See You at the Bar

by David Black

  He had phoned ahead to the villa’s guardroom to alert them he was on his way, so the Riley swept in past the white-helmeted American MPs on the gate, both of them snapping off a smart salute as the car went through.

  He checked for directions at the door, and then he and his escort marched purposefully down polished corridors in tight V-formation to Bonalleck’s little den. When they got there, Bonalleck was nowhere to be seen. Heads were sticking out other office doors, alerted by the measured steps. A young US Army Air Force officer, buzz-cut hair, wearing wire-rim glasses and lieutenant’s bars on his shirt collar was leaning out a door with a sign above it announcing, ‘NAAF Ops Room’. He said, ‘You guys looking for Charlie? He’s not turned up yet. He usually has breakfast at the staff officers’ mess. If you want to try, he might still be there.’

  Some sixth sense told de Launy something was seriously wrong.

  *

  Two days later, in HMS Maidstone’s wardroom, a steward walked the length of it to whisper in Capt de Launy’s ear; there was a phone call for him in the commander’s office.

  When de Launy took the receiver, an American voice said his name. De Launy said, ‘Yes,’ and the American officer, in a nasal southern twang, introduced himself.

  ‘I understand you have been trying to reach one of your officers, a Captain Charles Bonalleck, who is the SSLO for the western Mediterranean? I have some information for you.’

  De Launy’s sixth sense sent alarm bells ringing again.

  ‘Captain Bonalleck boarded a US Army Air Force C54 ferry flight to Casablanca on Tuesday afternoon,’ said the American officer. ‘We know this because we have the carbon of the NAAF travel docket he forged in order to make the trip. Have you any idea why he might want to travel to Casablanca, Captain? The reason I’m asking is our MPs want to speak to him on another matter too.’

  ‘Really?’ was the best de Launy could manage by way of innocent response while his mind raced.

  ‘Yes, sir. Our staff officers’ club safe is missing a substantial sum of US dollars. In fact, all the petty cash they use to fund purchasing local produce. Somebody palmed a set of keys, and your man is the only member we haven’t accounted for yet. The guys at the club are pretty steamed.’

  Twenty-three

  Harry shifted in the camp chair and accepted another cup of sweet, thick Greek coffee which was really rather fantastic. He’d been waiting outside the tent for ten minutes, and this coffee was the only reason he hadn’t been getting impatient.

  On the bridge, as Scourge had come back round the Thirios bar, he’d been handed a radio signal that he was to report ashore immediately to Brigadier Plomer’s TacHQ, which was a small collection of bell tents on one of the few patches of level ground coming out the town. And now he was here, looking at the sublime view down to the sun-bleached jumble of flat-roofed stone houses that made up the town, across the harbour and anchorage to where one of the MGBs rode on a mooring, and out beyond the bar, to the sea, the azure water all ruffled by breeze and dappled in the sunlight. Missing from the view, however, were Howsham and Alconbury.

  ‘They went off last night,’ one of the brigadier’s staff captains had told him, offering him the camp seat and asking him to wait. ‘Jerry started dropping paratroopers on Kos yesterday. They’ve gone to try and stop any landings from the sea. We’re on full alert here.’

  Which had explained why the captain and everybody else around the TacHQ were wearing tin hats.

  Harry had come wanting to know what he should be doing with all the wounded left aboard Scourge. All the walking wounded were already off down the gangplank the instant Scourge had come alongside the town’s wooden wharf. But his intention had been to decant the serious cases aboard the destroyers, where their sick bays would be the best place to treat them. And the last thing he’d wanted to do was start moving them around from pillar to post for no good reason.

  He was also curious as to why the brigadier had needed him so urgently. Or, as it appeared, actually not that urgently. Maybe it was just a case of the army being just like the navy; all ‘hurry up – and wait!’ At least now he understood why he’d been kept waiting. Jerry paratroopers. Suddenly, Harry didn’t want to be there, halfway up a bloody mountain while his command lay tied impotently to a wharf, a sitting duck down below. He needed to be back on board and getting sea room around him right now!

  ‘Have you any idea why the brigadier needs to see me right now, sir?’ asked Harry with an edge in his voice.

  The captain said, ‘He wants to know the state of your ammunition and fuel and to discuss how best to deploy you in the coming action.’

  ‘Discuss? …Sir?’ said Harry standing up. ‘Tell him I have three torpedoes, six rounds of three-inch and my three-oh-three is all but exhausted. I really must be getting back to my boat now, sir. Pass on my…’

  Both Harry and the captain looked up into the cloudless sky. The sound of aero engines. They scanned round. A lot of engines.

  Then high up, maybe ten thousand feet, to the north-west, a cloud of what looked like gnats – two dozen? More? And as they drew closer, the telltale gull wings began to stand out. Stuka dive-bombers. At least thirty of them.

  A soldier was already running to a siren sitting on its steel frame behind the tents, and he immediately began to wind it, bringing forth a mounting wail. Harry ignored everything happening around him and started running down the hill. His pounding heart and the blood in his ears and the pumping of his breathing made it feel like he was running under water as each bounding stride took him into the start of the town, and he could feel the lumps of the cobbles punching up through his plimsolls.

  Until, through all that sub-aqueous pulsing in his head, there was infused the beginnings of a scream, louder and louder, the tearing screech of a diving Stuka ripped away as it pulled out of its dive, only to be replaced by the whistle of a bomb… and then the rip of high explosives. When he looked up, he could see the Stuka had been aiming for the wharves and the harbour, but the sheerness of the surrounding terrain meant it hadn’t been able to hit the right angle of dive and have any hope of climbing out again without hitting the opposite hills. Its bomb had gone into the town. The town Harry was running into. Yet he had to get through it to get to Scourge.

  He could see the MGB, figures on her fo’c’sle slipping the mooring and the tiny jets of smoke around her gun mountings as she pumped up shells into the path of the next diving Jerry.

  Noise was everywhere now, again and again, the curdling scream from the Stuka’s Jericho Trompetes – those wailing sirens mounted under their wings, the Nazi terror sound signalling death from the skies. It really did shrink your skin, thought Harry as he charged on down alley after alley, dimly aware now of the civilians scurrying for cover too.

  They must have come from Rhodes, he thought, absently, as Verney and Grainger had both predicted. Jerry’d found the spare aircraft and now they were all here, clapping a stopper over Tommy’s little caper. They must’ve sent more Ju 52s too, for the paratroopers. As he continued running, Harry found himself wondering, how many?

  And then there was the second cox’n, Puttick, stripped to the waist, leaning over AB Windass, propped against the corner of another alley. Strange, he remembered thinking, as he was about to automatically speed past, what were they doing here? And at that, he jerked to a halt. There was bread and smashed wine bottles spread around the two sailors and the stink of explosives in the air and shattered stone and debris.

  Puttick had his shirt pressed tightly against Windass’ upper thigh and the material was already staining red. With his other hand, he was trying to tear an arm off the shirt. Harry, without a word, dropped to one knee and took over, ripping both arms off the shirt and using them to tightly bind it to Windass’ wound. Windass just sat, unflinching, staring at the hole in his leg and then all around him like a dazed child who’s just fallen off his bike.

  They must’ve come ashore to buy stuff, the bread and wine. And been caught lik
e him, thought Harry. The noise was too great, too indiscriminate to talk. He and Puttick hefted Windass, and together, they resumed their headlong flight, staggering and lurching towards the harbour.

  The next thing Puttick was aware of, was he was lying on the ground, dust choking his mouth and nose and stinging his eyes. He couldn’t hear properly, like his ears were listening from down the end of a tunnel, and Windass, randomly flung, was lying against the far side of the alley, and there were two civilians pulling on them. And rubble, a lot of rubble. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was on a bunk in the PO’s mess space on Scourge, and everything was still, not even the sound of her diesels, and Dickie Bird was sponging dust off him.

  Dickie Bird in the control room, face ashen, interrupting Farrar and Harding at the chart table.

  ‘Pardon me, sir!’ Dickie was saying, breathless, ‘It’s Captain Gilmour, sir!’

  ‘What about him, Bird?’ said Farrar.

  ‘Puttick says he’s copped it!’

  Scourge was on the sea bed, eighty-two feet down at the bottom of the harbour, safe from the Stukas. It had been the major saving grace for Harry, forced to bring Scourge in here in the first place, that the steep sides of the place carried on down to a sandy bottom, so that in the event of an air raid, all Scourge had to do was dive, like they used to do in Marsamxett harbour at the height of the Malta siege.

  The lesson hadn’t been lost on Farrar, so when the Stukas had come over, down went Scourge. During a lull in the raids, having spotted their two wounded shipmates through the periscope, sprawled against bollards on the wharf, up they’d come to collect them, and down they’d gone again. As for Captain Gilmour, everybody assumed he’d be safe enough up the hill, sharing a slit trench and probably a ciggy with the brigadier.

  ‘What d’you mean copped it, Bird?’ said Harding, voice hard, not the usual light touch.

  *

  That night, on the wharf, a big confab. Howsham and Alconbury are back, so Pleydell and Grainger are there; Farrar and Harding are there too and so is the brigadier.

  Jerry is closing in; holding Kos is doubtful. Plans are getting discussed for the destroyers to evacuate troops from up there. Someone has to tell the RAF not to send the Tomahawks; the airfield has already been overrun. Will holding onto Thirios still be viable? Big debate on that. Grainger has been delegated to brief Scourge on her part in the coming fray. It’s to be transporting wounded, a job less fitted for a submarine it is hard to imagine.

  Harding, Farrar and Grainger are standing at Scourge’s gangplank.

  ‘We’ve given you all the three-oh-three we can spare, but with nothing left in your locker for that pop gun on your casing, you’re really no good to us,’ Grainger is saying. ‘So Plomer wants you to take all the serious cases back to Beirut, clear our sick bays for the ones that will inevitably follow. When can you sail?’

  ‘We’ve got to go and find our captain first,’ said Farrar.

  Grainger already knows what has happened to his friend. ‘How long d’you think it’s going to take to find him, for Christ’s sake? You know there’s rumours Jerry’s already infiltrating troops in here.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ says Harding, ‘I don’t think you quite understand what’s happening here. We’re not coming back without him.’

  Grainger sighs. It’s no more irresponsible than he’s been himself. ‘When you get him, bring him to us,’ he says, pointing at his ship and her sickbay, riding beyond the anchorage. ‘I’ll see you at the bar.’

  Down in the control room, a press of sailors. Harding is picking his team, except it’s turned out most of the choices have already been made for him. ‘I’m going, sir,’ says Leading Seaman Billy Cross. Able Seaman Chapman says, ‘And you’re not going without me, neither, sir. Not a chance, sir!’

  The bloody cheek! Harding is thinking, but he knows what they mean. That’s how he’s thinking too. ‘And me too, sir,’ says Darky Mularky, the new boy.

  They find him in a half-demolished house, just before dawn. An old Greek woman and a child are tending to him. There are multiple wounds, but it looks like he’s already received some medical attention – a local doctor, doing rounds, patching up who he can after the bombing. Locals had had to dig him out from where the wall of a house had collapsed on him. The bomb that had blasted Puttick and Windass in different directions had buried Harry. Nobody had come to raise the alarm down on the wharf because the British soldiers had imposed a curfew.

  In the end, they don’t take Harry to Alconbury. Her surgeon lieutenant does a house call to Scourge. He removes the shrapnel from the chest wound and the wound on his right side, but he thinks there might be more in there, maybe in his liver. But he’s not going in there to look, not here. He could kill him. Their skipper will need a proper operating theatre to do a proper job. He drains, packs and sutures what he can and sets the fractured leg. And Scourge sails with her full cargo of broken and shattered for Beirut, just after first light, diving the minute she clears the bar.

  *

  The city of Beirut sits right on the Mediterranean in a near-perfect amphitheatre of mountains. And the Third NZ General Hospital was located in an old French Army barracks on one of the foothills that ring the city to the east.

  The First Submarine Flotilla, to which Scourge now belonged, had dibs on dock space down in the port, so it was no chore for her crew to come up the hill to visit their former CO, Lieutenant Harry Gilmour, and many of them did. The cohort of Kiwi girls who formed the core of the nursing cadre at the hospital didn’t mind, they quite liked Lt Gilmour – a couple of them more than liked him – so they were happy to entertain the stream of submariners who were always passing through to say hello. After all, it cheered Lt Gilmour up, and God knew he needed it. The poor fellow had been lying there under strict orders not to move for a couple of weeks now, prostrate after some pretty heroic surgery to save his life: one lung lacerated and collapsed, his liver scarred by shrapnel and recurring infection and a tibia that wasn’t knitting as it should.

  Despite the pain, Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had luxuriated in such sleeps and each time, waking to all these gorgeous girls, each one a picture of rude colonial health and cheerfulness. They could tuck him in any time they wanted, even wake him in the middle of the night to do it, he didn’t mind. But the pain was always there, and all the senior surgeon had said he was, ‘Buggered if I’m giving you any more morphine, or you’ll end up a dope addict. Grin and bear it, lieutenant.’

  Scourge had a new skipper now, a lucky replacement CO from First Flotilla’s pool, to take her back home to Gosport and HMS Dolphin. The Scourges he’d talked to about him seemed to think he was okay, not that they wanted to talk about him much. They wanted to talk about all the leave that was getting flung about, the boat being mostly in the hands of the dockyard, tightening up the lash-ups, covering all the multitude of sins she’d racked up with licks of paint, getting her ready for her voyage back to Blighty and a proper refit, a long time overdue after seventeen months of continuous operations. But Beirut! What a town! He’d better get himself better and get down there before they drank all the beer and wine and arak and all the available women got taken.

  And now, on this particularly beautiful morning with the sun streaming in the windows, there was Harding, walking down the ward alone. Harry didn’t spot him until he was halfway to him – two of the beds on this side of the ward had screens round them, very poorly young men behind them. They blocked the view.

  It was unusual for Harding to come alone.

  ‘Wotcher, Miles,’ said Harry, no ‘sirs’ or ‘Misters’ anymore, he was no longer captain. ‘Have we won yet?’

  Harding handed Harry a signal flimsy. ‘A present for you, from their lordships. And guess what? I got one too. And so did Hooper.’

  Harry opened it. It was a notification of a bar for his DSC.

  ‘Fancy that,’ he said. ‘And you too, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know about you,
but I intend to always keep mine about my person in case any girl wants to touch it,’ said Harding with his usual evil grin.

  A bit more chit-chat, then Harding came to the point.

  ‘We’ve got our sailing orders,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Going home. The lads will be chuffed rotten.’

  ‘No. They’re not,’ said Harding, wearing a peculiar expression that told Harry he wasn’t joshing him. ‘And they’ve told me to tell you so.’

  ‘What…? Why not?’ Harry looked even paler, with his face all blank incomprehension.

  ‘They don’t feel it’s right to be going home without you. Number One’s told them if he gets another delegation telling him to get you back aboard, he’s going to start charging them with mutiny.’

  Harry snorted then winced with pain, because it hurt. ‘Bollocks,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you, sir?’ said Harding, using the honorific on purpose, even though he no longer had to.

  ‘Get what, ya daft bugger?’

  ‘What they thought about you after you came aboard. After Bayliss,’ Harding paused, to regard him, lying there, chest swathed in bandage, skinny as an anatomy class skeleton draped in white crepe. Frail. ‘But right from the start, you made it plain. You weren’t Bayliss. Ordering the forward watertight doors open again and sod the mines… If we’re going home, we’re all going home together. Then, when you missed those Eyetie battleships with a full salvo. It was, I made a right bollocks …not, you lot …not even, we …it was, “I”. And when you took the time to sit and chat to Red Cross after his drunk-and-uncatchable antics instead of throwing him to the wolves on the depot ship. And you still don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘Get what, Miles?’

  ‘That crew. They’d follow you up a dead bear’s bum. Even if it was on fire.’

  After a brief silence to let it sink in, Harding asked him if he had any letters or parcels for Scourge to carry home for him, but Harry had had no strength to write and certainly no chance to shop. So, eventually, Harding got up and said that he’d see him back in Pompey one day, once he’d stopped leaking. Then it was a handshake and they both said goodbye, and Harding was striding back down the ward, not looking back.