Go in and Sink!

by Douglas Reeman

  Marshall asked, `Where do I come in?’

  ‘Where you have the best chances of continuing with deception, using it as a weapon no less deadly than bomb or torpedo.’ He paused, his face flushed. ‘I want you out in the Med. again. You know the stamping-ground well. You’re at home there. Top security as before, but that’s our problem, not yours. You will operate whenever and wherever you can do the most good. From what I’ve heard, you have a facility for causing chaos. Together we can give the enemy a real foretaste of what he has coming.’

  Marshall rubbed his chin. `Landing raiding parties and that sort of thing?’

  Simeon smiled. `Later. First tell me what you think of the prospect?’

  `I’ve already done several cloak-and-dagger operations.’

  Simeon twisted his mouth. `Acting as a feny-boat. Taking extra risks, of course, but without actually doing anything to hurt the enemy.’

  Marshall eyed him coolly. How much time had Simeon been at sea since he had first met him in submarines, he wondered?

  ‘I can see the possibilities. But it would put a double strain on my crew. It’s no joke being hunted by your own ships and aircraft.’

  ‘Who are you kidding?’ Simeon grinned broadly. `Things can’t have changed that much since I was doing patrols. I seem to recall that one submarine returning from her billet off the Hook of Holland made a signal which said she was coming home to base, friendly aircraft permitting!’

  Marshall smiled despite his caution. `Agreed. The boys in airforce blue can be hasty with the bomb switch. But this last job taught me what it’s really like to be an enemy of both sides.’

  Simeon seemed content for the present. `Good. That’s settled then. I’ll have a talk with your people. Secrecy, keeping mum and all that rot. I think they’ll see the sense of it. Their own lives will be depending on good security.’

  `What about leave?’

  `Leave? You have to be joking. Don’t forget you were recalled earlier than expected. Anyway, most of your chaps have been ashore for months, training and so forth. Bit of sea-time’ll do them good.’ He allowed his face to become grave. `That does not apply to you and some of the others of course. It’s asking a helluva lot from you. I know it. But we simply can’t afford to spread our resources too thinly. Nor can we allow the grass to grow under our feet.’ The gravity vanished. ‘. Hit and run. That’s going to be your job, and you can do it!’

  Marshall stood up, seeing himself again in the bulkhead mirror. Tousled hair, oil-stained sweater and this worn reefer. Against Simeon’s sleek image it was like a `before and after’ advertisement.

  ‘I’d like to tell my officers in my own way, sir.’

  `Certainly. Might be able to wangle a couple of days leave for a few special cases. Your Number One, for instance. Can’t promise of course.’ He consulted his watch. `Good. I must be off. No rest on this appointment.’ Ile was groping vaguely through his brief case when he asked, ‘I believe you knew my wife at some time in the past?’

  Marshall watched him. `Yes.’

  ‘Splendid.’ He was being very casual. Relaxed. `I’ve got a commandeered house a few miles from the loch.

  You, must drop in before we start jumping again. Have a bite to eat. Get the smell of diesel out of your belly, eh?’ He swung round, his eyes searching. `How about it?’

  ‘Thanks.’ He paused. `It was bad luck about Bill Wade.’

  `Wade?’ Simeon smiled distantly. `Oh, yes, it was. Still, these things happen.’ He looked at his watch again. `Hardly any of the old crowd left now. Frightful waste. Could use a few of their sort at this stage, I can tell you.’ He snapped the brief-case shut and locked it in two quick actions. `See you tomorrow. Soon as you’ve had breakfast. Suit you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He watched him stride to the door. For just those quick seconds he had seen through Simeon’s guard, that facade of efficiency and self-control. Hostility or guilt, or it could have been the harboured resentment that he had known Gail even before Bill.

  He picked up his cap and left the cabin. When he reached the entry-port where the quartermaster was lounging and yawning against his little desk he asked, `Are all my people off now?’

  The seaman lurched to attention, his eyes moving over Marshall’s crumpled uniform.

  ‘Yessir. ‘Cept the engineer officer. ‘E’s still aboard.’

  Marshall nodded and thrust aside the heavy canvas blackout curtain, feeling the chill wind across his face, the smell of the land nearby.

  He clambered down a ladder to the catwalk and across the deserted H-boat to where the duty officer from the depot ship was checking mooring wires with a torch. Over the small, unsteady brow and then hand over hand up the ladder beside the wet conning-tower.

  A muffled sentry mumbled something as he lowered himself through the oval hatch which in weeks had become so familiar to him.

  He found Frenzel in the wardroom, still in the filthy boiler-suit, his hair over his forehead as he stared at the glass between his fingers.

  `All right, Chief?’ Marshall’s voice was soft, but in the empty boat it sounded like an intrusion.

  Frenzel stared up at him, his eyes dull with fatigue. And loss. `You knew, didn’t you, sir?’

  Marshall nodded. `Yes. I’m sorry. I had to agree. Now I’m not sure.’

  Frenzel reached over his head and without looking pulled another glass from a locker.

  `I’d have done the same in your shoes.’ Frenzel’s hand shook badly as he slopped neat gin into the glass. join men’

  Marshall sat down slowly. Feeling the man’s hurt. His complete despair.

  ‘I think I can arrange leave for you, Chief Before we shove off again.’

  Frenzel drained his glass, some of the gin running down his chin like tears.

  `Off again? So soon?’ He nodded stiffly `I guessed that would happen. Only way.’ He seemed to realise what Marshall had said. `Leave? Thanks, but no. Her father did all he could. The grave. That sort of thing; Going there won’t bring them back. This way I can hold on to something….’

  Marshall looked away. `Come over to the Guernsey, Chief To my cabin if you like. I’ll send for some food.’

  Frenzel said vaguely, `Shoving off so soon, eh? That’s good. What I like about the sea. You get lost in it. You forget:’

  He. stood up and carefully removed the photographs from his bunk. As he laid them in his wallet something dropped across them. This time it was not gin.

  Marshall switched off the wardroom light and together they walked in silence towards the conning-tower hatch. On the open bridge. Frenzel paused and gripped at the screen and stared up at the sky. The clouds were moving fast but had thinned considerably so that it was possible to see the stars far above them.

  Frenzel said quietly, `Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’

  `I know.’ Marshall groped for the ladder. `I never doubted it.’

  They reached the depot ship and then Frenzel added, `I’ll turn in, I think.’ He tried to smile but it would not come. `There’s always tomorrow. That’s what they say.’ He lurched against the quartermaster’s desk and then headed away towards the cabin flat.

  The same O.O.D. came through the screen, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet to restore the circulation. He glanced after Frenzel and grinned.

  `Home is the sailor, eh, sir?’

  Marshall faced him calmly. `One of these days.’ he saw the young officer flinch, `I hope that just once I shall hear you say something which is neither stupid nor childish.’ With a curt nod to the quartermaster he strode towards the companion ladder.

  The O.O.D. turned away, blushing with embarrassment. What the hell had he said? Who did Marshall think he was?

  He glared at the quartermaster’s cheerful face and snapped `Don’t stand there gawping! Do something!’

  `Aye, aye, sir!’ The seaman could hardly keep from

  Hotne is the sailor izi

  grinning. `At once, sir!’ He watched the lieuten
ant hurry away. Bloody officers, he thought. Didn’t know when they were well off. The O.O.D. would be in a foul mood for the rest of the watch now. He chuckled. It had been worth it to see the sub’s skipper hack him down to size.

  Very carefully he opened the gangway log book and eased out his last letter from home.

  Throughout the moored depot ship Marshall’s men prepared to settle down for the night.

  With the hot water almost touching his mouth Lieutenant Devereaux lay full length in a bath, his mind drowsing and rewakening as he thought of the bullet which had clipped through his coat, missing his heart by inches. In his cabin Gerrard sat with a half-finished letter to his wife. Not knowing how to complete it, or whether he should first find out about the chances of leave. In the adjoining cabin Frenzel lay face down on the bunk, still in his boiler-suit, his legs outstretched as he had fallen. He was not asleep. Nor did he want to. He was afraid of losing the mental picture. As he had last seen them. Waving to him as he had gone to catch his train. Once he twisted his head to listen. In the next cabin he could hear young Warwick pacing back and forth like a caged animal. Three paces this way. Three back again. Poor little bastard. But with luck he’d get over his brief moment of horror. Whereas…. Frenzel buried his face in his pillow, his shoulders jerking violently to his grief.

  In another part of the ship, in a large cabin which they shared together, the chief petty officers sat around a table in contemplative silence while Starkie, the wizened coxswain, refilled their mugs with hoarded rum.

  Keville, the chief electrical artificer, swilled the rum around his mug and smacked his lips.

  `Well, ‘Swain, what d’you think?’

  Murray, the chief engine-room artificer, was lolling forward his eyes almost shut.

  ‘Wot about?’

  The coxswain regarded them both with a thin smile.

  ‘I think we’ll have another tot all round, right?’ Keville shook his head, the action making him wince. ‘No, I mean about the last patrol.’

  Starkie sighed. One more swallow of rum and he would go under. He had it timed almost to the spoonful.

  ‘I never think about the last one, matey. Nor the next one neither. I just think of now.’

  He pushed the bottle to safety as Murray’s head came down on the table with a dull thud.

  Keville eyed him blearily. `You worried then?’

  ‘Course I’m bloody worried!’ Starkie gave a relaxed grin. ‘This silly sod might have broken our bottle!’

  Their tipsy laughter reached Petty Officer Blythe, the yeoman of signals, who was lying on the other side of the bulkhead. He had been trying to read a thriller but was going to give it up because of P.O. Cain’s snores from the upper bunk. Good old Starkie. Stoned again. He thought suddenly of the blazing guns, the scream and rattle of cannon fire. Warwick’s face as he had come running aft when the order to dive had sounded. Starkie had survived one sinking, though God alone knew how. Just skin and bone. But with him at your elbow and a skipper like Marshall you should stand a good chance.

  He switched off the reading lamp. By Christ, we need all the chances we can get., he thought fervently. Then he too fell into a heavy sleep.

  6

  As others see us

  Within two days of her return to Loch Cairnbawn things started to move rapidly so far as U-192 was concerned, Either Browning or Commander Simeon, or both, seemed to have made certain that whatever operation or mission she might be required to execute, her company, from captain to junior seaman, would be able to handle it. Almost hourly, or so it appeared to Marshall, mysterious experts arrived to divide the submariners into small groups, whisking them away in motor boats, or ferrying them ashore where they were met by army trucks and carried swiftly to some new instruction.

  Marshall’s duties kept him concerned mainly with the progress of work aboard his own command. Paperwork and intelligence files,, plus the normal round of seeing men for advancement or punishment held him apart from the others so that he was able to build a mental picture of what was happening. It seemed that the whole countryside was dotted with bleak camps and well-guarded sites where men could learn to shoot with pistols and automatic weapons of almost every nationality. Gullies and steep, crumbling cliffs where sailors more used to the cramped life of a submarine had to master the business of hauling each other up and down in complete darkness while a leather-lunged instructor yelled insults and threats or fired the occasional bullet as close as was prudent to add a touch of danger.

  Even the experts themselves lent an air of unreality to the whole affair. Army officers wearing Pay Corps badges and flashes proved to be coldly efficient with portable signalling equipment or in the use of small but deadly explosive pencils. A major purporting to be from the Medical Corps took Buck and his torpedomen on a forced march through torrential rain and thick mud to carry out an attack on a forewarned army gunsite. Some of the kicks and blows were less restrained than had been expected, but as the umpire had dryly explained to Marshall, the Navy seemed to have come off rather better, despite the odds.

  The depot ship’s engineers had created, rather than constructed, a light folding cover for the U-boat’s conningtower, so that from a reasonable distance she took on the appearance of a British submarine. Once ready for sea it could be dismantled and clipped on to the casing like some weird umbrella.

  After the first grumbles and loud-voiced complaints the submariners settled down to their hurried training_ with enthusiasm. It was different, and as their bodies became hardened to the exercises and the Scottish weather they discovered they had drawn together as a unit, far more so than when they had gone to seek out the milchcow on the other side of the Atlantic. Partly because of all those others who had come to offer aid and instruction. Most of all because they felt that at last they belonged, if only to be recognised by this small elite of experts.

  At the end of ten days the pressure eased. As if everyone had exhausted both ideas and energy. In the limited time available they had taught the submariners all they knew. What happened from now on was up to them. And, of course, the enemy.

  Browning was rarely far away from the various training activities. Bellowing encouragement to panting and puffing seamen, or squatting on his shooting-stick like a great bear trying not to miss a moment of it. He was sharing it as best he could, and Marshall often wondered what would happen if he got transfered to some desk job. Worse, if Simeon took over the whole organisation from him.

  Browning had come to him on the last full day of training. He had found him working in a borrowed office in the depot ship, coat off and surrounded by clips of signals, returns of stores and fuel, spare parts and almost anything else which could be gathered into one place.

  He had said. `Thought you ought to know, Marshall. The Germans will know today that the crew of U-192 are in our hands. Prisoners of war. We couldn’t keep it secret forever. It’s not humane. Not right.’

  Marshall had considered the news with mixed feelings. In many towns in Germany there would be lighter hearts because of the announcement. Wives and parents, children and girlfriends. Even the people who had merely known the U-boat’s last crew as neighbours and workmates in that other world of peace. Browning had been right about one thing. It was the only humane course to take. The Geneva Convention laid down rules, but in war it was about the only one not so far broken by either German or Briton alike.

  `They’ll know about us then, sir.’

  Browning had shaken his head doubtfully. `Not so far as I can discover. The German crewman were taken away by their escort before our people got to the fjord. So far as they know, their boat is lying on the bottom where they left her. We’ve made certain that the rumour is well circulated. But when you go on your next mission you’ll be without your `cover’. U-192 has ceased to exist. Your guise for each operation will be as you think fit. Visual, rather than having false papers, so to speak.’

  `I think I prefer it, sir.’ Marshall had felt some sort of relief without
being able to put a finger on it. `I don’t mind using our skills against the enemy, our experience and bloodymindedness. But the other sort of war leaves you feeling dirty inside.’ He had thought then of Warwick. `You wave to someone, a man you only recognise as an enemy, yet one who is for those last moments your friend in his own eyes. Then you cut him down.’

  Browning had watched him gravely. ‘Commander Simeon might not agree with you. He would say you were deluding yourself That a war seen only through a bombsight or periscope is as unrealistic as allowing the enemy to know about our captured Germans. To him the war is everything and anything which can be used.’

  And people too, Marshall had thought. But he had had to admit there was substance in Simeon’s reasoning. The pilots who carried bombs over cities and returned to their bases after each massive raid saw nothing of the pain and horror they left behind. Through the periscope lens you could hear no sound as the scalding steam exploded in the engine-room of a torpedoed freighter or tanker, the screams of those trapped between decks, driven mad with horror, praying for death.

  Maybe that had been what Simeon had meant when he had spoken with something like scorn of the contest between torpedo and unarmed merchantman. There was a lot more to it than that of course. There were enough submarines lying on the bottom as proof of the balance. But the other evidence was also there in plenty.

  Then, on the last day, some leave had been granted. Local liberty for the bulk of the company. Forty-eight hours home leave for a handful of others. Gerrard had gone south to see his wife. Barely time to kiss her and pay the bills before hitching a ride back again, Knowing Gerrard it was likely he would find a friendly pilot to fly him to that windswept airstrip. Marshall hoped so for Gerrard’s peace of mind.