Sink or Capture! (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  They did not. There was neither sight nor sound of any torpedo striking the cruiser and Roope turned Glowworm away. Then smoke swirled around her as her funnels belched it out at Roope’s order. The few guns that were not mangled into scrap and still in action ceased firing because their crews and the Gunnery Officer in the director control tower had no sight of the enemy and they were hidden from him by the smoke. When they turned again it was to haul clear of the smoke but on the side away from the cruiser. Now Glowworm wallowed along, lower in the sea from the weight of water in her, tossed heavily by the huge green waves. She did not run away under cover of the screen.

  Smith knew what Roope was going to do. Glowworm’s captain was lying in wait to ambush the cruiser. But for the moment Smith was just glad of the respite like the others. Keeping upright on the heaving deck was an effort in itself, but passing ammunition at the same time, with each round weighing a half-hundredweight, was exhausting. He panted, leaned against the shield to steady himself against the pitching and rolling — and to snatch some rest.

  “Bit o’ nutty, sir?” Brummy had got out a bar of chocolate, broken it up and was sharing it around the gun’s crew.

  “Thank you.” Smith took a piece from the broad hand blackened by smoke and oil from the gun. He and the others sucked chocolate and stared out over the bow as the minutes passed. Their ears, plugged with cotton wool, rang in the sudden comparative silence. It was only comparative because there were still the pounding of the sea and shriek of the wind. The engines still thumped under their feet and the fans thrummed. And there was a mounting roar from the flames — there were many fires now. The cries of men sounded faint and far-off to their ringing ears.

  Then Jim shouted, “Jesus! It’s like a block o’ flats!” They saw the cruiser coming through the smoke, huge, drably gaudy in her daubed camouflage paint. And close! Smith thought she was a bare half-mile away. The 8-inch guns in her turrets looked enormous to the men standing on the deck of Glowworm and her bridge structure towered high above them.

  They were in action again, the gun slamming and recoiling, the breech knocked open to eject the shell-case that clanked and rolled across the deck. The cordite smoke jetted again to set them coughing. They looked out over the bow that now turned to point at the cruiser. She was broadside on to Glowworm, the guns in her turrets laid forward and aft, only now starting to train around towards the destroyer. Not so the lighter armament of 4-inch and anti-aircraft guns. They poured in a hail of fire and at that short and still closing range it was almost impossible to miss. The shock of the hits were a continual hammering, shaking Glowworm and underneath it was the rapidly increasing beat of her engines as she surged towards the cruiser.

  “Stand by to ram!” The speakers squawked out the warning, barely heard through the gunfire and bursting shells. The men of the gun’s crew threw themselves down on the deck and clung to whatever handhold they could find. Smith only went down on one knee — he had to see — and braced himself against the shield. The cruiser was trying to turn away but was too late. She lengthened and grew before Smith’s eyes as Glowworm rushed down on her, speed still increasing, closing through a barrage of shell that hosed her from stem to stern.

  “Hang on for Christ’s sake!” Jim howled it. The cruiser filled all their vision now and the firing stopped; Glowworm was too close for the enemy guns to depress to hit her. That was the bow of the cruiser stretching across in front of Glowworm and only yards away now. Smith could see the faces of men peering down from her lofty bridge structure that lifted to the gunnery control top. And he knew her now, had seen her before in days of peace. This was the Admiral Hipper.

  Then they struck.

  Glowworm charging in at thirty knots was stopped dead as she slammed into the bow of the cruiser. Smith was hurled against the steel of the shield, bruising and winding him. Hipper heeled over to that shock but was still steaming ahead so that Glowworm ground her way aft along the cruiser’s bow, ripping away forty yards of the armoured belt. Smith gripped the shield for his life through that tearing, lurching progress. The deck tilted beneath him, threatening to throw him into the sea boiling alongside. He was deafened by the clangour and shriek of battered, torn steel.

  Until Glowworm finally fell away from Hipper and a gap of churned sea opened between them. The cruiser was stopping and the destroyer drifting away from her. There was no firing now. Smith turned his head stiffly and saw that the ready-use ammunition had gone and he did not think any more would come from the magazine below decks. The other guns would be in the same position. Glowworm lay ominously low in the water now, her bow crumpled right back to her bridge. Her rigging, cut by splinters, hung uselessly. Her decks were cratered and many of the holes gouted roaring flames from fires beyond control. He thought the probability was that Hipper’s gunners did not think her worth the waste of further powder and shot. She could be left to sink. And she was sinking.

  She blew up. He thought later that fire had got through to one of the magazines. But now he knew only the huge kick as the deck lifted under him, the deafening explosion and the leap of flame far higher than any other, reaching above Glowworm’s topmast. She rolled underneath him and he turned, saw Buckley’s lips moving as he cursed. Smith could read the obscenities and shouted, “She’s going!”

  His voice sounded in his ears as a whisper. It was as a whisper that the order came to him, passed along the deck by men who mouthed: “Abandon ship!” Smith went with those few of the gun’s crew still living. With others, stokers and signalmen, they launched a life raft, dropped down into the sea and climbed onto it or clung to it. They were only just in time to see Glowworm dip her bow under, lift her stern and slide down beneath the waves. She left a scum of wreckage and oil. And, swimming or clinging to rafts, only thirty-eight out of her crew of a hundred and fifty.

  Brummy croaked, “We’ll have to swim for it.” Their raft, with a dozen of them hanging on to it, was some way apart from the others and a freak of wind or current was widening the gap. Smith saw Hipper had stopped and was picking up the other survivors.

  Then Buckley gasped beside him, “No, we won’t. Here’s somebody come for us.” Then he choked as a sea swept over the raft, spat water and finished incredulously, “Would you believe it? Look who she is, sir!”

  Smith turned and saw the ship steaming towards them through the heavy seas, then slowing, stopping to drift down to them as the wind thrust her. She had scrambling nets hung over her side, her deck was lined with men and others were climbing down the nets to be ready to help the men on the raft. This was a light cruiser, a smaller ship than Hipper, though bigger than Cassandra.

  Buckley said, “It’s Brandenburg.”

  Smith nodded. It was not such a remarkable coincidence that Brandenburg should be here. Germany had only six light cruisers of which Brandenburg was one. The sea was freezing him. He knew that neither he nor any of the others clinging to the raft could live for more than a few minutes in this sea. He feared for his life. Yet the thoughts came: Why was this force at sea, and in these waters?

  Norway?

  But then the raft surged against the side of Brandenburg. Within minutes he and the others were snatched from the raft and helped up the nets by brawny, cursing German seamen, to stand on the deck of the cruiser. Buckley had worked his way into the middle of the little group of survivors. He stood with his knees bent and shoulders hunched to make himself look shorter, and kept his face turned away from as many of the enemy around him as he could. He was worried about being identified. He and Smith had been prisoners aboard this ship and escaped from her only months ago.

  Smith did not think they would be recognised unless they were very unlucky. They were soaked to the skin, hair plastered to their heads and faces smeared with oil. The other men in the group wore working dress of overalls or anything old they had put on to go on watch, hoping it would keep them warm and dry. Smith was just another of them in his trousers and sweater, without cap or jacket or any badges of
rank. He covertly examined the Germans around him but saw no one he remembered, no flicker of recognition on any of their faces. He thought he saw one man who would have known him instantly but he was high on Brandenburg’s bridge: Oberleutnant-zur-See Kurt Larsen. So long as he came no closer he was no threat.

  But if he saw Smith he would recognise him as the man he had first met in Spain a year ago, then later in Berlin and Brazil. He would bear witness that Smith had been an Intelligence agent — a spy. He would no longer be treated as a prisoner of war. Under Hitler’s regime he would be lucky if he was shot.

  ***

  Gustav Moehle told Kurt Larsen, “A job for you again, Kurt, interrogation of prisoners.” Because his English was good. He had learnt a lot from Sarah Bauer, as he had known her then, in Berlin before the war. Moehle grinned at him. “Talk to them tomorrow. We may be in action at any time today.”

  “Sir!” Kurt acknowledged the order. He had returned to Germany in Altmark after she had been hauled off the shore and all necessary repairs made. He had rejoined Brandenburg in Kiel just as the repairs to her screws and steering were completed. Before she sailed on this operation, Weserübung, the invasion of Norway, he took a week’s leave. When he returned to his ship he was bitter and depressed by what he had learned.

  Smith and his bedraggled and shivering group were taken below under guard. As they stumbled stiffly and wearily down a ladder and along a passage, Buckley muttered, “See that lot, sir?”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir’ here,” Smith answered. One of their escorts might know that much English to identify him as an officer. And all the prisoners would be interrogated. He would have to give a false name and rank to avoid being identified. Then he acknowledged Buckley’s remark, “I see them.” He and the other prisoners were passing mess decks holding a few off-watch seamen but crowded with soldiers. Their packs and rifles were stacked under or between the tables and the men themselves sat on the benches around the tables or sprawled on the deck. They looked to be in various stages of seasickness, from the prostrate and seemingly unconscious to those holding their heads in their hands.

  Down another ladder and there were more mess decks, more soldiers. He wondered how many men could be packed aboard this cruiser, the bigger Hipper and the two escorting destroyers — if there were only two? Experience told him from 1500 to 2000. But what other ships might be in this force? Where were they going and to what purpose? There could only be one answer to that. They were bound on the invasion of Norway, and specifically — Trondheim? They were off that port now. There would be other groups of ships, laden with troops, further north and south, intent on making landings at other key ports. Bergen? Narvik? Hitler was out to ensure his supplies of iron ore from Norway.

  A rifle butt urged Smith along another passage to a sickbay where a doctor quickly but thoroughly examined the survivors. He repeated, “Gut! Gut! Gut!” as he worked through them, then left them to his sickberth ratings and the guards.

  One of the sickberth ratings, middle-aged and tubby, told them, “I worked in England before the war. Ja? So — you want, you speak to me. Ja? Tomorrow Herr Oberleutnant Larsen komm. Speak good English. Ask questions. But now you eat and sleep.”

  Smith thought bleakly that if Herr Larsen was going to interrogate the prisoners then inventing a false name and rank would be a waste of time.

  The prisoners were given blankets and their clothes taken away to be dried. A cook brought them soup and bread that they ate at a mess table. No one had much to say. Two of the men pushed their empty plates away and slept at once, their heads on the table.

  Smith knew that was shock or battle fatigue and he would fall victim to it no less than the others. He crawled into the bunk he was given and closed his eyes. Now the reaction started and he hid it as he always did, huddled down under the blanket so his shaking hands could not be seen, his body held taut to keep from shivering. He told himself that he had to escape, he worried about his daughter and his ship, his career. And then he grinned at himself: he was lucky to be alive at all to be able to worry.

  He looked across the sickbay and saw Buckley in a bunk over there, watching him. He asked, “All right?”

  Buckley had seen the tension in his captain’s face ease away, the clamped jaw relax, the rigid body loosen under the blanket. Now he, too, could let go. “Yes, sir.” He turned over, sighed and settled down.

  Smith closed his eyes. He slept.

  But his last thought was that he had to escape or die.

  8

  “She’s in action! Must be wi’ some of our ships! Mebbe Renown!” Brummy looked hopefully around the sickbay. The deep-throated booming of the guns was deafening even below decks in Brandenburg. Their firing shook the ship so that loose gear on the shelves rattled and slid, only held in place by the “fiddles”, the lips running along the edge of each shelf. It was three in the morning and the dozen prisoners stared at each other and wondered.

  They had come a long way on the road back to normality in a short time; Brandenburg’s men had hauled them out of the sea only eighteen hours before. Their clothes had been returned. They had washed though not shaved, eaten and rested all through the day. So now they showed signs of life although they were still quiet, were alert and not half-drowned, exhausted flotsam.

  Jim said, drily but watching the deckhead, nervous and voicing Smith’s thoughts, “But if it is, and Renown drops some fifteen-inch bricks on her and sinks her, what the hell happens to us?”

  But then the firing ceased and the armed guards in the passage outside the sickbay looked as relieved as the prisoners. They grinned at each other, all in the same boat, literally, listening to the silence. That was only comparative. There was still the thrum of the ventilating fans and the rapid beat of Brandenburg’s engines. Smith thought she was doing well over twenty knots — and not pitching and rolling. So was she no longer on the open sea but in sheltered waters?

  One by one the men turned over in their narrow bunks and drifted off to sleep again. But Smith stayed awake, busy with his thoughts, restlessly but fruitlessly seeking a way of escape. Tomorrow — or rather today?

  When Glowworm’s survivors had first stirred from sleep in the middle of the day, the tubby sickberth attendant had brought their food. He told them they would not be allowed on deck for exercise because: “Sea is a pig. Big green bastards come inboard. You go on deck maybe tomorrow. No soldiers then.”

  Buckley had asked, “Why no soldiers?”

  The SBA glanced quickly at the guards outside in the passage, saw they had not heard but said, “Never mind.” He had obviously been sworn to secrecy concerning the soldiers and was afraid even telling the prisoners they were aboard would get him into trouble. But now he stared at Buckley and asked, “I see you before? In England?”

  He had doubtless seen Buckley with Smith, walking the deck of Brandenburg off the coast of Brazil only four months ago. They had both been prisoners aboard her then. Buckley rubbed at his face to hide it and answered, “You might ha’ done. I kept a pub in Newcastle. Or it might ha’ been my brother. He went to sea.”

  The SBA frowned, “Not in Newcastle.” But he let it go, shaking his head.

  Smith had warned Buckley later, “We’ll have to be careful. He remembers you.”

  But now, as the hands of his watch edged slowly around the dial, Smith recalled the words of the SBA: “No soldiers tomorrow.” So presumably they were to be disembarked tonight?

  Two hours later the engines slowed and stopped. Brandenburg lay still and the men imprisoned in the sickbay woke again. Smith wondered, Were they in a port? Deep down in the bowels of the ship below the waterline, as they were, there was no question of looking out of a scuttle. But he thought again, Trondheim? The most important port on this stretch of the Norwegian coast?

  Those questions were soon answered. The tubby little sailor waddled into the sickbay, round face beaming. He announced, “We are at Trondheim. We komm in past the Norwegian guns very fast and they miss.
All is well.”

  So the gunfire had been Brandenburg replying to shelling from the two forts at Brettingen and Hysnes on the shores of the fjord. Now the Norwegians had changed from nervous neutrals to reluctant, and probably bewildered, belligerents. The two thousand or more troops embarked in Hipper, Brandenburg and the other ships — how many? — would be swarming ashore to overwhelm any small garrison.

  Not from Brandenburg. An hour later Kurt Larsen climbed to her bridge and his captain Gustav Moehle told him, “We’ve just had a signal from Hipper. She’s putting the last of her troops ashore now and all goes well there.” Kurt looked across at Hipper, anchored in the harbour like Brandenburg but closer to the port. The four destroyers of her escort lay close by. The sun had risen but not yet showed its face and the harbour lay under a low ceiling of thick cloud. In that early half-light the ships were almost in total darkness but Trondheim was sprinkled with lights being used by the troops still on the quay, though some were marching off inland and others had already gone. More were going in from Hipper and the destroyers, packed into the warships’ boats or commandeered tugs.

  “Worked like clockwork, sir.” Kurt grinned at his captain and Moehle returned it, both celebrating a job well done. But Moehle said, “We aren’t finished. The soldiers of the Herr Oberst we have aboard, and those in Wilhelmina, aren’t needed here so we are ordered to go on with her to the secondary objective.”

  The secondary objective was Bergsund, further north.

  The colonel, Oberst Klaus Grundmann, stood at Moehle’s side, tall, lean, his grey-green field uniform neatly pressed, forage cap cocked jauntily on his grizzled head. He commanded the regimental combat team embarked in Brandenburg and the transport, Wilhelmina, lying a few hundred yards ahead. Now he put in, “Except for the pioneers. They are to be landed in Trondheim; they are needed here.” And smiling at Kurt, “You’ll know them when you see them. They are a law unto themselves. Their uniform is whatever they find comfortable to work in and they look like a bunch of vagabonds!”