by David Black
Confronted by the fact that there were Jerries still holding out on Kos, their ancient brigadier, had apparently run out of ideas, according to Grainger. After failing to budge the two companies of Panzer Grenadiers from their holes at the other end of the island by naval gunfire, he’d just hunkered down. All plans to push steadily up into the rest of the archipelago, taking islands as they went, rounding up the surrendered Italians and sweeping out the few Germans left had been sacrificed to simply holding a line across the island, and whatever troops not being used for that, he’d just been sending off on random raids, hitting all the nearby islands in order to ‘strike fear into Jerry’s heart, wherever he’s lurking’ and then pulling back again. Not surprisingly, leading that charge had been Verney’s V-force.
Everybody else had been left to just sit about and wait on Thirios, including all the RAF ground crew that had arrived on two Fairmile D motor gunboats from Alex, who were waiting for the two squadrons of P40 Tomahawks that were supposed to be on their way, before moving up to Kos’ airstrip.
‘Our only excitement since you left is a nightly sweepstake on whether the two Ju 52s Jerry’s got left on Rhodes will come over to drop supplies to their foothold. And as for what happened to the third one, well since you’re asking…’
Grainger paused theatrically to grin, ‘…Let me tell you. He came over a little too early one night, while we were just coming off station and there was still light left, and one of my Oerlikon crews bagged him… boom! boom!… wing off… into drink. Double tots all round. The entire command now talks of little else.’
And then he laughed, not out of fun, but at what the operation had been reduced to.
‘Your pal, Verney, has been away regularly, island hopping, cutting throats,’ he’d continued, ‘so you’d think he’d be happy enough. But not so. He is definitely of the opinion Jerry isn’t going to let us get away with this. And I agree. Hence the idea. We might as well. It’s going to get a lot grimmer here before too long.’
The idea, that Harry had thought was a joke, was to stage a Sods’ Opera on Alconbury’s quarter deck for the evening after next.
‘So that’s what all the sawing and banging is,’ Harry said. ‘You’re building a stage.’
‘Absolutely, old chap,’ said Grainger. ‘So you have to get your chaps to put their acts together. I’m expecting a strong contingent from Scourge, and if your lot don’t have any ladies’ underwear to hand, I’m sure my stokers will be able to help them out.’
*
Harry didn’t like the idea, not this close to Jerry. Admittedly, there was no credible threat from the air right now; you couldn’t really count the two Ju 52s or the Storch, even though it was apparently overhead nearly every day now. And what light forces Jerry had – an unknown number of E-boats and Raumbooten – were not likely to be more than double figures and less likely to come out with two Royal Navy destroyers about, and the navy’s seriously dangerous little fleet of MGBs.
But just because nearly all his air force was otherwise occupied over a thousand miles to the north in the Soviet Union, that didn’t mean the Luftwaffe’s operations in Yugoslavia couldn’t spare a geschwader or two of Stukas to pop down for a long weekend. With the RAF Tomahawks still a no-show, they’d encounter no real opposition. Because let’s face it, the dead-eye dicks on Grainger’s Oerlikon wouldn’t really count as a proper air defence if Jerry turned up mob-handed.
Grainger had said there’d been, and continued to be, a lot of signals traffic between Alex and Howsham. ‘It all looks like intelligence stuff,’ he’d said. ‘Coded, for grown-ups’ eyes only. And the brigadier and Pleydell aren’t sharing. The likes of us aren’t getting a look at the raw material. But I’m sure if it all looks like it’s about to get sticky, I’m sure even those two would tip us the wink.’
All Harry could think was, yes, but only if they knew what they were looking at.
What did look certain was that their brigadier must’ve been warned about something because on his trip ashore to try and chivvy up the Royal Engineer detachment into helping recover his torpedoes, Harry discovered they were all too busy preparing defences for the main town and port.
His lads had managed to find a motley collection of buoys to help lift the one-and-a-half-ton monsters out the caique’s hold, and they could use the destroyers’ launches to drag them to a wharf, but they needed a crane to lift them out the water and then into Scourge, and there was no one available with the necessary tools and bits of machinery to jury-rig one, apart from the engineers. Because, given their daily bombardment sorties, neither Howsham nor Alconbury could spare anybody from their engine rooms to do the job, and Mr Petrie didn’t have the materials.
Frustration everywhere and uncertainty. A fertile environment for sapping morale and laying on the strain. He could see why Grainger thought the Sods’ Opera would be a safety valve. The lower deck’s version of what might be described as a concert party, except these things were nothing your grandmother or auntie would recognise. A Sods’ Opera was an irreverent, bawdy, crude and depraved parody involving music, songs (filthy), jokes (even filthier) and drag, and all of it thrown together with the single-minded aim of plumbing the absolute stygian depths of utter obscenity.
And didn’t Jack just love them.
There had been much excitement aboard Scourge when Harry had returned, although how the news of it had beat him back on board, he had no idea. He really was reluctant to let anyone out of the boat while there was even a remote chance of Jerry turning up. But he could see playing the strict dad might not be a good idea. Permission for the off-duty watch was granted. There was a lot of grumbling among the rest, but everybody could see there was a logic to keeping Scourge at operational readiness, just in case, given Jerry was just over the horizon.
He was firm on one thing, however: his officers were staying on board. So, it had taken a lot of cajoling and begging, with segues into sweet reason and bathos on Harding’s part to get his pass. With McCready, the answer had remained firmly, no. Harding, jumping into Alconbury’s packed pinnace with the rest of them, had winked at poor McCready. ‘If the captain changes his mind, Tom, we’ll be at the bar, you know,’ and grinning evilly as he jerked his thumb at the destroyer riding beyond it, just to rub it in.
Meanwhile, Scourge just had two torpedoes left in her forward tubes and one in the stern tube. But more worrying for Harry was that her three-inch magazine was almost empty, and there were no other ships in Pleydell’s little squadron that mounted the three-inch gun and so no more three-inch shells.
So, while they waited for the big night, Scourge topped up her fuel tanks and her fresh water from Howsham and scrounged some extra rations from the destroyer’s galley stores.
Then Verney returned from one of his raids. He had casualties who were all immediately loaded aboard Howsham for her surgeon lieutenant to patch up.
When Harry eventually spoke to him, he said, ‘Pleydell tells me you weren’t sure how many Jerries were managing to sneak through your patrol line unobserved.’
Harry had nodded, ‘Yes. They were spotting us.’
‘Well, I can clear that up for you,’ Verney had replied, with a wry smile. ‘Lots. As you can see, we bumped into some of them,’ and he gestured to the casualty transfer going on from one of his caiques alongside Howsham. ‘Lots and lots of Jerries. They’re on the move.’
Twenty
Capt Bonalleck collected his mail on his way to breakfast, which he usually took on the veranda of the US staff officers’ mess. Being the senior joint western Mediterranean submarine liaison officer certainly had its privileges. He acknowledged several friends on his way to his usual table. His US officer buddies and the mess stewards alike knew that when it came to breakfast, the old captain preferred to dine alone. Among the post was a copy of The Times; an old chum at the Admiralty sent him one regularly, not for the news, for the crossword. This edition was only eleven days old.
It was another stunning morning on t
he Algiers Corniche. It was already hot from a cloudless sky, with the turquoise water sparkling in the light. Not so much shipping these days; the war was moving on. But he’d miss the view when they finally transferred up to Palermo. He ordered Arab coffee, French-baked croissants and scrambled eggs. No rationing here. Then he opened his paper and prepared himself to enjoy the start of his day.
All the more reason for the fury that exploded in his chest, almost choking off his airway, when he saw that someone had already started on his crossword – seven words crossing seven rows of boxes. He felt his fists crushing the newsprint, What did bloody…? And he’d almost said his friend’s name with a curse when what those words were hit him like a punch.
SOMEONE – BIG – IS – AUDITING – YOUR – SIGNAL – TRAFFIC
He read it again to make sure he’d understood. And a voice in his head started up.
The voice, more in sadness, than in anger now, began its prating, ‘…prying… there are lots and lots of little people out there who just love to pry… to pry and tell… rummaging around in the dirty linen, looking for little stains… like you’re no more than some sordid little prep-schoolboy whose personal hygiene is in doubt… and they’re doing it again… siding with that jumped-up little oik of a grammar-schoolboy, spreading his little poisons…’
So, of course he had acted. What decent man wouldn’t? An honourable man has to act… to shut down sewer pipes like that sanctimonious little Jock. Except, these days, how can an honourable man act honourably with all those little people, all holier-than-thou, looking on, judging, when they don’t know the whole story. Don’t want to know it. All the mediocrities. Everywhere. That was why he couldn’t do it above board, couldn’t shut him up by just slapping him down, why he’d had to go in dived and silent-running.
Because all the good people had gone, and it was just the drones left who cared not a jot for a good man’s name.
That type had been after him all his life. That was why he’d been constantly superseded all his career by lesser men. It didn’t matter that he’d won a VC, that if anyone had bothered to look, they would have seen his new tactics, seen how they would change the face of submarine warfare. But the enemy had listened, had understood, hadn’t they? That was why they were winning the submarine war, because they’d adopted his ideas, while the mediocrities here, they wouldn’t listen. Refused to listen. It didn’t matter that the facts had spoken for themselves, that he was ahead of his time. And right!
And oh, how they hated it when you were right. The cardinal sin, the uttermost heresy for you to be right and them to be wrong. That was why they all wanted to listen to the poison, to deny an honourable man his right to silence his enemies, why they were coming for him to humiliate him and erase truth from the world. Well, he wasn’t going to sit here and wait for them. He was better than all of them, and he’d show them how much.
Twenty-one
There was the little bastard: a tiny speck against the seared blue of the sky, with the midday sun making you squint ’til it hurt just to see it, the Storch performing a lazy circle away off the port bow, like some drunk gnat. It was easily 15,000 feet up, way above where any weapon carried by Scourge could hope to hit her. And it was obvious they’d been spotted, plunging ahead on bearing zero four zero, the bows pointed directly at Symi and both diesels driving them on at fourteen knots, the boat’s churning wake unfurling a glittering ribbon over the deep blue sea like an arrow back at them that the Storch pilot and his spotter couldn’t miss.
Boxall, down in the radio cubby, had reported the radio chatter right away; it was a miracle he’d been able to manage even that, given the severity of his hangover. From the bearing of the signal and its proximity, it could only be the Storch, reporting their progress.
There were only a few more hours to run.
The signal from the para detachment on Symi had come just after first light. For that was when their observation post on the highest peak had first spotted two Jerry Siebel ferries – disgorging all those troops on a beach on the opposite side of the island to the town – and the three artillery pieces that they could see. One of the paras had identified them as 7.5cm mountain guns, the sort used by Alpine troops; small – the barrel, not five feet long – and light – just over 1,500lbs – and a lot more firepower than the paras could field. Not to mention the flock of Jerry-flagged caiques milling about that beachhead and another one down south. Number of troops coming ashore? Possiblly as many as a thousand.
The brigadier and Pleydell had been impressively nimble on receiving the call, as if they’d been expecting it. And especially since there had been another message, passed to them by local fishermen, about all the Jerry water traffic up Leros/Kalimnos way. Big stuff, Siebel ferries too and F-lighters. Right out of the blue, just one narrow channel away from the north shore of Kos.
Everybody had been shaken from their hammocks, hangovers or no. Scourge was to head for Symi, to ‘support’ the paras. Harry read it to mean ‘evacuate’, especially as Pleydell had told him to forget his sunken torpedoes and how much room did that leave him on board without them? Pleydell’s two destroyers, meanwhile, were heading off early on their bombardment patrol, except this time, they’d be going north about Kos, to ‘investigate’.
Harding was on the bridge with Harry, feigning to take the odd bearing from the island peaks that dotted the horizon around them, just to ‘make sure of our position’, but really, just for the fresh air, lungfuls of which looked like they might be necessary to stave off a full nervous breakdown.
There were lots of cigarettes involved too and mugs full of coffee from the flask Windass always kept topped up for the captain.
Although alcohol at the event had been strictly rationed – three bottles of beer per rating, to be topped up by a limited supply of locally purloined wine – two of Scourge’s crew had discovered other seams. For Boxall, it had been all the reward tots, and as for the vasco, he’d made a pig of himself in Alconbury’s wardroom.
For Grainger’s Sods’ Opera had been a soar-away success and Scourge’s part in it, the most successful, apparently.
Now it was the morning after, and Harding’s description had had Scourge’s lookouts, the three who hadn’t been there, twisted in agonies trying to hide their laughter and make it look like they really were minding the horizon. Harry, trying to appear the responsible skipper, was trying not to laugh out loud too.
There had been the usual parade of offerings, including an Andrews Sisters tribute act, who’d changed all the songs to dirty lyrics, and the inevitable Sods’ poet laureate with endless renditions like, ‘There was a young lady from Leeds, who swallowed a packet of seeds, a big blade of grass grew out of her arse, and her muff was a garden of weeds.’ Then there had been Hitler Plays George Formby, taking the piss out of everybody from Churchill and Eisenhower to Alconbury’s surgeon lieutenant and his sexual hygiene lectures. But the triumph had been Scourge’s own wireless operator, Arthur Boxall.
‘It’s difficult to do him justice,’ Harding had said, sucking on his cigarette. ‘He came on with his face all painted up with ink… red for his lips and blue round his eyes and flour all over the rest of him… and these blonde ringlets made out of unfurled bandage for a wig, that he kept flouncing. He had this bedsheet wrapped round him, with a split up one leg to his hip, to show a lilac frilly suspender belt holding up a single stocking with more ladders in it than a fire engine… and he kept flicking the split wide open… which he said was so any passing matelot could cop a feel. And all this foundation garment ensemble was complemented by a pair of French drawers two sizes too small for him so that every time he did the flick, you could see he’d stuffed an inside-out Arctic glove down the front of them, so there was all this fur hanging out of it. And there he was, mincing round the stage, so the sheet kept slipping, so you could see this lacy brassiere… and every time it did, he’d go all gravel-voiced, and coo, “…Call me torpedo tits, Jack” …and start plumping up all these old s
ocks he’d stuffed in it. Anyway, his act started with this big drum roll and the master of ceremonies camping it up at the top of his voice… “Here she is! By popular demand! Saucy Seaman Boxall! She says she’s got a box for all the seamen!” and out he minced… galleon in full sail… a vision. He had his squeezebox with him and he was pumping it away between his legs. You couldn’t hear yourself think for all the whistles, cheers, offers to indulge in unnatural practices… he really is bloody good on that box of his, isn’t he? And dance? If he’d shave regularly, there’d be a place for him in the Folie Bergere. Brought the house down, he did.’
There had been one particular song, ‘…Pure filth… hard to imagine a mind could be so depraved,’ Harding had rhapsodised. He couldn’t remember all the lyrics, he’d been laughing so hard.
‘The opening line went, Here’s to the cut that never heals, the more you tickle it, the better it feels! I can remember that. And then he’d strut around thrusting that furry glove about. In the end, he had the whole lot of them singing along… in between all the offers of marriage getting yelled at him. How did it go? …You can wash it in soap, you can wash it in soda… and, …You can rub it and scrub it and hose it as well… and the squeezebox is going ten to the dozen and he’s high-kicking that laddered stocking.’ Harding stopped and began shaking his head at the memory, and the lookouts were grateful because it was hurting so much.
They saw the smoke plumes before they raised the island, and the persistent chatter of small arms fire began wafting out to them on the light breezes and the occasional dull booms of the Jerry 7.5cm guns. Sgt Probert was with them again to offer soldierly advice on how best to get the troops off the island in an orderly fashion while under fire.
Harry had already explained to him that it was out of the question he’d be risking Scourge anywhere near those 7.5cm guns, so whatever plan the sergeant was contemplating better take that into account. Sat at the wardroom table, Probert had looked blank and pale as he stared at the map of Symi. ‘It all depends on the paras’ positions when we get there,’ and he’d jabbed at Symi town and its port. ‘And whether we can get in or not.’
