Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2

by Alexander Fullerton

  The Italian commanding that torpedo-boat had displayed a lot of guts, last night. Whatever they had as the equivalent of a VC, he deserved one. As a nation they weren’t militarily impressive; they weren’t really significant—at Matapan for instance, two months ago, when the tenthousand-ton cruiser Pola had been immobilized by a torpedo from one of Formidable’s aircraft, destroyers found her lying in a state of helpless panic, her upper deck littered with baggage, bottles, and drunken sailors. How to deal with her had been something of an embarrassment, but eventually she’d been sent to the bottom—joining the heavy cruisers Zara and Fiume and two destroyers—and nine hundred of her crew were saved. Rescue work was interrupted by German aircraft—Ju88s—and had to be broken off; so A. B. Cunningham signalled the Italian admiralty telling them where to find the rest of their survivors, and they sent out a hospital ship which for some reason the Germans didn’t attack. But there’d been some other interesting signals exchanged between the destroyer flotilla who picked up the nine hundred Italians, and the Commander-in-Chief in Warspite. One had reported: Prisoners when asked why they had failed to fire at us replied that they thought if they did we would fire back. Then, when ABC had called for details of any wounded men picked up, he was told: State of prisoners: six cot cases, fifty slightly injured, one senior officer has piles. The Commander-in-Chief flashed in reply: I am not surprised.

  But the Pola and last night’s torpedo-boat seemed hardly to have belonged to the same navy.

  Five-thirty-five. In a quarter of an hour it would be daylight. Start of the bad time here, end of the bad time in London …

  When Nick had got back from Norway, his uncle Hugh had been in London, wreathed in smiles at his nephew’s recent successes. Admiral Sir Hugh Everard had retired years before the war, but like many other retired admirals he’d rejoined as a convoy commodore. He was doing that now, in the Atlantic: no sinecure, for a man of seventy. He’d been dressed in his new rank of Commodore RNR when Nick had met him in London, in the late spring of last year. Hugh had asked him to lunch, and produced another guest as well, a wren third officer called Virginia Casler. She was small, blonde, smart, and very pretty, and she was working in the Admiralty; Hugh had come across her at the time when there’d been no news of Nick or of his destroyer Intent, when everyone had been assuming the worst. Hugh Everard had been highly impressed by the WRNS third officer, and when the great news had arrived—Intent still afloat and with a string of successes behind her—the gaunt old admiral and the curvy little blonde had gone out to celebrate; and Hugh had resolved to introduce Nick to her when the chance came. Match-making, Nick had guessed; the old boy had been on at him for years about settling down with a new wife.

  But the night before this luncheon, his first night in London, he’d spent with Fiona. He’d arrived late, learnt that there was no room for him at his club, telephoned her and found she was alone. (He wouldn’t have taken a chance on it. She wasn’t a one-man girl: she’d been married, not too successfully, to a rich man nearly twice her age, and when he’d died she’d decided that the one thing she wasn’t going to do was tie herself down again in any hurry. Nick had happily accepted this situation: he’d concluded a long time ago, after the divorce from Ilyana, that he wasn’t cut out to be a husband.) He’d asked her, in her flat that night, to join him next evening for dinner and a nightclub, but she’d said she couldn’t because she’d be on duty. So he invited Ginny Casler instead, and Ginny said she’d love to, which was fine. A “stunner” was how Hugh Everard had described her, when he’d been asking Nick for lunch: he’d also referred to her as a “corker.”

  Nick booked a table for that evening at the Jardin des Gourmets. London’s ordeal by bombing hadn’t yet started, in May 1940, and all the restaurants and nightspots were still open and intact. The table they’d reserved for him was one of a pair at the far end of the long, rather narrow dining-room: there were just those two “banquette” tables facing this way, down the room’s length as you approached them. He hadn’t been taking much notice of his surroundings as he and Ginny followed the waiter to it; it was only when the man had pulled one end out for Ginny to slip in behind it that he noticed the occupants of the other one—Fiona Gascoyne, with an RAF wing commander.

  There’d been no reason to be upset about it: he’d known she went out with a lot of other men. Why shouldn’t she? He was surprised she’d made that excuse, though: there’d been no reason to. Looking at her, showing his surprise, seeing her take in all there was to see of Ginny Casler in one swift feline appraisal before she glanced back at him—puzzled, almost—he’d felt a new element in the air between them: there was something disturbing about it but at the same time exciting, a feeling—which he couldn’t have described there and then—of make or break. Afterwards he’d wondered if he and Fiona hadn’t been struck simultaneously and separately by the same feeling: that it was—surprisingly—wrong to see each other out with other people. The corollary, of course, would be that they belonged together.

  In the next few days he’d telephoned her several times, both to her flat and to the MTC headquarters in Graham Terrace, but failed to catch her. Then he had to go back up to the Clyde, where he’d left Intent in dock. He was on his way north when news came that the Dutch army had surrendered; and for the next fortnight there was a whole series of evacuations from various points in Norway. By that time Intent was fit for sea again, and he was bringing her into Harwich after a fast dash around the top of Scotland when a BBC broadcast announced the collapse of Belgium. There was just about time to refuel, and they were away to take part in the Dunkirk evacuation. After that there was hardly any leave for anyone: invasion was expected at any time, the Battle of Britain was being fought over southern England, and the flotillas and squadrons waited with intentions that were entirely clear: whether the air battle was won or lost, the Navy would die in the Channel before a live German landed on an English beach.

  The all-night raids on London started at the end of August; in his destroyer during the patrols and anti-invasion sweeps and bombardments of the invasion-launching ports, he prayed for Fiona to be alive each morning. It wasn’t until October that he had some leave—before taking over Tuareg in Portsmouth—and spent nearly all of it with her in Hampshire. They’d laughed about that chance meeting in the Jardin: she explained that she had been on the duty roster, but another girl had persuaded her to swap, for some reason, and then this friend-of-a-friend had called: and she hadn’t known where Nick was … That she’d bothered to explain was unusual, out of character with their relationship as it had been. And on their last night together he’d been woken by her crying on his shoulder. She’d asked him, “You will come back, Nick? Please? Promise me?” He’d thought of her expression when he’d seen her in the restaurant, remembered how he’d felt and felt now even more, and he’d had a sickening glimpse of what it would be like not to have her to come back to.

  Nearly fifteen hundred people had been killed in London on the night of 10/11 May.

  There’d be a letter from her soon. There might be one now, at this moment, lying in the Fleet Mail Office or in Woolwich, the destroyer flotillas’ depot ship in Alexandria. Even if there wasn’t, she might still have written: mails were unreliable, particularly out of London. And at least she didn’t ride a motorbike now. Without any help from Germans she’d twice nearly killed herself on that machine …

  The light was coming rapidly, pouring up from behind a range of mountains which slanted jaggedly southwards from the low cape to port. It was 5:45: they were in the position ordered for the rendezvous with Carnarvon.

  If the cruiser was inside visibility range, she ought to see them before they saw her. She’d have them silhouetted against the dawn—if the land’s shadow didn’t hide them—and she had a greater looking-out range from that old spotting-top of hers.

  Pratt said, “Should be altering at any time now, sir.”

  It was up to Marsh: and as if he’d heard what Pratt had said, Blackfoot
started flashing. Nick was looking out that way, in the faint hope of an early sight of Carnarvon, and he saw it start: and Whiffen had his signalman ready and waiting for it, so that the answering clash of Tuareg’s lamp came with pleasing promptitude.

  “You must have a carrying voice, Pilot.”

  “Perhaps Captain (D) and I are on the same wavelength, sir.” Ashcourt, beside his torpedo-control panel on the starboard side, read the message aloud as it came rippling over in fast dots and dashes: Alter course to one-nine-seven. I will wait here for Carnarvon and then catch you up.

  Tuareg’s signalman had rapped out a “K” in acknowledgement. Pratt said, “There’s an answer to the speed discrepancy, sir.”

  Nick glanced at him: it was light enough to see the navigator’s slightly rueful smile, as if he was thinking that Marsh had been a jump ahead of them all the time.

  “Bring her round gently to one-nine-seven, Pilot.”

  Nick could hardly believe Marsh was doing this. What if there was some delay in Carnarvon’s arrival, and the Stukas found him first? The only effective weapon ships had in this battle against dive-bombers was collective firepower. A single destroyer with low-angle main armament, alone and unsupported, didn’t stand a chance.

  “How far are we from them now, Pilot?”

  Jack Everard went down to the chart to check on it. Carnarvon’s best speed now was 22 knots. She was no chicken, and a month’s hard driving plus quite a few near-missing bombs to shake bits loose had taken its toll despite extraordinary efforts by her engineers. She’d been on the move and at sea, without any break at all lasting more than a few hours, since she’d arrived in the Mediterranean near the end of “Demon.” She’d had one whole night in harbour—in Alexandria, just before “Tiger,” the convoy trip to Malta and back. There were three other AA cruisers on the station—Coventry, Carlisle, and Calcutta—and all four of them were wanted here, there, and everywhere else, simultaneously.

  At 4:50 this morning, after a breakdown lasting half an hour, the engineer commander had told Napier, “If you can keep her down to revs for not more than 22 knots, sir, I can keep her running for a week or two. If we have to exceed that for more than a few minutes I can’t answer for the consequences.”

  It wasn’t light enough for chart-work: Jack pulled the screen down behind him and switched the light on. About time he replaced this chart anyway; the bridge charts always got harder use than the ones in the chartroom, and there were so many rubbed-out workings from the past month’s operations that the paper had barely any surface left on it. Carnarvon was steering a course of 106 degrees, aiming to meet the 37th Flotilla at 0700 instead of the ordered 0600 rendezvous farther north; Napier knew that the Tribals would push on southwards, and he’d had to make the adjustment for his ship’s reduced speed. It did mean the destroyers would be on their own for the first hour of daylight, but that was beyond his control; he’d be joining them eight or nine miles south of Pondikonisi at seven instead of four miles north of it at six.

  Jack came up from the chart and told him, “At their 0600 position they’ll bear oh-seven-eight, range 26 miles, sir.”

  Napier looked ten years older than he had a month ago. Thinner, greyer, eyes deeper set.

  So long as the Stukas didn’t arrive too soon, Jack thought, everything should turn out all right. Even if they did find them, the four Tribals would be able to fend for themselves for a while, with luck. They’d be handicapped, of course, by only two of them being free to take avoiding action; Tuareg and Masai, confined to a steady speed and straight course, would obviously be the bombers’ target.

  But brother Nick, for God’s sake, was more than capable of looking after himself …

  By five-past six it was daylight. The Cretan mountains, thirty or forty miles ahead, were an uneven scar of indigo against a burning sky. Clear sky: in that quarter, burning bright. Here in the cruiser’s bridge, unshaven faces with binoculars at their eyes. From the constant looking-out your eyes acquired rims, circular depressions that you could feel with your fingertips.

  Bell-Reid muttered, “Enemy’s late this morning. Ought to be ashamed of themselves. A good German’s never late.”

  “Let’s not object too loudly.” Napier’s glasses traversed slowly across the horizon on the bow. “And you know what they used to call a good German.”

  A dead one …There’d be a few floating around, too, after last night. Just after 4:00 this morning there’d been a signal to C-in-C from Force D, Admiral Glennie with Dido, Orion, and Ajax, reporting that earlier in the night they’d run into an invasion convoy of caïques and steamers and one Italian escort, and destroyed it. Glennie was withdrawing westward now, towards Rawlings and the battle squadron, because his cruisers were low in ammunition; Admiral King’s Force C was thus alone in the Aegean, carrying out the C-in-C’s earlier orders to conduct a daylight sweep from Heraklion northwards to Milos Island, looking for more invasion convoys. The one thing they could be absolutely sure of finding was Stukas.

  Other signals on the log showed that the 14th Destroyer Flotilla, the ships who’d bombarded Scarpanto airfield two nights ago, were heading for the Kaso Strait from Alexandria, where they’d have fuelled and ammunitioned; and the 10th, comprising three rather ancient Australian destroyers, was on its way from Alex to join Admiral Rawlings. Also the 5th—Louis Mountbatten’s flotilla, which Cunningham had been keeping in Malta as a raiding force against Rommel’s supply convoys from Italy to the desert—had sailed from Valetta last night and would be joining Rawlings during the forenoon.

  Able Seaman Noble brought Napier a cup of coffee. He muttered in that low growl of his, turning pale slit-eyes up towards the sky, “Gerries must be ‘aving a lie-in, sir.”

  “Long may it continue. If there’s any more of that, Noble, perhaps you’d spare the commander a cup.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Noble asked Bell-Reid, “One lump in coffee is it, sir?”

  Bell-Reid nodded, and said to Napier, “Very kind, sir.”

  Napier’s ADP telephone buzzed, and he reached down for it. “Captain.” He was listening, and at the same time drawing himself up on the seat, tall in the saddle to get a better view of the horizon on the port bow or the dark blue mountains crowning it. “Are you sure of that bearing?”

  He put the phone down and told Jack Everard, “McCowan reports what he says looks like the flotilla on bearing oh-nine-five, but one ship less than there ought to be. We don’t expect ‘em to be as far south yet, do we?”

  Jack told him—the Tribals should have been thirty degrees on the bow, not ten.

  “That’s where they are, anyway.” Napier pointed. “And McCowan’s got an RDF range of fourteen miles. Visibility’s poor against the land, I dare say they’re all there … Giving ‘em 12 knots, what’s an adjusted course to intercept?”

  He went to the chart and worked it out. On the present showing he’d have given them about 15 knots, not 12.

  “One-four-oh, sir, to bring us up with them at 0700. But they may alter course before that, in the process of rounding Elaphonisi.”

  Napier told Willy Irvine, “Come round to one-four-oh.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” The black beard touched the voicepipe’s rim: “Starboard ten.”

  Jack checked the time of the alteration: it was 6:22.

  “Aircraft astern, sir!”

  One of the look-outs had yelled it. Nick slid off his seat: he told Yeoman Whiffen, “Red warning flag,” and joined Pratt at the binnacle. Ashcourt had gone to that look-out, to check on the report. Nick told Harry Houston up the director voicepipe, “Alarm astern, aircraft. Be ready with your barrage and for God’s sake watch the sun.”

  They liked to make use of the sun when it was low. It was lifting over the mountains: like an enormous, blinding searchlight aimed into the destroyer’s bridge.

  Ashcourt shouted from where he was leaning over the look-out bay, “Long way off, sir, hard to see. They’re circling, I think—can’t see ‘em at all now …’<
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  They’d be circling over or round Blackfoot. Like bloody vultures, Nick thought. He heard “B” gun’s fire-gong clang, and there was a split second in which to notice that the barrels of both the for’ard mountings were tilted up to port—into the sun—and then four guns had thunderclapped, recoiled smoking, and the second gun in each mounting fired, and it was continuous now, a fast barrage straight into that blind sector. With his eyes squeezed three-quarters shut Nick tried to see their attackers, but he couldn’t: the guns were shooting fast and steadily, and it wasn’t just Houston being edgy because the other ships were in action too; Afghan slanting across ahead from starboard to port with her guns cocked high spurting flame, disgorging smoke; and Masai on the end of her lead also giving tongue, at least with her for’ard guns. And now he heard it—the Stuka’s siren, the banshee howl that was supposed to break men’s nerves. With the tow astern, there was nothing to do except keep shooting. Every gun was doing that: pompoms thump-thumping, pointfives clattering. There was one four-barrelled pompom between the funnels and another on the platform aft which also supported the big searchlight and the after-control position: over all the din, the growing volume of the Stuka’s shriek.

  “Flashing, starboard side, sir!”

  Carnarvon, at last … He put his glasses up. The winking light was on the beam and a long way off: Mason, a leading signalman, was at the starboard eighteen-inch, sending his single answering flash just as a bomb splashed into the sea ahead and the Stuka levelled, tilting on to his starboard wingtip as he swung away towards the north.

  “What’s happened to the bunch astern?” He was asking Ashcourt—who like everyone else had been concentrating on things nearer at hand. That last one had come from nowhere: out of the sun, of course, but one minute it hadn’t been visible and the next it had been in its dive. There was another one behind it too … If Ashcourt had heard that question, he hadn’t answered it. The guns were thundering again, and the cordite stink was as eye-watering as the sun, smoke flaring over in brown throat-filling gusts with each salvo from the for’ard guns. Pratt yelled in his ear, “From Carnarvon, sir: Joining you at my best speed which is 22 knots. Are you one ship short?” A Stuka was screaming in, black and bat-like, just to the right of the sun’s blaze: it was banking, to come in on Masai’s beam, in a dive quite shallow by Stuka standards—making full use of the sun, of course. The port-side point-fives had opened up as the range closed in: Tuareg had quadruple point-five machine-guns each side of the bridge, on the wings of the signal deck, one level down. Petty Officer Whiffen was looking at him with a question mark on his broad, pink face; Nick shouted, “Make to Carnarvon: Blackfoot is ten miles astern and under attack. Her need may be greater than ours.” The Stuka was howling in, gun noise rising to a peak, starboard point-fives joining in for a snap shot as the machine roared low over Masai and a bomb went into the sea to starboard of her; the four-sevens were still shooting after the plane as it pulled away. Nick called up the voicepipe to the director tower and told Harry Houston not to waste shells on enemies who’d completed their attacks, that it was vital to conserve ammunition.