by Nevil Shute
Colvin flushed with pleasure. “It wasn’t all that, sir,” he said.
“Wasn’t it? I’ve been getting reports all day about it. Flaps in the German Army, mutinies in the German Navy, and I don’t know what beside. But first of all, how is Captain Simon?”
“He’s getting on all right, sir,” I replied. “I saw him yesterday. He’s lost two fingers, but he’ll be out of the hospital in a week.”
“That might be worse.” He motioned us to chairs. “Sit down, and tell me the whole thing. Smoke if you want to.” He pushed forward his silver box of cigarettes.
The story took the best part of an hour in the telling, because he wanted to know every little thing, including every detail of the damage to the ship. Once launched and over his diffidence Colvin told the tale quite well, in simple direct terms. He had the report that Boden had written out for him in his hand, and now and again he turned to that to check a point.
In the end the admiral turned to me. “So much for that,” he said. “That brings me up to date. What’s the next step, Martin?”
I said: “The next thing Brigadier McNeil wants us to do is to land these arms,” I said. I told him briefly what had been proposed, that the fishing fleet should be scattered by a false attack one night, and in the confusion certain of the boats should rendezvous with Geneviève. “Brigadier McNeil can find the guns and ammunition,” I said. “I saw him about that this afternoon. He very much wants the operation to be carried out.”
He eyed me keenly. “Don’t you?”
I said: “I think it should be all right, sir. I don’t think that the ship should do much more after that. She must be getting pretty well known by this time, over on the other side.”
“I agree that we don’t want to overplay our hand. Taking this operation, though, what form would your false attack take?”
I said: “Would you consider sending a couple of destroyers in to get behind the fishing fleet, and shoot up anything that they could find, sir? It only needs a little gunfire between the fleet and their home port — Douarnenez. That would scatter them all right.”
He said directly: “No, I won’t. I won’t even consider it, Martin.”
He got up from his chair, and began pacing up and down in front of his fire, as was his habit. “I told you when this thing began,” he said, “and I told McNeil. I remember telling Brigadier McNeil in this room that I wouldn’t send destroyers up to the front door of Brest to help him out if he got into trouble. And now that’s just exactly what you’re asking me to do!”
I was silent.
He turned on me, though I had not spoken. “However small the risk may seem to be, I won’t do that. You must keep a sense of proportion. This is a very minor operation of war, Martin. It has to do with a fishing-boat and a few Tommy-guns. To make that operation a success you say that we should risk a million pounds’ worth of ships and upwards of three hundred men. Well, I won’t do it.”
I knew my admiral fairly well by that time. “Very good, sir,” I replied. “Could we send a couple of motor-gunboats over for the job?”
He stopped short in his pacing. “That’s more like it!” he exclaimed. “All you want is something fast, to let off a few guns and make a noise. They can drop a depth charge if they want to make a bigger bang. Yes, I don’t mind a couple of M.G.B.s. You’ll have to see Rear-Admiral Coastal Forces, though, and see if he can work it in for you.”
We settled it upon that basis, and he made us stay and dine with him. We caught the last train back to London after dinner and got back at about eleven, very tired.
I fixed up Colvin for his convoy job next morning, which was Thursday. Then I settled down to work, to clear up the arrears that had accumulated while I was away. It took me all the rest of that week to get my normal routine straight without touching any of the paper that related to Geneviève, so that by Monday morning I was glad to see young Boden.
He turned up bright and early. I settled him down on the other side of the table to me and got him going; he proved to be intelligent and apt at office work. In fact, he was a good deal more accustomed to it than I am; Dartmouth and life at sea don’t fit one for an office chair or make it easy to dictate to a shorthand-typist. He was a great help. He took all my telephone calls when I was out and took them right, did the right thing with people who looked in to see me, and got the Geneviève papers into splendid shape with only minor guidance from myself. I was very sorry, I may say, when his leave came to an end.
He was sitting opposite me at the table one day when I happened to mention Colvin. “The East Coast convoy gets to Methil to-morrow,” I said. “Colvin should be here on Friday.”
“He’ll be in time for the meeting with Rear-Admiral Coastal Forces, then,” said Boden. “Do you want him in on that, sir?”
“If Simon hasn’t turned up by then, I do,” I said. And then I said: “I must say, you fellows have a queer idea of leave.”
He smiled. “Colvin hasn’t got anywhere to go to in this country. He left it just after the last war.”
I wrote my name at the foot of a minute and tossed it into the out-basket. “He was going strong with a young woman at Torquay at one time,” I said.
“I think that’s all washed up,” said Boden. “He hasn’t been over to Torquay for the last month.”
There was a pause. Presently he said: “After this next operation, sir, the ship will pay off, won’t she?”
I leaned back in my chair. “I think she will,” I said. “We haven’t come to any decision yet, but that’s what it looks like to me. If we decided to pack the whole show up, what would you like to do?”
“Do you think I could get into Combined Operations?”
“In charge of one of the landing craft?”
“That’s what I’d like.”
I thought about that for a minute. “It’s rather a waste of your anti-submarine training, isn’t it?” I said.
He said: “That’s what I’d really like best.”
I nodded. “I’ll remember that. C. W. Branch may get a bit sticky; if they do you may have to go back into anti-submarine. But I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s awfully good of you, sir.”
“Not a bit. What about the others? What about Rhodes?”
Boden said: “He isn’t a sea-going officer. He’s colour-blind. I think he’d be quite happy in a shore job after this.”
“Maybe,” I said, thinking of the Wren. There was a pause while I lit a cigarette. “Do you know what Colvin wants?”
The lad said calmly: “I know what he wants well enough, but he won’t get it.”
I stared at him. “What does he want?”
“He wants to go back to the West Coast of America. He left his wife out there, in San Francisco.”
“I thought he wasn’t married.”
Boden grinned. “That’s what he likes people to believe. It may be true, legally. Probably it is. But that doesn’t stop him wanting to get back to her.”
This was the Admiralty in war-time, and here we were gossiping like a couple of fish-wives. I thought of that for a moment, and relaxed. “What’s she like?” I asked.
“Her name’s Junie,” he said. “She comes from a place called East Naples, in Arkansas. Beautiful, but dumb. She went to Hollywood for a screen test, and got stuck there. She was a waitress in a cafeteria in San Diego when he met her.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About four years before the war. They got married, so to speak, and went to live in Oakland, as nice a suburban couple as you’d wish to see. That was when he had that shore job with the line of nitrate ships.”
“The Manning Stevens Line,” I said. “He had that for four years. Was he still living with her when the war broke out?”
“Yes. But for the war he’d still have been with Junie and the Manning Stevens Line, snug as a bug in a rug.”
I thought of the long, difficult trip he had made in the tug before the mast, to join up; of the eighteen weary
months that he had served in North and South Atlantic. “It’s a rotten war,” I said.
He took me up. “It’s very hard on a couple like that,” said Boden. “After four years of quiet, settled life, the first he’d ever had. And with people of that sort, it’s such an undertaking for them to write letters. It’s not like you and me. He hates writing, and Junie doesn’t know what to do with a pen and ink when she gets them, so he says. And if they do write, they can’t think of anything to say....”
I stared at him thoughtfully. “If they can’t keep together, they’re sunk,” I said at last.
“That’s right. He made a pass at that young woman at Torquay, but then he dropped her. He’s a pretty lonely man.”
I glanced across the table at the white-faced, red-haired lad before me. “You think a good deal of him, don’t you?”
He said: “He’s a fine chap, sir. He’s nice to work under, and he’s a splendid seaman. I hate like hell to see a chap like that have such bad luck.”
We turned back to the work.
Simon came up to London at the week-end, and Boden went back with Colvin to the ship, at Dartmouth. Simon was looking well enough, but for his hand; he carried it in a sling, heavily bandaged, and came with me to the conference with Coastal Forces. There was no great difficulty about the M.G.B.s. Two of them would be available at the end of the month, both armed with Oerlikons and depth charges and capable of about forty knots in calm water. If the position of the fishing fleet could be found out for them beforehand there did not seem to be much difficulty about their job. All they had to do was to slink in behind the fleet upon their silent engines, make a noise like a couple of battleships, and beat it for home. From their point of view it was a very simple exercise.
Provisionally we fixed it for the last day of the month, October. There was a waning moon which rose at about 23.00 then; that meant that there would be a little light but not too much. We wanted good weather for this trip in order that the boats could find the rendezvous with Geneviève. We did not want to leave it later than that if it could be helped, because of the moon and because we wanted to get guns ashore before the fervour in Douarnenez had died away. At the same time, it seemed to me important that Simon should go on the trip for political reasons and for his fluent French; that gave another seventeen or eighteen days in which his hand could heal. It was a short time, but it was just possible he might be fit by then. Simon himself, of course, was adamant that he was fit to go.
I want to Dartmouth for a day after that meeting. Geneviève was off the slip, but still in the hands of the shipyard; they had repaired the damage to the bow and the wheel-house, and a couple of engine-room artificers were working on the flame-thrower under the direction of a chap from Honiton. The engine repair was the longest job; it was impossible to get spare parts and they were having to be made. The estimated date for completion was the twenty-second, so if that date were maintained the show might still take place on the thirty-first.
Simon, in the meantime, had found out from the Breton lads in his crew the circumstances that governed the position of the fishing fleet in the Iroise. He spread out the chart before me in the ward-room in the little villa at Dittisham. “On the flood-tide it is easy,” he said. “The fish, the little sardines, they come northwards with the tide up from the Bay of Biscay. The tide sweeps them up the Baie d’Audierne,” he showed me with his finger on the chart, “until they come to the Chaussée de Sein. Then the tide sweeps through the Raz de Sein between the Chaussée and the land — very, very quick.”
“I know,” I said. “It runs up to six knots through there. And the fish go with it?”
He nodded. “The tide carries the fish through the Raz into the Iroise. Always, at the first of the flood, the fishing fleet will lie in the Iroise at the entrance to the Raz, stemming the tide with their bows to the south, drifting their nets to take the fish as they come northwards on the tide. That is the way we found them on that first night of all.”
“The tide was on the flood then, was it?”
“Yes. Our Breton lads knew where the fleet would be the whole of the time. But they did not know then just exactly what we wanted, and we did not think to ask them.”
“What’s the tide doing on the thirty-first?” I asked.
He pulled over the nautical almanac and turned the pages. “It is good for us upon that night.” He showed me the entry. “Raz de Sein — the flood-tide makes towards the north at 21.40, Greenwich time. That is 22.40 of our time.”
From Dartmouth I went on to Plymouth about the motor-gunboats. I went first to the Commander-in-Chief’s office and spent ten minutes with him, telling him what we wanted to do. Then I spent half an hour with his Chief of Staff, bending over the chart. It did not seem to be difficult. Zero, we decided, should be about the time of moonrise — say 23.00. That was when the motor-gunboats would begin to do their stuff. It would take them an hour to get into position on their silent engines at low speed, and five hours from Plymouth under average weather conditions. That meant that they should leave at 17.00, sunset time, which seemed reasonable enough. They would have daylight for their departure. They would be back off Plymouth at 04.30 or soon after; if the wind were in the west they might anchor in Cawsand till the port opened at dawn. We could arrange a tender for them there, in case of casualties. One of the mine-sweeping trawlers could do that.
We wrote a draft of an operation order there and then, that I could talk over with V.A.C.O. “This thing will have to have a name,” the Chief of Staff said. His eyes roved around the room. There was an iron bedstead in his office, the bed made up with sheets and blankets; evidently it was his habit to sleep there upon occasion. “Operation Blanket,” he said. “It’s got to happen in the blanket of the dark.” So Operation Blanket it became.
The M.G.B.s were in the Cattewater. I went down to see them with a young lieutenant-commander of the R.N.V.R., more for interest than anything else. Boats numbers 261 and 268 were detailed for the job; the officer commanding 268 was senior, and we went on board her. He was a lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. called Sanderson. He was twenty-two years old, and before the war had been at Cambridge studying to become a schoolmaster. He was a very tough-looking young man with hard eyes and a prominent jaw, dressed in a very dirty uniform. The officers of Geneviève looked like a pack of Sissies beside that chap. His Number One was a sub. of twenty with a great red beard. I never saw such a pair of pirates in my life.
Their ship was one of the new Vosper-boats, and she was very interesting. I spent an hour on board her, wishing that I’d had the chance of a command like her when I was young. She was good fun, that boat: well armed, comparatively seaworthy, and very fast. I thought a lot of her.
I went back to London, and two days later I went down to V.A.C.O. about Operation Blanket. It was shaping quite well; indeed, it seemed to be a fairly simple little job, without great risk to anybody. McNeil was gathering his Tommy-guns and ammunition together, two lorry-loads of them. Their weight would put Geneviève ten inches lower in the water and therefore slow her down a bit, but that didn’t seem to matter very much. Repairs were up to time and she came off the slip to schedule. Finally, Simon’s hand was getting on quite well.
Simon came up to London a few days after that, and I met McNeil with him for a discussion of the message to Douarnenez. There was an agent over there, I learned, who was to pass the message through: a man at Quimper who supplied the fish-packers with tinned steel sheets. In some way that I did not understand a message would reach him.
We settled to design the message. “Charles Simon says,” it ran at last, “the English will send seventy sub-machine-guns with three thousand rounds for each. On the night of October 31st/November 1st gunfire will begin about 23.00. Fishing vessels should put out their lights and scatter. Seven vessels should rendezvous without lights in the Anse des Blancs Sablons three miles north of Cap de la Chèvre. Charles Simon will be there to meet them in a Douarnenez sardine-boat painted black and will gi
ve to each vessel ten guns and ammunition. Confirm that on that night the fleet will fish north of the Raz de Sein. Ends.”
Two days later a reply came. “Charles Simon’s message received and understood. Seven boats will meet him as arranged. The fleet will fish north of Raz de Sein from 22.00 to 04.00 weather permitting. Ends.”
I went down to Plymouth on the twenty-ninth with McNeil; Simon met us there, and we had a conference in the Chief of Staff’s office about Operation Blanket. The commanding officer of M.G.B. 268 was there, Sanderson, whom I had met before, and with him was a quiet young man called Peters, who was in command of 261. In an hour we had settled the detail of the operation. Geneviève would sail direct from Dartmouth as before; her officers preferred the longer journey rather than the inconvenience of making their last arrangements in a strange port. That meant that she must leave in the forenoon of the 31st. We arranged to confirm the operation by telephone that morning, in view of the weather at the time.
There was no more to be done. I went back to Dartmouth with McNeil, and we went on to Dittisham. There was a lorry down there at the hard unloading Tommy-guns in their boxes into the boat to be ferried to the ship. It would have been easier to bring her up against a quay, of course, but Simon and Colvin had preferred the secrecy of Dittisham.
I went on board Geneviève and made a semi-official inspection of her. She was in good shape; the damage had been well repaired and they had taken her to sea one day to test the flame-thrower. Colvin said she was as good as she had ever been.
So they went.
We got them away at about 11.00 on the morning of the 31st, deep loaded with their Tommy-guns and ammunition and a full tank for the flame-thrower. I was at Dittisham to see them off; McNeil could not get down, nor was there any need for him to be there.
The weather was quite good, with high cloud and occasional bursts of sunshine. The forecast was for fine weather and moderate cloud off Ushant during the night, with only a slight chance of rain. That suited us quite well. It would make it easy for the fishing-boats to find the rendezvous; if the forecast had been for thick weather we should have been obliged to postpone.
