by David Black
Harry, their captain; it was time for him to say something, to bring everybody all the way back.
‘Anybody want to put in for transfer back to general service, with immediate effect?’ he asked. Dead pan. And everybody started laughing. It was only the high, tinny whine of high-speed propellers of the MAS boats, and the reminder that the enemy was still looking for them, that prevented it from getting out of hand.
It would still be dark on the surface, but the risks of ordering Scourge to surface again, without Asdic to listen out for any patrolling enemy ships, were too great.
Harry might need to get his boat up there, so she could start charging batteries and let the fresh air in again but if any enemy ships were still hanging about, all the noise and bubbles they’d generate going up would only bring the enemy back down on them, along with more depth charges. They were going to have to wait, through the rest of the night and all the following daylight hours, in the hope the enemy would tire and call off the search. In the meantime, over those hours, a significant amount of the power would be drained from their batteries and the air would become more and more unbreathable.
Harry ordered all unnecessary lights and machinery switched off and shut down. All crew, not on duty were to lie down to conserve air. Trays of lithium were to be laid out to soak up carbon dioxide, and Biddle and the wrecker were to go for’ard and see if anything could be done for the Asdic dome. Then Harry went to his bunk, and tried to get some sleep.
The hours ticked away, and the air became increasingly fetid. Harry took a turn round the boat. Some crew were playing uckers, others just lay sprawled, practising their Egyptian PT. As dark again approached, Harry ordered the empty torpedo tubes should be reloaded. The resulting noise failed to elicit any response from the surface. Maybe the searchers had gone home.
Twenty minutes after sunset according to the almanac, Harry sent Scourge to diving stations. The lithium trays were cleared, the boat went to “red light” and all the tools were stowed from where Biddle and the wrecker had been working on the Asdic. The engine room telegraphs were rung to ‘Full astern, together’ and the forward main ballast tanks were blown.
And Scourge was free.
‘Crilly, that was truly, deeply disgusting!’ said Farrar to the stoker who was manning the dive board with him. ‘Tell the captain what I just heard you say, Crilly.’
Crilly, a lanky, red-haired Irish boy, blushed crimson to the roots of his hair. A remark made under his breath, for his own celtic amusement, and look at the trouble he was in. ‘Sir …’ he squeaked plaintively.
‘He said, sir, and I quote, “slid off easier than a French letter off a floppy dick”. Those very words, uttered in your control room, Captain Gilmour! And in your presence. The insolence!’ Farrar had adopted a faux hauteur. ‘I am scandalised, Crilly! Scandalised!’
Well done, Nick, thought Harry, relief comes in many forms, but laughter’s always the best.
‘Yes, Crilly,’ said Harry, trying to copy Farrar’s hauteur and not to laugh himself, ‘How dare you insinuate that my boat is a French letter?’ A long pause, then, ‘… but fill me in, I’m curious. Just whose floppy dick are we talking about?’
Laughter was followed by a dig in the ribs for Crilly from the wrecker, ERA Meacham, who beamed proprietorially at him for what must be a leading contender for the “best joke of the patrol” sweep.
Then it was back to business.
Harry ordered Scourge up to periscope depth, and sneaked an all-round look. He called Farrar to the ’scope. ‘Look at this,’ he said, and when Farrar did, he found he was gazing at a Spica class torpedo boat, lying hove-to about a mile off their beam. She had a good 15 feet of her stern missing. There was a small tug alongside, and two MAS boats. Sparking blue flashes from inside the Spica’s hull said there was welding going on.
‘Biddle’s rogue torpedo. Our number two shot,’ said Harry, ‘She must have been what it hit.’ Then he ordered, ‘Down periscope, keep sixty feet.’
Farrar looked at him expectantly. A stationary, damaged enemy warship: what was he going to do?
‘The Cant 506 is still swanning about overhead,’ said Harry. ‘I think we know when we’re not wanted. So we’re getting out of everybody’s way, then I’m reporting in. I’m not sure exactly what we’re supposed to do with a bent Asdic.’
Fifteen
And there he was, standing on the well deck of their new, temporary, depot ship, HMS Ellan Vannin, a former Isle of Man Steam Packet Company ferry. Harry would have recognised him anywhere, if anything actually looking more distinguished in his No 1 whites despite it being so early in the year, the braid glittering on his cap visor and the four proud gold rings. The bastard even took his cap off and waved at Harry, standing on his own bridge as he conned Scourge alongside.
Ellan Vannin, like her big sister, HMS Maidstone, was moored inside the Algiers harbour mole. Opposite were the docks, and beyond, running east lay the Algiers’ sea front, an elegant corniche that stretched out like some reclining lady dressed in flowing white, running in a shallow arc around the head of the harbour. Harry had been mesmerised by the exotic grandeur of the view as they’d rounded the outer mole and said goodbye to the motor gunboat that had escorted them in. It was a beautiful day, sun dappling the sea, gulls wheeling overhead, their calls competing with clamour of the port which was crammed with shipping.
Harry had to tear his gaze away to concentrate on navigating Scourge through the enclosed water at dead slow ahead together, to ease her between the mole and the port proper while avoiding all the motor launches scooting about, and two other submarines, one another S class, and the other, a much bigger T-boat, standing off to let Scourge come alongside the depot ship, it being tradition that the incoming boat always got the inboard slot. Once Scourge was secured however, they’d come in and trot up alongside her.
The heaving lines came flying out, and the sailors on Scourge’s casing began securing the boat. Only then did Harry look up again at the beaming countenance of his former skipper, and now his new Captain (S), the man who would be his CO for the duration of Scourge’s temporary secondment to the Twelfth Flotilla, Captain Charles “the Bonny Boy” Bonalleck.
Scourge was here because after Harry had reported his brush with the bottom of the Gulf of Cagliari, his Asdic wrecked and his torpedoes gone, the Tenth’s Captain (S), Shrimp Simpson back on Malta, had ordered him to the nearest drydock for repairs, and that had been at Gibraltar. His signal had contained implicit criticism of Harry for being so careless as to bend his Asdic dome on the sea bed, but fulsome praise for bagging Atilla and her cargo of precious panzers. Then he signed off by thanking Harry for his service and wishing him well under the Temporary Command of the newly formed 12th squadron, finishing with the words, ‘Hurry back, Mr Gilmour, and no fratrenising with the Barbary Apes’. So Harry and his crew had turned west quite pleased with themselves.
However, the lay-up in Gib hadn’t been the run ashore Scourge’s crew had hoped for. Their CO ended up not that happy either. Dry dock time was precious so it hadn’t taken the dock yard johnnies long to fit another dome; and for the time it did take, Scourge’s crew had spent it all down in the dry dock cleaning the weed off of their boat’s hull, not ashore in the fleshpots. The weed had grown several feet long in places, and would soon have been causing serious drag, slowing the boat, even interfering with its steering. ‘It’s like the ’angin’ gardens of Babylon down there,’ the yard foreman had assured Harry.
Harry’s bad news was that he’d had four experienced crewmen pinched from him, three because of promotion, and his wrecker, Meacham, to another boat. The two stokers and the leading seaman he’d had replaced for him in Gib, but the Captain (S) of the Gibraltar Flotilla had told him if he wanted a new wrecker, he was going to ask his new Captain (S) at Algiers.
‘Algiers?’ Harry had said.
‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘That’s where the new Twelfth Flotilla is.’
For, alas, once in dry
dock, Scourge had passed under the temporary command of the VAG – Vice Admiral, Gibraltar – and he had no intention of letting her go, at least not right away, not when he had gaps to fill in his own submarine capability at this end of the Med. The Twelfth was still being put together for operations along the coast of Vichy France. More boats were on the way from Blighty, so in the meantime Scourge was being assigned to make up the numbers. This was also when Harry had learned who his new temporary CO was going to be. It had stunned him to silence.
So if his crew had been “proper chocker” at having to spend their run ashore time scraping weed, as Mr Ainsworth had assured him they were, their CO knew just how they felt – chocker being Jack’s special word for totally pissed-off.
On the up side however, Harry had been pleased there’d been work to keep his crew on board.
After going ashore himself to report, it had become all too apparent that Gib was no longer the look-forward-to port he’d remembered. All the old cafés, bars and shops not blighted by rationing were still there, but Gib was a major Allied base now, swamped by a military build-up for a war in the Mediterranean that was about turn. What Harry saw was a teeming, heaving arsenal, piled high with all manner of military material and crawling with sailors, soldiers and airmen from every Allied nation, including Americans. This was the first time he’d seen the Yanks over this side of the Atlantic, and in such numbers: they were everywhere. And with them had come a tension. Everywhere he’d looked there were Shore Patrols on the streets in force, and a gut feeling of impending violence had seemed to permeate the air. He didn’t want any of his crew ending up rolling about the bar floors of every New Passage den, trading punches with gobby Yanks or crabfats and ending up, banged up in a brig somewhere. Not with four crew already off his roster.
Back on his bridge now, Harry heard himself ordering, ‘Finish with main motors and steering’. Then he handed over to Powell who as officer of the watch would handle the two boats standing off when they came in to trot up. Harry was aware the Bonny Boy was still looking down at him as he climbed down onto the casing and headed for the gangplank. He hadn’t expected his new CO to be standing there ready to greet him, especially after all that had passed between them.
Captain Bonalleck was already at Ellan Vannin’s brow with her officer of the day, waiting for Harry with a big grin on his face. Harry found it unnerving. He tugged his only serviceable white shirt straight and adjusted his cap and tie before he skipped up the plank.
‘Lieutenant Gilmour, sir,’ Harry said, coming to attention before stepping aboard. ‘HMS Scourge. Reporting for temporary duty with Twelfth Flotilla.’
The Bonny Boy had changed quite a bit since Harry had seen him last, sitting in that shore cabin at Rosyth after the loss of Pelorus. The Bonny Boy Bonalleck VC, submarine ace of the Great War, had been Harry’s first captain on submarines. He’d also been a lush, and the loss of Pelorus and most of her crew had been his fault. A fact Harry had told him to his face in that cabin. So you could say they had a past.
But this Bonny Boy was no longer the pasty, gin-soaked wreck that Harry had faced that day in Rosyth. The white-topped cap with its captain’s braid, sat at a determined angle on his big round head, and the face that gazed openly into Harry’s was clear now, more defined, tanned, and the eyes, gimlet, not rheumy. In fact he looked quite relaxed, and at ease with himself, neat in his crisp white patrol jacket, his captain’s rings looking pristine.
‘Mr Gilmour!’ he said, extending his hand. ‘A commanding officer now, eh. And look at all that bunting on your chest!’ he added, nodding to the thin row of medal ribbon on Harry’s shirt, ‘It’s a wonder you don’t have a permanent list to port! Welcome aboard, Harry. Welcome aboard!’
Harry felt a nausea deep in his stomach. Was this man real? The relaxed affability continued down into the depot ship’s wardroom, where several other submarine officers mingled with Ellan Vannin crew. There were introductions, drinks, lots of talk although nothing of consequence was said. Then Bonalleck was gone, and the air seemed to lighten markedly, although the conversation stayed stilted. Not a happy wardroom, thought Harry, but then like its members had said, still a very new one; everybody still getting to know one another, and their new CO.
‘So what’s he like?’ asked one particularly forward lieutenant RN, ‘Our new CO? You served with him, he said, early in the war.’
Harry said, ‘Don’t really know. I only did one patrol under him, and we got sunk on the way home.’
The last thing he was going to do was start telling tales. He didn’t feel he was among friends yet. Meanwhile Scourge’s crew had been piling aboard Ellan Vannin to claim their mess space aboard their new depot ship and stow their kit. Before Harry’s visit to the wardroom had ended, Scourge was already topping-up her food and fuel and be ready for patrol at short notice.
Sixteen
Harry’s world was gyrating around him in short, dizzying pirouettes as Scourge battered through the darkness into a northeasterly gale. He was sat at the back of the bridge, perched on his little rope cat’s cradle, watching the churning sea’s phosphorescence rise into his view, the only external reference in the unrelenting dark, and then descend again to immaculate black as the boat continued its endless pitch and roll.
Harding had the watch and the two lookouts, one on either side of the periscope stands, clung on grimly, wasting their time trying to peer into the driving spray. And it was cold. It was the bloody Mediterranean, and it was effing cold!
Harry sank further into his sodden muffler, tucked in between his pullover and his buttoned-up Ursula suit. He wasn’t really paying attention to the weather: he was thinking.
This was their first patrol of their secondment to the Twelfth Flotilla. Bonalleck had assigned them a billet, designated SF1, a stretch of the South of France coast from Cap Sicié just west of Toulon to Cap Ferrat, between Nice and Monaco. There had been a page of written orders itemising priorities, tactical advice, types of targets preferred. Shrimp Simpson used to scribble his orders on the back of old railway travel warrants, and they seldom ran to a full sentence. A sign of the times. It was all war by paperwork these days. But it wasn’t that that had been bothering him, what had driven him back to his night-time perch to consider.
He’d given up his always-on-the-bridge routine when Scourge was running on the surface at night after a wardroom conversation with Ben Bryant. ‘You’re more use to yourself and your boat if you just go to your bunk and have a kip,’ Safari’s skipper had advised him. ‘Not only are you out of everyone’s way, you’re also paying into your sleep account which you’re most definitely going to be cashing in on sooner or later.’
So he had, except this patrol, sleep hadn’t been forthcoming. He couldn’t stop thinking about something the Flotilla’s Commander (S), Bonalleck’s exec, had told him before they sailed.
Harry hadn’t managed a run ashore during the short time they spent in Algiers. He’d spent his time writing up his last patrol report, which always had to be filed with your Captain (S) on a boat’s return so that he could file it with C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet. Then there was reading up on the other skippers’ notes and comments on the completely new billets he was now going to be patrolling: all about currents; shoals; the enemy’s anti-submarine forces; their ship types, habits and foibles; the air threat; and finally all the diplomatic tank traps involved in operating in waters dominated by Vichy France and neutral Spain.
And, after the first night’s run ashore for the red and white watches, he’d had to deal with Scourge’s first disciplinary incident since he’d assumed command: a stoker brawling with crew off one of the other flotilla boats in some lowlife wine shop in the slums behind the Corniche. In the end the offences hadn’t required the defaulter be hauled before the captain’s table; Farrar had cleared it up. But it had been another sign of the times. He had seen it at Gib, and it was here too. Back on Malta, through the darkest days of the siege, there hadn’t been any disciplinary tr
ouble to speak of, everybody had either been too busy or too tired. It had been the bombing and the shortages and the general sense of everybody hanging on by their finger-tips – everybody seemed to know that if anyone started pissing about, the whole fucking lot would come tumbling round their ears. So they all just got on with it. Now though, they were all just tiny cogs in the whole grinding juggernaut of the Allied victory machine.
So he’d typed on a borrowed Remington in the depot ship’s office, or read, or lay slumped in one of the armchairs in the wardroom. Not that that was a particularly convivial experience. There was no band-of-brothers here like there had been in the Tenth Flotilla’s wardroom. And Bonalleck hadn’t shown his face again after the hearty bonhomie of his welcome to Harry. So that it left Harry wondering whether the fact that he and the Captain (S) seemed so pally had already put a mark of Cain on him.
Then, two days ago, after the SOO – staff officer, operations – had alerted Harry that Scourge was at six hours’ notice to sail and he had his orders had been handed to him, he had been summoned to the Captain (S)’s office. Bonalleck had risen to meet him, smiling. ‘Good luck, and good hunting. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what to do,’ Bonalleck had said, even though he had, in great detail, in the orders Harry now clutched. Then a brief handshake, and Harry was shown the door, wondering what it had all been about.
Harry had no idea, nor ever would, of the malevolent trail of poison his new Captain (S) had tried to infect his reputation with over the past three years since Pelorus had gone down – his allegationthat Harry had abandoned his station after their boat had been rammed, his attempts to trump up charges for a court martial, then the attempts to block the award of all Harry’s medals – all done in the shadows. In stead, all Harry saw was Bonalleck’s apparent decision to let bygones be bygones. Yet something niggled. And was still niggling as Harry had made his way through Ellan Vannin’s warren of passages, on his way back to Scourge ready to put to sea. And that was when Sam Bridger, the Commander (S), had stopped him just before the depot ship’s brow.
