Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘I said, holding your fucking fire, Able Seaman Cardew!’

  ‘Sorry, G I.’

  ‘You’ll be fucking sorrier if you do it again, fat sod.’ Ramm seethed: next thing, the Commodore would be after him again. Kemp was, but for a different sin. As Captain Champney handled the ship, doing his best to throw off the Stuka, Kemp, looking round, said, ‘Petty Officer Ramm.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Kemp said no more but gestured towards the starboard ladder. Ramm, following the gesture, became aware of First Officer Forrest. He said stolidly, his face expressionless, ‘Sorry, ma’am. Heat o’ the moment, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all right, Petty Officer Ramm, I’ve heard worse. You can be thankful I’m not PO Hardisty.’ By this time the Stuka had reached the end of its dive and the din had grown to a shriek like all the devils of hell in concert. As the Stuka came within range and dropped its load a hail of fire went up from the close-range weapons. Concussions reverberated throughout the ship: a very near miss. The Stuka lifted unhit, going up as vertically as it had come down. The Wolf Rock steamed on, constantly altering course, leaving a twisting wake to stream astern.

  ‘Miss Forrest.’

  ‘Yes, Commodore.’ She went across to join Kemp. Kemp’s face was frosty.

  ‘Get below, Miss Forrest. Unless you’ve something to report.’

  ‘I haven’t, Commodore. I just thought I could be useful. Write up the action log...or something.’

  ‘Very good of you. The bridge today is no place for women and the action log is taken care of. Get below, and —’

  ‘But I —’

  ‘I was going on to say, that’s an order.’ Kemp turned his back. He was furiously angry, scarcely trusting himself to say anything further. The bloody woman, he thought, coming up just at the crucial moment in a dive-bombing attack, putting herself in danger when the orders for all WRNS personnel were to remain below when the ship was under attack. Discipline, in Kemp’s view, began at the top, and Jean Forrest was OC Wrens — a fine example! Damn the woman and damn all Wrens too, there’d been nothing but trouble with them....

  A moment later Wrens and anger were forgotten: two reports reached Kemp, one from the masthead lookout and the other from the yeoman of signals: beyond the line of battle astern, a big fire was burning, smoke and flames rising thickly from one of the Italians, a cruiser. More immediate to the Commodore was Lambert’s report of a trail of smoke rising from the engine-room casing of one of the troopships of the convoy, right between her two funnels. As Kemp trained his glasses on her, a signal lamp began flashing from her bridge.

  Lambert read the message. ‘From Orduna...bomb hit amid ships and fires starting, sir.’

  Kemp nodded. For now there was nothing he could do; but if that transport was forced in the end to abandon, then the Wolf Rock would play her part. General orders or not, Kemp would this time stand by to pick up survivors. So many helpless troops....He tried not to register that there was anything personal in that decision: the fact remained that the Orduna had been one of the ships on the pre-war Australia run, a ship of the Orient Steam, Navigation Company, friendly rivals of the Mediterranean-Australia Line on the long haul to Sydney, and Kemp had known a number of Orient Line officers, including Orduna’s current Master who had remained in command after the outbreak of war. He and Kemp had met at the convoy conference in the Clyde, the first time since the days of peace. They had found much to yarn about but little time to indulge in reminiscence: the war had called. But Kemp and Captain Pope were old friends, and old friends stuck together.

  Kemp sang out to Yeoman Lambert. ‘Make, good luck to you all and may God be with you.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Lambert said, thinking that there was some basic inconsistency in that friendly signal: if you invoked the good offices of the Almighty, it was a bit of an insult to invoke luck at the same time, but never mind. As he clacked out the Commodore’s signal the next air attack was seen coming in. Then distantly there was an immense explosion as the stricken Italian cruiser blew up, sending debris high into the sky.

  ‘One down,’ Kemp said, ‘but God knows how many more to go.’ He had scarcely uttered the words when one of the attacking aircraft opened up with its cannon and shells spattered the bridge. One of the Wolf Rock’s close-range gunners fell limp in his straps, head lolling and blood spurting from his neck. The rest of the bridge personnel were lucky: something had glanced off Kemp’s steel helmet and that was all. Kemp and Lambert went across and lifted the dead man from the gun and Peter Harrison, Officer of the Watch, sent a messenger down for the doctor. Kemp looked around for Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan, then remembered his own orders: Finnegan was standing by Third Officer Pawle. Kemp reckoned he was getting even older than he’d thought. In the meantime luck was with the Wolf Rock: another near miss and then the Stuka seemed to go out of control. It may have been hit: afterwards, Able Seaman Cardew claimed that it had. Whatever the reason, the German took the water off the Wolf Rock’s port side and disintegrated. Nothing was seen of the pilot.

  Kemp levelled his glasses on the Orduna: the smoke was rising thickly and a lick of flame was now visible, coming up from the engine-room casing and starting, Kemp fancied, to spread for’ard towards the bridge. He could see the troops falling in along the embarkation deck, already mustering at their boat stations, just a precaution. And perhaps more than that: troops were better out of the way of the seamen, who would be running out the fire hoses. Or should have been. A moment later a signal lamp started flashing and Lambert read off the message.

  ‘Commodore from Orduna, sir, have lost electric power, fire hoses inoperable.’

  ‘God Almighty,’ Kemp said. He gripped the bridge rail hard, staring at what could be a doomed ship, with fires below raging out of control and never mind the firescreen doors, they wouldn’t be enough to save her. He swung round on Champney, ‘Captain, you have hoses, powerful ones. And electric power still.’

  ‘Yes, I have. What are you suggesting?’

  Kemp said, ‘Can you lay alongside, and pump into the engine-room casing?’

  ‘We’re lower in the water than the Orduna, Commodore. I doubt if the hoses would lift water high enough. In any case, it’d be no more than a piddle compared with what’s needed below.’

  ‘It’s all we can do,’ Kemp said harshly. ‘We can try, can’t we?’

  Champney shrugged. ‘We can, but it would do no good at all. And remember my cargo, Commodore. If we’re too close to her when she starts a real blaze, the holds could take fire. It’s too much of a risk.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘My ship, Commodore. My responsibility.’ Champney met Kemp’s eye firmly. ‘I’ll not mention lives...we’re all at risk, all the time. But that cargo’s badly needed.’

  ‘So are the troops, Champney, so are the troops!’

  Champney said patiently, ‘Yes, they are, and if I thought there was any point in the risk it’d be different. But there’s not. We’d be of much more use standing by to pick up survivors if it comes to that.’

  Kemp, his mouth tight, turned away and paced the bridge wing. He forced himself to see that Champney was right. He had wanted to make a gesture, wanted to show Pope in the Orduna that he was ready to help...but gestures, useless ones if Champney was right, had no place in war. To take any risk with ten thousand tons of valuable war material, with all those girls and the fifty-odd seamen and engine-room and catering staff aboard the Wolf Rock, would be too much. Old friendships must never be allowed to cloud the judgment of the Convoy Commodore. Kemp turned and went back to Champney.

  ‘You win, Captain. You’re right. I was wrong.’

  Champney said, ‘It was a natural thought. But it would never have worked. Don’t imagine I don’t understand, though.’

  Kemp said nothing: seamen did understand one another, and Champney had been exercising a proper responsibility of command. Kemp stood and watched helplessly as the fires spread aboard the Orduna, and as the attack on the co
nvoy continued without any let-up while the merchant ships moved farther from the embattled warships astern. The screaming noise from the Stukas as they came in again and again tore at men’s nerves: Lambert, dodging down behind the bridge screen as the bombs fell and again the cannon and machine-guns stuttered into brief action, found his whole body twitching as though he had been shot already. Petty Officer Ramm, knowing he was lucky to be still alive, moved about the upper decks exhorting his close-range weapons’ crews, feeling blood run down his left side from a wound he’d been scarcely aware of at the time. Coming back from aft towards the bridge ladder he saw Dr O’Dwyer descending, shaking like a leaf but moving fast. Moving for safety, Ramm thought angrily.

  Ramm stood in front of him, blocking his way. Before he could speak, O’Dwyer said, ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘’Oo’s dead, sir?’

  ‘The man at the Oerlikon. On the bridge. There was nothing I could do. He was dead. Dead I tell you!’

  ‘Yes, sir, I heard you the first time. Doing anything about shifting the body, are you, eh?’

  ‘That’ll have to wait.’ O’Dwyer pushed past, his face working. Ramm let him go. Going for the whisky bottle, he reckoned. Ramm gathered saliva and spat on the deck. Useless bugger...climbing again to the bridge, Ramm thought about the dead. His question about shifting the body had been intended to needle O’Dwyer; you didn’t in fact shift the dead while the ship was still in action, any road when they weren’t gumming up the works and getting in the way of the living. Ramm had been through the Med before now, the last time on a Malta convoy run aboard a cruiser of the escort. The hull and upperworks had been peppered full of holes by the ferocious onslaught of the Jerries and Eyeties and the dead had been everywhere, so much so that they’d had virtually to be shovelled away from such guns as were still capable of firing. Afterwards it had been the most horrific sight Ramm had ever seen, what with blood and guts all over the show, several legs and arms, heads rolling in the scuppers. Just thinking about it now made him turn green. He climbed on for the bridge, wondering if the dead gunner would still be in the straps. He wasn’t; someone had lifted him down and the body lay on the deck of the bridge wing, beneath the gun that another rating was manning. The firing had been resumed, for what it was worth. Above Ramm’s head, the Seafires from the carriers were in action; that at least was something. Ramm saw the Commodore staring to starboard through his binoculars: the Orduna was well ablaze now, and a shower of sparks was billowing from the engine-room casing, carried on some sort of up-draught. As he watched, Ramm saw the movement of troops into the boats already swung out on their davits from the embarkation deck, and saw a number of men leap over the side into the sea as the Carley floats began moving down the slides.

  Captain Champney leaned over the bridge screen and shouted down to the bosun who was carrying out an adjustment to the ready-rigged fire hoses. Tod Ridgway lifted a hand in acknowledgement. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Orduna’s preparing to abandon, Bosun. Have hands ready with the jumping nets, both sides.’

  Another wave and Ridgway started mustering the seamen and casting loose the big rope-mesh jumping nets, dropping them down the ship’s sides for swimmers to grapple and climb and be helped aboard. Below decks, word reached Jock Campbell, chief steward, that the Wolf Rock was about to embark survivors, numbers unknown but as many as possible. This news threw him into a degree of panic unconnected with thoughts of danger as the Wolf Rock reduced speed to move in among swimming men and then, most likely, would lie stopped to become a sitting duck like the Langstone Harbour had been until she’d been taken in tow. Campbell’s thoughts were those of any chief steward faced with an inundation of persons who would need to eat and sleep and would thus take up space, of which there was none. None, that was, in any comfort. This was an emergency; Jock Campbell relinquished the key of the linen store to his second steward, registering that Mr bloody Harrison and Wren Smith had had it now, no more fornicating among the mattresses and sheets. The linen store would be needed as an extra accommodation unit until such time as the troops could be disembarked, probably at Alexandria or possibly Malta depending on the Commodore’s decision. Food was going to be tight and there would have to be rationing if Malta wasn’t on the cards...that was just one of Campbell’s headaches. Another one did concern danger: with troops aboard, the Wolf Rock would become even more of a target for the buggers attempting to stop the convoy in its tracks. He had a moment of doubt, of terror as to his own survival. The din from up top was appalling, shattering: it was the grandfather of all attacks he’d ever known since the start of the war and it wasn’t only the Stukas. Botley had come down with news that the convoy was now under fire from an Italian heavy cruiser that had sneaked round the flank of the main British line-of-battle, the armoured protection between the merchant ships and the Italian fleet. Botley had added that the destroyer escort was moving at speed to intercept and that was some comfort to Jock Campbell as he wrestled with his accommodation and catering problems with half his mind. A good proportion of the rest of his mind was back home in UK with Mary his wife, safe, or so he prayed constantly, on that farm near Wrexham. If ever she went into Liverpool, maybe to look nostalgically at their pre-war home...it didn’t bear thinking about, all those Nazi air raids, flattening the docks, bringing fire and death to the city. Hitler was a bloody sod. So was Musso...the bullfrog of the Pontine Marshes as Winston Churchill had once called him.

  III

  As the survivors from the sinking Orduna waved and shouted across the water, Captain Champney took the Wolf Rock in as close as possible and then stopped his engine: revolving screws could churn men up, thrash them into strips of bloody flesh. The risk in lying stopped was great but had to be accepted. Kemp had been adamant: he was not going to leave them to it. As the Commodore’s ship drifted closer the men in the boats and Carley floats and those who were swimming sent up a ragged cheer. By this time the great liner appeared to be white-hot almost from stem to stern; flames licked up around the bridge and took the woodwork of the wheelhouse; soon it would be a bonfire. Now the masts were ablaze, and fire licked through the big windows of what had once been the first-class lounge and the Tavern bar aft by the swimming pool — Kemp knew the lay-out well; it was similar to his own company’s ships, both lines having had their vessels laid down by Vickers-Armstrong’s yard in Barrow-in-Furness. He’d dined aboard the Orduna alongside the berth at Woolloomooloo in Sydney, with the then Staff Commander Pope. All the pomp and glitter of a great liner, the white-jacketed stewards, the ship’s orchestra, the gilded mess jackets of the officers, the superb menus, all in the past, all now burning to extinction.

  ‘They’re still jumping over,’ he said to Champney. ‘So god-damn many of them!’ With the best will in the world, the Wolf Rock couldn’t take them all. Kemp had sent his signals to the other ships but they hadn’t been necessary: the camaraderie of the sea was holding, and the nearer ships were moving in to stand by and assist the rescue operation. Two of the destroyers, alerted by Kemp as to his intentions, were acting as close guardships, pumping away with their multiple pom-poms at the Nazi attack. The air was thick with puffs of smoke and with shrapnel as the heavier ack-ack blazed away with the smaller weapons, but still the Stukas were coming in.

  Kemp, his binoculars trained from time to time on what was left of the Orduna’s bridge, caught a glimpse of two men still there: obviously, Pope and the OC Troops. They wouldn’t leave until the ship was clear of all personnel. And they wouldn’t have a hope by that time...

  There was another near miss, this time very close to the hull. Below in the engine-room, Chief Engineer Turnberry felt the full impact. The whole compartment juddered and rang with noise, the light flickered, dimmed and came back again. Turnberry was flung bodily from the starting platform, ending up on the greasy deck plating with his right arm twisted beneath his body. He felt agonizing pain, tried to get up, fell back with a gasp. As he tried again to get to his feet he saw a river of water run down
the bulkhead on the starboard side: sprung rivets, and the seam was weeping. He made a big effort; the pain in his arm and another in his side made him cry out, and then he passed into unconsciousness as his second engineer reached him and bent over him.

  Fifteen seconds later Champney took the report by voice-pipe on the bridge. ‘Second engineer, sir. Chief’s hurt and there’s a sprung seam to starboard. We’re making water fairly fast.’

  ‘Will the pumps cope?’

  ‘Don’t know yet, sir —’

  ‘Keep reporting,’ Champney said. He slammed back the voice-pipe cover and went out of the wheelhouse to join the Commodore in the bridge wing. By this time the Wolf Rock was in among the survivors and already men were grasping the jumping nets and clambering up, all along the sides. As the first of them reached the deck and were helped aboard by the Wolf Rock’s seamen, an aircraft came screaming out of the sky, its machine-guns blazing away into the water, raising a myriad pockmarks, finding easy targets in the crowded gap between the two ships.

  FIFTEEN

  I

  ‘Those awful screams,’ Susan Pawle said suddenly, her eyes wide and her fists clenched. She hadn’t spoken for some while, had just lain in her bunk staring blankly. Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan had left her now, taking his part in the hauling of survivors over the guardrails, a case of all hands. Rose Hardisty was sitting beside her, with her knitting, and was trying to shut her ears to the terrible sounds from outside. The Stuka had passed and re-passed, disregarding the stream of fire from the close-range weapons, firing blindly down into the water and then raking the port side of the Wolf Rock as the survivors climbed the jumping nets. Their screams as the bullets ripped into them were close enough to be heard in Susan’s cabin. ‘What’s going on, PO?’

  ‘It’s those Germans,’ Rose Hardisty said uncertainly.

  ‘Oh, I know that!’