually passed through two dawdling lines of troopships and their watchful escorts. Chesnaye knew that if he lived for ever he would never forget that moment. The sun high overhead, the clear blue sky and tall-funnelled troopers glittering above their own reflections. It had been very quiet but for the steady throb of the Saracen’s engines, an almost lazy, holiday atmosphere had cloaked the meaning of those double, treble rows of watching khaki figures who swarmed over every foot of the troopships’ superstructures.
Something was lacking, and eventually Commander Godden had remarked: ‘What a way to go to war! More like a Bank Holiday!’
Royston-Jones had been sitting in his chair, apparently dozing. His voice had been sharp and unexpected. ‘Have the marine band mustered on the quarterdeck.’
Godden had stared at him. ‘Now, sir?’
‘At the double, Commander! And tell the Bandmaster to go right through his repertoire until those ships are out of sight!’
It had been impressive and unreal. The fat, belligerent shape of the monitor, pale grey and shining in her new paint, with a giant ensign curling from the gaff, whilst on her scrubbed quarterdeck, paraded as if in Portsmouth barracks, the ship’s band stood in a bright square, instruments glittering like jewels, sun-helmets gleaming white, watching the deft strokes of the Bandmaster’s baton.
They had steamed past ship after ship, the slack, humid air suddenly coming to life with the strains of ‘Hearts of Oak’ and ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’.
Much later people might laugh at Royston-Jones, but Chesnaye knew in his heart that anyone who had been there would have known his decision to be right.
First one ship and then another had come alive, the upper decks transformed into rippling lines of waving hands and cheering faces. The cheering went on and on, until the sea itself seemed to vibrate.
That had been yesterday. Now those same soldiers were waiting out there in the darkness, fingering their rifles, pulling in their stomach muscles.
‘Fifteen minutes, sir.’ Travis was crouched above the compass.
‘Very well.’ The Captain sounded distant, as if thinking of something else.
Lieutenant Hogarth pushed his way across the crowded bridge. He paused to peer at Chesnaye and the two other midshipmen, Beaushears and Pickles. ‘Right. Nothing to do at the moment—for you that is!’ He stood, his gaunt frame silhouetted against the charthouse. ‘The first wave of troops is already moving up through the destroyer screen. You and your landing party will go with the second wave—got it?’
Chesnaye felt himself nodding. All at once his head seemed full of questions and doubts, his mind blank to everything he had been told.
Hogarth rubbed his hands. ‘Right, then. We’ll show ’em a thing or two!’ But he was looking forward, as if speaking to his guns.
Even as he spoke, Chesnaye saw the tips of the two massive muzzles lift gently above the bridge screen until they were at a forty-five-degree angle. Hogarth muttered to himself and began to climb the ladder to the Upper Control Top. The ship was already at Action Stations, but the voice-pipes and handsets kept up their incessant chatter, adding to the feeling of nervous tension.
; The Yeoman appeared. ‘Commence general bombardment in eleven minutes, sir!’
‘Very well.’ The Captain climbed to his chair, his feet scraping on the grating. ‘Ear-plugs, please.’
Chesnaye remembered just in time and groped for his own plugs. It would be terrible to start off with shattered eardrums.
There was a faint whirr of machinery and the great turret swivelled slightly to port. Criss-crossed along the monitor’s decks the leaky hoses kept up their constant dampening, a final effort to save the planking from splintering to fragments when the bombardment started. For hours the shipwrights and stokers had been unscrewing doors, removing crockery and wooden panels, and preparing the ship for the one task for which she had been built.
‘Five minutes, sir!’
Royston-Jones said: ‘Let’s hope the battleships know what they’re doing. We don’t want any of their salvoes falling short on to us!’
The monitor had previously passed a line of battleships steaming parallel to the invisible coast, their long guns already trained abeam, their battle ensigns making faint white blobs against the towering bridges and turrets. They would be shooting at a range of some twenty thousand yards above and beyond the wide phalanx of the advancing troops in their boats.
‘Dawn’s comin’ up, sir!’ A signalman spoke involuntarily, as if to ease his own nerves.
Chesnaye watched the pale grey and silver line with awe and surprise. It was amazing how quickly the dawn came here. But at the bottom edge, where the horizon should have been, there was a black, uneven line. The coast.
It was impossible to see the hundreds of small boats which must already be streaming towards the hidden beaches, but Chesnaye knew that they were indeed there. Whalers, cutters, pinnaces, boats of every shape and kind. Power-launches towing clusters of troop-filled boats like pods, men crammed together, sweating and silent, smelling the fear and the danger yet eager to get started.
Even the Saracen had sent some of her boats to help, and at least three of her midshipmen, Bacon, Maintland and ‘Ticky’ White were out there with them.
Overhead the range-finders squeaked slightly as they revolved in their armoured turret, and Chesnaye heard a voice-pipe stutter: ‘High explosive! Load . . . load . . . load!’
Godden said loudly, ‘Leaving it to the last as usual!’
‘One minute, sir!’
The young signalman by Chesnaye’s side hugged his body with his arms. ‘Jesus, this bloody waitin’!’
‘Standing by, sir!’
‘Very well.’ Royston-Jones sounded calm. ‘Starboard ten!’
The ship shivered and paid off into a moderate swell, her high bridge groaning. A pencil rolled from the chart table and clattered at their feet like a falling tree. Somewhere above a man coughed, and another could be heard whistling without tune.
‘Zero, sir!’
‘Open fire!’
Even as the order was passed, the horizon astern erupted into a jagged pattern of red and orange flashes as the hidden battleships commenced their bombardment. Seconds dragged by, and then high overhead, with the ear-searing shriek of a regiment of express trains, the first salvoes sped on their way.
Chesnaye felt the signalman gripping his sleeve, and saw the man’s mouth moving. ‘Gawd, sir, what a way——’ But his frightened words were lost as the monitor’s main armament steadied and fired. There was less sound than Chesnaye had expected, yet he was rendered deaf and stunned, as if the guns had fired beside his head. The air was sucked across the upper bridge like hot sand, and as the twin barrels were hurled back on to their recoil springs he felt the whole ship shudder and buck. It was more like being struck by a salvo than firing one.
He coughed as a cloud of acrid cordite smoke drifted across the screen. In the space of seconds it had got lighter so that he could see the lean shape of a nearby destroyer and the harder outline of the coastline ahead.
The bombardment mounted and thickened in noise and power, so that the shells screamed overhead in an unending procession. Chesnaye understood little of their effect, and only occasionally could he see the angry flash of an explosion ashore. But beyond the cliffs and hills he knew that tons and tons of high explosive were deluging down, so that the waiting Turks, if waiting they were, must be in a living hell.
‘Shoot!’ Again the monitor’s guns bellowed and lurched backwards, and Chesnaye could imagine the Quarters Officer yelling at his gunners and listening to Hogarth’s urgent orders from the Control Top.
The noise was crushing, devastating and without pity. Chesnaye lost count of time as his body and mind shook to the voice of the monitor’s bombardment. Occasionally Royston-Jones ordered an alteration of course, and Lieutenant Travis, strained and ill-looking, would crouch across the binnacle, his hands shaking to the thunder of the guns.
The sun peered across the land ridge, bright and curious, an onlooker without fear. The cliffs and the dirtbrown hills beyond looked suddenly close, the narrow strips of beach white crescents beneath the high rock. Like beetles the small boats were already merged with the shoreline, the progress of the soldiers marked only with occasional flashes of fire. How small and ineffective those flashes seemed compared with the monitor’s guns, Chesnaye thought.
Two waterspouts rose almost alongside the Saracen’s fo’c’sle, and Chesnaye ducked incredulously as something sped past the bridge with the sound of tearing silk.
‘Enemy battery, bearing red four-five!’ a lookout shouted between the gun-bursts.
Royston-Jones swung in his chair. ‘Tell the Director to open fire with the secondary armament immediately!’
A rating with the handset said, ‘Gunnery Officer has fixed the battery’s position below the east pinnacle, sir.’ Below the bridge the slim four-inch guns were already swinging shorewards.
‘Very well.’ The Captain seemed angry. ‘Increase to half-speed, Pilot. We will close the coast and concentrate on the local batteries. That ridge is too high for the Turks to get at us once we are inshore.’ He fidgeted with his glasses. ‘We can hit them, however!’
Two more waterspouts rose alongside. Much closer.
Chesnaye flinched as the four-inch guns opened fire independently. Their voices were different. Sharp and ear-splitting, a savage whiplash.
Somehow he had not expected to be fired on himself. Up to now his thoughts had been mixed, filled with anxiety for the soldiers and uncertainty for himself. This was different. There was no sign that he could recognise along those craggy cliffs and hills, no opposite ship to plot and stalk. Merely the abbreviated scream of shells and the tall, deadly waterspouts.
The Yeoman tilted his cap as the sun lifted clear of the land and squinted at the curtain of spray as it fell abeam in the calm water. ‘Quite big, too,’ he said at length. ‘Nine inch or bigger!’ He grinned suddenly, his teeth filling his tanned face. ‘Cheeky buggers!’
‘Port ten!’ The Captain sat hunched in his chair like a small gargoyle, his eyes following the white whirlpool which still showed the last fall of shot. The monitor swung awkwardly on her course and then steadied as another order brought her bows once more towards the beaches.
The hidden Turkish battery dropped two more shells simultaneously near the monitor’s starboard beam—where the ship would have been but for Royston-Jones’ sudden alteration of course.
Again the falling spray, the taste of cordite. Chesnaye stared fascinated at the leaping water, only to be knocked sideways as the Saracen’s big guns roared out once more. It was a wonder the turret did not tear itself clean off the ship, or that the Saracen remained in one piece.
Then there were no more Turkish shells, and Royston-Jones twisted round to stare up at the Control Top. Almost impishly he lifted his cap and smiled. Peering through his armoured slits, like a knight at Agincourt, Hogarth must have seen that impetuous gesture and felt a glow of satisfaction.
Royston-Jones glanced briefly at the three midshipmen. ‘Away you go! Stand by to lower your boats and embark landing partie
s!’
Chesnaye shook himself and tore his eyes from the Captain’s unblinking stare. All at once he realised that it was not over. For him it was just beginning.
* * * * *
A steam picket boat took the Saracen’s two whalers in tow until they were within half a mile of the beach and then cast them adrift. A sub-lieutenant in the power boat’s sternsheets waved a megaphone and bellowed: ‘Pull like hell for your landing point! It’s a bit hot around here!’
As if to emphasise his words, a small shell exploded nearby and sent a wave of splinters whirring overhead.
Chesnaye gritted his teeth and peered over the oarsmen’s heads. The nearest cliff, shaped like a miniature Rock of Gibraltar, hid the early sun from view and cast a deep black shadow across the two pitching whalers. ‘Give way together!’ His voice was surprisingly steady, and he forced himself to look at Tobias, who because of the extra passengers was squatting right aft, his legs over the tiller bar. He caught Chesnaye’s eye and grinned. ‘Just like a trip round Brighton pier, sir!’
Hunched in the sternsheets Lieutenant Thornton, selected by Hogarth as senior spotting officer, pawed over an assortment of leather cases which contained telescopes, handsets and other necessary gear, his face set in a scowl of concentration. Pickles was by his side, his gaze fixed on the dark shadowed cliff. The oarsmen pulled hard and rhythmically, half watching the other whaler which was barely yards away.
Beaushears stood in the other boat and occasionally glanced across, his features drawn and unusually determined.
H.M.S Saracen (1965) Page 8
