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

by Alexander Fullerton

  “Might bloody fry before we’re swimmin’.” Getting aft, out of this lobby, Brassey meant.

  Water swirled steaming on the deck. Water from the shattered stern would drown the fires eventually, but by that time it wouldn’t do anyone any good, she’d be on her way to the sea-bed. Meanwhile in the wet area where flooding had approached the edges of the fire and where damage-control parties had had hoses running to cool decks and bulkheads, it was less fire than progressive scorching, smouldering, heat, and fumes. A battle between elements, and the sea would win it: in the end, the sea won everything. They’d left the smoke-helmets one deck down, he realized … One-handed, he dipped his handkerchief in water and held it against the lower half of his face: he needed the other hand for steadying the cook, who was across his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He was soaked in blood from him already, and moving into greater heat, through the short midships passage between the two fan rooms and then turning right out of it, down the slope with really blistering heat radiating at him now, truly man-burning heat, and paintwork beginning to bubble on the bulkheads.

  On the port side he found himself moving into water that was kneedeep, thigh-deep, then up to his waist, and over it: by the time he was actually in the passage and had turned for’ard it was around his chest and the man he was carrying had his face an inch from the darkly swirling surface. He was unconscious now: he might even, for all Jack knew, have been dead. The length of the passage they had to get through was something like a hundred feet, he thought, with four watertight doors which he’d have to open and Berwick shut again behind them. Brassey’s torch-beam glinted on the water, throwing grotesque shadows on white-enamelled bulkheads as they shuffled forward: Jack burdened, sticky with the cook’s blood, trying to keep his breathing slow and even, forging slowly through black water that deepened as they got nearer to the ship’s middle section where her beam was widest. First door now. He spread his feet on the slanting deck, got the cook well balanced across his shoulder so as to have his hands free for working off the clips. If she listed one degree more, he thought, it would drown them. If … The knowledge was in Brassey’s face too, close up beside him: yellow, blood-streaked, smoke-blackened here and there from some earlier excursion. Easing the last clip off, he felt the pressure of the water on this side of the door and above its two-foot-high sill forcing it open, away from him. The weight on the clip made it hard to move and he had to hammer at it now with the heel of his hand: but if it had been a door that opened the other way, this way, nobody could ever have opened it against the pressure. Christ, he thought, but we’re lucky … The clip banged up and the door crashed open: water was sluicing over the sill like a river over a weir, deluging into the next section, foaming and roaring. His ears ached from the rise in pressure: he shouted, turning and at the same time bracing himself against the flood’s pull, “Shut it quick as you can, Spo.” Berwick wouldn’t manage it until the level on the other side had risen so that the flow slackened; by that time, with luck, it mightn’t be at much more than sill-height. But the door had to be shut behind them: it would have been a relief to have simply hurried on, but you had to think of the risk of a new flood pouring up behind them from the stern. Air out, water in: if all these doors were open at once it could send her to the bottom. They were all through, and Berwick was leaning hard against the door, Brassey helping to support that other wounded rating. The flow of water was quite gentle already, and Jack hoped that at the next door it might even be contained by the sill.

  “Next section ought to be dry, I’d say.”

  “Like I’d say I oughter be ‘ome in me bed.” Like a dog snarling, only it had been intended as a smile, Jack thought. He told him, “You may not have noticed, Guns, but so far we’re doing pretty well.”

  Even in this section the water was only going to be about three feet deep at the higher end: so there’d be a little to spill over at that next door, but it was a terrific improvement. In fact it felt like a miracle. Touch wood … There wasn’t any, only enamelled steel. And don’t get too cocky too soon, he warned himself. She could still go in this next second: roll over, or there’d be a split, a suddenly collapsing bulkhead, the roar of inrushing sea: Berwick had the door shut and a clip on, and they began the wade to the next door, which was in the bulkhead that made the after end of No. 2 boiler-room. The water was about eighteen inches higher than the sill and there was that much to cascade through, but it amounted to nothing much, because it was pouring from a short section of passage into a long one. The air was cooler too. It was about 45 feet to the next bulkhead, the one dividing the two boiler-rooms: he’d stopped there, waiting for the others, and the man on his back said, “Florrie—Christ’s sake, Florrie luv, what y’ doing?”

  Brassey said, “Takin’ ‘er knickers off, I shouldn’t wonder.” He cackled with laughter. “Come on, Spo, let’s get a bloody—”

  A deep boom from aft: a shudder that ran right through her. He felt the deck angle more as her stern settled. He was wrenching at the clips: he shouted, “Leave it open! Run!”

  Still one more door.

  This wasn’t a cave they were trying to get out of: it felt like it but it was a steel carcass hanging at the top of three hundred and fifty fathoms of sea. And it would go soon: you could sense or feel how it was just hanging, how the next thing would be the stern-first slide, the fast and sickening slipping-away you’d seen quite a few times now. He had the clips off the last door, and it wasn’t opening. It was stuck. He couldn’t—

  “Bloody ‘ell—”

  Brassey had pushed up beside him, added his not very considerable, scrawny frame to it. Muttering obscenities … Stoker PO Berwick suggested mildly, “Let this dog see the bone, sir?” Jack edged one way, Brassey the other, and Berwick came in between them. Now five men’s weight—including the unconscious ones on their backs—still wasn’t moving it. But there was a deep rumbling noise from the stern and the door gave suddenly, swinging open …

  “Go on, Spo. Straight up top!” Another, similar rumble: it could only be water breaking through her, and he thought, Here it comes … He’d guessed all along they’d never get away with it, hadn’t he? “Carry on, Mr Brassey. See you somewhere.”

  Slitted eyes gleamed out of the fiendishly ugly face. Brassey growled, “You’re a right good ‘un, Everard.” Then he’d gone through into the lobby where the up-ladder was.

  “Starboard twenty-five, sir …”

  CPO Habgood sounded as calm as always. Nick told him, “Two-fiveoh revolutions.” There’d been another upheaval or explosion in Carnarvon’s stern, but she was still afloat. There must still have been a lot of men to come out of her. A Stuka’s bomb missed to starboard, the fountain of it breaking right across her: she’d go at any moment, and in the circumstances he knew what he was going to have to do. Nothing he did would save her, and if he stopped to pick up survivors he’d as likely as not lose his own ship and another two hundred and thirty lives, quite probably adding Afghan and her two-hundred-and-thirty-odd to that. And the survivors he rescued would simply be sunk twice instead of once.

  The facts were simple, but the decision wasn’t easy.

  A Stuka was aiming itself at Tuareg. “Midships.” He had Dalgleish on the ACP telephone. “Get the lashings off half our Carley floats. Stand by to ditch them when we’re closer.”

  He bent to the voicepipe again.

  “Meet her.”

  “Meet her, sir …”

  “Steady!” Yellow beak predatory, loathsome: but it was pulling out, high among the shell-bursts, tracer curving away short of it. Its bomb had seemed to start with a slanting trajectory to port: when it had splashed in he’d put on wheel to close the cruiser. Drisdale was pointing: at more 88s arriving … “Port fifteen.” The bomb had gone in forty yards away. Another Stuka was about to start its dive: and there’d been another hit, in that second as he glanced at Carnarvon, in her bridge. He’d seen it and flinched from it … “Midships.” Then, into the telephone, “Stand by
to ditch the floats.”

  “Standing by, sir.”

  Chalk’s voice, very calm. Carnarvon was almost right over on her side and men were sliding down the exposed slope of hull. The cruiser had got her own Carley floats over and he saw some boats in the water too: the Stukas and Messerschmitts weren’t likely to leave them alone for long. In fact there—now—a Stuka flying low, parallel to the ship’s side, guns flaming … The spectre behind his eyes was of his own elder brother, 25 years ago, in a shattered, sinking cruiser: David starkly mad, jabbering incoherently. Memory wrapped in shame and infinite regret was heightened by knowledge now of personal responsibility: what you’d made yourself, you couldn’t blame, couldn’t stand aside from … “Stop both engines!”

  His own voice had passed that order. Tuareg’s screws would stop now—were stopping—but she still had a lot of way on, pitching as she drove up towards the expanding area of survivor-dotted sea. The gleam on the water and the stink was oil-fuel. He told Chalk over the telephone, “Scrambling-nets both sides!”

  Chalk was yelling the order to Dalgleish. The nets were rolled up and lashed along each side of the iron deck; all you had to do was cast off the lashings and they’d tumble down …

  “Slow ahead together.”

  Chalk reported that the nets were down.

  “Ditch the floats.”

  Dropping them out here rather than closer in where they might fall on top of swimmers. From all round the ship’s afterpart the heavy lifesaving rafts were toppling over, crashing into the sea. The guns were engaging yet another Stuka that was going for Carnarvon.

  “Stop both.”

  “Stop both, sir.”

  “Port twenty.”

  There was a group of about twenty men on and around one of the cruiser’s own floats: they were waving and cheering as Tuareg slid up towards them. But thinking more clearly now, he knew he had no business to be stopping, risking his own ship and all her company. That group around the float would be all he’d take: twenty-odd out of nearly five hundred. No business to be taking any … From the foc’sl break a heaving line soared out and fell across the float; they’d got hold of it, and now the men on Tuareg’s deck would haul them in alongside. Nick was looking round for Stukas, shocked at the wrongness of his decision: but it hadn’t been a decision, only an unthinking reflex. He shouted to Drisdale, “Tell me when I can move!” The navigator raised a hand in acknowledgement, and leant over the side of the bridge to monitor the rescue operation. A Messerschmitt 109 swept low over the sea, firing bursts at floats and the heads of swimmers. Bombs from some Ju88s were raising mounds of sea around the foundering ship’s hulk: men would die from the shock-waves of those explosions.

  “All inboard, sir!”

  “Half ahead together. Three-six-oh revolutions. Starboard twentyfive.” He felt sick. A Stuka was diving on Afghan; Afghan lay stopped, as Tuareg had been, and Tuareg’s four-sevens were barraging over her.

  “Yeoman”—he had to yell into PO Whiffen’s ear—“make to him: Course one hundred, speed 34 knots, executive.”

  Dalgleish reported by telephone, “We have 23 survivors on board, sir. No officers.”

  Nick passed the phone to Ashcourt and told the coxswain, “Steer one-oh-oh degrees.” Afghan was getting under way, circling to starboard through a man-dotted sea, bow-wave rising as she picked up speed; and Houston was shifting target to a new group of Stukas approaching from right ahead, high above the sun.

  Napier had been killed when a Stuka’s bomb had hit the bridge, and the fire from that hit was still blazing, would be until she sank and the sea put it out. You could feel the heat from it down here on the upper deck beside the starboard whaler’s davits, where the last of the wounded were being got away. Jack and Brassey had been helping with them, getting them aft to this point and then down the side to waiting Carley floats. The whaler itself had been lowered fifteen or twenty minutes ago when the order to abandon ship had been given, and the system—presided over by Bell-Reid—was that a stretcher with a man in it would be lowered from the for’ard davit and the empty stretcher brought up again on the after one. There were several stretchers in use, so it wasn’t too slow a process. Jumping ladders had been shackled together and hung over the side, resting on its slope, and men at intervals on the ladders were guiding the stretchers as they came slithering down.

  It was nearly finished now. At the ship’s side, Bell-Reid asked one of the men who’d brought the last customer, “How many more?”

  “Three, sir. One’s strapped in an’ ready, then two to go.” The SBA turned back, to re-enter the ship through the door under the foc’sl break.

  Brassey sloped in after him. “I’ll give ‘em an ‘and inside.”

  It wasn’t all that safe outside. One man had been shot off the ladder, and another killed on the upper deck, both by Stuka machine-guns.

  Bell-Reid helped to detach an empty Neill-Robertson from the after fall. Then he leant over the side, and called down to the two men on the ladder to go on down, get away. Straightening, he told Jack, “You go down, steer the next one when it comes, then carry on. Someone else’ll replace you.” He’d turned to Fullbrook, the RNVR lieutenant. “You too. And well done, both of you.”

  Jack was about a quarter of the way down the ladder when the ship began to move. Bow rising: then the ladder began to slide, scraping across the ship’s side as she tilted. This time she wasn’t fooling. And old Brassey was inside her—and Bell-Reid, Melhuish, half a dozen others. Above him Fullbrook shouted something, but a Stuka was roaring over and the shout went with it: next moment something came crashing down past him and it was Fullbrook, jumping … Jack looked down, saw where he went in, saw also an area of sea clear of heads or floats: Carnarvon’s long bow was lifting, lifting faster … He twisted himself round on the ladder and pushed off from it in a sprawling sort of dive.

  “Course one-four-six, sir.”

  It was the course for Alexandria; and the first 25 miles of it, starting now, was the run through the Kaso Strait. At the moment Afghan was more or less back in station astern; both ships had been dodging like woodcock under the Stuka rushes.

  They might get through. It was possible—given an outsize allowance of continuing good luck.

  The sun was well up now. Sidaro had been abeam before 0700 and they’d held on to the old course for two miles beyond that in order to clear Elasa Island at a safe distance. Ahead, about 25 miles southeastward, a discoloured patch of sky like a dirty thumbprint on a glass marked the position of Force B—Admiral Rawlings with Orion and Dido and destroyers. Force B was just about out of the Strait now; and a signal from the admiral to C-in-C a quarter of an hour ago had reported a near-miss on the destroyer Hereward, and that she’d been slowed down. She was dropping astern and the rest of the force was pressing on, under constant attack.

  One more carcass to the vultures. Alone, a single destroyer couldn’t possibly survive when it was already winged.

  For the moment, Tuareg had no bombers overhead. It was the first respite since the attacks had begun on Carnarvon at first light, and you could bet it wouldn’t last many minutes. But even one minute gave you time to draw breath, gave guns’ crews a chance to clear the gundecks of shellcases, ammunition-supply parties to get more shells up and into the ready-use racks.

  Unfortunately it also gave you time to think.

  “We seem to be still here, sir. Once or twice I didn’t think we would be.”

  Dalgleish had taken advantage of the lull to come up on the bridge. He was offering him a cigarette.

  Nick took one. “Thanks.”

  Dalgleish said quietly, “About Carnarvon, sir. Difficult to know how to say how bloody sorry—”

  “All right.” He shook his head: he knew how well-meant it was, but … he didn’t want it. “Thank you.”

  “I promised some of the lads, sir—they wanted me to tell you how they felt.”

  “Thank them for me. Number One, are you doing something about organi
zing breakfast?”

  “Sandwiches and tea, sir. I’ve sent cooks to the galley … I’d better get back aft—”

  “Alarm port! Stukas, red nine-oh!”

  “Signal, sir—”

  “Give it to the navigating officer.” How they felt … They meant it kindly and he appreciated it, but none of them could even begin to guess at how he felt. He had his glasses on the new attackers: about a dozen of them, in three flights. And any moment now, back to routine …

  Drisdale told him, “Decoy’s been near-missed, sir. Speed of the force is reduced to 25 knots.”

  Afghan had opened fire: now Tuareg’s guns crashed: Nick lowered the glasses from his eyes, watched the ugly-looking bombers spreading out for their attacks. The near-miss on Decoy was an ill wind: they’d be catching up at an extra five sea-miles per hour now. It wouldn’t be anything like safe down there with the admiral but it would be less unsafe than it was here. Pompoms had opened fire and the whole circus was in action: diving, shrieking bombers, guns thudding, crashing, flaming. Afghan’s pompom flashes were mixed blue and white. Some of the pompom belts would have been reloaded during that lull: they were twopounder shells, each the length of a man’s forearm, and handling the belts was heavy work. They’d put more tracer into the point-five belts now, taking that tip from the point-fives’ little brothers farther aft. Same family name of Vickers. Tuareg heeled as he turned her hard a-port and a bomb thumped in to starboard: each one that was dropped could be the one that would hit or near-miss, stop her, give her to the pack to finish off: behind recognition of that distinct possibility was an out-offocus image of Carnarvon on the sea-bed with two thousand feet of water over her. “Midships.”

  “Midships, sir … Wheel’s amidships, sir.”