Under Orders (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Port lookout,’ Forbes snapped suddenly.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Don’t daydream. The lives of everyone aboard depend on your eyes and those of the other lookouts. I don’t want any weak links, all right?’

  HM Destroyers Keppel and Cambridge—the latter one of the fifty ex-USN vessels handed over under the Lease Lend agreement—had joined by now, taking station ahead at forty-five degrees on either bow as the Castle Bay steamed north to turn to port between the Butt of Lewis and Cape Wrath into the North Atlantic wastes. Cameron had been sent below to familiarize himself with the ship and then to get some sleep before taking the middle watch from midnight to 0400 hours as second Officer of the Watch under an RNR lieutenant named Beddows, who was also the Navigating Officer. As Cameron turned into his bunk after dinner in the wardroom there was considerable motion on the ship; she had met the Atlantic blow off the Butt of Lewis and was steaming at her full seventeen knots into a heavy swell confused by short, breaking seas that gave her an uncomfortable twisting motion as she rolled and pitched at the same time. Things shifted around Cameron’s cabin and he spent some while in securing movable items. Though he was dead tired from his wakeful night in Portsmouth and the wearisome business of trying to doze whilst sitting upright in an overcrowded night train from the south, he found it hard to get to sleep; but in the end sheer physical tiredness overcame his mental rovings and sleep resulted. It seemed no time before he was being called for his watch by a boatswain’s mate.

  ‘2345, sir.’

  The voice sounded as though it had been saying this for some while. Cameron came to the surface. ‘Right, thank you.’ He stretched and swung a leg out of his bunk. He pulled on a shirt and trousers and a roll-necked sweater, completing his dressing with a duffel-coat and leather sea-boots with thick woollen stockings rolled down over their tops. He climbed to the bridge, swaying to the ship’s motion, which was totally different from that of a destroyer and from the fishing vessels of his father’s trawler fleet in which he had been to sea in pre-war holidays. There was a fair wind blowing now from the west, something like Force 6 or 7 by the look of the spindrift coming off the tops of the waves, and spray was flying over the decks as the blunt bows. dipped under, drenching the crew of Number One gun as they tried to find some sort of shelter behind the gun-shield. Their oilskins glistened in the light of a high moon, playing fitfully through cloud.

  On the bridge Beddows had already taken over the watch from the First Lieutenant.

  ‘A fairly dirty night, Sub,’ he said, ‘and it’ll get worse. I take it you’ve not done a run to Iceland before?’

  ‘Not Iceland. I’ve touched Norway aboard one of my father’s trawlers.’

  ‘You haven’t missed much,’ Beddows said. ‘Talk about cold!’

  ‘At this time of the year?’

  Beddows shrugged. ‘It can go into the fifties. Not what I’d call warm. I spent all my time east of Suez before the war!’ He listened for a moment to the ping of the Asdic, coming from the cabinet in the fore part of the bridge. The sound was reassuring; a sweep round with his glasses as soon as his sight was night-accustomed was also reassuring so far as it went. It would be next to impossible to pick up a feather of spray from a periscope in the prevailing weather conditions; the Asdic had to be relied upon implicitly. Beddows paced the bridge, back and forth, keeping a sharp lookout, checking the course by reference to the gyro repeater in its gimbals. He said, ‘The Old Man’s set a course between the Rosemary and George Bligh Banks. Back there is Rockall.’ He pointed to the port quarter. ‘ETA Hvalfjord is thirty-six hours from now.’

  ‘What then?’

  Again Beddows shrugged. ‘No idea. Unless we’re to join a convoy for Archangel, and somehow I doubt that. We’re just not equipped for escort work... except maybe as a rescue ship, someone to act as arse-end Charlie and pick up survivors.’ He paused, busy with his binoculars again, then added, ‘There’s something odd about our orders. I’m convinced of that. No doubt we’ll be told all before long. I reckon—’ He broke off as a shout came from the port-side bridge lookout. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Keppel, sir, turning hard to port!’

  ‘See anything—a periscope?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Keep watching, Grigg.’ Beddows moved fast for the Asdic cabinet; the ping was normal so far. He asked, ‘No contact?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Stay at it. There could be a contact, red 180 to 360.’ Beddows was taking no chances: he went for the action alarm and pressed it. The rattlers sounded through the ship and within a matter of seconds the ship’s company was pouring from weather doors and hatches, doubling to their action stations at the guns, the depth-charge racks aft, the damage control positions, the engine-room and auxiliary steering. Forbes, who in fact had not taken off his clothing, was on the bridge within half a minute. Taking Beddows’ report, he reacted instantly.

  ‘Maintain course and speed, Pilot. I’ve a feeling the bugger’s missed his chance and is dropping astern. In any case we’re not here to attack U-boats. We leave it to the destroyers.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘But pass to all guns, stand by to open fire if ordered.’

  The message went by voice-pipe to the captains of the 4-inch guns and the men manning the close-range weapons. Just as it had been passed, the note of the Asdic changed alarmingly and a report was made of a contact unexpectedly bearing green 45. Once again the Captain’s response was immediate. ‘Starboard twenty!’ he ordered. The Castle Bay heeled violently as the helm went over, and as it did so there was a shout from the starboard lookout.

  ‘Torpedo trails, sir, bearing green one-oh, four of them!’

  ‘Right.’ Forbes’ head bent to the voice-pipe connecting with the quartermaster at the wheel. ‘Steady!’

  ‘Steady, sir... course, oh-one-oh, sir.’

  ‘Steer that.’ Forbes straightened. The moonlight showed a white line of teeth as he gave a tight-lipped grin. ‘No option now, Pilot! If those bloody fish miss us, I’m going in to attack. Stand by depth charges.’

  ‘Stand by depth charges, sir.’

  The message went aft to the quarterdeck. On the bridge, at the guns, at the depth charges, all eyes were on the torpedo trails, clearly seen in the moonlight in spite of the confused seas, four speeding slivers of instant death. As the bows of the Castle Bay lifted to the swell, and appeared to cant towards one pair of torpedoes, Forbes swore violently. His fingers gripped the bridge rail like vices, the knuckles standing white. To port, the Cambridge, evidently having also picked up the contact, was racing in after a tight turn to starboard that was about to bring her smack across the bows of the Castle Bay. It was in fact the Cambridge that got to the target area first, and dropped charges. As Forbes listened to the now very rapid ping... ping... ping from his Asdics he saw the result of the first of the depth-charge explosions below the surface, a great upsurge of water like a giant’s fist smashing through. At the same time reports came in from the port and starboard lookouts: the torpedoes were passing safely down either side of the Castle Bay. Two on each side: she had steamed slap through the middle of them.

  ‘Thank God,’ Forbes said. ‘The bugger won’t be firing off any more, that’s for sure!’ He brought up his glasses and looked away towards where the Keppel was now also dropping her depth charge patterns. He ordered the helm to port to bring his ship round, and then kept circling: it could be suicide to stop engines until the outcome of the action had been decided positively, and although the destroyers could very easily overtake him later if he put his ship back on course for Iceland and steamed away, the resulting nakedness could be equally dangerous if other U-boats were in the vicinity; and as he had hinted earlier, the Castle Bay was under orders not to take any risks currently.

  A moment later Cameron reported, ‘Submarine surfacing starboard, sir!’

  Forbes swivelled and focussed his glasses. ‘You’re right, Sub. Damaged... I wonder if sh
e’s surrendering? Where’s the Cambridge?’

  ‘Turning away, sir, for another run in.’

  As Cameron spoke, there was a flash of bright orange from the U-boat’s fore plating, followed by the scream of a shell right overhead. All personnel ducked instinctively; Forbes, coming upright again, shook a fist towards the German and gave the order to open fire. Within seconds his 4-inch guns were in action, pumping shells across the water. Splashes, plumes of sea rising around the U-boat’s hull, showed the near misses. As Forbes brought the Castle Bay closer in, the Keppel joined the surface action, blasting away with her 4.7s but having no more luck than the Castle Bay against the small target provided by the half-submerged U-boat’s silhouette. Then another blast of flame came from the German, once more straight across the bridge, catching two men in succession before they could duck down. The leading signalman fell in a heap with his head shot from his shoulders and blood spurting, until the heart’s last action ceased, from the gaping neck; and the starboard-side Oerlikon spun madly in its mounting in the bridge wing as the body of the gunner, also decapitated, slumped sideways. Cameron, feeling himself a spare hand so far, ran for the gun and cast off the straps from the dead gunner, lowering him to the deck. Then he took the man’s place and, as the Castle Bay continued to close the range, he sent a stream of bullets zipping towards the U-boat’s conning-tower and the gun-mounting at its base. The fire from the German ceased abruptly and then the Cambridge, moving in now at high speed, took the U-boat a little abaft the conning-tower, ground hard into her and sheered her in half, the knifing bows cutting through the thin casing like butter. The two ends rose up and fell back into the destroyer’s tumbling wake, spilling men who were flung in all directions from the gaping bowels, men who screamed out in fear as they clutched desperately at floating debris, men seen clearly as Forbes ordered his searchlight to be turned on to the scene. The Cambridge seemed to have suffered only superficial damage to her stem.

  It was Beddows who spoke first. ‘Survivors, sir?’

  ‘No stopping, Pilot.’ Forbes’ voice was hard. As a merchant seaman by training with the traditions of the sea deeply embedded in him, he detested leaving men, enemy or not, to drown. But the exigencies of the service had to prevail and he was allowed no option. The Castle Bay had a vital mission to perform and was not to be hazarded until she had performed it.

  ***

  Breakfast next morning was a silent and preoccupied meal: the ship had sustained her first casualties since commissioning three months before, and though a victory had been achieved no one was celebrating it. The leading signalman had been a Fleet Reservist recalled on the outbreak of war, a man of forty-five with a wife and three children in Gillingham, handy for the Chatham Port Division to which he had belonged. The Oerlikon gunner had been little more than twenty, unmarried but with parents living in Sutton Goldfield. There would be letters to write, never a happy task, and during the forenoon the bodies would go overboard in their own hammocks, sewn around them as shroud and coffin combined. The Castle Bay’s only warrant officer, Mr Hanrahan, Gunner RN, was lugubrious.

  ‘Bad omen,’ he said. ‘That lad—the Oerlikon gunner. Name o’ Luck. Able-Seaman Luck.’ He shook his head sadly. There was no more that needed saying. Cameron, with his own lower deck experience not far behind him, knew very well that the fo’c’sle messes would be thinking along similar lines. He had no appetite, and he left the wardroom. The gory scene on the bridge had been much too recent; until the decking had been swabbed down by a party under the Chief Boatswain’s Mate, there had been no keeping a foothold for any of them, and somehow the smell of blood had lingered long after the escorts had taken up their stations again and the small force was heading at speed for Iceland. The war was turning into a long, hard slog and there was no end in sight. The Germans, with their vast hunting packs of U-boats, were apparently winning the Battle of the Atlantic, and if the terrible sinkings of merchant ships continued, then Britain would inevitably be starved out. When ashore on leave, Cameron had noted a disinterest in the activities of the convoy escorts, indeed in the fate of the merchant ships themselves. There was too much selfishness around, even now. True, a wartime spirit had emerged and there was some positive sense of pulling together, but there were gaps. There were gaps amongst workers in the factories and shipyards and arsenals; demarcation disputes had not by any means been entirely snuffed out. There were gaps elsewhere too: some people fiddled their food ration, others fiddled petrol, seeming uncaring that the stuff had been brought home to Britain by blood. The agonizing sufferings of the tanker crews who hadn’t quite made it and who had died in the fire and suffocation that came to them when a torpedo struck and spilled their cargo to blaze around them, seemed to mean all too little to too many people. News about the Army and the RAF struck home rather more on the whole, with the exception of the few naval spectaculars such as the boarding of the Altmark, the action against the Admiral Graf Spee by Achilles, Ajax and Exeter and the gallant, self-sacrificial defence of their convoys by the armed merchant cruisers Jervis Bay under Captain Fogarty Fegen and Rawalpindi under Captain Kennedy. Perhaps the British public wanted the resounding thunder of a major Fleet action, but Fleet actions were no longer what the Navy was all about. The reason for the Navy’s existence today was the convoys.

  At seven bells that forenoon, Cameron was sent for by the Captain along with all other officers not immediately required for duty.

  ***

  ‘Ah, Cameron. Sit you down.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Cameron sat next to the Accountant Officer, a paymaster lieutenant RNVR who would be responsible for encyphering outgoing signals and breaking down incoming ones. Forbes stood, leaning back against a scuttle through which he glanced now and again while he talked, keeping an eye and a half on the restless seas and their possibly hidden menace.

  ‘Orders,’ he said briefly. ‘My orders from on high. Time you were told. Those orders are simple enough to spell out, perhaps more complex in the work-out. We’re not going out on ocean boarding duties.’ He paused, the blue eyes scanning the faces of his officers. ‘We’re part of Operation Forestay. In my safe are the detailed, hour by hour orders, but all you need to know for now is the broad outline. It’s this: as you’re aware already, we’re to rendezvous with Admiral Vian’s Force F—the cruisers Nigeria and Aurora with two destroyers—off Hvalfjord. From there we sail with a convoy for Archangel on the White Sea. Ostensibly, that is. In fact, we don’t go all the way. Before the convoy approaches the North Cape, we’re to detach for the Norwegian coast. We lie off Vest Hammarfjord—that’s inshore of Soroy Island, around eighty miles sou’west of the North Cape.’ Again he paused, pulling at the lobe of his left ear. ‘Pilot, I’m sorry about this, but considerations of security meant I couldn’t tell you earlier—if you’d gone ashore demanding up-to-date inshore charts of the area something could have been blown. However, Admiral Vian will provide the charts when we rendezvous. All right?’

  Beddows nodded. ‘All right, sir. I just hope they’ll be corrected up to date, that’s all.’

  ‘They will be. Now, as to our objective. It’s fairly straightforward. Word has reached the Special Operations Executive from underground sources in Norway—the Resistance, the anti-Quislings—that the Germans are up to something that could prove nasty on the shores of Vest Hammarfjord. It’s all highly secret and nothing overt’s been seen apparently, other than the fact that the site is attended periodically by small tankers, so the information does not include anything to suggest just what the Nazis are up to. However, the detailed orders for the operation, which I need hardly say is to destroy the German set-up, do contain a very full description of the site itself and its buildings, plus drawings—artist’s impressions, you might say. Not that that’ll be our concern. Our job’s to be the landing of the troops who’re going in to do the job... yes, Guns?’

  Mr Hanrahan had been looking restive. Now he said sourly, ‘Look, sir. Why can’t the RAF sort this one out, eh
? They’d be inside range from Iceland if not from farther off.’

  Forbes nodded but said, ‘It’s not so simple, Guns. It’s a question of accessibility—the lie of the land. Aircraft can’t get an attack run between the mountains and the site is in any case covered in by a big rock overhang which in effect puts the whole thing in a cave—or almost. It’s like a lid, extending for some way over the site. Anyway, we’re landed with the job so we make a success of it. The site’s to be destroyed for good and all, on the grounds that so much secrecy it’s under very heavy guard and admittance is only via a mass of authorizations—must mean it’s very bloody nasty indeed.’ The Captain took another look out of the port, then asked, ‘Well? Any questions?’

  ‘Yes,’ Beddows said. ‘Why us? And just how do we go about it?’

  ‘To take your second question first, Pilot, a demolition party will be embarked at Hvalfjord on arrival. They’ll be soldiers—sappers, all of them explosives experts. They’ll be accompanied by 20 and 21 Commandos—five hundred men, fully equipped for the job. Our orders are to lie off the entry to the fjord after dark and put them all ashore in a flotilla of inflatable dinghies. The naval part of the operation, that is, the conduct of the flotilla, will be left to us. I propose sending you, Number One, in charge with two sub-lieutenants, Ricketts and Cameron, to assist, plus a party of seamen with a petty officer and leading hands. Soldiers don’t make good sailors and they’ll need shepherding.’ The Captain paused. ‘Now—Cameron.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ Cameron knew what was coming, had had more than an inkling since the Captain’s first mention of Vest Hammarfjord.

  Forbes said, ‘I’m told you went to sea in your father’s fishing trawlers out of Aberdeen on a number of occasions—right?’