Back to Battle

by Max Hennessy

  They beat off the aeroplanes without damage but as they began to relax, the signals officer appeared alongside.

  ‘Distress call from Inca sir: “Being dive-bombed.”’

  ‘It’s started.’ Latimer’s mouth was grim. ‘It’s going to be murder.’

  An hour later the signals officer appeared again. ‘Inca, sir. She requests fighter protection.’

  ‘There is none,’ Kelly snapped.

  Junkers 87s were dive-bombing the ships in Suda Bay as they arrived, contributing to the growing chaos there with attacks which came with an intensity that stunned the senses. One of their bombs near-missed Eastern Prince and she came to a stop with steam coming from her engine-room ventilators.

  Out in the harbour, ships were queuing up for the long journey to Alex while personnel ships were waiting to disembark at jetties where others were busy getting rid of their cargoes of men. Already, it was clear Impi would be going back to the mainland and the first lieutenant had got his men splicing slings for stretchers and lashing drums together to make rafts because the soldiers were going to have to come out on anything that would float. The doctor had roped off benches for operations and the cooks were baking double helpings of bread and preparing cauldrons of soup. The sailors seemed fatalistic.

  ‘What’s the good of cleaning it up?’ Kelly heard Siggis say. ‘The bloody pongoes’ll only come and mess it up again.’

  As they put their ropes ashore, the signals officer appeared, his face grim.

  ‘They got Inca, sir,’ he announced. ‘Impatient reported picking up the survivors of both ships, but then the bloody Germans raked them with machine gun fire and killed the guns’ crews, and the bombers went in. Impatient went in about fifteen minutes, with most of her crew and the survivors from Inca and Glenbyre they had on board. Some have been picked up by Ashby, but not many, I’m afraid.’

  ‘How about the captains?’

  ‘Not among the survivors, sir.’

  Kelly’s face was grim. Out of his flotilla, he now had two ships left, and ships were not merely steel and guns and turbines. They were living disciplined organisations with officers, seamen and stokers, and death by oil suffocation or entombment in the bowels of a ship was a squalid and terrifying end. And every one of them had a family – parents, wives or children who were still writing letters in the belief that they were alive. Even when the news arrived, ‘Missing, presumed killed’ it would still leave a tiny spark of hope. As he looked at his ship’s company sleeping off their exhaustion in the sun, he was staggered how young they looked despite the beards they grew, and a great surge of pride and affection for them filled his heart.

  Mail had arrived from home and it seemed like a glimmer of sanity in the lunacy of death and destruction that prevailed. Kelly Rumbelo had got his commission and was now in Repulse, and Paddy had got her wish and been warned she was to go eventually to the hospital ship, Anarapoora, at Scapa, but she was disgusted because Hugh had left Macrihanish on appointment to Victorious, which was due for sea. The trivialities the letter contained seemed to make sense just then, after the deaths of Smart in Impatient and all the men in Inca and Glenbyre.

  In defeat defiance, Churchill had said, but that was fine if you had the means, and defiance was always a bit more personal when you were the one who was doing the defying. At that moment, every day they awoke to find themselves alive was another day of grace and they were under no delusions as to the future.

  Kelly had just put the letter aside when a signal arrived that he was to take over Verschoyle’s ships, refuel immediately and be ready for sea within four hours. Chatsworth was on the oiler when they arrived and Kelly appeared alongside her with a crash that demolished the whaler.

  ‘It’s getting to be a habit,’ he said.

  Verschoyle looked tired and dark-eyed. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I’ll have it put in the water and signal you when it’s safe to come.’

  He was depressed by the disasters, because he’d already lost Rushden on the Malta convoy. She’d had to be beached at Marsa Xlokk after being damaged by a near miss and although he’d brought every one of the merchantmen home with his ships almost out of ammunition, Mons Star had been hit by a bomb eight miles from Grand Harbour. He’d managed to tow her in with Chatsworth and Hallamshire in a chaos of wires, ropes and cables, with most of her oil intact but Clan Mackay had been sunk by another bomb at her berth with the loss of most of her cargo.

  Since then, he’d been operating with his remaining ships and Impatient off Volos and had no great opinion of the staff work that had sent him there.

  He offered Kelly a drink and a cigarette and sprawled in his chair, his body limp with weariness. ‘This is only the beginning, too,’ he went on. ‘When they start on Crete, we’ll have to do it all over again. It’ll be like Dunkirk, only worse, because this time we’ve got to do it across a hell of a lot of sea without the RAF to watch out for the Luftwaffe.’

  He smiled wearily and sank his drink. ‘It’s a bugger of a war, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Seven

  They had brought the army out, but the battle was far from over. Before long the Germans would attack Crete and the British had to hold it as much as the Germans had to capture it.

  There was little light in the darkness and British fortunes were at their nadir. Tobruk was besieged now and the situation in the desert had grown worse. Two British generals had been captured – ‘It ought to ease the crowding among the staff a bit,’ Latimer commented – and most of the armour had been lost. Every gain from the winter campaign had gone.

  In Alexandria the anxiety was obvious. With envy in his heart as he saw the delight with which Verschoyle and Third Officer Pentycross greeted each other, First Officer Jenner-Neate became a symbol of calm to Kelly. He found himself investing her simplest actions with something the other Wrens couldn’t even pretend to possess – confidence and efficiency when they seemed to be blessed with nothing but the enthusiasm of youth, grace when they seemed as awkward as colts, tranquillity when they seemed to shriek like a lot of disturbed parakeets. It was tragic that they’d met again at the most desperate period of the war. Nothing was normal: everything – associations between men and women, even love affairs – had to be conducted at a frantic pace. Britain was fighting for her life. Now that the invasion scare at home had died, the desperation was all in the Middle East, because if the Mediterranean were lost the whole of British strategy would collapse.

  With the North African coast occupied by the enemy, there could now be no air cover for the biggest part of the Mediterranean, and Malta was once more in danger of starving. The respite the destroyer crews had hoped for after Greece – because there was hardly a single ship that was not in urgent need of a refit – never materialised. Tank and aircraft reinforcements had to be pushed through from Gib, because the army couldn’t wait for it to go round the Cape, so a convoy was assembled at Alex and, escorted by every available warship, run westwards to Malta where the tank and aircraft convoy was met and brought back to the Eastern Mediterranean. The Luftwaffe tried its hardest but the volume of gunfire was so tremendous it was beaten off without loss, but neither the tanks nor the aircraft, which had been brought at such effort from England, had been fitted with sand and dust filters and the work had to be done before they could go into action.

  ‘Why in God’s name couldn’t they fit the bloody things before they shipped them?’ Verschoyle snarled. ‘The whole goddamned lot could be destroyed before they’ve even fired a shot!’

  Desperate for calm, Kelly looked up First Officer Jenner-Neate again, but she seemed wary of him and was so perpetually on duty she began to torment him with her inaccessibility. He could see her and talk to her at headquarters but never alone, and he wondered if she were avoiding him. He knew she had a highly responsible job that demanded dedication and long hours but, by this time, her dullest, most menial chores had become for him an expression of her personality. She was completely mistress of what she did and seem
ed to tackle her work with a serenity that elevated it beyond a mere chore, and he took to hanging about in the corridor near her office like a love-sick midshipman in the hope of meeting her. When she appeared, which was rarely, she was always in a hurry, however, and in his desperation he wondered if he were falling in love again. Surely not, he told himself. He was too bloody old for that and she was too sensible.

  Finally, he grabbed her as she appeared with an armful of papers and was just about to ask – demand even – that she meet him for drinks when the fleet chaplain appeared. Frustrated, he swore bitterly and he saw the chaplain’s lips purse. Jenner-Neate’s mouth was as firm as ever but as she vanished – as suddenly as she’d appeared – her eyes were smiling.

  In a fury, he wrote her a note asking her if he could take her out to dinner but it came back with a scrawl across the back – ‘Too busy. And so will you be soon.’

  She was dead right again and the following morning he heard that the Germans had occupied the island of Milos eighty miles to the north of Crete as a base for the assembly of convoys and that they intended to mount a massive invasion of Crete by air. It needed no great intelligence to appreciate that the targets would be Canea, Retimo and Heraklion, and to counter any such attack naval forces were to be deployed to the west and north-west of the island, while the main fleet remained at Alexandria. Air reconnaissance or fighter cover was not expected to produce much.

  Latimer blew up his lifebelt with a great show as they left for sea. ‘I expect it’s all the air support we’ll get,’ he observed.

  With Intelligence reporting that the attack could be expected any day, Kelly took Impi and Indian, followed by Verschoyle’s three Hunt-Class ships, to Suda Bay before leaving on a sweep to the north. It was a messy arrangement mixing the classes of ships, but it was typical of war when tidiness was often sacrificed to ensure that it went on without interruption.

  ‘It’s a bit like Boy’s Own Paper,’ was Verschoyle’s comment. ‘Soldiers of the King facing fearful odds.’

  Crete was a harsh island, but dawn there always seemed to be extraordinarily beautiful, rising on decks wet with dew or powdered with sand blown from Africa, and it required little imagination to understand why it had been so beloved of Byron and Rupert Brooke.

  To the men struggling to build defences, however, and to the nervous sailors with their eyes on the sky on the lookout for aircraft, there was little poetry in a place that was only a temporary refuge from German ferocity. Whitehall was urging that it should be made a fortress, but no arms had arrived and, despite the numbers of soldiers, it remained a base of gunners without guns, drivers without vehicles, and signallers without radios, all mixed indiscriminately together and left to man the defences because there had been no ships after Greece to transport them to Egypt.

  On the evening of May 19th, north of the island, Kelly’s four ships were found by dive-bombers but, thanks to the anti-aircraft guns on the Hunt-Class ships, they were all driven off. Because of their smallness, however, the Hunts were unable to carry a great deal of ammunition or fuel and, as they returned to Suda Bay to re-ammunition, they ran into a fresh series of air attacks which appeared to be directed chiefly at the beached York. They were due to head north again the following day but, as they prepared for sea, they could see heavy German bombing south of Canea and towards Maleme.

  ‘Break out the Flit guns,’ Kelly suggested to Latimer. ‘I’m going to my cabin. Call me if it comes on to bomb.’

  He had hardly spoken when aircraft appeared over the mountains and swept over the harbour. Immediately, every gun on every ship burst into flame. The din was terrific and a Junkers 88 hurtled over the bay at masthead height, trailing smoke, to disappear beyond the hills in a great flower of flame.

  ‘That’s got one of the buggers,’ Siggis yelled with satisfaction.

  As they turned from watching the disappearing aircraft, they saw more appearing to the south and west of Canea.

  ‘Junkers 52s,’ Latimer said. ‘Transports.’

  Almost immediately, they saw objects falling from the aeroplanes and the blossoming of parachutes, then more concentrations of troop carriers and gliders making for Maleme.

  ‘The invasion appears to have arrived!’

  Almost immediately, the signal arrived to send them off to the north.

  ‘SWEEPS CANCELLED. GERMAN SEABORNE FORCE NORTH OF CRETE. COURSE 180. PATROL NORTH OF HERAKLION EAST OF LONGITUDE 25 DEGREES GUARDING GENERAL AREA SUDA BAY/KISSAMO BAY/MALEME.’

  As they slipped to sea, it was obvious that the military situation ashore was already confused and uncertain, and more aircraft were already swinging in to attack Suda Bay. As they turned north they could smell the land – the dry breath of rock, dust and rotting driftwood – and in the distance the sky seemed to be full of aircraft and the black pockmarks of shell bursts.

  ‘Aircraft green one-oh!’ Rumbelo’s voice swung their heads round. ‘About twenty of them!’

  ‘They’re Junkers!’ Latimer yelled. ‘Twenty-one, to be exact. And they don’t have escorts!’

  ‘Make to all ships,’ Kelly said. ‘Point blank range.’

  As the flags fluttered up the guns remained quiet, and they watched in silence as the aircraft approached. Since the ships made no attempt to fire, the pilots of the Junkers seemed to feel they were out of ammunition, and made only a slight swing away from them. But then every gun in the flotilla, the 4.7 all-purpose weapons on the I-class ships, the point-fives and Verschoyle’s four-inch-high-angle guns, burst into flame. The first of the transports was surrounded by puffballs of smoke and almost immediately its starboard engine began to trail smoke. A door opened and men began to jump, their parachutes opening as they fell. A second machine just behind exploded and fell in pieces, a wing sidling sideways and downwards in long slicing curves through a sky that was dotted with the falling bodies of men.

  Latimer was shouting with excitement as another aircraft caught fire. The transports had run straight into the barrage and within seconds seven of them were falling towards the sea and several more were trailing smoke. The rest swung away to the north, followed by the pockmarks of shell bursts.

  ‘That’s stopped the bastards laughing in church,’ Siggis yelled jubilantly.

  They continued to head north, fighting off a half-hearted attack by Italian bombers and later a force of high-speed Italian torpedo boats which hurtled round St Nikolo Point at the eastern end of Los and let go their torpedoes before retiring in the face of overwhelming fire. Throughout the night they sped eastwards, dreading the following morning and the possibility of being discovered by dive-bombers.

  Latimer appeared at Kelly’s side.

  ‘Forces C and D have been attacked,’ he announced. ‘Ajax damaged. Juno sunk.’ He frowned. ‘My brother-in-law’s in Juno.’

  ‘I’m sorry, William. I hope he’s safe.’

  Latimer shrugged. Tragedies of this sort were common coinage these days and people had grown so inured to them, they no longer had much impact.

  Shortly afterwards another signal arrived.

  ‘NUMBER OF SMALL CRAFT HEADING SOUTHWARDS TOWARDS CRETE. BELIEVED TO BE PART OF INVASION FLOTILLA. CLOSE IN THROUGH KASO STRAIT AND KITHERA CHANNEL TO PREVENT SEABORNE LANDING.’

  ‘Give me a course, Pilot,’ Kelly said. ‘Revolutions for 28 knots.’

  Just after eleven o’clock, the masthead look-out called out.

  ‘Masthead to bridge. Unlighted ship red two-oh.’ There was a pause. ‘Correction. Several ships. Small ships. They look like Greek caïques.’

  ‘Port two-oh!’ Kelly said. ‘Full ahead both. Stand by the searchlight. How far north of Crete are we, Pilot?’

  ‘Eighteen miles, sir.’

  ‘I bet they were hoping to make the place in darkness. Searchlight!’

  Impi’s light blazed out; Indian’s followed, with the lights of Verschoyle’s ships. Just ahead were about twenty-five caïques, the small wooden cargo boats that operated among the islands. They se
emed to be crammed with men among guns and boxes of what appeared to be ammunition. Officers in the bows appeared to be yelling instructions to each other with megaphones.

  ‘My God, what a target!’ Latimer said. ‘Poor bastards!’

  ‘Save your sympathy,’ Kelly snapped. He bent to the voice pipe. ‘Fire at will!’

  As the searchlights had appeared, the sails of the caïques had been lowered to minimise their size, and as the British ships came round, guns blazing, the little vessels began to scatter.

  ‘Destroyer, sir,’ Latimer reported. ‘Coming up astern of them! Looks like Lupo class. Modern but small. 3.9-inchers and torpedo tubes.’

  The Italian ship was making smoke, which was drifting towards them as she crossed in front of the caïques. Immediately, Indian’s guns crashed out and they saw tall fountains of water lift on either side of the Italian’s bows. The next salvo smashed home just abaft the bridge and they saw a large fire break out. The Italian captain was conducting himself with great courage, thundering towards them with every gun blazing. Turning to comb his torpedoes, they swung back towards the convoy, still hitting the Italian destroyer with everything they possessed, and as she swung away, burning, a complete broadside from Impi struck her on the stern.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Siggis’ exultant voice yelled. ‘Straight up the arse!’

  While Impi and Indian had been tackling the escort, Verschoyle had made no mistake about the convoy, and as they swung back to help, they saw that most of the caïques were on fire or sinking. Only three or four seemed to be still afloat and trying to turn north away from the withering fire. They were crowded with men, and were flying the Greek flag, and the destroyers tore into them, snapping and tearing like wolves which had broken into a flock of sheep. Every gun was roaring, pom-poms and machine guns riddling their occupants, and German soldiers were leaping into the sea fully equipped. Between the roars of the guns they could hear the unearthly wailing of drowning men.