To Risks Unknown

by Douglas Reeman

  Crespin said, ‘You must be Lieutenant Wemyss. I’m Crespin.’

  The first lieutenant showed a flash of surprise and then annoyance. ‘I’m very sorry, sir. I was not expecting you until this evening.’ He spread a pair of massive hands. ‘It’s just that it’s been like hell here. Dockyard maties all over the show, and half the incoming signals bogged down in some office or other.’

  Crespin smiled. ‘No bother. I didn’t want any unnecessary fuss.’

  He threw his raincoat across one of the battered-looking armchairs and removed his cap. He could feel Wemyss’ eyes following each movement but he did not care. Then he caught sight of himself in a bulkhead mirror above the small sideboard. No wonder Wemyss seemed wary, he decided.

  There were deep lines around his mouth, and his grey eyes were just that bit too steady, so that he seemed to be glaring at his own reflection as if he hated it.

  He turned his back on the mirror and saw Wemyss’ glance fall to the single ribbon on his jacket. The Distinguished Service Cross.

  Wemyss relaxed slightly. ‘Well anyway, sir, welcome aboard. It’s good to have a commanding officer again. Our last one, Lieutenant-Commander Saunders, had to leave immediately we reached Portsmouth. He’s taken command of a brand-new destroyer at Rosyth.’

  Crespin watched him guardedly, but there was no hint of a question in Wemyss’ remark. Yet he might well wonder why a regular officer, a man with a coveted decoration at that, should be given this command. A reservist would have been good enough. Wemyss himself could have had it.

  He asked flatly, ‘Have you been aboard long?’

  Wemyss shrugged. ‘Since she was built. I started as the junior sub-lieutenant and dogsbody and I’ve been with the old girl all the time in Western Approaches. When we were told of this new stunt, about the ship being taken over for special service and so forth, I thought to myself I’d like to stay with her. She’s become a habit, I guess.’

  Crespin sat down in a chair and rubbed his eyes. He was suddenly conscious of the bulky envelope in his pocket, the orders he had read and re-read a dozen times. Special service. He still did not really understand what it meant. To him and this ship.

  He said, ‘Well, what is the state at the moment?’

  Wemyss seemed to welcome the sudden crispness in his tone and replied with equal formality.

  ‘As soon as we handed over to the dockyard a fortnight ago most of the hands were returned to Western Approaches, sir. We have twenty of the original company, consisting of most of the key men, the coxswain, signals and W/T, and, of course, the chief. The coxswain is over at the barracks mustering the new men, about sixty all told.’ He smiled gravely. ‘I shudder to think what we’ll get. Whenever you ask for volunteers for anything a bit vague you’re liable to get some strange birds, sir. Chaps trying to dodge bastardly orders, or avoid getting sent to some ship they know is bad.’ He looked around the wardroom. ‘The two new subs will be joining ship in the dog watches. I don’t know them either!’

  ‘You will.’ Crespin wanted to go to his cabin. To find a small piece of privacy in this ship which would soon be alive and depending on him to keep it so. Eighty officers and men crammed inside this small hull. In the wild Atlantic it must have been a nightmare.

  He asked suddenly, ‘How was it in Western Approaches?’

  Wemyss seemed to consider it. ‘Grim. I know the papers tell us that the Battle of the Atlantic is turning in our favour. It looked bad enough when I left it, all the same. Forty ships started on our last convoy. Twenty-two reached the Bar Light Vessel at Liverpool!’ His eyes were distant. ‘I was second mate of a collier running out of Cardiff before this lot started. I’ve never got used to watching merchant ships being massacred. It’s such a waste. Such a bloody waste!’

  Crespin nodded. The next few days would show what sort of a man Wemyss really was, but the first impression was a good one. He was about thirty-three at a guess, and gave an immediate sense of complete reliability. Above all, he was a professional seaman, and in today’s Navy that was rare enough, God alone knew.

  He said, ‘We’d better get started, Number One. I’ll go through the confidential books and so forth later. Right now I want all the signals and the exact state of the dockyard alterations. After I’ve gone over that I’ll want your check of stores and ammunition and a rough outline of the new watch bill if you’ve got it.’

  Wemyss watched him gravely. ‘I’ve got it, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Crespin stood up and then winced as the pain lanced through his leg.

  Wemyss said quietly, ‘I heard you’d been wounded, sir. Are you feeling all right now?’

  Crespin swung on him, his mouth already framing the angry words. Instead he heard himself reply calmly, ‘I’m all right.’ He hesitated. ‘Thank you.’ Then he turned and left the ward-room.

  Lieutenant Douglas Wemyss stared at the closed door for a full minute and then shrugged. He finished buttoning his jacket and then felt the pockets to make sure he had left nothing lying about. With dockyard men running wild all over the ship you could not be too careful.

  He thought suddenly of Crespin’s barely controlled resentment when he had asked about his wound. Embarrassment? He shook his head doubtfully. Crespin did not seem the kind of officer who had much time for personal feelings of that type. But it was quite obvious to Wemyss that the Thistle’s new captain had some burden which was far heavier than taking a command. He had only smiled once during the whole interview, and in those brief moments Wemyss had seen a picture of what Crespin had once been. Youthful, even boyish, with a touch of recklessness which was appealing. Then the guard had dropped behind those grey eyes. It was as if Crespin intended to keep his secrets to himself.

  Wemyss glanced quickly around the untidy wardroom and then patted the ship’s crest at his side. He grinned. He knew from experience that in a ship this size it was hard to keep even a thought secret for more than a minute.

  He heard some dockyard workmen laughing beyond the door and set his face in an impressive frown before leaving the wardroom to hurry them along again. One thing was sure. Crespin was not the sort of captain who would tolerate slackness. Not from anyone, he thought grimly.

  Crespin pushed aside the bulky folio of stores and modifications and leaned back in his chair. The cabin was small and almost square with one scuttle through which he could see the rainslashed wall of the dock. There was a bunk along one bulkhead with a reading light and a well-worn telephone, so that even in harbour the captain could be contacted with minimum delay. At sea Crespin knew he would be lucky if he ever left the bridge, and then only for catnaps in the tiny sleeping compartment attached to the chartroom.

  There was nothing in the cabin to give a clue to the previous occupant. But above the small bulkhead desk was a framed photograph of the Thistle in heavy weather, obviously taken from a larger and more stable ship in some convoy or other. Her bows were right out of the water and her after part was so deluged in breaking spray that she appeared to be sliding sternfirst towards the bottom.

  He thought of Wemyss’ one word in answer to his question. Grim. It was a bad understatement, he thought.

  But whatever might lie ahead, the Thistle was his ship now. And his home. The last thought came to him so violently that he half rose to his feet and then slumped back again, unwilling to allow his tired mind to explore further than that.

  After leaving the naval hospital Crespin had gone home. He had known it was a mistake, but something had drawn him there in spite of his inner warnings.

  It was an ordinary semi-detached house in the Surrey suburbs of London. Like countless others whose owners had before the war been content with the quiet and unexciting, but nevertheless pleasant, way of life. They caught the same train to town and came back together. They passed non-controversial comments to one another across neat garden hedges on Sunday mornings, while some, the more prosperous, polished the family car. Crespin had been born in one of those houses and had gone to school locall
y, as did all the other boys.

  From the first time he could remember having any sort of definite ambition he had wanted to go into the Navy. He loved ships and everything about them. His father had no experience of such things, and in any case wanted him to follow him into a safe job at the bank. His mother merely wanted him to be happy. Neither was very much help.

  Maybe they just let Crespin try for a scholarship entry into the Navy merely to get it out of his system. Whatever the reason, they stood back and awaited results. To everyone’s surprise, not least Crespin’s, he passed his entrance exam to Dartmouth with room to spare. And at a time when most young gentlemen selected for Dartmouth College were either the sons of serving officers or from influential families it was no small victory.

  His parents forgot their fears and showed their pride whenever Crespin came home on leave. It was a fine career, a new dimension, and in their eyes Crespin had suddenly moved to unreachable manhood.

  Then everything changed when the Germans marched into Poland. At the time pain and personal grief seemed unending, but now looking back to that first year of war it was strange to realize how quickly everything had altered.

  His father had set off for London on the usual train. His usual Daily Mail under his arm, his sandwiches hidden in his cardboard gasmask container. He was never seen again. There was an air-raid outside Waterloo Station, one of those sneak daylight ones which came and went in seconds, before the warnings had even had time to set up their sinister wail. Many other ordinary men and women died that morning, but it was no consolation to Mrs. Crespin. There was nothing to show for it. No body, and not even a witness. Just oblivion.

  Crespin was first lieutenant of a small destroyer at the time, and when he eventually managed to get home he found his mother terribly aged and like a stranger. He had felt something like guilt. After all, he was trained and paid to fight. They were not. He learned much later in Greece and Crete that war was quite impartial when it came to exacting its dues.

  His mother never really accepted her husband’s death. One day she was walking with a neighbour, making her way to join one of the food queues at the local shops, when she looked up and said, ‘There’s George! It’s my husband!’ Before her friend could stop her she ran across the road. The driver of the lorry had no time to apply his brakes and she died instantly.

  Later the neighbour told Crespin that his mother had a smile on her face as they carried her away. The first smile since her husband had died. The worst of it was that the man she had seen was not a bit like Crespin’s father. He had been at the funeral and Crespin had seen for himself. He had returned to his ship, leaving the house and everything else to be sold and to be wiped from his memory.

  Why then had he gone back this time? Perhaps like his mother he still clung to the idea that things would somehow return to normal if only he believed it hard enough.

  The house had looked the same, but smaller and shabbier. And to his surprise he had found it full of soldiers, like most of the rest in that familiar, tree-lined road. A beefy sergeant had ushered him inside and had gone about his affairs rather than intrude on Crespin’s brief visit.

  Only the wallpaper was the same. In his old room where he had first read avidly about life at sea he had even found the brighter patches on the wall where his old pictures had been carefully hung.

  It would have been better to keep the old memory as it was. He knew that now. But now it was too late. Never go back. Nothing is ever the same.

  He jerked from his brooding thoughts as someone rapped on the door and then jerked it open. It was the same gangway sentry, but this time his face was working with excitement and alarm.

  ‘C-Captain, sir! The first lieutenant’s respects, an’ there’s an admiral comin’ aboard!’

  If the Holy Ghost had appeared on the quarterdeck he could not have looked more confused.

  Crespin picked up his cap. That is all I need. Aloud he snapped, ‘Next time wait until I tell you before you barge in!’

  He brushed the seaman aside and stepped into the passageway. It was already too late. On the steel ladder he could see a pair of black-stockinged legs which were soon, if clumsily, followed by their owner, a very plain-looking Wren officer. Then came Wemyss, muttering excuses and apologies for the mess and the gaping workmen. And finally the admiral.

  For a moment they all stood chest to chest in the narrow passageway, then the admiral cocked his head on one side and said cheerfully, ‘Rear-Admiral Oldenshaw. Glad to meet you, Crespin.’ He pushed between them and strode energetically into the wardroom, his gaze swinging from side to side as if searching for intruders.

  Wemyss ushered the Wren to one of the chairs and then stood by the door. The admiral’s pale eyes regarded him unwinkingly and then he snapped, ‘You can carry on, Number One. I know all about you, what!’ Wemyss withdrew with unseemly haste.

  Crespin stared at the little man with surprise and growing anger. He looked as old as time. God, when would they stop giving jobs to these ancient warriors just because of the unwritten old pals act?

  He said curtly, ‘I am sorry I was not on deck to receive you, sir.’

  The admiral squatted on the edge of the wardroom table and smiled. ‘My fault. Quite deliberate I’m afraid, Crespin. Dislike ceremonial, except in its right place. I came to see you, not some bloody wooden-faced guard of honour!’

  The Wren coughed quietly and the admiral nodded. ‘Quite. Mustn’t get carried away, eh?’ He looked round the untidy wardroom. ‘Small ships. Salt of the earth.’

  Crespin replied, ‘The refit seems up to date, sir. The main intake of new men will come aboard as soon as we’ve got our own power connected up again. At the moment they’re in the barracks.’

  ‘Know all that, Crespin. Made all the arrangements myself, as a matter of fact.’

  Crespin clenched his fingers until the pain steadied him a little. ‘And I have read my orders, sir. If the refit is completed I will sail for Gibraltar on Tuesday.’

  ‘It had better be completed!’ The admiral eyed him thoughtfully. ‘When you were last in the Mediterranean you commanded the 71st M.T.B. Flotilla. Before that you were in destroyers. You’ve seen a lot of combat, and you’ve a damn good record. So you’re probably feeling sorry for yourself because you’ve been given command of this battered little warrior, eh?’ He held up a wrinkled hand. ‘Don’t bother to argue, your face is full of resentment!’ He chuckled. ‘Fact is, I arranged that, too. I needed a captain for his brains, not his rank.’

  The Wren officer, who had been touching a ladder on one of her stockings with a forefinger, said suddenly, ‘The admiral means that you were chosen for your experience. Not because you happened to be available.’

  Crespin felt the cabin swaying, and it was all he could do to stifle his anger.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The admiral did not smile. ‘You really are resentful, Crespin!’ He folded his arms and regarded the other man with a fixed stare. ‘Very soon now the Allies will be landing on enemy soil. Italy will be an obvious starter, but the war cannot be won until our men are in France and then Germany itself. Therefore, whatever we succeed in doing when we invade Italy will be watched and calculated by the enemy. We will be at grips with the real foe. North Africa was too remote for ordinary people’s minds to grasp. It was too far away. So when we set our men down on Italian shores it is essential that we get the full co-operation of every living soul who has been living under Nazi oppression. Patriots, terrorists, I don’t care who they are, just so long as they can hate Germans and pull a trigger!’

  Crespin thought of the Thistle as he had first seen her in the open dock. So far he could see no role for her at all.

  The admiral must have read his thoughts. ‘You know the Aegean, Crespin, and the Adriatic, the thousand and one places where the enemy’s lines are stretched to the limit. As soon as the Allies start making progress these island people and their friends on the mainland will start to revolt. They will cut supp
ly roads, shoot down enemy patrols, and generally cause havoc behind the German lines. The Hun will have to take valuable troops to quell these uprisings, and so our advance will go all the faster. More important, it will show the peoples of France and Holland what they can do when the day comes to invade Hitler’s coveted West Wall, eh?’

  ‘How can you be sure of all this, sir?’

  The admiral’s answer was swift and biting. ‘I’ve not exactly been sitting on my arse for the past three years, for God’s sake!’

  Then he smiled. ‘I’ve got people out there now. In Yugoslavia and the Greek islands, and more to send when they’re needed.’ He became serious again. ‘That is why I asked for a corvette. A destroyer is both too large and too vulnerable. And you know better than most that M.T.B.s are too damn noisy for this sort of game.’

  Crespin had a sudden and vivid picture of the burning torpedo boat, the screams and curses of his men dying around him, the bullets and scalding tracers ripping the waters apart and tipping the spray with scarlet. It was no game, as the admiral had implied. It had been sheer bloody murder!

  The admiral stood up and consulted an ancient gold pocket watch. ‘Just get the ship to sea, Crespin, and pull these volunteers into one fighting unit. You’ve done it before, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, and neither would you. At Gib you’ll get fresh orders, and by that time I’ll know a bit more of the next phase of things. It’s not going to be easy for you. Nothing worthwhile ever is. But you’ll know that what you’re doing is important, maybe even vital. By harrying the enemy’s communications and working with our terrorist friends you’ll be taking the pressure off the main battlefront.’ He peered at Second Officer Frost. ‘We’ll leave now, eh?’