See You at the Bar

by David Black

  The group of three, they caught up with halfway down the gulf on which the town of Fournoi itself sat. When Harry looked at the chart, right at the bottom was a tiny narrows, less than twenty yards across. The caiques could squeeze through, but a six hundred and seventy-ton submarine couldn’t. They were obviously hoping to shake off Scourge there. But going flat out at almost fourteen knots, Scourge was too fast for them.

  Hooper began engaging at 1500 yards, just to make sure every shell counted. He and his crew had got three rounds away when everybody froze – Hooper and his gun team and Harry and the rest of the bridge crew – everybody.

  They’d been watching the second and third shells hit the stern of the hindmost caique. Harry had been aware of the twinkling out the corner of his eye from one of the other boats but had thought little of it until the little trail of waterspouts came walking down the starboard side of Scourge, landing about twenty degrees off the bow and passing ten to twelve yards off the beam.

  He knew what it was immediately, and so did everybody else. And then, drifting over the flat sea above the clatter of their diesels, came the distinctive rip of an MG 42 machine gun. Nobody imagined they had such an effective range. But everybody knew it wouldn’t take long for the gunner to correct his fall of shot, and it stood to reason there’d be more than one of the bastards on this little clutch of glorified bath toys.

  Hooper instantly switched targets and fired another three shells into the caique that was firing on them. It was enough to silence the gun, but not before the next burst had been on the way, and its rounds, obviously fired in a spray, walked in off the water and started tinging on the for’ard casing. One of Hooper’s loaders suddenly sat down, clutching his right buttock, and Harry, looking at him, saw the young rating’s mouth open in astonishment, like a cavern, and then he yelled, ‘They got me!’

  So loud that Harry, to his shame, actually laughed out loud before composing himself, before shouting, ‘Get that man below!’

  They got me! Just like in a Tom Mix western. Silly bugger.

  There was a lot of blood pumping out between the lad’s fingers, however. One of the older hands on the gun team quickly had him in a fireman’s lift, and Harry recognised one of the senior rate’s heads in the gun tower hatch waiting to grab him.

  None of this made the slightest difference to Hooper’s rate of fire.

  Harry was about to order him to switch targets again, but before he could shout, Hooper already had. So Harry shut up and smiled a little self-satisfied smile to himself; his gun layer didn’t need telling to start dropping suppressing shots on all the caiques now, to discourage other MG 42s from getting into the game.

  As Scourge started coming abeam the first caique she had engaged, Hooper swung the gun again and fired another two rounds at close range into its hull, right down on the waterline where its engine space would be, and there was a secondary bang and a huge puff of smoke that wafted up like solid shadow in the moonlight. The caique lurched and slewed her bows towards Scourge as she swished past in a glittering surge of phosphorescence. Close now, so that Harry, on the bridge, could quite clearly see the crush of Wehrmacht grey on its deck, some clinging to anything that looked solid as the caique wallowed.

  Rapid tattoos of tinging began hitting Scourge’s bridge wing. Harry could see little tornadoes of flaked paint dancing away. Small arms fire. Jerries on the sinking caique were actually shooting at them.

  Harry turned to see the outraged faces of the two ratings on the .303 mount behind him. Jack could be a fearsome warrior when his dander was up, but he could also show a rare compassion for fellow seafarers in peril. Even an enemy, if the vessel they were on was foundering. But it was obvious to Harry right away, that as far as those two able seamen were concerned, that bloody shower, in that tub over there had just crossed a line. The two of them were looking Harry straight in the eye. So Harry said simply, ‘Return fire.’ And they went to work with a vengeance.

  The other two caiques were both now in considerable states of disrepair, courtesy of Hooper’s attentions, and obviously sinking. When Harry studied the furthest one, he could see most of the soldiers on board had already jettisoned their kit and were either in or in the process of getting into the water. He only had to shift his night glasses a shrug to see why; the beach was close and eminently swimmable.

  ‘Check fire!’ he ordered. Then into the voicepipe he ordered, ‘Slow ahead together. Starboard fifteen.’

  As the way came off Scourge and she turned stern on to her former targets, everyone could see the spreading slicks of German soldiers in the water, all splashing and stretching out for the shore. It was immediately obvious to everyone on the bridge and the casing that all of them were likely to make it.

  The firing from the first caique had ceased, and so had the firing from Scourge’s .303 team, seeing as there was no longer any enemy fire to return. Its soldiers had further to swim, but they all looked like they were going to give it a try. Many of them were clutching lifebelts and one group had torn off a hatch cover and were clinging to it as they too kicked for the beach.

  Harry was aware of Farrar standing next to him, as he’d been since the start of the action.

  Suddenly, there was a question hanging in the air. What was the captain going to do about those German soldiers?

  As it had been up in Yugoslavia, so it was down here in the Dodecanese; a nasty little war where civilians were just as much a target for the Germans as partisans and Allied troops, where the objective wasn’t merely to pacify the conquered territory but to create a wasteland, with no mercy shown in the process. And as everybody knew on Scourge’s bridge and in the hamlets and villages ashore, as far as these survivors in the water were concerned, the minute they got back on land again, they’d be soldiers again, and it would be business as usual.

  Harry looked at the floundering figures, the bobbing heads and flailing arms, hundreds of them and said nothing.

  *

  Scourge was running north again, back to her patrol billet. It was halfway through the morning watch with less than an hour to first light. There were just two lookouts, Harry and Farrar on the bridge, and the two of them were standing right aft beyond the .303 mount, gazing at the wake.

  Harry had been up there all night and had watched the watch changes come and go. He hadn’t felt like going below, hadn’t felt like eating. But he had been accepting piping hot flasks of Windass’ coffee. And seeing as he was up here anyway, he’d spelled the rostered watch officers and let them get some sleep. So he couldn’t know the mood in the boat.

  Farrar had come up to join him about ten minutes ago. There had been a silence since.

  Then Harry had said, out of the blue, ‘Our old chum Verney doesn’t think this is a sideshow, you know. This Greek Islands show. Well, maybe a sideshow for this war. But not for the next. He says his diplomatic nose tells him so. He used to be a diplomat, you know. A Foreign Office type… before he became a full-blown nut job.’

  Farrar didn’t reply; he sensed he wasn’t expected to.

  ‘There’s no getting away from the fact that what we’re doing here is still “noises off” though, is there?’ Harry continued. ‘We’re a long way from the main thrust going up through Italy. We don’t need these islands to win. The Yanks obviously think that too, which is why we’re conducting this out of a shoebox. There’s no big kit being diverted our way. No landing craft… anything that even looks like proper air support… no carrier. But it’s what happens next that’ll make here the frontline in the next war, or so Verney says. That Uncle Joe might be our big pal now, but after we’ve won, it will be back to business as usual. Tsarist Russia, communist Russia, the Great Game goes on. And if the Red Army coming from the east gets as far as Greece, Joe Stalin will have achieved what no Romanov ever did… a friendly opening into the Med. Verney says it’s a certainty that’s what Winston’s been telling the Yanks… why it’s important. And he reckons the Yanks have been telling Winston, “Nonsense,
Uncle Joe’s our friend now,” and Winston’s telling them back, “We don’t have friends, we have interests,” …and that’s why he wants us here before Stalin… before the Greek communist party and their partisan army hands the whole caboodle over to him.’

  Harry paused, then turned to look at Farrar, ‘And I look at all those poor, starving islanders we’ve been seeing, and I think, “You poor bastards. Even when it’s over, it won’t be over for you.” We’ll all go home, and a new lot will come in. A change of shift, and it’ll all keep on going. I think I’m getting tired, Number One. And I don’t mean sleepy.’ And he gave a little laugh. ‘How about you? Are you getting tired?’

  ‘Crete,’ said Farrar, deciding it was time to get to the point.

  ‘What?’ said Harry.

  ‘It was while Jerry was consolidating his position on Crete and they were “cleaning up” on the surrounding islands… a rather unfortunate metaphor, sir, considering the mess they were making everywhere they went. That was when Lieutenant Commander Bayliss ordered a spot of “cleaning up” of his own. I’m talking about what happened when we were evacuating troops from a raid on Karpathos. You’ll have heard, sir.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Harry, although he was aware there was some kind of story about Bertie Bayliss ‘only doing his duty’ somewhere in the Greek islands. Whatever that meant. He’d always tried to stay away from the rumour side of the Andrew, where it was all nods and winks and suggested allegations about God knew what. It just depressed him and usually signified nothing in the end.

  ‘Coming out, we met a small reinforcement convoy… mostly local craft like tonight, sir,’ said Farrar. ‘Stuffed full of Jerry troops on their way to help out with the work their pals had already started and we’d just experienced. We shot up the craft, like tonight, and the soldiers went into the water, like tonight, with the beach less than a hundred yards away,’ Farrar paused, ‘Bayliss ordered the crew to continue firing on them until there weren’t any left, sir.’

  ‘And you think I should’ve done the same thing?’ said Harry, his voice very cool now.

  ‘When those soldiers got ashore, we all knew what they were going to be doing, especially since the commandos we’d been carrying had given the Jerries already ashore a pretty hard time…’

  ‘I won’t do it, Number One,’ said Harry, interrupting. ‘I don’t care what your old skipper might have done, or why. I don’t care about what the consequences might be. All I know is I’ve thought about it a lot. I know it’s war… I know there could be, will be times when people on my side will likely die as a result if I don’t… but I still won’t do it. I will not order my crew to fire on survivors in the water. And d’you know why? Because, if I live through all this, I don’t want that in my head. I don’t want it to be my first thought when I wake up every morning and my last thought when I go to bed. That I am a man who has ordered the killing of unarmed survivors. Am I selfish? Damn right I am. I don’t presume to answer for anyone else. But not me, Number One. Call me squeamish, call me spineless, call me anything you like. But if I get to go home after this war, I’m not carrying that back with me. I won’t do it.’

  Farrar gave a slight shake of his head and a smile. For a moment, Harry thought he was mocking him for a weak fool, and he started to feel the anger rising.

  ‘So we saw, sir,’ said Farrar, now meeting his burning eyes. ‘Bayliss ordered it. You didn’t. And what I am saying, sir, is that I don’t think you’ll find a man aboard this boat who isn’t grateful right now for not having had to pull the trigger again on Jerries in the water. For not having to have that in his head again… because you wouldn’t order it.’

  Eighteen

  When the petty officer writer got back to his desk, Admiral Cunningham’s office door was closed, which was unusual, and there were voices coming from inside. He recognised Captain de Launy’s voice. There was no shouting, there never was with the admiral, so no major row, but when he listened carefully and began to pick up the gist, he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  It was a typically gorgeous Malta afternoon outside – warm sunshine, rays of it flooding in through the blast-taped windows. The PO writer could remember a time when there was barely a pane of solid glass left on the island, and the orderly clack of typewriters echoed everywhere, a smoothly functioning staff machine at work in a rational world. Which made all this stuff they were discussing, about Captain Charles ‘the Bonny Boy’ Bonalleck VC, the S12 back in Algiers, all the more disorienting. Could such things have actually happened in this world?

  ‘I still cannot get to grips, sir, with how it all had got so far,’ the PO writer recognised de Launy’s voice. ‘But there are the transcripts of the interviews I conducted… the other documents… the blocking of the DSO… the binning of the recommendations for gallantry awards from Scourge while was she detached to Twelfth Flotilla… and the evidence of all these orders he was issuing without telling anybody… of what he was up to with the Americans, sir. It’s a building pattern, and it’s all pointing in the one direction.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, how did we let him get away with it?’ It was the admiral speaking now. He heard paper being shuffled. ‘He got away with a lot of it, I imagine, because poor old Henry was never actually on top of things…’ Henry? thought the PO writer, he must be referring to Admiral Harwood, ‘…but let’s face it… if someone had come to you with any of these stories, would you have believed them? I know I wouldn’t. I barely do now, except it’s you Gillie, who’s telling me, and you’ve got all the paperwork.’

  ‘A court martial will be bloody, sir,’ it was de Launy now.

  ‘No court martial. Not yet, anyway. I’ve already cut orders relieving him, but I want to you to present them to him personally. Then I want you to get him out of theatre, Gillie, pronto, you understand? And take a couple of regulating petty officers with you. With side-arms. I want it plain there’s to be no negotiations or appeals. There’s an RAF ferry flight for Algiers going from Takali, my driver will take you out there.’

  ‘D’you want me to charge him with anything, sir?’

  ‘If it were up to me, I’d have you take him behind a sand dune and shoot him. No, no charges, Gillie. I’ll have him have no rights in this matter. Get him back home, and we’ll decide his fate then.’

  And with that, the door flew open, and the PO writer was to be found at his desk, diligently cataloguing a signals file.

  De Launy swept out the door. Admiral Cunningham stood on the threshold watching him go, then he turned to look at the PO writer. The admiral was a slight man, not very tall, with thinning grey hair, who could’ve been mistaken for the owner of a small-town haberdashery. But the look he gave the PO writer sent a chill into his heart.

  ‘Wragg,’ he said, ‘Did you know we have a PNO stationed at the docks in Murmansk?’

  PNO – Principal Naval Officer; and Murmansk, the Russian end for the dreaded Arctic convoys.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said PO Writer Wragg, swallowing.

  ‘He has a small permanent staff to help him effect the smooth turnaround of our escorts on that run. He’s always on the lookout for replacements. I make it my business to always keep an eye out for likely candidates for him. Carry on, Wragg.’

  Nineteen

  ‘You’re joking,’ Harry said to Kit Grainger while lounging in the floral-patterned easy chair that dwarfed Grainger’s captain’s cabin aboard Alconbury. He swirled his tumbler of pink gin once more, just for the luxury of being able to do so.

  ‘Au contraire, young Jock,’ said Grainger, with his own pink gin, but perched on his desk chair. ‘I thought it rather a good idea, actually. Since everybody is sitting around here on their arses with bugger all to do.’

  Harry had already been to see Cdr Pleydell to report on his patrol; the F-lighter and all the caiques they’d sunk early on and then the eight hundred-ton coaster they’d torpedoed off Kokkari at the entrance to Samos harbour itself. That the coaster hadn’t expected them to be there
had been obvious. Because what had also become obvious, after several days of encountering nothing on their patrol line, was that Jerry must have had some system for reporting sightings of Scourge, as she plied among the islands, and was routing any convoys through one end of the chain while Scourge was at the other.

  ‘Couldn’t you have stayed dived so they wouldn’t see you?’ Pleydell had asked.

  Harry explained that it didn’t matter; even if they had, they’d still have had to come up at night to recharge their batteries, and in those confined island channels, someone would always hear their diesels thumping away. But he had explained to Pleydell that he’d tried other ways to confuse the enemy, and that was how they’d bagged the coaster.

  ‘We still had a few of these silly fake periscopes we’d mocked up from our patrol to the Adriatic, sir,’ Harry had explained. ‘So we popped a couple off Mykonos to confuse their spotters and then headed back up to the other end of our patrol line to see who we could surprise.’

  Pleydell had heard him out like a man just waiting to say what he wanted to say, and that was that the patrol line idea was scrapped, and Scourge was needed to act as a taxi for the brigadier’s raiding parties.

  After Harry had been dismissed, he’d headed over to Alconbury to see if he could find any sanity there. And that was when Grainger had begun by telling him about the stasis that was now afflicting Operation Hoplite, the plummeting morale and eventually, his idea for arresting it.

  But first, there’d been the matter of events.

  ‘There’s still a load of Jerries dug in round the western end of Kos,’ Grainger had told him. ‘And every morning, us and Howsham up anchor, tootle round and spend a leisurely day bombarding targets for the pongos, and when it’s time for sundowners, we tootle back here.’