Sixty Minutes for St George

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

  Nick slipped the clutch in, and put the throttle to slow ahead. He told Selby, ‘Watch the Hun and fourteen and tell me if anything develops.’

  ‘They’re chasing off, sir, that’s all!’

  ‘Keep an eye out that way.’

  Harry would be heading for the new minefield. Nick steered CMB 11 for the ML. If the German had come from the west instead of the east matters would have been reversed, he’d have attacked it and CMB 14 would have lain doggo. He took her up towards the wrecked ML slowly: wouldn’t help anyone if he flung up a lot of white water and attracted some Hun’s attention. There could easily be another in the offing: or that first one might give up the chase and come back to see if there were any prisoners to be fished out. But most likely he’d be leaving that job to Willie.

  There were two men standing on the ML’s stern, and she was only just afloat, with her forepart buried in the sea. He shut the throttle and told Selby, ‘Get up for’ard, help those two aboard.’

  There were raised hand-hold strakes the whole length of the CMB’s curved wooden topsides, and a bit lower another raised one was well placed for toe-holds. The top of the engine-space, immediately for’ard of the cockpit, was flat, but everywhere else you needed something to hang on to. Selby crawled for’ard past the round engine-access hatch at the for’ard end of the engine-space and halfway between the cockpit and the stem; Nick gave her another touch ahead, then shut down again: the CMB’s stem-post nudged the ML’s stern, and Selby was holding on to the bull-ring while he helped the two survivors climb up. Nick shouted to them to get down through the engine hatch, and saw them doing it as he edged her away from the wreckage; it wouldn’t be floating for much longer. Weary Willie was off on his port beam: black, quiet, and still at anchor. Then he saw men on her bow and heard a clank of cable-gear; those had to be British, because any Germans at liberty would have been blazing away with her four-pounder. Someone came out of this end of the engine-space and clambered up beside him.

  ‘Glad you were around.’

  Sam Treglown.

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘None. There was only me and my leading hand – that’s Eastman here – left on board. I’d decided the rest would be more use in Willie. She was ours without a shot before I shoved off, by the way.’

  Too soon to express joy or even satisfaction. There was the question of what was happening to CMB 14. The leading sea-man was in the cockpit now, and Selby was coming out of the engine-space behind him. Nick, with the CMB swinging to point her bow at the German trawler, was thinking about the likelihood of that destroyer coming back, and about the low speed of the trawler and the steadily increasing moonlight. That last factor was the clincher that was pushing him towards a variation of the plans made earlier. Treglown asked him, ‘Will Underhill be all right?’ He couldn’t have put the question at a better – or worse – moment: gunfire crackled in the north-east, perhaps a couple of miles away: Nick was looking in that direction when he saw red sparks near the horizon, heard more shouting; then there was a whitish flash and the deep boom of an explosion. He answered Treglown: ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ He’d arrived at that decision. ‘Selby – raise the firing-lever stop.’

  ‘Raise it, sir?’

  ‘Do it!’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  If the stop was down, when the torpedo was fired it would knock back the firing-lever, starting the missile’s engine so that as it dropped into the water its two concentric propellers would be whirring at full speed. If the stop was raised clear, there’d be nothing to hit the firing-lever, so the engine wouldn’t fire and the torpedo wouldn’t run. It would simply be pushed out astern and sink.

  Selby came back into the cockpit. ‘It’s raised, sir.’

  Nick moved the lever to withdraw the retaining-stops; they would have held the fish in its trough even against the ram’s thrust. He put his hand on the firing-lever, and jerked it over, heard the thud of the cordite cartridge firing to create sudden pressure inside the hydraulic cylinder. The boat jerked with the force of it as the ram slammed back: the torpedo was a silver streak that sprang away over her low stern. They heard the splash that represented about twelve hundred pounds of taxpayers’ money thrown away; then there was a long, sharp hiss of excess pressure leaking from the cylinder.

  ‘Stand by to go alongside the trawler. Selby, Eastman – hold us alongside when we’re there… Treglown – I want everyone out of her and into this boat. There’s plenty of space where the fish was. I want the Germans – here, Selby – get one of these panels out. That one.’ He kicked at the cockpit’s after bulkhead, on the starboard side. ‘We’ll put the Huns in there, inside the stern.’

  The panel could be removed, and there was room inside, between the heavy timbers that supported the torpedo channel, for several men to crouch or sit. They could be watched and guarded from the cockpit, and there was no equipment in there that they could do any harm to.

  He told Treglown, ‘Everyone into the boat, then have your stoker PO open Willie’s seacocks.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  Selby had forced the plywood bulkhead panel out, and CMB 11 was sliding up to berth on the trawler’s starboard side. As she loomed up closer, Willie looked surprisingly big. That tall funnel: and the high, square bridge with sandbags piled around it. Must make her top-heavy, he thought: and every little would help her down, presently. The moonlight was even brighter now. Treglown’s sub-lieutenant, Marriot, appeared on deck and reported that everything was under control, they’d only to get the hook up: then they bumped alongside and Treglown sprang over and started passing out Nick’s orders. There was a momentary hush of surprise, then a rush to obey. Nick was searching the sea to starboard, east and north-east: you could see quite a distance now and he knew he couldn’t help Harry Underhill, to try to would be like throwing a chestnut into the fire in the hope of dislodging one already in it. And with this moon beginning to break right through now it was simply not possible to remain so close inshore… There was nothing to be seen, out there. Since those two spasms of gunfire and the explosion there’d been no sound, either. The explosion could have been the German hitting a mine. Otherwise…

  ‘Get a move on.’

  Four German prisoners were being hustled aboard. Nick told a seaman, ‘Inside there. They’ll have to crawl in.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir… Giddahn, Fritz, giddahn there…’

  Otherwise: well a CMB wouldn’t strike a mine, because they were moored too deep, those M-sinkers. But there’d been gunfire first: and the petrol tank was right under the cockpit floor. It was the only place they could have put it, he supposed. It would be well enclosed, reasonably protected; but still, a four-pounder shell…

  If the destroyer came back, with this moonlight there’d be no escape from her. Not for a trawler that couldn’t make more than about twelve knots. That was why there wasn’t going to be a trawler for the destroyer to find if she did come back. Men were climbing over from her now. Treglown called, ‘Stoker PO’s below, sir, opening the seacocks. Only him and your midshipman and myself to come.’

  ‘Very good.’

  He waited. That calm ‘very good’ hung in his ears. Had it been his voice?

  ‘She’s filling, sir!’

  ‘Come aboard, then.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  The stoker PO sounded like a Devonport man. Nick shouted, ‘Treglown, Selby, come on!’ They all three tumbled over. He called down to Ross, ‘We’re overloaded but we need some speed – all right?’

  ‘She won’t let you down, sir.’

  The CMB was swinging round to point seaward. And Weary Willie was settling, lowering himself sedately but quite rapidly into the sea. When the Germans came back – or when any other German came – they’d think their Willie had been taken. Reaper had said, We wouldn’t want the Hun to think we’d just gone after prisoners. There was no reason why the Hun should think anything of the sort.

  Glancing round, a final look towards the
east, Nick thought that if that explosion had been the destroyer going up on a mine, CMB 14 would have been back by now. But there was nothing in sight except the long, flat swells and the increasing moonlight. Reaper had said something about responsibility, and not shirking it. Here it was. Responsibility was here and now and this throttle his hand was resting on.

  Chapter 11

  Edward Wyatt, staring out of the carriage window at the familiar features of Dover’s Marine Station, waited until the train had stopped before he stood up and beat at the skirts of his greatcoat to knock the dust off. The South East and Chatham Railway Company was a splendidly efficient organisation, and there had been times when its officials had worked miracles – at the time of the Somme offensive, for instance, they’d run twenty special hospital trains a day, on top of routine services – but it hadn’t the staff to keep its trains as sparkling clean as they’d been before the war.

  Wyatt wondered what the admiral was going to say to him. He’d hardly put Mackerel into the dockyard’s hands, up in the Thames, before he’d had the telegram saying that Admiral Keyes wished to see him personally and as soon as possible.

  To give him a new ship, perhaps. And just possibly, promotion! If they were giving him a brass hat, they might give him a flotilla-leader to go with it?

  He stepped down on to the platform. It was about one mile to the headquarters houses, and the walk would be good for him. He hadn’t seen Keyes since the Dardanelles, two years ago. Keyes had been a commodore then. Now he was an acting vice-admiral, promoted from rear-admiral in order to rank higher than Dampier, who was the admiral commanding the Dover dockyard, the engineering side of things. Last time Wyatt had met Keyes had been when Admiral de Robeck, Keyes’s chief at that time, had sent for him to congratulate him on the taking of that Turkish battery, the landing party he’d led.

  This time – what? Promotion, and a new ship, and a bar to his DSC? Even – possibly – a DSO?

  * * *

  Tim Rogerson had also just stepped out of a train, but at Portsmouth. He was here to have luncheon at Blockhouse, the submarine headquarters, with an old shipmate, ‘Baldy’ Sandford. He hadn’t the least idea what for: or why one of Baldy’s older brothers, who was a lieutenant-commander with a DSO and had apparently just arrived at Dover to join the new admiral’s staff, should have sent for him and given him this cross between an order and an invitation.

  On the part of the older Sandford it had seemed to be an order, but from the younger, Baldy, an invitation. One might hope to discover, over the meal perhaps, what the devil it was all about.

  Rogerson walked out of the station precincts and down to the wooden harbour jetty. A twenty-foot motorboat lay alongside, and its coxswain was a leading seaman with an ‘HM Submarines’ cap-ribbon.

  ‘Lieutenant Rogerson, sir?’

  He returned the salute, and stepped into the boat’s sternsheets.

  Baldy Sandford was an archdeacon’s son, he remembered. And one of a large brood: he was the seventh son, in fact. Which made one ponder on how archdeacons spent their leisure hours: and one could marvel, too, at such a churchly man having so un-pious a son. Not a respecter of persons, old Baldy: a very humorous, jolly fellow, a terrific messmate. Determined as a character could be, in spite of that. The iron-jawed type. If Baldy wanted something done, it was done.

  Even if he had to do it himself.

  He greeted Rogerson on the Blockhouse jetty with a warm, bone-cracking handshake.

  ‘How splendid you could manage it!’

  ‘Oh, they don’t exactly keep us on the hop, you know, in Dover.’

  ‘They don’t?’

  ‘Not the submarines.’

  ‘What do you get up to?’

  ‘This and that. We’ve moored ourselves to anti-submarine barrage nets, pretending to be buoys and hoping Hun submarines might come and put themselves in front of our tubes. And we’ve done a lot of research on tidal ranges off the Hun ports – graphs of rise and fall, all that… I suppose it might come in useful, one day.’

  Sandford nodded. ‘Indeed it might.’ His expression changed back to one of amusement. ‘But you’re bored stiff, eh?’

  'Pretty well.’

  ‘I can offer you something so un-boring it might make your ginger thatch stand on end.’

  He was a bit conscious of other men’s ‘thatch’. Rogerson nodded. ‘I’ll take it, sight unseen.’

  ‘Third hand of an old “C"?’

  ‘Now you’re having me on.’

  The C-class submarines were old, virtually useless, reserved for coastal-defence – and soon the breakers’ yard. As they strolled up the jetty, he could see a couple of them anchored in the mud of Haslar Creek. Here, alongside, were two K-boats and an E. Sandford pointed at the two anchored boats.

  ‘There they are… Listen to this, now. What about a C-class boat with a crew of six or seven picked men and her bow packed with five tons of Amatol?’

  Rogerson rubbed his chin. He murmured, ‘Sounds – explosive.’

  ‘Oh, very.’

  ‘What would we do with it?’

  ‘I can’t quite tell you that. What I mean is, I’m not allowed to. But you know that brother of mine who got in touch with you is now working for Roger Keyes?’

  ‘One hears Keyes is collecting quite a large staff.’ Rogerson nodded. ‘Well?’

  ‘This thing I’m on is part of some great stratagem of our former Commodore’s. Some kind of mad attack or other.’

  ‘I’m on.’

  Sandford glanced at him, surprised by the snap decision. Tim said, ‘I’m in. Don’t try to keep me out of it.’

  ‘Well, there’s a spot of preamble I’m bound to give you. It’ll be more than ordinarily hazardous. The question of whether or not any of us will get away, or end up prisoners-of-war or blown to smithereens or – well, the point is, it’s probably about as near to committing suicide as you could get without endangering your immortal soul. Are you sure you want to do it?’

  ‘Never been more sure of anything.’

  ‘Well, good for you!’ Sandford held out his hand. ‘I’m so glad.’

  ‘Nothing to what I am.’ Rogerson told him sincerely, ‘I’m tickled pink. Damn nice of you to let me in on it.’

  * * *

  Wally Bell saw Captain Edwards, who was in overall command of the Patrol’s MLs, striding towards him down the jetty. Wally stepped ashore to meet him.

  ‘Morning, sir.’ He saluted.

  ‘Morning, Bell. Your boat likely to be fit for sea soon?’

  ‘They’re putting her together again now, sir. She’ll be as good as new, the plumbers say.’

  ‘Better be.’ Graham Edwards stared with some disfavour at the litter of engine-room junk on the ML’s deck. ‘You’ve a lot of hard work ahead of you.’

  Bell jerked his head towards his boat. He said, ‘It wasn’t just lying around doing nothing that cracked her up in the first place, sir.’

  ‘Work of a particular kind, Bell.’ Edwards told him, ‘I’m taking you and a few others off routine patrol work, and giving you to Wing-Commander Brock for his programme of experiments. It’ll be inshore smoke-laying, mostly.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Those bloody burners. Black mess everywhere…

  ‘He’s got a new system he wants to perfect. None of that messing about with burners. It involves using chlor-sulphonic acid in your boat’s exhaust. Much more effective, apparently, as well as neater all round.’

  ‘Chlor-sulphonic, sir?’

  ‘Used in the manufacture of saxin. The sugar-substitute, you know? But that’s to be stopped now. All the chlor-sulphonic they can make – or grow, whatever the hell they do – will be sent here, to Brock.’

  ‘Sounds as if we’re expecting to lay an awful lot of inshore smoke-screens!’

  ‘Does rather, doesn’t it.’

  * * *

  Reaper told Nick, ‘You did well, Everard. Very well indeed.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’


  ‘I’m sorry about Underhill.’

  ‘Yes.’ Nobody knew yet what had happened to CMB 14. The most likely theory was that the German destroyer had sunk her, or rather blown her up, and then hung around looking for survivors or trying to fish out wreckage for their intelligence people.

  ‘In the circumstances, you took the best possible decision.’

  ‘Are the prisoners proving useful, sir?’

  Reaper’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I wondered if the prisoners I brought back were worth their salt, sir.’

  ‘Why should you imagine there was any – any usefulness about them?’

  ‘Well, sir, they’re all I did bring back. And you’ve expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the operation. And before we set out I did rather understand you to say – well, to indicate—’

  ‘You lost one CMB and her crew. Considering you’d had the bad luck to run up against a destroyer, and to find yourself having to cope with moonlight instead of total darkness, I can quite properly congratulate you on having made the best of a tricky situation. And since it was your first experience of command—’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He’d brought Lanyard back from Jutland.

  Reaper raised one hand, and let it fall again. ‘The first time you’d been appointed in command, then. In that consideration, it’s considered that your conduct of the affair was – impressive.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Not only in my view, I may add.’

  He glanced at his watch, frowned as he replaced it in his pocket. ‘So late… What did you mean about those prisoners, Everard?’