Torpedo Run (1981)

by Reeman, Douglas

  The E-boat was still coming through the smoke, burning in several places, but closing the range until their combined speed was nearly sixty knots.

  Bullets and shells ripped past the bridge or ricocheted from gun positions as the MTBs leaned over in a dramatic turn to port.

  From aft Devane vaguely heard shouts, the clang of depth charges being lobbed across the enemy’s bows. At minimum depth setting they exploded almost under the German’s stem. The whole powerful hull seemed to leap bodily from the water, which shone bright orange from the twin explosions, and looked as if it would disdain their puny assault and plunge after them.

  But as the din subsided the E-boat continued to rise, so that her bows pointed at the clouds. The depth charges and another internal blast had broken her in half and she was already on her way down. Men floundered in the seething bow waves as the MTBs tore past, others lifted their arms and sank out of sight rather than end their lives on those racing screws.

  Devane waited for his boat to resume her course and then peered abeam as they tore through the smoke. The others were still there, their guns momentarily silent as the devastated E-boats fell further and further astern. The unscathed one had swung away to disengage, or to wait her chance to pick up any survivors from Parthian’s murderous attack.

  Other vessels loomed to meet them, and he tried to identify Orel’s gunboat as they swept through and past the Russian flotilla and on towards the convoy.

  There had apparently been four ships, one of which had been an anti-submarine vessel. Surprise, speed and the knowledge that they were being supported by the powerful E-boats had apparently been considered sufficient protection. The patrol vessel was already capsized, and two of the transports were burning or listing so badly it was unlikely they would see another day.

  The one survivor was stern on, heading for the invisible shore as fast as she could move.

  ‘Half ahead.’ Devane wiped the sighting bar with his hand and stooped down to peer at the ship’s vague outline. ‘Stand by with torpedoes!’

  He had seen the red blink of gunfire a long, long way off, but when the shells arrived, preceded by a thin, abbreviated whistle, they were no less of a surprise. A shore battery, probably using RDF to locate their remaining supply ship and pin down her attackers.

  Another pair of waterspouts shot up close alongside, and Devane gritted his teeth and tried not to listen to the motors’ pitch as splinters punched into the lower hull.

  He held his breath, shutting out the shouts and commands, the sudden rattle of machine-gun fire as a motor boat came around the side of the careering transport. Who were those madmen anyway?

  ‘Fire.’

  The torpedoes leapt from their tubes, the bows lifting slightly as they increased speed again and began to turn away.

  Devane wiped his face with the back of his hand. Both torpedoes running. One of them must have passed directly beneath the motor boat, and Devane guessed they were survivors from Orel’s earlier attack.

  ‘Line astern! Steer south-east!’

  Every face on the bridge lit up like waxworks as the torpedoes struck and exploded. A solid wall of flame shot up the vessel’s side, picking out tiny details with stark clarity. A lifeboat, hanging in halves from its davits. The ship’s scuttles gleaming like eyes in the reflected fires, and then from within as more explosions changed the hull into an inferno.

  She must have been carrying fuel or explosives, Devane thought.

  He turned to watch as his boat speeded away from the smoke which stank of cordite and burning paintwork.

  ‘All engines, half ahead. Bunts, keep an eye open for a Russian forming-and-disposal signal!’

  Dundas was wiping his face and neck with a piece of rag. ‘You’re not going to ask them, sir?’ He could not stop grinning, although his hands were shaking badly and not just from the motors’ vibrations.

  Devane shook his head. ‘No. I’ve had that.’ He saw the light paling across the water. ‘Call up the flotilla, Number One. I think we’re all right, but check for casualties and damage anyway.’

  A light blinked across the water and Carroll, who was ready with his special code card, said immediately, ‘From the Russians, sir. Return to base.’

  Seymour climbed on to the bridge, soaked in spray and covered with chips of blasted paintwork.

  ‘What, Bunts, no please or thank you?’

  Devane gripped the screen and tried to calm each muscle in turn. But it was not going away. Not this time. His stomach was screwed into a ball and he felt as if he were going to vomit.

  He made himself say, ‘Very well. Acknowledge.’ He peered astern at the pall of smoke, which seemed greater rather than smaller with each turn of the screws. ‘Now let’s get the hell out of it, shall we?’

  He was surprised that nobody turned to stare at him. His voice had had no strength to it, as if somebody else had spoken while he stood stricken, unable to move or think properly.

  He said tightly, ‘Fall out action stations, Number One. I’m going below for a minute.’

  Devane nodded to their grimy faces, their bright, brittle smiles and unblinking eyes. One more time, for most of them. And what about the new hands? Would they be as wildly exultant as he had once been, that first time? Never realizing that it was just as easy to lose a fight. To die.

  Dundas watched him until he had vanished through the little hatch, then he said quietly to Seymour, ‘Did you see that, David? Here’s me, thought I was going to lose my guts back there, and the skipper just shrugs it off.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘The Black Sea or the bloody Antarctic, he’s the one for me!’

  Seymour grinned. ‘I thought you liked Richie best?’

  Pellegrine eased the wheel over and allowed his body to unwind. Nice and smooth, a copybook attack. The motors and the hiss of water alongside prevented him from hearing what the two lieutenants were saying, and anyway he was thinking about Devane. After the previous skipper it was hard to know what any of them must be thinking at the moment of decision. He would have trusted Richie with his life, any time. A real gent. One of the best. So his suicide had been a let down, something personal which had made them resent Devane as an intruder.

  Pellegrine heard the clatter of mugs and knew that the kye, that thick, glutinous pusser’s cocoa, would soon be handed round. It gave a man back his guts, it was almost a symbol of survival.

  Able Seaman Irwin, the boatswain’s mate, touched his arm. ‘I’m to relieve you, Swain.’

  Pellegrine released the wheel and was surprised just how hard he had been gripping the spokes.

  He snapped, ‘South-east. Watch yer ’elm.’

  He grinned wearily. He did not care for Irwin very much. A stroppy jack-ashore, always being dragged aboard stoned out of his mind by a shore patrol. But, like the kye, he was something familiar, one of the ‘family’, as Leading Seaman Carroll called it.

  With each mile under the keel relaxation grew to fend off the strain and the stark terrors of the moment.

  In the small wardroom Devane sat with his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, and wondered why he had not noticed it was happening to him. He had seen plenty of others go under, usually hell-bent on destroying the enemy when, like a gun jamming when it was most needed, every fibre and muscle seemed to freeze.

  He pushed himself away from the table and stared at the opposite bunks. It was like sea-sickness. In the Navy there was no allowance for it. He stood up and waited to gauge the pitch and plunge of the shivering hull. Especially out here, in a godforsaken place like this.

  Devane jammed on his cap and made himself climb up into the keen air again.

  From the W/T cabin, which was next to the wardroom, he heard the busy stammer of morse, and from forward he could smell something frying in the galley.

  Another mission completed. Returning to base. No matter where it was.

  Somewhere a man laughed and then began to whistle to himself.

  By the time he had regained the bridge D
evane was outwardly calm again.

  He nodded to the men on watch as they sipped their hot cocoa or munched the wedge-shaped sandwiches which Dundas had had the sense to arrange before the action. Ordinary, everyday faces. In a London street, or in a crowded barracks, you would never notice any of them.

  He gripped the stained screen and took a deep breath. But out here, they were special. They did not deserve to be let down, by him or anyone.

  Seymour was fixing up the ready-use chart table, his lower lip jutting as he tried to find a pencil which had not been broken during the short, fierce battle.

  Devane let the returning confidence explore his body and mind like a warm drug.

  He said, ‘Come up here, David. Tell me about this book you’re writing after the war.’

  Seymour waved his hand across the screen as if to embrace the flotilla as the other MTBs took shape in the dull light.

  ‘Well, all this, sir. It’s important. It should be written about.’ He almost blushed. ‘One day, I mean.’

  Devane nodded. Parthian was returning to its concrete lair. The flotilla had fought for the first time together and had won. In a matter of hours Whitcombe would know what they had achieved. So, for that matter, would Berlin.

  He thought of Kinross’s severe features, and what he called his crews. ‘The Glory Boys’.

  They had come through. Next time it might not be so easy.

  Lieutenant-Commander Ralph Beresford, Royal Navy, son of an admiral, and grandson of another, leant back in a canvas chair and surveyed the flotilla’s commanding officers with quiet amusement. If he had been worried that Parthian’s first sortie would go wrong, or that the new area of operations might affect the MTBs’ young captains in some way, he did not show it.

  He looked at Devane and smiled. ‘I still prefer the Med, but you can’t have everything.’

  The flotilla’s return had been managed without incident. Russian aircraft and two escorts had covered their final approach to the base at Tuapse and, although an enemy raid had since developed, it did not seem to be a part of their world, or their concern.

  Even Hector Buckhurst had shown some warmth at their safe return, or maybe that only two torpedoes had been discharged. His team of mechanics, artificers and shipwrights had got to work immediately, and now the armourers were waiting to replace magazines and ammunition belts as soon as they could get aboard.

  Damage had been minimal. In the Channel or the Mediterranean it would hardly have warranted a report. Only one seaman had been injured, and that was when he had fallen down a ladder and cut his head open.

  Now, in the hazy, drowsy atmosphere, the pipes and cigarettes were lit, and these professionals, who had once been welcomed to active service as the Navy’s amateurs, were going over the operation, searching for flaws which might have been prevented. There had been a few of the usual stoppages on the machine-guns, and one boat’s power-operated six-pounder had jammed at the vital moment because some idiot had dropped a wrench into it. Otherwise. . . .

  Devane listened to the muted drone of a drill from the small dock, and wondered how the Russians had made out. Orel had lost two vessels, and had suffered casualties. Devane had tried to telephone Sorokin’s HQ to break the ice, but had received only a polite acknowledgement from some junior aide.

  Beresford was saying, ‘I think that a few more hit and runs on the enemy’s coastal supply lines will change things completely. We could use a few extra boats though.’

  The other officers glanced at one another, each seeing an empty chair perhaps. Any or all of them might have stayed back there in the smoke and blazing fuel.

  Willy Walker, disdainful and reserved, his long legs outstretched, sipped a mug of coffee, a yellow scarf still hanging from his neck. He always wore it in combat. God knows when it had started, Devane thought.

  There had been that pub in Felixstowe where several of the MTB officers had met in the early days. For some reason the landlord had had a supply of long clay pipes, churchwardens, which he had handed to the youthful officers like talismans. After a bad operation in the Channel or off the Hook of Holland they would all gather and solemnly break the pipe of any of their number who had ‘bought it’. The landlord had eventually run out of pipes. Which was just as well, Devane thought, otherwise the pub would be full of broken ones by now.

  Lieutenant Sydney Home, a RNR officer like Dundas, who commanded the boat with the code name Buzzard, had been a fisherman before the war, running his own drifter with that of his father. He had quit the life and joined the Navy when he had seen his father’s little boat shot to matchwood by a German fighter. He was a broad, outwardly comfortable character, who was good with his men and liked by them in return. But beneath it all, Devane suspected, there was a sense of bewilderment. Hate had brought Home into active service, the need to hit back and get revenge at the same time. But unlike many of his more youthful companions, he was still a real sailor at heart, and had found it harder than he had expected to destroy ships and leave their hands to drown or burn.

  Andrew Twiss, commanding officer of the fourth boat, code name Osprey, was a real oddity. He had been an actor, although nobody had ever discovered what kind of theatre he had graced before the war. Even he had admitted in his resonant tones, ‘It was often a case of sardines and stale beer for most of the week!’ But whatever success he had found or lost, he had certainly discovered it in the Navy. Maybe it was what he had always wanted to do, but Devane suspected he was really acting the part of his life. For Twiss was not just a young, hostilities-only lieutenant, he was the British Naval Officer. Always smartly turned out, which was almost a crime in coastal forces where battledress and old uniforms prevailed, he stood, moved and spoke like a ghost from Jutland.

  Whenever they had pulled his leg about it, he had turned a haughty eye on them before claiming, ‘If we win this war, and with the companions I am doomed to serve alongside it seems unlikely, but if, gentlemen, there will be a far greater call for admirals in the acting profession than in the Navy. And I shall be there!’

  But Devane knew Mackay the best. All of his company were fellow Canadians, and had been transferred from the same Mediterranean flotilla into Parthian.

  He was one of the warmest, and sometimes one of the most alarming, friends Devane had made. In battle, at close quarters or fanning across a heavily defended convoy with all hell breaking loose, he was like a rock. You never had to look astern to make sure he was covering your flank, he was sure to be there. When they got back from each sortie, his loud voice and grating laugh were equally forceful.

  Mackay’s first command had been sunk off Tobruk after being hit by a Stuka dive-bomber. It happened, they said. A moment of carelessness, a time when the worst was just over and all you could think of was getting home to base, to sleep or drink it off until the next time.

  Devane had detached his own boat from a patrol area nearby and had gone to search for Red Mackay and any survivors. With fuel running dangerously low and an enemy-occupied coastline rising in the dawn light like a warning, Devane had found them. Six exhausted figures, squatting or clinging to a drifting life-raft, more like corpses than survivors.

  Mackay had been one of them, but when the MTB had manoeuvred carefully against the little raft, and some of Devane’s men had clambered down the scrambling nets to help them aboard, Mackay had called, ‘Not yet, John!’

  Devane found he was clutching his coffee mug with terrible force. It was so clear. As if it had just happened. The weary, fumbling figures being lifted and guided on to the MTB’s deck, too sick and dazed to say anything, when a glance was all they could offer in the way of thanks, and Mackay just sitting there on the raft, a seaman, no more than a boy, dying slowly across his lap.

  It had probably lasted minutes, but to the onlookers it had felt like hours, like watching yourself.

  When it was over, Mackay had climbed aboard, refusing helping hands, saying nothing until he had joined Devane on the bridge.

  Then
he had said bitterly, ‘His first trip with me.’

  It had been over a month before Devane had learned from someone else that the boy who had died in Mackay’s arms had been his kid brother from Vancouver.

  Mackay was that sort of man.

  Devane came out of his thoughts as Beresford said, ‘I should tell you that I received a signal from the Admiralty about an hour before your return.’

  They all looked at him. A recall? Another assignment? A rise in the price of wardroom gin? With the Admiralty you could never be certain.

  Beresford continued, ‘It would appear that our stay in the Black Sea may have to be prolonged.’ There were several groans but he ignored them. ‘Our Chiefs of Staff have been in constant contact with the Russians, and it seems likely that the proposed assault on the Crimea will be delayed until the beginning of winter.’

  Walker exclaimed, ‘But surely, sir, that will be after any Allied landings in southern Europe. I thought the whole point of the Russians attacking when we did was to confuse and divide the German defences? Now, Jerry will be able to take on one side at a time! Bloody stupid, if you ask me.’

  Beresford smiled dangerously. ‘I was not intending to, Willy!’

  Devane said, ‘The Russians must think that an assault on the Crimea in the colder weather will give them an advantage?’

  Beresford nodded. ‘Something like that. But if Ivan makes a cock of this one, and the Germans are still there next spring, you can cross your fingers for a Normandy invasion, or anywhere else for that matter.’

  Devane thought about it. He could picture Parthian’s role expanding and becoming more involved as the weeks changed into months. The Russians would throw in everything to drive the enemy from the Crimea. It was not just a strategic necessity for the whole Eastern Front, it was a matter of honour, or would soon become one.

  Beresford looked at him. ‘I’ve got a report in depth for you, John, but the rest of you may as well know, their lordships are not too happy about the differences in seniority here.’ He kept his face expressionless as they chuckled unfeelingly. ‘This operation will be taken over by a senior commander, with the necessary administrative and maintenance staff to support him.’