by Alan Evans
The words were clearer now but still they meant nothing to Smith until Sanders whispered, “Schwertträger — hear that, sir?” And seconds of incomprehensible muttering later, “There, sir. Hear it?”
This time Smith did, his ear picking it out. “Schwertträger.”
Sanders said, “It means sword-bearer. It might be a ship, or a code-word, sir?”
The lights blinked, went out and the wardroom was plunged into pitch blackness. The Kapitänleutnant’s voice went on, lifting and falling with Sanders’s whispered interpretation like an echo: “Hinterrücks anfallen — that’s stab in the back, sir — couldn’t get any of that — Springtau — that’s a skipping rope — he must be thinking of his children…” The voice in the darkness, disembodied, stopped.
A torch clicked on, held in the hand of the sentry, its beam directed at the German seaman who squinted at its glare. Enough of it spilled over to cast a glow on the face of the Kapitänleutnant just as his voice ceased. He was looking blankly into Smith’s face then his eyes moved to Sanders and past him. The lights blinked, came on again. Somebody cheered, ironically. Smith was watching the Kapitänleutnant, saw his eyes going about the wardroom, then coming back to stare at Smith and Sanders. His face twisted with pain, he coughed, and he coughed up blood. Smith took his handkerchief and wiped the blood from the man’s mouth.
The Kapitänleutnant’s chest was heaving now, his back rigid with effort, head back. His whisper was almost a breathless shouting. Sweat shone on his face. “Sie haben nicht gewonnen!” He coughed, slumped but struggled to lift his head again, “Bald kommt der entscheidender Schlag und wir werden diesen Krieg zu Ende führen!” He slumped again, lapsing at once into unconsciousness.
Smith wiped the German’s face as Sanders translated, “I think he said something like, ‘You have not won. Soon the — the decisive blow will fall and we will — will end this war’.”
Smith stood up slowly. The man had been aware, then. Just. A kind of drunken awareness. He knew where he was and who he was talking to, but he was not thinking clearly enough to guard his tongue. He should have kept his mouth shut but he was dying, slipping over the edge and the man knew that much and was shouting defiance. Guts made him speak. Valour was the better part of discretion. That had not been a threat so much as a promise. ‘Soon the blow will fall…sword-bearer…stab in the back.’ The words were a warning. But of what?
He asked, “Have you a notebook?”
“Yes, sir.” answered Sanders.
“Stay with him. Note every word he says.” They needed to know more.
Smith turned to leave and caught sight of the miserable face of the German seaman, his eyes fast on his dying officer. Smith patted the man’s shoulder as he passed, a brief gesture of sympathy, and said to Brodie, “Can you get him a dram?”
“He’s had one but I’ll give him another. Aye, sir.”
Smith left the stink of the wardroom and climbed to Sparrow’s deck and thence to her bridge. Dunbar turned his head with its turban of bandage but Smith looked blankly through him. ‘Schwertträger…Hinterrücks anfallen.’ A threat, no doubt about that. But of what? A threat uttered by a U boat commander whose boat was headed for the Channel or the Atlantic beyond. So — a new submarine weapon, or a new submarine tactic that would send the figures of shipping losses soaring even higher?
That would do it. That would end the war.
Braddock had said so and he was neither pessimist nor scaremonger but a man who dealt in hard facts.
Smith brooded over it, standing at the back of the bridge with Buckley a yard behind him and looming like his shadow.
And then he thought about Morris and his report. Four aircraft destroyed on abortive reconnaissance missions to Ostende and the coast north of it. They had been getting a bit of a pasting lately! But that mystery had nothing to do with U-boats. De Haan was hardly more than a village. There was no harbour, not even a stream. The coast from Ostende to De Haan was shallow, shelving beach running up into dunes. A fishing boat could well be hauled up on, or launched from that beach, but that was all. There was nowhere on that coast between Ostende and Zeebrugge that could be used as a base by submarines or destroyers. The anti-aircraft batteries in the wood were new. Why? And why the continued patrol of Albatross V-strutters that reacted so quickly, that pursued the RE8 and sent it down in flames into the sea?
He thought of Morris, Bill and the young men like Bill in the other three aircraft who had not returned…
He swore and saw Dunbar glance at him quickly. There was another lonely man now, with thoughts, memories to bedevil him. Smith took a pace forward to stand by the Lieutenant and said, “I’m a new boy around here, newer even than Sanders. There are things I need to learn, need to know.”
So he talked with Dunbar and set him talking as Sparrow picked her way through the shoals and the dying night. Among other things Dunbar told him about Victoria Baines, praising her until Smith was almost won over.
They talked until Dunbar said, “Should be getting light soon. We’ll be up with the monitors and should be able to get that German to a doctor aboard one of them.”
Smith only grunted and fell silent. He doubted that any doctor would help the Kapitänleutnant. And with the first grey light Sanders came to the bridge. He looked older now, the night in the wardroom had done that. He reported to Smith: “He’s dead, sir.” He held out a notebook.
Smith took it. “Did he say anything new?”
Sanders shook his head wearily. “No, sir. He babbled a lot but his speech got more and more slurred. There was very little I could make out and that was stuff we’d heard before. He was never really conscious again.”
Smith put the notebook in his pocket and stood in silence looking out at the tendrils of mist that wisped across the cold sea in the pre-dawn light. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” He was. The man was an enemy but the enemy had been a man. And Smith had killed him.
Part Two — To a Check…
Chapter Three
They came up with the rest of the bombarding force as that first grey light spread across the sea from the French coast. Sparrow, with the West Deep and the shoal water of the Smal Bank astern of her was about to turn on to a northerly course that would take her out to the Cliffe d’Islande Bank. Dunkerque was seven miles off the port bow, just seen from Sparrow’s bridge as a jumble of roof-tops with the finger of the Belfroi tower pointing at the sky.
To starboard steamed the Dunkerque Squadron, already heading out to sea on a northerly course for the rendezvous before the bombardment. The drifters were leading the way and sweeping a channel free of mines for the rest of the Squadron. There were British minefields to starboard of the drifters and off Sparrow’s starboard quarter, and the drifters themselves ceaselessly swept for mines that might have been laid by U-boats in the night. The monitors followed directly behind them while motor launches patrolled on either flank. These were petrol-engined boats, acting now as light anti-submarine escorts, seventy-five feet long and each armed with a three-pounder gun in the bow. And then there were the destroyers, from the thirty-knotters to the fairly new and bigger Tribal class boats, still too slow and underarmed however to meet the new German boats on equal terms.
The ships were all worn and workmanlike. They had held the Straits for three years by a mixture of determination and bluff; the Germans saw the British daring to patrol off the Belgian coast, a bare thirty minutes’ steaming from the destroyers based at Ostende and Zeebrugge, and believed the Dover Patrol and the Dunkerque Squadron to be far more powerful than in fact they were.
Smith watched them, grey ships under a grey sky, and felt a familiar justifiable pride. The depression of reaction had left him now and he was cheerful to match the elation of Sparrow’s crew. Hadn’t they sunk a U-boat?
Erebus, Trist’s flagship for the day, led the line of monitors and her searchlight blinked orders at Sparrow. In obedience to those orders Dunbar took Sparrow in a long, sweeping quartercircle to starboard
to take station astern of the last monitor in the line: Marshall Marmont. Just ahead of her the tug Lively Lady plugged steadily on. There Sparrow stayed as the day grew and the sun climbed the sky. At the Cliffe d’lslande Bank the force turned north-east to steam along the outside of the mine-net barrage that Bacon, Vice-Admiral commanding the Dover Patrol, had laid along the Belgian coast. By mid-morning they were off Ostende, the main force steamed on and Smith and his two ships were left with six motor-launches.
At twelve miles distance the coast could not be seen from the bridge of a little ship like Sparrow but the gunnery officer in Marshall Marmont would see it from her fore-top high above the deck. Smith could only see the buildings of Ostende as a ragged edging to the horizon. North of Ostende, about where the village of De Haan lay beyond that horizon, an aircraft patrolled. He could just make it out with Lorimer’s glasses and decided it had to be German or there would be anti-aircraft fire. He let the glasses hang on their strap. So that was the standing patrol that Morris, the airman, had spoken of.
There was a light breeze out of the north-west and that was what he wanted. So far the weather forecast was right. But the sky to seaward was clouding. The weather was turning bad as he’d guessed it would, and the wind would bring it down on them. But later. Meanwhile he had his orders.
To the signalman he said, “Make to Marshall Marmont: ‘Anchor and prepare for action. Report when ready.’ And tell the motor-launches: ‘Anchor to leeward of Marshall Marmont.’ And to Lively Lady: ‘Patrol to seaward of Marshall Marmont.’”
The tug would be inside the line of Sparrow’s patrol but he did not want her to anchor. If a submarine appeared and slipped past Sparrow — God forbid! — then at least the tug would be moving. But it was a small point. A submarine would undoubtedly go for the monitor tethered like a helpless beast. She had to be. Bombardment of the port and its installations had to be highly accurate because the town was set close around it and its people must not suffer. Apart from common humanity there was the need not to antagonise them. So the monitor had to be anchored to provide a stationary, exact firing-platform for her two big guns.
Smith’s gaze drifted over his little flotilla and he reflected that this was a first test for all of them. He was watching them and they were watching him — while Trist had hurried on to Zeebrugge where he would not have to watch at all. Smith had taken Wildfire and Bloody Mary off his hands.
That was one worry less for a very worried man. Smith shook his head, sorry for Trist. But then he remembered Dunbar’s warning, that Trist’s caution could be dangerous to them.
The signal hoists broke out and were acknowledged by Garrick aboard the monitor, the leader of the motor launches and, belatedly, by the tug. As Marshall Marmont anchored so the launches anchored in a long-spread line between her and the shore and two or three cables from her. Smith watched them all as he conned Sparrow on her weaving patrol to seaward. The submerged mine-nets were their inshore defence against U-boats. On the southward leg of the patrol he saw the ‘Ready’ signal break out on the monitor. As Sparrow passed the tug she was steaming easily. Her master waved from the wheelhouse as the two ships passed and the dumpy figure in boilersuit and sea boots in the stern also lifted a hand. Smith thought absently that it was crazy for a woman to be at sea — and she had a line over the stern! Fishing! Dunbar had been frank about Victoria Baines’s faults as he saw them. “She’s got an edge to her tongue to take the skin off you and she can be pig-headed. But, by God! She’s a seaman and she’s doing a man’s job and doing it bloody well.”
Smith was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. But he reserved his verdict — a woman of sixty or more for God’s sake, effectively commanding one of H.M. tugs in time of war?
The signalman said, “Monitor reports ‘Ready’ sir.”
“Acknowledge.” And: “Where’s that aeroplane? It’s due.”
He was answered by a call from Buckley acting as look-out: “Four aircraft bearing green two-oh!” He saw the aircraft drifting below the cloud base and watched them through his glasses.
As the lower one approached Buckley called, “Harry Tate, sir!” That would be the RE8, that was to be the spotting aircraft for Marshall Marmont’s guns. Flying high above it were three Sopwith Triplanes, its escort. All of them were from the Royal Naval Air Service field at St. Pol outside Dunkerque. The escort would be needed.
Soon they were making a wide, slow circle overhead and the signalman reported, “From Marshall Marmont, sir: ‘Aircraft in wireless contact.’”
“Reply: ‘Open fire when ready.’ Signal the launches to make smoke.”
All straightforward so far, no hitches. This was a drill and they had done it before, knew what to expect. But they had not fired a round yet and this operation would follow a deadly dangerous, predictable course. A bombarding ship was always at risk, at a disadvantage against shore batteries if they were at all efficient and the batteries at Ostende were. Timing could mean the difference between life and death and it lay in his hands.
The RE8 buzzed away towards the coast with its escort climbing above it and the launches began making smoke with the smoke-making machines they carried. Dense clouds of it, mixed black and white poured out and rolled slowly downwind. It would hide them and the monitor from the shore batteries and was mixed black and white because when white smoke only had been used the black cordite of the monitor’s guns had marked their position for the shore batteries. He thought that but for the smoke it might have been a deceptively peaceful scene, the monitor lying at anchor, the tug chugging up and down and Sparrow patrolling at an easy twelve knots. But the monitor’s guns were trained on the shore, barrels at high elevation pointing skywards. Any moment now…
Marshall Marmont fired, a single gun thundering out, the flame jetting orange and smoke spurting black from the recoiling muzzle. The massive fifteen-inch shell, half a ton of it, went howling away into the clouds, soaring to nearly nine thousand feet high before starting on its downward path. It would fall in about forty-five seconds and some fifteen hundred yards short of Ostende. The spotting aircraft should be able to spot it there and order a correction.
Sparrow’s patrolling course had taken her clear of the smokescreen and before she turned he saw the Harry Tate twisting and turning off Ostende and all around it the cotton-wool puffs in the sky that were the bursting of anti-aircraft shells. He saw something else and lifted his glasses. Was that a balloon rising over Ostende, the silver skin of it catching what leaden light there was? He was sure of it and knew what it meant. Just as the Harry Tate spotted for the monitor, so the observer in the basket swinging below the balloon served the shore batteries. Smith and his flotilla would be under fire soon. It was time for Garrick to cross his fingers. He found his own were crossed and shoved his hands in his pockets. Superstitious nonsense. But he kept them crossed.
Sanders said, “Balloon’s gone up, sir.”
Smith grunted. “That it has. Go round Sub, and tell ’em all to keep their eyes skinned for U-boats. I know they’ve been told. Tell ’em again.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
A man could become bored staring at an empty sea and be distracted by the action elsewhere.
Smith was not bored. This was like walking out along a plank.
Marshall Marmont fired again.
So the observer in the Harry Tate had spotted the fall of the first shell and ordered a correction. Or he had not seen it and ordered a repeat. Sparrow patrolled her beat and each time she turned he had a view of the coast and the aircraft. Every two minutes or so Marshall Marmont fired a single, ranging round as the observer ordered corrections to bring the gun on for line and extended the range towards the target. Smith did not envy the observer his job, bucketing about in the cramped cockpit of the RE8 as it twisted and turned off Ostende. The German anti-aircraft gunners were banging away at him and he had to peer down over the side of the cockpit with the engine’s clamour deafening him and the oil spraying back, watch for th
e shell’s burst and then send his correction to the monitor.
The regular thumping slam! of the ranging gun marked the passage of time like the slow tick of a great clock. As Sparrow tacked up and down on her patrol and while he still concentrated on his command a part of Smith’s mind worried at the mystery thrust upon him. “Schwertträger…Hinterrücks anfallen.” ‘Sword-bearer’ — a code name, obviously, but for what? And ‘stab in the back’. That could mean the Atlantic shipping…There was another mystery. The patrol over De Haan that Morris had spoken of. Now he could see it.
He was jerked totally back to the present as the monitor fired a salvo, both guns. So she had ranged on to the target, the dockyard installations or a ship in the basin, or the lock gates. He saw the shock-wave send a shudder out across the sea.
The RE8 still circled and soared, though now the anti-aircraft guns had ceased firing. Instead there was a dog-fight going on involving half-a-dozen aircraft, the escorting Sopwiths and a flight of Albatros fighters swooping and climbing, diving, curling away. But he noticed one oddity. The single German aircraft to the north over De Haan had been joined by two others but they only patrolled, made no attempt to join the dog-fight. Strange, but –
“Port ten!” Dunbar ordered.
“Port ten, sir!” Gow answered.
Sparrow came steadily around.
“Meet her. Steer two-four-oh.”
“Two-four-oh, sir!”
Sparrow steadied on the southward leg of her patrol. Buckley had stood a trick at the helm but now Gow, the coxswain, was again at the wheel. Or over it. His big body curled over it like a question mark, head bent above the compass card, long arms gripping the spokes. Gow was a good cox’n.
Sparrow rode well enough in this quiet sea but the sky was darkening. In bad weather she would be a pig. These ships, this ship, kept the sea right through the gales and foul weather of winter, though they were not really fit for the task. They demanded, therefore, a special breed of seaman. Smith stared out at Marshall Marmont, a ship seen through the haze of the smoke from her guns’ firing and beyond her the rolling smoke of the screen. Flame, smoke and slam! as she fired. The barrels of the guns, the turret and her foredeck were stained black from the smoke of her firing.
