Convoy North (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Best thing if the bugger was dumped overboard.’

  ‘Induced suicide?’ Napper asked sarcastically.

  ‘Why not? Best way out for him, never mind us! Bugger’ll get the chop anyway, back in UK.’

  ‘Commodore couldn’t wear that,’ Napper said with a sniff. ‘Get himself court martialled, wouldn’t he, for neglect o’ duty. Come to that — so would I. Po in charge o’ escort...’

  ‘And you wouldn’t risk that, not even for the sake of the ship and all of us.’

  Napper said crossly, ‘O’ course I bloody wouldn’t.’ He broke off the conversation and went aft with his curious waddling gait: in spite of the lanolin, he was no better. But measurements taken as accurately and carefully as possible had indicated no increase in the swelling. With luck there would be a subsidence by the time he got home again. If ever he did. He didn’t fancy taking on what had sounded like the entire German surface fleet, even less so when he couldn’t walk straight. But walk straight or walk in a twist, he knew his duty: he went conscientiously on a tour of the close-range weapons, all round the ship in the freezing, perishing cold, slithering on the iced-up decks — you never could get a decent grip with seaboots — feeling round the moving parts of the guns to make sure the ice hadn’t got at them, his skin almost sticking to the metal even through his woollen gloves. Peashooters, that was what they were, but they just might stop the jerries boarding...

  ‘Able Seaman Grove —’

  ‘Yes, Po?’

  ‘Wipe that grin orf your face, double quick.’

  ‘Sorry, Po.’

  ‘You’ll be fuckin’ sorrier if I sees it again.’

  Grove kept a straight face until Napper had turned his back and moved on. Napper, in his view, had used an inappropriate adjective for a man in his condition. Grove found himself wondering how crabs did it.

  IV

  Still ahead of the Hardraw Falls Rear-Admiral Fellowes, muffled to the ears on the flagship’s bridge, tapped the signal form that had been brought to him at the double. ‘Indiscreet — very. Plain language...the German Naval Staff — bound to reinforce!’

  ‘It’ll make the Admiralty pull its finger out,’ the Flag Captain said. He believed Kemp to have been right out of visual touch with the Flag — what else could he have done? Encyphering would have wasted many vital minutes, deciphering would have wasted more. He repeated his remark about the Admiralty sending in heavy ships.

  ‘Not as fast as the Germans,’ Fellowes said.

  That was true: if the report from the Hardraw Falls was accurate, the German units were very much nearer than any available British ships.

  The Flag Captain asked, ‘Do you intend to scatter, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s pretty extreme.’ The Rear-Admiral looked around at the convoy and the shepherding escorts, shadows in the night, the night that from now on would last almost round the clock as they came into the northernmost waters of the convoy route, into the land of the midnight sun in summer, the region where in winter the aurora borealis was at its most spectacular, the streaming Northern Lights spreading their colours vividly across the dark sky. The convoy would stand out beautifully beneath those great streaks of light, helpless targets for the German guns. Fellowes did a swift calculation in his head of what the Germans would produce: total gun-power something in the order of six 11-inch plus twenty-four 8-inch, plus secondary armament and anti-aircraft batteries, plus the torpedo-tubes of the destroyer escort that would be in company with the fleet. Quite a lot, and the convoy covered a lot of water.

  Fellowes made up his mind. ‘I’m not going to scatter. We’re not all that far off Murmansk — and bugger Archangel in the circumstances.’ He turned aside and called to the chief yeoman of signals.

  ‘Chief Yeoman...make to Captain(D), “You are to detach one destroyer with the A/S corvettes to stand by convoy into Murmansk repeat Murmansk. Heavy German force expected to make contact from Spitzbergen.” Message ends. Make to the Vice-Commodore, “convoy will detach to Murmansk repeat Murmansk to avoid expected enemy attack. Executive will follow shortly.”‘ Fellowes paused. ‘One more, Chief Yeoman.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘To Neath...and Captain(D) again: “Remaining ships will alter north-eastwards to engage the enemy.”’

  V

  In the Operations Room in the Admiralty bunker beneath Horse Guards Parade there was a high degree of consternation when the message from Commodore Kemp came in. Nothing had been known of any enemy concentration in the waters off Spitzbergen. Heads were due to roll if Kemp’s information was correct. In the meantime it had to be accepted that it was.

  ‘We know he picked up von Hagen,’ the Duty Captain said. A signal to that effect had been reported from the submarine. His face showing strain, the Duty Captain took up a red telephone and dialled a single digit. The call was answered almost immediately and the Captain made his report. He listened thereafter, saying little. When he put down the phone he got to his feet and went across to the large map that covered most of one wall, with WRNS officers and ratings standing by with pointers to shift the cardboard silhouettes of the warships in home waters. To his deputy he said, ‘Most Immediate to C-in-C Home Fleet from Chief of Naval Staff. “You are to proceed forthwith to give cover to PQ convoy off Kola Inlet and to engage heavy German force believed moving south from Spitzbergen.”’

  He looked again at the wall map: the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Home Fleet lay currently in Scapa Flow, a depleted force consisting of Rodney and the old, slow Ramillies; Rodney carrying nine 6-inch guns, Ramillies eight 15-inch and capable of only twenty-one knots at full stretch, a speed she couldn’t hope to maintain for long if, in fact, she could make it at all. Both battleships were only just in from an Atlantic convoy escort, sea worn and with stores to replenish. The stores would have to wait. In Rosyth, also within the command of C-in-C Home Fleet, was the battle-cruiser Renown together with the aircraft-carrier Victorious. All these heavy units were accompanied by their destroyer escorts; and would leave in company with the 18th Cruiser Squadron consisting of Sheffield, Edinburgh, Belfast and Newcastle.

  VI

  From the bridge of the Hardraw Falls Kemp watched, as had Rear Admiral Fellowes, the play of the Northern Lights as they lit the sky ahead. He felt a sudden shiver of apprehension: there was something about that amazing illumination, something primeval and awe-inspiring.

  “Fearful lights that never beckon, save when kings and heroes die”...some poet or other wrote that, Cutler.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you read poetry, sir?’

  Kemp laughed. ‘Think it’s pansy, do you?’

  ‘Well, sir, no, not quite that.’

  ‘Never mind, anyway. It just came to mind.’

  ‘Because men are going to die?’

  ‘We won’t dwell on that, Cutler.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘We’ll concentrate on a sharp lookout.’

  ‘Not much we can do if we sight anything, sir.’

  ‘Bugger all,’ Kemp said with another laugh. ‘Except bugger off!’

  Cutler made no response to that: Kemp had already made his intentions known to all hands. They were well round the North Cape by this time and the only viable direction in which to bugger off would be for a Russian port, and the orders were still for Archangel even though Murmansk was handier. The Hardraw Falls had no speed to match that of the heavy Nazi units and Cutler believed they were — or would be if sighted — steaming towards oblivion. He felt somehow detached about the prospect: he’d always wanted to go to sea and he’d wanted action, and if in the course of that action he bought it, well, that would be just too bad. No use moaning, and no use trying to avoid the inevitable either. He hoped for just one thing: not yet tested in full action, he hoped he could stand up to it and not let the USA down by showing fear. If he did, there would be those - not many it was true — who wouldn’t hesitate to let him know they knew: that Napper for one. Napper didn’t like Yank
s...Cutler believed he didn’t like action either. There was an expression in the British Navy and it could well be applied to Petty Officer Napper: all wind and piss like the barber’s cat.

  And what was it like back in Texas tonight?

  The rolling hills, the wide-open spaces, the big ranches far from the sea, the ice and the war in Europe...Tex Cutler’s old man ran a ranch, not one of the biggest, but big enough by British standards, and one day Cutler, along with his two brothers, would inherit it. One day — if he lived to see it; he rather hoped he wouldn’t give his father the pain of outliving a son, but even with that thought in mind he had no regrets for what might be about to happen. If he had to die, he couldn’t die in better company than that of Kemp and Theakston...he glanced across at Theakston now, standing in the port bridge wing, head sunk beneath the hood of his duffel coat, his body motionless as if frozen to the guardrail, his steaming breath visible in opaque clouds in the glow of the Northern Lights. Theakston and Kemp — they were both like rocks of dependability, each with his own worries probably, personal family anxieties that would not intrude on the duty of either of them.

  The night so far was in fact peaceful: but not for much longer, probably. And the shatter came even as Cutler had the thought: a blue-shaded lamp winked from the bridge of the destroyer escort and Leading Signalman Corrigan reported to the Commodore.

  ‘Surface contact, sir, bearing green four five, distant twelve miles.’

  TEN

  I

  Tension had mounted throughout the ship: Sub-Lieutenant Cutler was far from being the only one aboard who saw oblivion staring the Hardraw Falls in the face. Below in the engine-room Chief Engineer Sparrow stood grim-faced on the starting platform, wondering, amidst his thoughts about being the target for an unknown number of heavy German gun batteries, just how long his engines were going to stand the strain of being pushed to their maximum and beyond. They were not in their first flush of youth by any means, any more than he was himself, and they’d been pushed for too long already in the Commodore’s attempts to catch up with the convoy. Before long, something was likely to give. When the bridge passed down the word that there had been a surface contact, Sparrow was in no doubt what Theakston wanted: more speed.

  ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘Engines are rattling to pieces as it is.’

  ‘Do your best, Chief,’ Theakston said.

  Do your best, Sparrow thought, it’s the equivalent of the army’s ‘carry on, sergeant’. He passed the word, just for form’s sake, to the second engineer, who shook his head in disbelief that the bridge could expect miracles.

  ‘What’s the Old Man think we are, eh?’

  Sparrow disregarded the rhetorical question. He said, ‘If this is the Jerry heavies, then I reckon they must have missed the main convoy.’

  ‘And found us. If so, it’s curtains.’ Weller gave the chief one of his calculating looks. The strain of war — of being about to be blown sky-high — would likely tell. Sparrow, seeing that look, knew what it meant. But it was somewhat on the late side now, he reckoned. They’d go aloft to the pearly gates still in the relationship of chief and second engineer. And if they were to make that final trip, then Sparrow wished they would get on with it. The tension engendered by waiting for the big bang and the clouds of boiling steam was acting upon him like they said about a drowning man, all his past life flashing like a cinema screen before his eyes, some good, some bad. Home and the wife and kids, ports all over the world, runs ashore to get boozed up with his friends and then find a woman, white, yellow or black; unfaithfulness had never mattered much then but it did now. He should have been more contained and it was, he thought regretfully, too late now to put in a good word for himself, a sort of apology.

  Chief Steward Buckle was feeling much the same: so far in this war he had never been so close to the enemy as to fear the worst, had never been entirely alone on the waters as the Hardraw Falls now was, never been the main — the only — target for a strong force who probably believed they were about to make contact with the whole convoy and its escort and would blast away with everything they had the moment the Hardraw Falls was sighted. Not much hope now of making a small fortune out of caviar and possibly just as well really since it would have been another shady fiddle to be chalked up against him, and God knew — and might shortly tell — how many fiddles he’d worked in the past, regarding them as chief steward’s perks. He wasn’t alone, of course: he had once heard a shipmaster say that you could always tell which was the chief steward when the officers and crew went ashore in a home port, out of uniform, because the chief steward would be the only one with a car.

  II

  So far there had been no gunfire and there had been no identification either: their destroyer escort had made no further reports, no doubt in the interest of remaining anonymous for as long as possible, though it could be assumed the ship they had picked up on the radar would have picked them up at the same time.

  ‘Playing possum,’ Cutler said.

  ‘It seems to be the case, but why, for God’s sake?’ Kemp stared ahead: the sea was far from fully dark beneath the pat-terns of light but he could pick up no ship. Whoever it was could not be on a closing course. Was it remaining, as it were, parallel, keeping just outside range, or was it steaming away? For the moment there was uncertainty in the air. Kemp said, ‘It could be an arse-end Charlie from the convoy, I suppose.’

  After another five minutes Portree was seen to be calling up again. Corrigan reported, ‘Contact moving north-west now lost, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Corrigan. Keep the guns’ crews closed up, Cutler.’ Kemp glanced at Theakston standing by his side. ‘This is a mystery, Captain. There’s a possible solution...it could be the Rear-Admiral doing what I thought he might — moving to put himself between the convoy and the German units. Portree could have got an echo off one on the extended screen.’

  ‘Sounds likely,’ Theakston said.

  Kemp turned away and paced the bridge, back into the interminable business of awaiting developments, of trying to foresee the unforeseeable, of attempting to get into other men’s minds and act ahead of them. Would one of the objectives of the German warships be to get von Hagen back? There was no absolute certainty on that score, and in fact the German naval command would scarcely commit so many heavy ships to that purpose, surely? An all-out attack on the convoy must be presumed to be the first priority. If that was so, should he, Kemp, be in duty bound to stand clear and not force the speed in his attempt to catch up? The Hardraw Falls would add nothing to the defence of the convoy, that was for sure. Just another target — and he had that valuable cargo.

  Valuable to whom? The answer to that was principally the Russians, and Kemp was determined to do what he could to honour his promise to von Hagen, the promise that he would do his best for him. Even so, he couldn’t go against his orders. Von Hagen, it seemed, was an important element in the current game of chess being played between two governments...

  Kemp went into the chartroom and looked at the chart spread open on the wide mahogany table with pointers, set squares and parallel rulers laid neatly on top of it. The course for Archangel was marked in pencil from the last fix: near enough six hundred miles to go, but only three hundred and seventy to the entry to the White Sea and safety from German surface attack if not a daring Luftwaffe — around thirty hours’ steaming. Murmansk lay nearer, some two hundred miles distant — the Hardraw Falls could make the port inside some sixteen hours.

  But the orders were still for Archangel. No doubt the scene had been set there, all preparations made for an act of betrayal. Or could you ever be said to betray the enemy? Perhaps not.

  Kemp left the chartroom, went back into the cold of the open bridge. The wind was keener than ever, and everywhere on deck the ice had tightened its grip. There was no evidence of any other ship. Not yet; but the German force would presumably be sweeping south to engage.

  III

  Petty Officer Napper had gone below
to the heads and when he emerged he all but bumped into the chief steward. Buckle said, ‘Just the man.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Got something for you, if you’ve got the time.’

  ‘Should be on deck. What is it?’

  ‘Book on medical matters.’

  ‘Medical? Yes, I got the time.’

  Napper went with Buckle to the latter’s office. Buckle produced a volume: The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide. ‘Skipper sent down for it after you got — what you got. Couldn’t bloody find it, not then. But it’s turned up.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Napper said eagerly. The book should prove a mine of information.

  ‘Page 176, testicles,’ Buckle said.

  Napper flipped through the pages and found the relevant entry and his eyes widened as he read and an expression of indignation spread across his face. Bloody quacks! The doc in the Portree - ought to be struck off. The treatment stared Napper in the face: a man with bruised bollocks should be given bed rest and the testicles supported with a pillow. There was even a picture of it, the part all swollen up like a melon, resting on the prescribed pillow.

  He should have been put on the sick list, off all duties. As it was, he hadn’t even been put on light duty, had just had to carry on. Agitatedly, Napper sucked at a hollow tooth, his face all creased up. It wasn’t right, but not much use going to the bridge to complain, not just now anyway, not with the enemy around. Napper, just come from the heads, had carried out a further examination of the affected part. It wasn’t any better but it wasn’t any worse either, he had to admit that to himself, pillow or no pillow. He went back on deck, still moving awkwardly, and made his way to the bridge for another check on the close-range weapons, making sure the gunners had kept them ice free: in current temperatures they could ice up in seconds, almost. He exaggerated his crab-like gait when he saw the Commodore’s eye on him: propaganda wasn’t the province of Dr Goebbels alone.