The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6

by Alexander Fullerton

  “How long’s the oxygen last in these?”

  Lanchberry was pulling the DSEA sets out of the storage locker. Paul admitted, “If she floods that slowly, not long enough.”

  Forty-five minutes, he was remembering, on the main cylinder. Then you could switch to the reserve and get another five.

  “Can’t do it, can we.”

  “What we can do,” he’d just started talking, spouting thought aloud, “is get her up to the surface, abandon ship—and she’ll go down again on her own with the hatch open. As she’s going to blow up, there’s no problem about secret equipment in enemy hands, so …”

  “Skipper—how?”

  “Just listen to me, Jazz.” He leant with a hand on Louis Gimber’s shoulder. “First we’ll lighten her as much as we can.” He pointed at the trimming pump. Gimber interrupted, “Pump’s got a hell of a pressure to work against.” Paul nodded. “Sure, it’ll be on the slow side. But we’ll start by emptying the stern trim-tanks and comps, shift that weight to the bow or amidships. It’ll at least help to balance her. Then we’ll blow one and three.”

  “Skipper—”

  “Hang on. We’ll lose air through three, I know, but the blowing will still have some effect, from the air as it passes through. It did start to—remember? Before we heard it escaping and you shut off? Then as soon as she shows signs of stirring, full ahead group up. Planes hard arise. Surface. At this angle, and keeping her at full ahead and blowing like hell—well, she ought to get there, and although she won’t stay up for long there’d be time to evacuate … Right?”

  “Ten to one against.”

  “Balls, Jazz. But that’s better odds than we’ve got down here, anyway.”

  Gimber agreed, “It’s the only hope we’ve got, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. We can pump out number two main ballast too, Jazz. I was thinking we couldn’t—for some reason … But we do have a chance, you see.” There was a glint of hope in Lanchberry’s eyes, at last. Paul told him, “I’ll take over as helmsman, Jazz.”

  “Yeah?”

  Gimber looked surprised too.

  “Because I want to control the blowing myself.”

  It would make enough sense—just enough—for them to accept it. In fact he wanted to change places so the two of them would be under the hatch and first out. If she reached the surface. Lanchberry had been near enough right, he thought, with his estimate of the odds against.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  . . .

  Trench said,” That’s the lot. Those top sheds are empty, at the moment. Until we disperse the litters, you see.”

  Trying not to show my relief too plainly, I pushed the door shut. When you’ve seen a few thousand minks, you have a fair idea what a mink looks like. I thanked him for the guided tour. “Fascinating.”

  “Really?” He was genuinely surprised, “D’you think so?”

  Unspoilt Norfolk countryside lay around us. There was a village in a dip, thatched cottages clustered round a church with a square stone tower; in woodland between us and the village the trees were in new leaf. Some fighters had roared over at something like Mach 2 while we’d been in the shed, but all was quiet now and it looked as it might have done fifty years ago.

  Trench told me as we strolled towards the farm’s office building, “Foremost was hit a second time, and stopped, just as we got down to support her. The enemy destroyers, in line ahead, had turned towards her and the convoy—which they couldn’t see yet, on account of the smoke she’d been laying, but obviously knew where it was … They had Foremost pretty well for target practice, steering to pass her at close range and no doubt blow her out of the water on their way to make hay with the convoy. Having had their friends lure me away to the north and northeast, you see.”

  “D’you think it was a deliberate plan they’d followed?”

  “No, I don’t. Visibility was too bad, for one thing. I don’t think they had much idea of anything until they actually ran into us. They were scouting in separate divisions, that’s all, and it’s how things happened to turn out.”

  “So you were steering south—with the enemy and Foremost in sight.”

  “The Germans didn’t spot us until it was too late—too late for them— and by that time we’d fired torpedoes. It was too late for poor Foremost too, of course. She was quite obviously done for, but they were still bombarding her. At times you couldn’t see her for their shell-spouts, and the smoke pouring out of her, and fires—and the vis being what it was anyway … I was—well, you can imagine. I’d put him in that ship—then left her, gone swanning off on a wild goose chase, and …”

  He paused, shaking his head. “I know. I couldn’t have stayed down there, ignored the enemy reports from Legend. Still … Foremost was helpless— stopped, burning, one gun firing at irregular intervals—and those bastards methodically completing her destruction. Their job, of course—but there seemed to be a certain Germanic precision about it that got my goat. In fact they were preoccupied with it to the extent that our fish were on the way to them before they knew we were there. I’d have thrown the galley stove at them, if I’d had it handy. What I mean is—I told you earlier I’d intended saving our torpedoes for Lützow, obvious thing to do, of course. But here were these swine in a neat line like fairground ducks just waiting to be knocked over, and the long and short of it is, my three ships each fired four torpedoes—holding another four in reserve—and only then opened up with our guns. Of course the very patchy visibility helped, but they should have seen us long before they did. It cost them two destroyers. I’ve no idea whose torpedoes did the damage, but out of the twelve we’d fired we got three hits, and sank two of them, second and third ships in the line. It left numbers one and four well separated and no doubt shaken to the core—this being their first awareness of our presence. Extremely lucky, of course—unseen approach, snap attack, two enemies destroyed—that’s luck, all right. The two survivors turned and ran, in opposite directions. I went after number one, the leader, and told Laureate and Lyric to attend to the other; and mine, when after a mile or so he saw he had only me on his tail, decided to have a final crack at Foremost. He was between me and her, you see. When he turned to run, he crossed my bows at about seven thousand yards but he was closer than that to her. I couldn’t see her all the time, only glimpses of her out beyond this Hun; I was turning to starboard to bring my guns to bear on him. I suppose he reckoned he could polish off Foremost with a salvo or two—well worth it, for a Knight’s Grand Cross or whatever and then throw a few at me as he took off. He had the legs of me, he’d know that, and he’d also be well aware he out-gunned me. In fact he’d good reason to expect to get away with it.”

  Moloch’s four-sevens firing as fast as they could be reloaded: every time the four “gun-ready” lamps glowed in the director, the director layer, with his crosswires on the target, would press his trigger. He’d got the German’s range and straddled: one hit glowed and smoked amidships, shell-spouts lifting all around: the fire-gongs clanged again and another salvo crashed away. Trench, with his glasses on the enemy, saw his stern guns swinging round, shifting target: he still had his glasses trained there when Foremost blew up. A huge streak of flame, then the eruption …

  “I felt it.” He touched his head. “Like something in here, exploding.”

  The German’s guns were all directed at Moloch now. Most of the first salvoes went over, but one shell hit aft, smashed the searchlight and killed and wounded some torpedomen. Moloch scored too, with a hit below his bridge, and he was swinging to port.

  “Turning away, sir!”

  “Port fifteen! Full ahead both!”

  Trench told his engineer over the telephone, “I want every ounce you can give me, Chief! I don’t care if you burst the bloody boilers!” He slammed the phone down. “Midships!” He had to repeat that order—it had coincided with the crash of the four-sevens. He’d displaced his navigator at the binnacle now. “Steer—” sighting over the gyro repeater, “Oh-eigh
t-three!”

  Moloch at full stretch, hurling herself across the swells, spray sheeting aft as she cut through them. He’d turned her enough to follow on a course roughly parallel to the enemy’s but with all his guns still bearing. Shellspouts lifted: and she was racing into them …

  Then, the bridge was engulfed in flame, deafeningly concussive noise.

  “Where I got this.” He touched the empty sleeve. “Or rather, lost it. Didn’t know it at the time, hardly felt a thing. There was a sort of knockout effect, I knew we’d been hit, of course, but this arm was like—well, just a blow, no more than that. The amount of bleeding became noticeable soon afterwards—the arm wasn’t severed so much as smashed. They put a tourniquet on it, up near the armpit, while I was still too busy to take much notice. I’d got one in the jaw as well. I was still conning the ship, you see; I’d been knocked down but only for a moment, it didn’t seem to me I’d been seriously hurt at all. We’d had one shell in the bridge and another in the director tower, all four of them killed up there, and radar gone, and wireless—well, a lot of damage. The bridge was a shambles too. McAllister—my navigator—had had his head blown off, Cummings— sub-lieutenant—was dead too, and my yeoman—excellent man called Halliday—was very badly wounded. He survived, I’m glad to say—thanks to Dicky Rudge, my quack—who undoubtedly saved my life as well, with that tourniquet. He was about to give me an injection of morphine, I’m told, but apparently I knocked the thing out of his hand and used some highly abusive language. I don’t remember any of it, myself. But the voicepipe to the wheelhouse was intact, Henderson had got the guns into local control—done it by messengers, since the telephones to the TS and the guns themselves had gone to hell—and we were still intact, mobile and manoeuvrable, a fighting unit.”

  He paused. Reaching into memory, or putting memories into order. His recollections—as he explained now—were only patchy, in some areas.

  “What follows is less from my own remembering than from what they told me. And it’s not always clear to me which is which—if you see what I mean. But some bits—visual flashes—are as clear as anything. Above all else I remember an absolute dread of the possibility that the German might get away from me. It was an entirely personal feeling, like wanting your hands on a man’s throat, and obviously it was because of Foremost. They told me I was—berserk, was the word Dicky Rudge used, and Henderson was honest enough to agree with him. I certainly wasn’t rational. I had a bit of that German shell in my jaw, you know—here. Scar doesn’t show much now, but I still feel it. I’d barely noticed it at first, but I knew it by this time, and it was distorting my speech as well as giving me a lot of pain. But—sticking to what matters—the German had turned back towards me, for the simple reason he’d found his retreat cut off by Legend and Leopard and I suppose he preferred to face one rather than two. My guns were still banging away at him, but in local control the shooting wasn’t all that good and we’d just been straddled again. So I—”

  He’d checked, turned and thrown me a glance. Then looked away again. “I steered to ram. Straight into those guns of his, which unlike mine were in director control and shooting accurately. It was a lunatic thing to do, of course. Suicidal, and quite unjustifiable. All those bloody great five-pointones blazing in my face. I jinked her a bit, dodging, turning towards the fall of shot each time—so I’m told—so I couldn’t have been completely off my head, but it was madness all the same. The dog in the fight, you know? The pain inflicted being what matters, not the wounds received? And my aim—contrary to everything that’s gone on record—was to ram him.”

  I began, “It’s understandable …”

  “Then you don’t understand. I had five destroyers under my command. All of them present, intact and fighting fit. I also had a large convoy to protect. What I was doing was indulging a personal hate—revenge—whatever you like to call it, and it was tantamount to throwing my own ship away. The fact she stayed afloat wasn’t my doing. Half the for’ard guns’ crews were killed, the foremast went over the side, we had a fire amidships and a shell went clean through the upper seamen’s messdecks without exploding—and none of it was necessary. D’you see, now?”

  “But you headed him off. He’d have got clean away—as you said yourself, he had the legs of you—but you forced him to turn back into the arms of Legend and Leopard.”

  “You’ve been reading too many official histories.” Trench smiled briefly. “That was the fortunate end-result of an act—no, period—of lunacy. Which in the record went down as tactical brilliance, forthright leadership and—well, you’ve read it all. Coolness and courage in the face of the enemy. Coolness, my God!” He shook his head. “I don’t have to tell you about our casualties. Fortunately, I passed out. Loss of blood, Rudge told me afterwards. I don’t know, perhaps he got one of his damn needles into me. Henderson took over, and turned her under the German’s stern, and we came off a lot less badly than we would have done if I’d been on my feet to see it through. Moloch was in almost as bad a state as Foremost had been: except we could still steam. As you say, we’d forced our Hun to alter course again and we’d hit him a good few times, and then John Ready caught him on the rebound and applied the finishing touches. That was how Ready described it. Laureate and Lyric had meanwhile polished off the other one. I was on my back, being shot full of morphine—came round eventually in my bunk with an arm missing, jaw strapped up, couldn’t say a word, only listen to Henderson’s report. Which, as you’ll have guessed, covered for me. Then, and afterwards. All was well, convoy intact and on course for Iceland—the RAF had photographed Lützow at anchor somewhere off Narvik—”

  “On her way down to Gdynia, I think. Either to refit or pay off.”

  He nodded. “And there were nine survivors out of Foremost. Nick Everard, of course, not one of them. I had that to lie there and think about, too.” He added, after a silence, “I interviewed every one of those nine, not many weeks later, in the hope of finding out what had happened to him.”

  I’d spoken to two of them myself, quite recently. From one, a man who’d been the loader on Foremost’s B gun, I’d heard the same story he’d told Trench nearly forty years earlier—the story Trench repeated to me now. How Nick Everard had last been seen leading a blinded signalman aft in order to get him into a Carley float before she sank or blew up. Leading this signalman by the arm, helping him down the ladder from the foc’sl break, telling him he was going to be all right, plenty of room in the floats and other ships at hand who’d pick them up, and how eye surgeons could perform marvels these days—that sort of stuff, shouting in the man’s ear because Foremost had been under fire at the time, on fire, one gun still sporadically in action.

  “Apparently he’d turned out and got dressed when she went to action stations. He was on the bridge with Crockford to start with, then helped organise Cramphorn’s first-aid and stretcher parties. He was wearing a tin hat with MID painted on it; Foremost had no midshipman serving in her at the time, so that one was spare and he wore it. Cramphorn was among the missing, and I wasn’t able to establish to what extent Nick had recovered, whether or not he knew who he was or where, or why.” Trench pushed a gate open. “All we do know is that the end became the man.”

  It was a matter of fitting the pieces together—times, and the events which are explainable now but weren’t then, to the participants. Such as Lützow being on her way south to Gdynia, and Scharnhorst anchored not in her usual berth but off that island—Aaroy. In fact Scharnhorst was out there because after the raid on Spitzbergen her captain, Hoffmeier, had decided his ship’s gunnery wasn’t up to scratch, and arranged for some practice shoots. This was why he’d moved her out of her protected berth, and on the morning of the twenty-second was only waiting for permission to proceed to his exercise area up in the wider reaches of the fjord.

  “It’s running.”

  The trimming pump—sucking on number two main ballast. Gimber kept his hands on the pump’s casing—getting some slight warmt
h from it, or hoping to. The bottom of Altenfjord was freezing cold.

  Unlike numbers one and three main ballast, which had open holes in the bottom through which when you blew the tanks with high-pressure air the water was expelled, number two had a Kingston valve at the bottom that could be opened or shut. So you could keep this tank full, for trimmed-down ballast and bodily weight at sea, or empty for buoyancy and safety in harbour. It also made possible its use as a reservoir for the flooding or draining-down of the W and D.

  Which was unusable because its hatch was standing open.

  You could hear the pump’s soft whine. It was having to work hard against outside sea pressure. You could also hear the trickling noise from aft where water was seeping in. Then—something quite new …

  Lanchberry pointed a long forefinger upwards. His eyes were turned up towards the deckhead. Lips drawn back exposing teeth whiter than the whites of his eyes. Face black with stubble, and dried blood in it, bloodstains all over and the soaked cotton-waste, hardening and black, adhering to his scalp. The overall effect was barely human. He said, “Weighing anchor.”

  “Scharnhorst?”

  “Wouldn’t know what else.”

  It was so familiar a sound—that steady, rhythmic clanking—that there was no question of not recognising it. The clanks were made by each link of the anchor-chain as it crashed over the lip of the hawsepipe, with enormous strain on the cable as it hauled the 26,000-ton battleship up to her anchor. They’d have taken the wire off the buoy astern before they’d begun heaving in for’ard.

  Gimber said, “Doesn’t make much odds, since we didn’t leave a bomb under her.”

  “X-10 may have done.”

  “Could be just shortening-in. If it’s timed for eight she may still be there.”

  Paul looked at Lanchberry. Thinking, Let’s hope we’re not still here.

  It was 0720. In forty minutes’ time this end of the fjord might erupt. And in a sense you had to hope it would—if it didn’t, the operation would have been a failure. But if it did, and you hadn’t been able to lighten her enough to get her to the surface … He frowned, not wanting to see so far into the future, not liking as much as he could see.