Non-Combatants

by Non-Combatants (retail) (epub)

  Non-Combatants

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Postscript

  Copyright

  Non-Combatants

  Alexander Fullerton

  For Kate – Ronnie’s Kate, a.k.a. Katharine Gordon, who allegedly gave up gin in Quetta.

  1

  ‘All right, Holt?’

  ‘Aye, sir…’ Shifting binoculars from his eyes for a moment. Dark night, tumbling sea flecked and flashing white, Quilla chucking herself about rather more than one might have expected in such a sea-state. An odd time for a ship’s master to leave his bridge: when you could reasonably expect to be going to defence stations at any moment, were even a bit anxious on that score – and Captain Nat Beale going down for a smoke, snooze, snack, whatever. One didn’t know him yet. Having signed on only two days ago as second mate of this ship – SS Barranquilla, tramp steamer of 7,050 tons gross, Glasgow-registered – met him then for the purpose of signing on, of course, but only a few times and briefly since; they’d not even been a whole day at sea yet. All Andy Holt could have said of his new captain at this stage was that he was a Scot, aged forty-two – might have guessed older, but that was the truth of it – and that he liked what he’d seen and heard of him this far. Would have expected to, in fact; might have been a poor outlook if one hadn’t. And Harve Brown, the mate, with whom Andy had sailed before and knew well, had said he was a good man: that he watched points fairly craftily out of those seemingly easy-going, often humorous grey eyes, and reacted badly to either incompetence or bullshit; which was as it should be, in Harve Brown’s and one’s own view, and the expressions of approval incidentally reflected well on Harve himself, by contrast still a first officer at forty-six. A generous-spirited character, who by experience and seniority might well have had his own ship long before this, yet had been lumbered with medical problems including a dicky heart which a year ago they’d thought might kill him. It had been a pleasant surprise to find him here in the Barranquilla – to have him as first mate, one’s own immediate superior, but in any case heartening that he should have recovered well enough to be back in a seagoing job.

  Old Man growling as he started down the bridge ladder, steadying himself as Quilla – the diminutive by which her own people knew her – rolled harder than usual to starboard, ‘I’ll not be long, Second.’

  Which explained it. Call of nature. Must have been up here eight or nine hours: certainly had been when Andy had taken over at midnight, probably throughout the third mate’s watch before that, and the dogwatches too, a long stint during which the convoy had been getting itself through the war channel and then into shape. So, wise move, since it was odds-on that any minute now the U-boats would be raising their ugly snouts and you’d be going to defence stations; Old Man stuck up here for sure then, probably until dawn or later. The U-boats might well have embarked on their fun and games an hour or two sooner than this, in fact: during the late afternoon and evening the air-waves had been foul with chatter, according to the Marconi boys, a natural assumption being that they were preparing for a busy night. As likely as not, one of them shadowing and others homing in on him during recent hours. And for ‘busy’ night, read ‘happy’ night; there’d been a report a week ago in the Glasgow Herald that U-boat men were calling this summer of 1940 their ‘happy time’: targets galore, opposition minimal, night attacks on the surface gutting convoy after convoy.

  Starting late tonight – or this morning rather, if they were going to start at all: 0130 now, 4 August, a Sunday.

  As dark as it was going to get, the convoy in its formation as ordered, and well clear of the North Channel, having come through the mine-swept war channel in double file before having anything like room to form up. Now, four hours after completion of that nerve-racking evolution, you had Barra Head forty-five miles northeast and Bloody Foreland – appropriately named, being more or less the focal point of the bastards’ depredations in recent months – seventy-five miles southwest. Which left a heck of a lot of sea-room on that side, where Quilla was ploughing her own broad white furrow in the port-hand column.

  She was number four in column seven: three ships ahead of her and only one astern. That one – the Harvest Queen – even more vulnerable than Quilla having no sheltering neighbours either outside her or astern. The bastards did attack from astern when it suited them; on the surface they could get eighteen knots out of their diesels, whereas this convoy’s ordered speed was only twelve, and Quilla’s best – flat-out, with her engineers sitting on all the valves – allegedly a fraction over fourteen and a half.

  Convoy escorted, incidentally, by one sloop. One. Out there in the dark ahead somewhere. Forty-one merchantmen – four columns of five ships, and three – the central ones – of seven – escorted by a single sloop, which typically would be nine or ten years old, displace about a thousand tons, be armed with two four-inch guns and boast a top speed, when in good heart and clean-bottomed, of maybe sixteen knots. So the U-boats outpaced her as well. She’d be half a mile ahead, he guessed, crabbing to and fro across the convoy’s front in the hope of maybe intercepting a surfaced U-boat on its way to penetrate the columns of plunging, blacked-out ships and let loose with torpedoes at ranges where the things could hardly miss. Even on a night like this one, with the moon and scatterings of stars showing through when breaks in the cloud permitted, a U-boat stood a good chance of getting in unseen. Even when you had several escorts. A U-boat being a mere sliver to the eye, especially bow-on; and even when technically surfaced would still be low in the night-black sea, more in it in fact than on it. And while from the bridges and bridge-wings of the freighters watchkeepers could only strain their eyes downward at the shifting, heaving black confusion that hid the predators, they had their potential victims in bulky elevation against a less than totally dark sky.

  Moon flushing the seascape again. Andy lowering his glasses slightly, glancing across the darkened bridge and telling the seventeen-year-old cadet who was his dogsbody on this watch – ‘Check lookouts awake and on their toes, Dixon.’ Ensuring he was on his toes, as much as chivvying the lookouts in the bridge-wings. Hearing the young Londoner’s acknowledgement of the order: glasses up again, probing the port-side seascape in this flush of moonglow, taking advantage of it while it lasted. As any U-boat skipper out there would be doing too. But sweeping the port side first because attacks didn’t have to be made from ahead or astern, or from inside the convoy’s columns, and one was very conscious of the apparently empty wilderness to port – well aware it wasn’t necessarily all that empty and that if one of its denizens got its sights on you, you could as well say you were done for. Simply how things were, when your primary defences were no more than your own binoculars and a few lookouts’ sharp eyes and alertness in all the confusing vagaries of light and darkness.

  Quilla rolling harder than she was pitching, meanwhile, and the quartermaster – Selby, Yorkshireman, shortish, thickset, square-jawed, eyes under his woollen cap reflecting the soft glow of the gyro repeater – shifting the wheel this way and that to hold her within a degree or two of the ordered course, 305 degrees. Being in ballast, deep-tanks filled but cargo-holds empty, Quilla was fully entitled to react in lively fashion to the long Atlantic swells powering in from the southwest. Westerlies, these winds were called: gentle enough at this stage, for sure, but ocean-wide in their scope, sweeping from the seaboards of
North America and Canada, driving up over Iceland and the Faeroes into the Norwegian and Barents seas. One had known some very heavy weather in these latitudes, one truly had. Six months ago, as a prime example, in a ship by name of PollyAnna, which having sprung a leak had damn near foundered; at the height of it, in hurricane-force winds and with number two hold filled to its brimming hatch-cover, his own over-riding concern had been for Julia, survivor of another ship in which she’d been a passenger.

  She was as much in his mind now as she had been then.

  Having searched the port side from the quarter to the bow, he was routinely checking on Quilla’s next-ahead, focusing on the dimmed stern light. The MV Daisy Oakes. Distance still about right, near enough 600 yards, no need for adjustment of engine revs, which did tend to be necessary at frequent intervals in convoy. Six hundred yards between ships in column, 1,000 laterally between the columns, convoy thus three nautical miles wide and nearly two miles deep – quite a large area of what you might call inhabited sea, a whole community of ships and seamen shifting steadily northwestward at twelve knots. A check to starboard confirming now that station-keeping this far was unusually good: the little Bristolian, no more than 4,000 tons, was right there on the beam, a blossom of whitened ocean just about exacdy where it should have been.

  With the glasses – second-hand but good ones, Kershaws, a present from his father to mark his alleged achievements in the PollyAnna – he could make the Bristolian out better than that, too. Low funnel practically right aft, bridge superstructure amidships also low but extensive in relation to her length. She’d been anchored close to Quilla at Tail of the Bank in the Clyde estuary, where they’d spent some days while that section of the convoy gathered, so that her profile had become familiar – still was, even in the dark at a distance of half a mile and throwing herself around. In ballast, of course, like Quilla, as most of the ships in this convoy would be – barring a few who were down to their summer marks with Welsh coal. That lot would have come up from Barry, Cardiff and Newport, to rendezvous off Belfast, where those from the Mersey had been waiting for them in the Lough.

  Training left now, pausing on the ship ahead of the Bristolian: effort of memory getting its name – memorised from the convoy diagram he’d pinned above the chart table – as SS Cedarwood. Somewhat ahead of station, too wide a gap between those two. Bristolian should crack on a bit, he thought – except then she’d be out of station on Quilla. So the Cedarwood was ahead of her station, had to be crowding her next-ahead.

  He was edging his glasses slightly further left to check on that one, whatever her name might be, when the Daisy Oakes was hit. You heard the deep, booming thud of a torpedo striking, swung in that direction – left – saw the pillar of upflung black water collapsing white across her, and had an impression – all it could be, through the dark and movement and in a matter of just seconds – that she’d begun a swing away to port. Guesswork taking a hand then: that she might have seen her attacker, jammed on rudder in an attempt to ram or to save herself by ‘combing the tracks’. He had a thumb on the button of the alarm that buzzed in the Old Man’s cabin, then on the klaxon alarm that would send the hands to their defence stations. Glasses meanwhile one-handed and still focused on the stricken Daisy Oakes – who was sheering out to port, thus allowing Quilla to hold on as she was going. He told Selby, ‘Steady as you go’, and the Old Man as he arrived like a ton of bricks beside him in the bridge’s forefront, ‘Our next-ahead, sir. Hit port side. She’s hauling out that way.’

  ‘I’m on her.’

  Quilla holding her course of 305 degrees, pitching and battering on, the Daisy Oakes stern-down and with a growing list to port as she swung away. Quilla had had all her boats turned out since dusk or earlier – davits turned out, that was to say, boats boused firmly to the griping-spars, since if they’d swung loose they’d have smashed themselves against the davits; they could be freed and lowered in a lot less time than it would have taken if the davits had had to be turned out first. All ships in convoy would have done the same – or any that hadn’t would be doing so now. Old Man telling him, ‘I’ve got her, Second. Where’s—’

  Crump of a second torpedo hit fifteen or twenty seconds after the first one. To starboard somewhere. For the moment this was all one knew – except that in the hard, knocking thud, men would probably have died, others trapped below decks drowning at this moment – until young Dixon squawked, ‘On our beam, column six, sir! Bristolian? Kind of a flash, then—’

  ‘All right.’

  Hadn’t seen any kind of flash, but saw muck cascading – water, assorted debris, and smoke streaming. The little ship’s profile less familiar now, stern half already lifting as she tipped bow-down in the boil of whiteness: instant flooding of empty holds, he guessed, perhaps more than one hold simultaneously; if a bulkhead between them had been breeched, that would mean about two-thirds of the ship filled within seconds. The inrush of ocean was the picture in mind as he trained left over the glossy black-and-white ridges, surface gloss imparted by cloud-filtered moonglow, to the Bristolian’s next-ahead, the Cedarwood. She was all right. Andy swinging slowly anti-clockwise, hearing the Old Man call down for an increase in revs that would provide about one more knot, to close up into what had been the Daisy Oakes station. Quilla’s next-ahead would now be the Pole, name of – mental effort again – oh, Byalystok, whatever that might mean.

  Probing darkness out to port again. Port bow, where the attack had come from and some U-boat’s crew would still be cheering. Their commander would need to get his boat down into the static depths to reload its tubes though, one might guess, if that had been a full salvo he’d fired.

  Presumably it would have been. From somewhere for’ard of the beam. Salvo of four, say.

  ‘Bristolian’s gone!’

  Gone.

  Crew of thirty, thirty-five, one might guess, gone with her in those few minutes. Vision of Julia then: her brown eyes on his, soft but urgent whisper, ‘Swear you will come back?’

  He’d sworn it. What else? Although she’d known as well as he had – having been through it herself, and then some – that any such assurance would be nothing more than whistling in the dark.

  Happened, or it didn’t, that was all. When it did, according to the circumstances you’d cope as well as possible. If possible, remain alive.

  Primarily now for her sake. Which wasn’t a thing you’d broadcast. Make any such observation to old Harve, for instance, his response would be, ‘Yeah, pull the other one!’

  A touch cynical, old Harve.

  ‘Same salvo, I’d guess.’ Old Man gesturing out to port. Meaning that one torpedo had put paid to the Daisy Oakes – who was well abaft Quilla’s beam now, stopped and stern-down, listing increasingly to port with the sea foaming over her already swamped afterpart – while another of the same salvo had run on and blasted the Bristolian. What might be called a browning shot. Second distress rocket streaking skyward – he’d heard one scorch up when he’d been focusing on the Bristolian just now, had been aware of the sudden streak of brilliance as it were out of the corner of his mind as well as eye – Quilla at that time thrashing by the Daisy Oakes at a distance of less than half a cable, allowing a view of one boat in the water and another halfway down her side – starboard side for’ard. Others might have been lowered on her port side – should have been, please God: although it was the weather side it would be less hazardous than on this one, on account of the list which as it steepened could lead to boats scraping down a barnacled iron slope. Might by some miracle make it all the way down, but more likely would not – except upside-down, having spilled out its occupants. The Old Man had his glasses on the Pole, Byalystok, as Quilla closed up astern of her. And that hadn’t been a second distress rocket from the Daisy Oakes: it was what was called a ‘snowflake’, hung overhead now, dazzling bright, turning – as the oft-used phrase went – night into day. Convenient for the German and his mates, Andy thought, lighting us all up, but not much bloody
help to us, really none at all. However – this at last was Waller, third mate, beside him, the light-reflecting peak of his cap a dull shine about a foot below the level of Andy’s shoulder, Waller being almost spectacularly short-arsed. He told the Old Man, ‘Third’s here, sir. Your permission, I’ll go down.’

  Since merchant ships were now armed, a second mate’s responsibilities included gunnery, and his own defence station, he’d been told, was at the twelve-pounder on the poop – a steel gun-deck built above the roof of the crew’s quarters right aft, that superstructure having been strengthened to support it. Merchant ships being non-combatant, crewed by civilians, were allowed such weapons only on their sterns – for defensive purposes, notably for use when running from an attacker. He went out into the port wing of the bridge – two lookouts there – turned aft and rattled down a ladder to the boat-deck, where at each boat a pair of lowerers squatted close to the out-turned davits, and further aft, abreast the funnel, were Quilla’s other two cadets, Merriman and Elliot. Their dark-hours’ duties included the launching of distress rockets and/or snowflakes, or by day when under air attack the operation of the Holman Projector – a steam-powered grenade launcher – and, in other circumstances, flag-hoists. Merriman called to ask him which ship had been the victim of the second torpedo, and Andy told him the Bristolian, starboard beam, adding that she’d gone down in less than three minutes: ‘So put on that bloody life-jacket!’

  Kapok-filled ‘swimming waistcoats’ in this ship, Andy had noted earlier. In the PollyAnna they’d had the old-fashioned kind that could break your neck if you were wearing one when you jumped. Clattering down the next ladderway now, to the main deck aft. With the amount of movement on her, especially her roll, watching his footing and making use of such handholds as were in reach – ventilators and winches, for instance. The safest route, if the motion had been much worse than this, would have been along the centre-line, over the tops of the hatch-covers of numbers four and five holds, using the lashed-down five-ton derricks as massive handrails. But it wasn’t anything like that bad: there was plenty of life in her but no seas coming over, decks running wet but from no more than spray. That snowflake’s light was a big help, still bright, though well astern by now and drifting seaward.