Sixty Minutes for St George

by Sixty Minutes for St George (retail) (epub)

  The emergency situations most likely to arise were (a) a breakdown, engine failure, of one of the three boats of the cutting-out flotilla, (b) encounter with enemy destroyer/s, (c) change of cloud/moon conditions. Nick’s orders as he finally produced them dealt almost entirely with reaction to these contingencies.

  Everyone knew exactly what to do, now.

  He looked across at Selby. ‘All right, Mid?’

  The pink face turned to him; and this time, Selby laughed. He shouted, ‘Bloody marvellous, sir!’

  * * *

  Treglown, they learnt, had arrived in Dunkirk and sailed again on schedule. The CMBs refuelled and were clear of the harbour by 9 p.m. The route Nick had planned would take them about three miles offshore most of the way, after an initial zigzag to seaward to clear the silted east side of Dunkirk Roads and the Hills bank. They’d finish up only two miles off Middelkerke; they’d be just inshore of Weary Willie then, and over the top of a shallow patch which the Germans might well consider impassable and therefore an approach not worth watching very closely.

  There was a danger that it might be impassable, places so shallow at this lowest of low tides that even CMBs and ML: couldn’t scrape over them. The lack of dredging and the removal of navigational marks, all part of a deliberate enemy policy, created that uncertainty. There’d have been sifting into channels, and some of the shoals would have extended this way or that, even moved bodily to new positions.

  The distance to cover was about twenty miles. The CMBs could have raced there in not much more than half an hour, but Nick had set a speed of twelve knots – which would leave virtually no wash or broken water to catch a German eye, and allowing for the tides would give a speed-made-good of ten and get them to the rendezvous position by the zero-hour of 11 p.m. Twelve knots was also about the slowest speed a CMB could manage; their engines couldn’t put up with low revs for any length of time.

  By eleven-ten the trawler should be captured and the flotilla – now of four instead of three – on its way seaward.

  He looked to his right, at Selby. The midshipman had his glasses up and he was keeping a fairly constant watch on CMB 14, who was tucked-in close now, only fifty yards astern. Each snotty had the job of keeping track of the other boat; and since at this distance they were within hearing distance of each other’s klaxons, a system of emergency sound signals had been established.

  The monitor and its attendant destroyer off La Panne had been warned that they’d be passing. And it was a halfway point, a way of checking their position accurately for the last time before they found Weary Willie. The squat, black shape of the monitor loomed up ahead, and Nick moved the wheel gently, easing the CMB over to pass close to seaward of her. Ahead and to starboard a glow hung in the sky over Nieuwpoort, and the small sparks of distant starshell drifted downwards, flickered out to be replaced by others; Nick thought, No starshell to seaward, please… They’d be worse than searchlights, even; and the searchlight crews along this section of the coast had been warned of the boats’ schedule. The rumble of gunfire from the Front was remote, impersonal. He saw the destroyer now: an ‘M’, lying at anchor beyond the monitor. Both ships were dark, dead-looking, silent; but there’d be more than a few pairs of eyes watching the CMBs slide out of the night and into it again. At Nieuwpoort they’d pass within two miles, four thousand yards, of the point where the trench-lines met the sea. Nick wondered if his father had even been that close to the firing line, or whether his previous appointment had been of a similar kind to this riding-school job he had now. Something to do with horses, most likely. He’d never made any comprehensible statement about what he did. He’d implied, or allowed others to imagine, that he’d been actively involved in the various ‘pushes’, and talked about the fighting as though he’d been in it; but if it turned out eventually that he hadn’t, nothing he’d said would prove him a liar.

  He wished his elder brother David was still alive. They’d never got on; but David had been the heir to the baronetcy and Mullbergh, and now he was dead he, Nick, was in his place; he’d have preferred to have been detached, disinterested altogether in the inheritance, in whether his father lived or died.

  Underhill was passing the destroyer. From this boat the monitor, well astern now, was just fading out of sight.

  ‘What’s the time, Mid?’

  ‘Nine fifty-seven, sir.’

  Three minutes inside schedule. A rocket soared, burst over Nieuwpoort, a greenish-yellow colour. He wondered what it meant. The land to starboard now was Belgium; France had ended just before La Panne – where, astern, a searchlight beam had just sprung out, lancing the darkness with its silver blade, sweeping the sea to the westward of the guardships. Their timing wasn’t far out either, he thought; they’d been told to stay switched-off until ten.

  ‘Selby – see if Ross is happy, will you?

  Selby ducked down for a quick chat with the ERA. He told Nick a minute later, ‘lt’s all fine at the moment, sir. Except for the usual worry about oiling-up.’

  It was a risk that had to be accepted. Gunfire was louder as they drew closer to the front line. You could see the flashes low down, sometimes, and bits of walls or broken buildings silhouetted for split seconds in their light; but no individual sounds, it was all one continuous background rumble. Inland searchlights wavered, fingering the clouds, searching for aeroplanes or Zeppelins; but those were too far east, he realized, to be anything but German. They’d be watching for the RNAS squadrons, Johnny Vereker’s friends. A flare hung, the brilliant magnesium-white illuminating a black spread of land, the horror-ground of Europe.

  * * *

  Selby shouted, ‘I think fourteen’s in trouble, sir!’

  Nieuwpoort was well astern. They’d been in what might be called enemy water for almost half an hour.

  ‘Think – or is she?’

  He heard the letter ‘A' on Underhill’s klaxon. In their code it meant ‘am aground’…

  With target almost in touching distance, and German batteries a bare two miles to starboard.

  There was a quick remedy and a slow one; they’d practised both. This was a time for the faster, riskier method. He was turning the CMB to port, seaward, holding full rudder on her; at twelve knots no amount of helm would turn her over.

  ‘Tell Ross I’ll be opening right up in a minute!’ He had her on the opposite course now, heading back the way they’d just come. He asked Selby, as the snotty came up from shouting in Ross’s ear, ‘Was she dead astern of us?’

  ‘Bit out on the quarter.’

  ‘You should’ve told me.’

  Spilt milk… Underhill had let his boat swing off to starboard and he’d hit the mud and there he was… Nick swung the boat around to port again, taking her in two cables’ lengths astern of the stranded CMB and holding on until he was inshore of her. Then hard a-port, right round quickly, aiming her at Underhill’s boat, on a course of about east-by-north. When she was pointing the right way and he’d steadied her and centred the wheel, he pushed the throttle wide open. CMB 11’s stern went down hard and she surged forward under full power. You could feel the thrust, the sea trying to hold her back and then its resistance lessening as she lifted in the water and began to skim it, bounce it, engine-noise a deafening roar now and sea flying past, wind ripping, whining, wash piling upwards and outwards, flinging high and white from her quarters as she drove forward. Underhill would be ready for the wash that – hopefully – would lift his boat off the sand and give him a chance to clear it. Nick moved the wheel a little, easing her to port and aiming to pass about ten yards clear of fourteen’s stern. This boat was right up on the plane now, rocketing along, the sea crashing under her as she hurtled over it: and passing fourteen – now…

  As soon as he’d passed, muttering thanks to God that he hadn’t hit the ground himself – in fact with the boat up and skimming she was a foot or two further from that danger – he cut the power. There was an immediate sensation of drag: as if an anchor had been thrown out to p
ull them back: like brakes slammed on and as if she was stopping dead, and her own wash rushed past and under, lifting and then dropping her several times, making it difficult to hold glasses steady enough to see what had happened to Underhill.

  ‘I think she’s off, sir.’ Selby was propped with an elbow over the torpedo warhead and glasses at his eyes. Nick was bringing the boat round to starboard, swinging her across the rolling ridges that still followed from that short, sharp rush. Rocking in towards the land again, dead slow. Now he had his glasses on the other boat: and he heard her hooter bleat the letter ‘P’, which meant ‘ready to proceed’.

  ‘See how Ross is, and tell him I want the revs for twelve knots again.’ He’d control it by the throttle, but Ross down there could watch the revs minutely and keep them adjusted. That burst of speed should have cleared his worries over oiling-up; and fourteen had been got out of trouble without the delay of passing a line and trying to drag her off. The risks had been of grounding oneself, and of making such a display of wash. He’d been shown aerial photos of CMBs going fast in poor visibility, and the wash and wake was all you could see. Navigationally too it was a nuisance that it had happened; he’d been on the track he’d worked out and needed to be on, and now he couldn’t be sure of it any more. If he went too far to starboard he’d do what Underhill had done, whereas if he came too far to port they might run straight into Weary Willie before linking up with Treglown. There was a strong element of chance in it, anyway, with so much uncertainty about what changes had or hadn’t occurred in the shoals and channels. For that matter, Treglown could have run into trouble, could be stuck on some inshore bank; or been too cautious and stayed farther out, passed the luckless Willie and now be groping in the darkness, lost…

  He decided to take Underhill’s present position as being fifty yards too close inshore: and turn here, now, on to the old course.

  ‘Tell me when he’s back in station.’ He waited, searching the sea ahead. It was all black, quiet, empty. The deep growl of the engine emphasized that surrounding emptiness. There was a special feeling, state of mind, when you were in enemy waters, close to his coasts and bases, a distinctly enjoyable sensation of loneliness and danger: a sharp consciousness of being there, armed and secret. You’d have to experience it, he thought, to know it, it wasn’t something you could put into words. No sign of Treglown. Selby reported, ‘Fourteen’s in station astern, sir.’

  ‘Good. Now look out ahead and both sides, help me find the ML.’

  ‘Some way to go yet, sir, isn’t there?’

  The fireworks over the trenches were well abaft the beam. But perhaps Selby was right, perhaps they weren’t yet far enough back. He checked: first that the boat’s head was on the course – north 65° east – and then the relative bearing of the pyrotechnics. 130° on the bow: and he had the hearings in his head, memorized, as you had to when you couldn’t use a chart: Nieuwpoort would have to be 150° on the bow when they were inshore of Weary Willie’s regular anchorage. Selby was right: there was about a mile, or slightly more than that, to go. Say five minutes, then: and expect to meet Treglown in three?

  ‘Time, Mid?’

  ‘Ten-fifty, sir.’

  Nicely up to schedule. His sense of timing had been thrown out by the emergency of Underhill’s grounding. An excess of anxiety had given him the impression they were late and in danger of messing the thing up. In fact the incident with Underhill’s boat had only so to speak taken up the slack.

  Lesson to be learnt: to keep on the ball you don’t have to worry… Command was a new experience, and one had to be careful not to allow it to distort one’s judgement.

  He told Selby, ‘You’re right. About a mile to go.’

  Silence all around them, soaking up the engines’ rumble. The sea’s blank, dimpled surface hid its secrets. Shoal water: at times there was probably no more than a foot or even a few inches under the boats’ keels. And any channels that were still deep enough for navigation might well have been mined. Two miles on the beam there, German gunners would be peering seaward. There was a sudden stench of petrol exhaust as a breeze swept up from astern. Wind rising? Wind didn’t only make calm seas rough, it blew cloud-cover off the moon… He told himself, It’s moving according to plan, there’s no point dreaming up problems that aren’t here. Selby was cleaning the lenses of his binoculars. The sea hissed as it swept along the CMB’s wooden sides and the engine grumbled deep in its throat as it drove her steadily through the night. The midshipman had his glasses up again, now. Nick’s own last spoken words, a mile to go hung in his brain as if he’d memorized them; he wasn’t sure if it might be one minute or five since he’d spoken them. It was like a dream when something nonsensical or totally unimportant keeps running through your mind.

  He checked the bearing again. Nieuwpoort was slightly more than 140° on the bow now. Almost there. The ML might appear at any—

  ‘There she is, sir!’

  Too good to be true…

  But that odd, cuttle-fish shape was too distinctive to confuse with anything else. He looked back, saw Underhill close astern, and put the wheel over, headed to close Treglown. Close up to him, he throttled right down and stopped, de-clutched. The CMB lay rocking on the swell, so close that if Treglown had come out of his little box of a wheelhouse and waved, he’d have seen him. Underhill had stopped too, after getting in much closer; the object was to let Treglown see them and identify them, without the need for exchanges of signals.

  He had seen them. The ML was gathering way, on a north-wards course. Half a mile in that direction, Weary Willie should be nuzzling sleepily at his anchor.

  ‘Time now?’

  ‘Eleven o’clock sir.’

  He checked the Nieuwpoort bearing. South 35° west.

  Bang on. The main worry had been a variability of the tidal streams on this coast, but the allowances he’d made for them seemed to have been right… He told himself not to count his chickens, that things could still go wrong. He was edging CMB 11 out to a position one cable’s length, two hundred yards, on Treglown’s port quarter, and Underhill was opening out the other way to put himself on Nick’s beam, the MLs other quarter. He could see both the other craft, he realized suddenly, with the naked eye… The clouds hadn’t broken up, but they’d thinned, enough to let a suffused radiance filter through. Now, of all moments! White froth under the ML’s counter suddenly: she’d speeded up.

  ‘They must have the trawler in sight.’

  “I have too, sir. Just to starboard of her.’

  ‘Yes… Well done.’ He pushed the throttle shut, and the engine-sound fell away to a harsh stuttering. Clutch out… He kept his glasses on Treglown’s craft as it slid up towards the German trawler’s tall black shape. It was Willie’s funnel that gave him that high look. No light showing: no movement: only the ML sliding across the dark sea like a ghost-ship.

  ‘What’s fourteen doing?’

  ‘Stopped, sir, level with us – abeam, I mean.’

  Good… Except for the moon. Any moment now the ML would be spotted and there’d be shooting, or a rocket soaring… The two shapes merged into one as the ML crept up to the trawler. One solid black smudge now, shapeless except for its height on the left edge. Willie’s chimney. They could have been just in line from this angle, but they’d been united for so long that it was safe to assume they were alongside each other: Treglown’s boarding-party would be aboard the German : if no alarm was raised now, why—

  ‘Ship, sir! Starboard there, a—’

  A searchlight beam sprang out, swept the sea in a short arc and settled on the ML and the trawler locked together. A German voice boomed gibberish over a loud-hailer. Selby had his glasses on her, and began shouting in a high, choked voice, ‘Destroyer, sir, it’s a dest—’

  She’d opened fire. A gun on her foc’sl: a scarlet spurt of flame and now the sound of it, a sort of cracking thud: four-pounder probably. Moonlight brightening the whole scene now, but nothing like as bright as the searchlight st
ill holding the ML in its hard steel clamp. That side was Underhill’s. The ML had left the trawler’s side, you could see a gap widening between them as she moved ahead and towards the German – whose shell hit her low down and for’ard, a shattering upwards disintegration of timber lit in its own shoot of orange flame. That was all it needed: she was built of half-inch planking, and ML 7I3 was finished, but the destroyer had fired again to make sure of her. Nick swung his glasses to CMB I4 and saw her gathering way, moving towards the enemy destroyer and rising in the water as she picked up speed, white sea boiling, piling from her stern, spreading as she slammed on power. The destroyer was stopped, or as near as dammit stopped. Harry had a sitting duck ahead of him. But the searchlight swung and picked him up, held him: the Huns would be staring down that beam at a welter of foam with a black dart cleaving through it, racing at them. Nick muttered under his breath ‘Fire! Fire now!’ If he didn’t he’d lose his chance. The German was moving ahead, in the direction of the burning ML: no, he was turning, you could see his length shortening as he turned to put his bow towards his new enemy. Harry must have fired, because he was going over to starboard now, listing hard over as he swung away: the fish must be on its way, but the German would be bow-on to it, and unless there was a bit about… now? Nothing had happened: except that CMB 14’s white wash was a brilliant fish-hook track across the sea to starboard, and the Hun was continuing his turn and putting on speed himself, still under helm: you could see his bow-wave lengthening, its white curve rising, extending now the full length of that rather high, level-topped foc’sl: a short, high foc’sl, probably turtle-backed, with a gun on its after edge and then a deckhouse in the well before the bridge: a ‘V’, he thought, built for thirty-five knots but getting a bit old now, probably do 30 at most flat out: a CMB should have the legs of him. Harry would have to have the legs of him, he’d nothing left to hit him with. The ML’s flames were lower, almost extinguished as she settled in the water; she was only afloat now because she was made of wood. The Hun destroyer captain would be thinking he was on top of things: he was driving the CMB away and he’d smashed the ML, he’d think he’d saved Weary Willie from the English swinehounds; he hadn’t seen CMB 11, thanks to an extra couple of hundred yards and the fact that lying stopped like this there wasn’t much to see.