Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  The round-down was sliding under Mark so close that he was certain he felt the wheels rub. He eased the stick back gently and this time when the engine died, he cut it. Ethel plumped onto the flight-deck on all three wheels, lumbered on until the hook dangling below her belly caught on the first arrester wire — and she stopped.

  The deck-handling party came running to manhandle her along the deck to the forward lift, right in the bow. When they halted Ethel there Mark unclipped his harness and stood up in the cockpit, swung his long legs. over its side and climbed down, feet finding the cut-out steps in the fuselage. He stood on the deck, tall enough to look out clear over the heads of the other men. But even so, Ethel towered above him. She was nearly as tall as a double-decker bus. He reached up and patted her because she had got him home. But he muttered, “For Christ’s sake, don’t do that again!”

  Ethel’s fitter and her rigger were in the crowd; at that time each Swordfish had its own maintenance crew, and these two were Royal Air Force personnel, as many were. The Fleet Air Arm had become part of the Royal Air Force in 1918, reverted to the Navy only in 1937, and the Navy had not had time since then to train enough of its own crews.

  Mark thought of Ethel’s two as Laurel and Hardy. They were not comic, but Hardy the fitter had a barrel of a body set on short, thick legs that strained his oil-marked white shorts and a round face burned brick red, while the rigger was shorter, thin and wiry. At sea or ashore they were always together, Laurel’s high-pitched Cockney voice rising and falling, interspersed with Hardy’s flat Yorkshire monosyllables.

  Laurel, the rigger, asked now, “Are you all right, sir?” Mark did not answer but continued to stare over their heads out to sea. “How about Mr Rogers and Campbell?”

  “Destroyer picked them up,” Laurel reassured him. “We got a signal; they’re O.K.”

  “Good.” So that was all right. Mark edged out of the crowd. Laurel glanced at Hardy and muttered, “He’s taking it cool.” They followed. The handling party were pulling out the retaining pins that held the wings out in their full spread of forty-six feet, folding the wings in along Ethel’s sides and securing them with the clamping bars swung out from under the tailplane.

  Mark turned to the two men. “She cut out on me, kept dying and coughing, running ragged then dying again. A fuel blockage. Not a good start.”

  Hardy answered, “No, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Mark eyed him, “Was it your fault?”

  The fitter met his stare. “No, sir. She was serviced and fuelled thorough and regular, like she always is. I’m just sorry it happened.”

  Mark nodded, hiding his edginess. “Very good. We’ll try again.”

  Hardy said, “I’ll strip the fuel system and clean it right through.

  “Do that.” He smiled wryly. “Still, it was an experience.”

  “Yes, sir. Suppose it was.” Laurel’s’ face was expressionless.

  Mark stepped from the lift to the deck as the hooter sounded, warning that the lift was about to descend. “I think I’ll try that line on Messrs. Rogers and Campbell. It should provoke some interesting comments.”

  The lift sank, taking Ethel down to the hangar deck, Laurel and Hardy riding with her. The rigger waited until they had sunk from Ward’s sight, then burst out, “Bloody cheek! ‘Was it your fault?’ he said.” Hardy flapped a meaty hand in a forget-it gesture but his incensed friend continued with his tirade: “And him a flamin’ weekend sailor!” Laurel, like Campbell, was deep into a twelve-year engagement. “And he’s goin’ to tell Doug Campbell it was ‘an experience’ after Doug’s had to swim home spittin’ and swearin’!”

  Hardy said stolidly, “Shut it. He asked me, I told him, he believed me. I reckon he’s all right. He could ha’ copped it today and he knew it. If it had been me, I’d have asked some questions, an’ all.” The lift settled on the hangar deck and he turned to Ethel, squatting, wings folded, like a huge settled bird. “Now, you old cow, we’ll sort you out.”

  Mark stood for a moment on the flight-deck after the lift had gone down, leaning against the wind that swept in over Eagle’s bow. Then he turned and walked aft along the starboard side, headed for the island. He would make his report to the Commander (Flying), could see him up on the compass platform now. He considered his team of Rogers, Campbell and himself in the air, Laurel and Hardy in the hangar, and knew he had to get them working more effectively together.

  Another Swordfish was ranged aft, engine bellowing, waiting to fly off to take over the patrol Mark had been forced to abandon. The flight-deck officer stood in front of it, hand circling in the “wind-up” signal; the pilot of the Swordfish had obediently opened up its engine. The Commander (Flying) signalled with his flag from the bridge, the F.D.O. waved the Swordfish away and it rolled along the deck, picked up flying speed and lifted neatly off.

  Mark thought, Nice work. He watched it climb away, banking onto its course. The sun was sinking and there were perhaps two hours of daylight left. He wondered if they would find the Italian Fleet — if it was at sea even. If not, then the Italians would be lying safe and snug in the harbour of Taranto. He knew little of that harbour, only that it lay in the heel of Italy, big and heavily defended.

  He passed the two four-inch anti-aircraft guns, pulling off his helmet, the tension easing, combing his long fingers through his hair. Landing on had been a risky business but he could grin about it now.

  Taranto. He thought it sounded like a bugle call or a ruffle of drums. Ominous. A .challenge. Taranto.

  Leading Airman Doug Campbell dried out after his dip, then went hot-foot and hot-headed to his petty officer. “Here! I want to fly with somebody else up front.”

  The P.O. raised his eyebrows, “Ho, do you? Well, Sunny Jim, maybe you were put there for a reason. Maybe the Commander (Flying) thought you were the best man for the job.”

  Campbell retorted with bitter sarcasm, “Because I can swim?”

  “Very droll.” The P.O. tapped Campbell with a thick finger. “You’re not the first matlo that’s happened to and you won’t be the last. What did you expect? The admiral’s barge waitin’ out there for you? Look, we’re not running five-bob joy-ride flights. You stay with those two. And cool off.”

  2 Katy

  Katy Sandford was day-dreaming — she saw the Italian Fleet in the great harbour, but it made no impression on her. Bert Keller, on the other hand, could hardly take his eyes off the ships. The two Americans walked along the wide, tree-lined promenade at Taranto with all the other strollers in the cool of the evening. The sun setting out over the Mediterranean sparked light from the glassy surface of the harbour, but this made no impression on Katy either, for she was dreaming of Jamie Dunbar. Meanwhile the men among the strollers glanced approvingly at this slim, sun-tanned girl in her thin cotton dress that set off her figure. She was not tall; even in the tapping high heels her head with its blonde mane did not quite reach to her companion’s shoulder.

  Keller shambled along at Katy’s side, long and thin, an inch or two over six feet, loosely and awkwardly put together. He wore a good suit but he had bought it off the peg and no peg was Bert’s shape. The suit looked dragged on carelessly; even as if he had slept in it. At times, he had. He admitted to being in his fifties, which meant he was nearly out of them. The Camel stuck in a corner of his mouth was as much a part of his face as his nose. He squinted through its smoke at the ships anchored in the great bay and said, “Boy! That’s an impressive sight.”

  They looked out over the huge, circular harbour. It was three miles across from where they walked to the islands of San Pietro and San Paolo. Those islands were linked by a submerged breakwater and another such connected them to the northern shore of the bay. A third breakwater, this one standing up from the sea like a great wall, ran out from the southern shore of the bay. The gap between its tip and San Paolo was the entrance to the harbour from the Gulf of Taranto, and the whole complex made the harbour unassailable from the sea.

  Five battle
ships — floating steel fortresses, grey and massive — were anchored in a long, spread line a quarter mile from the promenade. Cruisers and destroyers were scattered beyond them and launches running on errands between the ships carved white tracks on the blue mirror-like surface.

  “Impressive? Yeah...” Katy’s agreement was restrained. “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose so!” Bert glanced at her. “With your old man you have to know something about ships.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “He’s a captain in the United States Navy.”

  “So what?” Katy shrugged. “I knew a girl whose father was a gynaecologist but she still got pregnant at college.”

  Bert shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, she did.”

  Bert growled irritably, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know you didn’t...Look, Bert, my father went to sea the way other girls’ fathers went to the office. I loved him, I always knew what ship he was in, I’m proud that he’s at Annapolis now and a success in his job. But it’s not my job and I never dug into it. All right, I know something about ships but an expert! Never. Those five big ones are battleships, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s it. End of knowledge.”

  They strolled in silence for a time, Bert peering at the distant grey monsters. Katy believed that although she was proud of her father she was entitled to her own opinions, and one of these, held by many other Americans, was that the money spent on defence by Congress was mostly wasted. America had the Atlantic on one side, the huge Pacific on the other. Who was going to attack her? The war in Europe was none of her business. True, she had allowed herself to become embroiled in the last European bloodbath but that must not be allowed to happen again.

  Thinking of home and her father’s profession led her back to her day-dreaming. As the daughter of a naval captain she had met a succession of young officers, invited to her house for dinner. They were polite, very correct and on their guard in the presence of their senior. She thought they were like so many wind-up toys — except for Jamie Dunbar. He was English — or Scottish? Well, British, with the drawling accent of the British officer class. It was not just that he was handsome. She had overheard her mother say, “That Dunbar man is a ladykiller.”

  And her father’s reply: “Don’t let that fool you. He’s a tough professional soldier.”

  Maybe. But when Jamie Dunbar looked at a girl...

  She was jerked back to the present by Bert’s slow drawl. “Well, they’re big, newish, and faster than any of the four battleships Admiral Cunningham has. And now Italy’s in the war that means he has a problem.”

  Bert’s knowledge of warships came not from a casual interest but was part of his stock-in-trade. He was a war correspondent, had covered the Russo-Japanese war, the 1914 War and the Spanish Civil War and those were only the high spots.

  Now he went on: “You see, Cunningham has to sink at least some of them before he can call the shots at this end of the Mediterranean. And if they won’t stand and fight and he can’t catch ‘em, then Egypt and the Suez Canal look pretty shaky. That’s what Mussolini’s after: the gateway to the east, and the oil.”

  Katy said, “But the British have an army in Egypt, don’t they?” She knew there were British soldiers in Cairo, and one British soldier in particular. “And there’s the French.”

  “Oh, sure,” Bert’s reply was off-hand.

  “You don’t sound very certain.”

  “Let’s wait and see.”

  Katy thought: ‘Wait and see, or go and see? And if the latter, then the sooner the better.’

  A group of sailors passed them and ogled her appreciatively. Bert said drily, “You’ve filled out some in the last two years.”

  Katy knew Bert too well to blush. “Don’t be a dirty old man.”

  He grinned at that. He was an old friend of her father and had watched her grow up over the years, but the last time he’d seen her was in Boston in 1938 when he was on a brief visit from Spain while covering the Civil War there. It was because of his friendship with Captain Sandford that Bert had got her the job as a photographer attached to him. Katy wanted it because she needed professional experience and it was a way of getting her name and her work known, but she had no intention of making a career out of pictures of this or any other war, and so she had told Bert. She had a contract for six months. It was a way of making a start — and what had decided her was that Bert’s assignment was to Italy and the Middle East, which included Egypt and Jamie Dunbar. But she had not told him this.

  Bert was silent again. He flicked away the stub of the cigarette and did not light another. She thought he was working up to saying something. Well, so was she...

  They came to their hotel and Katy asked, “What are we doing tomorrow?”

  Bert halted, and she paused with one foot on the wide steps that led up to the big glass doors. He said, “France is going to fall.”

  Katy asked, puzzled, “Fall?”

  “Surrender.”

  She could not believe that. In the last war France had fought for four years, and won.

  Bert said, “Fact is, I think Egypt could be the place to see some action. So tomorrow I’m going to clinch a passage on a ship to Turkey and from there on to Port Said and Cairo.”

  Cairo! Couldn’t be better, thought Katy. “All right,” she said non-committally.

  They walked up the steps and pushed through the glass doors. Bert halted again, glanced in at the bar off the foyer and then: “I said ‘a passage’ because you don’t have to come. I’ve been thinking it over. To tell you the truth, there were plenty of guys against your getting this job. Nobody ever took a woman photographer to a war.”

  Katy eyed him suspiciously. What was he leading up to? She said, “There’s always a first, for everything.”

  Bert agreed quickly. “O.K. Sure. You’re dead right. Only what I was trying to say was, I know how you feel about this war and I reckon it’s going to be rough out there from now on. So if you’d like to call it a day and head for home, well, that’s O.K. by me. I can handle a camera. I’ll get some sorta pictures.

  Head for home? To her own country, at peace? The idea appealed to Katy, but at the same time Cairo lay ahead. And perhaps Jamie Dunbar.

  Bert saw the colour rising to darken her cheeks. He started, “Nobody’s going to think any the worse of you because —”

  Katy almost barked an answer, her strong streak of proud independence getting the better of her. “Look here, Mr. Keller!”

  He stared. “What’s all this ‘Mr. Keller’ stuff?”

  She ignored that. “Mr. Keller, I took on this assignment and I was glad to get it. I took it because I believed I could do a good job and earn my money. What’s more, if I said I’d do it, then I will, right down the line!”

  Bert fumbled another cigarette from a crumpled pack, and said evenly, “O.K. I heard you.” He struck a match and drew on the Camel, took it out of his mouth and examined its red tip

  Katy demanded, “Was there anything else?”

  Bert looked up at her, picked tobacco from his tongue; and began gently. “Yeah, Miss Sandford, something else there is. You can get down off your high horse. I was in this business before’ you were born. So you call me Bert, you don’t preach your high-school morals at me, and you buy me a drink now because you damn sure owe me one.”

  He finished as quietly as he’d started, but when he stalked off into the bar she followed him, meekly and pink-checked, called the order and paid. Bert took a large swallow of the strega and rested comfortably with his long, bony hands propping him on the bar. Katy sipped the Bianco, glad the wine was chilled and hoping it would cool the blood in her face. She waited for the blow to fall. Home. It was not so appealing now.

  After a minute, Bert said amiably, “Katy, do you think we two can get along?”

  Katy did not hesitate. “Oh yes, Bert.”

  He emptied his glass. “O.
K. Same again.” He grinned at her. “On me.”

  Their ship was to sail from Brindisi on the evening of the fifteenth of June. The train from Taranto that day was crowded and hot. The Italians were excited and happy about the war; Mussolini had promised them an African empire. There was an ugly moment when one of them suspected Bert and Katy of being English, but they waved their passports and the moment passed in smiles. Just the same, that brief confrontation with hostility left Katy nervous and with a sense of foreboding.

  At Brindisi they were glad to get down from the train, to breathe again and drink coffee in a bar before taking a cab to the ship. A radio yammered behind the bar and the Italian conscript soldiers and clerks that filled the place all cheered wildly. Bert glanced at Katy, who sat stunned. They both spoke Italian well enough to understand: the Germans were in Paris.

  Katy was glad to be out of the train but the foreboding was still with her. She told herself this had nothing to do with her, this was Europe’s war: she would do her job and then go home. She tried to think about Jamie Dunbar but somehow could not bring his face to mind. Other images pressed in on her instead.

  Bert said, “They think it’s all over, bar the shouting. They’re wrong. This war’s only starting and it’s going to be a long one.”

  The cab was waiting with its engine running. Katy and Bert went out to it and down to the ship, on their way to war.

  BOOK TWO

  The Schooling

  1 Action off Calabria

  He had made an unholy mess of it.