For Valour

by Douglas Reeman

  “Midships! Steady! Steer two-two-zero!”

  Wishart seized the table and tried to prevent the parallel rulers and the freshly sharpened pencils from skidding over the edge.

  It seemed an age before the shells exploded. Near or far, it was impossible to tell. It was only afterwards that they heard the actual fall of each one, like tearing canvas, ripped apart by a giant.

  Someone gasped, “Missed, you bastards!”

  “Starboard twenty. Ease to ten. Steady.”

  Another explosion, a different bearing, or so it felt.

  There were two more shots, and another voice ordered a reduction of speed and a fresh course to steer. The navigating officer.

  Wishart straightened his back and contained the vomit in his throat. He had been under fire. He repeated it in his mind. Under fire.

  He could feel it around him. These same men. His new companions.

  A boatswain’s mate was saying, “Should ’ave worn yer brown trousers, Swain!”

  And the massive Spicer’s retort, “Too late for you, by the smell of it!”

  Midshipman Seton said, “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” He picked up a pencil. “I’ll show you how to lay off a course and allow for variations.” But the pencil did not move, and he said in a different voice, “I’ll do it later.”

  Wishart nodded and rearranged the instruments, his breathing slowly returning to normal, or so he hoped.

  He saw Forward give him a casual thumbs-up and wanted to say something to the midshipman which might be of help.

  But he had never seen naked terror before, and he decided against it. Instead, he looked at the others. We did it. Together.

  His old instructor at St Vincent, who had once made him blush, would have been proud of him.

  Lieutenant Eric Driscoll, Hakka ’s gunnery officer, stood straight-backed on the newly scrubbed grating in the forepart of the bridge, one hand resting lightly on the binoculars slung around his neck. He did not even deign to hold on to anything as the ship swayed steeply in the offshore swell.

  Everything moving on time. Just as he liked it. They had already slowed down to drop the motor boat in the water to dash ahead of the ship with the two buoy jumpers in their massive life jackets. An unenviable job, he thought, for anyone with imagination. He had heard of cases where a commanding officer had approached a mooring buoy too fast and had ridden right over it, the two seamen bobbing up gasping for breath, if they were lucky. And of a destroyer which had mistakenly gone astern with such force that the picking-up wire had snapped and had all but decapitated the first lieutenant.

  He looked at the Captain as he bent over the gyro to check a bearing again. The coast of Devon had greeted them at first light. A far cry from Tobruk or Alexandria. He gave a tight smile. Or Harwich either, for that matter.

  Driscoll was twenty-four years old, and prior to the war he had been training to be a surveyor and working in the business of selling houses to dull, suburban people. All his spare time he had spent sailing in small boats, eventually becoming a weekend volunteer in the R.N.V.R. He had a good singing voice and had belonged to a local Gilbert and Sullivan society. It had been like being someone else, a different person altogether.

  He had soon discovered the doubts and the suspicions of the regular navy, especially when he had chosen the gunnery branch for his proper place in the war.

  But even the hardened cynics amongst the training staff at the gunnery school at Whale Island had been made to eat their words.

  On this cold day, with his cap tilted over his eyes against the harsh glare from the anchorage, he not only looked the perfect naval officer, he knew he was as good as any strait-laced regular.

  “Hands fall in for entering harbour, Guns.” Even the Captain’s casual acceptance made Driscoll very aware of how far he had come.

  He had been in Hakka for eighteen months, and had witnessed some of worst of the fighting along the North African coast. Dazed and exhausted soldiers, demoralized by retreats and losses, but he had seen that same army draw breath and prepare to make a last-ditch stand under their new and little-known general. In the desert Rommel had been God, and even the Eighth Army, the Desert Rats, had admired him. They had picked up some music in the W/T office, a sultry-voiced singer, and “Lili Marlene” had become a part of every man’s desert war. Monty intended to change all that. And if you could believe the newspapers he was doing it, all the way back from El Alamein.

  He thought of the blind bombardment in the Dover Strait, the aftermath of shocked surprise in some of the men in his division. He glanced over at the Captain again. Another fifteen minutes with the unfortunate Grebe and those great guns might not have been so inaccurate.

  He saw the navigating officer with his familiar notebook, his forehead set in a frown as he made some last calculation. Tide, current, wind, speed and distance. Driscoll was officer of the watch, but from now on it was the Captain’s head on the block.

  Martineau was well aware of the lieutenant’s interest. He looked over the screen and saw the forecastle party fallen in as before, with Fairfax right in the bows by the bull ring, and perhaps the same signalman with the Jack folded and ready to hoist. A lot of ships around, some moving but mostly moored or farther out at anchor, destroyers and some weather-worn corvettes from Western Approaches, supply vessels and two lordly cruisers. He lifted his glasses. Plymouth had been badly bombed, like Portsmouth, and the scars were visible from here.

  He bent forward again. “Port ten.” He barely heard the acknowledgement. “Ease to five.” He felt the glare in his eyes; the sheltered water was like burnished pewter. “Midships. Steady.” He saw the motor boat making a tiny wash as it moved away from the indicated buoy, the two seamen crouching there, one ready to take the wire and secure it, the other to stop him from going into the drink.

  Hakka ’s bows must look like a giant axe to them.

  “Dead slow.”

  Fairfax was right in the eyes of the ship now, gesturing to the buoy jumpers, his leading hand ready with a heaving line, and another in case he missed. Fairfax pointed with his arm but did not look up at the bridge.

  Closer, closer, the shadow of the bows reaching out towards the two watching seamen. The buoy would already be hidden from the coxswain at his clearview screen. He could almost feel him holding his breath.

  “Stop engines! Slow astern starboard!” He saw the heaving line hurtle over the side and pictured the buoy jumpers hauling down the wire, hooking on to the encrusted ring.

  “Stop starboard.” A signal from Fairfax, men scampering to lower the cable and shackle.

  “Both engines stopped, sir. Wheel amidships.”

  And there was the Jack, breaking to the cold breeze as if it had always been there.

  One of the cruisers had swung to her cable, and Kidd was the first to see the destroyer lying beyond her.

  “Zouave, sir. Starboard bow.”

  Martineau smiled. “Thanks, Pilot. Not long now.” He did not raise his glasses. They were powerful, and so were those on the other destroyer’s bridge.

  Zouave, their sister ship, with barely a month between them. If you served in any Tribal you could find your way around any of them blindfolded.

  “Ship secured, sir!”

  He heard the motor boat bring the two seamen around to the ship’s side. There would be a tot of rum for each of them, unofficially.

  He heard the clatter of the signal lamp’s shutter, and waited.

  But Zouave was different in one respect. She wore a broad black band on her funnel. The leader.

  Onslow called, “From Zouave, sir. Welcome back. Captain repair on board. ”

  “Finished with engines. Well done, Swain.” He clipped the voicepipe shut. “Motor boat in ten minutes, Guns.”

  Then he did turn and look across at the other destroyer. He had not wasted much time.

  4 | And Goodbye

  Commander Graham Martineau folded the papers he had been studying and looked around th
e room. The officers’ club had seen better days, he thought, and even the large paintings of sea battles long past could not disguise the shabbiness, the tiredness of war. In one room he had seen great cracks down the wall, evidence of one of the air raids which Plymouth had endured.

  An elderly servant in a white jacket was at his table again.

  “’Nother gin, sir?”

  He looked at the empty glass. He could not remember how many he had consumed since his visit to the Zouave, and Captain “Lucky” Bradshaw.

  “Why not?”

  Bradshaw was a bit of a legend in destroyers. During the evacuation of Crete he had made several attempts to get alongside bomb-blasted jetties, lifting off exhausted soldiers with every gun firing at the unhindered German aircraft. On another occasion his ship had been straddled by a stick of bombs which had put the steering out of action. The ship had been badly holed and many would have abandoned her. Not Bradshaw. He had conned her with the emergency steering aft, and had somehow managed to shoot down one of the dive-bombers.

  Martineau had served in the same flotilla as him, a year or so before the war, and like most of them he had been astonished when Bradshaw had been pensioned off by yet another Admiralty axe. It was said at the time that he had been too out-spoken about something. Being recalled had seemed like a miracle to him. As it would have been to my father. Older, larger than life maybe, but still the same “Lucky” Bradshaw.

  The new flotilla was one of several still in the planning stage, a force which could be used for either special escort duty or for more aggressive operations against enemy shipping. There were eight destroyers in the group, or would be as soon as they had all been mustered at Liverpool, three Tribals, two J Class ships, and two of the powerful K Class like Mountbatten’s ill-fated Kelly. And one other, the Harlech, already a veteran of the North Atlantic.

  Bradshaw had boomed, “I’m damn glad it’s you in Hakka. You’re what she needs.” His eyes had moved to the ribbon on Martineau’s jacket. “A destroyer is for hitting the enemy, not sodding along with some eight-knot collection of rust-buckets!”

  Martineau glanced across the long room. One officer was asleep in a chair, and two others were engrossed in earnest conversation, the waiter lining up the drinks with tired regularity.

  It was not much of a place, but it was somewhere to get away from the people you served with, and a change from the din of a Barbican pub or dragging out the time in somebody’s house.

  They would be having a wardroom party in Hakka. Fairfax had asked him if he would care to join his officers, and some of those from other ships. Bradshaw had suggested much the same aboard the leader, but had seemed relieved when he declined. Maybe he had his feet under the table locally, as Jack would put it, but Martineau suspected it was just another symptom of the uneasiness people so often showed in his presence. As if the V.C. made him different in some way, as if the medal itself overshadowed the reason it had been given. Bradshaw had put his finger on it. A damned hard thing to win, but a bloody sight harder to wear!

  Absurd, and yet it was always there.

  He tried to clear his mind, to think of the next move. Liverpool, then the Western Ocean, the killing ground. Every day convoys fought their way across it. Many were indeed old, worn out, the rust-buckets Bradshaw had called them, but without their precious cargoes the war would have ended long ago. Torpedoed, bombed and shelled, the seabed was littered with them. And yet the survivors, men like Kidd, went back to sea again and again.

  And if it was true that Britain and her remaining allies had at last made a stand and were fighting back successfully, the next year would see cargoes even more precious, and ships big and fast enough to carry them. Men, with all the weapons and equipment they would need for what had once been considered a propagandist’s dream. Invasion.

  He sipped the gin; it could have been anything. The sleeping officer had vanished, spirited away. The other two were preparing to pay up and leave. So, back to the ship. They had probably been talking about the Grebe, and their Captain’s inhumanity. My ship, and I am a stranger.

  From the opposite end of the room the servant sighed and looked at the clock. Not much longer. The sirens would probably sound, although the raids were not so savage any more, not surprising with all the extra anti-aircraft batteries and the flak from the harbour. He peered beneath the counter of his bar, seeing the bottle of gin disguised in a carrier bag, and the steel helmet he kept for emergencies. The gin was a perk, and why not? They made the bloody stuff just down the road.

  He heard the door rattle and the hall porter speaking with somebody. Not another one. At this hour.

  But it was a woman this time. A Wren officer, her raincoat collar turned up, her shoulders dappled with heavy drops.

  The porter said helpfully, “The Tribal that came in today, Ted. Hakka or some such name, eh?”

  The servant looked at the girl, for that was all she was. Pretty too, he thought, somebody’s bit of stuff, most likely.

  “Hakka, you say, miss? We’re not supposed to know them things.”

  She swung round as Martineau got to his feet, unable to conceal her surprise, a sudden anxiety.

  Martineau said, “I’m Hakka ’s commanding officer.” He held out his hand, aware of the others staring at them, and the expression on the girl’s face. “Here, sit down for a bit. Is something wrong? How can I help?” The words flooded out and he cursed the amount of gin he had swallowed. But it was not that. His mind had never been steadier. Aware.

  She sat down abruptly and said, “I’m making a fool of myself.” She shook her head and he saw her hair catch the harsh light above the table as it curled beneath her neat tricorn hat.

  In the photograph the hair had been long and had looked much darker. It was chestnut, the colour of autumn. And her voice, very low and barely under control, unexpected. North American.

  The waiter put down another gin but she said, “No. I’m all right. Really. I have to go. There’s a car waiting. I—just thought—”

  He said quietly, “You thought I was somebody else.”

  She nodded, and some rain fell from her hat and marked her face like tears.

  “I’ve been away—quite a long time—I’ve just come back from a course. I heard Hakka was in Plymouth.” She clenched one fist on the table. “He’s dead, isn’t he? I should have known. I’d written, you see.” She looked up sharply, the eyes very direct. “But just now when I came in, you knew me.”

  He said, “There was a photograph. It was in a book of sonnets—I found it when I assumed command last week.” Absurd. How could it be only a week?

  “No letters?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She looked at the gin and then picked it up. “I should have known. But I’ve been so busy.” She was miles away now. Seeking explanations, asking questions, trying to accept something. The man she had cared about enough to correspond with, and to give a photograph of herself.

  Then she smiled; it only made her look more despairing.

  “Sorry, sir. I’ll leave now.”

  She began to rise but he took her wrist.

  He said, “I’m Graham Martineau, by the way.”

  Like everyone else’s, her eyes moved to the ribbon. “I should have realized, but I was too full of my own troubles.” She half turned as voices filtered from the entrance. “My name’s Roche. Second Officer.” She looked at his hand on her rain-spotted sleeve. “I’m in Operations.” She pulled her arm away as the porter appeared in the doorway. “It’s the car.”

  He said, “The photograph?”

  Her eyes were distant again. “Oh, that. Had it done a long time ago, when I was at U of T.” She seemed to realize what she had said, and added, “University of Toronto. A hundred years ago!”

  She moved away, and said, “I hope everything goes well for you this time.” She shook her head again. “That’s not how I meant it. Sorry.”

  He said, “And I wish you better luck, too. I mean it.” />
  She gave him that direct look, and then, like the girl in the photograph, she reached out impetuously and touched the crimson ribbon.

  “For both of us.”

  He said, “I must be going, too.” He saw her turn as he signalled to the waiter and picked up his cap and raincoat.

  She said, “I can’t offer you a lift, I’m afraid.”

  They stood together outside the club. It was pitch dark, and still raining. A solitary searchlight beam played back and forth across the clouds, and true to form the air raid sirens began to wail.

  He saw the car. Like the one in which he had been driven to Harwich, the engine throbbing impatiently.

  The girl in the photograph. And Fairfax had known nothing about her. He had too open a face to conceal a lie. And she was going.

  He said, “If we meet again . . .”

  She might have smiled. “Better leave it right there, sir.”

  He opened the car door for her, felt her brush against him as she climbed into the rear seat.

  She wound down the window and said, “Goodbye. And thanks for being so nice about it.” She said something to the driver and the car jerked into gear. She called, “Anna. The name’s Anna, by the way.” The car’s dark shape merged with the night and he was alone once more.

  When she had recovered from her obvious distress at the death of someone who must have been more than just a friend, although he had been careful to conceal it from his subordinates, then she might share it with her comrades.

  But somehow he knew she would not.

  The name’s Anna, by the way.

  It was little enough. But to Graham Martineau, it was like a lifeline.

  The Turk’s Head pub was packed and the air thick with unmoving smoke. Bob Forward found a corner and took a swallow of beer. He had stopped at several pubs on this run ashore, moving on whenever he had spotted someone he knew. He peered around the bar. Sailors for the most part, trying to drink as much as they could before they returned to their ships. In another corner there was a group of red-faced chiefs, probably “stanchions” from the barracks at Devonport nearby. They never went to sea, living happily on bribes obtained from those willing or desperate enough to pay to avoid an uncomfortable draft-chit, or to wangle more leave ashore than they were entitled. He smiled. It was the world he knew and understood.