The Breaking Wave

by Nevil Shute

  Janet got out of her bunk at ten o’clock, and Viola got up with her. Outside the Wrennery the sky was overcast and grey, and the wind was rising, whipping the tops of the tall elm trees. They stood at the window in pyjamas, looking at the weather in consternation. Viola said, “It’s going to be a pig of a day.” And then she dropped her voice. “They can’t go in this, surely?”

  Janet asked in a low tone, “When do they go—when is it? Do you know?”

  Viola whispered, “I think it’s tomorrow morning. They’re supposed to sail this evening. But half of them will be swamped if they go out in this. It must be blowing quite hard in the Channel.”

  They dressed and got some breakfast; then Janet set out in her duffle coat to walk down to the hard. She got a lift in a small Army truck and reached the hard at about eleven in the morning. It was a dirty grey day with a stiff westerly wind; out in the Solent the L.C.T.s were anchored by the stern in rows, pitching uneasily in a short, breaking sea. One or two of them had dragged and fouled each other, and were struggling to free themselves and to turn back against the wind to regain their berth. She found the Hardmaster and reported to him. “I hope I’m not late, sir,” she said. “You didn’t say any time.”

  “That’s all right,” he replied. “You might have stayed in bed. It’s been postponed for twenty-four hours. They’d never have got across in this.”

  She stayed down at the hard for a couple of hours and had her dinner with the Wrens in Lepe House, but there was nothing for her to do. The Hardmaster released her for the day then, warning her to stay on call in Mastodon, and she walked back to the great house that was her ship. Back in her quarters she felt tired and strained; she took off some of her clothes and lay down in her bunk, and slept uneasily for a time. At about five o’clock she got up and went and found Dev in his kennel, and got his supper for him from the galley and sat and watched him eat it; then she got her clothes brush from her quarters and gave him a grooming with it, not before time. It was better to do that than to sit about in tension, thinking of the battle that was coming.

  That night when she went to bed there was half a gale blowing, with squally, driving rain. Few of the Wrens in Janet’s hut slept much that night; all were young, and most of them had boy friends, fiancés, or even husbands in the L.C.T.s that lay tossing and dragging their anchors in the black night in the Solent. They lay listening to the wind and to the rain beating on the window, thinking of their men wet and cold and in some danger, struggling to keep their loaded, cranky ships afloat until the weather moderated enough for them to sail across to France to battle with the Germans on the beaches on the other side.

  All night Janet tried to sleep, but sleep eluded her till just before dawn. She was sick with a great apprehension, with fear of what was coming. She was seized with the presage of a huge, impending disaster. She did not worry much about her father; it was clear to her that the merchant ships would not be brought to the invaded coast until the enemy had been driven well back inland. She was filled more with a dread that the whole enterprise would fail and end in a shambles of defeat upon the beaches. Mixed up with this was a sick memory of the Germans she had killed in the Ju.188, the smashed bodies that she had seen lying in the field where she had shot them down, men who were friendly to us, on our side. A great sense of guilt lay heavily upon her which was to remain with her, I think, until she died, and over all was the memory of Bill, my brother, who had loved her, whom she would have married, who had vanished without trace out of her life leaving only the bare word that he was dead. She had killed seven friendly Germans wantonly and so Bill had been taken from her, because Judgment was inexorable.

  She slept a little before dawn, a restless, nightmarish, unhappy sleep.

  When the petty officer roused out the hut the sun was breaking through the clouds; at breakfast it was evident that the wind was falling. Janet went down to the hard and reported to her officer; he told her that the indications were that the operation was laid on for the next morning, June the 6th. He employed her on a variety of minor jobs in the forenoon and at lunch time he dismissed her for the day; there would be plenty for her to do when the landing craft came back from France to reload.

  In the evening Janet went down river in the cutter with Viola Dawson and Doris Smith to embark a party of R.N. officers at Lepe and to take them across the Solent to Cowes. She had no business to be in the boat upon a trip like that; it was a joyride for her, but she had become so used to going up and down the river in the boats by that time that she ranked practically as one of the boat’s crew. The officers were mostly of commander’s rank; she did not know it, but these were the headquarters naval staff of Juno sector, changing ship. They were serious-faced, silent men. They crossed to Cowes in the sunset and one of them directed Viola to an unpretentious steamer called Hilary lying in the roads, studded all over with radio and radar aerials. Hilary had been the headquarters ship at the invasion of Sicily and at Salerno, and now she was to serve the same function at Juno beach of “Overlord.”

  They turned back to Beaulieu as the sun was going down, and now they saw the whole fleet getting under way. The whole stretch of water between the Isle of Wight and the mainland was crowded with landing craft and ships of every sort, and all in turn were getting short their anchors, weighing, and moving off. In the deep channels were the Infantry Landing Ships, cross-Channel steamers and small liners with landing craft hanging on their davits; in the shallows were the L.C.T.s loaded with vehicles and tanks and men, moving off towards the eastern entrance at Spithead in great flotillas, shepherded by their M.L.s. Coming down Southampton Water was a great fleet of Tank Landing Ships, big American vessels with a double door that opened in the bow. Overhead the fighters circled in the evening light, the inner patrol positioned to catch any German aircraft that penetrated the outer guard of fighters over the Channel. The evening was thunderous with the roar of engines on the sea and overhead.

  Viola slowed the cutter to half speed and they lingered over the return to Beaulieu, silent and wondering, conscious that they were looking at a mass of ships that nobody might ever see again assembled in one place. Viola told me that she tried to count the ships that were in sight that evening; she counted over four hundred and then failed to separate the hulls massed together in the east down by Spithead. Gradually as they crossed the Solent, weaving in and out between the landing craft, the western Solent cleared. The craft that had been lying between Lymington and Beaulieu passed them going to the east, and by the time they reached the river entrance there were few left to the westwards. The girls stood talking in half whispers as the cutter steamed up river, as if to speak out loud of what they had just seen would break security and put the men in peril.

  In the Wrennery it was another sleepless night. Aircraft were passing overhead all night hindering the restless girls from any sleep they might have got; if drowsiness came through the sheer weariness of anxiety a wave of bombers from some aerodrome nearby would pass over, climbing in fine pitch, and they would be wide awake again. They were too young to have acquired a knowledge or the habit of sedatives, too much accustomed to a healthy life, too little used to feminine megrims. Through most of the night one or two of them were out of bed, whispering together. Towards dawn a little knot of them in pyjamas collected at the open door, listening in the quiet of the summer night. Far to the south beyond the Isle of Wight the faint reverberations of explosions came a hundred miles over the sea; they stood there tense, and cold, and rather sick, listening to the distant echoes of the bombardment.

  One of the signal Wrens from Lepe House whispered, “The airborne party go in about now …”

  Janet got practically no sleep at all that night. The tension in the Wrennery was contagious, and for forty-eight hours now she had had little to do. Before, the work had been continuous and exacting since she had shot down the Junkers, since Bill had been killed, and had given her little time for thought; she had slept well every night in an exhaustion of fatigue. Now
in her idleness and tension the sense of guilt was heavy on her. She had killed seven men who were not Germans, but Poles and Czechs, trying to escape to fight upon our side. She had smashed them into the pathetic, sodden, mutilated things she had seen lying in the field. She had done that in her pride and folly, for she had seen the wheels come down and had been so exultant in her skill with the Oerlikon that she had not paused to consider what that meant. God was a just God, and she must take her punishment. He had taken Bill from her to Himself as a judgment for what she had done, but was that punishment enough? Perhaps there was more coming, for she had murdered seven friendly men and Bill was only one. One life could not atone for seven. Perhaps she had made some terrible mistake that would kill six more of her friends. Perhaps a ready-use ammunition locker on the deck of some craft she had tended would explode and kill six of her friends through some mistake that she had made, because God was a just God, and His judgment was inexorable. She racked her brains to think what her mistake could be.

  She lay awake in silent agony all night.

  The Wrens were up at dawn next morning clustering around the radio in their recreation room, listening to the news of the invasion put out by the B.B.C. Janet went down to the hard at Lepe after breakfast, but there was nothing to do there except listen again to a small wireless set, talk interminably about the position on the various beaches, and wait for the landing craft to came back for another load. There was little chance that any of them would return before nightfall; at dinner time the Hardmaster dismissed his staff till seven o’clock, advising them to get some sleep.

  Janet took three aspirins and lay down in her bunk in the Wrennery, and pulled a blanket over her, and slept till six. It was the last spell of heavy, refreshing sleep she was to have for several days.

  At half-past ten that night the first L.C.T.s came back to Lepe. They came from Nan beach in Juno sector, near the small town of Courseulles in Normandy. Janet heard something of their landing from a tired young rating as they lugged a box of Oerlikon ammunition on board together. “They got land mines, old shells, anything to make a bang, tied on them beach obstacles,” he said. “Three of ours got it and sank in about two foot of water on the beach; I don’t think anyone got hurt. Time we come to go in the Jerries was a bit back from the beach; I reckon they’re a mile or two inland by this time. They didn’t put up much of a fight, not in our sector. I did hear it was worse for our chaps at Bernieres and down that way,”

  About German aircraft all he had to say was, “One or two come over, strafing the chaps on the beach. Everybody had a bang at them, but I never see one come down.” He had fired off two and a half drums; while the L.C.T. was embarking vehicles and refuelling Janet helped him to grease the rounds and reload the drums. May Spikins was working at the same jobs on another L.C.T. on the other side of the dolphins that ran down the middle of the hard; Janet finished her work and crossed to help May out with hers, and while she did so the first L.C.T. backed off and was replaced by another empty one. Officers and ratings in these ships kept watch and watch, taking what rest they could while the flotilla was on passage.

  Reloading, refuelling, and re-arming that flotilla took five hours. When the last ship backed off the hard at half-past three in the morning there was a pause. Janet and May went wearily to the Hardmaster’s hut, where there was tea brewing, and bully sandwiches. There was no indication when the next flotilla would arrive though it was expected soon; the tanks and motor vehicles were jammed tight down the lane leading to the hard. The Wrens wrapped themselves in their duffle coats and lay down on the camouflage nets at the back of the hut, and slept.

  They were roused again at six and came out bleary-eyed in a cold dawn to see another lot of L.C.T.s from France at anchor in the Solent, and the first two craft slowly nosing their way in to the hard. The Wrens gulped down a cup of tea and went to work. At eight o’clock the Hardmaster called them off for breakfast for half an hour; then they went on with the job. The last craft of the flotilla backed away at noon but there was another flotilla already anchored in the Solent waiting to come in to load; the Wrens swallowed a hasty dinner in the hut, brushed the hair back from their foreheads with filthy hands, and went to work again.

  That was Wednesday, June the 7th. That afternoon Viola Dawson took the cutter down the river to Lepe and lay alongside one of the L.C.T.s for a few minutes, using it as a quay while they unloaded some equipment they had brought down to the hard. Janet broke off, and went over to the boat. “Viola, be a darling. You’ll be back at Mastodon tonight?”

  The coxswain nodded. “As far as I know. Can I bring you down anything?”

  “It’s not that. Viola, I shan’t be able to get up to see Dev till Lord knows when. Will you see he gets his supper tonight? Look, ask that Leading Wren in the galley—Rachel Adams—ask her if she’ll see he gets his food for the next few days, while I’m down here. She knows what he has.”

  “I’ll look after him, old thing. Would you like us to bring him down here in the boat one day, or don’t you want to be bothered with him?”

  Janet said, “I couldn’t look after him with all this going on—he’d better stay up at Mastodon. But I’d love to see him if you could bring him down and take him back again.”

  Viola said, “Okay, I’ll do that. Hope it lets up soon, Janet.”

  “It’s going on for ever, by the look of it,” Janet told her. “I don’t mind. It’s the build-up that’s important. Commander Craigie says the Jerries are four miles inland now—that’s in Juno sector.”

  She left the cutter, and went aft to the wardroom to find the first lieutenant of the ship.

  All day and night through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the build-up continued. The flotillas came in to load irregularly and without previous notice; so long as the flow of tanks and priests and trucks kept coming down the road, directed by the Army, so long the L.C.T.s would keep on coming to the hard. The girls ate and slept irregularly in the Hardmaster’s hut, taking food and sleep as they offered, working in a daze of fatigue. Troubled, the Wren officers from Mastodon offered relief to the Ordnance Wrens; as there was no one else to do their job the Ordnance Wrens refused. “I’m quite all right, Ma’am—it’s nice down here. I had a lovely sleep last night, and another one this morning.” Working in a daze of exhaustion they went on with their job.

  The boat’s crew Wrens brought Dev down to the hard each day standing proudly in the bow of the cutter; he would jump on board the L.C.T. they came alongside and frolic in and out among the tanks and trucks till he found Janet; then he would be all over her. She would give him biscuits and knock off for a few minutes to play with him, fondling his ears; then Viola would take him back into the boat and Janet would go on, cheered and refreshed by the short interlude with her dog.

  On the morning of Saturday June the 10th Third Officer Collins rode her bicycle from Mastodon down to the hard, her pretty young face troubled and upset. She leaned the bike against the hut and went in to the Hardmaster. “Where’s Prentice, sir?”

  He pointed at an L.C.T. loading on the hard. “In that one, I think.”

  “Could you send for her, do you think? I’ve got to see her, and I’d rather do it here, not in the ship.” She hesitated. “We got a message from her mother. Her father’s been killed.”

  When Janet came, wondering, to the hut Miss Collins said nervously, “Prentice, I want a word with you. Come out here.” She led the way down on to the strip of beach below Lepe House. “I’m afraid there’s been some bad news, Prentice,” she said. “It’s about your father.”

  Janet said quickly, “Has Daddy bought it?”

  “Well—yes, I’m afraid that was what the message was, my dear. Somebody rang up trying to get hold of you, speaking for your mother.”

  “He’s killed, is he?” Janet asked directly.

  “I’m afraid that’s what the message said.”

  Janet walked on in silence for a minute. In the back of her mind she had been ready for this, be
cause God’s judgments were just and she deserved His punishments. Ever since she had heard that motor transport ships had been beached upon the coast of Normandy on Wednesday to unload their trucks with their own derricks on to the sand, she had known that her father was not far from the German Army. She was too tired to grieve, too dazed with work and little sleep, too much obsessed with the thought that she had left her job with the breech out of the port Oerlikon and, as like as not, without her help the rating wouldn’t be able to put it together again. Daddy had bought it; when she was rested perhaps tears would come and she would want to go to church. Now it was just a matter of brushing off Third Officer Collins and getting back on to the L.C.T. to put that breech back.

  She said quietly, “Thank you for telling me, Ma’am. It was good of you to come down.” She stopped, turned round, and started to walk back towards the hard.

  The officer said, “I’ve arranged forty-eight hours leave for you, Prentice. I’ll just see the Hardmaster; then you can come up to Mastodon and change, and go off on the 1400 ferry. You can take my bike and go on ahead, if you like. You’ll find your pass and warrant on my desk; if they’re not there, ask Petty Officer Dowling for them.”

  Janet said, “I don’t want to go on leave.”

  The Wren officer was nonplussed. “They said on the telephone that you’re her only child in England—that’s why we put it through. Of course you must go, Prentice. You must go home and see your mother.”

  “I couldn’t go till this flap’s over,” Janet said stubbornly. “Not unless you can get me a relief.”

  “Don’t you think Spikins can carry on alone, just while you go home for forty-eight? You’re working independently; she can carry on without you.”

  Janet said, “It’s just a question if she can carry on with me, Ma’am.” She quickened her pace towards the hard. “She’s just about all in. No, honestly, I’ll be all right. There aren’t any reliefs. Is it true that it’s all coming to an end tomorrow?”