by Alan Evans
That warning had been necessary because all of them were weary now and there was also a sense of anti-climax. There was little talking in the three boats. Despite the cold, men dozed crammed together in the little cabin or crowded shoulder to shoulder in the sternsheets. The snow squalls swept in again and again, blinding lookouts and helmsmen alike. Donnelly steered by the compass but each launch followed the darker shadow that was the boat ahead of it, seen only dimly through the white curtain.
When the snow had gone the night was still dark. In one of those clear periods a lookout called, “Ship starboard quarter!”
Smith turned quickly and saw the black mass of her coming up astern, a half-mile away or maybe less. In the night it was impossible to see what ship she was or to judge her size. She might have been a big destroyer or a cruiser. Brandenburg? But why should she be here? And then again, why not? If it was her, trying to slip out past the blockading squadron patrolling outside the Vestfjord, then she had chosen a good night for it — but left it too late. She should have started earlier, to have been past this point by nightfall and so have all the hours of darkness to cover her escape.
But had she seen the three boats? It was unlikely on a night like this and she was not slowing nor altering course. And here came the snow again, at first only a few big white flakes flying on the wind and then a thickening cloud that came between Smith and the distant, shadowy ship. Then she was blotted out.
The long, weary journey went on. They finally sighted Cassandra in the first grey light before the sun was up. She saw them, altered course a point and ran down to them. Every man aboard her whose duties did not require him to be elsewhere lined the rails. There was no cheering but a host of helping hands to haul them inboard and plenty of laughter and excited talk. Smith knew he was the subject of a lot of it, saw glances directed his way and that look on their faces again — respectful, awed, admiring? He heard Ben Kelso telling Sandy Faulknor and anyone else in earshot, “The Old Man was terrific! He charged at them like he had a regiment at his back!”
Smith knew what he was talking. about but took no notice, walked away from them all and went up to his sea cabin. As he took off the holstered Colt, Buckley tapped at the door and entered with a thick china mug filled with coffee. Smith remembered Kelso and the others shouting at him, calling him back from that wild charge. He could not recall any words, except those of Buckley: “You mad bastard — sir!” Now he decided it might be better if he did not recall those, either. And Buckley had virtually stowed away in Per Kosskull’s boat to be part of this last expedition. Smith had threatened to talk to him later — but now seemed too late. It was all over.
Buckley was staring at him now. Smith asked, “What are you gawping at?”
“You look a bit of a mess, sir.”
Smith looked in the mirror and saw one reason for the stares he had received. His eyes, sunk deep in dark circles, glowered out at him. His face was gaunt and bony, smeared with dried blood from the shallow wound re-opened on the side of his head and from a new ragged tear along the line of his jaw. A red weal marked the burn from the muzzle of the carbine.
Buckley said, “If you ask me, sir, I don’t think you should take risks like — “
Smith said, “I’m not asking you. Thank you for the coffee. Now get away to your breakfast.”
Buckley said resignedly, “Aye, aye, sir.”
When he had gone Smith ran water into the basin and washed. Before he had done Kilmartin had rapped on the door and entered. Smith asked, “How’s that marine — the one that fell down the hill? Stephenson?”
“That’s right, sir. He’s got a bit of a headache — concussion — that’s all.”
Then the surgeon examined Smith’s injuries — Smith would not describe them as wounds: “The cut on the head came from tripping over my own feet. Any cook could have got burns like those on my chin and neck from falling against the galley stove in bad weather.”
Kilmartin sniffed. “That’s true as far as appearances go. But I never heard of a stove that fired a carbine in your face, sir. From what I hear you are damned lucky to be alive.”
“I am — with the kind of young quack we have practising in the Navy now.”
But Kilmartin only grinned at that, applied dressings and went away.
Smith sat on the bunk and sipped at the coffee. He told himself he should be content. He had penetrated the enemy’s lines, brought out the merchant seamen held prisoner and all without a single casualty except the one man who fell on the hill. When he wrote his report he could describe the operation as a success, though there was no euphoria now. He was simply very tired.
Had he missed Sarah by only minutes, let her be whisked away under his nose? Had it been her or some other young woman? Would those questions haunt him for the rest of his life?
Then Merrick came and told him, “We have orders, sir. The Fleet’s going into Narvik fjord to sink or capture all the enemy ships still in there.”
17
“Starboard ten!” Smith growled it, leaning over the voice-pipe, holding onto it as Cassandra pitched under his feet. The sea was still lively here in the Ofotfjord.
“Starboard ten…ten of starboard wheel on, sir.” That was Taggart answering from the wheelhouse.
Then as Cassandra’s head came around, “Midships! Steer one-one-oh!”
“Steer one-one-oh, sir.”
To start on a dog-leg across this narrow neck of sea.
Smith cursed, scowling, and the bridge staff, from Galloway to the lookouts on the wings, kept quiet and clear of his foul temper. It was past noon of a filthy day, bitterly cold with intermittent snow squalls driving in under a lowering sky. And Cassandra was not going to the party after all. Her crew were at action stations and she was ready to fight but not going to. Ben Kelso had grumbled, “All dressed up but nowhere to go.” And Smith had snapped at him to keep his comments to himself. That was the mood they were in.
Only part of the Fleet had been ordered to go in to sink or capture the enemy destroyers at Narvik. A squadron under Whitworth had been given the job and Cassandra had followed him in through the Vestfjord but only as far as the mouth of the Ofotfjord. Then she had been ordered to patrol in the Narrows, there to watch for any enemy ship that might slip past Whitworth’s ships in the foul weather. Like a terrier set to watch a rabbit hole after the ferrets had gone in. For a moment Smith could see the ferrets — just — three miles or so ahead, and they were big ones. There were nine destroyers and among them, like a swan among ducklings, cruised the thirty-thousand-ton battleship Warspite with her eight 15-inch guns. Whitworth had transferred his flag to her from Renown.
Then the snow swept in again on the wind and hid the ships from him. Smith swore again. As he had sworn, along with every man aboard Cassandra, when they received those orders. And at the weather. Now there was fog added to the snow. It misted his binoculars, clung damply to his bridge-coat and trickled coldly down his neck inside the towel wrapped around it.
He told himself he had chosen to be here, pleaded for a ship, when he might have kept his mouth shut and stayed in the sunshine of Montevideo. He could have been spending a siesta in bed with the long-legged Hannah Fitzsimmons now. That was a warming thought. Was there any real choice there? He burst out laughing then, just as a wave broke over Cassandra’s bow and spray flew back to slap him in the face. He saw Galloway and Kelso staring at him and said, “I just thought of something funny.”
They smiled politely, waited for him to go on and tell them the joke but he only looked them over then turned away, grinning. Galloway thought they would never understand this man.
Smith had taken off his cap but his steel helmet still hung on the hook below the screen. The dressings put on by Kilmartin were now reduced to one strip of plaster along the line of his jaw. His eyes were still sunk in dark sockets and the face was thinner than Galloway remembered from their first stiffly formal meeting in Montevideo, but bareheaded he looked younger. Especially when he l
aughed. John Galloway thought, He’s a hell of a good skipper.
He said, low-voiced so only Smith would hear, “The men are very tired, sir.”
“They have reason to be. I’ll rest them as soon as I can.” Smith glanced at his Executive Officer. “How is morale?”
“I had a word with Taggart and he agreed with me: morale is sky-high. They all think this is a lucky ship, now.” He hesitated, then added, diffidently because it smacked of flattery, but honestly: “I think that’s down to you, sir.”
Smith knew it was not. Well, possibly some of it. He shook his head. “They’ve been in almost constant action and they like it.” That was a truth he had learned a generation ago.
Galloway went on, smiling now, “The only thing that worried them was Brandenburg. She was becoming a bit of a bogey, the way she kept turning up. It was as if she was hiding round every corner, waiting to get us. But she didn’t.”
Smith only answered, “No,” to that. He recalled his own premonition that there would be a final confrontation with Brandenburg, but he had been wrong. Thank God. The last time they had met she had been headed south and would soon be berthed in Kiel. There had been those sightings of last night and the night before when he had thought he might have seen Brandenburg, but they had been at night. That was when the eyes played tricks and you saw what you expected, sometimes subconsciously expected, to see.
Galloway’s words had cheered him. He thought that he was proud of his ship and her company. She was shabby and workmanlike but still graceful, an overworked, ageing beauty. Still proud. And the men. They had all come a long way since he had first stepped aboard in the harbour of Montevideo just three months ago. The applications for transfer had all been withdrawn. Galloway had been first, after they had left Bergsund, then Kelso, and the rest followed in a rush.
The island of Baroy lay astern and there was the coast off the starboard bow. The Ofotfjord was only two to three miles wide at most but you couldn’t see half-way across it in this weather. Time for another leg of the dog.
“Port ten!” Crisp but not crotchety this time.
“Port ten…ten of port wheel on, sir.”
And was that answering voice a little more human, Taggart at the wheel sensing his mercurial captain’s change of mood now? And as Cassandra settled on the new course: “Coffee, sir.”
Smith thought, The prize diviner of his captain’s mood. He took the mug. “Thank you.” Had Buckley waited these past ten minutes, gauging the moment, knowing that if he had come earlier Smith would have sworn at him? Probably.
He sipped at the coffee, hot and sweet, felt it warming him. They would continue this zigzag progress along the Ofotfjord until they opened the Breivika inlet, a side fjord really, on the port side. The Narrows ended soon after that, the limit of Cassandra’s patrol.
He cocked his head on one side as the deep rumble of gunfire, from big guns, came rolling down the fjord. All of them on the bridge had their heads up. Galloway said, “Sounds like Warspite is in action, sir.”
Brandenburg was anchored in eight fathoms in the Breivika fjord. She had steam up ready to sail, although Gustav Moehle did not intend to leave the shelter of the anchorage until sunset. That intention was changed by the signal he received just after noon. Paul Brunner brought it, running, to where Moehle lay in his sea cabin. He was sleeping, having been up most of the night and expecting to be on the bridge all through the night to come.
He sat up in the bunk as the Executive Officer shook his shoulder and panted, “From Künne to Bey and also to us.” The Herrman Künne was one of Kommodore Bey’s destroyers.
Moehle read the crumpled slip of paper. Künne had sighted a British force of a battleship and nine destroyers advancing into the Ofotfjord. Moehle said, “God help Bey and his men now.”
He swung his legs off the bunk, pulled on his seaboots and grabbed his bridge-coat. He was at the door, straddling the coaming, one leg still inside the cabin and the other out in the passage when he froze, listening. Brunner, a yard ahead of him in the passage, stopped with his head turned to stare back at Moehle. They both heard the distant thunder of the guns.
Brunner said, “It’s started. That’s a battleship firing.” Then they ran.
Sarah heard the alarms and the pandemonium of running men and shouted orders, guessed that Brandenburg’s crew were racing to their action stations. She pushed aside the curtain, put out her head and asked the sentry, “What’s going on?” She asked in German but he would not answer her, only scowled and waved her back into the cabin. Frustrated, she called him a very rude word she had learnt in Berlin. That got a reaction. He flinched, shocked, as if struck, but still waved her back and drew the curtain again.
Sarah swore.
Brandenburg weighed anchor and got under way. On her bridge Moehle sat in his high chair and listened to the reports coming in rapid succession from all the ship’s departments, that they. were closed up for action. He told Brunner and Kurt Larsen, “I don’t like leaving the destroyers.” He thumped the bridge screen with his clenched fist. “But they should have been pulled out two or three days ago. We can’t save them. If we tried it would be a useless sacrifice. We have no chance against a battleship. I have nine hundred men aboard and I’m not going to throw their lives away. Besides, I have my orders, to return to Kiel. I’ll carry them out.”
He paused then, the decision taken, but bitter. He knew brother officers in the destroyers now trapped in Narvik fjord, knew they would fight and that many of them would die.
He went on, “The British force has passed us in here. I think the way may be open. We’ll take the chance offered to us and go now.”
Fritsch, standing unobtrusively at the back of the bridge, heard the decision with relief. He did not cheer or applaud, but it was just bad luck that Moehle turned in his chair and saw him then. Brandenburg’s captain asked coldly, “What are you doing here?”
Fritsch explained, “I just wanted to know what was going on.” Moehle was well aware of the power of the Gestapo and that Fritsch claimed respect as its representative. But there and then Moehle commanded a warship and the lives of all aboard her were in his hands. Fritsch was no more than a passenger and Moehle disliked the man. He said savagely, “You don’t come onto my bridge without my permission and you haven’t got it. This ship may be in action shortly and I have no room here for useless spectators.”
Fritsch blinked at him, “You said —”
Moehle cut him off: “I said the way may be clear but the British might have left a gatekeeper. Now I’ll thank you to get off my bridge.”
Fritsch left, quickly and readily, running awkwardly down the ladders. He did not want to be on that exposed bridge if Brandenburg was under fire.
Appleby saw her first, voice breaking high as he shouted, “Ship fine on the starboard bow!” Then a dozen pairs of binoculars were trained out to starboard, Smith’s among them. He saw nothing but a horizon made hazy by mist, nor did any of the others.
Ben Kelso rumbled their doubt, “Are you sure, Mid?”
“Certain, sir.” And Appleby was confident. He admitted, “Can’t see her now but she showed just for a second before that fog came down again. There’s a ship in there.”
So they were still studying that grey distance over the bow and saw her appear again. Appleby said triumphantly, “There she is!”
Nobody answered him for a moment. The wind had rolled away the fog to expose the distant ship hull-up on the horizon. Visibility had cleared, for this part of the Ofotfjord and for this time at least, so that they saw her at a distance of six or seven miles. That was Smith’s estimate and now Sandy Faulknor’s voice squawked on the loudspeaker from the director control tower, “Ship bearing Green Two Oh, range…” Smith converted the 13,400 yards into sea miles: six and three-quarters as near as dammit.
Sandy’s voice again, “I think it’s Brandenburg — or one of her class, sir!”
There was a moment of silence, disbelief, voiced by Ben Kelso
complaining, “I thought she’d be back in Kiel by now.” And then a mutter of agreement: “But that looks like her.” It was echoed by Galloway and then he left the bridge on the run, headed aft to his post in action.
Smith said, “That just about makes it unanimous. It’s her all right. Well spotted, Mid.” He thought, There’s a young man who’s improved by leaps and bounds.
He let his glasses fall to hang from their strap against his chest, and put on his steel helmet while using the telephone to talk to Sandy Faulknor: “Fire when ready.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Kelso said, “Signal, sir.” He handed it to Smith.
He took it and read, grinned at Ben and passed the signal back to him. “We should get a drink out of that later on.” Ben laughed, “That we should, sir!”
Neither spoke the thought: If there is a “later on”.
Smith turned back to Brandenburg. He recalled that gut-feeling, that Cassandra was fated to fight Brandenburg. Logic dictated there could only be one end to that.
Brandenburg was faster, bigger, outgunned Cassandra two to one and her crew were as good as their ship. They had shown that in the previous unfinished encounters.
And in his favour? Only that Brandenburg’s speed could be discounted here in these constricted waters of the Ofotfjord. She could not run rings around Cassandra, or ease away from her to leave her out-ranged. This would be a fight in a small ring and the ropes were the rocky shores of the fjord.
But he had to stop her, could not allow her to escape to raid again, sinking ships and taking lives. His duty was clear — and how to carry it out. He knew what he had to do, had already decided on his course.
The barrels of the guns were training round to point at the ship on the horizon. The three guns Cassandra still had aft of the bridge would not bear as yet, but — Smith worked out a little problem in triangulation, with the distance between the two ships now as the base of the triangle and using their estimated speeds and courses, came up with an answer. He ordered “Port twenty! Full ahead!”
