Back to Battle

by Max Hennessy

  Kelly’s first job was to brief his new commanding officers in what he expected of them and try out the ships’ companies. As they left harbour for working-up exercises off the coast of Scotland, he was determined there should be no individualists, but a single unit.

  The working-up routine had been devised by an expert in the art of driving both officers and men to the limit, and all day they carried out anti-submarine and gunnery exercises and at night controlled imaginary convoys. By the end of November they were as trained as the brief course would allow and they returned to Liverpool to act as convoy escorts. As Impi went alongside the oiler in Kelly’s usual hit-or-miss fashion, she wiped off Chatsworth’s whaler.

  Going across to apologise, he informed Verschoyle that there was to be no leave.

  ‘Pity,’ Verschoyle said. ‘Thought I might slip down to Dover to see Maisie. When Christina’s having a bad temper, she always makes me welcome.’

  To Kelly’s delight, Paddy appeared, demanding that he take her out to dinner. At long last, she was wearing the uniform of a naval nursing sister and was waiting to go to Haslar near Portsmouth to absorb naval methods, ideals and mannerisms.

  ‘What about Hugh?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Too far away,’ she said bluntly. ‘Still with Illustrious. And that’s no good to me. I want him here in England, and alongside me.’ She looked at Kelly with steady eyes. ‘And I mean alongside,’ she said firmly. ‘Standing up and lying down. In bed or out of bed. I need him and he needs me, and that’s the way it’s going to be when he comes home, married or not.’

  Too many attitudes had changed since the war and he wasn’t shocked. Indeed, it only brought home to him once more his own loneliness.

  The following day he was informed he was to take a convoy to New York and, clutching a brief case containing the Western Approaches Convoy Instructions, the convoy bible, he met the officers of the merchant ships at a conference to brief them on his intentions. To his surprise, the commodore was ‘Gorgeous George’ Harrison, the last captain of Rebuke, whose departure from the Navy had become inevitable from the day he started dodging his responsibilities during the mutiny at Invergordon. He was still a captain and still a dandy, but he looked a great deal older, more soured, and resentful of the fact that the man who had once been his Second-in-Command was now running the show.

  It was to his credit that he had emerged from retirement to take his chance at sea but he was still too naval for most people’s taste.

  ‘I’d sell you a hundred of that bastard any day,’ Verschoyle said. ‘He makes me feel seasick.’

  The merchant skippers came in all sizes and all types, from the elegant men of the big passenger vessels to those who ran ships that were little more than ocean tramps. There was an enormous amount of secrecy and no one was informed when the convoy was to sail.

  ‘Orders stamped “To be destroyed before being read,”’ Verschoyle commented sarcastically.

  The voyage was marked by a sustained battle against three submarines, one of which was damaged and one of which was sunk by Verschoyle, but the small Hunt ships were never able to keep up with the I-class vessels in the emergencies and Kelly decided bitterly that somewhere in the thirties Britain had betrayed the dead of Jutland now screwed down in their sailors’ Valhalla. There’d been time and enough to provide for this war, but it had never been done, and now they were scraping the barrel to survive and praying that somehow the Germans would so infuriate the Americans that they, too, would enter the conflict.

  Just before they reached New York, they ran into the worst gale to strike the Western Atlantic since the war had started. The sky darkened to reduce visibility to less than a mile, and life became wretched as the wind increased and they headed at three knots into mountainous seas that lifted like impenetrable green walls above their heads. Low overhead, black clouds raced past before a wind that screeched like dervishes on the rampage, and lifeboats, whalers, and motorboats were smashed, and galley fires were swamped so that food was cold and everyone forgot what it was like to be dry. Everybody seemed to be in a bad temper, from Kelly down through the first lieutenant and the master-at-arms, to the youngest boy seaman and the ship’s cat.

  For two days they lay hove-to in gigantic seas, behaving like double-decker buses on a Big Dipper. On the bridge, salt water penetrated the most tightly wrapped scarf to irritate sore necks and, as everyone’s sense of humour became strained, small things assumed magnified importance. Meals became tests of stamina because it required an acrobat to sit in a chair and tilt a cup of soup against a swinging and unhelpful ship. Below decks, hammocks bumped against each other and a constant rain of condensation dripped from the steel plates of the deck-heads into the foul air of closed compartments. Exhausted guns crews and bridge personnel stumbled below to snatch some sleep, only to doze fully-dressed in hammocks, on bunks, tables and lockers, even on the hard steel deck.

  At dawn on the third day, the storm eased enough to allow them to proceed at about seven knots, the stinging spray losing its bite and the great seas rolling under the ships instead of cascading across them, the spume and rain squalls thinning out to a mere heavy blow. As the battered, weather-scarred, rust-stained line of ships steamed into port, they all drew a breath of relief.

  The welcome from the Americans was as warm as ever but they found an even greater comfort in the feel of firm ground under their feet, the sound of birds, the land smell of the city, the blessed release from worry, and above all real sleep in steady bunks in quiet ships. Impi had come out of it with little worse than smashed crockery, but Hallamshire had had a huge wave smash a gun mounting and cock the barrels at full elevation, while a second had ripped out a steel ammunition locker and carried it overboard with a man who had been using the deck to go to his post instead of the gearing compartment and engine room; while Chatsworth had a crack in the quarterdeck plating which let water into the wardroom and caused the stern to move independently of the rest of the ship – ‘until it was flapping like a virgin’s fan,’ Verschoyle said.

  They returned with another convoy to Liverpool and, with the chance of several days in port, Kelly went to Thakeham where there was a telephone call from Paddy to say that Hugh was a survivor from the bombing of Illustrious.

  ‘But he’s safe,’ she crowed delightedly. ‘And he’s coming home!’ Then her voice sagged. ‘I’ve almost finished at Haslar,’ she wailed. ‘What’ll happen if I’m sent to the north of Scotland before he arrives?’

  ‘That’s one of the things in wartime that always produces a great deal of ill will,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll try to get your posting delayed or, failing that, get him sent to Scapa.’

  He decided he’d better inform Christina and was surprised to hear the concern in her voice. Perhaps they were all growing more compassionate with age, he thought.

  A disastrous year drew to its close with the bombing of Coventry, Bristol, London, and a dozen other places, while in Africa the Italians had captured Somaliland and invaded Egypt and Greece. On the credit side, the supply of arms mounted, President Roosevelt of the United States showed himself a generous-hearted friend, and a great strategic prize had been gained as the fine natural harbour in Suda Bay on the island of Crete had been occupied at the invitation of the Greek government as a fuelling base for naval operations in the central Mediterranean. Its value was proved almost immediately as Admiral Cunningham, C-in-C, Mediterranean launched a carrier-borne attack, which crippled the Italian fleet at Taranto. Finally – at the end of the week – Hugh arrived home, flown from the Med in a Sunderland, and the day afterwards Paddy arrived, quivering with pleasure.

  It was impossible not to be affected by her joy. Hugh was a little subdued, white and curiously tense, but happy because he was expecting to be appointed to a squadron operating from Macrihanish in Scotland, with a view to joining the new carrier, Victorious, as soon as she was ready.

  It bothered Biddy a little that her daughter didn’t sleep in her own room now that Hugh was
home, but with death just round the corner, Kelly found he could hardly blame either of them.

  The New Year – with another convoy and another visit to New York under their belts – saw the Italians tossed out of Egypt by Wavell, but Hitler, concerned with Italian failures, promptly sent the Luftwaffe – a very different proposition from the Italian Regia Aeronautica – to Sicily.

  ‘And since the aeroplane’s become the ultimate neurosis symptom of the age,’ Verschoyle said as they received the news, ‘like a virgin on her wedding night, it should give the Mediterranean Fleet something pretty weighty to think about.’

  It was as if Churchill and Hitler were playing a vast game of chess covering the whole globe, with fleets and armies as kings and queens and men and women merely as pawns.

  Almost at once, the battleship, Rebuke, was caught by two squadrons of Stukas near the entrance to the Kithera Channel off Crete. Nicknamed Rebuilt after all the alterations done on her, she’d been attached to Cunningham’s fleet and because, in the stringent period of economy before the war, she’d never managed to be provided with the armoured deck she’d been promised, when she was hit, she’d turned turtle almost at once, taking with her to the bottom 740 men out of her complement of 1310.

  Kelly was hardly surprised. He’d predicted some such fate for her as long ago as 1931. Not since Jutland, when he’d seen three massive vessels destroyed by German heavy shells plunging down on their unarmoured decks, had he had a high opinion of battleships.

  The press published dirges but nobody in the Navy was surprised, and they’d barely accepted her disappearance when the dive-bombers caught and sank the cruiser, Southampton. Almost immediately, they learned that German troops had arrived in North Africa and they all knew that from now on it would not be the walk-over it had been with the Italians but a hard slog against tough professionals.

  With two of his captains promoted and the Admiralty displaying a strange reluctance, that spoke of a foreknowledge of events, to send the twenty-third and Nineteenth Flotillas across the Atlantic again, Kelly took the opportunity to get hold of Rumbelo to look after him and acquire Latimer for Impi and Smart for Impatient. They’d doubtless have Shakespeare for breakfast, dinner and tea but at least the signals would be worth reading.

  The time in port also meant it was possible to get home, but Thakeham remained lonely and, with the blitzes, London was no place to go for an evening out. Verschoyle had moved Christina out to Guildford, much to her disgust, as staying put in London had seemed to her the only way she could show her defiance of the Germans, and he knew she’d go back as soon as he was at sea.

  With the centre of London full of still-smoking wreckage and the streets crunching with broken glass, Kelly went to Dover. During the invasion scare of September, guns and torpedo tubes had been mounted to defend the harbour, and plans to immobilise cranes, wharves and other port equipment had been made, and with control of the Strait lost, the Germans had mounted huge guns to command the narrows.

  ‘Since they weren’t needed to protect the flank of an invasion,’ he was told, ‘they’ve been used instead to bombard Dover. Our guns keep trying to knock them out, but, so far, neither side seems to have been very successful.’

  Charley was friendly and matter of fact, but no more. He stayed at her flat – sleeping on the settee – but there was always something missing, and he had been in Dover only two days when Hugh telephoned him from Thakeham.

  ‘Mother’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ It seemed unbelievable. ‘When, Hugh?’

  ‘The air raid last evening. I’ve just heard from James Verschoyle. She went back to London and he found her covered with debris. I don’t think she suffered. He rang me first thing this morning. I thought you’d like to know.’

  Kelly put the telephone down wonderingly. What a bloody funny thing war could be, he thought. While he’d found Charley again, Verschoyle had been robbed of Christina.

  He examined his feelings, trying to find some emotion. But there was none. This woman, who – if only for a short time – had been important to him – had gone, and the only feeling he could produce was sadness that she was a human being who’d been robbed of life. It was hard to think of her as dead because she’d always been so tremendously alive, but that was all. His sorrow was not for himself but for Verschoyle.

  Heading back to London for the funeral, he found Hugh there ahead of him with Paddy, and Verschoyle looking desperately lonely.

  ‘I shall miss her, Kelly,’ he said slowly. ‘God knows what it was that kept us together because we were both as selfish as hell. I just thank God Hugh’s around with that pretty little chit of his.’

  While he was with Verschoyle at his club, Corbett contacted him and they went to the Admiralty together.

  ‘You’d better both start packing,’ Corbett said. ‘The balloon’s gone up in the Med. Intelligence has it that the Germans are going into the Balkans.’

  Telephoning Charley to say he wouldn’t be going back to Dover, Kelly heard a long pause as his words sank in, but there was no indication as to whether she was sad or otherwise, and the following day a signal arrived ordering his ships to join the Mediterranean Fleet.

  He thought of ringing Charley again to say goodbye but a curious doubt held him back and in the end he headed for Liverpool without seeing her.

  Four

  It was strange to be back in Gib again, especially with all the lights glowing after the blackout in England.

  ‘So this is Mussolini’s Mare Nostrum,’ Latimer said. ‘It looks like the same old Med to me.’

  ‘Sell the pig and buy me out,’ Able Seaman Siggis wailed. ‘I wish I was back in Wallasey.’

  Everybody was talking about the coming joust with the Germans which they all knew was only just round the corner, but though the harbour was full of warships and bristling with guns, not a shot had yet been fired in anger there and the biggest concern was the German and Italian spies who everybody knew were watching from La Linea.

  The whole area of the Med was changing. The Italian adventure into Greece had turned out to be the usual disaster and, with their army flung back across the frontier by the Greeks, they were now on the run everywhere. But while troop convoys were moving from North Africa in response to the Greeks’ call for help, nobody felt that they’d stay there for long. The Germans had already occupied Romania and Bulgaria and it was obvious that Greece and Yugoslavia would be next, if only because it was clearly policy to prevent the British regaining a foothold on the mainland of Europe. The latest funny story, in fact, consisted of what the sailors had shouted down to the soldiers as they’d disembarked at Piraeus and lined up before marching off. ‘See you later,’ they’d yelled. ‘At the evacuation!’

  With the Eastern Mediterranean suddenly the focal point of the war, Kelly knew very well that he’d be moving with his ships to Alexandria before long, and, in the middle of March, Nineteenth and Twenty-Third Flotillas were informed they were to accompany a desperately-needed convoy to Malta before passing on to Alex. Intelligence had it that the Italian Fleet was contemplating a sortie against the Greek convoys while Admiral Cunningham, in Alexandria, was making dispositions to catch them at it, and the Malta convoy was to be the last for a while because he had no wish for such an important collection of ships to be caught at sea.

  Getting his captains together on board Impi, Kelly explained what he intended and they worked it out carefully with model ships until everybody knew exactly how his mind was moving, what he thought would happen and what he intended them to do.

  ‘The voyage will divide itself roughly into three parts of three hundred miles,’ he pointed out, ‘and if the convoy makes a speed of just over twelve knots, we can divide it roughly into three periods of twenty-four hours. If we leave at daylight we should arrive off Malta at daylight on D+3 and, with the early-setting new moon, we shall have only minimum illumination at night, and the hours of darkness on all three days will be almost equal to the hours of dayl
ight.’

  He paused to look at the men listening to him. Verschoyle sat alongside him, his hands clasped on a thick wad of papers, and directly in front were Smart and Latimer, as different as chalk from cheese; Smart elegant, unruffled and controlled, Latimer nervous and edgy and eager to get on with the job. The men about them looked unbelievably young.

  ‘The major hazards,’ Kelly continued, ‘will occur during daylight and will consist, I imagine, of evening reconnaissance’s and air torpedo and bombing attacks. These might well be supplemented by the proximity of Italian heavy ships, with the most dangerous time as we go through the Sicilian Channel. However, the Long Range Desert group’s expected to put on a diversion against enemy airfields, and cruisers from Alex have been ordered to bombard Soluk near Benghazi to keep the Luftwaffe busy. To gain early information, submarines will be patrolling off Taranto and the Strait of Messina.’ He paused. ‘We can’t expect air support.’

  He looked up again at the young faces staring at him but there was no sign of alarm.

  ‘If enemy surface forces are sighted,’ he went on, ‘Twenty-Third Flotilla’s job will be to harass and threaten a materially superior enemy by repeated assaults and withdrawals, to prevent them reaching the convoy. Liberal use of smoke screens ought not only to prevent them sighting the merchantmen but will also conceal the imminence of short range gunfire action and of even greater concern to them – of torpedo attacks.’

  He saw the officers shift a little in their seats because what he was saying could well be condemning some of them to death.

  ‘The ships will be split up to make a striking force, consisting of Impi, Inca and Impatient, who will harass enemy warships. Indian and Hallamshire will act to lay smoke between them and the convoy. Captain Verschoyle’s remaining ships will be the close anti-aircraft escort. The disposition for surface action, to be assumed in place of the normal cruising disposition designed to meet air attack, will be taken up with the least possible delay. The Hunts will leave the night before to carry out an anti-submarine search ahead, and join on the morning of D+1.’