by David Black
‘A word, Mr Gilmour,’ he said. Cdr Bridger was a tall, sandy haired man, a bit older than most officers of his rank and RN through and through. He also sported an impressive full set – the Navy’s term for beard and moustache – which gave him a sort of Rider-Haggard look, intrepid and utterly trustworthy. It was an impression that wasn’t misplaced. He’d commanded boats during the Norwegian campaign, and one, HMS Trinity, he’d brought home after a mine had blown off her entire forward torpedo room.
‘Sir?’ said Harry turning, curious, to see what was up.
‘’Your last patrol report,’ said Cdr Bridger. ‘The Captain (S) has forwarded it directly to C-in-C, with his own endorsement.’
This wasn’t regular. The report should have gone to Tenth Flotilla first for onpass, seeing as Shrimp had technically still been Harry’s CO for the duration of the patrol. Harry didn’t know what to say. There certainly wasn’t anything he could do. But Cdr Bridger hadn’t finished. He stared directly at Harry, in no doubt about what he felt he had to say.
‘Mr Gilmour, Captain (S) in his endorsement has drawn C-in-C’s attention to not only what he describes as your negligence in hitting the bottom during your attack on the enemy tank transport, but also the fact that you failed to engage the damaged Spica class torpedo boat you encountered after managing to extricate your boat. He noted your decision to withdraw instead posed a question over your aggressive spirit. When he called you to your meeting, I was under the impression he was going to acquaint you with his dissatisfaction at your conduct. I understand however, that he did not. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Harry, stunned.
‘Hmn,’ said Cdr Bridger. ‘That is not as it should be. Anyway. Now you know. Here’s to your happy return, Mr Gilmour.’ He shook Harry’s hand and then ushered him to the brow and the gangway, and there he remained until Scourge had slipped, and he’d waved them off.
And now Harry was on the bridge, with about three quarters of an hour until first light, not that they’d notice in this muck, and thirty miles south of the Île de Porquerolles according to Harding’s last dead reckoning, there being no chance of getting a fix since the gale blew up yesterday evening.
And he still didn’t know what to think about what the Commander (S) had told him.
His mind kept rolling back to that afternoon in Rosyth and what he’d said to Bonalleck. He’d been determined going in there’d be no question that he’d miss him, and hit the wall.
‘Sir, you are a shameless drunk. You have lost your boat and you have killed half your crew. You are a disgrace to the uniform you wear. You’re going to get away with this, I know that. But I want you to know that whatever else happens, there is always going to be someone who knows the truth.’
He had delivered his message while staring the man in the eye, in a cold, measured voice. And later, when he’d told his friend and mentor Peter Dumaresq, then a lieutenant commander, Peter had told Harry the right people would get to hear what had been said, and the Bonny Boy would be dealt with. Peter was old Navy, and Harry had felt reassured; but Peter was dead now, and the Bonny Boy was prospering.
Harry remembered how invincible he’d felt in his righteous anger that afternoon. Now all he remembered was how young he’d been. The Bonny Boy was a captain now, and his commanding officer, and that meant they were locked in a binding hierarchy as old and inflexible as the Navy itself. He couldn’t report him … what for? Being beastly? And who to? Seeing as Bonalleck was his CO, going over his CO’s head would condemn him more.
That all the bonhomie of their first encounter after all those years might be fake hadn’t really surprised Harry. But what else was he capable of? There really wasn’t any way he would know, until it hit him. He’d only come to know this much through the uncommon decency of an honest man, the Commander (S), who might himself end up in the Bonny Boy’s sights, if the Bonny Boy ever found out.
There was no-one to confide in, to advise him or keep their ear to ground, because Harry was a captain himself now, and you didn’t go whining to your own junior officers about your seniors. Harry had never felt so lonely and isolated in his life. And it wasn’t just for himself; Bonalleck had informed the C-in-C that Scourge had shied from a fight. The whole boat’s reputation would be questioned at the highest levels of the Mediterranean Fleet because of one of his decisions that at the time seemed so prudent. It was made in the light of what Shrimp had always banged into all his skippers: your boat is a strategic asset and not tradeable for some momentary tactical victory. The Spica had had its arse blown off! It wasn’t as if it was going to be a danger to anyone any time soon. And without its Asdic, his own boat was blind and useless. So he had slinked away. Jesus! And round and round it went in his head. Again and again, when he should’ve been concentrating on how best to sink the enemy and get away with it on this patrol, and not worrying about what had happened on the last.
The eastern sky was growing pale. It would soon be time to dive the boat, but instead Harry stepped forward to join Harding at the bridge front. The spray and wind slashed at his face.
‘I’m going to take a chance nobody’s going to be up and about in this,’ Harry said, gesturing to the roiling sky. ‘We’re going to stay up until we close the coast, see if you can’t get some useful fixes so we know exactly where we are. Then we’ll dive to a decent depth so we can have breakfast without the coffee spilling.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Harding, thinking his skipper looked particularly distracted this morning.
Harding’s dead reckoning had proved to be surprisingly accurate. Dead ahead the Île de Porquerolles had indeed risen, and through the murk he took bearings on Cap d’Arme and the lighthouse above Rocher de la Croix.
With Scourge at 70 feet crawling east along the coast, and young McCready on watch, the wardroom had sat down to a huge breakfast of real scrambled eggs made with butter, fresh black pudding – or rather the French version, boudin noir – and fried fresh tomatoes with toast and coffee. The boat was finally below the rocking of the surface swell, and the other messes were similarly tucking in. The wardroom conversation was all about what they were supposed to do if they actually sighted a French warship, still flying the tricolour.
‘Does Vichy have any warships left after the big scuttle at Toulon?’ asked Powell, spreading jam on his toast. He was referring to events immediately after the “Torch” landings when the German army had overrun all of the previous unoccupied territories of Vichy France up to the Riviera coast. Wehrmacht units had been driving on the huge naval base, when what was left of the Marine Nationale had done the decent thing and sunk itself lest it fell into German hands.
‘The Yanks say we have to be nice to Vichy because they like them more than de Gaulle,’ observed Harding, whom Harry noticed was coming up with increasingly bolshie takes on the world despite his English upper middle class pedigree. ‘But if they’re shooting at us …’ Harding shrugged, ‘… do we still have to play nice?’
‘We can take it as read that everybody along this coast will be shooting at us now, or at least wanting to,’ said Harry, gulping coffee, ‘because they’ll likely be Jerries.’ They really had pretty good coffee aboard now, since deploying to Algiers. And fresh food, much of it courtesy of the second cox’n and their new wrecker, and the local Algiers black market. God, it was a welcome change after the relentless diet of tinned stuff that was all Malta’s depleted stores had to offer.
‘What’s supposed to be our policy towards French merchant ships, then?’ asked Powell.
‘We’re only supposed to sink them if they’re carrying war supplies for the enemy,’ said Farrar, joining in.
‘How will we know?’ pressed Powell.
‘The captain speaks French. He’ll ask them nicely,’ said Harding, helping himself to more coffee. Then, into the passageway, he called, ‘Windass! Tide’s out in the coffee pot!’ He turned back to the table, where they all sat in a squeezed huddle under the little floral lampshades. �
��Isn’t that right, sir?’
‘I’m reluctant to try that actually, ’ said Harry, airily, ‘in case they tell a fib. Then I’d look silly. I’m leaning towards we just sink them anyway and say afterwards they were flying a swastika if anyone complains.’
‘You mean you’d want us to tell a fib, sir?’ replied Harding. ‘But we’re British.’
Windass came grumbling out the galley, ‘… t’ift stokers’ eggs get nithered while I’m sortin’ yer coffee, sir, it’ll be me fer a brayin’ and no’ yews …’
But the control room messenger arrived from the other direction, interrupting with a clutched signal flimsy, ‘Signal from S twelve, sir, marked urgent, immediate decoding,’ and the spotty youth held it over the wardroom table for Harry to grasp.
‘Someone pass me the book,’ said Harry as he pushed plates out the way.
Everyone shut up while the captain flicked through the pages and scribbled away on his pad.
‘A two-ship convoy, coming from Toulon, expected Rade de Hyères midday today,’ said Harry reading from his notes. ‘Do you ever wonder where they get all this bumf,’ he asked no-one in particular. ‘There’s everything here apart from the captain’s inside leg measurement … anyway, it says they’re due in three hours’ time. We’d better get cracking.’
‘What about yer coffee, sorrs?’ said Windass, his face gleefully twisting itself into ecstatic disgruntlement.
Scourge was at periscope depth at the eastern exit from the bay. The short, steep sea whipped up by the gale had her bouncing, periscope stands bursting clear of the surface one moment, then plunging the periscope head back under water the next. For all their new wrecker ERA Braithwaite’s efforts on the dive board, the boat was just not behaving, and every time Harry ordered the periscope up for a look he was more often than not looking into a welter of bubbles and froth instead of the horizon.
Seventeen
They padded back and forward for most of the day, but nothing appeared. It did however, give Harry a look at his new enemy. He’d never operated on this coast before, against a settled German coastal defence network; it had all been against Italians until now, or the sea flank of the Afrika Korps.
First he had taken a look at the gun batteries covering this end of the Rade de Hyères, at Batterie basse de Mèdes on Île de Porquerolles above the cliffs of Cap des Mèdes, and then on the mainland at Fort de Brégançon. He couldn’t tell the calibre of the guns through the spray, but what he saw didn’t give him any cause for complacency. Then there had been the big bedsteads, turning slowly in the murk, Jerry’s version of RDF, or radar as they were calling it now. He didn’t know how efficient the Jerry kit was but he was sure he’d be bound to find out soon.
He’d also got a look at his new wrecker, outside ERA. Braithwaite, James, a newly appointed engine room artificer who had been shining his backside aboard Ellan Vannin as spare crew when Scourge turned up. He was one of the new lads now being churned out by the Navy’s training machine in ever increasing numbers. Much like himself, Harry had thought, and given his relative youth for his rank, doing rather well on it. When Harry had asked him about himself, it turned out he was from Middlesborough, and had been an apprentice engine fitter in civvy street before he got his papers, working on corporation buses. Mechanically savvy, the Navy had grabbed him, aged 20. He seemed a sensible sort – conscientious, smart and with all the bland freshness of youth. And he was already a hit with lower deck and he hadn’t even completed his first patrol yet. The reason? Harry wasn’t supposed to concern himself with these things, but he was aware that Cox’n Ainsworth had button-holed Jim Braithwaite for any local knowledge of the Algiers black market, and Jim had come up trumps. There hadn’t been much to do while he’d been waiting for a proper berth, so Jim Braithwaite had made sure he ate and drank only the best the port had to offer, and he willingly steered his new shipmate through the stinking, slum warren behind Algiers’ exotic façade to where the safest deals could be concluded. That day’s breakfast had been just the latest example of their joint success. The thought of it made Harry smile and forget all the other things he could’ve had on his mind.
The gale began to abate before nightfall. Scourge was in urgent need of a charge on her batteries, but surfacing this close in shore here didn’t seem like a good idea. Yet Harry was reluctant to withdraw in case the two-ship convoy sneaked past in the night. Instead he crawled westward on what was left of his amps and brought Scourge to the surface off the remote west coast of Île de Porquerolles where he planned to lie with his diesels pouring on charge without any locals hearing; and where he could keep an eye on both routes past the island for anything that might still show up.
Again, he broke his new ‘no-loitering-on-the-bridge’ rule, and had Windass send up a flask of Ky for him and McCready, and the two lookouts.
Harry and McCready spelled the young ABs on lookout to let them sip their Ky. When they were finished, the two officers poured their own. Harry was gazing into the flat wall of blackness that enveloped them. To starboard was the loom of the cliffs of Pointe Sainte Anne, with the thump of their diesels echoing back. The rest was obsidian night.
‘You know, Mr McCready,’ said Harry, ‘when I was doing my Perisher, Teacher told us heaving-to on the surface at night was the easiest way to get yourself sunk.’
McCready considered this in silence for some time before commenting, ‘Biddle’s keeping an Asdic watch, sir. I’m sure he’ll alert us if anything unfriendly shows up.’
McCready couldn’t see the gleam of Harry’s teeth in the dark, grinning evilly, or the twinkle of devilment in his eyes.
Time passed.
‘A light, sir! Bearing green three zero!’ It was one of the lookouts.
Harry spun to see a beam, off to starboard, from beyond the Pointe, directed out to sea, almost directly west. It began blinking. Then, as he continued to look, the beam began to slowly traverse towards them.
‘It’s the Île du Petit Langoustier lighthouse, sir,’ whispered McCready, almost as if the lighthouse keepers might hear him. ‘It must be, sir.’
‘And they’ve just switched it on,’ said Harry. McCready knew exactly what his captain meant: they were expecting traffic. The two-ship convoy? Harry stepped to the voicepipe, ‘Asdic, bridge. Keep a close watch from dead ahead to port one zero zero. A light’s just come on up here and we think something is on the way.’ He slapped the cover back down.
Meanwhile, the beam had hovered over them, dipped slightly and began traversing back. It began flashing again. Two short, one long.
‘Tom,’ Harry said to McCready, ‘shout down and ask Mr Harding to look up the frequency for the Petit Langoustier lighthouse.’
Harry watched the light coming back again.
‘He says it’s not two short, one long, sir’ said McCready stepping back from the pipe.
Harry frowned. Then a couple of things happened all at once. The light began dipping towards them again, one of the lookouts said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but two short, one long is the letter “U” in morse,’ and as he spoke, a disembodied voice exploded from the voicepipe, ‘Bridge, Asdic! High-speed HE closing fast, bearing red two zero!’
Since McCready was closest to the klaxon, Harry yelled, ‘Tom! Hit the tit! Clear the bridge!’
As he was shouting, the port lookout yelled too, ‘Bow waves! Port bow!’
However, with the klaxon already blaring, the lookout didn’t need any encouragement to obey the last order; he and his mate were gone down the hatch. Harry shoved McCready after them and jumped so fast himself that he hit McCready on the ladders and knocked him to the control room deckplates.
‘E-boats,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Flood Q! Keep eighty feet! Full dive on the planes! Port twenty!’
Scourge was already on her way down. Harry held the attack periscope to steady himself.
‘It was the lighthouse, all right,’ he announced, ‘directing bloody E-boats onto us. “U” in morse … Jerry for unterseeboot …
for submarine.’ He turned to McCready, ‘Sorry about that Tom …’ a pause for an evil grin, then, ‘… but hey, we both learned something. Teacher was right about heaving-to on the surface, eh?.’
The noise of high-speed propellers entered the hull. Everybody looked up as they always did.
‘Targets transmitting, sir.’ It was Biddle in the Asdic cubby. ‘They haven’t acquired. New sort of set, sir. Haven’t heard one like this before … I think the targets are Jerry R-boats. Haven’t heard them in a long while.’
Raumboots. Just fast motor gunboats. Nowhere near as evil as a full-blooded Jerry E-boat.
Then, through the retreating engine whines, Splash! Splash!
Then two more.
Depth charges.
The detonations were very loud, but they barely felt the blast from them, little more than a casual kick up the backside from too far a distance astern to do any damage.
‘Targets slowed right down, sir,’ said Biddle, ‘directly astern of us. They’re still transmitting … still not acquired us.’
The water must be in turmoil, thought Harry; with all the churn from the depth charges and the echo from the cliffs so close to starboard.
‘Port thirty, helmsman. Group up, full ahead together. Let’s get the hell out of here and away to seaward,’ he said, and he felt Scourge turn and heel beneath him as they turned. On the way out, they heard four more detonations, but a long way behind them.
‘That’s probably their full load gone,’ observed Harry to the control room, ‘but we don’t want to be around in case they’ve called up any chums, especially big chums.’
