Dangerous Waters (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  Cameron tried to be cheerful and produced a cliché. ‘Never say die, Mr Vibart.’

  ‘Die, eh?’ The Gunner (T) stopped work again and glared. ‘Don’t use that word, Mr Cameron, please. I reckon we’re all marked men in the bloody Med... know what they call the Med out here, do you?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Cunningham’s pond,’ Mr Vibart said dourly. ‘We’re all his little fish... and once in, we don’t get out again, not till we’re bloody dead we don’t. They say he stops every draft out of the Med with his own bloody pen. Greedy for all the ‘ands he can get hold of.’

  *

  The Warrant Engineer worked miracles, as was expected of him. By 0730 hours he reported his engines ready to turn over for trial, with steam on the boilers for immediate notice. The engine trials proved successful, and Sawbridge ordered his First Lieutenant to pipe special sea dutymen. Climbing to the compass platform he authorized the signal to the Castile, the shore signal station, reporting readiness and asking formal permission of the Admiral to proceed to sea in execution of previous orders. As soon as that permission came via the King’s Harbour Master, the orders were passed.

  ‘Let go headrope and sternrope... let go spring... engines slow astern.’ As Wharfedale’s stem came round and off the wall, the after spring was let go and the engines put ahead. When all ropes and wires had been brought inboard the hands fell in fore and aft for leaving harbour. The early-morning scene was one of peace and beauty; the sun shone down on the bright blue water that contrasted so strongly with the old yellow-white buildings as the destroyer moved through the Grand Harbour, her bosun’s mates piping a salute to the Admiral as they headed out for the breakwater leaving Fort St Angelo to starboard. Cameron watched the receding harbour and hoped the Gunner (T)’s words had been just hot air. At 0815 Wharfedale passed the breakwater outwards and her engines were put to full ahead. She began her race to join Lord Louis Mountbatten and his Fifth Flotilla, and within minutes of clearing away from Malta Sawbridge spoke over the tannoy to his ship’s company. Or started to; he had scarcely pressed the switch when a lookout reported:

  ‘Aircraft coming in, sir, bearing red nine-oh.’

  3

  THE incoming aircraft were identified as German: early in the year the Luftwaffe had moved Flieger-korps x into Sicily’s airfields. As the dive-bombers, accompanied by twin-engined fighters, roared in, the alarm rattlers sounded throughout the destroyer and Sawbridge rang down emergency full ahead on the engines. As Wharfedale surged on, Sawbridge started a zig-zag; and as he did so, the Hurricanes scrambled from the about-to-be-attacked island behind. They climbed high in an attempt to drop down on the dive-bombers, and the ack-ack defences put up their barrage. Wharfedale’s anti-aircraft fire joined in; the sky was dotted with white puffs as the shrapnel burst. The dive-bombers seemed to take no notice; down they came, screaming, and Malta erupted in numerous places. As two of the enemy aircraft peeled off towards Wharfedale, the close-range weapons stuttered into action, the pom-poms and Oerlikons pouring out their rounds. There was a stench of gun-smoke and the whole ship seemed to lift in the air as a near miss from one of the dive-bombers took her. Water dropped aboard, cascading over the compass platform.

  ‘Bastards,’ Sawbridge said flatly. ‘No damn manners.’ He spoke to Bradley, action Officer of the Watch. ‘Hard-a-starboard, Sub. We’ve got to shake them off, like fleas.’

  As the helm was put hard over, the destroyer heeled sharply, her starboard side lifting as the port rails went almost under: the manoeuvre was only just in time. Another near miss shook the hull and more water dropped aboard. Then came something better, something that was due to sheer luck: one of the attackers failed to pull out of its dive in time and drove smack into the Mediterranean some two cables to port of the speeding ship. The wings broke off on impact, like matchwood; the aircraft’s own impetus carried it down deep, and no more was seen of plane or crew. There was ragged cheering from Wharfedale’s upper deck, cheering that was renewed when two more enemy machines were shot up by the Hurricanes and plunged in flames. By now Wharfedale had as it were got her hand in; she was covering herself with an umbrella of anti-aircraft fire and, twisting and turning as she was, presented a difficult target. The dive-bombers broke off the attack.

  Sawbridge wiped his face with a handkerchief.

  ‘Malta’s stationary,’ he remarked to no one in particular. ‘Easy enough to hit, poor sods. I can only wish them luck.’ He shook a fist back towards the German attack force as it peeled off for the island, still harassed by the RAF Hurricanes. ‘All right, Sub, stop the zig-zag. Get the shipwright to sound round and report. Cameron, go below with the shipwright — it’s a good opportunity to acquire some knowledge of damage control among other things.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Cameron said. While he was below, the tannoy clicked on for Sawbridge to pass the promised movement information to his ship’s company. Wharfedale’s special mission seemed likely to be a tricky one: she was to lie off the south coast of Crete and put a party ashore between the ports of Sphakia and Tymbaki to bring off a person or persons as yet unknown.

  Sawbridge said, ‘The identity or identities are obviously known to the British Government, but I shall not be told until we’re off the coast, when I shall be contacted. Once we have our man, or men — or women for all I know — aboard, then I’m under orders to join Lord Louis, after which we come under his command. For the present, that’s all I know.’ He paused. ‘I expect to be off the south coast of Crete by midnight tonight. The ship will be at action stations from 2000 hours — if not before.’

  *

  The tannoy clicked off.

  There was, for the time being, no further enemy action; both sea and sky remained clear. It could have been a peacetime cruise if it hadn’t been for their sustained high speed, speed that set everything rattling in the wardroom when Cameron went down for lunch.

  He found the Gunner (T) there, sitting in an armchair and reading a days’-old copy of the Times of Malta. On Cameron’s entry, Vibart threw the paper aside.

  ‘Give me the Mirror every time,’ he said. ‘Roll on Pompey, eh!’

  ‘I thought this was a Devonport ship, Torps.’

  ‘So it is, but I’m not. I’m Vernon, right?’ Vibart’s reference was to HMS Vernon, the torpedo and anti-submarine school in Portsmouth. He blew out a long breath. ‘I wonder what perisher’s waiting for us in Crete. I don’t like this. Hanging about off the coast, it’s not my cup of tea. Give me the wide open hogwash, every time!’

  ‘I suppose we may not be there long.’ Cameron sat down. ‘Whoever we have to pick up... they’ll presumably be ready for us.’

  ‘Unless the Germans get to them first,’ Vibart pointed out. He scratched his chin. ‘According to the buzzes, Crete’s not a healthy place, Sub. Not healthy at all. All those troops brought out of Greece, and Hitler can’t wait to knock ‘em all off — well, stands to reason he’d want to, eh? Whole island under constant attack, you can bet your young life on it. Not that I’m scared,’ he added. ‘It’s what I joined for, I suppose... but I’ve got a wife and four kids to support. Not much future for them on a WO’s widow’s pension! You youngsters, you just don’t know how lucky you are. War’s a single man’s game if you ask me.’

  Cameron nodded. The married men did indeed have the worst of it; they had more to lose, and he remembered that aboard Carmarthen it was the married men who had always had a preoccupied look about them and who were the most avid for the BBC News broadcasts and to get at the papers when they returned to port. The air raids were never far from their minds; even the evacuated children were far from safe in the so-called safe country areas; often enough the Luftwaffe jettisoned its bomb-loads on country districts and the nagging anxiety was always there. Yes, it was better to be single in a world at war, and never mind that so many men of his age seemed to be propelled by the fact of war itself into quick marriages, as though they wished to snatch at happiness before it was too late. That
was a point of view, of course, but basically a selfish one. As for Cameron, he had a strong feeling that he was going to survive this war and the rest could wait. Nevertheless, the Gunner (T)’s words had made him uneasy: it was tricky, hanging about off a coast that by the sound of events as reported in rumour was becoming a happy hunting ground for the Third Reich. From what the Captain had said the night before, C-in-C Med was worried enough to commit most of his big Fleet units and that spoke for itself. Lunch over, it was back to the compass platform. The new sub-lieutenant might soon be required to replace a casualty, and before that happened he must become as familiar as possible with the handling of the ship at sea and learn to a hair’s-breadth how much helm would be needed to alter course under various conditions of speed and weather.

  With the sea and sky both remaining clear, the Captain went below and left the bridge to his navigating officer, Hugh Bradley, Sub-Lieutenant RNR. In peacetime Bradley had been doing an apprenticeship with the Clan Line and had obtained his Second Mate’s certificate just before the outbreak of war. He had been many times through the Mediterranean and was reasonably well versed in bridge watchkeeping; though, as he said, a Clan liner handled very differently from a destroyer.

  Cameron, he forecast, would soon get the feel of her, as he had done.

  ‘Nothing in it,’ he said off-handedly. ‘A little trial and error and there you are.’

  Cameron asked, ‘Could I try an alteration of course, d’you think?’

  ‘Not unless you want to incur Father’s wrath. Wait till he’s up here himself. Then he can say "no" in person.’ Bradley grinned. ‘He has an ETA to keep to, old man. Just watch and observe when we start some manoeuvring, which’ll be after we’re off the Crete coast tonight. That’s something I don’t look forward to particularly, I must admit... we’re going to be something of a sitting duck, waiting to embark this unknown VIP. It’s going to be a rotten job, you know.’

  The destroyer steamed on through a flat calm, throwing back a big bow-wave that curled up around her hawse-pipes and rushed aft to join the wake’s turbulence. There was a subdued roar from the fast-turning engines and the whole ship seemed to be straining with a curious urgency, almost as though she felt in her plates that she was desperately needed by hard-pressed men in Crete.

  *

  Sawbridge returned to the compass platform after a brief sleep and sent Bradley below while Cameron was given the unexpected thrill of taking over the watch; sleep was import-ant, for after 2000 hours no one was going to have the chance of any at all, and throughout the ship men were being sent below for a spell, then returning to relieve their mates on the guns and torpedo-tubes, the signal lamps and lookout posts, and in the engine-room and boiler-rooms. Sawbridge was taciturn, standing in the forepart of the compass platform and staring ahead, sometimes using his glasses to examine the horizon as his ship rushed onwards. After a while he swung round and spoke to Cameron.

  He said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, old chap, but you’ll realize I’m speaking nothing but the truth when I say that currently you’re my least valuable officer. Any Captain would be bound to say that of his newest joined sub-lieutenant. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Sawbridge smiled and seemed relieved. ‘That is, at sea. But you can be bloody useful ashore and do a job that has to be done as well as anyone else. In short, I’m sending you ashore tonight to make the rendezvous and bring off our man. All right?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Cameron said again, and felt a surge of excitement run through him. And sheer, naked fear at the same time, a feeling that he fought down firmly. It was on everyone’s lips, it seemed, that Crete was no picnic and here he was, being projected right into the heart of it, well away from the ship which, however fragile she might be against bombs and guns and torpedoes, had a sight safer feeling about her than the still-distant shores of Crete...

  ‘You won’t go alone,’ Sawbridge was going on. ‘You’ll have a petty officer, a leading-seaman and twelve men, including a signalman. You’ll all be armed — you and your PO with revolvers, the leading hand and the junior ratings with rifles. Two hundred rounds of ammo per man, and bayonets. And something else.’ He grinned. ‘You may guess what.’

  ‘Hand-grenades, sir?’

  ‘Right! You’ll get detailed orders just as soon as I get them myself. In the meantime, you’d better have a word with Number One and sort out who’s to be detailed for your party —and after that, get to know them.’ Sawbridge bent to the voice-pipe. ‘Quartermaster?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Send a messenger down to Lieutenant Renshaw. My compliments and I’d like him to take over the watch.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  When Renshaw came up, Cameron went below and found the First Lieutenant. Drummond said that Petty Officer Pike, PO of the Fo’c’sle Division, would be a tower of strength; so would Leading-Seaman Wellington. They would be detailed, and between them they would pick the right hands to form the party. When the party was detailed and mustered, Cameron had a word with each of them, finding out his service experience and then chatting with them all in a general way as a step towards gaining their confidence. He felt he was really being thrown in at the deep end now, with a vengeance. As an officer, it might make him and it might break him. Once ashore, all the decisions would be his alone and all lives would be in his hands, which was a daunting thought.

  *

  ‘Green as grass is subby,’ Leading-Seaman Wellington said reflectively as he fished a dog-end out from inside his cap and lit it. He blew smoke past Petty Officer Pike’s left ear. ‘Roll on my bleeding twelve! Think we’ll ever see Guz again?’ he asked, using the lower-deck name for Devonport.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Pike said. He was a small man, bright-eyed and wizened beyond his years, with brown flesh puckered around his eyes as though he had spent a lifetime gazing into long distances. ‘Cameron’ll be all right, I reckon. He looks like he can take it and come up smiling. Didn’t do so bad in the Carmarthen according to the buzz, eh?’

  Wellington didn’t answer that; instead he gave a belch and said, ‘Wonder who the geezer is who has to be picked up. I heard a buzz down The Gut that the King of Greece had done a bunk to Crete. Maybe he’s the one.’

  ‘Could be,’ Pike said. ‘We’ll be told soon enough, anyway.’ He went off to confer with the Gunner’s Mate about issuing the revolvers and rifles for the landing-party, then he disappeared into the petty officers’ mess to write a letter to his wife in Devonport, though God alone knew where and when it might be posted. If the ship bought it, it never would be. But the ship might survive while he did not; landing-parties could be bloody terrible and if any man had wanted to be a soldier, well, then he wouldn’t have joined the Navy — stood to reason, did that. Young Cameron didn’t know what he was in for, but he would soon find out. And he, Pike, would make bloody sure the officer didn’t go and do anything too daft. Petty Officer Pike wished very badly that he could tell his old woman where he was going so that maybe the blow would be softened if he didn’t get back off Crete, but the wardroom officers, who censored all outgoing mail, certainly wouldn’t pass that one. Of course, there were ways and means: one was to have two duplicate pages from two identical school atlases of your area of operations, in their case the Med — one for the folks at home and one for yourself — and then when you knew where you were bound you placed the letter over the map and pricked it with a pin on, say, Crete. After that all the old woman had to do was to put the letter on her own copy of the map, and hey presto, she knew all. Censoring officers didn’t always spot pinpricks; but Pike was a petty officer with his rate to lose if they did, and anyway he didn’t approve of such stratagems. ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ and ‘Be Like Dad — Keep Mum’; that was what the posters said, and they were dead right.

  At 2000 hours, with the day fading fast into night via the brief Mediterranean twilight period, the destroyer went to action stations, still maintaining her high speed. The engin
e sounds, the hum of the dynamos and the ventilators, the click-click of the gyro repeater on the compass platform and the ping of the Asdics as they kept up their relentless search for enemy submarines were the only sounds to break an intense and brooding silence. Overhead the stars began to show, hanging like millions of lanterns, so close overhead, it seemed, that a man could reach out and touch them. The whole sea was lit by them and from any enemy ship the destroyer must stand out clearly. The weather was being unkind: Sawbridge would have welcomed a blow from the Levant. The Med wasn’t always like this, not even at this time of the year — far from it. But there was nothing he could do about it; and so far at any rate there didn’t seem to be any other ships, their own or the Italians’, moving in this sector. In the meantime the lookouts and all the bridge personnel were very much on the alert, while along the upper deck the guns’ crews and the torpedomen stood by their weapons, ready for instant action.

  *

  Unknown to Sawbridge and his ship’s company, events were moving towards a climax in the island of Crete. By the twenty-ninth of the previous month — April — something over fifty thousand troops had been evacuated from Greece to Crete, but soon after this control of the Aegean had passed to the Germans and Crete was very much under threat. It was impossible to re-equip the disarrayed British forces on the island; there was almost no air defence left, indeed no air presence that was of any account. The Mediterranean Fleet — since the Germans’ supremacy in the air had made Suda Bay unusable — was forced to work from Alexandria, more than four hundred miles south. And on 20 May the main attack had come from the German land forces, airborne and immensely strong, against practically no opposition. As the twenty-second had dawned, Lord Louis Mountbatten’s Fifth Destroyer Flotilla was not far off, while more destroyers were coming in from Alexandria and four cruisers with another three destroyers were patrolling off the north coast of the island, targets for vicious attack from the air. The cruisers Gloucester and Fiji came under very heavy attack in the Aegean and were sunk; previous to this, the cruiser Naiad had suffered severe bomb damage, the destroyer Juno had been sunk, and the Captain of if Ms Carlisle, another cruiser, had been killed; while in the Kithera Channel, HMS Warspite, wearing the Force A Commander’s flag, had been severely damaged in a bombing attack. Sawbridge was in fact steaming into an impossible position; and soon after midnight, as he came up towards the coast of Crete, he was able to pick up the sound of the never-ending aerial bombardment in the distance as the dive-bombers zoomed down on the defenceless troops in the north of the island. Although some thirty miles off the racket could be heard and the burning could be seen, the latter as a grotesque and devilish glow that lit the whole northern horizon when Wharfedale’s engines were stopped. As Sawbridge remarked to Cameron, still awaiting his final orders, the south of the island appeared quiet.