The Northern Garrisons

by Eric Linklater

  On the shore of a southern fjord there was an Officers’ Mess, housed in the usual Nissen hut, but uncommonly distinguished by the magnificent view that filled the windows, and by the craft and the imagination which had created its furniture. Easy chairs and a sofa, all homemade, were upholstered, not uncomfortably, with old Army blankets, and in one corner a circular bar was smartly panelled with paintings of black and silver mountains, a growth of golden fir-trees. The electric lamps would not have shamed a modern flat.

  We had so good a lunch that the cook, we concluded, must in private life have worked for some decent hotel.

  “Indeed he didn’t,” said the Battery Commander. “In civil life he was a chimney-sweep.”

  A Yorkshire Soldier

  Driving into Reykjavik again, we found the road a little softer and more treacherous than it had been in the early morning. All the roads were melting. In the winter the earth is frozen a yard deep, so they melt by degrees into ever deeper layers of mud-soup and cinder-porridge. We drove, another day, by lava-fields and rough enormous moors to Geysir and to Thingvellir, where the Icelanders in their heroic age first thought of ruling the land by free discussion and debate, and held their sturdy parliament. The scenery was very fine, and grey geese flew beside the car. But the day was strenuous, and three times we were bogged in a sudden yielding of the road. Twice we dug out the car, with the spades we had brought, but the third time it had sunk too deep. So we walked some miles to look for help, and found a detachment of Yorkshire infantry, whose officer lent us a truck.

  The driver was a great-shouldered, thick-set man, quite young. He drove his truck over an appalling bouncing track with easy assurance, saying now and then, “You’d better hold on here.” We had some conversation, and he told me that he had gone to France with his Territorial battalion, in which were serving also his six brothers. He alone had come back. Of his brothers, two were dead, two prisoners, and of the other two they had had no news at all.

  And having suffered this overwhelming loss he was still serving his country with calm endurance. He was patient with our tedious difficulties, he was helpful to us, not because he was a soldier and had been told to help, but because there was still a great fount of kindness in him.

  I had seen many fine things since morning, but the best of all was that Yorkshire soldier.

  VI. Eagles of the North

  A squadron of the Royal Air Force had established its temporary headquarters in the nook of an Icelandic bay. The structure, the framework, of their headquarters had been fetched from the other side of the world, and what was now the Operations Room had once been familiar with globe trotters, and Old China Hands, and Madrassi stewards. But over a panelled wall which had listened to the gossip of Shanghai and Singapore, and the ice clattering in countless stengahs, was now stretched a diagram of the North Atlantic battle-front.

  It showed, in longitude twenty-something, an east-bound convoy, and the cardboard pattern of an aeroplane indicated the Sunderland that was escorting it. Inward-bound there was a second of these great flying-boats, returning from patrol, and two destroyers were speeding westward to meet another convoy. In the middle of the chart was the name of a merchant-ship, and the inscription: “0930/29. Left burning.” Another name, and the addition: “1400/28. Sunk.” In a jagged line were pinned some eight or nine blue shapes of cardboard. These represented the enemy, the U-boats, and against each one was shown the hour and date when its presence had become known.

  It was, of course, an ever-changing battle-line, and the disposition of the enemy could not be exactly shown. It so happened, however, that the disposition of the U-boats, in their last-reported positions, made a sort offence running all athwart the ocean, and the chart in consequence had a very sinister appearance. It brought the Battle of the Atlantic very near to one’s mind. There was the pattern of the conflict, changing from hour to hour. By morning the enemy might, with reinforcements, draw his fence closer. Or he might be dispersed and weakened. There would be, perhaps, another epitaph to pin upon a sunken ship.

  That afternoon a patrolling plane reported having seen a ship’s boat, under sail and with three men aboard, about a hundred miles from land. Survivors from a vessel which had failed to come through the fence. The crew of the aeroplane had dropped a supply of food and cigarettes and chocolate, and waved encouragement.

  An hour later, from a nearby port, a trawler put out to seek and rescue the three survivors.

  Sentinels of the Sea

  Between the knuckle-end of Scotland and the Denmark Strait, from the ragged coast of Norway to the immensity of the deep Atlantic, the Royal Air Force has many duties to perform, and the islands that reach like sentry-groups across the ocean give them bases from which to work. The sea is parcelled-out among their squadrons. From longitude This to longitude That a convoy may be watched by planes from Iceland. From longitude X to longitude Y a nearer station will provide its escort. And when the convoy comes within Z miles of such-and-such a shore, there will be fighters circling the sky, like hawks with a selective appetite, waiting to stoop from the sun on swastika’d plumage.

  In Scapa Flow—from time to time, as circumstance dictates—lie ships, great and small, of the Home Fleet. So Here and There and Elsewhere are squadrons of fighter-planes to guard the Navy’s roost. And at the aerodromes of Weissnichtwo and Kennaquhair live other planes that fly far to search, with actinic eyes, for the movement of German ships on the other side: raiders, troopers, and supply ships. A commerce raider, discreetly slipping from the Skagerrak at dusk, may be seen, at dawn, a shadow on the mouth of a Norwegian fjord. It is a reconnaissance plane from Kennaquhair that has seen him, and from Kennaquhair the news goes hot to Scapa. Then the Fleet takes action, and from the runways at Weissnichtwo goes up a hunting flight of (for example) geocyclic Inconnus, our latest fighter-bombers. So news is made—unless in fog or darkness the enemy escapes—and the islands that were among the quietest places of the earth have found another story for the front page or the six o’clock bulletin.

  “From Their Northern Eyries”

  But that is not a daily happening, or even a monthly diversion. Of the work of the Royal Air Force about the islands, the greater part by far makes no news at all. The work is vigilance—unending vigilance—and its duty is a constant mind, unfailing skill. Only at long intervals is the reward spectacular. The enemy’s long coastline is closely photographed, the seas are hunted, the convoys brought in: the less there is of interruption and conflict, the more evidence that the patrols are serving their purpose. They are keeping the enemy indoors.

  But consider the nature of such patrols, the ocean voyages. Ponder the difficulties of navigating by dead reckoning when the wind may shift its direction half-a-dozen times a day, its velocity from hour to hour ; as is the habit of the wind about the northern islands. Think of the sky that is always ready to let fall a curtain of thunder, snow, or fog, to hide the homeward view from a returning plane. Note, upon a decent map, the vastness of the sea compared with the littleness of the land, and picture the task of finding a convoy or a U-boat—moving upon variable courses—in that huge emptiness. Then imagine the boredom of circling in the freedom of the sky, for hours on end, above the snail-slow progress of ships upon the water.

  And think what comes to break the boredom. … A stain of smoke on the pale glimmering sea, a burning ship. An empty raft, a lifeboat crowded with gaunt survivors. Then if the underwater beast is seen—a wash of foam, a white line upon the sea—with what fierce excitement will the hunter turn, dive steeply, and let fall his bombs. Heart exacting a most anxious aim. Then if his luck be in, and justice for a day be wakeful, the nose of the dead beast appearing, and its oily blood upon the sea.

  The battle goes to and fro, it covers the North Sea and half the Atlantic, and from their northern eyries the pilots of the Royal Air Force are watching, warding—and choosing the slain.

  VII. Cargoes for Britain

  We left Reykjavik in fine weather but wi
th somewhat uneasy minds. Two small ships had been torpedoed, the night before, within fifty miles of land, and there was a rumour that the Bismarck was out and about in northern waters. We did not wholly believe this tale, because rumours in Iceland come gushing from the earth as numerously as hot springs, but we had not quite enough faith in scepticism to reject it altogether.

  Our ship, a vessel of some fifteen hundred tons, had once traded quietly between London and Glasgow, but now was serving as a convoy rescue-ship. We would join a convoy somewhere to the south of Iceland and if any ship in it was torpedoed, bombed, or struck a mine, we should hurry to the scene and pick up survivors. There was a surgeon on board, and a sick-bay. Rope-ladders were coiled in readiness to be thrown over the side, and a couple of rafts, triced to the rigging, could be let go in a few seconds.

  It was a Thursday, about midday, when we went aboard, and our escort was already waiting. Two little ships, about a hundred and sixty feet long, that had been built for catching whales in the chill neighbourhood of South Georgia, were to look after us on the first part of the voyage, and for rather more than twenty-four hours they led us into a desolate sea that, hour by hour, grew more deeply ridged and colder. The wind in the funnel-stays made a melancholy harping, and fulmars glided rail-high or skimmed the crumbling edges of the waves. There was no other sign of life.

  We were in ballast, very light upon the water, and rolled heavily. But our escorts, smaller and with gun-platforms to make a heavy top-hamper, rolled fantastically, so that while he on the starboard was showing all his deck, he to port would be exposing half his bottom. There has never been, at any time or place, much humanity in war, but to sink by stealth a ship in mid-Atlantic, where nature herself shows violence and cruelty enough to satisfy the wildest imagination, is surely the most fearful of war’s excesses.

  Town at Sea

  Late on Friday afternoon, after an hour or two of searching roundabout—now plunging head to the waves, now rolling deeply, now lurching before a following sea—we discovered, far away on the port bow, something that looked like a small town. There was smoke, and a tiny row of dark excrescences that might have been the chimneys of a village street. Slowly we came nearer, and the chimneys became funnels, the houses were revealed as the upper parts of a merchant fleet. There were thirty ships in the convoy, and they were heading a little south of east.

  Our leading escort, after a conversation with Aldis lamps, handed us over to a destroyer. He turned again for Reykjavik, and as he headed north, facing the sea, his flaring bows threw curtain after curtain of spray, bridge-high, across him.

  We took our station in the convoy. It was sailing on a broad front, in eight columns, with a destroyer patrolling ahead, a destroyer astern, and corvettes like outriders on either flank. It was very pleasant to be in company, and as we examined our company more closely, and found it good, the sensation became exhilarating.

  The thirty ships were of many different shapes, and of different nationalities, but all were alike in being deeply laden. Their holds were stuffed to the limit with war-gear for Britain, and many had cargo lashed upon their decks. Ahead and to starboard we could see a sturdy freighter that carried, in full view, half-a-dozen American fighter-planes. On the other side, on a strange-looking vessel that sprouted derricks on both sides, were two submarine-chasers, American mosquito-craft. And tankers, low in the water, their decks continually awash, were full as eggs with fuel for our ships, our bombers, and our tanks. It was a goodly convoy, and as we slowly perceived the richness of it, we felt, as the most urgent desire of our hearts, a straining wish—it grew to be a prayer—that all might come safely home.

  Darkness in those latitudes was short, and in the very early morning the ships again were visible. We grew familiar with them, and searched the several columns to make sure that all were there. The weather was beginning to improve, and we ran mostly before a following sea, though every little while the course was altered, and the wind would come now on one quarter, now on the other.

  Escort Duties

  Suddenly one of the destroyers swung to the west and put on full speed. A couple of broad fountains showed where she had dropped a pair of depth charges, and presently we heard the crunch-crunch of their explosion. The convoy, which had been heading due east, turned sharply with a blowing of steam whistles to the south-east, and a corvette joined the destroyer in a circling hunt. There was an enemy in the deep.

  But their quarry escaped. Their quarry was cunning and determined to do mischief. He may have hidden himself below the convoy, where, in the passage of many ships and the thresh of many screws, the listening ears of the destroyer would find it hard to distinguish the particular note of a submarine. In the afternoon the steel hull of our ship again echoed the shake and the crunch-crunch-crunch of depth charges. Again, in interlacing circles, destroyer and corvette went hunting their elusive prey. Two flying-boats appeared from nowhere, as it seemed, and joined them in the search.

  A little while before darkness came, one of the smaller ships fell to the rear and stopped. From her funnel blew a billowy unceasing cloud of steam. Her engines had failed her.

  An hour or so earlier a Swedish tanker had had similar trouble, and fallen behind. The convoy reduced speed to seven knots till she had made repairs, and caught us again. To see her in distress, and threatened with desertion—for the convoy must go on—had filled us with anxiety, and our feeling of relief when she rejoined us was streaked with elation and sprinkled with joy. But now this little freighter was in more serious trouble and night was very near. She grew smaller on the horizon, and dusk enshrouded her. To be left in that Atlantic loneliness, with an enemy, it was likely, fathoms deep but waiting to surface at the cruel and proper moment, was a fate one shrank from contemplating. It weighed upon the heart with an immense anxiety.

  Then, most gladly, we saw a corvette return. The convoy went on, but the little corvette would stand by the troubled merchantman. Some young Lieutenant in his first command, with a crew half-trained—landsmen six months ago—would patrol the darkening sea, and watch with straining eyes, listen with ears alert, lest an ocean-beast should break cover and attack. We went to bed more cheerfully—but kept our trousers on.

  Sunday morning came with sunshine and a calm sea. We looked immediately for the freighter, and there it was, in its old position in the second column from the left. It had made its repairs under the watchful eyes of the corvette, and rejoined us at dawn. The sun shone more brightly, and all the ships put on a gayer look. Black hull and buff topsides looked handsome against a sparkling sea, and an olive-green Norwegian tanker—at which we had grumbled yesterday, because when changing course it nearly ran us down—was now, to clearer eyes, a most gallant sight. We were very close to the ship that carried aeroplanes on her deck, and their sleek painted bodies looked swift and beautiful.

  Our hope, our anxious prayer, that all the convoy might come safely home, was by now a growing belief in its security. We had seen the Navy at its work, the ceaseless patrolling of the destroyer, the steady watch of the corvettes, with their sturdy trim and handsome lines. And what we had seen had given us confidence. The Navy was doing its work with zeal and efficiency, with a kind of brilliant steadiness. The tall-sided destroyers, moreover, were two of those that America transferred to us, and their blue-patterned flanks—streaked with the rust of never-ending work—and their tall un-English funnels were a constant reminder of the other nation, so different from ours but yet alike in its love of freedom, that stood by our side in this war for the world’s good future.

  Then—crunch-crunch and a shaking of the hull—one of the destroyers, fetched from idleness in the Navy Yard at Philadelphia, was furiously at work. Again it was joined by a corvette, and this was the most serious hunt of all. The convoy went on, and we lost sight of them. This time, we thought, they had surely found their prey, the U-boat which had been trailing us so hungrily, and now they would not leave it till they had worried it to death. So we thought, and ho
ped, but because the Navy does not advertise its well-doing, we were not told and never knew if they had killed. But it was a long time before they rejoined us. By then a pair of bombers, circling widely, had been added to our guard.

  Landfall

  We made good progress that night, with the wind, freshening again, still behind us, and the convoy increasing speed to ten knots. Before noon we could see through a drifting haze a grey shape of land. Then, an hour or two later, land on the other side. Scotland on the one hand, Ireland on the other. A third of our convoy had already left us, for a rendezvous from which it would take fresh instruction and another escort. Now aeroplanes were continually above us, and in the narrowing sea we formed, in double column, line ahead. We were nearly home.

  There was still, however, a casual danger, and a destroyer turned aside to sink a floating mine. Another, which the whole convoy had closely passed, not seeing it, drifted by us not twenty yards away, and a corvette remained to deal with it. Then the convoy divided into two, and half turned to the south, the others to the north. But all were in home waters now, and thirty ships, laden to their full capacity, had brought their cargoes in to feed and strengthen us in war. Here, surely, was an earnest of our victory.