Sixty Minutes for St George

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

  The recall?

  Vindictive’s signal to the landing force. The order to start falling back to the ship. It meant the blocking had been completed, that the withdrawal would be starting now.

  And consequently, that the howitzer plastering of the Goeben battery would be ceasing. Damn!

  ‘Ease to five. Stop port.’

  He watched carefully as the gap between the two ships closed. ‘Midships.’

  ‘Midships, sir!’ Garfield unruffled, stoic.

  Staring at Grebe’s battered, lacerated hulk, Nick thought Have we pulled it off, then? Really? But it was a detached, rather academic consideration. The smoke was already wafting out, surrounding them; Grebe was half hidden in it. All right, so there was another bank to drift up behind it, but that gave – what, five or ten minutes? To get two ships lashed together and under way, creep out of range?

  * * *

  Wyatt croaked, ‘Hold on, damn you…’ Crawling, sliding himself along with the Marine corporal on his back. This one seemed to have been shot in the lungs. His own wounds, Wyatt thought, were mostly superficial. His left leg was smashed from ankle to kneecap – that was bad enough… Whenever the pain of it reached his brain he had to stop, lie flat, press his face against the concrete and – he’d passed out, two or three times. It came in spasms, and when it ebbed – he said aloud, ‘The hell with it!’ His shoulder – no way of knowing whether that had been shrapnel or a bullet: and a bayonet-stab in the neck. Flesh-wounds, those. Bled a lot, but – nothing. He’d been stabbed when he’d led a rush of bluejackets over some wire – they’d thrown planks on it and dashed over them – and cleared out one end of the first lot of trenches. Huns back there now, damn them! A long time ago, that felt like, but it couldn’t have been, they’d only been on the mole an hour. He told the man on his back, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll live to have another crack at ’em! So’ll I, by God!’ Talking helped, now and then. One’s own voice reassured one. Almost as much as seeing Keyes’s flag had, just now: over the smoke out there, within a stone’s throw of the mole, he’d seen Warwick’s masthead go by with that great banner of a vice-admiral’s flag streaming from it – big because it had been made to fly from a dreadnought battleship, Keyes’s squadron flagship up in Scapa – the St George’s Cross and the single red ball in its upper canton: it had passed by floating above the smoke although the destroyer under it was hidden. Men had cheered to see it, there’d been a shout of ‘Here comes Roger!’ A few minutes before the recall signal, that had been; and now by unspoken agreement, without any order being given, they were bringing back the wounded and the dead. Wherever they could be got at: some, you couldn’t reach. Wyatt had passed Padre Peshall half a dozen times: Peshall, not even scratched so far – perhaps the Lord looked after his own lieutenants? – had an odd way of running in a crouched, bear-like shamble with a man across his shoulders. He kept delivering them and going back for more. Wyatt was doing the same, a lot of chaps were, but he couldn’t move as fast as the padre, with this damn leg. He’d saved three: this one would make four. It wouldn’t be fitting, to leave the dead for Huns to deal with; and the wounded, of course, had to be brought out. In the last hour, Wyatt thought he’d seen everything fine that there could be to see, he’d come to realize there was no standard to which the British sailor or Marine could not measure. Harrison, for instance, who’d been laid out half-dead by that shot in the jaw: he’d come-to, and immediately rushed ashore and taken over command from Adams. By that time Adams, who’d led an assault on the wire and trenches beyond No. 3 shed, had been hit several times himself and lost three-quarters of his men. He’d reinforced them with some of B Company, whose officers had all been killed, and led another rush along the parapet, but a machine-gun had pinned them down and another one from a destroyer moored on the inside of the mole had caught them in a cross-fire. They’d had to retire again, leaving a lot of men dead out in front. Harrison, taking over, had sent Adams back to ask for Marine reinforcements, and Major Weller, the senior surviving leatherneck – the Marines by this time had cleared two hundred yards of mole to the westward of the ship and were holding out down there in the face of particularly fierce attacks – sent up a platoon. Meanwhile Harrison, who couldn’t speak because of his smashed jaw, had led another dash along the roadway. He and every single man with him was either killed or wounded. Wyatt, who’d been flat at the time, temporarily knocked out by the shock of his leg-wound, had seen it, and helped some of them to crawl back. The half-dead leading the three-quarter dead. Able Seamen Eaves had tried to carry back Harrison’s body, but Eaves was knocked out himself while he was doing it. Another sailor, McKenzie, a machine-gunner, had gone on working his gun long after he’d been badly wounded: he’d caught a group of Germans running from a blockhouse to the destroyer – which had shortly afterwards blown up, hit by a torpedo from God knew where – and he’d polished them all off, like a row of skittles, one behind the other. Wyatt asked the man on his back, ‘Know your Captain Bamford, do you, eh?’ The corporal didn’t answer. Couldn’t: couldn’t hear, quite likely. Wyatt told him, not caring too much about being heard or not, ‘Man’s incredible. Never seen anything like it. Doesn’t know bullets kill a man – or doesn’t give a brass—’

  ‘Hello there, Edward!’ The padre crouched down beside him, staring at him anxiously. Probably thought he’d been talking to himself, gone off his head or something. He smiled. ‘Give you a hand with this fellow?’

  ‘No. You fetch your own.’ Wyatt thought that was funny. He said it again, because Peshall hadn’t laughed. The padre said, ‘Ought to pack it in now, Edward. Let ’em take you aboard this time. The recall’s sounded, did you hear it?’

  Wyatt crabbed on towards the ship. A Royal Marine platoon was holding a small perimeter and providing covering fire, and there were scaling-ladders up to the higher roadway. Bluejackets were hauling the dead and wounded up as they were brought back from all directions, and carrying them across and lowering them down the brows. Four brows in commission now. Wyatt had one more chap he was determined to fetch: he had to, he’d actually told him he’d come back for him. He’d seen him sprawled in a half-sitting position in the doorway of a wrecked blockhouse or store near the Hun wire that started beyond No. 3 shed. There were some railway trucks lined up there, and they’d provide enough cover for a man on his own to crawl up under them and drag him away. The Germans were damn close by, since they’d reoccupied that trench: but if one was quiet, and as quick as this damned leg would allow… Wyatt had been almost within touching distance of the wounded man already: he’d put the Marine corporal down, crept under the trucks and inspected him from not more than ten feet away. An able seaman with three good-conduct badges. Badly hit – his face all black on one side with crusting blood. Wyatt had called to him, ‘Hold hard – I’ll come back for you!’ The recall wasn’t an order to be obeyed promptly, it only gave notice of withdrawal. You couldn’t just draw stumps and walk away. He lay flat while a machine-gun flamed and clattered from the left: there’d been too much light, one of their blasted flaming onions. God, he thought, How I hate the bloody Huns! There was quite a bunch of men in the shelter of No. 3 shed now. A young Marine sergeant was controlling them, sending them across the open mole in small groups between bursts of enemy machine-gun fire. On one’s own, keeping to the shadows and moving this slowly, as slowly as was necessitated by this damn-fool condition he was in, you had a certain advantage over men in groups legging it about. He grinned, muttered, Marvellous chaps. Thank God I’m an Englishman! Better cross over now. He’d been lucky with that parapet hook, he thought. That lift of the ship, just as Daffodil shoved her in, had done it. Wouldn’t have, otherwise. Bargained for a tide three or four feet higher than tonight’s. Last night’s. One minute after midnight, Vindictive had bumped alongside. Young Claud Hawkins of D Company hadn’t been so lucky, when they’d been struggling to get Iris tied-up alongside. Hawkins had used a scaling-ladder, got right up on the parapet to manhandle the hook over; he
’d been on it when they opened up on him, and he’d started firing back at them with his revolver, and they’d killed him with the hook still not in place. Then George Bradford, Hawkins’s company commander, had tried going up the derrick, and a machine-gun firing across the mole had cut him off the top of it: he’d fallen – his body had fallen-between the mole and the old ferry-boat, and one of his petty officers had gone down after it and that had been his end, too. The hook tore away in any case, as soon as the weight of the steamer came on it. But you felt so damn proud, to have had such friends… Nearly there now. The shade under those trucks was deep: once he got under there, he’d be – Flattening, as a mortar thumped down somewhere behind him. Shrapnel lashed the trucks, splintering wood and striking sparks off metal, sang away into the flaming dark. Last trip, this. The ships wouldn’t be alongside much longer. He was dragging himself forward again. Never mind about it hurt-ing, you milksop, doctors’ll fix all that up. What they’re for. Had enough practice by this time to know how to set about it, too. That recall wasn’t sounded on Vindictive’s siren, but on Daffodil’s. Reason: poor old Vindictive’s had her whistle shot off. She’d been shot to bits, above the level of the parapet she was a smashed-up scarecrow of a ship. God bless her! And Carpenter, Rosoman, Osborn, Bramble – what a crowd! Hilton Young with an arm half off: Walker waving without a hand: Keyes knows how to pick men, all right. Any man Roger Keyes picks for a job of work is fit to know. Under the second truck now… Putting his face right down on the cold concrete between the lines he could see light – radiance of distant starshell and closer flares, constantly changing but always there to some extent – and the black outline of the wrecked building where his three-badger would be waiting for him. Told you I’d be back, my friend, eh? Movement: scrape of a boot on concrete, and then a metallic click. Something bounced, skittered towards him under the truck. It touched his face. In the half-second that was left to him he realized it was a grenade.

  * * *

  Grebe was on fire again, and all her guns had been knocked out. He could see just one man moving on her after-part. The stern itself was shattered, funnels split and torn, her bridge was a charred heap of scrap-iron on which Hatton-Jones, recognizable by a bandage round his head, had a helmsman and a snotty with him. The fires aft provided enough illumination for the occasional starshell to be superfluous, from the shore gunners’ point of view. Grebe was a dead weight to Bravo: it was probably only the fact that she was well down by the bow with her stern consequently raised high in the water that she hadn’t flooded aft and foundered.

  Bravo’s twelve-pounder had been knocked to bits by a direct hit which had also killed all its crew; it was a miracle that shell hadn’t killed everyone on the bridge as well. At least with the gun finished one wasn’t obliged to go on bringing up more men to man it in the place of those already killed: stuck out there in front of the bridge, and with its protective screening shot away, it was about as exposed a position as one could imagine. Every shot that hit the foc’sl sent splinters screaming over it. More shells ripped overhead: Nick was tensed for new flame, blast, destruction, death: it hadn’t come. Not this time. They’d all gone over. The bastards have to miss sometime: … Bravo’s worst wound had been a hit in her for’ard boiler-room. Chief ERA Joseph had shut it off now: so long as the feed-water held out they could manage on the after boilers. She could make a few knots through the water; and while she could move, and float, and Grebe could float and move with her, there were lives in both ships that one could try to save.

  ‘Port five, cox’n.’

  ‘Port five, sir…’

  To keep the for’ard wires taut. When they were slack, the sea’s movement drove the two ships together – thumping, scraping… He saw flashes from the Goeben battery: he’d had his glasses on it, holding them in his left hand with his elbow on the top edge of the port side plating, looking aft over Grebe’s smashed stern. With nothing shooting at those shore guns now – Vindictive and the others had left the mole some time ago – they were using the two old thirty-knotters for target-practice.

  Wreaking some vengeance, perhaps, for the indignity their side had suffered, the rape of their stronghold.

  Perhaps I’m being stupid? Perhaps there’s no point in this now?

  No alternative, though. Badly wounded men drowned, when a ship sank. Bravo and Grebe had more dead and wounded now than they had fit and living. Less than half Bravo’s crew of sixty were on their feet.

  Salvo scorching in now. He met Garfield’s impassive stare. Behind the coxswain, young York. York had taken over from Elkington, who was dead. There wasn’t anything one could do, except struggle on. At what – two knots? The only miracle that he could think of that anyone could have prayed for was the Goeben guns to run out of ammunition. It wasn’t really likely. Nick said, ‘One thing – they’ll have to give us a new ship, after this.’

  Garfield’s raised eyebrow managed to climb another centimetre, then dropped back. He muttered, ‘Don’t make ’em like this no more, sir.’

  ‘You think that’s bad?’

  Jowitt laughed. The shells came down in a hoarse rush ending in leaping fountains of black sea and a streak of flame across both ships, clap of thunder under your feet and inside your skull, stink of explosive and fried metal: on the starboard side abaft the bridge yellow flames danced, crackling and spurting, leaping to throw the foremast into silhouette. The yard had gone and most of the rigging with it, the rest hanging in a tangle of steel-wire rope, halyards and aerial wires, but the mast still stood. Nick realized that the yellow burning was a cordite fire; bits of it were springing in the air, landing elsewhere and continuing to burn. Ready-use cartridges at the starboard for’ard six-pounder. He called to York, ‘Sub – go round the guns and dump all the ready-use. Cartridges specially. Over the side.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  ‘Bravo, ahoy!’

  Hatton-Jones was bawling through a megaphone as the shellstink blew clear. Nick found his down by his feet. Moving was a strange business: you forced your limbs to travel in a desired direction, but when it started it felt like floating, lacking support or contact with the surroundings. He was up again, with the megaphone.

  ‘Everard here. You all right?’

  Hatton-Jones shouted, ‘You’d better leave me. Cast off and get out of it.’

  ‘What about your wounded?’

  Shouting hurt him. He looked aft. ‘Sub, wait here!’ York came back from the ladder; there was a considerable gap in the bridge screening there at its head. He asked Hatton-Jones, ‘Can you send them over to us?’

  Garfield shouted, ‘Captain, sir!’

  Nick turned, looked at him. The coxswain was pointing out to port, across Grebe’s smoking, shattered waist. Nick saw, by starshell light, a streak of white. Broken sea, some sort of—

  ‘CMB, sir!’

  He let the megaphone drop and put his glasses up. Left arm doing all the work. It was a CMB. One’s mind was slow-moving, sluggish; one had to drive it, prod it. What could – well, take off some of the wounded, or—

  Smoke!

  Streaming from that racing, leaping boat’s exhaust: lovely, heavy, Brock-type smoke! Jowitt cheered suddenly, a cowboyish whoop of joy. Garfield snarled, ‘Quiet, you silly—’

  ‘Sub’ Nick told York, ‘Go down and empty all the shot-ready racks. Then see to the wires, see if anything needs adjusting or doubling-up. Look for fraying, and see the fenders are still in place. All right?’

  Flashes of clarity. York was grinning as he turned away, looking at the CMB as she passed astern, rocketing by to spread her blessed smoke between these destroyers and the shore. Well inshore, plenty of room for it to drift out astern of them as they dragged themselves away like crippled animals. The CMB might even hang around, be at hand to lay another streak if that lot blew away.

  It was all they’d needed. There’d been no hope of getting it, and the MLs had all been fully occupied getting the blockships’ crews away. The launches had been
packed to capacity, and it was obvious that a lot of the blockships’ passage-crew stokers had defied orders and stayed on board… Shell-splashes sprang up way off on the quarter: the Hun gunners were trying to knock out the CMB now.

  ‘Grebe, ahoy!’

  ‘Yes, Everard?’

  ‘Shall we proceed now, sir?’

  Waiting for the answer, he leant against the plating and shut his eyes, whispered in his brain, Thank you, God…

  * * *

  More motion on them now, as the linked ships struggled seawards in a stiffening breeze. Crashing together, lurching, scraping… ‘Like two junk-yards ’aving a go,’ Garfield had rumbled. York had nearly split his sides. York said now, with binoculars at his eyes, ‘Looks like Warwick coming back in, sir. The admiral.’

  Nick was on the stool. They’d lashed it to the binnacle for him. He slid off it, moved to the side of the bridge and got his glasses up. He wasn’t certain, but he felt as if he might have been asleep. Perhaps only for a second? Otherwise he’d surely have toppled off the stool.

  It was Warwick, all right. Garfield said approvingly, ‘Come to round us strays up, sir. Gath’ring ’is flock.’

  Nick was remembering how a month or so ago, when he’d been getting to know his new coxswain and to like him, he’d asked him one day, ‘What year did you join the Navy?’ Gar-field had told him, ‘Nineteen-oh-three, sir.’ Nick had thought, When I was seven… He’d asked another question: ‘Why did you? What made you join?’ The coxswain had glanced down at his boots, frowned, looked up again. He’d answered with one word: ‘’unger, sir.’