‘Well, no, sir.’ Erskine was dazed by the change of events. As his tired mind cleared, he found a growing excitement. This enemy ship coming out of the blue was a gift indeed. The monitor could pound it to pulp even if the other vessel was four times as fast and ten times as manœuvrable. It was as if Providence had decided to make an offering to relieve the fear and apprehension of Tobruk.
Erskine had hardly spoken to the Captain since the monitor had left the smoking harbour. He had looked for some light of triumph or contempt on Chesnaye’s face, but it was impassive as always, giving nothing of the inner man away.
But this new venture would make all the difference. Erskine could even feel the news transmitting itself through the ship as he stood on the bridge with Chesnaye. The infallible system which carried information from man to man faster than any telegraph.
There was a cheer from aft, and Chesnaye remarked, ‘Our people want another crack at the enemy, it seems!’ He spoke evenly, but for a few seconds Erskine saw through the mask to the almost boyish excitement beyond.
Erskine received his orders in silence, and then as Chesnaye began to move away he said quickly, ‘I want to apologise, sir.’
Chesnaye turned, his eyes alert. ‘For what?’
‘Tobruk. I didn’t think the risk was worth making.’ He stumbled miserably over each word. ‘I was wrong. This minelayer will put us one up again!’
He saw Chesnaye’s mouth soften slightly. ‘We’ve not sunk it yet, John!’ But although Chesnaye’s voice was gruff he was obviously pleased.
Erskine looked across at Fox. ‘We’ll be up to her in less than an hour, eh?’
The Navigator grinned and nodded towards the Captain’s back. ‘I hope so, for my sake!’
Erskine climbed on to the ladder. Chesnaye was right. This ship was alive. Nothing had changed, but for the vague news of an enemy ship and the consequences of possible danger. Yet the ship stirred and came to life in a way Erskine had never seen before.
As the hands of the bridge clock embraced for noon the minelayer was sighted. The powerful range-finder above the bridge fastened on the tiny speck which hovered just below the rim of the horizon, and McGowan informed the Captain.
Almost simultaneously, Able Seaman Rix, anti-aircraft lookout on the starboard wing of the bridge, yelled: ‘Aircraft! Bearing Green four-five!’
The klaxons screamed their warnings, and once more the Saracen’s man faced outwards and waited.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Max Eucken licked his lips and tried to retain the taste of the coffee he had been drinking only half an hour earlier. In spite of the tremendous heat which glared through the long perspex cockpit cover Eucken was able to remain completely relaxed, and his eyes hardly wavered as he stared ahead through the silvery arc of the Stuka’s propeller. Without looking he knew that the other six aircraft were formed on either flank in a tight arrowhead formation, just as he could picture the face of each pilot, as well as the exact capability of every man under his command.
Below him the sea shone like a sheet of bright blue glass, and around him the sky was clear and inviting. Eucken was twenty-two years old, and at that very moment extremely contented.
It was amazing what a difference it made to a man’s life the moment he was airborne, he thought. All the irritating faults and stipulations of the dusty airstrip were forgotten as soon as the wheels left the makeshift runway. Up here a man was king. Master of his own and other’s destinies.
Voices crackled in his earphones, but he was able to ignore them. The other pilots were like himself. Excited and eager. Discipline and instant obedience could be switched on at a second’s notice with the precision of a bombsight. For the moment the pilots could be left alone, trusted to keep formation and good lookout.
Behind him, at the rear of the long cockpit, Steuer, the rear-gunner, hunched over his weapons like an untidy sack. A bovine, unimaginative man, but completely reliable. He did as he was told, and trusted his pilot. Those qualities were quite enough by Eucken’s standards.
He pulled in his stomach muscles and felt the sweat trickling down beneath the waistband of his shorts. Apart from these he was clad only in flying helmet and sandals, and he flexed his arms with sensuous pleasure, pleased with his own reflection in the oil-smeared perspex. His body was an even golden-brown, and the hairs on his forearms were bleached almost silver from the strange hermit existence in the desert.
He twisted his head to look at the three Stukas on his port quarter. Rising and falling gently like leaves in the wind, they appeared to be hovering against the pale sky, their wide-straddled fixed undercarriages poised like the claws of hunting hawks, which indeed they were. The nearest pilot raised his hand, and Eucken acknowledged him with a brief wave. That was Bredt, the only man apart from Steuer who had been with him since France and the big break-through.
To Eucken each phase of his war was interesting, provided it did not remain the same. He needed excitement, and enjoyed each aspect of it as some men relished sexual pleasure. He had lived long enough and had taken too many risks to believe in fear. He had forgotten its meaning soon after the first solo flight, and almost certainly following his first individual action in France. He could still remember that first time, perhaps more clearly than some of the things which had happened quite recently. The long straight roads choked and overflowing with streaming French refugees. While the Wehrmacht battered its way through a crumbling and decadent French Army and the British Expeditionary Force scattered towards Dunkirk, Eucken and his squadron helped to sow the seeds of confusion and panic behind the front. Jammed roads meant chaos and a break in supplies. The Stukas dived and screamed on the terror-stricken columns, their bombs carving bloody craters in the helpless victims below. As each bomber whined out of its dive the rear-gunner would take his toll too, the stammering machine-guns mowing down the trapped people like corn. Men, women, children, horses and cattle swept across the windshield in a crazed panorama from hell.
And so it went on. Victory after victory, until France was contained and the Stukas were sent further afield in search of prey.
Eucken rarely thought of his comrades in the other services. He disliked the Navy for its hidebound and arrogant ways. The U-boat Service was the only real attack weapon they had. The rest of the Navy seemed badly organised and not used to its fullest advantage. Neither did the Army appeal to him. Their sort of warfare conjured up pictures of a bygone age, as told to him by his father. Squalor, lice, ignorance and stagnation.
No, the air was the thing. And of all the planes which flew for Germany, the Stuka had struck the greatest blow. He could almost sense the great armour-piercing bomb which was slung a few feet beneath him. Soon he would be rid of it, and another ship would be on the bottom of that glistening water.
He had been lounging in the mess-tent beside the desert airstrip when the news had been received. Army Intelligence had reported a sudden and devastating bombardment from the sea off Tobruk. The enemy ship had escaped it seemed, and now there were cries for recriminations.
How like the Army! he thought with contempt. Always wanted the Luftwaffe to do its dirty work. And then, of course, there was this Italian minelayer. That, too, was somehow typical. How much better it would have been if the British had been Germany’s allies. Together they could have stamped on all these sub-standard nations. But as the Führer had already explained, the British had been misled by Jews and Communists. They would just have to pay for their mistakes.
His handsome features crinkled in a small frown as Bredt’s sharp voice cut into his ears. ‘There it is! Dead ahead!’ Eucken gave himself a small rebuke for allowing his mind to wander and so allow another to make the first sighting report. He leaned forward, his clear eyes reaching out ahead of his formation.
At first he thought the ship was stationary, and then almost in the same second he imagined that the strange-looking vessel had already been attacked. She looked ungainly, her superstructure unevenly spaced, so tha
t at first glance he thought she had lost part of her stern. But as he drew nearer, and the vessel’s outline hardened through the haze, he realised that this was indeed the one they were looking for. From the approach angle the monitor’s shape was not unlike a tailor’s steam iron, and from her small wash he guessed that she was doing less than eight knots. It would be a copybook attack. The one they had executed so often in these waters.
He felt quite happy at the prospect. Perhaps it was because this was to be another new experience. The monitor was quite big, although he had no way of gauging its actual potential and value in over-all strategy.
Calmly he gave his orders and settled himself more comfortably in his harness. It would soon be over. There would probably be more decorations after this. Personally he did not care very much, but he knew that his parents would be pleased. It would make up in some way for his two brothers who had already died for the Fatherland. One in France, on the flank of the Maginot Line, the other in Holland, when his scoutcar had run over a mine. Strangely enough, he could hardly remember what they looked like.
The Stuka wagged its wings as the air suddenly blossomed with brown shell-bursts. The Tommies were evidently awake. Eucken smiled gently. Let them make the most of it. It would be a long swim for the survivors. About forty miles, at a guess.
The joke amused him, and he was still smiling as the port wing of bombers, led by Lieutenant Bredt, curved away and plummeted down towards the toylike ship. More shell-bursts, but the three Stukas flashed through them unscathed.
The other three Stukas were climbing to the right for a cross-attack, while Eucken idled along the same course, his keen eyes on the drama below.
Another voice shouted, ‘I can see the minelayer!’
Sure enough, the limping Italian ship was also appearing on the scene. Eucken grinned. The more, the merrier.
A nerve jumped in his cheek as the first Stuka exploded in direct line with the monitor. Impassively he watched as the remnants of Bredt’s aircraft were scattered across the calm sea in little white feathers of spray. The second Stuka was diving. Tracers lifted to greet it. The plane quivered then dropped into a full dive. All at once smoke poured from its wings and it continued to dive straight for the water. Eucken imagined he could hear the thunderous explosion as the Stuka’s bomb exploded on impact. Bomb, aircraft and crew vanished in a bright orange flash well clear of the defiant monitor.
Eucken could feel his hands shaking with sudden rage. It was his fault. He had been over-confident.
His voice grated over the stuttering intercom. ‘Keep clear! This is Red Leader! I am attacking!’
He heard the engine swell into a ferocious roar as he gunned the Stuka into a sidestepping dive. He saw the third attacker falter and pull away, a thin smoke trail streaming behind it. Down, down, faster and faster; until it seemed as if the wings would tear themselves free. Aloud he said, ‘Don’t forget to give them a long burst as I pull out, Steuer!’ Behind him he heard the gunner grunt assent. Steuer never saw anything until the aircraft was out of its dive. It was a lonely job.
Eucken forgot Steuer, the Squadron and everything else as he used every ounce of skill and cunning on his approach. Behind his goggles his eyes were slitted with concentration as he hurled the bomber towards the strange ship. Already it had grown in size. It filled the windshield, and he could see the white caps on its upper bridge like tiny flowers on a grey rock.
Steady now! Ach . . . here come the tracers. Deceptively lazy the red lines climbed to criss-cross over the bomber’s path. He watched his sighting mark, his breath almost stopped. Now! The Stuka fell into its final dive, the unearthly scream enclosing Eucken’s mind like a drug.
Faster and faster! The aircraft was rocking madly from side to side, and he felt the thud and rip of metal against the fuselage. Above in the clear sky his comrades would be watching and waiting their turn.
Everything seemed enclosed in those tiny final seconds of attack. Eucken could see himself in his mind’s eye, the black aircraft almost vertical as it plunged down. Its proud yellow stripes and squadron badge below the cockpit, a wolf with a ship between its jaws.
Almost time. The moment! He pressed the release button and pulled the Stuka out of its headlong plunge even as the monitor’s tapering topmast swept to meet him. The plane jumped as the bomb left its rack, and Eucken wished that he could watch it strike home, as he knew it would.
There was one abbreviated explosion, and the Stuka fell over on to its side. All at once the tense but orderly world of the cockpit had exploded about him.
There was fire all around him, and he could hear someone screaming like a tortured animal. Automatically he flexed his arms to adjust the controls, but dumbly realised that only his brain was working, his limbs were frozen and useless.
The bright sun—which should have been at his back—was suddenly below him. First there was the sky and then the sea. The aircraft was revolving with gathering force as it plunged towards the blue water.
The pain came simultaneously with the realisation. But it was all too late. With glazed eyes Max Eucken, aged twenty-two, watched the sea tearing upwards to meet him. He could see the windshield being sprayed with his own blood, just as he could hear himself screaming. But he felt completely detached, and was still staring when the black Stuka hit the water.
* * * * *
To drop the bomb which struck the Saracen the Stuka pilot had planned his approach with great care. With a slight curve he had dived across the ship’s port quarter, almost brushing the main topmast, so that the few who saw him imagined for a moment that the screaming aircraft was going to plunge into the mouth of the funnel itself. While the bomber banked and began to haul itself out of its steep dive, the single, gleaming bomb detached itself and plummeted straight for the crowded bridge.
Then several things happened simultaneously. As the Stuka displayed its striped underbelly the monitor’s Oerlikon gunners, who had been keeping up a steady fire since the first enemy attack, saw their opportunity. Even as the aircraft began to regain height the fuselage sparkled in a long, unbroken line of small shell-bursts. The Stuka staggered, picked up again, and then began to spin out of control while the Oerlikons still hammered home their deadly blows. No one saw the German actually hit the water, for in that tiny instant the ship seemed to jump bodily as the bomb exploded.
It was well aimed, and in the seconds which passed to the sounds of blast and destruction it should have sent the ship on its way to the bottom to join the remains of the shattered aircraft. With the speed of light the bomb struck the front of the bridge superstructure with the sound of a giant hammer and ricocheted forward and down until it sliced into the rear of the tall barbette upon which the ship’s great gun-turret was mounted. That first change of directios saved the Saracen from the mortal blow. I guided the bomb clear of the small area of thinly armoured deck between the turret and the bridge, and instead sent it smashing its way at a forty-five-degree angle towards the empty lower messdeck where it exploded. Had the bomb struck the area intended, it would have cleaved straight down through two decks and on to the keel itself. Fuel and ammunition would have made an inferno to cover the inrush of water, and would have made escape impossible for many of the ship’s company. As it was, the bomb was turned aside, to spend itself like a crazed beast before exploding in the monitor’s steel bowels.
But in those agonising seconds, and in the long minutes which followed, there were few who really knew what had happened. Each man wondered and feared for his own safety, and many verged on the edge of panic.
Tending to the army wounded in the forward messdeck Surgeon Lieutenant Wickersley felt the bomb strike the ship, and sat frozen on the deck as he listened to the thing tearing its way through the toughened steel with the noise of a bandsaw. The explosion lifted him from his trance, and as the long space filled with dust and drifting smoke he found with sudden surprise that he was able to ignore the unknown danger and turn, instead, to the bandaged figures wh
ich lay trapped and helpless around him. His assistants, made up of cooks, stewards and writers, and many others of the men who were not actually employed in fighting the ship, were staring at him, suddenly dependent and waiting.
Wickersley stood up and brushed some flaked paintwork from his hair. He gave his orders in a calm voice, inwardly grateful that now the moment had arrived he had beaten his fear and was ready to cope with the work for which he had been trained.
High above the bridge in the encased world of the control tower Lieutenant Norris had been sitting hunched and fascinated beside McGowan, the Control Officer. The small armoured nerve-centre of the ship’s gunpower had suddenly vibrated to the scream of the diving Stuka, so that even the stammer of Oerlikons and the deeper bark of pompoms seemed muted by comparison. Still Norris had been unable to accept that the moment had arrived. Not until the shadow of the screaming aircraft had enveloped the open bridge below him, and a dark streak had flashed down across his vision towards the figure of the Captain himself, did Norris fully realise his very real danger. He wanted to turn away, or bury his face in the back of the rating at the training mechanism, but he was quite unable to close his eyes to the impossible sight of the bomb grinding across the front of the bridge in a shower of sparks to disappear somewhere at the foot of the massive turret. The explosion came after what seemed an age of waiting, and then it was as if it had come from another bomb altogether. Far away, muffled and sullen, it seemed to be in the very bowels of the ship. The air was filled with black smoke which fanned by the breeze billowed back over the bridge until the lonely control tower was lost and isolated in an impenetrable cloud. McGowan’s face looked grey, but his voice was toneless as he spoke quickly to his handset. The four ratings glanced quickly at their officers and then settled back again on their stools. If they were near terror they gave no sign as far as Norris could see, even though their small refuge and the tripod mast beneath still thrummed like some maniac instrument.
H.M.S Saracen (1965) Page 26
