‘Weary Willie was based on Zeebrugge, sir. I believe – with respect, sir – I think prisoners are what we were really after. The Germans weren’t to think so, so it was better if we didn’t realize it…’ Reaper was just sitting there and staring at him, listening. He went on, ‘There’ve been rumours of an offensive. And – well, it would make sense from the anti-U-boat angle to attack Zeebrugge, blow it up or capture it or block the canal? Ostend as well, I suppose. But if—’
‘It’s a nice idea. And of course it’s been mooted more than once, in the last two years.’ A moment ago Reaper had looked sharply alert; now he’d relaxed. He smiled. ‘You’ve a powerful imagination. But – don’t broadcast your ideas, please.’
Nick felt fairly certain he’d hit the nail on the head. An operation against Zeebrugge and Ostend: block seaways out of Bruges and eliminate it as a base. Reaper murmured, ‘Wide of the mark. But we don’t want rumours flying.’ He was looking at his watch again. Nick, worried that he might jump up and rush away, began: ‘About what my next appointment’s to be, sir…’
Reaper looked surprised: as if he thought it was an odd subject to bring up. Nick thought dismally that he’d guessed right in this area too: he’d done the Weary Willie job, and that was the end of this man’s interest in him.
‘Am I to remain in Arrogant?’
A shake of the narrow head… ‘I’ve something else to tell you – and on which to convey to you Admiral Keyes’s congratulations. As a result of Mackerel’s action on Christmas Eve, you’ll be getting a DSC.’
He was astonished. Delighted, as it sank in, but as much surprised as pleased. He said, ‘Very generous of – of the admiral.’
Might Keyes really have sent congratulations? Would he even have heard of Nicholas Everard?
‘Lieutenant-Commander Wyatt gets a DSO.’
‘Is there a full list available, sir?’
Thinking about Swan. About all of them, but particularly Swan. Reaper shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ Another glance at his watch. ‘Have to cut this short, I’m afraid.’ He closed his eyes, as if to concentrate his thoughts: then opened them again and reached for the telephone. ‘Crosby. Telephone to Arrogant’s first lieutenant. Ask him with my compliments to have Lieutenant Everard’s gear packed and sent immediately to Bravo.’
Nick stared at him. He couldn’t surely have said Bravo? Reaper seemed deliberately to avoid his eyes.
‘If you can’t reach the first lieutenant, the officer of the day would do.’ He put the ’phone down. Nick couldn’t believe this. A ‘thirty-knotter’ – fit for nothing but defensive patrol work? And Bravo already had a first lieutenant – Elkington, Tim Rogerson’s pal! Unless they’d moved Elkington elsewhere; that must be the answer… But – patrolling over the Varne minefield, or hanging around the Downs: no hope of any action or excitement. If you had enormous luck you might get a crack at a U-boat: but then, so might a drifter!
Reaper was on his feet. Nick stood up too. He felt sick with the let-down of it. They praised you, gave you a medal, then kicked you down the stairs!
‘You’ll be glad to be in a sea-going appointment, I’m sure. If you’d stayed in Mackerel you’d have been in a London dockyard for months on end.’
Sugaring the pill… Reaper added, ‘But if in the future some offensive operation should be contemplated, I imagine you’d like a part in it?’
‘Yes, sir. I should.’
What was he saying – that Bravo would be only a temporary billet? Until the attack on the Belgian ports? Or might she take part in it? Hardly… His mind was snapping at guesses like a fish at flies… And hard reality remained: Minefield patrol. This is Wyatt’s doing… Reaper said, ‘Look, I really must cut along.’ Pausing, he looked quizzically at Nick. ‘You’re not a very trusting fellow, Everard.’
‘I – don’t think I understand—’
‘Obviously not.’ Reaper smiled. ‘Never mind.’ Offering his hand: ‘Thank you again, for a job well done. And – happy New Year.’
New Year’s Eve…
It didn’t feel like it. It hadn’t felt like Christmas, either. He shook Reaper’s hand.
* * *
‘Sit down, Wyatt.’ The admiral drew his own chair closer to the desk. ‘Last time you and I met was also an occasion for congratulation, as I recall.’ He nodded at the ribbon on Wyatt’s shoulder. ‘That DSC, of course. But hadn’t you been nicked by a Turk’s bayonet?’
‘A pinprick, sir.’
‘H’m… Great days while they lasted, eh?’
‘Damn shame we were obliged to withdraw, sir.’
‘As you say.’
Nodding. Thoughts reaching back to the Dardanelles and to his own conviction that the Navy could have forced the Narrows, should have done. His commodore’s rank then hadn’t cut much ice.
‘But it’s the present and future we must think about, Wyatt. Not the games we’ve lost.’ Fingers drummed briefly on the desk. ‘Your ship’s out of commission, you face a period of inactivity, and that’s hardly to your taste. Am I right?’
Wyatt nodded. The admiral continued, ‘Your talents in command afloat are undoubted. But you made a useful soldier of yourself, out there, too.’ He wasn’t just making conversation; he was watching his visitor closely, to assess reaction. ‘How would you like to do something of the sort again?’
Wyatt started carefully, ‘If you have some such employment for me, sir—’
‘I’m planning a – a certain enterprise, Wyatt.’ Keyes slid a drawer open, took out a folded sheet of paper, passed it across the desk. ‘Read that, would you.’
It was a letter to him from Admiral Wemyss, who had now taken over from Sir John Jellicoe as First Sea Lord. Wyatt read,
In view of the possibility of the enemy breaking through the line on the North Coast of France, and attacking Calais and Dunkirk, a special battalion of Marines and a company of bluejackets will be placed at your disposal for reinforcements, and to act as demolition parties, etc., to destroy guns and stores. You are to make every preparation for blocking Calais and Dunkirk harbours at the last possible moment, with the ships whose names have been given to you verbally, so as to deny the use of these ports to the enemy if necessary.
Wyatt looked up. ‘I see, sir.’ He passed the letter back. Keyes contradicted him, with a smile. ‘No, you don’t. This is a great secret which we’ll allow to leak out. It will explain to the over-curious why certain ships are having peculiar modifications made to them, and why we should be training a lot of sailors in various offensive and destructive arts which are more usually left to men in khaki. But I can trust you, I’m sure, to keep your own counsel. No need to burden you now with the details: suffice it to say that my operation will be not defensive, but offensive.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it, sir.’
‘But it will be an extremely hazardous undertaking. If you elected to join me, I’d be glad to place a section of the landing force under your command. You are, of course, exactly the sort of chap I need for it. But before you give me your answer, I must tell you that the chances of your returning alive from the assault would be – slender. One might say non-existent.’
Wyatt was looking as delighted as if he’d been offered the Crown jewels.
‘Where shall I go, sir, and when, to study these esoteric arts?’
* * *
Crosby, the paymaster in the other office, was falling over himself in efforts to be helpful. Before, Nick had found him moderately insufferable. He took the long, buff envelope, containing his appointment to Bravo, from him; it bore the seal of Captain (D)’s office, and was addressed to Lieutenant Nicholas Everard, DSC, RN. The paybob said, ‘Captain Tomkinson’s only just in the process of taking over—’
‘Tomkinson?’
‘The new Captain (D).’
He remembered: Reaper had mentioned him. He was pushing the buff envelope into his pocket; Crosby asked him, ‘Excuse me, but – shouldn’t you read it?’
As if an appointment to an o
ily wad was something to drool over… Crosby said, ‘I do think you should—’
‘Yes. Later on. ’He nodded at the fussy little man. Some of these office people lived for their bits of paper, records, memoranda… As for Tomkinson, it seemed Dover was filling rapidly with four-stripe captains, as Keyes built up his staff. God help Dover, Nick thought; and God help Nicholas Everard, too. He told Crosby, ‘I’ll give it some undivided attention later. But now I think I’ll go on down. You say there’s a boat already waiting?’
‘Should be.’ Crosby nodded. He still looked worried. ‘Or on its way in. By the time you get down there—’
‘Right. Thank you.’
The boat was there, waiting for him – if that motorboat out at the naval pier steps was Bravo’s. He could see it as he crossed the Marine Parade. He could see Bravo herself too, in the centre of the destroyer moorings, rolling and tugging at her buoy. The wind was rising, high clouds scudding over; the usual south-wester was blowing up, and as usual there was ice in it. He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat and set off down the pier.
There was an RNR midshipman in charge of the boat. A skinny, dark-haired lad who looked as if he thought Nick might bite him.
He stepped into the sternsheets. ‘Carry on, please.’
‘Shove off for’ard! Shove off aft!’
Quite choppy in the harbour. The destroyer berths were in shallow water; tides ripped in from both entrances and met here in the middle, to the discomfort of destroyer men seeking a rare night’s rest in port… He gazed at Bravo as the boat bounced out towards her. Strange-looking craft, the thirty-knotters. This one, a D-class boat of 1897 or ’98, had two funnels instead of the more usual three. They were low, stunted-looking, and there was an absolute litter of ventilators all over her upper deck. A turtle-back foc’sl led to a bridge that was only about half the height of Mackerel’s and two-thirds of which was occupied by a twelve-pounder gun. There was a six-pounder aft, and two more on each side between bridge and after funnel. The pair of torpedo tubes just for’ard of the stern gun would be eighteen-inch. The general effect was of clutter, bits and pieces everywhere.
But she was clean, well kept. That would have been Elkington’s responsibility, and it was obvious he’d been a very conscientious first lieutenant. The motorboat curved in towards the port-side gangway. Nick wondered what sort of CO he’d be getting now; he couldn’t remember Elkington having mentioned him.
The midshipman had cut the boat’s engine. Almost at the gangway’s foot. Now he’d put her astern and he’d reversed the helm: and stopped again. It had been quite neatly done, and Nick told him so. The boat’s coxswain, a leading seaman, looked as pleased as the snotty did. Bowman and sternsheetman had their boathooks out and hooked to the boat-rope. Nick stepped on to the gangway.
Above his head, he heard the quiet order, ‘Pipe!’
Pipe?
Only commanding officers – and foreign naval officers, and the King and members of his family, and certain other categories of visitor such as the officer of the guard and four-stripers and above – were entitled to be piped over the side of a Royal Navy ship. He didn’t fit anywhere in that list. Someone, obviously, had blundered. He began to climb the gangway: the note of the pipe had risen, dropped, cut off. As he reached the top it began again. He saw Bruce Elkington standing stiffly at the salute, and a colossally broad CPO – it would be Bravo’s coxswain, probably – beside him, and two seamen, one of whom was the bosun’s mate and doing the piping. Behind Elkington a sub-lieutenant and a warrant officer were also standing at attention. Finally, as he paused on the top platform of the gangway, he saw a long line of sailors fallen-in on the iron deck abreast the funnels, and a similar rank on the other side.
His hand snapped up to the salute, and he stepped aboard. The pipe’s note fell, held for a few seconds, died. Elkington stepped forward.
‘Welcome aboard, sir. On behalf of all hands may I say how delighted…’
His head span. This was – it was happening, it was real, and yet—
‘His fingers touched the unopened envelope in his pocket. He could visualize one startling, glowing phrase in it: … appointed in command… Reaper’s voice grated in his brain: You’re not a very trusting fellow, Everard… Elkington said, ‘Ship’s company is ready for your inspection, sir. May I first present Sub-Lieutenant York – and Mr Raikes, torpedo gunner… This is Chief Petty Officer Garfield, our cox’n.’
Shaking hands… Still dizzy. I’m dreaming this, I must be… A destroyer command, at twenty-two? Oh – only an oily wad, but still a—
‘Will you inspect the ship’s company, sir?’
Walking slowly for’ard, past the tubes and then a dinghy in its davits. He glanced up at the masthead, saw the ensign fairly crackling in the rising breeze.
Not just the ensign. His!
Part Two
St George’s Day: Zeebrugge
Chapter 12
‘Stop both.’
‘Stop both, sir.’
Engine-noise, the thrum of vibrating steel, ceased. Bravo, in her station near the van of the assault force, rolled more heavily as she lost steerage-way and the northerly breeze slapped a choppy sea against her port side. More of a sea than there’d been when they’d sailed; but thank heaven the visibility had closed in at last. Cloud obscured the moon, and drizzle was an enclosing curtain.
Admiral Keyes’s armada of seventy-six assorted craft lay stopped while MLs embarked surplus crews from the blockships. Stokers, mostly, who’d been needed for the cross-Channel passage but had to be removed before the actual assault. The fewer men on board the blockships when they were run into the canal mouth and sunk, the fewer there’d be to rescue.
To attempt to rescue. Nobody was in much doubt as to how the odds lay. And yet there was gossip – Bravo’s chief stoker had mentioned it to Elkington – that a lot of those engine-room ratings weren’t intending to disembark at this point. Determined to be in on the attack itself, they were planning to lie low until the ships got under way again.
Nick moved out to the port wing of the twelve-pounder platform, which was a forward extension of the bridge, and trained his glasses aft. The CMB they’d been towing should slip now, and York, the sub-lieutenant, should be seeing to it. Elkington murmured at Nick’s elbow, ‘Slipping her now, sir. Starboard quarter.’ As he spoke, the cough and spluttering roar of the CMB’s engine proved he was right. And all through the mass of silent, rolling ships other CMBs would be casting off and getting away under their own power. They’d been brought this far under tow so as to conserve fuel. He could see a few of them now, in the lanes and gaps between bigger ships’ dark outlines, slinking off like wolves to gather in their various packs.
They’d be the first craft in, laying smoke in the Hun defenders’ faces to cover the attacking force’s approach. Then MLs, plugging up more slowly – Bell’s and Treglown’s among them – would take over most of the smoke-laying work.
‘Signal to proceed, sir!’
Leading Signalman Tremlett had been watching for it. Nick said, ‘Half ahead together.’
‘Half ahead together, sir!’ Clark, bosun’s mate, slammed the brass telegraphs over. There was a lot of brasswork in and on Bravo, and every bit of it gleamed like gold. Elkington and his chief buffer, PO Russell, made up for the ship’s antiquity by keeping her so spick-and-span anyone might think she’d been prepared for an admiral’s inspection, not for war. Every ventilator, for instance – and her upper deck was fairly dotted with them – had a brass rim which in sunlight was blinding to look at. Bravo was gathering way, responding to her helm again, and Chief Petty Officer Horace Garfield held her precisely in the centre of her next-ahead’s wake. Garfield’s cap was, as usual, slanted to the right, while his left eyebrow – also as usual – was cocked up. Whether he wore his cap at that angle to make room for the habitually raised eyebrow, or pushed the eyebrow up to fill some of the space left by the invariably askew cap, probably not even he him
self knew.
Grebe, the thirty-knotter ahead of Bravo, was to be her partner in the inshore patrol. By way of contrast to these two relics, ahead of them steamed North Star and Phoebe, two new destroyers who were to patrol the area off the mole’s end; and ahead of Phoebe, Roger Keyes’s vast silk vice-admiral’s flag flaunted its St George’s Cross over the flotilla-leader Warwick.
Marker buoys had been laid with great accuracy to guide the attacking force and mark the stages of its approach. Where they’d just been stopped had been position ‘D', and now they were steering for ‘G’, just a few miles farther east.
Astern of this group of ships – Unit ‘L’ in Keyes’s operational orders – Unit ‘M’ consisted of two more destroyers towing the submarines C1 and C3. Seen bow-on – from here now, of course, they were quite invisible in the dark, and anyway hidden by the towing ships – seen end-on, they looked like nothing that anyone had even seen before. Spars had been mounted across the tops of their conning-towers, and motor-dinghies slung on each side from the spars. Rather like panniers slung on a donkey’s back. The boats were for the submarines’ crews to escape in, after they’d done their job of blowing the viaduct sky-high. But only an optimist could have believed they’d have much chance of launching those dinghies, let alone motoring away to safety in them.
Tim Rogerson was in C3.
The dark assembly of ships ploughed steadily, silently east-ward. Bravo rattled, groaned, hummed and moaned to herself as she thrust across the waves; the wind sang in her rigging overhead. She was entitled, Nick thought, at her age, to talk and mutter to herself. He was used to her now, and loved her. As others had before him; and he wondered suddenly, the thought springing out of the darkness and the tension, the knowledge that before long the night would turn to flame and thunder, whether anyone else would after him.
Sixty Minutes for St George Page 20
