by John Harris
Moving through the water behind her at full speed, the throttle wide open, the seaplane tender in the hands of Corporal Bunting held her position until the Sunderland began to draw away from her. Then, just as she was on the point of lifting off, there was a bang, the aircraft’s tail came up until it was almost vertical, and the nose of the machine dug into the water in an enormous cloud of spray and flying water.
‘Christ, another!’
On the point of closing the throttles, instead Bunting slammed them with the heel of his hand to make sure they were fully open and swung the wheel so that the boat slid into a skidding turn at full speed.
As the searchlight flared, sending its ice-white beam across the dark lagoon, they saw the mountainous wall of water flung up by the aircraft, and a huge mist of spray drifting away. What looked like a tidal wave was moving, ahead of where the aircraft had disappeared, then it seemed to surge back on its tracks, just as the aircraft bobbed up, tail first, like a fisherman’s float, before settling back and sliding out of sight.
The water was littered with floating wreckage, an aileron and one of the elevators laying flatly on the heaving surface, then a wing float bobbed up and joined them. There was no sign of any member of the crew until the fitter, who was in the stern of the boat, yelled and pointed. A man was struggling in the water, drifting rapidly downstream on the tide.
Opening the throttles, Bunting swung the boat round in a tight circle that threw up a large wave, and stopped her dead within a yard or two of the swimming man. A rope was thrown and the shocked man grabbed it and was able to swing his arm so that it twisted round his wrist. The fitter and the deckhand were unable to haul him aboard so Bunting left the wheel to join them and, between them, they had him gasping on the well-deck. It was the rear gunner and he appeared to be uninjured.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Am I alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d just got in the turret when I heard this bang and the kite stood on its nose and started filling with water. I jettisoned the doors and fell out. I didn’t know where I was.’ The dazed man looked up anxiously. ‘You sure I’m alive? Am I the only one?’
‘It looks like it.’
The rear gunner looked at his rescuers for a moment with blank eyes then put his hands over his face and started to weep.
There were celebrations at Boina that evening as the news of their latest success reached Heidegger. Following the disaster at Giuru and the incident with the refueller, it seemed a triumph. As the reports came in, Lorenz could hardly contain himself.
Much as he disliked Lorenz, Heidegger had to admit he was very capable and the men under him liked his tough approach. The only fly in the ointment seemed to be the absence of young Willer. Their contacts at Kumrabai and Mahera had not heard of him and it worried Heidegger. Had he been injured? Had the British picked him up? Were they questioning him?
‘He’s lying low,’ Lorenz insisted. ‘He’s after the petrol, at Lungi. He’s just waiting his chance.’
Heidegger nodded. ‘I think we’d better have a toast to that,’ he said.
They started drinking before the evening meal – French brandy from Senegal and Scotch whisky stolen from Freetown docks – and one or two of the younger men grew noisy. The meal was a rowdy affair with a lot of shouting and bread throwing, and Heidegger at the head of the table noticed that Pfitzner, supervising the serving of the meal, was watching Lorenz with angry eyes as he talked across the table to Magda Fallada.
He was outlining the year’s successes for her, his face alight with hope and ambition. ‘Schaarhorst and Gneisenau,’ he was crowing. ‘Escaped from Brest. Tirpitz at Trondheim to stop any attempts by the British and the Americans to supply Russia by North Cape. Britain hit by the U-boat campaign. Singapore gone. The Philippines gone. The Japanese running riot across the Pacific. The American fleet sunk at Pearl Harbor. Rommel at the gates of Cairo. German soldiers at Sevastopol, Rostov and Stalingrad.’
It was an impressive list, Heidegger had to admit. He saw Lorenz raise his glass to the Fallada woman and she returned the gesture with a look in her eyes that confirmed his suspicion that she and Lorenz were lovers. As he watched them, Pfitzner moved behind Lorenz and Heidegger saw him deliberately spill coffee across his knees. Lorenz’ rapt look vanished at once as he swung round and glared.
‘My apologies, sir,’ the steward said blandly. ‘An accident.’
Lorenz subsided as damp cloths were brought but, watching, Heidegger suspected that the time was coming when he’d need to do something about Pfitzner. He had been brooding for some time now, withdrawn and angry, his heavy brows down, his eyes always on Lorenz and the Fallada woman. He’d been warned again by Heidegger to keep away from the woman he was chasing in one of the villages at the head of the river but – Heidegger found himself feeling guilty – if he himself could feel stirred by the thought of Lorenz and Magda Fallada naked on her bed, then doubtless so could Pfitzner, the boastful lover of women. The spilling of the coffee seemed to spell trouble and, despite the successes at Giuru and Jum, Heidegger was conscious of a chilly uneasiness.
Six
The trots in the lagoon, which had been looking bare for some time, were looking even more bare now.
The stand-by crew had been called out and a boom defence vessel was now anchored over the spot where A-Apple had gone in, for a diver to go down to attach strops to haul her to the surface. Because of the faulty light socket, the convoy that had been expected had been without air escort for two hours and it had been enough for the U-boats to take advantage of it. Two ships had been sunk and another was being towed by a naval tug towards Freetown harbour. The navy were understandably annoyed.
Molyneux and Hobson sat in Mackintosh’s office, Mackintosh frowning at the service sheets of the lost machine.
‘The bloody thing had just gone down the slip,’ he was saying. ‘Hacker swears she was in excellent condition.’
‘He’s got some good chaps in the hangar, too,’ Molyneux said slowly. ‘We’ve never had much fault to find.’
‘We’ve lost a lot of aircraft all the same, sport,’ Mackintosh pointed out.
‘Perhaps they weren’t all due to bad servicing.’
Hobson looked up, startled, and Molyneux shrugged and pushed a packet of cigarettes forward.
‘This is an important base,’ he pointed out. ‘And, what with detachments and accidents, we’ve nearly been wiped off the map.’
Nobody spoke and he expanded his theme. ‘We provide cover for the whole Sierra Leone area,’ he pointed out. ‘From south of Bathurst down to Takoradi where they’re also having unexplained accidents.’ He lit a cigarette slowly and thoughtfully. ‘At the moment we’re managing to keep our machines in the air – just – but some of the most important convoys of the war are due past. Without them, Uncle Erwin up in the desert could push through to the Canal. When shall we know what caused it?’
‘As soon as the boom defence vessel starts lifting,’ Hobson said. ‘I’ve got a tender alongside her with a radio. As soon as they know, they’ll call headquarters who’ll ring us.’
Towards midnight, Corporal Feverel, Kneller and Ginger Donnelly were awakened and told to report to the base.
‘Now what’s on?’ Feverel asked.
‘Sick man to be taken off the beach at Lungi.’
They knew the water at Lungi well. They had laid a triangular bombing target just offshore and had taken advantage of the opportunity to spend a whole joyous day there with the pinnace crew away from the suffocating confines of Jum, with a breeze fresh from the sea and only the possibility of sharks and the vicious stings of the Portuguese men-o’-war to mar the swimming.
‘Who is this chap?’ Feverel asked. ‘The King of England?’
‘One of the foremen, I heard,’ the service policeman who had wakened him said. ‘You’re a dab hand with a signalling lamp, they told me.’
Feverel acknowledged the fact and the policeman went on cheerfully, ‘P
erhaps they think you might be attacked by the Scharnhorst as you go across the bay. They were going to do it by ambulance, but it’s too far round so they’re going to do it by boat.’
Feverel began to dress, wishing he hadn’t been so good at Morse as a Boy Scout. Corporal Bates was waiting with a seaplane tender alongside the catamaran when they reached the base and as they climbed aboard, Squadron Leader Greeno, the medical officer, arrived. He was followed soon afterwards by Molyneux, whose thin face looked angry and puzzled.
‘It’s not one of the foremen,’ he said. ‘They think now he’s a foreigner. If it’s true I want to know who he is.’
The tender was just about to leave when they heard a car brake to a stop in the darkness. A torch flashed and, as feet clattered down the jetty, Morgan, the padre, appeared.
‘Thought I might be needed,’ he pointed out. ‘They said he was in a bad way.’
As the boat moved out of the creek into the river, picking out the buoys with its searchlight, they could see the glow of Freetown in the distance. It wasn’t very bright because the glow of Freetown never was, but on the hill behind the town they could see the sparkle of lights from the hospital.
The padre was still recovering his breath. ‘Dhu, man,’ he said, lighting his pipe and filling the cabin with acrid smoke, ‘even if he is a poor benighted foreigner I suppose he’s still entitled to a prayer when he’s dying.’
‘Is he dying?’ Molyneux asked.
‘I gather he’s in a bad way,’ Greeno said.
‘He slipped across the border from French Guinea,’ the padre added. ‘Wanted to join De Gaulle’s lot.’
‘Who says?’ At that moment, Molyneux wasn’t much inclined to trust foreigners.
‘They said,’ Morgan pointed out vaguely. ‘I heard them tell the doc.’
Molyneux wondered if his normal enthusiasm was running away with him. Morgan was an odd character. He had come from a country parish and Molyneux never quite knew what to make of him because he seemed to spend all his time in the mess drinking his ration of whisky and that of any non-drinker he could persuade to hand over his allocation. Nevertheless, he was far from a normal run-of-the-mill vicar because he was an Oxford scholar, had won a gong for bravery in the other war, spoke excellent German and French and had travelled extensively in Europe. In fact, he’d been in some doubt in 1939 as to whether to become a padre or an interpreter and even now was called on occasionally by the navy to translate when they picked up U-boat signals in clear.
The boat was thrusting through the water at a good speed now, Corporal Bates nursing it because they had a long way to go. As they approached the river mouth the waves coming in from the sea through the wide entrance of the Rokel caused it to lurch and the doctor reached out suddenly for a handhold. The boat’s crew were in the wheelhouse with Bates, the mooring party sitting on the hatches over the noisy diesel engines in the well-deck.
There was nothing to see in the darkness and Ginger began to yawn. He was just on the point of curling up on the deck for a sleep when they noticed that the stars and the lights of Freetown had disappeared.
‘Rain,’ he said.
A few minutes later they were hit by a squall that slashed at the windscreen and drove them all into a crowded group in the cabin. Then a message came from forward that a light was flashing from the naval signal station on the hill.
‘What’s he saying?’ Bates asked.
The Aldis clattered and the light started again, a winking pinpoint in the blackness high in the sky.
‘He says, “You are…” He says, “You are in the middle of”’ Feverel looked at Bates and grinned. ‘He says, “You are in the middle of a minefield.”’
‘Oh, charming,’ Bates said. ‘Bloody charming!’
‘If the navy bothered to tell us where they were it would help,’ Molyneux growled.
‘We don’t draw much water, sir,’ Feverel reassured him. ‘We ought to go over them.’
‘Unless they’re floaters with the old glass horns. In Sierra Leone they could well be. What do we do? Turn back?’
‘Dhu, boy,’ Morgan said. ‘If we’re in the middle of it, we might just as well keep going. I’ll say a prayer.’
It was in the early hours of the morning when they reached the beach at Lungi and Bates closed the throttles so that they drifted with idling engines.
‘Can’t we go further in?’ Molyneux asked.
‘No, sir,’ Bates said. ‘It’s hard to see in the dark but I think we’re as far in as we dare go.’ He pushed forward the chart for Molyneux to see. ‘It varies between three feet and two fathoms and the chart doesn’t say where because it changes every year. There are also rocks.’
Molyneux frowned. ‘Well, we can’t get at the bloody man unless we do go in,’ he snapped.
Bates agreed to move in a little further but he was worried. He had his clearance chit and an inquiry into a lost boat would mean missing the troopship home which, after two doses of malaria, was something he didn’t look forward to. He shut down the engines again and dropped the anchor. As they began to discuss what to do, a light flashed from the shore.
‘They’re telling us to hurry,’ Feverel announced.
‘Ask them if they’ve a boat.’
It appeared there was a native fruit boat but because of the hour there were no oars and no crew. Molyneux began to look angry but Morgan quietly started unfastening his shoes. Stripping off his stockings and shorts, he dragged at his shirt. His body was covered all over with black hair.
‘How far is it to the shore?’ he asked.
‘Around a hundred yards, sir,’ Bates said. ‘Bit less now, I imagine.’
‘Can we make up that much in rope?’
Ginger and Kneller had already seen what he was up to and they were unhitching the mooring ropes and bending them together. Attaching a length of grass line from the locker, they added the springs and the heaving lines. As Morgan dived in and reappeared at the side of the boat, blinking in the glow of the searchlight, his moustache dripping like an elderly seal’s, he reached for the end of the line.
‘Can you swim that far?’ Molyneux asked.
‘Used to do my twenty lengths of the baths regularly at school, man.’
‘You’re a bit older now.’
Morgan gave a small smile. ‘There’s caution for you. Perhaps you could help by making sure the line runs freely. And this time you could offer up a small prayer. I shall need my breath for swimming.’
Kicking off from the side of the boat, he headed into the darkness. After a few yards, it was impossible to tell whether he was still afloat or not apart from the fact that the coils of line on the deck gradually grew less. Eventually they stopped.
‘I hope to God he’s reached the shore,’ Molyneux said, ‘and not just sunk to the bottom.’
After a while the light ashore began to wink.
‘He says “Haul”,’ Feverel called out, and they began cautiously to pull the wet line aboard. Eventually, they made out the shape of a wide-beamed bullom boat emerging from the darkness, the padre pushing at the stern with a long bamboo pole. As it bumped alongside, Molyneux climbed in with the doctor. ‘Come on,’ he said to Ginger and Kneller. ‘Better have you two, as well. This thing’s heavy.’
The padre had collected three or four other poles and they thrust at the sea bed until they began to make way towards the shore. There was a strong swell running and the tide was setting down the coast, but eventually, soaked with sweat, they ran the boat on to the sand and Ginger and Kneller jumped over the side to hold it steady.
The water was deeper than they had expected and, now they were out of the river and into the sea, considerably colder. Two black men appeared and indicated that they were willing to carry anyone ashore on their backs who didn’t wish to get wet. Molyneux and Greeno accepted the offer and vanished into the darkness. Morgan jumped back into the sea. ‘I’ll find some trousers and come back here,’ he said.
As he vanished Ginger an
d Kneller looked at each other. Up to their chests in the sea, they could just see each other in the spill of the tender’s searchlight but couldn’t see the water’s edge or anything of the land beyond. They had no idea where the others had gone and could only concentrate on holding the boat beam on to the current. How long they remained there they had no idea and they began to grow cold.
‘Sing us a song, Nelly,’ Ginger said sarcastically. ‘Cheer us up.’
‘What would you like? “Roll Me Over In The Clover” or something of Vera Lynn’s?’
‘“Your Little Frozen Mitt” wun’t come amiss just now.’
They were almost asleep when voices ashore brought them back to life and they saw lights moving down to them as though they were descending to the beach from the higher land where the airstrip lay. Eventually figures appeared from the darkness, a few white men with Molyneux and Greeno, followed by the padre wearing borrowed shorts and a pair of old tennis shoes. Black men were carrying a stretcher. As they lifted it into the fruit boat the man on it showed no sign of life.
They all climbed aboard, together with two of the Africans, who were to pole it back to the shore, and began to lean against the bending bamboos. As they bumped alongside the seaplane tender the laborious business of getting the stretcher aboard began. A wind had risen and there was a swell running so that the boats went up and down against each other like horses on a fairground roundabout. Then, just to improve matters, a downpour started, and by the time they had the unconscious man inside the cabin everybody was soaked to the skin.
‘Freetown,’ Greeno said as the engines were started. ‘I’ve arranged for an ambulance.’
There was still a journey of twelve miles ahead of them and the cabin was packed with people as they crowded in out of the rain. The unconscious man, a blond handsome youngster, they saw now that they had him under the cabin lights, began to mutter.
