by Peter Albano
His opening gambit had been a casual, almost careless reference to the top-secret British decoders who had been reading German wireless transmissions for over a year. “According to the chaps in Room Forty, a German force of six new B-class destroyers under Korvettenkapitän Max Schultz has reinforced the German flotilla at Zeebrugge.” An excited rumble filled the room. “Added to the Sixth Flotilla at Ostend and the Tenth at Zeebrugge, the Hun has at least eighteen vessels ready for sea and Schultz has taken command of the whole lot. Obviously, this force increases the threat to the Dover Patrol and Channel shipping in general.”
Commander Norman Griffith, the commanding officer of Destroyer Squadron Eight, said, “The B-boat, sir. I understand they mount ten-point-five-centimeter guns.”
Watts nodded to a yeoman of letters seated at a small desk to his left. The yeoman handed the vice admiral a document. He read: “Length two hundred eighty feet, eighteen hundred forty-three tons, speed thirty-two, three funnels, three deck level fifty-centimeter torpedo tubes, two ten-point-five-centimeter guns.” There were groans. The vice admiral raised his hands. “Your K-boats have three, quick-firing four-inch guns mounted on better platforms with superior sea-keeping qualities and manned by the best gun crews on earth.” The captains exchanged skeptical looks. Watts surveyed his audience with beady eyes, purple lips slashed downward in a scowl that was lost in the fat.
He continued, irritation obvious in the timbre of his voice. “I have a plan to lure them out, engage them, and dispose of the lot.” He tapped the desktop with a single finger. “As you know, the Dover patrol has been hard put to contain destroyer raids. Squadrons from Zeebrugge and Ostend have raised bloody hob of late and now Schultz’s flotilla makes the threat even more grave to say nothing of the U-boats operating out of the Channel ports.” He glanced at the yeoman, who handed him more documents. He spoke with a new solemn tone in his voice. “Last night German destroyers shelled Dover and Margate and sank two steamers off the Downs anchorage. Two enemy ships were spotted as close in as the Maas lightship and light buoy Eleven-A.” The captains exchanged looks of dismay and anger. “Whitehall is screaming for action and, as you well know, the papers will be crying for blood in a day or two.” He thumped the table. “You know these attacks cannot be kept secret.”
Reginald waved a hand. The vice admiral nodded in his direction. “Sir,” Hargreaves said. “What happened to the plan to attack the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend with monitors?”
Watts smiled respectfully. “You were in planning in fifteen, Commander Hargreaves?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Watts spoke directly to Reginald. “The War Office was hoping the Somme offensive would put a quick end to this whole bloody business—put the Ostend-Zeebrugge plan on the shelf. But now”—he shrugged—”I believe we’ll be dusting it off.” Reginald nodded. The vice admiral continued. “Korvettenkapitän Schultz is known as a daring commander—a hothead who can be reckless in the stress of battle.” Watts placed both hands on the table and supported his weight by leaning forward. “We intend to lure him out and hope the other flotillas will follow.” He moved to a chart attached to the wall under a picture of King George V and picked up a pointer. “A slow convoy—eight merchantmen, three colliers, and an oiler with a weak escort of two patrol craft and a minesweeper—will leave South Shields tonight and head south through the Channel at eight knots. Their wireless discipline will be sloppy and German direction finders should pick them up as they stand out. Anyway, German U-boats and small craft patrols are sure to pick them up and I am convinced Schultz will not be able to resist the bait.” A smile creased the broad face and his beady eyes moved over the assemblage.
Norman Griffith asked, “Not even in daylight, sir?”
“Not even in daylight,” Watts said, his smile exuding confidence. He struck the chart. “Commodore Tyrwhitt’s Harwich cruiser force of six cruisers and eight destroyers will steam north and circle back of the convoy.” He struck a long arc from south to north and south again. He turned to the captains and indicated two of the older officers sitting close together at the end of the table. “Commanders Griffith and Gladden will take Destroyer Squadrons Eight and Eleven on a northerly course to intercept the convoy here”—he struck the chart with the rubber pointer—”off Skegness.” He turned to Hargreaves. “At the same time, Commander Hargreaves, you will strike out across the Channel with Destroyer Squadron Four and place your ships between the German destroyers and their home ports.” He tapped his open palm with the pointer. “That’s my plan,” he added proudly. “We’ll have them on an anvil.”
Reginald felt the acid of anger and dread seethe deep within and icy prickles began to chill the back of his neck. “Admiral Watts,” he said, not bothering to wave. “It is possible my squadron may be forced to engage eighteen enemy ships, six armed with ten-point-five-centimeter guns, and two knots faster than we are.”
Anger boiled through the fat. “There’s little chance that can happen, Commander—not with Commodore Tyrwhitt’s cruiser force hot on their sterns and”—he gesticulated at Gladden and Griffith—”not to mention Destroyer Squadrons Eight and Eleven.”
Reginald felt control begin to slip away. “On their sterns, sir—on their sterns. Destroyer Squadron Four will be hot on their bows with hostile shore guns behind us. We’ll be on the anvil. We’ll need cruiser support.”
The layered fat began to purple. “Commander Hargreaves, the ships aren’t available and if you’re afraid. . .”
Reginald shot to his feet, discretion and years of training forgotten, cold rage bursting from his lips. “No one challenges my courage, Admiral.” There was a shocked silence, every eye focused on Reginald. “Steam with me, Admiral. Fly your pendant from my masthead. Die with my chaps.” There was undisguised sarcasm in his voice.
The eyes moved back to Watts whose face was a book of rage. Surprisingly, he managed to control his voice, speaking with only a slight tremor. “Because of the pressing exigencies of the moment, Commander Hargreaves, I will not remove you from your command.” Watts thumped the table with a hand like a sack of jelly. “You will carry out my orders precisely as I have outlined.” He gestured to the yeoman. “My writer will give each of you a detailed description of your duties and responsibilities, departure times, ETAs, courses, speeds, codes, recognition signals, and dispositions. And keep in mind, there is nothing I would enjoy more than to personally lead you. But the admiralty forbids it—requires me to remain here.” He looked around silently, smoking eyes finally coming to rest on Hargreaves. His voice was cracking ice. “You and I will discuss this matter—your conduct—when the operation is concluded. You are dismissed.”
Reginald was the first to leave the room.
The next day in a conference room in Portsmouth Reginald met with his own captains: Commanders Liddel Wolcott of Unity, Nathanial Blankenship of Victor, and Dewey Woolridge of Paragon. With memories of the previous day’s scene in Operations Room Four still fresh in every man’s mind, the meeting was somber. There was the usual distribution of orders, charts, the discussion of departure times, readiness statutes, steaming formations, signals, radio silence, and the multitude of details facing a squadron preparing for sea and battle. “And regardless of what you heard in Operations Room Four,” Reginald concluded, “we have our orders and I need not tell you we will execute them to the letter.” Then Reginald had taken a last look around the bright, intense faces staring up at him: Wolcott and Blankenship both fathers of two, Woolridge newly married. Was he about to create a new clutch of widows and orphans? One thing was a certainty: these brave, loyal men would follow him through the gates of hell. Suddenly he felt anger and resentment, a thickening and closing of the throat. “You are dismissed,” he said hoarsely. The captains filed silently out of the room.
Now he was leading four ships, over six hundred men, on a run north that would place them just a few miles off the coast of German Belgium. He had tried to hid
e his misgivings when presenting the plan to Lancer’s officers in a wardroom meeting. But the senior officers, Pochhammer, Farrar, and the new gunnery officer Horace Gibbs, saw through it immediately, yet, as the disciplined professionals they were and taking their cue from their captain, they accepted the orders and possibly their death warrants stoically with only a few questions about execution and tactics, not overall strategy. But there had been resentment and anger smoldering in Farrar’s strange eyes.
Farrar’s soft voice in his ear and an unusually vicious roll brought Reginald back to the present. He spoke boldly, using expressions from the mess decks. “By your leave, Captain, the plan is a load of pusser’s duff—a sure ticket to blighty.”
Reginald’s first impulse was to rebuff the pilot. However, the voice was soft, confidential, and, despite the crude level of expression, the sentiments were his own. “The Frenchies would say, ‘C’est la guerre,’ pilot,” Reginald said.
“Even the Frogs would do better than this, Captain. We need a big-gunned ship. We can run into ships that can out-gun us and outrun us. We need a big-gunned ship—a cruiser division.”
It was time to bring the conversation to a halt. “They aren’t available and we have our orders.”
Farrar would not let go. “And orders are sacred.”
“Of course. For what other reason do we exist?” Reginald waved his hand in a gesture of irritation and finality. Piqued, Farrar moved to the other side of the bridge and sullenly raised his glasses.
A break in the clouds and a bolt of sunlight struck a low ridge of clouds rouging a large sector to the southeast in spectacular shades of vermilion and cinnabar, banishing thoughts of Watts and his plan, bringing back Brenda’s hair and the way she looked when he held her on the dance floor of the Savoy. Like all men who had spent long months at sea, Reginald’s memories came back with vivid, real images, a presence that struck with a physical impact, and he could feel the American’s firm, tiny waist under his hand, her hard stomach and groin pressing against his, inflaming him. The maddening heat and arousal of the moment rushed back and the young commander twisted in his chair uncomfortably like a tortured spirit. She was an enigma. Passionate, no doubt. She found him attractive; there was no doubt about that, either. But she would not accept him as her lover. There was a barrier. Did she have a secret lover? Randolph? He shrugged the idea away. No. There was something terribly wrong with Brenda. She loved men, but could accept none. Certainly, it was not Geoffry. Her husband’s death had been a blow—everyone knew that. But he felt she had never really loved Geoffry romantically—passionately. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was guilt over all of the dead young men. But how could that be? He loved Brenda but could not tell her. What was wrong with this world? Was there so much hate love ceased to exist? Certainly there was sex—that was what everyone sought. Everyone except Brenda. He sighed and rubbed his head in frustration.
A lookout’s call jarred him. “Ship! Fine on the port bow!”
“Very well,” Desmond Farrar said, raising his glasses.
Reginald came erect, glasses hard against his face. A small unarmed drifter, wallowing in the swells. Probably trying out the new hydrophones that were supposed to detect U-boats miles away. Reginald dropped his glasses in frustration. If the small, helpless vessel ever encountered a U-boat, all it could do was cry a warning on its wireless and hope destroyers from the Dover patrol arrived before it died. Bloody terrible way to fight a war. Throwing away good brave men—like his own.
The sun was high in the eastern sky, but it was still very cold. He glanced at his watch. The convoy had left South Shields four hours before Destroyer Squadron Four had put to sea. By now the bait was off Flamborough Head with the Harwich Cruiser Force eight miles astern, and Destroyer Squadrons Eight and Eleven were poised in Dover with steam up. They would put to sea in another thirty minutes. There was a sharp whistle and Reginald leaned forward and opened one of the voice pipes. “This is the captain,” he said into the steel tube.
He recognized the voice of his young signals officer, Sublieutenant Ian Carpenter. “This is the W-T, sir. Just received a signal on fleet channel B, Captain. ‘German destroyers putting to sea from Ostend and Zeebrugge.’”
“Very well. Do not acknowledge.”
Carpenter’s voice came back. “We are maintaining silence, sir.”
“It’s started, sir,” Farrar said in a hard voice.
Reginald felt the same pang of helplessness all men feel when committed to battle by the minds, hopes, and ambitions of other men. He was a totally expendable pawn who had very little to say about whether he would live or die in the next twenty-four hours. He could only follow his orders, pray, and trust to luck. “Yes,” he said simply. “The plan is working.”
“Like a clockwork mouse,” Farrar said laconically, turning away and raising his glasses.
As the force worked its way slowly northeastward, frequently changing course to mislead curious eyes that could be watching at the end of a periscope below or staring down through binoculars from the clouds above, several ships were sighted. Six merchantmen with two small escorts passed to the southwest, hugging the coast of Folkestone, and headed for the Atlantic, coal black funnel smoke smearing the sea in rolls in the heavy air. Then, a half hour later, two minesweepers, both converted trawlers, passed in line abreast with gear deployed. They passed within four miles sweeping the Channel landward of the force. Recognition signals were exchanged while the ready gun, X-gun, tracked. The crew was not called to action stations. Reginald had his lunch brought to the bridge.
By 1400 hours, the squadron passed through the narrowest part of the Channel with the Pas de Calais visible off the starboard side, Dover and its high white cliffs like a long row of hulking spirits to port. The wind had died and the sea had calmed with just a deep swell like the heavy breathing of a dying man to change the hues from dark gray to black. The sky had changed, too, from grays and black to solid pewter with streaks of ostrich feather cirrus smeared across it. The air itself seemed charged—heavy with static that made Reginald’s skin tingle, the cold still oppressive and insidious.
By 1530 hours, Dunkerque was off the starboard quarter and the first attack signals were broadcast from the convoy. Ostend was thirty miles away. They could run into enemy patrols. Reginald turned to Farrar. “Your clockwork mouse is moving, Mister Farrar. Action stations,” he said matter-of-factly.
Farrar shouted down the voice pipes and in a moment boatswain mates’ pipes shrieked and buzzers sounded in every compartment in the ship. Instantly, there was a pounding of running boots on decks and ladders, the shouts of officers and petty officers, the clang of water-tight doors being slammed, the hard sound of steel on brass as breeches received four-inch shells, the declining whir of fans as deckhands were turned off. Farrar moved to the chart table and Pochhammer took his place next to the captain. Reports echoed up the voice pipes: “A-gun manned and ready”; “Y-gun manned and ready”; “W-T manned and ready.” On and on they went, Pochhammer relaying the reports, Hargreaves acknowledging with “Very well.” Finally, Lancer was ready, alert, claws bared, holding her breath.
Reginald glanced at the Belgian coast looming through the gathering gloom off the starboard side. He needed more sea room. “Port one point,” he said into the pipe.
He felt the ship heel as the helmsman put the wheel over exactly eleven degrees fifteen minutes. “One point of port wheel on, sir,” came back through the pipe.
“Very well. Midships. Steer zero-one-zero.”
“Wheel amidships. Steady on zero-one-zero, sir.”
“Very well.” He spoke into another tube. “W-T, any more messages from the convoy?”
Carpenter’s voice came back. “Nothing since the original contact report.”
Hargreaves turned to Pochhammer. “Have the lookouts be especially alert for small craft.” Reginald knew the order was redundant. By this time,
enemy eyes on shore and probably in submarines had doubtless spotted the destroyers. Now their survival depended on timing, skill, courage, and no small measure of luck. To foil lurking U-boats, Geoffry increased speed to sixteen knots and led the squadron on a zigzagging patrol only six miles off the coast, first northeastward and then reversing with his bows pointed to the southwest.
At 1600 hours, Carpenter reported more wireless transmissions: the convoy had lost two cargo ships, a collier, and an oiler. They were crying for help.
Pochhammer struck the windscreen. “Where’s the bloody cruisers?”
Reginald was jarred by the starboard lookout’s shrill cry. “Flames! Rockets!” The voice belonged to a new eighteen-year-old midshipman, Orville Tucker, and it grated on the captain’s nerves like the screech of a taut, erratically played violin string.
Reginald knew the sighting had to be to starboard and swung his glasses. But the panicky youngster needed a lesson. “Bearing? Range, old man. Chop, chop!”
The boy shrieked back, “Flames and alarm rockets broad on the starboard beam—over the horizon.”
“Very well.” Reginald had already brought his glasses to the western horizon where two suns were setting. No doubt about it. Fifteen to twenty miles away, an uncertain blood red glow spreading over the horizon, lighting up the low clouds like the pulsing electric signs in Piccadilly. Balls of light soared high above it, silver and red spheres that exploded and rained down red, white, and green stars. “Must be the oiler—poor bloody bastards,” Pochhammer muttered, staring through his binoculars.
There were huge flashes to the northwest and Reginald saw groups of lights arc lazily above the mist and plunge into the sea to the south where they disappeared in wavering red and salmon glows. “Gunfire!” came down from the director, which was mounted on the mainmast above the forebridge. The voice belonged to Lieutenant Horace Gibbs, the new gunner. “Big guns.”
“Must be the Harwich cruisers,” Pochhammer said.
