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

by Alexander Fullerton

  Tom Kyle had sent Chalmers down to get the old water-cooled Lewis out and mount it on its stanchion on the engine-room hatch back aft. Potts meanwhile had finally managed to get the Vickers GO set up on the signal deck on the starboard side of the bridge. Taken him a bloody age, at that. The Lewis hadn’t been used in a year or more: they’d been in the Med then, on the Tobruk run, and it had been salvaged out of a dump at Mersa; all the trawlers stuck extra weapons on, whatever they could scrounge from the dumps, for AA defence on that desert coast. It might have been a fine weapon in its day (in 1914, say) but it turned out to be a pain in the neck on board Opal, jamming solid the moment it saw a Swastika or those black crosses. So it had been stowed down for’ard in the bosun’s store. Kyle had sent Chalmers for it partly to get rid of him and partly because the radio operator, amongst others, had been killed, and he considered it important to get a signal out before the aerials and the set went to blazes, to let the escort commander of SL 320 know what was happening. He mightn’t be aware there was a U-boat this close to him, and Kyle flattered himself at being a dab hand with a morse key: he managed it, too, despite having been hit in the shoulder and having a useless arm that hung dripping, luckily without any feeling in that side at all. As soon as he’d got the message away he went down to help Chalmers—Potts had been killed by then, and the Vickers and that bit of signal deck had gone with him. There was no steering, no control, no purpose that Kyle or anyone else could have served up here: the coxswain was draped across his wheel, dead and smouldering and with cortisene all burnt away around him, reeking. Kyle found the boy dead too, his skull smashed by a cannon shell like an exploded egg, in the for’ard welldeck, with the Lewis gun under him and some belts of .303 ammunition wrapped round his shoulders. The only men alive now were dying, and Opal was sinking by the stern and listing too, perhaps about to turn turtle, by the feel of her. Kyle pulled Chalmers’s body off the gun, hefted it in his good arm and staggered aft to the engineroom hatch, which was blackened and blistered but intact, although the mounting for the gun was slightly askew and he could see he’d have a problem. There was nothing else he could usefully have been doing, though, not the slightest point in trying to help such men as might still be living, since there was no hope at all of survival. There were no rafts, and U-boats never bothered with survivors. He knew this so well that he didn’t think about it: the only practical thing to do was take a few Germans with you, make it slightly less joyful an occasion for them. The gun in its cylindrical water-cooling jacket was a heavy, awkward load, and one-armed it was a hell of a job to get it up on the slanting hatch-cover. Cursing it steadily and fluently, a growling noise that sounded like someone else beside him swearing and grunting in his ear. The ship was low in the water, sluggish as if the sea was glue. He got the thing up there finally, then remembered—cursing himself for it, a loud shout of profanity—that the ammo belts were still draped round Chalmers’s torso. He was turning to ease himself down from the hatch-top when U 702’s 20 mm sewed a straight line like explosive stitchwork right up the trawler’s slanting centreline, bursting the old Lewis into flying scrap a second before it sent Tom Kyle reeling scarlet to his Maker.

  Instead of a cross, the albatross / About his neck was hung … The effort of recall passed time, and occupied the mind. His greatest accomplishment so far had been to recapture half Swinburne’s Forsaken Garden, which when he’d memorised it in the English class at Dartmouth had been considered somewhat outré. But now the Ancient Mariner was going to have to wait a while, as it was time to go down and reconnoitre for some grub.

  The child had gone off to school and the girl, wearing the same clothes and carrying the same basket, had left soon afterwards, as she had on the previous two days. Before these departures there’d been the standard early-morning routine as well—the boy to the well with a bucket, sometimes several buckets—his mother opening shutters and seeing him off to school before she fed the hens. Peering down between the slats of the shutters, Jack saw too—as he had yesterday—that she also went into the henhouse and collected the morning’s eggs. Yesterday she’d done it twice, morning and evening, and during her absence in the afternoon he’d gone out there and found three still warm in the straw nests. He’d considered boiling them in a pan of water on her stove, but he’d baulked at taking such a liberty: it had seemed excessive, for some reason. He’d thought better of it since: eating the eggs raw up here later, he’d wished he’d gone ahead and cooked them. There’d have been no traces for her to have seen, just from a pot having had water boiled in it. And he could have used the heated water afterwards for washing. He’d taken some bread yesterday, and a mutton bone with meat on it, and drunk some milk from a jug. He’d also washed himself, without soap, in a bucket of ice-cold water, and his appearance afterwards in the mirror in the girl’s bedroom had been somewhat reassuring. He’d approached it with trepidation, remembering the shock he’d given himself that first day; but yesterday the eyes had seemed less crazy, the expression altogether less savage. As a result, he supposed, of having had some rest and a certain amount of sustenance, and shelter.

  The ankle was less painful, too. Sprains did heal themselves, given time and rest. Moving out of his room now and down the stairs, negotiating the heap of junk that blocked them lower down, he hardly put any weight on it at all. He’d become adept at hopping on the sound foot, and taking weight on his arms against walls and so on; and feeling generally better now, stronger in spirit as well as physically, he wanted the ankle to mend quickly so he could be on his way. He thought the bike would still be in the place where he’d hidden it. There’d been no further signs of the military, which there surely would have been if they’d found it; they’d been searching for an escaped POW at the very time it had disappeared, and they’d hardly have failed to connect the two phenomena. They might well have assumed their quarry had taken off in a southerly direction, and that search would have been a formality, compliance with an order to check all buildings within a certain radius. Something like that. It had seemed perfunctory, at the time.

  Today, his programme was to go out and get some eggs, then heat water in a saucepan and boil them. He’d been over-cautious yesterday, and raw eggs were fairly unappealing even to a very hungry man. Whereas hard-boiled ones, with some bread if he struck lucky again—

  He stopped dead, in the kitchen doorway.

  She’d laid a place at the table. A setting for one. Knife, fork, German sausage and a peeled, hard-boiled egg, two thick slices of black bread, a tumbler with a jug of milk beside it.

  He stood frozen, gaping at it. Scared stiff of it. It was like looking at a baited trap. He was as shocked as he might have been if there’d been someone sitting there with a pistol pointing at his head.

  But as his mind began to unfreeze, he realised that she might have set it for herself. Or for the child … That was it! The child would be coming home early from school—before she was expecting to get back herself—so she’d left his meal ready for him.

  It was the obvious solution. But for a moment he’d been really frightened. Nerves on edge: he hadn’t appreciated what strange tricks solitude could play. Staring at the setting on the table, actually frightened …

  She’d left it for the child. Obviously. And he’d better make it snappy now, he realised, because if that was the boy’s lunch he might be trotting up to the door quite soon. Nasty little Nazi that it was: Jack remembered that bony little arm shooting up, the rapped “Heil Hitler …” But now … move. Egg-hunt first. No—visit to the outside WC first, en route to the egg collection. Via a window, since as usual the back door was locked. The child would have its own key, presumably: unless she hid one for it somewhere outside—which might be worth investigating … It was most likely a half-day at school—a Saturday, probably. In which case tomorrow would be Sunday, they might not leave the house at all and he, Jack, might therefore be confined to his room. Facing, among other deprivations, foodlessness. So the thing would be to gather quite
a few eggs and hard-boil them all. Then straight back upstairs, before the return of junior. Eat a couple of the eggs today, save the others—and perhaps take one of those two slices of bread?

  The child would hardly complain at getting only one slice. If it did, its mother would tell it not to talk nonsense. Might take a slice and a half, in fact: cut one slice neatly in half with that knife, and keep the half-slice in case tomorrow was a Sunday?

  He set a pan of water on the stove to start heating while he was outside. And he found five eggs. Good for him, bad luck for the girl. He felt sure it was eggs she took away with her every morning in the basket. Probably traded them for other items such as bread, milk, sausage …

  The child did not come home for its lunch. Jack was lying on his mattress several hours later when he heard someone approaching and knelt up quickly, peering through his shutters: it was the girl. At about the same time as she’d returned on the last two days, and as usual carrying a loaded basket. She went round the side of the house to the back, and he heard the back door open and bang shut.

  Then—distantly but clearly, echoey through the half-empty house—he heard her laugh.

  In London, Rear-Admiral Aubrey Wishart slammed a black ’phone down and snatched up the red one.

  “Wishart.”

  Listening …

  “I know. As a matter of fact I’ve just been on a visit to the Tracking Room. It’s true he’s a long way astern of station, and it’s also quite plain the U-boats are homing-in on him again … Yes, agreed, SL 320’s in for some more rough stuff, at least two or three more nights of …”

  Listening again. Impatience in his manner.

  “Close, yes. But he’s back on the rails again now, and he’ll know as well as you and I do that he’ll have to stay on them. He knows the score, he’ll handle it.”

  Wishart reached for a cigarette, put it in his mouth, groped for a lighter. The voice from the other end of the scrambled line continued for a while, then ended with another question. Wishart drew smoke hard into his lungs.

  “I can tell you positively that he would never have intended losing them. He’d have seen he had to do some damn thing, though, and what he’s just done may have saved half a dozen ships. Or more. But if there’d been any likelihood of actually losing the U-boats he’d have put the kibosh on that when he answered the first call from Opal, wouldn’t he?”

  Another interruption … Then, “I agree.” Smoke gusted round the telephone. “Very sad. And that’s two of his three trawlers gone, which rather brings one back to his request for reinforcements. As I said before, it seems perfectly justified—especially now his primary task is damn near completed—and that convoy’s going to be lucky to survive even in single figures!”

  He rocked back in the chair, scowling at the ceiling.

  “Yes. Admiral Ramsay has been kept informed.”

  Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay was running the London end of “Torch,” as Deputy Allied Naval Commander—deputy to A B Cunningham. Sir Andrew Cunningham and his staff were already in Gibraltar, and General Eisenhower would be joining them in the tunnel some time today. Not that convoy SL 320 came into the scope of their enormously complicated plans: the red-herring operation was entirely peripheral to the main one.

  “No.” Wishart frowned into the red telephone. “Nobody can send him orders now without risk of blowing the gaff and wrecking the whole bloody thing—just when it’s on the point of accomplishment. And if I know Nick Everard, he’d ignore your orders anyway. My worst time, let me tell you, was three days ago before he took matters into his own hands. I’ve known him more than twenty years, he’s there because I knew damn well that if anyone could …”

  He’d been interrupted again. He listened for only a few seconds this time. Then he cut in: “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m very busy, and this isn’t getting us anywhere. The only way you could possibly help is by sending him the reinforcements he’s asked for. What the hell would you propose—a PQ seventeen?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  From a German intelligence appreciation dated 4 November 1942: The relatively small number of landing craft and the fact that only two passenger ships are in this assembly at Gibraltar, do not indicate any immediate landing in the Mediterranean area or on the northwest African coast.

  “Four hundred revolutions. Port fifteen …”

  Nick Everard was at the binnacle with a sliver of moon beyond to silhouette his dark, duffel-coated shape as Harbinger’s rudder went over and revs increased; she was moving out to support Paeony, who’d put a U-boat down at close quarters and now had it in asdic contact. It was the first one tonight and as yet there was no pressure from elsewhere; the Germans had been holding off, keeping the defenders on edge in the knowledge that they were out there and might move in at any moment, had only two or three nights left in which to finish the butchery.

  Unless they were intending simply to maintain contact, and wait for the rest of the pack to join?

  It wasn’t likely.

  “Midships!”

  “Midships, sir …”

  Paeony’s RDF was out of action—which was a good enough reason for Harbinger to move in that direction. Guyatt was busy with this U-boat, and his sector would be unguarded by RDF or even visually. Not that any sector could be covered as it should be, with escorts spread so widely: and the only remaining trawler having some trouble with her asdic set. Broad had made a signal about it this afternoon. Even Harbinger wasn’t totally without problems: the weather had been foul for days on end, and the rough handling had left a host of defects including one serious one, a leak on one condenser. Hawkey was in a state of agitation about it, but there wasn’t anything to be done, at sea. The prospect of Harbinger breaking down was one you didn’t have to entertain. “Steer oh-one-eight.” “Oh-one-eight, sir …”

  The convoy’s mean course now was 030. They were back on the ordered route, and nearly two days astern of schedule. It would have been worse if they hadn’t cut the corner, by-passed the dog-leg of position B. But there could be no more diversions, not at any rate until all the “Torch” assault convoys had passed astern.

  SL 320 consisted of twenty ships, after losing the William Law and the Bonny Prince last night. The William Law had been hit by two torpedoes and had gone down quickly, but the Bonny Prince had straggled, dropped several miles astern, and she’d been hit while Stella had been struggling back to see what the trouble was and persuade her to rejoin. Then she’d been torpedoed twice, with an interval of about ten minutes between the attacks. Nick had known there were two U-boats ahead at that time, a dozen miles away, but not of any other until those two ships were hit, within about half an hour of each other.

  So thirty-seven ships had been reduced to twenty. And the fewer ships were left in convoy, the shorter the odds became on any individual being the next to go. But those odds would also be affected by the number of U-boats involved. HF/DF contacts during the evening and early hours of the night had indicated that four were keeping pace with the convoy, and a Tracking Room signal received at dusk had stated, In addition to those in your immediate vicinity, transmissions on 4995 KCs between 1500 and 1800/A indicate 5 U-boats now ahead of you will have joined by noon tomorrow.

  Bearcroft had read that message out from the W/T office voice-pipe, when they’d been at dusk action stations, and Chubb had broken an ensuing silence with an enthusiastic “Oh, good!”

  Chubb’s ebullience was undiminished. Warrimer had settled down, become more intent on the job he was doing and less conscious of his own value to it. Mike Scarr was quieter than he had been. For all of them—except Chubb, apparently—it had been a telling, formative week.

  The Omeo was being left astern as Harbinger surged forward and diverged from the left-hand column. Next ahead of the Omeo now was the Colombia: then the Sweetcastle, and the Tolworth Tide as column leader. The Chauncy Maples led the whole pack of them from the centre, the head of column three, with the Burbridge astern of her. The oiler, Redgulf S
tar, was abeam to starboard of the Burbridge. Harbinger driving her narrow hull across a sea that was definitely easier now, lower and longer and with moonglow high-lighting the crests, spray glittering as it came whipping across the bridge. The moon was only a brightness behind cloud, most of the time, with occasional leaks of brilliance through gaps: the wind was distinctly colder, to make up for conditions having improved in other ways.

  A call from the plot … Carlish took it. “Surface contact oh-four-one, seven miles, sir!”

  “Translate that into range and bearing from Astilbe, and pass it by TBS.”

  Scarr would probably be doing it already: he’d have sent the initial report up to the bridge while he got on with it. Although Graves should have it on his own screen by now: he was closer to it than Harbinger was. But RDF as well as asdic performances were erratic in bad weather. Nick had his glasses up, looking for a sight of Paeony somewhere ahead: and TBS was calling, Gannet informing Eagle that she’d lost her contact. Then, Captain to captain, please?

  “Bring her to oh-three-oh, cox’n.”

  Convoy course—until he’d drawn clear of the Tolworth Tide, to be able to cross ahead of her. He took the microphone from Bearcroft: “Everard here. What’s the problem?”

  Just for the record, sir, the one I just lost would seem to be a deep-diver. Went straight down and out of my beam at a range when I should have held him. Over.

  “Could be so. We thought we had one a few days ago.” Or more. Time ran into itself: two days, seven, ten … “I was coming to join you, but I’ve a contact now on oh-four-oh, seven miles. I’ll be passing between you and the convoy. Out.”