Under Orders (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  The Captain sat up at once. ‘What is it, Pay?’

  ‘Cypher—and an important one, sir. Very badly garbled, a number of corrupt groups and a touch of informed guesswork.’ The Paymaster added, ‘Prefix Most Immediate... and I managed to get the originator—C-in-C Home Fleet. It’s addressed Flag Officer Force F repeated Castle Bay, sir.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  Chamberlain passed him a messy-looking transcript.

  Forbes said, ‘Good grief!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir—’

  ‘What’s it all mean? What’s the gist, for God’s sake?’

  ‘It seems that an enemy force has been observed leaving Wilhelmshaven, sir. Scharnhorst and Admiral Hipper, on a northerly course. And the message ends quite cleanly: PQ convoy now nearing safe zone.’

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ Forbes said, staring at the doubtful-looking transcript. ‘What does that mean? About the convoy. What do you make of that?’

  Chamberlain said, ‘I read more into it than it says, sir, always assuming my transcript is reasonably accurate in its other parts—and I think we have to assume it is. I think C-in-C’s suggesting the enemy ships couldn’t expect to reach the PQ convoy before it gets into Archangel. Which means—’

  ‘Means C-in-C thinks they could be after Vian—which also means us.’ Forbes got to his feet. He looked for a moment from the chartroom port: it was daylight now, and their surroundings were clear. It was sheer beauty, breathtaking, wonderful, with deep blue water amid the high mountains topped with snow. Forbes gestured towards the port. ‘Nothing we can do about it from here—except get out and go to sea, and I can’t do that yet. Ask the navigator to come in, will you, Pay?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Paymaster Lieutenant left the chartroom. A few moments later Beddows clumped in from the bridge. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Pilot. Take a look at this.’ Forbes handed over the signal. ‘What d’you think?’

  Beddows thought the same as Chamberlain. He said, ‘I suppose we just have to wait and see what happens.’

  ‘Unless we’re ordered out to sea by the Admiral, yes.’

  ‘We’re like a rat in a trap, aren’t we?’

  Forbes smiled tiredly. ‘You could say that. But I have no bloody option, Pilot, until the troops get back. How long will it take Scharnhorst and Hipper from Wilhelmshaven to be off the entry here?’

  Beddows frowned, doing some mental arithmetic. He said, ‘Give them thirty knots... about thirteen hundred miles, say... a little under two days, sir.’

  ‘Should be time enough to get clear of the area... I don’t propose to worry too much.’ Forbes paused, then added grimly, ‘At any rate, not unless Cameron takes a lot longer to get back than I expect.’

  ***

  Dawn had revealed the extent of the damage and the casualties too: Lonsdale’s body was dragged from the water with the head smashed in. Colonel Bell had been identified earlier, with a huge chunk of rock where his chest had been. Blood still moved sluggishly in the water; even the jagged rocks were reddened. Men were shivering from the cold of their soaked clothing. The sapper major was alive but wasn’t going to last long without medical attention, and the RAMC captain who had accompanied the commandos was himself dead. The two majors in command of the individual units making up the force were injured, one seriously, the other—Major Rennie—only lightly, with a painful shoulder like Cameron’s. Command would devolve upon Rennie; Cameron, now the officer in charge of the naval party since Ricketts, who had survived, was his junior by a matter of months, asked Rennie what his intentions were.

  ‘Carry on, of course,’ was the brief answer. ‘I’ve had a count of my casualties—I don’t know about yours. I have forty-eight dead, seventy-three injured. We’re not too depleted, and the orders stand. I don’t know why the devil you need to ask.’ His tone was acid, his manner arrogant.

  Cameron shrugged. ‘Call it curiosity, Major.’ ‘There’s no need to be bloody impertinent.’

  ‘I’m sorry. The point is, we haven’t enough dinghies left. Almost all of them have had it.’

  ‘I know that. We’ll have to march, that’s all.’

  ‘The ledge,’ Cameron pointed out, ‘doesn’t go very far—’

  ‘Swim, then! Or cross the mountain. I’m damned if I’m going to be beaten by lack of transport. What’s the depth of water, through to the fjord?’

  ‘It varies, sir. Maximum’s forty-five feet. Minimum’s thirty-six in the main stream, with some shallows that have to be avoided—’

  ‘I see,’ the Major said shortly. ‘Can’t wade it, in that case, what?’ He looked around, face impatient, cane tapping a leg. He shouted for 90 his sergeant-major; there was a conference during which the Major made the decision to attempt a swim, with the weapons and demolition charges being taken through in the remaining dinghies. It could be brought off, perhaps, but the time schedule was now inevitably thrown out. It would be a long swim: there was still, Cameron pointed out, a matter of about three miles to go. In any case they wouldn’t be able to move out again before night.

  ‘A three-mile swim is child’s play to my commandos,’ the Major said, ‘but I take your point about waiting for dark. A daylight attack wouldn’t have a hope—but the whole operation’s at risk if any Germans come along in the meantime.’

  ‘Then why don’t we try to find a route over the mountains?’

  ‘Hm,’ the Major said. He brought out a soggy rolled-up map that had been prepared from the information supplied by the Resistance. If they could find a way of outflanking the intervening mountain, they might be able to come down on Vest Hammarfjord on the northern side of the German base instead of to the south as the sea route would have taken them. The attack could presumably be made just as well from that direction; and they might come down close to a roadway shown on the map as running around the northern end of the fjord, a roadway that according to the Resistance had been metalled by the Germans and was used as their supply route for the base.

  The Major said, ‘Shift of plan, Sar’nt-Major. We look for a track. You’d better come with me.

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  They went off, marching in step along the ledge. Cameron watched as they investigated the sheer side, taking the eastern end first. When they returned, the Major was acid. ‘No damn hope that way. We’ll try westwards.’

  They marched away again and were soon lost to sight around a bend. They were absent for some while, and when they reappeared the sergeant-major’s clothing was freshly wet: he dripped water at every step. Rennie said, ‘My sar’nt-major noticed a deep cleft in the mountainside some way beyond the ledge. He swam to have a look. At the inward end there’s a steep rise into the mountains. Could be a track. It’s worth trying.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Cameron said. ‘What about the injured men?’

  ‘They come with us. No alternative. The Huns might decide to use the channel.’

  Cameron asked, ‘And my party?’

  Rennie looked him up and down. ‘Up to you. You’ve virtually no flotilla left to worry about, and when we come back we’ll have no alternative but to swim back to your ship. In the meantime I’m short of my full requirement. If you like to come along with me, you’ll be welcome enough.’

  ‘Right,’ Cameron said, ‘we’ll come.’

  ‘Under my orders, of course.’ The soldier turned away, then halted and came back. ‘There’s the dead—poor devils. They can’t be left to give the show away if the Germans do come along. We’ll have to carry the bodies into that cleft and hide ‘em.’ He turned away again to give his orders. Cameron rounded up the Naval party: the First Lieutenant and Ricketts, plus one P05 two leading seamen and twenty ABS had left the ship with him; an earlier count of casualties had shown just Ricketts, the PO and fifteen ABS left. As quickly as possible the dead and injured were carried aboard such of the dinghies as remained seaworthy; with them went the commandos’ weapons and the explosives. The rest swam from the en
d of the rock ledge and climbed over the lip of another, smaller ledge from which the cleft ran into the mountainside. It was deep and narrow, so narrow that scarcely any daylight penetrated. Off-loaded from the dinghies, the dead men were carried into the narrow way and left some distance in from the channel, and roughly covered with rubble. After this the deflated remains of the damaged rubber dinghies were hauled from the water with the undamaged ones and concealed in the cleft along with the bodies.

  All this took time; but Major Rennie wasn’t worried. He had in any case to remain out of sight until nightfall and even though the commandos would be encumbered by the injured men and by their arms and equipment, he still expected to have time in hand. The distance couldn’t be all that great.

  For some way the floor of the cleft was level; then it began to rise as indicated by the sergeant-major, and the rise became steeper and steeper until it seemed to Cameron to be not far off the vertical.. Loose pieces of rock fell as the men climbed, making the going hazardous. The carrying of the many injured men turned the climb into a nightmare of sweat and blood; hands became torn on the rough rock surface as they scrabbled for a hold or did their best to protect their burdens from more injuries. During that appalling climb two more men died, one of them being the sapper major. When word of this reached Rennie, he gave the only possible order. Unnecessary burdens could not be accepted, and the two dead commandos were held in place until all the others had climbed past, and then they were let go. They crashed back down to the cleft, taking a shower of rubble with them to add to the covering of the earlier dead. The rest climbed on; no backward glances.

  ***

  ‘Noon,’ Forbes said. He looked around: the Castle Bay was dwarfed by the mountains rising sheer from the still, silent water. From above, she would look like a toy in a bath. ‘Noon and no explosion. I don’t like it, Pilot. We’d be bound to hear it.’

  ‘Depends, sir. Whatever it is, it could be blown by small charges, I suppose, and well tamped. If the explosions took place inside the buildings—’

  ‘Perhaps. I hope you’re right, that’s all, but I still don’t like it. The attack was timed for first light—they should have been back by now.’

  Beddows made no answer; he knew the Captain realized well enough that the job could have taken longer than Bell had expected and there was no point in labouring the obvious. But, like the Captain, Beddows felt uneasy for no real reason. There had been that distant sound, not long after the commandos had entered the channel. That was still unexplained; there had been plenty of speculation and it had started the worm of worry. Forbes had been adamant that it should not be investigated from the ship: he would not risk throwing any spanners in. The orders had been crystal clear and positive: the Castle Bay’s mission was to land the commandos and that was all, no trimmings; and Forbes had said, reasonably enough, that if Bell had been ambushed then he would most probably have used his radio if only to warn the Castle Bay to get the hell out and rejoin Vian’s force.

  They just had to wait. Beddows understood the Captain’s anxieties and misgivings. Another thing he would have to decide would be when he should pull out if the commandos failed to return and for one reason or another were unable to communicate. Forbes had been given discretionary powers to make his own decision on withdrawal as circumstances developed. He would not like leaving the shore party to it, wouldn’t like pulling up the drawbridge. And soon the Scharnhorst and the Hipper wouldn’t be far off.

  ***

  ‘You look puffed,’ Rennie said, giving Cameron his up and down look.

  ‘I feel it.’

  ‘Everyone has a duty to be physically fit in wartime. Look at me and my chaps. Not even raised breathing.’

  This was not quite true, but it was near enough. The troops had done wonders in bringing all the injured personnel up that bastard of a climb. Now, at the top where they were covered from view in a saucer-shaped concavity, they rested and would not move on again until dusk. Rennie had carried out a reconnaissance and had found that the descent could be made by way of a gully running down from the eastern side of the saucer. The sides of the gully itself would afford some extra cover and by the time they were well down they would be right inside the tree-line; thick fir forests would hide them as they came down to the fjord. With luck, there wouldn’t be a lot of ground to traverse in the open. Rennie’s plan of attack need differ little from that laid down in the orders: it was simple enough in basis. The target was to be surrounded by seventy-five men moving silently through the night, and as soon as they were in position, Rennie would lead the rest of the commandos in the assault on the main gate in the perimeter fence. They would fight through and enter the central building, killing every German that came in sight, and then bring in the sappers with their explosive materials to set the charges, after which there would be a rapid withdrawal back the way they had come. From then on, movement would have to be fast; the Resistance had indicated that the base supply route around the northern edge of the fjord led to a military garrison, a Norwegian camp now used by the Nazis; and this garrison would be immediately alerted by the explosions, with the result that troops would be rushed to all likely escape routes and the presence of the Castle Bay in the outer fjord was almost certain to become known. Before that happened, they had to be back aboard and under way.

  Rennie said, ‘We can’t hope to make it back to the ship as fast as we would have done in the dinghies. It’s going to be a very close run thing. If there are unforeseen delays—if it takes us longer to fight in than I expect—we’re going to end up in the bag.’

  They waited for the dark, watching the tantalizingly slow passage of the sun down the sky, just sitting about and thinking ahead, wondering who was going to come out of it alive, and watching more of the injured men die. The inaction was enervating but there was nothing to be done about it. There was something foreboding in the very silence of the mountains. Nothing moved anywhere, other than a few light clouds drifting high; there wasn’t even an animal to be seen. Rennie spent a good deal of the time marching up and down with his company commanders. Whilst on passage in the Castle Bay Cameron had gathered that both Bell and Rennie were regular officers, Sandhurst trained; and Rennie had been commissioned into a Guards regiment a year before the outbreak of war. The rest of the commando officers were either pre-war territorials or the holders of temporary wartime commissions such as Cameron’s. The difference tended to show: there was stiffness and formality about Rennie that was absent in the others, but not only that. He carried the extra authority of absolute certainty that his orders would be obeyed without question. The temporary officers had not had that utter sureness so completely instilled into them. In pre-war days they had not held authority and they were in effect still acquiring it...

  The day passed; the sun at last sank below the far horizon to the west.

  Rennie stood and watched the last rays of a splendid sunset and as the rim of the sun vanished to leave its afterglow hanging like fire in the sky, he said, ‘Right. We move out now.’

  ***

  They came in silence, unseen, down into the tree-line and the protection of the tall, close-growing firs. There was no moon; once the dark had come a wind had sprung up, bringing cloud with it. To that extent at least, luck was with the commandos. But as they came down farther they saw light: brilliant light that was reflected from the waters of Vest Hammarfjord, now visible below their line of descent. Floodlights: the Resistance had warned of these. The glow had the look of a yardarm group, a cluster of powerful bulbs customarily hoisted on a wandering lead to a yard when heavy work was being done on the upper deck at night. Cameron said, ‘We may get a preliminary view, sir—find out what we’re going to blow up.’

  Rennie nodded. ‘You could be right. Interesting!’ The advance continued; the troops already had their orders: they would halt at the bottom of the descent, lay the injured men down in cover, and keep out of sight in the thick fir forest until Rennie had thoroughly reconnoitred the ground
through his field-glasses. Down they went, treading carefully, making no sound beyond the crackle of brushwood beneath their boots. The glow of light increased, sweeping out over the waters of the fjord. Now they could hear voices in the distance, the shouting of orders by the sound of it; and soon after this they could hear other sounds, the hum of machinery and the engine of a vehicle.

  A few minutes later they had the base buildings in view beneath what were now confirmed as floodlights. It was a busy scene; there were many German Army uniforms around, plus the swastika armbands of the Waffen SS, and a number of civilian workers. ‘Quislings, no doubt,’ Rennie said in a hard voice. The advance was halted just inside the trees. They were within a quarter of a mile of the German base. Rennie brought his field-glasses up and took a long look. After a while he said, ‘Something’s being loaded on to a lorry. Can’t quite make it out.’ He went on looking. ‘It seems to be some sort of aircraft in miniature, that’s the nearest I can get to a description. We’ll hang on a bit.’ He added, ‘I’d have thought the Resistance could have told us about this.’

  ‘It could be the first time it’s appeared in public,’ Cameron suggested.

  ‘Yes, could be. Could mean the buggers are nearly ready to go, and security’s got a trifle lax.’

  The road, the supply route running through to the military garrison on the far side of the fjord, was below them. Running out from the shore in front of the base was a jetty with a fast-looking power boat secured alongside, not the sort of boat that would take a heavy load. They waited a little over ten minutes, then the lorry moved slowly out and turned from the main gate on to the roadway.

  It came right below the watching men. Rennie stared. He said in little more than a whisper, ‘It looks like a bomb... a big bomb, with wings and an engine. I suppose you could call it a flying bomb—no pilot needed. I wonder what its range is?’