by John Masters
‘Port thirty!’ Tom cried, seeing a gap in the boom defence. A German submarine must have been coming in or out just as the attack began. Orestes heeled far over in the savage turn to starboard, and, at nearly twenty-five knots, smashed through the gap in the boom. Flames were rising aft, astern of the funnels … and the engines were faltering … must have been hit … have to … Before he could move to the navyphone, it buzzed and Arrowsmith’s tinny voice said, ‘Bridge … two shells in the engine-room. Twelve killed, twelve wounded … boilers leaking steam badly … Very hot …’
‘Stick it two minutes more,’ Tom said. ‘Half ahead both!’
‘Aye, aye, sir … half ahead both.’
Tom tried to ignore the shuddering of his ship to the blows of the shells, the smell of burning, the orange and red flames, the groans and screams. There was the position where he was to sink Orestes across the channel. The water was dark, intermittently lit by star shells and livid explosions. The cloudy sky shimmered with reflected light from explosions, from star shells, and from searchlights. The night was full of the growl of CMBs’ powerful aircraft engines rising to a scream as they skidded round under full helm at thirty-five knots … there, one was hit fair and square, exploding, disappearing with its crew, totally vanishing …
Tide: two knots, ebbing. Dead slack low water was what the admiral had wanted for the raid, because a ship, sinking, seldom goes down on a level keel; either bow or stern goes down first. The tide or current then catches that part and swings it with it; so that when the ship is finally down, it is lying along the line of the current, not athwart it. Here the tide would flow straight up and down the passage to the sea; and the block ships were to be sunk across that passage … but it had been impossible to find a night when dead low water coincided with all the other factors of distance and darkness, so: two knots, ebbing, half-tide.
‘Slow both,’ he called, watching the bow and the dark, firelit mole walls to either side. A hammer smashed into his left arm above the elbow and he gasped, falling to the steel deck of the bridge. He pulled himself up with one hand. The arm was numb. God knows whether he had it still, he dared not look. He held on to the bridge rail … ‘Stop engines … Evacuate engine-room! … Stand by stern anchor!’ Orestes was slowing fast against the current, but her head was still running true. She was passing the point where she should sink … now! ‘Let go stern anchor!’ A livid explosion swept him off his feet, reeling, half-blinded, against the rear wall of the bridge. Again he pulled himself upright, one-handed … there was no one else standing … three, four crumpled figures, their faces bright scarlet, uniforms burned off them … his own was singed, charring. ‘Open sea cocks!’ he croaked into the navyphone.
‘Aye, aye, sir! Sea cocks open!’ The ship jerked to a stop, her head falling slowly off across the channel. A sailor ran up on to the bridge and shouted, ‘CMB alongside, sir! All ready for evacuation!’
‘Start evacuation!’ Tom gasped.
What else had to be done? The ship was falling slowly across the tide, and sinking at the same time, held by the stern … Mustn’t let her go too far … ‘Let go starboard anchor!’ From the bridge he heard the roar of the cable running out through the hawse hole … barely twenty feet of water here, the anchor should bite soon … ‘Secure the fo’c’sle! Abandon ship!’ He staggered towards the bridge ladder and suddenly knew he would not make it … not this time. The deck was slippery with blood, but he could not see … He was falling, his knees giving way under him. The blood was his own … It was dark, in a gradually fading inferno of explosions, shrieking steel, shrieking humanity.
Billy Bidford took CMB 148 round in a short, sharp turn to starboard under the wall of the East Mole. It was tempting to make long graceful patterns on the water, and the boat was really more efficient that way … but one’s life expectancy would not be long. Short sharp turns, ugly jerks to and fro, never holding a course or speed for long … even so, the deck was continually being swept by splinters from shells bursting on the water, and the upper part of the bow, damaged by the U-boat, was now gone from a direct hit. He still had to keep the speed above twenty knots, otherwise the bow would sink, and the boat would start taking water … then, Billy thought, she’d float for perhaps five minutes …
The wheelhouse was riddled with machine-gun bullets, but he had one torpedo left, and wanted a good target for it … Where were the blockships, Orestes, Thetis, Iphigenia, and Intrepid? Only three here … Ah, out to sea, at the entrance to the channel, another was stuck … either aground or caught on the boom defences … looked like Thetis. He turned sharply, at the wheel himself now, and headed back up the harbour. Three German destroyers on the East Mole were trying to get up steam to go to sea. Damn, they were behind torpedo nets. It was their guns firing, but at him now, though in some cases they could not be depressed enough to bear, especially as he got closer. Six CMBs were still operating in the harbour.
The machine-guns on either side of the wheelhouse chattered as they raked the decks of the German destroyers. Twelve twenty-five … the lead block ship was going down perfectly, behind him, to seaward … there’d barely be room between the cruiser and the Mole for him to get out. All the shore batteries seemed to have concentrated on her – it was Orestes, Commander Tom Rowland, the old pansy he’d been drinking with in Dominion only three days ago. Well, he might be a pansy but by God he was a good sailor …
He spun the wheel over, pulled back the throttle so that the CMB slowed violently in the water … a salvo of three shells burst twenty yards ahead … they’d have been napoo if that packet had hit … Hard aport … Orestes was nearly down … Time to stop tearing round the harbour and go to take her crew off. He thrust the throttle forward and headed for the narrow gap between Orestes’ bow and the East Mole … A hundred yards to go … ‘Make smoke!’ he yelled to his CPO.
‘Can’t, sir … Just used up the last canister.’
Billy swore under his breath … Fifty yards … a shuddering jar astern … half the decking blown away, a fire, men down behind him, the CPO kneeling over them … He was through, swung the wheel left, jammed the throttle back, then into reverse. Swinging, swaying, the shattered bow thrust deep in the water, the CMB stopped under the scrambling nets draping Orestes’ port side, which faced seaward and so was protected from most of the fire.
Thumps and thuds rained down on the wheelhouse and all along the CMB as the men from Orestes slid or jumped off the nets on to her … twenty, thirty, Christ, how many had they got? They were supposed to have transhipped half the crew two hours ago, but … and they must have had some killed, to judge by the ship’s appearance … ‘Ready?’ he yelled. ‘All off?’ Two guns in a battery near the end of the West Mole were firing straight at Orestes’ exposed side, only half-hidden by the drifting smoke.
A sub-lieutenant shouted, ‘The skipper’s not off yet.’
‘Hurry, man. We’re sinking!’
‘Here he comes!’
Four sailors were scrambling down the net, a body slumped between them, half-draped over their shoulders, half hanging free. They lowered it to the tiny foredeck of the CMB, then slipped down themselves. ‘All off!’ the sub-lieutenant yelled.
Billy opened the throttle, and CMB 148 moved forward … sluggishly, for water had been pouring in through the bows while she was stopped. Gradually the bow lifted, gradually the speed increased. They were carrying the wounded skipper of Orestes into the wheelhouse … left arm broken above the elbow, forehead and hands burned and bleeding, jacket burned off, trousers smouldering, a wound in the right leg. His eyes opened, staring at Billy, then at the sub-lieutenant – a beautiful young fellow, Billy noted. ‘Jerry,’ the commander gasped, ‘thank God you’re safe.’ A shell from the German battery smashed through the wheelhouse four feet behind the wheel, removing Sub-Lieutenant Jerome Sherwood’s head as cleanly as any executioner’s axe could have. Blood spouted a foot high from the severed stump. For a moment Commander Rowland’s eyes widened, and Billy
thought, they are a lens, a camera, and on the brain behind, this image is now for ever imprinted. The eyes closed.
They were passing Thetis, aground off the end of the West Mole. Her scrambling nets were down, her decks crowded, but Christ, no CMB to take the men off … must have been sunk. Someone was trying to launch the only boat but the davits were smashed. The German fire concentrated on Thetis.
Billy swung the wheel hard and once again throttled back. ‘Get everyone to the stern,’ he shouted to the CPO. The bow again sank as speed fell. He was alongside, yelling ‘Jump! Hurry, hurry!’ How many men were the CMBs supposed to take off the block ships? Forty, wasn’t it? He had sixty, eighty now … Shells were hitting Thetis regularly, wounded and dead men falling off the nets on to the CMB’s deck or into the sea. The deck was awash with blood, Billy’s own jacket soaked with it from Sub-Lieutenant Sherwood’s neck. A three striper was coming down Thetis’s side, to land on the wheelhouse. The nets were clear behind him – ‘All off,’ he croaked.
Billy thrust the throttle forward. Slowly, heavily the bow tried to lift … water was pouring in … must have been holed again, lower down. Commander Rowland was on his feet, holding one-handed to the rail, ‘Back, men, back, into the stern!’ The bow would not lift clear. ‘Can’t do any more,’ Rowland said. ‘They’re being pushed off the stern …’ Billy’s CPO slowly knelt on the deck, coughing blood.
Billy kept the throttle jammed against the stop. The 500-horsepower engine roared and shuddered desperately to give the boat enough speed to lift the bow clear, but it could not do it. Gradually water poured in, and gradually the bow sank, and the speed fell. The engine stopped, flooded.
‘She’s going, sir,’ Billy said quietly, in the sudden eerie silence. They were half a mile clear of the Mole, no one was firing star shells, and they were awash under a pall of drifting smoke.
A tall bow loomed out of the night to starboard. Someone up there shouted, ‘Object green nine oh! … It’s a CMB, sir!’
Billy clearly heard the orders from the bridge, ‘Stop engines … full astern … port twenty … scrambling nets out starboard side … Slow ahead both … Stop engines … Get ’em out, Number One!’
Then it was quiet, until Billy realised he was hearing a noise and seeing a sight that had continued all through the battle – and still were … the sound of the guns, and the flash of their shells on the Western Front, thirty miles to the south-west.
Tom Rowland lay in a bed in a small room in St Thomas’s Hospital, London. He could see the Thames outside his window, but he could not see it very well, for most of his head was swathed in bandages and his eyes were not yet recovered from the flash burns the irises had suffered at Zeebrugge. His left arm was in a cast, and his right leg heavily bandaged – it turned out he had had three machine-gun bullets and a shell splinter in it, but no bones broken. He smarted or ached or throbbed all over; but mostly he longed to be well. The action, in all its bloody glory, had somehow acted like a giant conflagration to burn the Royal Navy out of his thoughts. He no longer dreamed of it, or missed it, or cared what it did or thought. He wanted to be well, to get to Arthur Gavilan’s salon, and start really learning his new profession.
The sister came in. ‘Visitors for you, sir … famous visitors – Mr Wharton, Mr Coward, Mr Novello, and Mr Gavilan.’
The four men trooped in as the sister held the door open. The nineteen-year-old Coward raised his hand in reverent salute and intoned, ‘We, Noel Coward, Russell Wharton, Ivor Novello, and Arthur Gavilan, salute the gallant dead … You’re supposed to say, what did the bloody old fool call me?’
Tom laughed. Pain stabbed his chest and he gasped. But he risked it and laughed again. These were his friends. They made him feel good. His place was among them. He said, ‘I’ve heard the story …’
Wharton said, ‘Zeebrugge must have been appalling, while it lasted. The papers have been full of it. A whole lot of VCs are expected to be announced at any moment.’
Gavilan said, ‘You did the job, as the navy always does … Noel and I are both frustrated admirals, you know.’
Tom did know; both men were great admirers of the Royal Navy. Coward said, ‘I’d have given anything to be there …’
Wharton said, ‘And you’d have come back and we’d have asked you what it was like and you’d have said’ – he drooped one hand in a limp, effeminate gesture and changed his voice to a homosexual’s lisp – ‘My dears, the noise … and the people!’
Novello said, ‘We’re only allowed ten minutes. We want to tell you we’re all waiting for you.’
‘I have a table ready for you in the designing-room,’ Gavilan said. ‘And my head cutter’s ready to give you a special course in materials.’
‘And as soon as you say the word, we’ll throw a party for you that London won’t forget for a long time … our London, at least.’
Coward said, ‘If he gets the VC, we’ll ram it down their throats … One of us, a VC. Then they’ll have to change their stereotypes.’
‘They won’t,’ Wharton said, ‘but it’ll make some of them think, a bit … in private, of course.’
They talked then about the theatre, about their friends and Tom’s; then the sister came and said, ‘Time, gentlemen, please.’
‘Were you ever a barmaid, darling?’ Wharton said. ‘You’ve got the tone off to a T … Ta-ta Tom …’ He blew Tom a kiss, and the others followed suit as they left, the sister smiling as they trooped out.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘you have another … this one swears he won’t take more than two minutes.’
A captain RN came in. Tom stared a moment, thinking, who on earth? Then he recalled. It was Captain Buller, the 2nd Sea Lord’s Naval Assistant. Buller waited for the sister to close the door behind her, then said, ‘I’m here in an unofficial capacity, Rowland … You did very well at Zeebrugge – better than very well – brilliantly, and showed extraordinary skill and courage. You were recommended for a VC – which you will not get. The admiral tore up the recommendation. Instead he gave me this …’ He put some papers on Tom’s bedside table. ‘That is your request to be allowed to resign your commission, already approved. Sign it, and you will be out of the Service, effective at once. These’ – he tapped other papers – ‘are the proceedings of a medical board grading you 4F, unfit for further military service in any capacity. The admiral says you have done your bit … but he won’t have you wearing a VC. It’s unfair, Rowland, but the navy often is. You know.’
‘I know,’ Tom said. He was smiling, as best he could. He didn’t want a Victoria Cross, because he’d never again have a uniform to wear it on. He had wanted to be out, with his friends; and now he was. ‘Thank the admiral for me, sir,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it. If you’ll give me a pen and hold the papers against this board …’ He signed. ‘There.’
Buller said, ‘Well, goodbye … And good luck, whatever you do … By the way, Bidford, the fellow who rescued you and your crew, has a VC.’
He went out, the papers in his hand. The sister came in. ‘Now there’s another, but I told him I’d have to see you before I let him in. How do you feel?’
‘A little tired. Very happy. Who is it?’
‘A man called Bennett.’
‘Charlie … show him in. We won’t be long.’
Charlie Bennett came in. Tom saw for a second the beauty of Jerry Sherwood, one moment glowing in the excitement of the battle – the next, disappeared, only a tall spout of blood from the handsome column of his neck. Had he killed the young man, by desiring him?
He held his hands out and Charlie took them, whispering, ‘Oh Tom … are you all right?’
‘I will be … got chewed up a bit … it won’t take long … four, five weeks …’
There were tears in Charlie’s eyes. ‘I’ve longed for you … prayed for you … everything’s ready for you at home.’
‘I’ll come as soon as I can … Don’t say anything. Just hold my hand, till they make you go … hold my hand.’
SPRING DELICACIES
COVENT GARDEN’S STORE
Two things are necessary for the enjoyment of Covent-Garden’s best spring fare. The first, good taste, is claimed by most people, but the second, a well-filled purse, is not nearly so prevalent. Notwithstanding wartime conditions France is sending some excellent asparagus, that of Lauris being very fine, whilst another variety, the Cavaullon, is good enough for all but the most exacting of epicures … Much fresher than the French is Devonshire asparagus, which is uncommonly toothsome … Those whose path of duty is in the avenues of Covent-Garden look with longing eyes at the beautiful English tomatoes displayed in small quantities. As yet the beautiful ‘love apples’ are worth more money than can be paid by people in ordinary walks of life; but with the advent of warmer weather supplies will increase and prices will fall automatically, although the prospects of very cheap tomatoes are more than remote …
The ready sale of cucumbers is not understood even by the men who distribute them daily in large quantities. One firm disposed of full 4000 cucumbers in a single day. That of itself is not a remarkable achievement, but the fact that the market remains firm at 8s to 10s a dozen wholesale is passing strange. By whom these expensive cucumbers are eaten it is difficult to say, but the principal consuming centres are Nottingham, Sheffield, and Derby. Were it not for the insatiable demands of those towns the price of cucumbers would be much lower …
