The contrary sun had shone benignly to the end of one of the most perfect summers England had known. A military barber set up shop on the promenade below the swooping gulls and the troops lined up to have themselves shorn, watched with amusement by old soldiers who occupied the municipal benches. There had been a strong debate in the council chamber over whether those benches should remain in place, since they might provide resting places for attacking troops, but in the end nothing was done to remove them. Some of the retired men had their trousers decorously rolled up to the knee and others had knotted handkerchiefs shading their elderly heads. Their wives methodically shopped as they had always done and the shops closed for a punctual hour at lunch-time. A new rendezvous for afternoon tea and morning coffee had opened with the name of Front-Line Café.
German aircraft made hit-and-run raids on the town and the inhabitants instinctively found the nearest sheltering cave. There was also regular but random shelling from the French coast. Often the streets were filled with acrid smoke. A horse was killed in York Street and lay stiffly on its back with its legs in the air. A bomb demolished a wing of the Grand Hotel where the regularly visiting newspaper correspondents stayed. One American reporter, Guy Murchie of the Chicago Tribune, dropped three floors when the room disappeared under him, but he was unhurt. Because of the dispatches from him and others Dover had become famous throughout the United States and good wishes and food parcels were sent plus a surprise consignment of surplus First World War bandages.
In the evenings the formations of enemy bombers overflew the town, high in the pale sky, now heading for London. The roar went on beyond darkness, the raiders finding their way by moonlight reflected on the River Thames.
Along the coastal counties the military trained and exercised, fighting mock fights, blowing up imaginary buildings and bridges. Many troops had been diverted to gather in the harvest and worked, bronzed and happy, among the corn, some of them town boys who had never stood in a field.
None of the thousand children who had not been evacuated from Dover went to school after the summer holidays; they ran wild in and about the caves. An attempt was made by the council to impose a bedtime on them: up to eight years, in their bunk in the cave by seven thirty, eight to ten years, eight thirty, all other children by nine thirty. The timetable was ignored.
Harold, Spots and Boot excelled in the freedom. They roamed the streets and meadows, and had secret dens in the woods, some of these shared with the military.
‘’Ere, what are you kids doing in our snipers’ nest?’
‘It’s not your snipers’ nest, it’s ours, mush,’ answered Harold.
‘Get out or I’ll ask our officer if I can shoot you.’
‘Bet you’d miss too.’
Some Dover inhabitants still felt that the artillery on both sides of the Channel were indulging in a game of tit for tat, firing at each other in turn. Winston Churchill was obliged to make a second visit to placate the Dover protesters. He wanted to know where the heavier guns he had ordered were.
‘They are not here, Prime Minister,’ an officer informed him. ‘The emplacements are prepared but the artillery has not arrived.’ Churchill dictated a note to a secretary.
The Prime Minister, stumpy and pugnacious, inspected the bomb and shell destruction, cheered by people calling: ‘Good old Winnie,’ and waving Union Jacks from the pavement.
‘You’d think he’d be a lot bigger,’ said Doris Barker. ‘He sounds bigger on the wireless.’
On the cliff tops the leader inspected trenches which had been specially dug for the visit; they had a limited view, no field of fire, but the ground was firm and mud-free for the Downing Street shoes. The soldiers occupying the trenches were up to their armpits in earth and their ankles in water.
The visit was not protracted. Lunch was served in the town hall where Churchill, never short of words or phrases, gave a speech that was both rousing and stirring.
Before he left, he was shown the two biggest guns on the Dover coast. ‘They both have names, Prime Minister,’ said the proud conducting officer. ‘This one is called Winnie.’
‘Splendid,’ growled Churchill. ‘It was not what I was called at my baptism, but I appreciate the tribute. And what’s the other called?’
‘That one, sir, is called Pooh.’
The first of the autumn gales came bounding up the Channel at the end of the month. The Straits were wreathed in rain. ‘Perhaps he’ll try it now we can’t see him coming,’ suggested Elphinstone. ‘But I don’t think so. He’s missed the boat. If he ever intended to catch it.’
Instow was due on watch at eight. HMS Carnforth was unlikely to leave Dover in that weather and at six he went briefly ashore and walked, raincoat collar turned up in the squally street, to the theatre.
Molly was in a room off the foyer loading ice creams on to her tray. ‘Last lot of Wallsies,’ she said offering him one. ‘Until the end of the war.’
He refused. ‘I’m back on watch in an hour and a bit,’ he said. ‘Better keep sober.’
She laughed in her fruity way: ‘It will be toffee apples next week, I bet, or that funny Spanish Root stuff, like wood tasting of liquorice. And they’re talking of treacle on carrots. All that munching, they won’t be able to hear a word from the stage.’ She stopped suddenly and looked directly at him. ‘You’re on duty then?’
‘Soon will be,’ said Instow. He felt inside his tunic pocket. ‘It’s your birthday, isn’t it?’
She said: ‘How did you know?’
‘You told me.’
‘Big mouth I am. I’d never be any good as a spy.’
Quickly he glanced towards the door and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I brought you a birthday card,’ he said. ‘It’s a present as well.’
He handed the National Savings birthday card to her. Her face glowed. ‘And I thought I wouldn’t get a single one,’ she said. She opened it and gasped softly. ‘Five pounds!’ She took the ice cream tray from around her neck and pressed herself to him and kissed him. ‘What a kind man you are.’
‘Well, you said you were saving for your future.’
At nine thirty that evening, with the storm in full gust, a message was brought to Instow on the bridge. He picked up the mouthpiece of the internal telephone. ‘Sir, we’ve just received an order to prepare for sea.’
‘Jesu,’ grumbled Captain Elphinstone. ‘In this lot? What’s the excuse?’
Another slip was handed to Instow. ‘It’s just arrived, sir. There’s a report of a submarine in the Goodwin Sands area. Something snagged the telegraph cable and the coastguard picked it up. And it’s not one of ours.’
‘Right, I’m on my way. Prepare for sea, Number Two. I’m sorry for anyone stuck on the Goodwins tonight, U-boat or not.’
Instow alerted the crew and they stumbled out on to the wet, windy deck and began their tasks. He felt the warm roar of the engines starting up. It would take thirty minutes to get under way. The captain appeared beside him. ‘I was just settling down to listen to Arthur Askey,’ he said. ‘He makes me laugh, doesn’t he you?’
‘Very funny, sir,’ said Instow seriously. ‘Never miss him. Davenport is starting to move.’
‘Her engines are not as clapped out as ours,’ said Elphinstone. ‘She’ll get the glory, if there’s any to be had.’
It was less than half an hour before they were casting off and heading for the barely discernible harbour entrance. The other destroyer had already passed through to the open sea. The Channel came to meet them, dark with white luminous edges, throwing itself powerfully against the outer breakwater and punching the hull of the block-ship at the other harbour entrance. Wind whistled as though through a funnel. ‘It’s no night to look for U-boats,’ said Elphinstone. As if in response there came a deep, dull explosion, a depth-charge, followed by another.
Instow stood beside the captain on the bridge with the steersman and the gunnery officer, searching the smeary night through binoculars. There appeared the sudden shaft
of a searchlight ahead. ‘They may have dug him up,’ said Elphinstone.
They could see by the beams lighting the sea ahead that there were four ships already searching. The single big searchlight continued to sweep the rough water. Another set of depth-charges rumbled and then flung the sea in massive spouts, leaping like sudden shadows in the night. ‘If Fritz has got stuck on the Goodwins then nobody is going to tow him off,’ muttered the captain. ‘He’ll have to get himself unstuck. His chums sank the lightship.’
‘U-boat surfacing, sir,’ said the gunnery officer quietly. He shouted an order down his voice tube: ‘Prepare for action.’
‘Not just yet, Guns,’ Elphinstone corrected him. ‘We’re not going to plaster him while he’s stuck on the sands. That would be unsporting.’
‘Gun crews, stand down,’ muttered the officer.
They slowed their engines. The other ships were in a circle two miles across. The searchlight gave another stab. ‘There he is,’ said Instow. It was almost a whisper. The conning tower of the U-boat was projecting above the waves. ‘U-16,’ said the captain. ‘Like a rat in a trap.’
The gunnery officer glanced at him anxiously. The searchlight had the awash conning tower fixed in a circle of white light. ‘Never seen a better target, sir,’ he mentioned.
‘I’m not in charge of this operation, Guns,’ said the captain. ‘The commander is, over there in Davenport. But if he’s a sailor, and I know he is, he’s not going to open fire on a defenceless vessel, even if it is a ruddy U-boat. Poor old Fritz is in enough trouble as it is.’
Instow said: ‘Be nice to tow it into Dover in one piece.’
‘What a prize,’ breathed the captain. ‘That would be a sight for a lot of sore eyes.’
The searchlight was joined by another. They pinned the conning tower at their apex. ‘She’s rolling,’ said Elphinstone. ‘Trying to get off the shoal. Some hopes. Odd situation. He can’t get out, we can’t get in or we’d be stuck too. And we can’t open fire.’
‘We could be here till Christmas,’ said the gunnery officer adding: ‘Sir.’
‘Maybe Dover lifeboat . . .’ suggested Instow.
‘They’ve been told to stay at home in their beds. They’re not well disposed since the lightship incident. Even in daylight it’s going to be an impossible job.’ They watched and waited for another ten minutes. Then, in the white beam of the searchlights they saw a movement at the top of the U-boat’s conning tower. ‘They’re abandoning ship. Or giving it a try,’ said Elphinstone. ‘Prepare the lifeboats.’ Instow gave the order. Then the captain said: ‘I don’t intend to send them anywhere in this sea, but if those Jerries can get away just a few cable lengths there may be a chance of picking them up.’ He sniffed: ‘Although I doubt it.’
They watched. The wind screeched around the bridge and the sea rolled the ship. They kept their eyes on the submarine. There were figures moving on the conning tower. ‘One, two, three, four, five,’ counted the gunnery officer.
‘And a boat,’ added the captain. ‘They’re bringing out a collapsible. In this sea they’ll be lucky if it doesn’t collapse.’
The men on the submarine were attempting to launch the small white boat. Each time it was thrown up by the waves plunging across the shallow sandbank. The water was rising around the conning tower. The British watched their enemies make another attempt, and another. The Germans managed to right the small boat and ease it into the sea and they followed it, one after another, getting into the craft. Everything was lit by the searchlight. ‘It’s just like a stage play,’ muttered Instow.
‘I’m glad I’m not in it,’ said the captain. As he spoke the white boat and its men were lifted by a long wave and swept right across the back of the barely submerged submarine. It turned over and the Germans could be seen briefly in the sea. ‘God help them,’ he muttered.
Now the U-boat was sinking fast. The water was halfway up the conning tower. No more figures appeared.
A lieutenant came to the bridge with a message: ‘Type Two B. Launched 1936, thirty-eight crew.’
‘Thank you, son,’ said Elphinstone. There was silence on the bridge. Then he said: ‘Don’t like to see thirty-eight sailor men drown like that.’
Instow said: ‘No, sir.’
‘And she’d have made a nice prize. Pity.’
As a dull daylight spread across the choppy Channel the ship turned and made for Dover. They had searched but they knew there was little chance of seeing survivors.
Instow, his watch ended now, went to his cabin and was taking his sea boots off when a young midshipman knocked on his door. He was holding a letter. ‘It came just before we sailed, sir,’ he said. ‘But what with all the excitement . . .’
He handed the letter over. Instow knew it was from his wife even before he saw the writing. It was her sort of grey envelope. The midshipman seemed reluctant to leave. ‘That U-boat, sir,’ he said. ‘Will that go down as a kill to us? Or will we have to share it?’
Instow said: ‘We’ll have to share it with God, I suppose, son. It was God got the U-boat, not us.’
‘Right, sir. Thank you, sir.’ The boy went out. Instow sat looking at the envelope. He almost knew what she would say.
Dear Paul,
This war has kept us so far apart, and for months. I hardly know what you look like and I expect you have the same trouble remembering me.
One thing the war has done is to give people like us a chance to look at our lives and wonder where we are going – if anywhere.
Paul, I have met someone else and I am in love with him and I eventually want to marry him. He is Canadian, an army officer, and one day I want to go with him to Canada. So this will be the end of us.
I hope you understand.
Yours faithfully,
Roz.
He put the letter on his pillow and began to laugh without mirth. ‘Faithfully,’ he muttered.
Chapter Twelve
THE BIG WINDOWS of all the wards at the hospital were criss-crossed with wide adhesive tape to minimise the threat from glass should a bomb explode nearby. When it was sunny the rays shone through the diamond gaps and made kaleidoscope patterns over the walls and the counterpanes. Patients used the apertures as spyholes if they wanted to see what was happening in the town below.
There were twenty in the ground-floor men’s ward: seventeen civilians suffering from common illnesses, two with injuries caused by enemy action, and one sailor boy, sixteen, with a round red face, who had fallen into the harbour and swallowed the water.
When the air-raid warning sounded it had no immediate effect on the men reading their newspapers in the lined-up beds; everyone was used to the undulating howl. But then came the hard impact of bombs and the deep din of aircraft. Several men left their sickbeds and peered through the spaces in the window tape.
‘What is it, Mr Shadbolt?’ called the young sailor apprehensively. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Junkers,’ replied Mr Shadbolt.
‘Noisy bloody things,’ said another patient.
‘Is it time to get under the beds, Mr Dickens?’ the boy asked the second man. The answer came from outside. A cracking explosion shook the hospital followed by a second which shattered the taped windows and made them billow inwards like sails on a ship. Every man tumbled under his bed, clutching at the floor, as another bomb sent violent vibrations through the boards and the dust rose in clouds. All the patients began coughing wildly and the boy sailor rolled from beneath his bed and staggered spluttering about in the middle of the room. One of the bedridden men called the lad over to him and began to pound the coughing boy on the back croaking: ‘Nurse! Nurse!’
There were no more bombs. They heard the grunt of the planes receding. Two of the large windows were hanging by their tapes like ragged curtains and a third collapsed slowly inwards as the men edged from beneath the beds.
There were groans and splutterings. One man shouted: ‘I’ve gone and piddled!’
All the men hooted wil
dly. The boy joined in.
The door opened and Nancy Cotton came in briskly followed by a nurse.
‘Everyone all right?’ she said. ‘Anyone hurt?’ She strode towards the boy.
‘All right, Popeye?’ she said.
‘Bit of bomb dust that’s all, sister.’
A doctor in a white coat came through the door and called Nancy over. ‘The police station got a direct hit,’ he said quietly.
She felt herself pale. ‘Frank’s on duty,’ she said.
‘We’re sending two ambulances. You’d better go with them.’
She turned and hurried along the corridor taking her cloak from its peg as she went. She could feel herself praying, telling herself to keep calm.
Outside the hospital was one ambulance with the door open opposite the driver. She climbed in. ‘The other crew are gone,’ said the driver. ‘I thought you’d be coming. It got the full packet.’
‘Perhaps Frank was out,’ she said almost to herself. ‘He’s nearly always out somewhere.’
‘We’ll soon see, Sister,’ said the driver. She heard the two other members of the crew climb in the back and slam the doors. ‘We got no defence down ’ere. Nothing to stop them,’ grumbled the driver. ‘Where’s the RAF? Defending London, that’s where they are. Never mind about Dover.’
She sat upright and wordless. When they approached the police station her heart almost stopped. Smoke was hanging over it, a mound of wreckage and rubble. ‘New only last year,’ said the driver.
Nancy clambered from the ambulance. She had never seen a building so completely demolished. Even the Civil Defence rescue teams, the firemen and the air-raid wardens were standing around hopelessly staring. ‘It’s a job to know where to start,’ said a man.
There was a confusion on the other side of the building and she hurried across, skirting the smoking pile. They were bringing out a figure from an aperture, calling for assistance. She ran towards them, conscious of the restrictions of her starched uniform. Someone was on a stretcher. ‘Frank,’ she mumbled. ‘Frank.’ It was not Frank. But it was a dead body. Then another and another.
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