A Funny Place to Hold a War

by John Harris

  ‘I wonder,’ he said slowly, ‘if we could set fire to that lot with a Very pistol.’

  Their first shot landed in the middle of the damaged thatch, a white ball of light trailing a coil of smoke, then it changed to a red glow and a moment later the straw started to burn.

  ‘That ought to make ’em think a bit,’ Cazalet mused.

  Almost at once a man with a white flag appeared and ran across the space between the big building and the hut where Hubbard was directing operations. He was French and was bundled away by the sergeant. Then several more men appeared and fell through the door.

  ‘Je me rende,’ the first man shouted.

  ‘Vous êtes français?’ Cazalet fancied his French.

  ‘Oui. Charles-Richard Piccard, ancien officier de l’Armée de l’Air.’

  ‘And a bloody traitor, too, I’ve no doubt,’ Cazalet commented. ‘Take the nasty little thing away, Sergeant.’

  There were several Germans among the Frenchmen, one of them an ex-U-boatman.

  ‘Now we’re beginning to see daylight,’ Cazalet observed. He gestured back at the building. ‘How many more?’

  ‘Fier und Zwanzig,’ the U-boatman said.

  There were a Kapitänleutnant, another officer and several men still in the building. Cazalet was doing quite well with his limited German, and it seemed that the decision had been made for the most experienced men to escape by boat with their report while those who were left were to hold off the attackers as long as possible.

  Even as they discovered what was about to happen the firing started again. The roof thatch was burning furiously now, the flames devouring it and sending up a huge column of brown smoke into the air.

  ‘I’d better get back to the radio,’ Cazalet said. ‘And warn those chaps in the river Bic.’

  He was just about to turn away when they heard the roar of an engine from the other side of the burning building.

  ‘I think you’re too late, sir,’ Hubbard said ‘That’s from the river Bic.’

  Feverel was surprised at the damage he saw. The boat shed and the building above it had collapsed into the water in a scattering of planks, timbers and thatch. The bush lining the creek had been flattened and crushed and there were dead fish floating in the water, even a dead crocodile.

  As he stared at the ruin, he could see the two native fishing boats he had seen the day before, aground on the bank, surrounded by fishermen from Yima, chattering like monkeys and gesturing at the flattened trees by the water’s edge and the scattered planks of the boathouse. Near them, half-hidden by the bend of the river, he could see the Dutchmen’s big launch. The mast had fallen, but she was still afloat and still moored to the bank by a single unbroken rope. Even as he looked at her, a man appeared from below, then two or three more and he heard the engine start.

  He watched, unable without a weapon to do a thing as the remaining mooring rope was cast off and the launch swung away from the bank, edging past the native boats to pull away from the shore. The engine sounded uneven, as if the tidal wave which had deposited it on the bottom had damaged the propellers.

  As it vanished, he turned back to his task, suddenly uninterested in the escaping boat because he could see Kneller. He was huddled at the bottom of a palm tree near the water’s edge but, though all the firing seemed to have stopped, he didn’t lift his head as Feverel approached.

  As he reached him, to Feverel’s surprise Ginger Donnelly rose from alongside him, and then he saw there was a woman holding Kneller in her arms, her clothes like Kneller’s, saturated and in rags.

  She gestured at the ruined hut and at the catamaran upended on the bank, and Feverel saw bodies lying in the undergrowth and one floating in the water nearby. The woman’s jaw worked. She was spattered with mud and her eyes were wild.

  ‘It was the explosion,’ she said in English.

  To the men on the pinnace the roar of the launch’s engine came quite distinctly across the mangroves. Almost at once the bow wave was seen through the trees, then the boat itself, roaring down the creek towards the open sea.

  Faintly disappointed at his share in the battle, the padre had been on the point of withdrawing from the Bic, but now he swung round and started to shout.

  ‘Haul up that wire,’ he roared and the fitter and one of the deckhands leapt to the winch and started turning by hand.

  Intent on escape, the Germans never even saw the hawser. The launch swung round the corner, tilting to the turn, its nose lifting as it increased speed. As it ran on to the wire, the bows leaped high out of the water and there was a twang, a metallic crash and a scream of engines as the propellers tore themselves to pieces. As the bows flopped back into the water in a growing circle of ripples, the launch lay stopped, dead, her rudders caught, her propellers stripped. The screaming died as the engines were cut, then men came pouring from below, and the airmen on the deck of the pinnace, bewildered at being once more involved in a battle when they’d thought it was finished, began to fire. This time it was hard to miss. One of the Germans fell into the water and began to swim slowly and painfully for the shore. After a little more sporadic firing, the rest flung down their weapons and raised their hands.

  The padre stared at them, startled. ‘I think we we’ve won,’ he said.

  Eight

  The sea seemed to be covered with ships. In the distance a Sunderland was just swinging into its last run in front of the convoy before turning for base and the radio operator reported that he’d just picked up a contact. As Molyneux took the Sunderland’s place, he saw one of the destroyers from the starboard side of the convoy put on speed and race ahead, then it swung sharply to starboard and a second or two later he saw the sea heave astern of it as its depth charges exploded.

  The radio was filled with excited chatter. The destroyer came round, leaning to the sea, and this time Molyneux actually saw the depth charges falling through the air. As the sea heaved again, he watched closely, then he saw a black thing like a whale rise out of the water, obscene and menacing, lifting slowly, almost perpendicularly, before sliding back into the darkness, great spouts of water and air rising where it had disappeared.

  ‘We seem to have got among them,’ he said.

  Almost immediately, they picked up a contact and dropped their depth charges. Whether they were effective or not it was hard to say; they were unable to remain in the vicinity because the navigator spotted a submarine astern of the convoy. As they raced towards it, they saw it dive hurriedly and by the time they arrived at the spot where it had disappeared, the swirl of sea made by its dive was dispersing, and Molyneux dropped only two depth charges.

  ‘Just to let ’em know we’re here he said. ‘It’ll keep their heads down.

  By this time there were three aircraft circling the convoy as it moved sedately beneath them, and they searched carefully in the increasing daylight. As the flight engineer announced that their fuel position was reaching the danger point, Molyneux turned for home. Thirty miles from the convoy, he saw Catalina B-Awful on her way out to relieve him and the two aircraft passed so close it was possible to see Flying Officer Kitchen’s innocent young face quite clearly. As they touched down and moved to the buoy, they were met by a dinghy which rushed them ashore, while other boats brought out the maintenance crews, fresh depth charges and petrol.

  Mackintosh was in his office, smoking a cigarette. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘We had a few contacts,’ Molyneux said. ‘Nothing more. Gather you got one.’

  ‘We put in a claim. The navy got another. That makes two of them and one to us, so far. It ought to help. No reports of any ships being sunk either. I’m off again soon.’

  Molyneux nodded and Mackintosh vanished. Molyneux made his report, then headed for the officers’ mess for a meal and a sleep before he took off again in the evening. The coming night would be the danger period because it would be the submarines’ last chance and they would inevitably be taking risks, especially as they had been unsuccessful
so far.

  His sleep was fitful and, only half-refreshed, he was back at the rickety wooden jetty in the late evening waiting to be ferried out to his machine. His crew were all looking tired but they were buoyed up by the successes. Reports had been coming in all day of submarines forced to submerge, though one had tried to fight back and had hit B-Awful’s starboard fuel tank so that petrol had flooded the flight deck and the navigator and the engineer had been wounded. But Flying Officer Kitchen, his innocent blue eyes hard for once, had dropped depth charges and seen the U-boat sink by the bows before he had had to put down on the sea within reach of naval help.

  Flying Officer Hobson was in his office as Molyneux reappeared. He, too, looked tired. ‘It would be nice to go home feeling we’d done some good,’ he said.

  As Molyneux climbed down to the catamaran and into the dinghy with his crew to be ferried out to his machine, Hobson watched him from the end of the jetty. As he stood there, he became aware of Ginger Donnelly, back at last with the men from Yima, busy below him on the mud, surrounded by half a dozen of his labouring gang. He was holding the limp shape of a green mamba and, remembering hearing a lot of shouting not long before, he realized one of the Africans must have seen the snake wriggle from the river under the hut and summoned Ginger.

  ‘Big one, Ginger?’ he asked.

  Ginger held the snake up in a muddy paw for him to see. ‘Nah. Just a tiddler.’

  ‘I gather you had them in the front line at Yima.’

  Ginger nodded. ‘They did all right,’ he agreed. ‘But they didn’t bite nobody, I reckon they was too scared.’

  Hobson gestured towards the aircraft trots. ‘Your inspired guess over that beer bottle seems to be paying dividends now,’ he pointed out.

  Ginger nodded again, unmoved. He tossed the dead snake into the river and watched it drift downstream on the tide. ‘Yeh,’ he said. And that was all.

  Half an hour later, in the growing dusk, Molyneux opened the throttles of his aircraft. As they headed down the strip of water, rattling and bumping as the Catalina lifted to the step, he had to control his excitement. Then the bumping stopped and they lifted into the air over the growing darkness of the land. Almost immediately the radio operator picked up the naval report of another success.

  ‘I think we’re bloodying their noses a bit,’ Molyneux said.

  In U-1022, there was an atmosphere of despondency. All day and all the previous night they had kept edging in to the convoy but again and again had been spotted and forced to dive. Even during the hours of darkness, they had had no success because of the moon and the radar with which the aircraft were fitted.

  Schutze was irritable and Lorenz found it wiser to remain out of his way because the feeling that they were failing when they ought to have been succeeding was clear. There had been immense excitement at the first glimpse of the convoy and Lorenz had been on edge as U-1022 had moved in. It had been growing dark and it had seemed easy but, as they had headed in on the surface, there had been sudden panic as everyone on the bridge had fallen through the hatchway and the submarine had been rushed into an emergency dive. The depth charges which had followed had shaken them. Light bulbs had been broken but they had not been much hurt, though they had had to lay low long enough to lose contact with the convoy.

  When they came cautiously to the surface again, it was daylight and the convoy had vanished. But they had picked up a directional signal from another submarine and had moved in again. Long before they were within reach, however, the lookout had given the alarm and they had all piled below again and Schutze was swinging off to starboard, hoping to throw off the attack. The depth charges had not been near enough to do any damage but they had sounded horrendous to Lorenz.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ he asked.

  Schutze gave him a cold look. ‘When they pick us up,’ he said. ‘And they seem to be picking us up rather more than normal at the moment.’

  Throughout the day they had been forced to remain submerged. Towards evening they had picked up another message giving the convoy’s course and speed, but the other boat had gone off the air in the middle of its transmissions, which seemed to indicate she was under attack, and they heard no more of her.

  When they came to periscope depth again, the moon was out, filling the sky with pearly light, and the sea was like a silver sheet. Studying it, Schutze could see nothing. The convoy seemed to have disappeared and he was just trying to swallow his disappointment when he saw a black speck on the horizon against the moon. As he moved the periscope, he saw there were more black specks, then more and more. The horizon seemed to be filled with ships. Warily, he studied the sea about them. There were no signs of escorts and he assumed they were all closed up on the convoy which had surely now almost reached the safety of the river Rokel. This was his last chance and the only hope he had of catching them was to surface.

  ‘Take her up,’ he said.

  By this time, the navy was filled with euphoria. Six submarines had been claimed as sunk and only one ship, a straggler, had been caught, its attacker destroyed within minutes of its triumph.

  ‘Jerry seems to be having a hard time of it for a change, sir,’ the flight engineer said as he brought a mug of coffee to Molyneux. Sitting with the machine on automatic pilot while he held the mug between his hands, Molyneux nodded, remembering the lean years from 1940 when the Germans had acquired their bases on the French coast so that their U-boats didn’t have to emerge into the Atlantic via the North Sea and the north of Scotland. It had put two hundred miles on the distance they could cover and reduced by a hundred per cent the risk of being caught. The shipping losses that had resulted had been enormous and only rarely had they been able to catch them at it. In those days it had been a long and unsatisfactory war for the crews of the flying boats, and even during the last year when conditions and equipment had improved with radar, it had remained a boring business. It was hard to remain enthusiastic and eager when you searched for months without success.

  The moon was just rising and the stars were hanging in the heavens like lanterns so that he could see occasional patches of silver on the water. The roar of the engines filled his ears but everything else was still and silent. Below him the sea to the horizon seemed empty but the radar man had his eyes glued to his set, hoping for a contact. The convoy, a mere grouping of shapes on the horizon, was virtually safe and they were searching round the tail end of it in the hope of frightening off persistent last minute attackers. The first ships must be just beginning to enter safe waters by this time and the chances of a contact were slight as the patrol reached its limit. Any minute now they would have to turn for home, but Molyneux decided to stretch it out as far as he could by throttling back the engines. In the distance a frigate, chivvying on a straggler with a faltering engine, was moving slowly, leaving a white wake which they could see quite clearly in the moonlight that laid a brilliant pathway across the sea. As the moon rose higher, the pathway widened and Molyneux found himself praying that God would give them a little luck and enable him to use its light for an attack.

  ‘Skipper!’ The voice was the radar operator’s. ‘Contact!’

  As the alarm went, Molyneux’ mug went flying and he was just about to reply when the voice of one of the waist gunners came. ‘Skipper! I see him! Christ, I see the bastard!’

  Taking his direction from the waist gunner, Molyneux picked up the submarine. It was on the surface and he could just make it out, following the convoy. Swinging the heavy aeroplane away from the moon’s path, still keeping his eye on the submarine, he straightened out again, facing the moon. He could see the submarine now against the shimmering light, a perfect silhouette as if painted with black ink on stark white paper, the whole boat clear, even the periscope and the gun platforms carrying the double-barrelled 20mm cannon.

  ‘I’m going to use the moon,’ he said.

  The sound of the idling engines filled the ears but everybody was quiet, listening for orders as the Catalina slid towa
rds the path of the moon from the dark side. The intense boredom of all their past empty sorties was swept away and they were all prepared to press home the attack to the limit, regardless of what was thrown at them.

  ‘No radio, operator,’ Molyneux ordered. ‘In case they’re listening out. Make your sighting report after the first attack’s been made.’

  They had turned now, the moon beyond the submarine making it sharp and clear on the surface of the water. Molyneux held the lumbering Catalina steady, dropping down to within forty feet, the moonlight so bright he could see the rivets holding the Plexiglass round the flight deck.

  ‘Now!’ he said, and the depth charges dropped away as they swooped overhead.

  The roar of the air being sucked into the submarine through the open hatch was loud enough to drown an aircraft’s motors and, as the alarm went, the control room was filled with the sound of boots on the ladder as men tumbled down inside.

  ‘Take her down!’

  Within seconds, it seemed, they heard the murderous crashes of the depth charges and the boat was shaken violently. A terrifying thunderclap smashed against Lorenz’ eardrums, driving the breath from his lungs and all sensible thought from his brain so that all that was left was a simple instinct to survive.

  ‘She’s rising!’ The first lieutenant’s voice rose to a scream. ‘Bring her down! Bring her down!’

  As the men at the controls laboured over their wheels, the submarine shot upwards, the bow rising so violently they had to grab for handholds to prevent themselves sliding towards the stern. Then she steadied and settled but, as she did so, the lights went out.

  In the thick impenetrable darkness, standing in the doorway of the wardroom, terrified by what had happened, Lorenz felt himself barged out of the way as someone rushed past, then the emergency lights came on and he could see the looks of shock and alarm on the faces around him. All the electrical installations including the lights on the control panel seemed to be in pieces on the floor plates and the moving boots were crunching glass. The reports began to come in steadily, to be repeated to Schutze by the officer on the intercom.