Torpedo Run (1981)

by Reeman, Douglas

It was like a giant travelling circus which had paused to set up camp for another show. Vans and armoured vehicles of every kind, with anti-aircraft guns, light and heavy, already manned and pointing at the evening sky.

  Soldiers busied themselves on every side, and the air above the great laager of vehicles was smoky with cooking fires and mobile kitchens.

  But Devane’s attention was riveted on the five MTBs. Out of the water, even a forty-four ton boat looked like a battleship. But here they were toys, incidental to the great motorized carriers which were taking them from one sea to the other.

  Beresford nodded slowly. ‘I thought much the same when I saw them. But after the first confusion and misunderstandings we got them moving, and here we are. Each of those beauties has got sixty-four wheels, and the only real hazard so far was loading the boats without damaging them. When it comes to organization, we could learn a lot here.’

  The Russian captain beamed. ‘Da, da!’

  Beresford gave a brief shake of his head. Sorokin understood more than he had so far demonstrated.

  Soldiers were already hauling great areas of camouflage netting over the canopied boats and their equipment, and Devane guessed that when they were finished the whole encampment would look like just another hump of land from the air.

  A Lavochkin fighter with bright red stars on its tapered wings droned towards the encampment from the next fold of hills, and the AA guns moved to cover it, as if they were sniffing for an enemy.

  Beresford said quietly, ‘We’ve got good air cover. Without it, things could get distinctly nasty.’ As the car moved forward again he added, ‘Cadged a lift in one of their light bombers two days ago. Did a quick recce over last year’s battlefield. I’ve seen nothing like it since the old pictures of the Somme. Even the shell craters were full of craters! Thank God I’m a blue-job.’

  Devane automatically straightened his back, the pain in his spine from the constant bumping, even the earlier fatigue, forgotten. Was it merely automatic, or something he had come to accept? He had known what it was like to go out on a sortie in a boat which had only just been in battle. Men’s eyes ringed with fatigue and worse, and the boat still punctured with bullet holes from a last encounter. That was the testing moment. Now here was another.

  Five MTBs, their crews and attendant care and maintenance staff had come all this way, knowing only a fraction of the truth, understanding even less of what was expected of them.

  A strange country, made more awesome by its vast area. Even when you thought of Russia you pictured it more as a map than as earth and water.

  He relaxed very slightly as several figures emerged from amongst the parked load – carriers. The sight of British sailors, especially out here, made all the difference.

  He saw a lieutenant-commander in a stained boiler suit shading his eyes to watch the oncoming scout car. That was Buckhurst, their ‘plumber’, who had put together and patched up MTBs from Grimsby to Alexandria. He was a born fixer, and could make do with almost anything. He was a godsend, provided you could put up with his constant moaning. A lieutenant in battledress appeared smoking a pipe, his bared head like a red mop. George Mackay, the Canadian. With him was Andy Twiss, the maniac who had once taken on five enemy armed trawlers single-handed, and had crawled back to Felixstowe, his boat like a pepper-pot.

  It was like entering an encampment of olden days. Inside were the familiar faces, outside were the aliens, watchful and unemotional.

  Devane slid down from the car and returned their salutes, shook a hand here and there, and found himself wondering how Richie could have abandoned them, no matter what his personal reasons might have been.

  ‘You’ve not changed, Red.’

  Mackay grinned. ‘Hell, no, sir. Though much more of this an’ I reckon I’ll be about ready for the infantry!’

  Buckhurst wiped his hand on his boiler suit before shaking Devane’s hand.

  ‘Russians!’ He shot Sorokin a murderous glance. ‘They care as much for these boats as they do for their bloody sanitation!’

  Sorokin ambled across the churned-up ground, still smiling, but his eyes everywhere as he watched the sailors checking the lashings on their individual boats.

  Devane studied him. A hard nut. His record in the Baltic had read like the path of a whirlwind.

  Sorokin spoke to Beresford, who translated sparingly. ‘The commanding officers and ourselves will dine with the Russians tonight, John.’ He did not even blink as he added, ‘That will mean champagne and caviar until it comes out of your ears. Very passable too.’

  Devane nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  Beresford smiled. ‘You will get used to it. They have their extremes, and they can be as vast as their country. From immense hospitality to a cruelty which makes you want to vomit.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Take Sorokin for instance. He is entirely responsible for the safe delivery of our boats. And yet yesterday he found time to visit a rear-base hospital and give flowers and vodka to the wounded there. I’m told he once needed information from a German prisoner. When the man did not or could not tell him he had him stripped naked, then had buckets of water thrown over him. The German died slowly and eventually froze solid while Sorokin watched. But then, the Germans murdered his wife, so how can we judge him?’

  They both saluted as Sorokin drove sedately from the circle of camouflaged boats.

  Devane sighed. Champagne and caviar. It was further from Chelsea than he had imagined.

  For most of the following day the great caravan of vehicles and supporting armour moved ponderously westwards. If it made good six miles per hour, Beresford appeared satisfied, but there were also long delays while the lashings were rechecked on the boats or air cover was called up by some nervous patrol on the road ahead.

  After that, as the reality of war drew remorselessly nearer, the procession moved only when it was dark. Sometimes at night they watched flashes lining the horizon and, although the fighting was many miles away, the clear, bright air made it appear close and threatening.

  There were other signs too. Blackened and burnt-out villages, deserted farmsteads, to mark the Luftwaffe’s onslaught of the previous year. A few small graves, but mostly communal ones at the roadside, each with a fading red star above it.

  The Russian air force had not been able to blanket the whole of the area. During one night a German bomber force had attacked a convoy of supply vehicles on the road, and most of them had been upended or set alight before fighters eventually arrived to drive the marauders away.

  An anxious interpreter explained that the road was temporarily blocked for the great sixty-four-wheeled carriers. But Beresford was told not to worry. The necessary manpower was on its way.

  Beresford appeared to accept each challenge philosophically. Like Devane’s first evening when they had dined with the Russian officers in their temporary mess. An army colonel, his face flushed with champagne, had shouted something from the end of the table, his reddened eyes fixed on Devane. Beresford had drawled, ‘He says you are here merely as a gesture. In the Red Army they admire deeds, not gestures.’

  Devane had sensed the sudden change of mood around the table, the grim watchfulness after the earlier chorus of toasts and counter-toasts. Then the Russian colonel had toppled backwards and collapsed, and his companions had leapt to their feet to cheer and clap their hands, the momentary hostility gone.

  Beresford had said, ‘They can change like the wind. So be on your guard.’

  Devane and Beresford were sitting on a little hillock apart from the rest of the flotilla when the promised manpower marched along the road. There were hundreds of them, all in step, their field-grey uniforms showing them to be prisoners of war.

  Devane found himself on his feet as the long column of men marched towards the pile of upended and bombed vehicles. They were more like ghosts from a battlefield than soldiers. Thin, unshaven, their threadbare uniforms in tatters, they appeared more dead than alive.

  Beresford did not stand up, but said wa
rningly, ‘Easy, John. Some of this is for your benefit. They’re testing you. They’ve got fitter men in this column, they had no need to collect these Germans.’ He looked up, his eyes slitted against the sun. ‘Another lesson, eh?’

  Someone called a halt and the field-grey column stood motionless while an NCO reported to some Russians in an escorting armoured car.

  The nearest rank of men was just a few yards from Devane. The prisoners were all young, but they looked like old men. One was staring at the massive carriers and their covered loads, and then he seemed to realize that Devane was there. That he was not a Russian.

  Devane met the soldier’s gaze. One of ‘them’, as his mother would have said. It was a good thing you did not always have to see your enemy face to face. He knew that if the situation were reversed this column would be Russian, the treatment equally brutal. Too many deaths and too many atrocities by both sides had made certain of that.

  Another order was yelled and the column wheeled towards a lorry to collect shovels and lifting jacks.

  But just for the merest second the soldier and Devane looked at each other. Then the German gave what could have been a sigh or a shrug of helpless resignation before he marched away with the others. The moment was broken.

  Beresford said irritably, ‘We’re heading for a safe place to launch the boats. Day after tomorrow if all goes well.’ Then he stood up, his mood changed to one of restless impatience. ‘After that, Parthian will move up to the Russian base at Tuapse. I’ll be glad to get things going.’

  Devane looked at him. So it had touched him too. You never knew with Beresford.

  Some of the British seamen gave an ironic cheer as the third MTB came up tautly against her lines some thirty yards from the shore. Once again, the operation was impressive, with vehicles and Russian engineers to manage the final unloading of the boats into their natural element.

  Devane stood on the beach and watched. It was like seeing an amphibious invasion in reverse. Men scrambled over the gently swaying hulls, as if eager to free themselves from the land, to give their boats life again. Two destroyers cruised slowly off shore, and there was the distant drone of a patrolling aircraft to show they were still under protection. Devane watched the blunt-bowed fuel lighter chugging towards the first MTB to be slipped into the water. It was just as well they had air and sea cover, he thought. For until Parthian reached the Russian naval base at Tuapse, which according to his map lay some one hundred miles to the north-west of where he now stood, they would be unarmed and defenceless.

  The fourth MTB, Lieutenant Willy Walker’s, edged down the great ramps, guided and controlled by steel warps as thick as a man’s wrist. He could see Walker fussing about below her bridge, pointing and jabbing with his hands as if he were shadow-boxing.

  A motley bunch. But they had worked and exercised together as a flotilla. In the Bristol Channel and up the Welsh coast, making mock attacks, and acting in cooperation with some commando units for good measure. Until the moment of completing the exercises, most of them had imagined they were getting ready for the invasion of Europe.

  Devane tried to relax his limbs as the last of the boats moved slowly towards the ramps. His own. Where he would get to know the mettle of his small company and the strength of the flotilla he would now lead.

  He had already met Dundas, his Number One, and what he saw he liked. The new third hand too, Lieutenant Seymour, a slim, willowy young man whose gentle appearance was totally at odds with his Distinguished Service Cross and a hair-raising battle he had fought off Crete to win it.

  But Devane was not going to make the mistake of being too friendly from the beginning. He was to lead them, but first he must win their respect.

  Dundas had been the only man so far to mention Richie by name. He had been the one to find him dead in a cabin aboard the fast transport which had carried the newly formed flotilla from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

  Bitterly Dundas had said, ‘I never thought he was that sort. He was full of drive. I sometimes hated him for being so damned good at his job.’ He had made it sound like a betrayal.

  Devane found he had been clenching his fists as the boat came under the control of the line-handling parties and slewed round like a thoroughbred. Set against the shark-blue water which rippled on her flared hull, she was a boat which any man would give his arm to command. With her triple screws and three rudders she could accelerate from eight to thirty-nine knots in about eleven seconds.

  He could see Dundas climbing astride one of the eighteen-inch torpedo tubes, beckoning to a seaman to lower a fender outboard as a fuel lighter puffed purposefully in his direction.

  Even after her torpedoes had been fired each boat was still a deadly force to be reckoned with. In addition to her power-operated six-pounder forward and twin Oerlikons aft, she also carried a variety of machine-guns and depth charges.

  Devane could remember those first lectures at Gosport; it seemed like a century ago rather than three years. A stiff-backed torpedo gunner’s mate had lectured the new coastal forces officers on the substance of the boats they might one day command. The irony in his tone was not lost on them. Only half of those officers had come through unscathed.

  That same petty officer had lingered over his carefully rehearsed statistics like a salesman. The hulls were constructed of laminated mahogany, with glue and four hundred thousand screws to hold them together, to say nothing of the copper rivets, a mile or so of wire and a few other bewildering items.

  The MTB was swinging to an anchor now, and to his astonishment Devane saw that someone had even found the time to hoist a new white ensign at her gaff.

  A great engine spluttered into life, and like tired monsters the big Russian carriers began to move up the beach towards the road. Some of the soldiers had gathered to watch the five restless motor torpedo boats, but they gave no hint of their feelings. Envy, contempt, it could have been anything.

  Devane heard boots squeaking in the sand and turned to see Sorokin watching the anchored flotilla with professional interest.

  Devane spoke carefully. ‘I should like to thank you, sir, for getting them here in safety. It must have been a great responsibility.’

  Sorokin did not turn his head, but his mouth lifted slightly in a smile.

  ‘I would have hoped for more vessels.’ He shrugged. ‘But that is not your concern.’ His lips came together as Beresford came striding down towards them.

  Beresford glanced curiously at the Russian before saying, ‘Ready, John? Old Hector Buckhurst has admitted to some small satisfaction, so that must mean you can proceed safely.’ He pointed towards an elderly launch which was idling close to the ramps. ‘That will take you out. I’ve had your gear sent across. Lioutenant Kimber is coming with the base staff.’ He grinned. ‘By road. That’ll keep the rest of us out of your hair. For the moment anway.’

  Devane nodded. ‘Thanks. That was thoughtful.’ He had pictured Beresford and the grim-featured Kimber watching his every move, recording each contact with his new command.

  He looked up the beach. But for the great tracks there was no sign of the massive vehicles. Devane turned to say goodbye to Sorokin, but he too was already climbing into his little scout car.

  Beresford murmured, ‘Never mind that one, John. The next meeting you have with him will probably be across a table, taking a bottling because you have done something to offend the Soviets.’ He grinned again. ‘You should worry.’

  Devane realized that he and Beresford were the only two British people left on the beach. The sailors, like the Russians and their tractors, had withdrawn into their more familiar surroundings.

  Beresford said, ‘Like a piece of Kipling, isn’t it?’

  Then he drew back and they saluted each other formally, as if they had just met in no-man’s-land.

  As Devane walked towards the waiting boat he knew Beresford would continue to his transport without looking back. It was his way.

  The five boats were anchored in an uneven l
ine, rising and falling in a slight swell, while their companies rushed from one checkpoint to the next. It looked as if they had never been out of water, Devane thought.

  Dundas and Seymour were waiting for him, and in the small open bridge he received a smart salute from Pellegrine, the coxswain. He was a sturdy man with a brick-red face. A mixture of sea-time and drink. Very soon now he would know them all. He had read as much about his own command as he could. From Dundas down to an ordinary seaman named Metcalf, who was apparently a failed candidate for a commission. Even as the lowliest member of the boat, it was to be hoped he had no plans for proving he still had a special gift of leadership to offer. It could sometimes be fatal.

  Devane’s eye continued to move, his brain recording the reports of readiness as they were called from the deck or came up the various voicepipes.

  He pictured the petty officer in charge of the boat’s powerful Packard engines. His name was Ackland, before the war a garage mechanic, so he should be all right.

  Carroll, the leading signalman, was stooping down to push his flags firmly into their lockers, and another leading hand with leather gauntlets to protect him from snags in the mooring wires was mustering his forecastle party ready to weigh anchor. His name was Priest. Devane was satisfied, names were falling into place already.

  Carroll said, ‘The senior escort is signallin’, sir!’ He triggered an acknowledgement with his Aldis before peering at a hastily compiled list of local signals.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Dundas asked, ‘Shall I call up the flotilla on the R/T, sir? It’ll save time.’

  Devane slung his binoculars about his neck and tugged his cap firmly over his eyes.

  ‘No. You do it, Bunts. The sooner we get used to a minimum of radio communicating the better.’

  Dundas watched him questioningly. ‘It’s a bit like being all on our own, sir.’

  ‘In a way.’ Devane listened to the clack . . . clack . . . clack of the signal lamp. ‘I’m told that the Russians don’t trust anybody they don’t know. Well, maybe they’ve got the right idea.’