by Alan Evans
Smith hesitated, then nodded. He was a novice observer while Pearce was a highly-experienced pilot and he didn’t want to let the train off the hook.
Pearce turned away and the Short’s nose tilted down steeply as he set it diving. The crest of the hill seemed to flick at the floats. Then the nose came up and Pearce was flying it down the track, the floats only a dozen feet above it, the orange groves blurring green past the starboard wing tip.
The train was stopped.
Smith saw the tiny figures of men leap from the footplate and scurry towards the groves, but his attention was all for the locomotive and the track with the twin steel rails right under him.
For the last time he yanked out the pin and let go the bomb. The engine flashed beneath him and in that instant the bomb burst. Looking past the tail of the Short he saw the dust rising ahead of or under the engine, he could not tell which but waited as the Short turned, climbing slowly now. The dust blew away like the smoke that trailed from the tall locomotive chimney and Smith saw the bomb had fallen short of the train but on the track. There was a hole now and twisted rails.
That was enough. This was yet another day when the train would not arrive at Jaffa, when the repair gang under its German foreman would have to come out from the station at Lydda to repair the track, when the crew of the train had been harried and frightened. That was in the letter and the spirit of the orders given to Smith. Harass the enemy ...
Pearce lifted the Short over the crest, then sent it plunging down across the long slope of rolling sand dunes to the sea. Smith turned around and gripped the Lewis, checked that it swung freely on its Scarff-mounting, cocked it and peered up through the ring sight at the German plane diving down after them.
Far out of range, but for how long? Smith glanced over his shoulder and saw they were over the sea, levelling out close above the waves and heading for the ships that were hull-up over the horizon and seen bows-on as they closed the shore. On board Dauntless and Blackbird they had spotted the Short and were coming to meet it.
Smith swung back to peer astern, squinted up at the Fokker monoplane and wondered uneasily if they had hung on too long. If it came to a fight the seaplane would have no chance, being slower and far less manoeuvrable than the Fokker.
It was just in range of the Lewis now but Smith was not an expert shot and so he waited, watching the black aircraft astern, as it seemed to swing slowly from one side of the Short’s rudder to the other, and closing, steadily closing. He took his eyes off it for a moment as he felt the Short tilt into a banking turn to starboard and he saw they were near to Blackbird and she was stopped. Pearce was turning into wind to set the seaplane down, and Dauntless was steaming on, starting to turn to patrol around the carrier.
He swung back to peer over the tail, could not see the Fokker, searched frantically but for only a split-second because the Fokker was boring in from his left hand, cutting the corner of the turn the Short had made. He pivoted in the cockpit, swinging the Lewis around, got the Fokker in its sights, lost it, brought the sights on again — and fired as the German fired. He did not know where the burst from the Lewis went to, he saw no signs of a hit on the Fokker but splinters were snapping off the tail and fuselage of the Short, something cannoned off the Lewis sending the shock jarring up his arm, fabric ripped loose from the fuselage and streamed on the wind. The Short was sinking, slowly, and the Fokker snarled over them and away. Smith tried to whip around to follow it with the Lewis but was too slow in turning in the tight cockpit. He saw the Fokker climbing and turning to come back at the Short again. They were skimming the surface of the sea, Pearce was rubbing the heels of the floats into the short waves and breaking the tops of them in unflung feathers of spray that briefly rose higher. They misted around Smith as the floats dug in, then dropping away and the Short was down, taxi-ing towards Blackbird.
He was aware that Dauntless was firing her three-inch anti-aircraft gun and her Vickers machine-guns were rattling madly. He could see her to his right and astern of the Short. The Fokker was closer, flying through a sky pocked with the bursting shells from Dauntless, but that firing ceased as the Fokker dived at the Short.
Smith had a little more time, was a little more ready, breathing controlled, the gun steady in his hands and on the Fokker that filled the big ring sight.
The Short was a sitting duck.
He swallowed at the thought and fired.
He thought this time the burst had scored, was sure he saw pieces flying from the Fokker that swerved and showed its side before it straightened again. But now the German pilot could fire only one brief burst and then he flashed over Smith’s head again, was turning and climbing and the Archie from Dauntless was bursting around him. He bore a charmed life, plunged down towards the sea but only to level out there and escape more quickly. He fled away, wings rocking, headed towards the shore and pursued by the fire from Dauntless. Then that stopped as the gunlayer lost the target tucked right down on the surface of the sea.
Smith found he was sweating, but it was not from the heat of the sun, even though that baked him in the open cockpit now that the wind of passage had ceased. They were coming alongside Blackbird, Pearce edging the Short in with the engine ticking over in pulsing bursts. Smith secured the Lewis with shaking hands and wiped the sweat from them on the front of his white shirt. Dauntless had launched her gig and it was pulling towards Blackbird and the Short. He could see Leading Seaman Buckley, who had served with Smith in the Pacific and the Channel, at the helm, face turned towards the seaplane. Smith forced a grin. That might reassure Buckley who was a seaman and not an airman, suspicious of the seaplanes and distrustful of Smith’s ability to look after himself. Smith could see the look on Buckley’s face now, half-anxious, half-irritated at Smith getting involved in a fire-fight with a German fighter plane. Smith grinned again. Buckley had a certain licence because of long acquaintance, dangers and hardships shared.
The Short was close under Blackbird’s lee now. The derrick was swung out and dangled its wire rope with the purchase block and its hook at the end of it. A heaving line was secured to that hook and a seaman on Blackbird’s deck held the rest of the heaving line. Smith saw men standing out on the wide rubbing strake along Blackbird’s side again with the long spars ready to hold the fragile Short from running against the carrier’s steel hull. But he watched the seaman with the heaving line attentively. Any other observer who missed that line when it was thrown could expect hard words, because it meant the line had to be recovered and thrown again while all the time the carrier lay sopped, which was wasteful of time and effort, and often dangerous.
So Smith dared not miss it himself.
The seaman threw the line, snaking it out across the ruffled sea between the carrier and the seaplane. It fell on the fabric aft of the cockpit and slithered away but Smith dived after it, sprawled precariously along the fuselage with his head towards the tail, grabbed at it and caught it. He worked back into the cockpit, then clambered past Pearce to haul in the line and thus bring down the hook of the derrick purchase. The slipstream from the propeller pushed at him but he snatched at the purchase block, hooked on to the ring on the upper wing and lifted a hand. As the derrick took the strain the Short’s engine died.
“Sir!” That was Buckley’s deep Geordie voice.
Smith looked down and saw the gig alongside the Short with the bowman holding on to the portside float. He glanced at Pearce and told him, the words sounding strange in the silence after the engine’s dying, “We cut it too fine, Chris.”
“Well, we got back, sir.” Pearce was breathless and he fumbled with the strap of the flying helmet, not looking at Smith.
“With a hell of a lot of holes and just by the skin of our teeth.” Smith paused, then asked softly, “Is anything wrong, Chris?”
“No, sir. Nothing.”
Pearce was lying. “This isn’t the time nor the place,” Smith murmured, “but if you’d like to have a talk —”
“No, sir!
There’s nothing. Everything’s fine.” Pearce was quick in his denial, the words jerked out of him.
Now Smith said ruthlessly, but for Pearce’s sake, “You look dog-tired and you’re on edge. Maybe you’re trying to do too much. When you’re not on the bridge or flying you’re down in the hangar. You’re driving yourself too hard.” He paused, then: “I don’t want you flying again for a while.”
Pearce looked at him now, startled, and protested, “Sir! I’m all right! It was just that blighter looked a lot further —” His voice was rising but it cut short as he saw Smith watching him and the men in the gig looking up curiously.
Smith said quietly, “You see what I mean.” He stood up and swung a leg over the side of the cockpit, picked up the map and notes and dropped his helmet on the seat. “That’s an order. No flying.” He went down into the gig.
As the bow man shoved off the winch hammered aboard Blackbird. Smith sat in the sternsheets of the gig and watched, head turned, as the Short was swung up and inboard, then lowered on to the trolley that waited on the deck. Now they could fold the wings and shove it into the hangar that filled the after half of Blackbird from just abaft her second funnel to within fifty feet of her stern. The Short was on that last clear patch of stern deck now. The hangar made her a queer-looking ship. Some wag aboard her had quoted: “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe ...” Blackbird did look a bit like a floating boot but she could make twenty knots and Pearce swore that once you got some way on her she handled like a destroyer. He also admitted that in a strong wind and at slow speed the slab-sided hangar acted like a sail and made her tricky to handle.
Smith turned and faced forward as the gig closed Dauntless. She was a light cruiser, commissioned only two years before. Of four thousand tons, she was four hundred and fifty feet long and no more than forty in the beam, slender, graceful and fast; she had steamed twenty-nine knots in her trials and could still do so. Her class of ship was originally built with a pole foremast but now that had been replaced by a tripod mast like a battleship’s. So in the North Sea those of her class in the Harwich force were known as Tyrwhitt’s Dreadnoughts, after the Commodore. That was only a joke because they were a long way from being Dreadnoughts with armour no more than a three-inch thick belt round the hull and only an inch on the deck. She mounted three 6-inch guns, one forward of the bridge and two aft.
Smith was delighted with her, gained fresh pleasure from each sight of her. He knew she had her faults, that to give her speed she was lightly armoured, and when steaming at speed it was hell’s own job to work the forward 6-inch because of spray and the seas breaking inboard. He forgave her those, not turning a blind eye to them as a man might to the faults of a beautiful woman he loved, but acknowledging them and remembering them. Because Dauntless’s faults, particularly her lack of armour, could possibly be the death of him and the three hundred and fifty men aboard her.
But that was a million-to-one chance in these waters. The nearest enemy ships were the battle cruiser Goeben, light cruiser Breslau and the heavy cruiser Walküre. All three of these were bottled up in the Sea of Marmara and had been since the early days of the war when they had been caught in the Mediterranean and fled through the Dardanelles to seek sanctuary with Turkey. They flew Turkish colours, were ostensibly Turkish ships, but their commanders and crews were German. They were locked in the Sea of Marmara, an imprisonment that unfortunately tied down a force of British capital ships, there in the Aegean, solely to guard against a break-out, maintaining the weary vigil week in, week out; year in, year out.
Buckley ran the gig neatly alongside Dauntless and Smith, grabbing for the dangling ladder, started to climb. On deck a party under the command of Lieutenant Griffiths waited to hoist in the gig. A long, dark, soft-spoken Welshman, Griffiths had made a brave reputation in the Dardanelles as a forward observer ashore, calling down the fire of the ships in support of the troops. Now he asked, “Any luck, sir?”
Smith answered, “Caught the train on its daily run from Lydda to Jaffa.”
“Again? They must be getting fed-up. Give ’em a fright, sir?”
“Not as bad as that Fokker gave me.” He grinned at the laughter and climbed up to the bridge.
The two ships headed southwards with Dauntless leading, following the line of the coast, searching hopefully for targets for the guns. The land south of Jaffa was sand dunes, some of them a hundred feet high, stretching inland like a low mountain range, barren, empty. Two hours later the coast was greener and they were passing Gaza, the coastal end of the Gaza-Beersheba line. Smith remembered hearing that the German engineers had settled in at Beersheba to the extent of building themselves a beer-garden. He grinned. There was confidence for you.
Two monitors were anchored five miles out, low in the water like crocodiles, and lobbing 6-inch shells into Gaza as part of the build-up to Allenby’s attack. A silver speck in the sky inland and south of Gaza was the observation balloon of Number 49 Balloon Section which was overlooking the Turkish positions. There was a direct telephone line from the observer swinging in the basket below the balloon to the naval signalling station set up on the shore, so all corrections of the fall of shot could be passed quickly to the monitors. Smoke and winking flame marked the land artillery with Allenby’s army, also pounding Gaza. From the ships they could see that army stretching all the way back to the small man-made harbour at Deir el Belah, ten miles to the south, and beyond. A pall of red dust hung permanently over the land, churned up by the hooves of eighty thousand horses, camels and donkeys. This army had built its own railway all the way from Kantara on the Suez Canal as it fought its way across Sinai, and Deir el Belah was its forward railhead. As it laid the railway it also laid a pipeline, so that a large part of its water came from Egypt. It was an army with a tough confidence in itself. Not cockiness; it respected the Germans and Turks for the fighters they were, but it had fought them from Egypt across Sinai into Palestine and beaten them, albeit narrowly, all the way. It was ready to beat them again.
The same mood of confidence ran through Smith’s command. There were only six days now to Allenby’s attack. Smith was not looking forward to it with eager anticipation because attacks, raids, battles, line-strengthening operations, whatever name you gave them, their first result was a casualty list. But this time the end should be, had to be different, not a tragic failure like the Dardanelles nor an unending, murderous struggle like that in France and Flanders, counting losses in millions of wounded and dead, and the gains in scant yards of churned and blasted earth. This time they would achieve a victory, driving the Germans and Turks out of Palestine and bringing nearer the end of the war, the end of the killing, and Dauntless and Blackbird would play an important part. These last weeks they had proved themselves an efficient team and morale was good.
And yet ... Smith knew the attack would go in on the 31st, though that was a secret not shared with the rest of his command who only knew it must be soon. But Kressenstein the German commander also knew that it must be soon and would have his own plans. Smith did not speak his doubts aloud, but three years of war had left him wary of over-optimism. Now, as the two ships steamed south, headed for Port Said, he was uneasy.
*
Adeline Brett, twenty-one years old, small, pretty and blonde, climbed out of the thick oven-heat of the Number Two forward hold of the steam tramp Morning Star. The marine sentry, rifle with bayonet fixed slung over one shoulder, turned the key in the padlock and swung open the gate in the barbed wire. Adeline passed through and stood on the deck for a moment, blinking in the strong sunlight after the gloom of the hold, relishing the breeze. The white cotton shirt and drill trousers were plastered to her body with sweat. They were men’s naval issue that she had laboriously tailored to fit her but not very well; they were still too big. Now she eased them from her skin and pushed at the dank tendrils of hair clinging to her brow, held up her face to the wind. That was the wind of passage; Morning Star was making all of her best speed of twelve knots,
smoke billowing from her single funnel, sparks and coaldust and soot raining down aft. The old ship was alone on an empty sea that reflected the sun’s glare like a mirror. And she was running for her life.
The girl shivered and hitched at the canvas medical haversack slung from her shoulder and hanging heavy against her hip. She remembered that first dawn at sea when the thump of the explosion and the commotion on deck had brought her running from her bunk to the rail of the Morning Star. There she watched wide-eyed as the old destroyer, their escort, back broken by the torpedo, sank in minutes. Morning Star had not stopped to help survivors or invite another torpedo. She had run, was still running. And somehow, miraculously, the German submarine had lost her.
Adeline Brett smiled at the young marine sentry with his flat, sailor-like cap on top of his cropped head, and started aft, passing under the bridge and going to her cabin in the superstructure. She had to show an example, that had been instilled into her from childhood. She walked lightly, rope-soled sandals on her feet, near-silent on the deck. In the cabin she opened the haversack, checked its contents and made good its deficiencies of bandages, dressings and pills from a chest she dragged out from under the bunk. Adeline Brett was a nurse.
At the beginning of her career she had cycled down from the big house in Hampshire to the little cottage hospital, just a young girl of good family helping out. But when the war came she went to France where an army surgeon, a veteran of the Boer War and the North-West Frontier, took a liking to her and schooled her. From France she went as a member of a small volunteer team to Gallipoli and then, with what was left of it, to Salonika. There the war and disease took its toll and within a month the team had disintegrated, the others shipped home and she was left alone. Then she found this strange, unhappy battalion.
Now she worked quickly, neatly, packed the haversack so it was ready again, snapped the straps through the buckles and hung it on a hook. She turned the taps to run water into the basin, stripped off the shirt — and saw a flicker of movement at the scuttle as she turned, a crew member’s head withdrawn. She swore a soldier’s oath and yanked the curtain across.
