In the slack hours on the low-lit bridge, riding through the night with the quiet voices and the helmsman’s silhouette off to his right, standing as easy and steady as the course, MacIver conjured up a larger context for Massenbach. He used, it seemed, unorthodox ways to keep the whole outfit alert, boredom at bay. Short rotations of actual watch, but between them games of chess (he had taught them that too), while the young hayseed from Bavaria was free to carve wood, which he did well, and the nervous painter from Darmstadt did a fresco of the medieval myth of the Venusberg at the entrance of the bunker. They spent a lot of time outside this squat pillbox, lookouts posted on cliffs for a wider survey than the slit openings the gun site provided. Keep them out in the fresh air, not stifling themselves under the low ceiling with the smell of cordite, hot steel, and oily dust. The captain himself, when he was on duty, sat in a straight-backed chair above the cliffs, facing the sea, but head bent to a book, flashing gold-rimmed glasses, trying to puzzle out the inflections of Basque grammar. Twice a week he drove into Spain in his long raking staff car to take lessons in philology from a neighboring parish priest; not for him the bored sally to Biarritz and the empty dining room of one of the old Edwardian hotels overlooking the grey Atlantic (a little more champagne, Liebchen?), keeping up pretenses for the invader. No, Massenbach was there for his men and for the town. Picnics on the beach, soccer games on the grassless field behind the lycée.
More recently though, the mood would have grown uneasy. Were they going to be marooned down here? Stern rules against the dangers of fraternization had begun to appear on the walls of their billets. In town, when the lower ranks loitered on the promenade after supper, the natives made a point of giving the cold shoulder; graffiti and tricolor stripes were found painted across the Reich’s proclamations in the square; derisive shouts followed their trucks: “Hey, Bochesalop! Still hanging around, waiting to be taken? How do you think they’re going to take you? Maybe from behind, eh? Storming up your ass, while you’re standing at attention staring out to sea!” Massenbach’s men had been schooled beyond the ordinary to tact and patience, but why were they still here?
They had taken a three-hour break after midnight, but were now back on the bridge. The question was on Major Lockeford’s mind.
“Are you sure they’re still here? I thought the word had gone out to the German divisions in the south that they should withdraw, and hold a line farther north.”
“They were still here as of dawn yesterday morning before we left Weymouth, according to our intelligence and the local resistance. It’s a puzzle: our people assume they’ve been left to be useful pretty much along the lines of your mission—only, I suppose, in reverse: covering the last dash of escapees across the border.”
MacIver had the impression that the major had seen enough trouble in this war already, and did not relish an ill-defined and probably unnecessary engagement in this forgotten corner against the rump of the Wehrmacht. But they were getting close. An hour before dawn the men had breakfast, and then were ordered to battle stations.
Major Lockeford went back to his company. The first phase of the action would belong to the Royal Navy. The Pongoes would stay out of the way, while the Constant’s 4.5-inch guns eliminated the two gun sites on the cliffs. Farther inland ahead of them, the sun was already firming up with red the low clouds in the east, and starting to fire shafts of glare past the dark silhouettes of the mountains. Their targets on the coast were still in shadow but clearly visible through the glasses; the ship was now well within range, inside three miles, and turned parallel to the coast to bring forward and after guns to bear at once. This should be easy. The after guns were given the target of the more northerly placement, the forward guns the larger of the two on the cliffs to the south; they fired pretty much together, and the after guns got lucky with their first shot. MacIver on the bridge, with his glasses trained on the cliffs, felt the recoil shudder through the ship, and saw the shell explode into the rock face forming the underlip of the northern bunker, driving upwards towards the big gun itself: rock, concrete, and flame burst upwards, bright in the shadow, and a large artillery piece slid forward over the cliff. There was a cheer from soldiers and sailors on the Constant, but it was cut off by an answering shell from the shore, bursting not thirty yards astern. They were there after all, and they were ready.
“Two points starboard, helmsman,” said MacIver, moving his glasses along the cliff to the other German gun, and seeing it flash. The forward guns had been a little high and off to the left: MacIver saw smoke rising behind the crest of the cliff.
“Two points starboard, sir,” the man at the wheel repeated, making the adjustment. It wasn’t enough. Instantly there was a huge explosion aft, and the whole ship lurched farther starboard, every rivet straining, as though it had just grounded itself on a rock. But it was a direct hit on the after gun turret. On the bridge they heard shouting and screams, soon drowned in the klaxon of the fire alarm blaring through the ship. They would be getting it hot and heavy now, with the enemy gun locked on their position. MacIver called for more speed, and turned the ship sharply towards the shore, heading straight for the target, offering the enemy an oncoming splinter to shoot at, which would be harder until he lined it up. The next shell from the shore fell alarmingly close on the starboard side—water from the spray struck the windows on the bridge like a detonation, and MacIver and the helmsman rocked backwards with the shock. But the next two shells in quick order fell farther back and wider from the turning ship: the German gunner had locked on their broadside course and would now have to adjust. “He damn near had me, and still might,” MacIver said to himself. The forward guns blazed again below him, this time closer but low into the cliff to the right of the German battery. MacIver noticed the helmsman’s mouth thin with tension as he held the wheel to the last of the turn: they both knew it was a question of who was fastest now.
“Jenkins, make your correction fast, and take the fucker out,” MacIver said evenly into his intercom, and saw the officer in earphones at the forward guns glance up at the bridge and nod. “Fire and first aid parties to after gun turret.” MacIver took a deep breath, and waited, trying not to count. In a matter of a few painful seconds the guns below him thundered again, and this time scored; MacIver, with his glasses locked on the bunker, willing his shells home, saw its concrete roof burst upwards and the exposed gun, no doubt with a shell in its breech, skew sideways and explode. Jenkins poured the fire on, the crews rhythmically loading four seconds to the round, and soon produced a truly pyrotechnic display across the water at the top of the cliffs, having apparently hit a magazine beside the bunker. The time was 0634. The whole engagement thus far had taken less than four minutes. It remained to be seen at what cost.
But they wouldn’t stop to count it now. The engine room reported that all systems were functioning, but that it was hotter than hell down there. They asked that hoses be kept playing on the deck overhead. “Make it so, Mr. Edwards,” MacIver said to his first officer, “and get me the casualty report.” He addressed the ship at its battle stations: “We have taken a hit and suffered casualties, but we remain powerful, as you have seen, and will finish the job, which is to land our guests in a safe harbor. We will enter at speed, and ready to fire: the Bofors will strafe the top of the promontory heavily as we round it, so we won’t have people shooting down at us. The two principal targets for the forward guns are the small pillboxes at either end of the breakwater. After that the entrance to the Hôtel de Poste, the large building at the north end of the promenade, where the enemy are billeted. I expect the action to be successfully concluded in eight to ten minutes.”
In fact, it was over before 0640. The engine room gave them a burst of speed around the promontory, with the Bofors raking the high rocks; as soon as they made the turn and saw the breakwater and the town in front of them, the big guns blasted the two pillboxes. A few German soldiers suddenly appeared and started running down the breakwater towards them with machine g
uns chattering, as though they would stop the ship before she reached the entrance; but they were jerked like puppets off the wall by shrapnel or direct fire slamming into the stones beneath them. There was a brief pause and then the forward gun placed a 4.5-inch shell into the front door of the hotel, only half a mile away. After the explosion, figures could be seen pouring out of the ground-floor windows along with the smoke, towards trucks and jeeps in the driveway. “Wait till they’re full and about to move, and fire again,” MacIver said quietly into the intercom. Again the nod from Jenkins. The first round exploded the lead truck into flames, which blocked the other vehicles from the exit. A white towel attached to what looked like an officer’s baton was waved from the second jeep. “Cease fire,” said MacIver.
After the inferno, the silence was deafening. The engine room cut the ship’s engines to idle, and she rested in the inner bay with her guns still trained on the shore, the crew at their battle stations. There were no shenanigans. Loudspeakers broadcast across the water to the German remnant that they were to pile their weapons and assemble at the north end of the promenade to await the arrival of Major Lockeford, who would receive their formal surrender. The boats were lowered and the soldiers efficiently filled them, and were powered across to the beach. They leapt ashore before the boats grounded, fanning out with weapons at the ready for the short dash up the sand. A small crowd of early-morning onlookers cheered. On the promenade, a German officer stepped forward and saluted Major Lockeford. MacIver, watching through glasses on the bridge, noted with satisfaction that he was of the rank of Hauptmann, and appeared to wear gold-rimmed glasses.
The report had been that four men had been killed and three critically injured at the after gun turret; two soldiers, who had edged too close to the action to watch the guns being worked, had been hit by shrapnel but would do fine. MacIver left the bridge in Edwards’s hands, and went aft to see for himself. The gun turret was a charred husk of a thing open to the sky, its twin barrels vanished, vaporized, or exploded into myriad shrapnel fragments. What metal armament remained around the exploded core of the gun seemed frail, paper thin, a derelict black tulip; in this state, it was hard to believe the relic had ever served any kind of function at all. Spars and struts had writhed and been twisted like straws in the heat, and then set carbonized into blackness. The mechanical hoist that brought the shells up to the guns had also been seared by fire, but remained recognizable, so it was clear it had been quickly extinguished. Men from the fire party were still hosing water on the base of the turret and the surrounding deck, whose blistered paint was being stripped by the spray. MacIver congratulated the chief petty officer on their prompt reaction. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “A close call—when we got here, the deck was red as a brandin’ iron.” The mood, MacIver noted, was somber back here, in contrast to the exultation of the forward gunners, who had not yet heard the full report.
He turned to the casualties. The two soldiers, he heard, had been helped to the sick bay, but his own men were still on the deck being attended to, on stretchers away from the heat. Four were covered with blankets and just in the process of being carried away. He stopped the first stretcher bearers, and was given the names: the body they were carrying was his junior officer Mark Cuthbertson, who had been in charge of the after gun.
Every detail of what followed was fixed in slow motion in MacIver’s memory. Surgeon Lieutenant Michael Rosenberg and two of his sick-berth attendants were involved with the three other cases. When he noticed him looking down, the surgeon had given some instructions to one of the attendants, and stood up to join him. They had walked a little apart.
“So tell me, Michael,” he had said.
“What we have is effectively seven fatalities. You have seen the four dead. Milnes and Oswald are unconscious and will not regain consciousness. Head wounds and burns. Matthew Barton has lost his right arm at the shoulder, and his right leg above the knee. We have stopped the bleeding there, but he also has terrible burns over more than 40 percent of the rest of his body. He can’t survive.” MacIver could smell burnt flesh mixed in with the lingering cordite from where they stood.
“But he’s conscious?” he had said.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“What now?”
“Not long. We’ll try to keep him hydrated. Apart from that, morphine and more morphine.”
MacIver had gone forward and knelt beside the stretcher. “The captain’s here, Matty,” someone said gently.
The man had clearly registered it, and with terrible concentration tried to speak. MacIver leant forward over him to catch the slow, forced syllables, each one whispered with equal effort and emphasis. “Into the water, please, sir,” he said.
“Soon, Matthew, soon,” MacIver had said, afraid of his wounds but wanting to hold him.
“We will keep him comfortable, Robert,” the surgeon said, when he was going back to the bridge.
“About three or four minutes of action, Michael,” he said. “We lost two men a minute.”
They had buried Matthew Barton at sea early in the morning on the way to Gibraltar. The two other wounded men had died within a few hours of their arrival in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and had been buried there with the four killed at the gun turret. Matthew had slipped away into a coma, and died in the evening after they had set sail. MacIver recalled the extraordinary quiet of the ship’s company, assembled for the brief service of committal. He had found it hard to read the words: “We have entrusted our brother Matthew to God’s merciful keeping, and we now commit his body to the deep, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life....” The body in its weighted canvas bag covered with the Union Jack slid forward off the bier, and the light swell of the sea rose to take it, with hardly a splash. Some of his messmates had been given flowers by people in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, as part of their high-spirited thanks for liberation, and had said they would make a wreath for Matthew. MacIver now stood back and nodded to the two able seamen, who came forward with their large arrangement, beautifully woven, and lowered it evenly on new cords and laid it on the water. MacIver felt his eyes, and the whole crew’s, drawn to follow it gliding away from the ship’s slow passage, bobbing slightly as it passed over the small wake behind them. Then the ritual returned to the present and the words of the Navy prayer: “O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens and rulest the raging of the sea; who has compassed the water with bounds until day and night come to an end: Be pleased to receive into Thy almighty and gracious protection the persons of us Thy servants and the Fleet in which we serve. Preserve us from the dangers of the sea and of the air and from the violence of the enemy; that we may be a safeguard unto our most gracious Sovereign, King George, and his dominions, and a security for such as pass upon the seas on their lawful occasions. . . .” Good strong historic words, MacIver thought as the men quietly filed away after the service, and encouraging too, as long as you live to say them. . . .
Old MacIver sat on in his rocking chair, reliving that brief passage of his life (in fact, these had been the only moments of command he had been allowed: the loss of the gun turret had necessitated a long, frustrating delay in Gibraltar for repairs, and before they were complete, it had been decided he would be more useful back in the Admiralty). But the few moments had great force for him; he could remember no others in his working life when he had felt so much alive. “You love what you do, don’t you,” Major Lockeford had said with a smile, but a little shake of his head as well, when they were saying good-bye, as though he had been doing nothing but this sort of thing through the whole war. MacIver only came to realize later that the shake of the head implied a small criticism from a generous man, or at least an incomprehension: how can you radiate such exultation at the outcome, when you have just lost seven men whom you obviously cared about? His best friend at Oxford, the little fire-plug of a scrum-half for the university, Terry Aldington, had once told him in a moment of truth: “The thing about you is that you have a lot of violence
in your nature, and only a piece of you disapproves of the fact: you had better find a gentle girl and marry her, so you can learn the rest.” Terry, who had been killed in the Normandy landings, was never wrong, and MacIver did what he was told. The question, though, was always how well he had learned the lessons she had taught him.
CHAPTER 5
The Art of Seeing Differently
Not a good night, but still bearable. Pain a little more assertive, fever spiking higher, before the dawn remission, sinking with the moon. Pain and fear both know that a little goes a long way at night. They had been testing him. But he now had to acknowledge that he was persistently ill, in a particularly nagging way. The pain seemed to have opened up a second front with some sudden thrusts into his midsection while he was writing—as though it weren’t hard enough already. But perhaps the most telling symptom was that he was now finding it very hard to swallow—the only thing attracting appetite was the warm water. He still tried to abide by the Rules and eat real food, but he was aware he pushed it around inside his mouth, gumming it like a child who has been told to finish her spinach or rice pudding if she wants to watch her favorite program, which is just about to start. Tears would not be far away. In his case, it was not so much revulsion at the taste, but fear of the stab at the act of swallowing.
Rules for Old Men Waiting Page 6
