Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  IV

  ‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves an arse-end Charlie,’ Petty Officer Ramm said. Word had spread fast about the plight of the Langstone Harbour. ‘Poor sods! Sooner them than me, just waiting for ‘Itler. Wonder when the buggers’ll turn up. The Luftwaffe, I mean. Would ‘ave expected ‘em before now...funny, really.’

  He was speaking to Leading Seaman Nelson, the nearest in age to himself among the Naval draft except for the yeoman of signals, and the age proximity permitted Ramm, in his own view, some relaxation of the normal distancing of a gunner’s mate. Besides, you had to talk to someone or you’d go barmy: what Ramm didn’t admit was that he liked the sound of his own voice.

  Stripey Nelson drew on his fag, shielding it from the wind with a horny palm. ‘Something else expected an’ all, GI.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Patter o’ tiny feet, that’s what.’

  ‘Now what are you on about?’ Ramm stared in bewilderment. Stripey said, ‘Seems you ‘aven’t ‘eard it. One of them Wrens. Got a nipper up the spout.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘It’s been known. Childbirth —’

  ‘All right, all right, Leading Seaman Nelson, no need to be funny.’ Ramm paused, all agog now. ‘How do you happen to know, eh?’

  Stripey closed an eye in a wink. ‘Got ears, GI. So’s the Captain’s steward. You know what captains’ stewards are. All lug and key’ole eyes. ‘E ‘eard a thing or two outside the Commodore’s cabin, see. It’s Wren Smith, the one with the goo-goo eyes and sharp tits, kind of pointed like, very sexy, more’n the sort like barrage balloons.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ramm said once again, testily. ‘When’s the happy event, know that, do you?’

  ‘Long time off yet, GI —’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘’Ow should I know? Wasn’t me any road. Some matlow in Pompey.’

  Ramm sucked at his teeth, ruminating, seeing Wren Smith in his mind’s eye, Wren Smith doing what she shouldn’t have done. Maybe she’d be easy if the opportunity ever showed itself, maybe she’d be a little overawed by a gunner’s mate’s rank and dignity: you never knew your luck. Keeping his feet against the motion of the ship by holding on to the guardrail round the after gun-mounting, Ramm saw an unwelcome sight: coming aft, a hefty figure wrapped in an oilskin, a barrel-like arm raised aloft to retain a WRNS uniform hat against the wind. He said to Stripey Nelson’s ear, ‘I’m off below. That old bag’s coming up fast. Ma Hardisty.’

  Stripey chuckled. ‘Bloody coward,’ he said, but he said it to himself. Ramm had no sense of humour at all. As the gunner’s mate vanished down a hatch, the PO Wren came on aft and passed harmlessly below the gun-mounting, eyes darting to left and right. She went right aft, peered for a moment over the stern into the curfuffle made by the screw, then started back for’ard again. Stripey fancied she was seeking something that she hadn’t yet found. Maybe more Wrens in danger of becoming pregnant, though it would take a tough Wren and come to that a tough matlow to do it in this icy wind, and the spray and all.

  On her return swoop Miss Hardisty halted below the gun platform and looked up. Her voice boomed. ‘Morning, killick.’ Some Wrens, Nelson thought sardonically, were more RN than the Navy: Miss Hardisty’s reference had been to his leading seaman’s badge of rank, the fouled anchor known as a killick that stood above his three good conduct stripes. Formally he said, ‘Morning, PO. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing that I know of, thank you.’ She marched off again; Stripey thought: and sod you too, mate! Viewed from astern, Miss Hardisty resembled a tank. She might as well be landed in Alex as reinforcement for the armoured divisions waiting in Egypt for when the big push came against Rommel. Stripey was thinking this when he became aware of the lamp flashing from the signal bridge of the Nelson, and more signalling from the cruisers as well. And a matter of seconds later he heard the threatening sound of aircraft engines coming in from the east.

  V

  Aboard the Langstone Harbour Captain Horncape had been intrigued to get the personal signal from the Commodore’s ship. John Kemp...John Mason Kemp in full, as Horncape had recalled — he’d seen the Commodore, naturally, at the conference, and had recognized him through the mist of years. He would have liked a word then, but there hadn’t been the chance: the Convoy Commodore was a busy man and the proceedings had been official, all very RN. He was glad now that John Kemp had remembered him; as the signal said, it was all a long time ago.

  Jake Horncape’s mind, like that of Kemp himself, drifted back into the past, a long reverie that was interrupted by the sound of the aircraft engines that had also reached the Commodore’s ship.

  FIVE

  I

  ‘Petty Officer Ramm!’ Finnegan was yelling down from the bridge: Ramm had reappeared by the after gun-mounting. ‘Target astern!’

  ‘Seen for meself, sir,’ Ramm shouted back.

  ‘Right. Fire when ready.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Ramm started chivvying the guns’ crews as they turned out from below. He sent Nelson for’ard to take charge of the close-range weapons’ crews on the bridge and on monkey’s island above the wheelhouse. Stripey lumbered along as fast as he could, overtaking the PO Wren who went down a ladder towards the girls’ quarters. The WRNS contingent was under orders from the Commodore to keep out of the way when the ship was in action.

  Kemp was watching the approaching air armada, suffering the customary feeling of helplessness that visited everyone other than the guns’ crews when air attack came. It was the gunners who counted: all the bridge could do was wait for the fall of bombs and dodge as best as possible. Kemp looked across at the carriers: the Fleet Air Arm squadrons were already mostly in the air, just a few Seafires still waiting their turn to take off behind the leaders. Kemp had already ordered the merchant ships to scatter and move independently as required; and the Naval escort was moving widely out on the convoy’s flanks, two cruisers, Derbyshire and Glamorgan, heading to starboard and Belize and Guiana to port, with the destroyers constantly altering course in an attempt to confuse the enemy bomb aimers.

  Just the Nelson was ploughing along stolidly, her heavy guns useless against air attack but her ack-ack blasting away into the sky as the Germans came in. Kemp had been informed by lamp that the flagship was increasing speed to her maximum of around twenty-two knots: speed was the best protection after the antiaircraft batteries — speed and manoeuvrability, but the Nelson had little of either.

  Lambert was reporting. ‘Ten bombers, sir, FWs. Escort o’ twenty fighters.’

  ‘Thank you, Yeoman. Any word of the Langstone Harbour?’

  ‘Not a thing, sir.’

  Kemp searched the seas to the east, binoculars clamped to his eyes. In the big waves his search was useless: ships appeared and disappeared again, and now the attack was starting. As the German four-engined bombers roared across the convoy, the sea became peppered with spouts of water, some wide, some very close to the ships. Captain Champney was handling the Wolf Rock expertly: this was by no means his first experience of avoiding bombs. Nevertheless, there was a close shave when a heavy bomb took the ship on the port side aft, slap on the deckhouse over the engineers’ accommodation, and went through without exploding.

  There was a shout from Petty Officer Ramm.

  ‘UXB, sir, gone into the Wrens’ quarters.’

  Kemp roared out, ‘Evacuate pronto. Report casualties — and get the doctor along.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Ramm vanished down the hatch, taking two men from the after guns. By now the sky was puffy with shrapnel as the ack-ack shells burst, and a rain of fragments was coming down on the decks as the ships twisted and turned. Below in the Wolf Rock’s engine-room Mr Turnberry had heard the crump from above and felt the shudder as the heavy bomb broke through the poop. Even before the bridge passed the warning, he had diagnosed what had happened: not very nice. If that bomb went up, there wouldn’t be much left of the engine spaces. Or of himself. His impulse was t
o clear the engine-room, get to hell out, get for’ard as far away as possible. But you couldn’t do that: Turn-berry grimaced across the shining steel of the ladders and across the sweaty vests of the oilers and greasers. There was after all, a war on....

  II

  The Langstone Harbour’s chief engineer reported to the bridge: the crack was getting worse under the battering of the sea on the screw. He was forced to shut right down.

  ‘All right, Chief.’ Captain Horncape banged back the cover of the voice-pipe as he faced the gale and the German activity overhead. You had to be philosophical: this was no-one’s fault except maybe the shipyard’s, or the owners’ for exercising too much economy during the last years of the peace. If they couldn’t move, well, they couldn’t and that was that. If only he was back in sail again...there was more than enough weight of wind around to carry a square-rigged ship on at around fifteen knots, maybe more. Not so much slower in fact than the great bulk of the Nelson, known to the Navy as Queen Anne’s Mansions on account of her immense central superstructure housing the senior officers’ sea cabins, compass platform, admiral’s bridge, flag deck, conning tower, gunnery control and what have you.

  Horncape spoke to his chief officer. ‘We’ll let the sea take her. No damn choice — have we?’

  ‘How about a tow, sir? Those two destroyers —’

  ‘Not yet, anyway. They have their hands full.’ Horncape ducked as a spout of water came over the bridge from a near miss, adding to the general drench of rough weather. More helpless now, with way right off the ship, he watched the fall of bombs as the Focke-Wulfs came over, watched the Seafires from the carriers get in amongst the Germans, saw two of the Seafires spin down trailing smoke. Then one of the bombers sprouted a thin line of red along its fuselage and a moment later was a ball of fire dropping from the overcast skies to come down in the water some ten cables’-lengths to starboard of the Langstone Harbour.

  Soon after this, one of the destroyers, the Pindari, was hit for’ard. Her fo’c’sle erupted in flame and smoke and when the smoke began to clear a little in the strong wind Horncape saw the deck plating ripped up almost to the conning tower, the two fore gun-shields vanished with their guns and, presumably, their crews. Then he saw the damage control parties moving for’ard with hoses and axes as the destroyer continued firing with her remaining HA guns. She began turning to starboard through one hundred and eighty degrees to proceed stern first in an obvious endeavour to keep the weight of the sea off her for’ard collision bulkhead, which seemed as though it must be holding yet.

  In the meantime, the Langstone Harbour remained somewhat miraculously unhit. If they came through, Horncape would proceed under tow so long as the Navy could spare one of its escort, which would henceforward be hamstrung when further attacks came, as come they would for certain before the convoy passed out of range of the air bases.

  If it was humanly possible, Captain Hornpipe was going to get his cargo into Malta. In his time he’d come through plenty, getting his cargoes around Cape Horn and then serving as third officer in steam through the last lot, the 1914-18 War.

  Two minutes later the cruiser Derbyshire took what looked like a direct hit, a bomb coming in at an angle to explode just below the waterline on her starboard side, a little for’ard of the after turrets on her quarterdeck. There was an upsurge of water, of boiling foam, and a raw red flash followed by clouds of thick black smoke.

  ‘Engine-room,’ Horncape said. ‘Slap in the engine-room.’

  The cruiser was seen to slew violently off course for a while until she steadied under helm. She continued making way through the water, obviously with her port engine-room intact still, two of her four shafts turning. Distantly from the bridge of the Wolf Rock, Kemp had her in his binoculars. The sense of helplessness increased, and he clenched his fists impotently. He looked down aft, where Ramm was keeping the ack-ack gun firing constantly but with little apparent effect. Kemp took stock. One cruiser and one destroyer crippled, one armament carrier sunk in the submarine attack earlier, and the Langstone Harbour drifting at the mercy of the sea and the Germans.

  So early in the convoy, with thousands of sea miles yet to be covered to Trincomalee.

  He turned as an unshaven face appeared at the head of the starboard ladder from the Master’s deck: Dr O’Dwyer, looking haggard and shaken, skin white behind the stubble. The man was trembling like a leaf in a gale, Kemp noted.

  Captain Champney went across. ‘Well, Doctor?’

  O’Dwyer licked at his lips. ‘It’s bad down aft, Captain. A number of injuries...and one dead.’ He turned to Kemp. ‘One of the young girls, Commodore, I’m sorry to say. I —’

  ‘Let’s have the details.’ Kemp saw blood, quite a lot of it, on the doctor’s uniform jacket and shirt.

  ‘A girder...it carried away, and came down across the girl’s head and neck. The neck was broken. The head...’ The doctor’s voice trailed away; there was a look of horror in his eyes, which were badly bloodshot. ‘There was nothing I could do, you understand.’

  ‘Yes; I understand. The others; the injuries?’

  ‘Various. Mostly not serious. But there’s a young girl with her leg trapped. I think the leg is broken —’

  ‘Trapped, in what way, Doctor?’

  O’Dwyer said, ‘Another girder that fell and became wedged. The bosun has men trying to lift it, but I believe it may be necessary to amputate. Of course, the girl’s under sedation, a morphine injection. She’s not conscious.’

  ‘Do you propose to amputate at once?’

  ‘I...I don’t know. Really, I’d like a second opinion as to how long it can safely be left. One of the Naval doctors from the escort —’

  ‘In action, Doctor? That’s not possible — you must realize that. I think you must use your own judgment.’

  ‘Yes. But don’t you see, Commodore...it’s a very final verdict, and it’s possible the girder may be shifted eventually. For a young girl to lose a leg...if it should not be necessary, you see —’

  ‘Yes, I do see. And I appreciate your honesty if I may say so.’

  Dr O’Dwyer looked down at the deck, away from Kemp’s eye. He had read behind Kemp’s words: the Commodore had seen that there was a strong desire not to amputate on the part of a doctor whose surgery, such as it had ever been, was years behind him. The skill, the touch, had gone over long years of disuse and too much drink. But O’Dwyer also knew that without amputation the girl could die. Not just because she lay trapped when at any moment the ship could be blown sky-high but because of the possibility of infection; the leg was badly lacerated. And he believed that Kemp, too, knew the risk.

  Kemp did: gangrene, perhaps, was one of the risks. Just one of them; there were so many. Blood poisoning...but gangrene might be the worst threat. Kemp, during his days in the sailing ships as apprentice and then as second mate, had become more or less familiar with shipboard injuries such as broken legs and arms, men falling from aloft, men with clumsy fingers caught in the sheaves of blocks, flayed hands resulting from rope friction when the wind-filled sails took charge of halliards or downhauls or sheets or braces in the days before steam winches had been fitted for the handling of the sails. In a ship carrying no doctor the Master had been the medical authority, the physician and surgeon, with the printed assistance of The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide and often with the assistance of his officers as well if only for holding down purposes when limbs had been amputated under the only available anaesthetic — an uncorked bottle of rum or whisky set between the patient’s teeth.

  Gangrene or the possibility of it had been the bugbear. Injuries — crushing, freezing, burning — could not be left. Limbs could become swollen, could go dead white and then blue-green or black, and there would be moist putrefaction, and the condition could extend.

  Kemp put the question: ‘Gangrene, Doctor?’

  ‘Oh, it’s early for that, of course, but...’ O’Dwyer shrugged.

  ‘But,’ Kemp said flatly. ‘Quite! An
yway, the next thing is to try to release the girl. You’d better get back aft, Doctor.’ He added, ‘I’ll be down myself as soon as I can leave the bridge. Where’s Miss Forrest?’

  O’Dwyer said, ‘Aft, Commodore. She’s very distressed.’

  III

  There were further hits on the convoy but no more serious damage: their bombs dropped, the Germans withdrew towards the east, harried by the carrier-borne Seafires. Seven of the F Ws had been shot down, together with eight fighters. When the attack pulled off, the signals flew from the flagship, the senior officers of the cruiser and destroyer escort, and from the Commodore. The convoy reformed into its steaming columns and the cost in terms of losses was counted. The Derbyshire was under control, but reported seventy-eight casualties including fourteen dead; Pindari had blown up, turned turtle, and sunk. There were fifty-three other crew casualties in the rest of the convoy and its escort, some serious, others not. The Langstone Harbour wallowed on astern, attended by the Hindu and the Burgoyne, the latter having taken over from the Pindari, and a tow was being passed. Kemp, who reckoned that his own ship was of less significance to the convoy than the guns and free manoeuvrability of the destroyers, would have wished to undertake the tow himself, but had recognized that this was not the proper function of the Convoy Commodore, who had other considerations than an arse-end Charlie to worry about.

  When the convoy was back in its proper steaming order, Kemp went aft to the engineers’ accommodation and was met at the port doorway from the after well-deck by Jean Forrest.

  He asked, ‘How is it now, Miss Forrest?’

  ‘Bad,’ she said. Her face was grey and her lips trembled as she spoke. ‘Third Officer Bowles-Gourley — she’s dead. It was — horrible.’

  ‘And the one who’s trapped? Any progress?’

  She said, ‘The bosun’s done his best, Commodore Kemp. He and his men. No use so far. The girder’s wedged down hard. They’re trying to burn it away with — blow-lamps, I think. The chief engineer’s there.’