See You at the Bar

by David Black

  Grieve’s dense script was remarkably legible considering the speed he must have been scribbling it down at. Harry began to read the entries, immediately recognising the three main beaches, JOSS, DIME and CENT that extended east from where they were now, off Licata, past the town of Gela. And the names of the USS Navy warships: the Brooklyn-class light cruisers, Savannah and Boise and Philadelphia on the gun line and the destroyers, Buck, Swanson and Roe and others. Grieve’s notes started:

  0028 – Western Task Force confirmed at assigned areas

  0030 – Searchlights from shore probing our movements

  0037 – Ancon anchored

  USS Ancon, she was flagship for CENT beach landing force

  0044 – DIME Force in position in transport and gunfire support areas

  0046 – JOSS Force sighted Blue reference vessel light

  0050 – JOSS Force sighted Yellow reference vessel light

  0055 – Sea state settling, wind now at force 3 to 4

  0103 – JOSS beach, first LSTs begin lowering LCVPs

  And there it was, at three minutes past one in the morning, the first of the big Landing Ship, Tanks beginning to disembark their troops and equipment into their smaller Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel and them heading for JOSS beach. Harry looked at the innocuous little line of script. Seven pencilled words marking the moment; the first Allied soldiers about to set foot back on the shores of occupied Europe. Here we go, thought Harry. We’re on our way.

  Grieve’s narrative marched on:

  0142 – CTF 86 in Biscayne anchored midway between Blue and Yellow reference vessels at 5000 yds off beach, Licata bearing 127°

  CTF 86 – commander, task force 86 – that was the JOSS beach boss.

  0155 – Biscayne illuminated by 3 searchlights from shore

  0200 – First waves left rendezvous area for JOSS Blue Beach

  0204 – Biscayne alerts first LSTs: you are anchored too far offshore. LCVP run-in to beach too far

  0206 – Other JOSS beach LSTs late on station

  0210 – CTF 85 reports his H-hour delayed one hour at request of commander, transports

  0215 – DIME beach, first wave Ranger Battalion begins run-in

  0243 – NCWTF orders CTF 85, land immediately

  Harry is smiling to himself as he reads that. NCWTF was the Naval Commander, Western Task Force; that would Vice Admiral Hewitt USN on USS Monrovia, the big boss. Grieve sees the smile and says, ‘The flagship got a bit tetchy there, sir. No mistake.’

  0245 – JOSS Beach, enemy MG and medium artillery landing among first waves

  0246 – Rocket firing LCTs salvo suppressing fire

  0247 – DDs open suppressing fire on enemy searchlights

  0250 – Biscayne reports enemy mobile radio beacon near Scoglitti active, homing in enemy aircraft

  0252 – All CTF 86 first waves landed. Surf reported as 3 ft. Biscayne advises all units to use blazing coastal towns as navigation reference. Ranger Battalion and first waves of 1st Inf Div landed by CTF 81

  0254 – Philadelphia ordered to shoot out air beacon

  0255 – USN DDs Swanson and Roe in collision off JOSS beach, both request permission to proceed Malta

  0315 – USN DD Buck ordered to replace Swanson and Roe in JOSS Fire Support Area No. 1 and support troops landing at Red Beach

  0330 – USN DDs and rocket-firing LCTs begin bombardment of CENT beach

  0400 – NCWTF reports first light

  0410 – CTF 85 reports first waves landed at assigned beaches encountering no opposition

  0412 – CTF 86 reports continuous artillery and MG fire on JOSS Red Beach and approaches

  0415 – Savannah and Boise ordered to open supporting fire on enemy batteries

  Harry shoves the pad back to Grieve and the two men share a long look at each other. There is nothing to say. The scale of the battle out there in the gathering light has silenced them.

  ‘Want to listen in for a bit, sir?’ says Grieve, and he plugs in a spare headset. Harry holds one earpiece to his head. He hears staccato voices in matter-of-fact monotone rasping at him through the crackle, an incomprehensible babble of call signs and coded phrases, random cracks that must be gunfire in the background. It is like opening a shutter on a madhouse. Harry can’t listen to it. He only realises he’s had his eyes closed when he opens them again and sees Grieve is back, scribbling intently. He unplugs his headset. Grieve sees him and says, ‘There seems to be an enemy air attack developing over CENT beach…’ although he is still listening hard, getting ready to resume his frantic scribbling.

  ‘Carry on Grieve,’ says Harry. ‘I’ll be on the bridge.’

  A beautiful day was dawning when Harry got there. But a far from peaceful one. Even coming up the conning tower ladder, he could hear the din of battle, all of it blasting and banging against an all-pervading, sky-to-sky, deep industrial grumbling of aero engines that sounded like it was coming from everywhere, and when he did get up, he could see it was.

  The bridge was crowded; while he’d been eavesdropping on the fight, Farrar had ordered up two more lookouts. Harry immediately concurred with Number One’s decision; the sheer scale of the shipping that blanked the horizon to starboard needed close watching. Nothing was close, yet. But that could change very fast. Then there was the great arc of sea running from astern to their port bow. It was blank, for now. But if the enemy were coming to interdict this landing, that was the direction they’d be coming from, and it needed watching. And he hadn’t looked up yet.

  The sky was full, coming from the west and the south, great carpets of bombers. At medium height, USAAF B25 Mitchells, A20 Havocs, all passing overhead, heading inland, and above them, further to the east, he could see three, no four, flights of B24 Liberators. Then he turned right around, and he was looking back west, and much further to the west and lower, where more aircraft, mostly medium bombers, were coming from the land, all heading back out to sea. Definitely Allied, he was sure he could pick out the odd twin tail of a B25. Those must be aircraft who’d delivered their payloads, returning now to the airfields along the Tunisian coast, likely going home only to bomb up and head back.

  And when Harry looked back again, over the task force, he could see down at low level smaller, darting aircraft, forming into looping circles over the transports. As they turned and twisted, he could see they were P40 Warhawks and Airacobras, dozens and dozens of them in what looked like continuously moving cab ranks, then peeling off and streaking in over the beaches to drop bombs almost to the shoreline.

  Harry had never felt more naked or vulnerable in his life, standing there on Scourge’s bridge, on the surface in broad daylight now, and he could almost feel his skin crawl. This was not right. Submarines had no business being on the surface amidst such mayhem. He stood on the bridge wing with his binoculars stuck to his face, scanning for threat.

  He hadn’t long to wait. The tracer curling up from the inshore destroyers alerted him. And there they were, skidding and weaving, two tight flights of Ju 88s coming at the transports, straight off the land. He lowered his glasses in time to see a pair of Airacobras haul back and climb out their cab rank, gaining height to come back and engage. And as he watched, his eyes caught other specks in the distance, way across the Golfo di Gela, beyond Gela itself. The evil, gull wings leaving no doubt. Stukas, a half dozen of them, peeling off and diving in.

  The morning wore on without respite.

  He commuted regularly to the wireless and Asdic cubbies, checking. The sea was clear to the west, and nobody was shouting at Scourge. No Task Force vessels strayed their way.

  A thought occurred to him – the crew would be getting peckish. But he was buggered if he was going to secure from diving stations so they could go and eat, not with all bloody hell being let loose round about them. So he ordered Harding to get Windass to start a sandwich production line and keep the coffee brewing and to grab a couple of stokers off Mr Petrie to do the distribution.

  On one of
his trips down to the radio cubbie, Grieve took a moment, ‘Sir! You just missed it! Another station broadcasting from the air net… I didn’t recognise the call sign… anyway, some flyboy telling Monrovia she had a U-boat on the surface, approaching from the west, and Monrovia telling them to shut up and leave it alone, it was one their guide boats. The R/T language was definitely non-standard! Lots of advice about reading operation orders, sir, and doubts cast on aircrew parentage.’

  Harry took another brief look at Grieve’s log. The boat had secured from red light by that time, and he didn’t have to squint:

  0448 – CG 45th Inf Div reports Elements from all assault battalions CENT Force have landed. Everything appears to be going well

  0450 – USN minesweeper Sentinel damaged during dive-bombing attack in JOSS area

  0510 – JOSS Red Beach, Beachmaster reports severe shell fire in sector; warns CTF 86 to suspend landing LCTs

  0538 – JOSS beach area. Shore batteries in Licata town open fire on Biscayne. Fire returned by Biscayne

  0600 – CG 3rd Inf Div reports JOSS beach area progress satisfactory on Blue Beach, landings underway at Green Beach, two battalions already ashore on Red Beach

  Harry pushed the log back and stepped forward into the control room. Through the press of bodies there, he could see through to the other end and McCready in the passage beyond, backing out of the galley clutching a can of coffee and a gas mask bag over his shoulder with the top of a pile of sandwiches peeking from under the flap. At diving stations, he should’ve been at the fruit machine in the control room.

  ‘Feeling peckish, Tom?’ called Harry, startling the lad.

  ‘Ah! Um, no, sir,’ said McCready, turning to see where his CO was shouting from. ‘Just taking a moment… something for the lads in the forward torpedo room, sir.’

  ‘Mr Petrie’s boys are supposed to be looking after that,’ said Harry.

  ‘Ah, well sir, you know. Stokers. They get nosebleeds if they go any further for’ard than number one main battery space.’ Poor McCready, he wasn’t exactly simpering with guilt, but not far off it. Abandoning his station, with the boat closed up.

  From the chart table, he heard Harding’s voice, ‘I told him to, sir.’

  Did you really? thought Harry.

  And then he pulled himself up. McCready had committed a grave sin, abandoning his diving station, but not as grave a sin as Harry letting himself get too twitchy in front of the crew. It was time to calm down. He looked around the control room, face grave.

  Everyone might look like they were attending to their duty, but you could practically see the entire control room crews’ ears flapping, waiting to hear what was going to happen next. It would be bad form for him to let his crew become twitchy too.

  And since there was bugger all happening to concern Scourge right now, and certainly not a whisper of HE coming out the Sicilian Channel, all he said to McCready was, ‘Hurry back.’

  Just take it easy, Harry, he said to himself.

  But even so, there was too much explosive ordnance flying about in all directions for Scourge’s captain to be totally relaxed. That, and the fact it was high time for them to receive their recall signal so they could dive and get the hell out the way. With the sun fully up and the day advancing, there was no more need for guide boats to keep the Task Force within the landing area. Somebody in Monrovia’s ops room must have noticed that by now, surely?

  Harry contented himself with issuing a further parting order to McCready before he disappeared up the conning tower hatch. ‘And when you’ve done that, go and annoy Grieve,’ he said. ‘Get him to show you his radio log and then go through the boat and brief everybody as to what’s been happening upstairs. There must be some of them interested.’

  It was only when he got to the bridge and the warm sun was on his face that Harry realised how close he’d been to overreacting. You really are getting tired, aren’t you, he said to himself.

  To snap out of it, he began scanning the shore again. The land behind the beach was shrouded by palls of smoke, randomly shimmering with concussions from the continuous bombardment. The minutes ran into an hour, and then another, as he watched the pageant unfolding along the great sweep of the Golfo di Gela. Detached from it, here, then there, along that bay, little incidental swarms of gnats seemed to coalesce, twisting and turning in the clear sky beyond the ranks of clouds, sometimes right down on the sea, sometimes way up to maybe ten thousand, twelve thousand feet, aircraft locked in their own dogfights, coming together for moments then peeling apart again, and then from time to time, one or maybe two of them, falling away in curls of smoke that ended in sudden plumes of water.

  Their recall really was long overdue now. That was when his thoughts were interrupted. It was the young stoker covering the port quarter lookout station.

  ‘Four aircraft, red one five zero, right down on the deck, sir. Coming in fast, sir. Right at us!’

  Harry spun and saw the specks, growing rapidly in the heartbeat it took to raise his binoculars. ‘I have them,’ he said. And in that instant, the ragged line of their formation peeled apart and as the four aircraft diverged into two loose deuces, their wings rising into their turns, he could see the distinctive box of their twin booms – USAAF P38 Lightnings. But they were no longer coming straight at Scourge, they were moving out to box her. Time concertina-ed. He felt his throat close. This couldn’t be happening.

  ‘Sir…! …?’ The lookout might only have been a boy, but he knew enough to realise what the P38s were doing. Harry heard him as from down a tunnel. He was looking at the two P38s wheeling right, at the 500lb bombs hanging from their under-wing hardpoints, observing to himself, in a very matter-of-fact fashion, that they were now reversing their turn and were about to start coming back in on him. He looked rapidly to his left; the other two had swung much wider, but they too were now beginning their bank back again. By the time he’d turned back to the two coming in from starboard, he was looking right down their noses and at the two .50 calibre machine guns and a 20mm cannon that nestled in each.

  They were setting Scourge up for a classic one-two – a simultaneous attack from both beams. He’d known that the minute he’d seen them begin their split but couldn’t bring himself to accept it. He’d gone the whole action so far without a single ship or aircraft or bomb or shell coming near. He and Scourge had done their job; no vessel had been allowed to stray from the landing area, no aircrew had had to be rescued. And now it was long past the time they should’ve been sent home, with a nice ‘thanks a lot’. Right now, they should’ve been at sixty feet, heading in the opposite direction.

  And he still wasn’t reacting. God! You really are tired.

  But time really was concertina-ing. Bare seconds had ticked away.

  ‘Clear the bridge!’ he yelled. ‘Number One, dive! Dive!’ And he grabbed the young lookout and propelled him towards the conning tower hatch. But there were six of them up there. Four lookouts, himself and Farrar, who was shoving the lookouts down the hole like he was stuffing a last-minute Christmas stocking. Harry held the lookout closest to him back, while Farrar straddled the hole, ready to drop. Something in the corner of Harry’s eye; he glanced back. The nose of the lead P38 was sparkling.

  Scourge was already on her way down, her bows up past the three-inch gun mount, diving into the welter of foam and spray, the sea rising up to engulf them. Then the thud! thud! thud! of blows hitting her. He was already looking aft, but he would never remember whether he saw the gouts of water tripping towards their hull first or whether it was the chunk of aft casing splinter, but he remembered the two vicious puffs that followed, blowing back at an angle out from under the casing and that he’d known instantly what he’d just seen.

  He needed to stop the dive. Now.

  ‘Shut main vents! Blow Q! Blow forward main ballast tanks!’

  At least two more thuds! This time he felt them beneath his feet.

  But even his own voice seemed to be coming from somewhere els
e, maybe behind him, because he was moving so fast he’d left it there, because right now, he was already on top of the crumpled figure of the remaining lookout, jamming him in under the bridge front.

  There was a tremendous roar of aero engines, a shadow passed in a draught above his head, so close he could smell the reek of fuel fumes and then a most remarkable, astonishing sight, sailing in slow motion, two bombs in smooth, horizontal flight, over the aft casing. And then water deluged into the bridge and was smothering them, Harry’s head shrieking, Christ! The conning tower hatch! before recalling he’d actually kicked it shut as he’d shoved the lookout into the corner.

  Water engulfed him. Harry felt the pressure in his ears; it meant Scourge was still diving.

  Bubbles and the noise of water. He daren’t open his eyes. He had one hand on his own nose, holding tight against the last gulps of fresh air he’d managed to suck down and the other clamped firmly over the nose and mouth of the young lookout. What was his name again? He was a stoker, Harry remembered that, but his name? The face didn’t ring any bells either, but then you didn’t often see many back-afties stray as far for’ard as the control room. Even so, he should be able to remember his name. It wasn’t as if there were that many of them in Scourge. Chapman. That was it. Who would have thought the process of drowning could actually create for you a little quiet moment to collect your thoughts?

  Those bastard P38s had shot holes in the pressure hull.

  Harry, wedged there, waiting for the water to win, all manner of thoughts came flooding in on him. That sparkling had been the P38’s cannon going off. The chunk of casing getting blown off didn’t matter, but those seemingly innocent little puffs? Remember them? They hadn’t looked like much, but those were cannon shells going into Scourge’s guts. And now she was diving with holes in her pressure hull.