Marine H SBS

by Ian Blake

  ‘Sorry, boys,’ Danforth said firmly. ‘Now that we’re in the process of retaking Burma, the colonial government is having more and more say in what we can and can’t do. And we can’t sink native shipping without good reason.’

  ‘So we have to allow them to sail and then try and intercept them?’

  Danforth smiled. ‘That’s the theory. But we’ve come up with a better idea. Stick the equivalent of a limpet mine on the hull with a long enough time delay and the ships will sink at sea. No one will be any the wiser.’

  ‘Trouble is, sir, as you well know, we don’t have the equivalent of a limpet mine that works on wooden hulls,’ said Tiller in exasperation.

  ‘You’re right again, Tiger. We don’t have such a device, but the Yanks have it.’

  Tiller stared at him, amazed. ‘They do?’

  Danforth pressed his intercom. ‘Is Master-Sergeant Lee White out there? He is? Send him in, please.’

  Almost instantly, there was a knock on the door and before Danforth could respond a tall, lean man in his late twenties, dressed in bush shirt and trousers, entered. He saluted Danforth with an abrupt, exaggerated salute. It looked odd to Tiller because he wasn’t wearing a cap.

  ‘Major?’

  The drawl was Texan, straight from some B movie; the man’s jaws chomped on chewing gum. He looked both at ease and totally alert, light on his feet. With a quick motion he unslung a rucksack from his shoulder and put it on the table.

  ‘Thanks for waiting, Sergeant. We need your advice.’

  ‘Sure. How can I help?’

  ‘Master-Sergeant White is a member of the Office of Strategic Services,’ Danforth told Davy and Tiller.

  Tiller remembered Taffy’s remark about the OSS when they had found the booby-trap. A hush-hush Yank outfit, he’d said.

  ‘It was the OSS who kindly supplied us with the collapsible canoes,’ Danforth added. He turned to White. ‘We’re going to be testing them out soon. We’ll give you a full report on them.’

  Tiller stretched out his hand to the Texan and introduced himself, then Davy did likewise. Like Tiller, the sergeant wore a pistol and a fighting knife on his belt. The pistol was a regulation Colt .45 automatic, but the knife was longer and narrower than Tiller’s and was contained in a ‘pancake flapper’ sheath.

  ‘We are going to dispose of some native craft,’ Danforth said. ‘We need an explosive device with a time delay that can be fixed to a wooden hull. You boys have such a store, am I right?’

  ‘Sure have,’ said White. He sat down and opened the rucksack. ‘We call it a Pin-Up Girl.’

  He slid the device out on to the table. To Tiller it looked like an ordinary limpet, but without the usual six magnets.

  ‘It’s slightly lighter than our standard limpet,’ the OSS man said. ‘And of course our limpet is an almost exact copy of yours. Except, unlike the Brits, we use a celluloid case. And we use Torpex explosive because PE reacts with celluloid.’

  ‘But how do you attach it to a wooden hull?’ Tiller asked.

  The American turned the device over and pointed to a socket fastened along one side of it in which lay a thick, five-inch-long iron bolt. ‘This is all you do,’ he said, then deftly swivelled the socket until it was at right angles to the case. The socket locked itself into place with a click.

  ‘See that trigger under the slot where you attach the placing rod?’

  Tiller nodded. The American pointed to the ring of the safety-pin which retained the spring-loaded bolt in its place in the socket.

  ‘You just slide the ring over it. Unhooking the placing rod automatically pulls up the trigger, which pulls out the safety-pin holding back a spring. When the spring is released it drives the bolt into the hull and the Pin-Up Girl is ready for action.’

  Tiller turned the device over. He hoped it was as simple as the Texan made it out to be.

  ‘Very ingenious,’ he said, trying not to sound grudging. He wondered why the boys at Welwyn Garden City, who had managed to come up with something as crackpot as the Welman, had not thought of such a useful device. At least they might not have given it such a daft name.

  The Texan rummaged around in his rucksack and placed on the table half-a-dozen tall, oval tins, very like those used for cigars. He slid the top off one of them. ‘And these are the time pencils.’

  ‘Are yours the same as ours?’ Tiller asked, drawing one out from the tin.

  The Texan grinned. ‘Guess we like to think they’re better. We’ve used a different corrosive and slightly thicker wire to try and make them less vulnerable to changes in temperature.’

  ‘And the colour codes. Are they different?’

  The Texan shook his head. ‘The same as yours. Red for half an hour, then white, green, yellow and blue for two, six, twelve and twenty-four hours.’

  ‘What else have you got, Sergeant?’ asked Danforth.

  The American grinned. ‘What would you like, Major? Some footshooters . . . a box of caccolubes, perhaps?’

  ‘Caccolubes? What on earth are they?’

  The American dug into his rucksack again and produced a small tin box. He opened it to reveal five egg-shaped rubber sacs, each of which was about two and a half inches long. ‘Means bad lubricant. We also call them turtles’ eggs. Drop them in a gas tank, the rubber disintegrates and the contents are mixed with the fuel. After fifty miles or so the truck comes to a grinding halt. By which time the engine is ruined. Can be used against any sort of engine.’

  Tiller poked at one with his finger. ‘So what’s in them?’

  ‘Thirty grams of a mixture of finely ground aluminum-magnesium alloy and ground cork. We’ve also been working on a new type of incendiary device.’

  He placed a six-inch rectangular greased waterproof cardboard carton on the table. Tiller picked it up gingerly and weighed it in his hand.

  ‘Only weighs 1.¼lb,’ the Texan informed him. ‘We call it the City Slicker.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It’s used to ignite fuel oil slicks on the water. It’s perfectly safe until water-fused.’

  ‘Water-fused?’

  ‘That’s what activates it: water,’ the American explained patiently. ‘See this flap? You just lift it before you chuck it in the slick. After one minute the water activates the chemicals inside, which, in turn, ignites the oil. Very effective against a damaged enemy vessel or aircraft. Useful, too, to cause a diversion.’

  ‘Can you let us have some Pin-Up Girls?’ Danforth asked eagerly.

  ‘Sure. As many as you want,’ the Texan said cheerfully. ‘I guess the caccolubes don’t fit with your type of operations but the City Slicker could be useful to you. This one is a prototype and we’re looking for someone to test it under operational conditions. The colonel thought you guys might be able to find a suitable target to try it out on.’

  Danforth and Tiller exchanged glances. Tiller nodded. Danforth said: ‘I’m sure we could.’

  The American slid the box across the table to Tiller. ‘There you are, buddy. All yours. How many Pin-Up Girls will you need?’

  ‘A dozen,’ said Tiller. ‘That should see us through this op.’

  ‘I’ll see that they’re here by noon tomorrow.’

  ‘Tell us what else you people have developed that may be of use to the SBS,’ Danforth requested. ‘Tiger, take some notes, will you?’

  The OSS, it seemed, had been working on a number of ingenious devices, including a rubber inflatable powered by a new silent outboard engine, and was eager to have them tested in the field. When he had finished describing them and answered the inevitable questions, the Texan picked up his rucksack, saluted Danforth and said: ‘Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen. Any time.’

  Two days later, as dawn broke, two MLs, in line astern, nosed cautiously out of the crowded anchorage of Cox’s Bazar. The rain had temporarily relented and Tiller stood by Davy on the bridge watching Nabob, perched on his master’s shoulder, eating the remains of a piece of fruit. The m
onkey watched him with knowing button eyes.

  On the deck amidships two SBS Mk II canoes, covered in tarpaulins, were lashed to the stanchions just in case they were needed.

  ‘You’re a belt and braces man, aren’t you, Tiger,’ Davy had remarked to Tiller when he had said he wanted to take them along.

  And Tiller had shrugged and replied: ‘You bet I am. Those Yank canoes have never been used operationally.’

  A number of Burmese rowing a large, crudely made boat stopped to wave. Tiller waved back. Nabob chittered angrily.

  ‘Like the bloody rush hour in Cape Town, this place,’ Davy muttered. ‘Have you ever seen so many boats? The whole bloody population of the Arakan seems to live afloat. And some of the crates they go to sea in look as if they’ve been tied together with bits of string.’

  ‘That’s almost exactly how they do make them,’ said Coates, sucking noisily on the stem of his old briar pipe. ‘Haven’t you ever looked closely at one of their country boats? Fascinating. They stitch the planks together with cane.’

  ‘Christ,’ muttered Tiller. ‘Remind me not to get a lift in any of them.’

  ‘They’re as seaworthy as this tub,’ snapped Coates.

  ‘That’s not saying much,’ Davy grumbled. ‘Anything above a force six and I run for shelter.’

  ‘Who turns out all these boats?’ Tiller asked Coates, peering down at a mass of working craft huddled together by a quay. ‘And what do they call them?’

  ‘Generically, they’re called chok-hle,’ said Coates. ‘Which literally means "stitched boat". The type we’ve just passed is called a kistie. The hull is hollowed out from the trunk of a tree. Then the owner floats the hledon, or rough hull, down stream to the chok-thama, or boat stitcher. He bores a line of holes along the edge of each plank and builds up the hull by lacing the planks together with bamboo cane. Any gaps between the planks or the holes are caulked with bamboo bark.’

  ‘Are you seriously saying they go to sea in them?’ Tiller queried.

  Coates smiled and shook his head. ‘No, they’re used in the chaungs mostly. It’s the tavoy and other schooners like the sandoway and the mergui that are used for coastal trading.’

  An ominous swell lifted and rolled the MLs as they left the shelter of the harbour, and the horizon was black with monsoon clouds. They headed south instead of following the south-east line of the coast, so that they were soon out of sight of land.

  All day they rolled through the monsoon swell, watching the heavy veils of rain, driven by a stiff south-westerly, sweeping across the sullen waters of the Bay of Bengal. Occasionally there was a glimmer of sun before the clouds closed in again, but at least at sea the air was fresher, less damp and cloying.

  Tiller went below to get something to eat and found that the wardroom had been converted into a small operating theatre. Everything was covered in white sheets and a surgeon-lieutenant – instantly recognizable by the thin red stripe between the two gold stripes on his sleeves – was checking his surgical instruments with an Indian sick-berth attendant. The surgeon glanced up and grinned when he saw Tiller’s look of surprise: ‘Standard procedure on an op of any size. Didn’t you know?’

  Tiller shook his head. He thought of the Lewis gun operator whose place he had taken on the River Kaladan and wondered if an operating theatre could have saved him. But he knew it could not have. They had buried him at sea in a brief but dignified ceremony, the weighted, canvas-wrapped body being slid into the waves from a plank. The burial had been watched in silence with bared heads by the few members of the crew not at their action stations.

  ‘If you’re looking for some nosh it’s being handed out from the galley,’ said the surgeon.

  Tiller thanked him and retreated hurriedly from the humidity of the wardroom, its lingering smell of antiseptic and its gleaming instruments a grim reminder of the dangers ahead. He went to the galley and was given a doorstep of a sandwich and a mug of tea, which he took on deck. He made his way aft. The Oerlikon crew were stood down but preferred, despite the rain, to sit around their gun eating their sandwiches to going below. They nodded to him in a friendly way. His skill with the Lewis gun had not gone unnoticed and his efforts to save the life of the gunner had been appreciated.

  Further aft one of the wireless operators attached to the SBS for the operation hung over the side looking pale. To distract him from the ML’s lurching motion Tiller asked him what deception methods he proposed to use.

  ‘Usual stunt,’ the signals corporal said. ‘I’ll just exchange messages with my oppo and sent out ones to a fake subordinate HQ. The Japs are quite capable of decrypting several of our low-grade ciphers, so we’ll use one we know they’ve cracked. They’re shit hot on traffic analysis and it’s the volume of signals that attracts their attention, not so much the contents. I shall only be acting as a brigade HQ, so the volume won’t be that great. Bloody hard work while it lasts, though.’

  Tiller asked what traffic analysis was; he hadn’t heard the term before.

  ‘Monitoring the level of signals and their networks,’ the signaller explained. ‘The Japs might not be able to decipher all the signals immediately, but from the quantity and type they’ll be deceived into thinking that a Commando Brigade HQ is controlling a landing of some size on Ramree.’

  ‘But they must know we might try and pull a stunt like that,’ Tiller protested. He didn’t much like the thought of what might happen if the Japs double-guessed them.

  The signaller was reassuring. ‘They couldn’t know for certain, any more than we could be certain of them pulling the same trick. But the signals deception would be only a small part of a much larger deception scheme, and the other factors have to be right. For instance, we will have made sure the Japs know we have a Commando Brigade in Ceylon with a lifting capability to Ramree. What’s more, we will have made sure they will have been able to monitor that lifting capability in Ceylon. Who knows, Naval HQ at Trincomalee may have broken wireless silence by signalling the LSTs and their escort force after they supposedly had left harbour. We give the Japs all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and leave it to them to fit it together.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ said Tiller. ‘Who thinks up these cunning schemes?’

  ‘A naval commander called Fleming,’ said the signaller promptly. ‘I know him because I’ve worked with him. Runs an outfit called D Division in Ceylon. D for deception. He thinks up all sorts of deception radio tricks.’

  As they talked the dull greyness of the day faded suddenly into night. Of the sunset there had been no sign. Tiller went below, reassured that he and his tiny force were being well looked after by the powers that be. The SBS might be the cheese in the mousetrap but the trap seemed a powerfully made and well-designed one.

  He slept soundly for four hours and then dressed in the two-piece swimming suit which the SBS used in tropical climates. It was made of a light, waterproof material which gave some protection to the body from sharp rocks and, more importantly, from the several species of fish which could administer particularly vicious stings. The jacket was fitted with an inflatable rubber lifebelt. On his feet he wore light rope-soled canvas shoes. These were so much better, he had found, than the rubber commando boots he had worn in the Mediterranean. Rubber was slippery and leather quickly rotted in the jungle heat. But, with rope soles, the wetter they got the harder they became. Even Coates had grudgingly admitted that they were better than the calf-length canvas jungle boots he wore, though he refused to use them.

  Tiller then filled the many pockets of the suit. Pencils, plastic board which served as waterproof writing paper, COPP measuring reel, compass, emergency rations, torch, spare pistol magazines, citronella oil to ward off the mosquitoes and sandflies, standard dressing for bullet wounds, the City Slicker, and a small plastic container which diffused shark repellent in the water, were all fitted in somehow. Then he buckled on his belt with his .45 pistol on one side and his commando knife on the other, and finally donned a kapok lifebelt which prot
ected the rubber one that was part of his jacket, and which gave additional, unpuncturable buoyancy should he need it. He packed his rucksack with a cheese-cloth mosquito net, a change of clothes, a towel, a blanket and a medical kit. He also stuffed in the rudimentary two pieces of escape and evasion equipment carried by all personnel on operations, though he had doubts about their practicality. These were a silk British flag known as a ‘blood chit’ because any Burmese safely delivering back its owner would be financially rewarded, and what was known as a ‘pointee-talkee’ phrase book.

  Tiller returned to the bridge to find that Coates was still jammed into one corner, sucking his empty pipe, a seemingly indefatigable watcher of events. At the other end of the bridge Davy was drinking a mug of tea and feeding Nabob bits of biscuit. Rain hung in the air. The wind had dropped and with it the swell.

  ‘How much longer?’ Tiller asked Davy. Davy glanced at his watch and then across to his navigator, a fresh-faced RNVR sub-lieutenant, who said immediately: ‘We reach the DR position in fifty minutes, skipper.’

  ‘I’ll make a final check on all the equipment,’ said Tiller. He went aft and ticked off on his list the two collapsible canoes in their rucksacks, the crate of Pin-Up Girls which the OSS had delivered so promptly, the wireless with which he would communicate with the ML, and the boxes of extra rations and ammunition.

  The wireless operators would stay aboard the ML until the SBS team had reconnoitred the island. If given the all-clear for the deception operation to proceed, one of the operators would be landed with his wireless equipment while the other stayed on the ML. The one afloat would begin broadcasting as if the Brigade HQ was directing a landing.

  While Tiller was checking his equipment two of the ML’s crew began to prepare to lower the motor surf boat from the davits in the ML’s stern. It was twenty feet long, and was equipped with a five-horsepower Stewart and Turner petrol engine which ran silently because the exhaust outlet, on the starboard side, was below water level. Constructed of wood, the boat had a flat bottom and high bows, and was designed, as its name implied, to land troops and equipment through surf.