Love For An Enemy
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Publisher’s Note
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Love For An Enemy
Alexander Fullerton
Publisher’s Note
This book is set during World War II, and includes views and language on nationality and ethnicity that reflect those common at the time. The publisher has retained this terminology in order to preserve the integrity of the text.
Prologue
The boats ahead are stopping. In a flat calm, with only the gentlest of swells, and the assault flotilla just twenty sea-miles short of its target. Target being the Grand Harbour of Valletta, Malta. Date 26 July 1941. Object of the operation to: (a) force entry, (b) sink whatever ships are to be found inside. The strangely assorted group, which sailed from Augusta in Sicily at sunset last evening, is being led by the Diana – who started life as a destroyer, then became Benito Mussolini’s private yacht and is now by courtesy of the Duce back in naval service and she’s carrying nine explosive motorboats slung on specially fitted davits. She’ll be lowering them now; that’s what this pause is for.
Emilio has his glasses on her, is peering through about five hundred metres of salt-misted darkness to watch it happening. He can also make out – just – the low, end-on shape of the ‘pig’ transport launch which Diana has in tow. ‘Pigs’ are what their operators – Emilio himself is one of them – call two-man human torpedoes. There are two on the transport launch; they won’t be launched until she’s brought them a lot closer to the target. Emilio and his side-kick, Petty Officer diver Armando Grazzi, are here as spare crew, on call in the event of anything untoward happening to the action crews who are on board the transport - namely, naval engineer Major Teseo Tesei with P.O. diver Alcide Pedretti, and Sub-Lieutenant Costa with his diver, Barla.
Tesei didn’t want Emilio and Grazzi with them on the transport. Some bullshit about its being an invitation to bad luck, to have the stand-ins too close at hand. He told Emilio yesterday, in Augusta: ‘You’re along for the ride, that’s all.’ A hand on his shoulder, and an almost paternal smile in the deepset eyes: ‘Don’t worry, lad. You’ll get your chance.’
Emilio didn’t in fact need to be told this. He’s well aware that his training is over; also that, barring the possibility of being called on tonight, he’s being ‘saved for the big one’. Uncle Cesare’s words; Cesare Caracciolo’s a vice-admiral, and had confided this to him in strict confidence. But – reverting to the subject of Teseo Tesei – in Emilio’s opinion, he’s mad. It’s a virtual certainty he’s going to kill himself tonight. .
‘Tow’s gone, sir.’
Deep, throaty note of the big engines, vibration under your feet as the screws bit and she drives forward, her flared bow lifting and the sea’s dark surface parting, rolling away in a low wash that rocks the two motor-launches as she passes well out to starboard of them. Several of the explosive boats are already in the water, and Lieutenant-Commander Giorgio Giobbe, who commands them from the MTB, has an elbow hooked over the cockpit’s coaming while he counts aloud – counting the men, the pilots, rather than the boats themselves. Those hulls have so little freeboard that in the dark you’d need to be within a few metres to see them at all. Only their pilots are visible, heads and upper bodies sticking up as if right out of the sea itself. The boats are flat-bottomed, driven by Alfa-Romeo 2500-horsepower engines which give them thirty-two knots flat out, and each has 300 kilograms of high-explosive inside its forepart. The method of attack is for the pilot to aim his boat at the target, open the throttle to full speed, clamp the rudder, then ditch a wooden life-raft which until this moment has served as his back-rest, and throw himself after it. By pulling himself on to it a few seconds before the boat hits its target he hopes to avoid the underwater shock of the explosion, which otherwise might well kill him.
At Suda Bay, Crete, in March – four months ago – six of them launched from two destroyers scored the Light Flotilla’s most notable success to date, sinking several merchant ships including a laden tanker, and also the cruiser H.M.S. York.
‘Trouble, there?’
Emilio’s seen it too: a man in the water, one boat seemingly up-ended, two others closing in. One of the motor-launches too; and it’s much closer, it makes sense to leave them to it. But – in the area of things that aren’t going quite according to plan – like being an hour behind schedule, and now this – Emilio’s thinking that an air attack should have been going in by now. A diversionary bombing attack on an inland airfield, to keep the defenders’ eyes off the sea approaches.
‘That boat’s sunk.’
‘I’ve got eyes, damn it.’
‘Sorry, sir. I only—’
‘Forget it.’ Already regretting his own irascibility. He’s actually a very nice guy. Shaking his head, letting out a long, hard breath of exasperation as he watches the rescue. Then: ‘Where’s the damn megaphone?’
Someone’s located it, passed it to him
‘Four-five-two! Whose boat was it?’
‘Montanari’s!’ The answer comes high-pitched, carrying easily across the gap of quiet sea. ‘Engine wouldn’t start, then it flooded, and—’
A cough of sound drowns the rest, as some throttle’s handled carelessly and an engine revs, blaring for a second or two before it’s cut. Giobbe lifts the megaphone again: ‘All right, lads. Form astern here. In the order Frassetto, Carabelli, Bosio, Zaniboni, Pedrini, Follieri, Marchisio, Capriotti.’ He tells his coxswain: ‘Move her up a bit.’ Because Diana’s leading off again, meanwhile, with the ‘pig’ transport still in tow, and he doesn’t want to risk losing visual contact.
The plan for the attack on the harbour is to break through the netted section under the St. Elmo viaduct. There’s a length of mole with the St. Elmo light structure on its western extremity, and its other end connected to the rocky point of land – and the St. Elmo fort – by a double-spanned bridge under which steel-wire nets have been slung on heavy cables; it’s in this netting that Teseo Tesei’s warhead is to blast a gap through which the explosive boats will then race into the harbour and hurl themselves against their targets.
There’ll be targets, for sure. During these hours of darkness, while the assault flotilla’s been on its way from Sicily, the ships of a British convoy from Gibraltar have been berthing at the Valletta quays. They’ll be in the Grand Harbour now – with dockers, soldiers and sailors working flat-out to off-load their cargoes of food and munitions.
Giobbe has his glasses trained astern, where the boats are forming up. He grunts, lowering them again: ‘Slow ahead. Keep in Diana’s wake.’
The transport launch is a dark smudge partly obscuring that spread of wake. Emilio wonders whether those are really Tesei’s intentions. If they aren’t, he’ll have a job to live it down, hereafter. He’s on record as having expressed his view that results don’t matter one way or the other, all that counts is for the world to see how Italians are prepared to die, throwing themselves recklessly against their enemies’ defences.
What about his diver, Emilio wonders: does he know he has a one-way ticket?
Plugging on… Diana in the lead still, the transport launch wallowing astern of her, then a gap of about two cables’ lengths and this MTB with the eight high-speed floating bombs
strung out behind her. The motor-launches are out on either beam, a feather of white bow-wave at each stern.
‘Stopping, sir!’
‘Come out to starboard.’
The explosive boats will follow in the curve of this one’s wake; moving out so as to lie well clear of Diana, who as soon as she’s slipped the transport’s tow will be reversing course and heading for home. Then the transport will push on to the next stopping-point, 4000 metres from the target.
It’s so quiet meanwhile that it’s spooky. There’s only the sea’s murmur along the MTB’s sides and under her wide stern. Men speak in whispers, when they speak at all: a slightly raised voice can be heard from boat to boat. Glasses up meanwhile to watch while the transport slips her tow and Diana hauls it in. Must have hauled it in, now: she’s turning away to port. Emilio has his binoculars focused on the transport launch as she moves ahead under her own power now. Her commander, Lieutenant Paratore, will stop when his navigational plot tells him he’s reached that 4000-metre position.
Diana has completed her 180-degree turn, is already merging into the darkness on the quarter. Darkness which before much longer will be lightened by the beginnings of the dawn. There’s no doubt that a lot of time has been lost, but things can’t be rushed now, you can’t say: ‘Oh, the hell with it, let’s go—’ and open those boats’ throttles, split the night with noise.
Not yet. The moment will come, all right, but – not yet…
Emilio dozes. In the after starboard corner of the cockpit with his knees drawn up, forearms on knees, forehead on the crossed arms. The bone of his skull, according to his friends’ amiable leg-pulling, is three centimetres thick. Hence, they say, the smallness of the space that’s left inside for brain.
The hell with them. He has all the brains he needs. Happens also to be built like a small bull, that’s all.
He’s woken by Giobbe’s growled order: ‘Out clutches.’
Stopping yet again. The engine sound’s a deep rumble; the MTB rolls to the swell as the way comes off her and the eight explosive cockleshells close up around her stern. He’s slept for longer than it’s seemed, he realizes. Stretching cramped muscles now and getting the sleep out of his brain. Also remnants of a dream about a girl called Renata… Back into this picture; recalling that the purpose of the present halt is for the transport launch to switch over to her electric motors for the last stage of the approach.
She’s going ahead again, already: his glasses pick up the swirl under her stern as her screws bite and drive her forward. Another 3000 metres, and the ‘pigs’ will be launched for their masked, rubber-suited operators to steer them on towards their targets. Separate targets: while Tesei is making for the viaduct, Costa will be trying to find or force a way through the defences of the other harbour – Marsamxett, which will be on the starboard hand then – to plant his warhead under or among the British submarines at their Manoel Island base.
Giobbe lets the transport launch and the other two draw ahead until they’re almost out of sight. Then he orders ‘Slow ahead’ again. The nearer of the explosive boats are close enough for their pilots to see the movement of his arm as he waves to them to follow. Mother and ducklings – anxious mother, small but highly lethal ducklings.
Patience. Holding strained nerves together. Thinking of that deep harbour crammed with targets…
Finally, the transport launch stops for the last time. Within minutes now – within a minute, probably – the two torpedoes each with two men straddling it will be on their way. In his mind’s eye Emilio can see them – goggled heads just breaking surface, black water aswirl around them… In its essentials, a ‘pig’ – or SLC human torpedo, which is the Navy’s official name for it – is an electrically propelled, cigar-shaped object seven metres long, which two men riding astride can pilot into an enemy harbour or anchorage, then select a target, clamp the detachable warhead to the target’s underwater hull, set a time-fuse and escape by swimming. The operators wear rubber watertight suits which they call ‘Belloni overalls’, and breathe oxygen from face-masks connected by flexible tubing to a breathing-bag. Exhaust air passes into a container of soda-lime crystals which absorb the poisonous carbon dioxide. The detachable forepart, or warhead, contains 300 kilograms of explosive.
Emilio has binoculars at his eyes, watching the thinning darkness ahead. When he sees the transport craft returning he’ll know for sure the ‘pigs’ are on their way. Well, they must be, by now… Visualizing them: trimmed right down, the operators’ masked heads just clear of the surface; in this position they’ll get as close in as they dare before submerging and continuing until they hit the net. One thing they can’t risk is broken water, a swirl of phosphorescence to catch a defender’s eye.
Anyway, sentries and gunners get bored. Night after night of duty, with no breaks in the monotony of it. They’ll be on short rations too, Emilio guesses, on this fortress island. Rest, British gunners. Dream. Dream of your girls back home. I’d lend you my Renata to dream about – if that’d help…
Helps me, all right. Renata’s black hair and huge brown eyes, the sweetness of her mouth. Her absolutely fantastic—
He’s caught his breath. ‘Launches returning, sir!’
Giobbe has been looking astern, checking for the umpteenth time on the cluster of small craft. He’s back beside Emilio now: hearing as he puts his glasses up a drone of aircraft – from the northern sky, high up. The second air-attack diversion is due at 0430, and it’s now ten minutes short of that… The two motor-launches are coming back slowly in the wake of the transport, which is now on the MTB’s port bow. Giobbe lowers his glasses, tells his coxswain: ‘Slow ahead. Steer ten degrees to port.’ Turning back then, cupping his hands to his mouth: ‘Come up on the beam here, lads. Frassetto – Carabelli. Rest of you astern of them.’
There’s a snarl of engines as the boats manoeuvre into their positions. The drivers’ palms no doubt itchy on those throttles, after the cramped hours of waiting.
‘Stop, out clutches.’
Emilio can see the bridge, now, in the misty-dark circle of his glasses. But dawn’s a shimmer in the overhead, with the hint of a reflection of it on the sea, so – from that bridge, if sentries’ eyes are open, won’t these craft be visible – silhouetted against the lightness?
Clutches out, engines grumbling throatily. Massive old engines that can send this heavy craft flying at thirty knots or more – and have barely been used yet, except to crawl.
‘See it, Sub?’
‘Yes. Yes…’
In his mind’s eye, seeing also Tesei and Pedretti in the black water right there under it. In which case—
But there are a few minutes to go, still. They could have clamped their charge to the net and got away to the mole. Could have… Everything seemingly dead quiet, there, meanwhile. Sleep, British sentries… The launches astern are by this time visible only through binoculars – and at that, only because one knows where to look. The transport has disappeared.
Wherever Tesei and Pedretti may be, Costa – well, that’s a toss-up. He whispers in his mind: Good luck…
One minute to go.
‘Listen, boys.’ Giobbe, addressing the motorboat pilots again. ‘Assuming the torpedo blows – Frassetto, you’ll use your boat to make sure there’s a good wide hole. Huh? Then Carabelli – same goes for you, you’re back-up to Frassetto – unless you see clearly the job’s done. In which case, go ahead, you’re first inside. Don’t tread on his heels, Bosio – give him room, eh? Then in you go, all the rest of you – and good luck!’
Emilio’s muscles are tense. Knowing how it can be – usually has been, in his own experience in training exercises. Breathing problems, a swirl of current holding the ‘pig’ fast against some obstruction, this or that item snagged and held, trim gone to hell, ballast pump on the blink, the ‘pig’ a deadweight heading for the bottom before you’ve got the warhead off…
Giobbe’s problem is whether if the charge does not explode he should send Frasse
tto on his way immediately, or wait – in the hope it’ll blow in the next minute, say. Because if Frassetto releases his boat at the net when the divers are still on it—
Thunderclap, under the bridge. Solving that problem… Muffled thunder and a huge disturbance of the sea. The underwater blast jars solidly against the MTB’s hull, while at the harbour entrance a mound of sea still hangs, capped with white. Giobbe yells: ‘Go, lads! Go!’
The two leaders first: then a pause before the other six roar away, roughly in quarter-line astern. Throttles wide open – astounding, after the long, sea-quiet hours. Wakes brilliant white lead like smoke-trails at the viaduct, the scream of exhausts trailing away so fast that Giobbe’s order to his coxswain to put her slow ahead is perfectly audible. Emilio pivoting slowly with his glasses up, stopping again on the low, greyish outline of the viaduct. He can’t make out the cables or the net, can’t therefore tell how much of a gap’s been blown in it. The sea’s still frothing there. Later, he’ll relive this moment time and time again, recall watching that seething patch of water, watching for a sight of some object surfacing, being flung up in it…
Frassetto has aimed his boat at the net, clamping the rudder and ejecting himself and his raft into the sea. Only the explosion that should follow – when he’s pulling himself on to the raft with the howl of Carabelli’s and the other boats blasting out of the dark around him there’s no explosion. And Carabelli doesn’t eject; he stays with his boat, drives it right on to the target. The likely explanation is that he’s assumed a gap exists by this time: but whatever’s in his mind, his is the second blast, an explosion on impact and with him still at the wheel, and it brings that span of the bridge down, a mass of iron and concrete collapsing to block the entrance completely, while in the same moment – as if that explosion was the signal to the defenders to show their hand – searchlight beams flare out from the shore, sweep the suddenly brilliant acreage of sea pinpointing target after target for the guns – six-pounders, and multiple Hotchkiss from Fort St. Elmo – flaming out of the fragmented remnants of the night. It’s intensive, close-range and crossing fire, skull-splitting noise. For a few seconds brains are numb: helpless, impotent, watching the boats smashed and their pilots slaughtered…
Love For An Enemy Page 1
