by Alan Evans
She washed, worrying about the men of the battalion imprisoned below, dried her face and looked at herself in the small mirror, her reflection shivering with the vibration of the old ship’s engines. It was a face burned by the sun, far thinner than that of the young girl of the summer of 1914, the puppy fat of adolescence honed from her by the last three years. She was a woman now. Briefly she wondered at her presence in this tiny, shabby cabin. In that long-ago summer she was the schoolgirl daughter of a rich man, meeting and mixing with the wealthy and famous, one of her uncles a press baron and another in Parliament. She led a leisured, comfortable life, the darling of the big house with its servants, horses and cars. Looking back at that girl was like looking at a stranger, another person in another, incredibly happy existence. Now she was the sole woman aboard this ship and caring for four hundred infantrymen locked away behind barbed wire. So her thoughts came back to those men and her lips tightened, she thrust away the past and turned away from the mirror. She consoled herself that by nightfall they should be safe in the harbour at Port Said.
2 — The Battalion
Smith was in his cramped little hutch of a sea-cabin at the back of the bridge, a seven-foot steel cube holding a bed, a small desk and a chair. His report lay before him unfinished as he brooded over Pearce, wondered what ailed him. Should he ask for Blackbird’s captain to be relieved, order him on leave, request a medical report? But any one of these could prove damaging to Pearce’s career and up to now it had been outstanding. Besides, Pearce’s performance of his duties was adequate. Yet that was not good enough for Smith, a bitter disappointment after the glowing reports he’d had of Pearce but equally his disappointment was no grounds for drastic action. You could hardly relieve a man of his command because he was not outstanding. But Smith should be able to rely on him totally, and he could not. Something was wrong, eating away at him, the way he reacted to Smith’s questioning showed that, but whatever it was he was determined to keep it to himself. Chris had a wife in Cairo he had not seen for weeks but it could not be that; there were men in these ships who had not seen wives or families for years.
Smith sighed with frustration, then picked up his pen. They were bound for Port Said and with luck there would be shore leave for all of them and that might work a change in Pearce. Now the report had to be finished before they reached port to be handed to Admiral Braddock.
Port Said was barely two hours away when the messenger came running from the wireless office aft. Smith took the signal, left his desk and the report and went through to the chart house next door.
“There’s a steamer in trouble,” he said. “Engines broken down on her way to Port Said. There’s a convoy coming down from the north but we’re closer and ordered to assist. Course?”
He handed the signal to Henderson the navigator and watched as he plotted the position of the ship on the chart.
Henderson muttered, “Morning Star. What’s she doing out there on her own?” He pointed at the signal. “And R.D.F. indicates a U-boat in that area!”
A Radio Direction Finding report meant that stations ashore had picked up signals from a U-boat and its approximate position was where the bearing of the signals to the various stations intersected. Smith thought that had probably been the previous night when she had surfaced to charge batteries and could rig her wireless aerial. She must have gone from that area now or she would not have passed by a target like Morning Star. But she might well return.
Smith said dryly, “Could complicate things a bit.” As he went out on to the bridge he, too, wondered why a solitary ship lay out there without escort.
Dauntless altered course and Blackbird followed in her wake, both ships increasing to twenty knots. Even so it would be dusk when they came up with Morning Star. When they were still fifty miles away Smith ordered Blackbird to launch a seaplane and the Short went booming off across the surface of the sea to lift into the air and go scouting ahead, disappearing over the horizon. It was sent to find Morning Star and patrol around her, watching for the U-boat.
*
Close on two hours later they sighted the Short again, flying in a wide circle at the centre of which lay the steamer. Morning Star grew from a speck until they could see her as a tramp of three to four thousand tons: three ‘islands’ of fo’c’sle, superstructure and poop, with well-decks between. As the sun sank, Blackbird stopped to recover the Short but Dauntless went on, slipping towards the tramp at ten knots. There was a sea running now, her bow nodding as she rode it.
Ackroyd, the first lieutenant, was on the bridge. Square-shouldered and square-faced, a dour Yorkshireman, he was a ‘salt-horse’, impatient of fools and paperwork. He already had enormous respect for Smith, who had proved himself a seaman and kept the two ships in almost continuous action for the last two weeks. Ackroyd expected that from what he had heard of the man. But the other rumours of unconventional behaviour, insubordination and scandal, made him wary. Now he said, “Signal from Blackbird, sir. The Short reports smoke, probably the convoy, to northward.”
Smith nodded, eyes on the ship ahead.
Ackroyd muttered, “What’s that row?” He lifted his glasses then said incredulously, “That’s wire strung around her hatches and bridge!” Faintly across the sea came the sound of yelling. Then a light flashed from the bridge of the Morning Star.
The signal yeoman read: “S.O.S. ... Prisoners ... escaping.”
Ackroyd said, “What the hell? Prisoners?”
Dauntless was coming up astern of Morning Star, would pass her within a cable’s length. Smith saw through his glasses what looked like barbed wire laced around her fore-deck and bridge and a milling crowd just forward of the bridge, not distinguishable as individual men but a heaving, swaying lump of humanity. He let the glasses fall on their strap and snapped, “Send the sea-boat! Armed!” And as he dashed back to his cabin: “I’ll go!”
In the cabin he discarded the glasses, snatched the Webley pistol on its belt from the drawer and buckled it around him, slid down the ladder and ran aft. Dauntless was stopped, the way coming off her and pitching in the swell, the cutter already in the sea and her crew gone down into her. He glanced across at Morning Star and saw flickering spurts of flame, heard the rattle of rifle-fire. For a moment he stared, then grabbed for the dangling line and dropped hand over hand, turning on the line as Dauntless rocked. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Blackbird manoeuvring ahead, making ready to pass the tow to the disabled tramp steamer. He wondered, suppose the U-boat turned up while they were trying to take the ship in tow and he was involved in this business, whatever it was? He swore as he dropped into the boat and fell across a thwart. Buckley, holding the line, a rifle slung from one shoulder, apologised: “Sorry, sir.”
Smith answered, “Not your fault.” Pushing past him Smith snapped at the midshipman in the sternsheets, “Get on with it! Shove off! Oars!”
He sat down with a thump. The cutter thrust away from Dauntless’s side, the oars dug in and she headed for the Morning Star. He saw the midshipman was Bright, the lumpish one whose clothes were too small for him so the buttons of his jacket strained and his trousers were perpetually at half-mast. Bright? A misnomer? He was the one always falling over things, always bewildered, all at sea. The cutter soared and plummeted as she closed the Morning Star. All at sea? True enough today. Smith grinned at his own bad joke but he said, “Smart work, Mr. Bright. You were very quick.” He had been.
“Th- thank you, sir.”
The evening was cool but Smith saw the boy was sweating, red-faced. Nervousness? Smith murmured, “You’re doing very well. Lay us alongside.” A little encouragement would not come amiss.
The side of the Morning Star was hanging over them now as she rolled. Heads showed over her bulwarks and a Jacob’s ladder spilled down to swing above the sea and be grabbed by one of the cutter’s crew as Bright yelped, “Oars! Hold her off, there!”
Smith scrambled over the thwarts and pushed between the men to get at the ladder, hung on t
o it and started to climb. The ladder swung as Morning Star rolled. Down in the boat they were holding the bottom of the ladder but Smith was still jerked out over the sea then thrown in against the rusty, riveted plates. He climbed steadily, aware that there had been shooting aboard this ship only minutes ago, that the Webley was in its holster and while the boat’s crew were armed there was nothing they could do to help him. Then he saw the faces above him, one topping a seaman’s blue jersey and bareheaded but the other wearing the round cap of a marine. He swung a leg over the rail as the marine held out a steadying arm. The marine held a rifle with bayonet fixed in his other hand.
Smith stood just under the bridge. A quick glance aft showed a little group of seamen peering forward. He turned. There was the hold, all the covers on except the two nearest to him and there was the barbed wire. It was strung in a fence across the deck and around the hold and marines were posted by it, a guard on the wired-in hold, rifles with bayonets fixed held across their chests at the high port. Two more marines sat on the deck, one of them wiping at a bloody nose and the other nursing his right wrist. Smith took it all in with one sweeping glance that returned to rest on the captain of marines who stood before him, saluting.
Smith returned the salute and the marine said breathlessly, “Brand, sir.”
“Smith. Commanding Dauntless. I heard firing a minute ago. What’s going on?”
Captain Brand was a muscular young man, broken-nosed. His was a face that might easily break into a wide grin but now he looked a tough nut.
He said, “The prisoners tried to break out.”
Smith asked, “Germans? Turks? Where are they from?”
“Salonika, sir. They’re —”
“Bulgarians?” In this wide-ranging war an Allied army was fighting the Bulgarians in Salonika in the north of Greece.
Brand dabbed at a cut on his forehead that welled blood and said hesitantly, “They’re not exactly prisoners, sir, though my orders were to treat them as such in every respect.” He saw Smith’s exasperation and finished quickly, “They’re British soldiers, sir.”
British! And not exactly prisoners? Smith could see Blackbird ahead of Morning Star and going slowly astern, closing on the bow of the tramp where a party waited on the fo’c’sle to take the tow. Dauntless was patrolling out there, a wraith of a ship in the gathering gloom and there was still the U-boat — but he prompted, “So they tried to break out?”
Brand wiped again at the blood that streamed from the cut on his forehead. “We’re quartered right aft. I heard the shouting and ran forward with a few of my men and found the prisoners out on the deck and fighting with the sentries, trying to break past them to get aft, or so it looked. I ordered the men with me to fire over their heads.”
Smith said, “And that drove them below.” He was staring past Brand at the wire strung around the hold. It had been torn down in a gap of six feet or so.
Brand said flatly, “It did not. More of them kept coming up out of the hold and they were shoving us back and we couldn’t get room to use the rifles. But then the major came running up. He got them below again.”
“Major?” Smith asked, “What major?”
“Taggart, sir. He’s the only officer with them and he’s in the hold with them now.” Brand paused, then added, “God knows what would have happened if all of them had got out. They’d gone mad!”
“All?” Smith asked, “How many men are you holding below deck in this ship?”
“Close on four hundred, sir.” And as Smith turned to peer at him Brand said defensively, “I had my orders, sir.”
Smith said, “I want to see.”
Buckley and a half-dozen men from the cutter were behind him now, rifles held across their chests, peering suspiciously about the deck. They followed him as he walked to the gap torn in the wire and picked his way through the trodden tangle of it strewn on the deck. There was blood on the wire and the deck. At one side of the gap was a door in the wire, closed and padlocked. There a ladder poked its top rungs out of the hold and Smith moved to it, hearing Brand coming behind him and ordering one of the marines, “Run aft and get some wire to mend this.”
Smith leaned over the head of the ladder and peered down into the hold below. He said, “Four hundred men in this hold and the other one forward?”
Brand said, “Yes, sir.” He explained, “The dockyard at Malta worked through the night to fit some bunks and hooks for slinging hammocks. There wasn’t a troopship available and we had to sail the next morning to embark the battalion at Salonika.”
Smith said, “It’s a poor substitute for a trooper.”
Brand said honestly, “It’s bloody awful, sir.”
“What did she last carry?”
“I don’t know. But she’s been a cattle-boat before now.”
And still was. Smith stared down into the hold. The ladder led down steeply to the ’tween-decks. The only light was from the small blue bulbs, police lights, scattered sparsely around the sides of the hold.
He called, “Major Taggart!” His voice echoed in the hold, came back to him a hoarse whisper. He saw faces turned up towards him, faces so close together they were like a mosaic, their eyes catching what light there was.
A voice answered from below: “Yes?”
“I am Commander Smith. His Majesty’s cruiser Dauntless. I’m coming below.”
“Right you are.”
Smith swung onto the ladder and started down into the gloom, descending to the ’tween-decks, and the smell of packed humanity rose up around him. The ladder ended in a small clear space of deck, where a score of men were drawn up shoulder to shoulder in four ranks. An officer stood bare-headed in front of them, only a shade taller than Smith but broader, deep-chested, black-haired and black-browed. His tunic hung open, thrown on hurriedly, but the insignia on the cuffs was that of a major. He stood to attention. “John Taggart. Major, Composite Battalion.”
Smith held out his hand but stared past him at the other men beyond those who stood drawn up in ranks, the men on the bunks that were built in tiers, four above each other, crouched or perched on the edges of the bunks with backs and heads bent below the overhang of the bunk above. More men squatted on the ’tween-decks and another ladder led down into the hold still further below. Smith saw blue lights down there also, glistening on faces slicked with sweat like oil.
He ran with sweat already. The inside of the hold was airless and humid with the heat of bodies. He asked the major, “Captain Brand only knows your men tried to break out. Can you add to that?”
Taggart was angry, curt. “Two or three of them were standing on the ladder getting a lungful of clean air. Then the girl screamed for help and —”
Smith broke in; “Girl? What girl?”
“This one!”
The voice came from behind and above him and he spun on his heels to see her coming down the ladder, to step on to the deck beside him. She was small, her blonde hair cut short and curled, dressed in a pair of men’s white drill trousers and a man’s white shirt that hung around her and made her seem even smaller than she was.
Taggart said, “This is Miss Adeline Brett. She’s the nurse attached to us. In fact, apart from a dozen orderlies who are little better than stretcher-bearers she’s the only medical help we have.”
She glanced up at Smith, saw a man surprisingly young for the rank but with a hard eye, and labelled him a career officer, ruthless. She asked coldly, “You command the cruiser? And so you command here?”
And when Smith nodded assent to both questions: “Then you must do something for these men.”
It was more order than request, given in a tone that was used to issuing orders. Smith was used to taking them but not from a slip of a girl. He said shortly, “I understand this — disturbance began when you screamed for help.”
The girl’s brow lifted fractionally.
“Did it? I know I did scream and I’m sorry. I’d been here in the hold to see to a man who had fallen from the ladder. I
was walking aft to my cabin when a man grabbed me. I clawed at his face and pulled away, and because it was a shock, I screamed. But that was stupid. I lost my head for a moment.” She thought she was passing it off coolly, and was glad. At the time she had been terrified.
Smith saw the shirt was torn at the neck and showed a white shoulder.
Taggart asked quietly, “Who was it?”
Adeline Brett shook her blonde head. “I don’t know. It was dark under the superstructure. He ran away aft.” Taggart growled, “One of the crew!”
“Obviously.” The girl did not seem interested. She carried a small haversack slung from one shoulder and now she hitched it around and tugged at the straps that held down the flap. “I came to see if these men need attention. With your permission, John?”
Taggart nodded and she moved to the front rank of the men fallen in behind him, pulled cotton-wool and a bottle from her haversack and said briskly, “Hands, please.”
The first man held out his hands. Smith saw them torn and bloody.
He said, “They tore down the wire with their hands?”
Taggart glanced sidewise at him and said dryly, “They’ve been faced by wire before.”
Smith looked at them and at the men beyond them, faces stacked in rows as the tiers of bunks climbed the sides of the hold, their eyes watching him. Soldiers. There was nothing apparently unusual about them, except that coming from Salonika they were not dressed in drill shorts and shirts like Allenby’s army. They wore thick khaki serge uniforms, trousers bound around with puttees below the knee and down to cover the tops of the ammunition boots. Their tunics were discarded but they still wore their heavy collarless, khaki wool shirts. And they were unusually, eerily quiet. There was no talking, no whistling, no whisper exchanged in the background and Smith knew why from the way they watched him: he was a stranger among them. Taggart and Adeline Brett were accepted, a part, but he was alien. They watched him in a silence that enabled him to hear the voices of the men far above him on deck, even to tell from those voices that the tow was being passed from Blackbird.
