The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5

by Alexander Fullerton

  “But?”

  “Well, I’m sorry to be—well, leaving you, sir, even for such a—”

  “You won’t be leaving me, Tony. You’ll be very much with me. The great advantage for me, in fact, is I’ll have one CO in this group who’ll know exactly what I expect of him.” Nick told the others, “That’s no reflection on the rest of you. The fact is we’re still strangers to each other. Which, come to think of it, is why we now have to get down to some more hard work …”

  It was past midnight when Astilbe’s motorboat returned him to Harbinger’s gangway, at Number Two buoy. It had been a well-spent evening: his presence had lessened the potential awkwardness of this sudden arrival of a brand-new CO, and he’d seen to it that his own confidence in Graves became obvious to Astilbe’s wardroom officers. Then, alone with Graves after dinner, they’d had a useful session, tying-up various loose ends.

  Back in his own ship, he paced the quarterdeck for a while with his new first lieutenant, who’d been at the gangway to meet him. It was no surprise to him that Warrimer, whose elevation had been just as sudden and unexpected as Graves’s, was taking to it like a duck to water. Warrimer needed no reassurance at all, he was plainly revelling in his greatly increased responsibilities.

  Mike Scarr might find the change a bit difficult at first, Nick thought, after he’d sent Warrimer down to turn in. Scarr being RN—as distinct from Warrimer with his temporary commission—and only junior in seniority as a lieutenant by a matter of weeks. Nick realised he’d need to keep an eye on that.

  If time permitted any such attention to domestic detail … He’d stopped his pacing, right aft beside the depth-charge racks, staring out across the dark but gleaming anchorage. Still, velvet-warm night air under a brilliantly starry sky—which was what gave the flat, black surface of the estuary its shine … Well, there’d be a settling-down period, a day or two—even four or five, possibly—before the convoy ran into opposition. With a speed of advance of only seven and a half knots, it would take a week to reach the latitude of the Canaries. That rate of progress was of course dictated by the performance of the slowest ships in the convoy, but in fact the escorting trawlers wouldn’t do much better. Ten knots was as much as could reasonably be expected of them. Which meant that if a trawler lagged behind or was separated for any reason, it would take her a long time to catch up, with only a two-and-a-half-knot margin. They were supposed to be twelve knotters: but that had been years ago, thousands of steamed miles ago. The trawlers would provide the convoy’s close defence. Each was fitted with asdics, had a four-inch gun on her foc’sl, a couple of machine-guns amidships and a depth-charge chute on her stern. They’d plot along in close attendance on the merchantmen while Harbinger and the two corvettes roamed farther afield to act as striking force. Not that the Flowers with their flat-out maximum of 15 knots were ideal for that role, either, when the U-boats they’d be fighting could make a good two knots more; but the Flowers were what he had, all he had, and the weaker your defence—he believed—the more necessary it became to take the offensive, smash the assaults before they could be pressed home. He thought Guyatt of Paeony fully understood this principle and how to apply it, now; and Graves certainly did.

  A faint breeze momentarily dulled the surface shine. The quarterdeck sentry shifted, his rifle-butt thumping against a stanchion. Nick had exchanged a few words with him earlier. Resuming his slow pacing, he noticed the outline on X gundeck of a camp-bed that probably contained young Carlish. It reminded him—he’d meant to tell Warrimer—Mr Timberlake could stand one bridge watch per day, with Carlish to back him up, and for one dog watch each day Carlish could be on his own, although Nick would make a point of being near at hand. If that worked out, by the end of this trip Carlish might rate a watchkeeping certificate, and thereafter earn his pay more usefully than he could at present. This had been Tony Graves’s suggestion, this evening.

  An interesting character, Graves. Motivated by a desire to serve, rather than by any personal ambition? Nick had seen him more clearly in the last few hours than he had in all the recent months. Graves seemed to be governed by an innate modesty, limitations he imposed on his own opinion of himself: and when you thought about this it was difficult not to see also in your mind’s eye that dumpy little wife of his. Because of the—well, “homespun” quality they shared? They were very much a pair of the same breed … Which didn’t match Graves’s sharp expertise as an asdic man, or the other attributes gained through years of sea and war experience; but Graves was himself unaware of any such qualities—as yet … He’d sheltered, always, behind a leader’s shoulder: even in civilian life—assistant miller, taking little of the kudos but most likely the lion’s share of the work, in some factory churning out breakfast cereals, for God’s sake … As expert in the science of milling as in the art of submarine detection?

  He’d learn now, discover talents he didn’t yet realise he possessed. Command would change him, probably for life. Nick wondered whether Mrs Graves would mind.

  He still didn’t feel like sleep. In this single day an enormous amount of ground had been covered, and the echoes of it were buzzing around inside his skull—all the talking, wrangling, planning, instructing and advising … That, on top of the upheaval and uncertainties of the past fortnight. And Kate: but he didn’t want to speculate about Kate—her whereabouts, anything at all—until this thing was finished. There wasn’t room for her, not now: if he let her in at all she’d take more than her fair share. He forced a change of thinking quickly, to the fact—the handicap—that the three trawlers weren’t equipped with TBS, the talk-between-ships VHF radio link, so that communications with them could only be conducted through the time-consuming routines of visual signalling, laboriously flashing messages to each ship in turn.

  Reaching the stern again, he spoke to the sentry’s dark silhouette. “I’m going below now, Crosby.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Goodnight, sir.” Crosby reminded him—as if he might have been thinking it was high time his skipper did turn in—“Not much kip-time left now, sir.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  Sailing time was set for dawn. In fact the trawlers would be on the move well before the light came, to carry out an anti-submarine sweep offshore. They’d be out there and working when Harbinger slipped from her buoy, and Astilbe and Paeony formed up astern to follow her seaward; the merchantmen would by that time be weighing anchors—steam capstans clanking, stinking black mud splashing from slowly-rising cables. As daylight flushed the estuary with colour the ships would be crowding west, out past Cape Sierra Leone and into open sea where gradually, after a fair amount of hectoring by the commodore and chivvying by the escorts, the whole motley assortment would form itself into the single entity to be known as SL 320.

  CHAPTER SIX

  23 October 1942:

  Commander-in-Chief Middle East to Prime Minister: Zip!

  Prime Minister Winston Churchill to President Roosevelt:

  The battle in Egypt began tonight at 8 pm London time. The whole force of the Army will be engaged. I will keep you informed.

  Max Looff, Kapitänleutnant, dragged out of sleep by the shriek of his submarine’s alarm bell, moved instantly by reflex—jack-knifing to hurl himself off the bunk, the noise like a torture in his fogged brain while awareness grew inside like a negative taking form in the developing liquid: this alarm—ten to one it was an aircraft attack—the long, nerve-wracking patrol and his own sick worry growing: but only hours short of docking in St Nazaire now, thank God—or rather, please God … Main vents had crashed open and before that he’d heard distantly the yell of “Dive, dive, dive!” The deck was angling by the time his feet landed on it, U 122’s bow dropping steeply, men rushing to their action stations skidding and jostling, and Looff glimpsed—as sudden and startling as party-goers caught unaware in camera flashes—fright, desperation, in the pale, drawn, stubbled or bearded faces of men already close to their limits. You saw it only for an instant before the
individual re-asserted control, faces turning to masks again, and Looff hoping to God that none of them focusing on him one or two seconds ago as he pushed out through the green curtain that shut off his tiny cabin-space might have seen that same fright mirrored: eyes wide, mouth slackened … It had drawn tight now, into a slit like a sabre-cut: he was in the control room and the bridge lookouts—and Oelricher who’d been officer of the watch—were sorting themselves out of a heap on the deck, under the lower hatch in a mess of water that would have sloshed down as she dipped into the waves, while Oelricher had still been pulling the lid down over his soused head. Fourteen metres on the depth-gauges: Franz Walther, Looff’s chief engineer and right-hand man, was busy with the trim.

  “Blow Q!”

  Q being the quick-diving tank, flooded to get the boat down fast. It had done its job, she was going down too fast.

  “Brit aircraft, sir.” Oelricher—he was quartermaster, which in the U-boat context meant warrant officer and navigator—answered Looff’s unspoken question. “Bomber—Wellington, I’d guess, but I didn’t wait to—” shaking his head, still short of breath: “Came out of nowhere—well, low cloud, but straight for us, as if—”

  The sea began to explode, astern. U 122 like a drum being smashed or a ball kicked point-blank against a wall. Bombs, or very shallow-set charges. Men were being flung about: Looff, hugging the long barrel of the search periscope as his submarine tilted until she was almost standing on her nose, plummeting down, saw the depthgauge needles jerking to the blasts of pressure. Then realised as the reverberations died away that she was still vibrating, the whole ship trembling violently enough to shake herself apart, and noise from the stern like a giant knife-grinder.

  “Stop both motors!”

  Noise and vibration ceased so promptly that he knew the men back aft must have pulled the switches of their own accord before that order could have reached them. Either the screws had been damaged—blades bent or blown off—or the shafts had been bent. Or both.

  “After ends report bad leaking, sir!”

  Eighty-seven metres on the gauges. Ninety …

  “Get her snout up, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Blow number one main ballast, sir?”

  He nodded to Walther. The engineer was bearded and incredibly dirty, but his brown eyes were calm. Looff envied him: and was more than ever conscious of the degree to which he relied on him. Scruffy bastard though he was … He heard the rush of high-pressure air, a noise as harsh as sand-blasting in the narrow pipe. There’d been something said about leaks aft: he guessed it would be the stern glands again, where the propeller-shafts passed through the pressure-hull. They’d had trouble with them earlier in this patrol, first during a counter-attack after U 122 and some others had mauled a convoy south of Iceland, and then again—worse, and with other major damage too—farther west, during a long, very unpleasant depthcharging close to Newfoundland.

  Walther had been blowing the forward main ballast tank for nearly half a minute, and she hadn’t responded at all. Steep bow-down angle, needles sweeping round the gauges. Hundred and five metres: something as wrong as hell … “Blow two and three main ballast!”

  Faces like trapped animals’. Sweating with nerves. Frightened animals, all in the same cage and perhaps about to drown. He himself—inside himself—as screwed-up as any of them, and the worst and deepest fear was the nightmare of this being recognised. Externally at this moment all they’d see would be the straight gash of a mouth, hard eyes, strong jaw. Even a smile—as demanded by his reputation. He was also supposed to smile when ships burned. He’d done so once, apparently, even though he had no recollection of it and could only think it had been a grimace which someone had wrongly interpreted: but whenever he hit a tanker, in particular, they all looked for that grin, for the way they wanted him to be. They were kids, most of them eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, only the POs and CPOs older than that: they wanted a fable, a skipper they could boast about to their girls. And he’d given them a tanker, this trip, with a grin to match: he’d also knocked down one straggler, and two other freighters out of that convoy close to Canada … The slight smile began to form now as he remembered a little catch-phrase that had gone around and was still quoted: “For Max Looff it’s always the happy time!” Then his smile switched off completely: he shouted, pointing furiously, “Main vents, you fucking idiot!”

  You could see from the indicators on the panel—the vents were still open. All that air had been blown straight out to sea!

  Vents thudding shut now. Walther scarlet under dirt and beard. Walther of all people—probably the shrewdest and most conscientious engineer Looff had ever sailed with. Looff glaring at him in white-hot rage: fists bunched, eyes blazing, on the brink of losing control, physically attacking him. It was the sort of carelessness, stupidity, that you’d have skinned some half-baked recruit for: from a man of Walther’s experience and expertise it came closer to sabotage, dereliction of duty, criminal carelessness …

  “Stop blowing!”

  The boat was levelling, and Walther was directing the two planes-men—on the fore planes, five degrees of dive … The gauges showed 130 metres, and the descent had been checked. They’d been deeper than this before now, of course, quite a lot deeper, but the Type VII C was only tested to 90 metres. Besides which Oelricher had called a warning from his chart table a few minutes ago: “We’re in eighty-six fathoms, sir …” 86 fathoms being about 172 metres: so another forty of that headlong rush and she’d have slammed into the bottom.

  “I’m—”Walther glancing round, shaking his head—“extremely sorry, sir. Don’t know how I could’ve—” His voice had a shake in it, too. He’d turned back: he had his hands full with the trim, to get her up now out of danger—because with weak spots, leaks such as they had aft and other points of strain from those earlier batterings, this depth was dangerous—and to do it in a controlled manner he’d need to get rid of some of that air in the main ballast tanks. The submarine’s bow was already rising to an extent that the forward planesman, with maximum dive on now, was finding impossible to control … “Permission to crack number one main vent, sir?”

  Looff barely heard. He was still glaring at him … Then the engineer looked round again: Looff swallowed, mumbled “Affirmative,” and turned away as if he couldn’t stand the sight of him. Walther, the man he’d trusted, relied on, more than any other. All right, so in a U-boat the engineer was the man who counted most, after the skipper: but Walther was exceptional in any case. And a minute ago he’d nearly drowned them all! It amounted to nothing less: it you couldn’t use your propellers, all you had to get her up with was the store of high-pressure air in the bottles, so if you blew it all out through tanks with open vents in their tops you’d be left with nothing except a one-way ticket to perdition. And yet—it dawned on Looff as suddenly as a cold shower hitting him—by reacting as violently as he had he’d made an exhibition of himself: seeing it, he felt like a man coming out of fever, delirium …

  Because he did rely on Franz Walther so heavily? Needed his talents and support now more than ever, because of his own …

  No. He shut his mind to that. It wasn’t that his nerves were shot, simply that he was played-out, mentally and physically exhausted, worn through to the bone … He needed the leave that was due to him: and afterwards he’d be all right. Berlin, and Trudi: he’d drown in her … He put a hand on Walther’s shoulder, told him gruffly, “Sorry. Temper’s a bit short … Look—you’re allowed one mistake a year, and I’d forgotten, this year you never drew your ration. So we’ll forget it.”

  Walther glanced round. White teeth gleamed in a gap in the scrubby beard. Teeth like a rat’s, narrow and sharp-looking. Despite which Franz Walther invariably got more than his ration of women. There was surprise in his eyes now, despite the grin: Looff had turned away but he was still seeing that probing stare, a kind of critical speculation—as if Walther had begun to guess …

  She was coming up nicely now
. The engineer was releasing air from the tanks a little at a time as she rose, still slightly bow-up but not excessively so. It would be necessary to check out the propellers now—one at a time, in the hope that only one of them might be damaged. That was only a very small hope, from his recollection of how it had felt and sounded: but in any case he wanted her closer to the surface before making any experiments of that kind: there was a danger of shaking those glands right out. Imagination saw the spurts of sea, rivets blowing out like bullets, plates bulging, splitting, the Atlantic bursting in …

  “I want a report on the leaks—after ends.”

  “Lieutenant Gebhardt went to deal with it, sir.” That was Grewe, first lieutenant—on his way to the watertight door, to unclip it and go aft. There were only two such doors in the boat, one at each end of the control room, so that the forward and after compartments were very large, so big that in practical terms it meant if one of those subdivisions were flooded, and the boat was in deep water, you’d have had it. And most of the Atlantic—until you came to a shallow coastal strip such as U 122 was in now—was very deep indeed.

  “Periscope depth.”

  He’d decided he’d surface completely, then check the state of the screws. A recce of the sky first, of course. That bomber would be a hundred miles away by now, but there could be another: there were far too many of the bastards these days, and the approaches to the U-boat bases were favourite hunting areas for them. Three U-boats had been lost to British aircraft in Biscay in the last few months: and if those bombs had fallen just a metre or so from where they did fall, U 122 might well have made it four.

  Looff was at the chart beside Oelricher, using dividers to measure the distance from here to the Loire estuary and the St Nazaire U-boat pens. The quartermaster told him, saving him the trouble, “Would’ve been four and half hours’ steaming, sir.”