Non-Combatants

by Non-Combatants (retail) (epub)

  Waller had muttered, having got that far for the umpteenth time and begun to edge back the other way, ‘Might’ve given ’em the slip…’

  Counting chickens, or wishful thinking: anyway addressing it to himself, probably unaware of having spoken out loud. Only Samways’ glance and doubtful sniff had answered him. Shake of the cloth-capped head then, eyes back on the gyro repeater, its soft glow reflected in them. Andy guessing at – visualising – U-boats having been, say, six or eight miles ahead, spread across the convoy’s line of advance, before the emergency turn – which rightly or wrongly was how one had pictured it at that stage – well, by now they’d be more or less crossing the convoy’s wake, having expected to make contact sooner than this. Failing to do so, they’d – well, wouldn’t continue south for long, presumably weren’t dummies; they’d spread out, crack on speed, begin to hunt around. And not being morons, they’d guess that a westbound convoy would hardly have made a turn to starboard.

  That might be realistic enough, he thought. And if the Commodore had anything like that picture in his mind, why wouldn’t he order a second forty-five-degree emergency turn now? You’d be turning out of echelon into line – on course then about 235, i.e. southwest, directly away from—

  Explosion – port quarter. Torpedo hit for sure – and close. The brain’s reaction to it – through a wave of disappointment – was that it might well have been a hit on the Harvest Queen. Visual confirmation following instantly, binocs having swung that way – a mound of black ocean lifting alongside the grain-carrier’s substantial midships section and bridge superstructure that was noticeably larger than Quilla’s. Waller muttering, ‘Jesus, Jesus’; Andy’s own unspoken thought a grim acknowledgment, Well, it’s starting now…

  Grim, but not despairing. Despair was something one couldn’t afford, didn’t feel or contemplate. Things got bad and might go from bad to worse – you held on because you had no option.

  ‘I’ll take her, Holt.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Distress rocket scorching up out of a general thickening of the darkness – smoke, with the Harvest Queen somewhere inside it and – a second’s hesitation, recalling that one’s name, the steamer that had been number four in column six – hell, the Princess Judy – under helm, ploughing through the muck’s nearer fringe, giving a wide berth to her former neighbour and maybe intending to come up on Quilla’s quarter, where she’d be welcome, since without the Harvest Queen Quilla was on her own, exposed to any others of them on that side. Old Man doubtless with similar thoughts in mind, telling him, ‘Pass the word aft to Merriman, they see one, don’t waste time telling us, bloody well let fly!’

  By telephone via the sight-setter, whose name was – he got it while cranking the handle of the phone – Hardy, ordinary seaman, who’d answered with a squawk of ‘Gun-deck!’ Andy told him, ‘Captain to Mr Merriman, Hardy – see a U-boat, don’t report it, shoot at it!’

  ‘Message from the bridge, Mr Merriman—’

  He’d hung up, was only just moving back into the bridge’s forefront when the next bad news came – from some distance astern, well back, near the centre maybe – and another on the heels of that. Sharpening one’s presentiment that this was going to be worse than the previous night. Three hits in a space of – what, five or six minutes – and widely separated. U-boats had to be all over the place, might well have infiltrated the columns.

  And damn-all one could do about it except maintain station, course and speed, and plod on, say your prayers.

  As bad as any other aspect, that sense of impotence. Fact of impotence. Last night had in fact been his first experience of convoy action, and this was a derivative he’d not foreseen – the extreme frustration, almost shame, of personal helplessness. It had been his first experience of convoy action because although they’d sailed from Halifax in convoy in the PollyAnna, the atrocious weather had split them up and left the Anna struggling on her own; her good luck had been that U-boats couldn’t operate in those conditions anyway. He was at the chart now – time 0118 – noting that on this westward course they’d be crossing longitude 15 west without coming within an hour’s steaming of position ‘A’. Not that position ‘A’ had anything special to offer, other than being a cardinal point on the convoy’s preplanned route and on 15 west – which had nothing magical about it either – giving rise to another depressing truth, that longitude 15 degrees west, although it had been seen as the westward limit of effective U-boat operations, now that the bastards were working out of Lorient couldn’t be seen as anything of the sort. So tomorrow night wouldn’t necessarily be any more fun than this one or the last.

  Another hit – starboard side, and close. Recognition, then – just 600 yards away, the Byalystok. The Pole’s stern engulfed in smoke and flames, burning debris flying.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ – from Waller – and ‘Poor buggers!’ – a groan from Samways, addressed only to themselves. The Byalystok's afterpart had been shattered in an upward boil of sea and was on fire, by the look of it internally; minor explosions might have been ammunition going up. That gun’s crew done for – instantly obliterated. Old Man snapping to Samways, ‘Port ten!’

  ‘Port ten, sir…’

  To pass clear of the Pole as she lost way and fell back. Damage aft could have wrecked her steering: desirable therefore to pass well clear. She was still on an even keel – more or less – or looked to be. Odds were she’d be immobilised in any case: propeller shaft or shafts, he was thinking of. Quilla passing her now, Old Man ordering, ‘Midships and meet her’, and then, ‘Starboard ten’, and to the engine room – you buzzed for attention, then used the voice-pipe – ‘Up four revolutions.’ Having lost ground by steering around the Pole, needing to keep station, or rather take station on the Catherine Bell. Andy checking around, seeing that the Princess Judy had evidently had second thoughts about closing up, was back where she’d started from, in the billet that had originally been the Bristolian’s until that disaster twenty-four hours ago. Disaster, nothing less, every time, not just a ship but forty to fifty souls in each of them. There’d be fish exploring the Bristolian’s interior by this time, crabs clawing their way in. And in this column seven, where last evening there’d been five ships, there were now just two – the Catherine Bell and the Barranquilla, joint leaders of the herd; and being in echelon, a U-boat commander attacking from either the port or starboard side might so angle himself as to get them as one overlapping target – the kind he could hardly miss.

  So change the subject. Tonight’s score – binoculars up and searching across the bow – at this stage, four. Five last night, if one included the Belgian who’d made it into Londonderry. Running total therefore nine, and surviving ships in convoy at this moment thirty-two. While another thing in mind – had been out of it for some moments but was back now – was that Merriman and the gun’s crew, having witnessed the destruction of the Byalystok’s stern, gun-deck and gun’s crew, might themselves be feeling – say, uneasy. And Merriman only seventeen, for all his gawky length… Moving up beside the Old Man, on this thought: ‘Captain, sir – all right if I pay ’em a visit aft?’

  * * *

  He’d stopped to chat briefly with the bridge-wing lookouts, and paused on the deck below for a word with Elliot and Dixon. Noting that both were wearing their lifejackets and had a distress rocket ready for launching, as well as snowflakes within reach. Dixon’s opening remark was: ‘Kind of asking for it on our own out here, aren’t we – sir?’

  The ship, he meant – presumably – overexposed, inviting U-boats to take a shot at her. Although in point of fact, in this echelon formation the Bell was actually the leader, might seem to a U-boat to be the one to go for. But in any case, what would the boy propose that anyone should do about it? Andy told him, for lack of any more effective reassurance, ‘One thing we do have going for us – if you’ve noticed, Dixon – is we’re still afloat.’

  Elliot laughed. ‘Aye. There’s that.’ Andy nodded to him, went on aft and down the la
dder to the main deck, thinking that if he ever had to pick one of those two to have with him in a boat or on a raft, he’d make damn sure it was the Glaswegian.

  In fact Dixon might need his arse kicked.

  He was climbing the port-side ladder to the gun-deck when they scored again. He winced: involuntary reaction indicative of nerves wearing thin, to which a second mate, he told himself as he came off the ladder, was not entitled. But – only thirty-one now. Put it to the tune of Nine Green Bottles? Humming it as he joined the huddle of men around the gun and Assistant Cook Bayliss, ammo-supply number, chose this moment to scream into the darkness, ‘Bloody fucking bastards!’

  ‘Feel better for that, Bayliss?’

  Pettigrew explained, ‘Cookie’s not enjoying ’isself all that much.’ Merriman, though, looming up then: ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘OK here, are we?’

  Rocket going up from somewhere in the middle. Merriman shrugging: ‘Except can’t see a darned thing out there. It’d have to be practically alongside – or have a blooming light on it!’

  ‘Yeah. Lost our moon. Applies both ways, mind you, them as well as us. But dawn won’t be all that long coming. If they’re still with us then—’

  ‘Christ.’ Peering at him through the dark, braced against the ship’s motion: ‘Might almost say if we are – I mean, hour and a half, two hours—’

  ‘Run out of torpedoes before long, I’d guess. For every one that hits you can reckon on a couple that’ve missed. Except when they’re in the middle of us, point-blank range.’

  ‘Only take one of ’em with our name on it, eh?’

  Fox, that was, one of the black gang. Andy told him, ‘Bollocks, Fox. This is a lucky ship, didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say I ’ad!’

  ‘Saw the Polish steamer hit, I suppose?’

  Merriman said, ‘Didn’t we just.’

  ‘Well – knocking ’em down all round us, haven’t they? Last night the Daisy Oakes and the Bristolian, now the Pole and the Harvest Queen. Well’ – a wave towards the Catherine Bell – ‘if I was in her I’d have the wind up!’

  Merriman laughed. So did Patterson – and Pettigrew. Even Fox. Most, if not all. Not that he was fooling any of them: they were making allowances for him, acknowledging the effort and its purpose. One of the things he loved about this racket – the sense of independence, individuality, which they all prized and respected in each other – allowing him the same licence. In this instance, freedom to make silly jokes or even non-jokes in an effort to keep spirits up, one’s own as much as others’. He clapped Bayliss on the shoulder: ‘A bit more luck, you’ll get your own back, catch one on the surface at first light, eh?’

  * * *

  Heading for’ard ten minutes later, he was remembering his father’s predictions on the subject of Atlantic convoys, of which the old man had memories from the ’14–’18 war. Not so much personal as historical, how close the U-boats had brought Britain to starvation, especially in 1916 and 1917. He’d prophesied, ‘This time it’ll be worse. We haven’t a fraction of what we need. Plain truth is we’re going to be well and truly up against it – and your lot worse than any!’

  Being both a master mariner and a lifelong member of the RNR, Royal Naval Reserve, since 1937 he’d been involved in defence planning, preparations for the arming of merchant ships, organising and running courses and so forth; despite which he’d assumed that his son would switch to the RNR, as he himself had done in 1914. But Andy, who in late 1938 had just taken his second mate’s ticket and qualified as a third mate, after three years at sea as a cadet, wasn’t having any. He’d trained for the merchant navy, found himself very much at home in it: this was what he was, and the life he wanted. In his thinking there was no question of changing over, and it led to the most fundamental difference of opinion he and his father had ever had; at the height of it virtually a stand-up row – on Armistice night of ’38 when he’d challenged the old man with, ‘You’re saying I’d have better chances of survival in a fighting ship than in a merchantman?’ The answer had been an angry rebuttal, but that had been a good part of his father’s reasoning. While Mama’s had been more the social angle – or as she’d chosen to express it, ‘It’s the fighting men get the respect, Andy.’

  The only voice supporting him, he remembered, had been his sister’s. Annabel had understood completely and naturally how he’d felt about it. And the old man had come to terms with it, finally. While as to this current Atlantic situation – well, he’d been absolutely correct in that gloomy forecast, although a memory to hang on to was his having added, ‘Oh, we’ll get the better of them in the end – bloody have to. That or starve, be starved into surrender, that’ll be the buggers’ aim.’

  Have to. Those were the words one latched on to. Bloody would, given half a chance, including the luck to remain in the land of the living until they’d built, launched and manned about a thousand more destroyers, sloops, corvettes…

  Gunfire?

  First thought had been: God, another one…

  But – distant, and a sharper sound, whipcracks quite different from the thudding submerged explosions. Again now – and a vision of the U-boat surfaced or half-surfaced, getting its come-uppance – please God! Rapidly up the ladder to the boat-deck now, pausing at the top and hearing it again – one single shot – from a northerly direction – from down-wind – might therefore be less far off than one had thought, sound reduced by having the breeze against it. Somewhere to starboard anyway – on which side he found a group at the rail between the boats – the two cadets, and Harve Brown, bosun and boat-lowerers. Brown yelling at him after he’d made his presence known, ‘Our sloop throwing her weight about, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Don’t know what else, Harve.’

  ‘See the snowflake, did you?’

  ‘No – where, when—’

  ‘Before the argie-bargie started. Well, could’ve been starshell, weren’t there long, I suppose. I’d say either sunk it, or it could’ve dived. Must’ve got seven or eight rounds away. Quicker ’n one of us could’ve done, I’d say!’

  ‘Pray God they sunk ’im.’ McGrath, the bosun, drawing fervent agreement from others. Show over, though, most of them turning inboard, Andy still scouring the dark sea streaked and patched whitish in the foreground from Quilla’s own lunging passage through it, and a smudge of further disturbance out there around the Catherine Bell. Leaving her, picking up the tail-funnelled Imperator, and on her quarter, roughly, the Montreal Star. Lowering his glasses, he told Harve Brown, ‘Been down aft. Merriman seems OK. Heading back up now. Not too bloody marvellous, is it?’

  Steam-whistle, then – above their heads an escape of steam preceding one deafening short blast: there’d been a couple from the deep field by then, and from a neighbour now the same again. Others then, astern, and Quilla’s repetition of the single blast, emergency turn starboard. Entire herd giving, or by this time having given tongue. Andy on his way up, pausing in the bridge-wing, his glasses finding the Commodore’s green lights a few seconds before they vanished: pushing in then by way of the starboard-side weather door, leaning back on it to shut it, hearing Samways report to the Old Man, ‘Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir.’

  ‘Steer 320.’

  ‘Three-two-oh, sir…’

  Commodore reckoning on the sloop’s action – whatever its outcome might have been – having distracted other close attention? That might account for the briefness of the interval between the green-light signal and the turn: getting his flock round on to the northwesterly course before another of the bastards poked its head up.

  ‘Up four turns, Waller.’

  ‘Up four, aye aye—’

  ‘Course 320, sir!’

  Eight minutes past two a.m. It had been 0140 when he’d gone aft, and the last torpedoing had been just as he’d reached the gun-deck – 0145, say – so you could say no hits in the last – well, call it half an hour. Might have been another if the sloop hadn’t caugh
t one of them on its way in – and touch wood, put paid to it?

  Boring thing was, you’d probably never know.

  Anyway, chartwork now…

  They’d made the emergency turn at 0030, so to all intents and purposes had spent an hour and a half steering west. At twelve knots, eighteen miles. Call that sixteen. And applying that to the 0130 EP – a new one for 0200 put you on 58 degrees 55’ north, 15 degrees 10’ west. So you might say that any U-boats encountered from here on would in theory be out of bounds, and the convoy entitled to disperse.

  He told the Old Man, ‘0200 EP says we’re ten miles west of fifteen west, sir. And twenty miles south of position “A”.’

  ‘Dispersal at first light maybe.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Glasses up again – and favouring the port side again, the unprotected side. With nothing astern now either. Although most U-boat attacks came from the flanks: which was why all convoys were given a broader front than depth, the shorter depth – very much shorter now, this column – presenting a narrower spread of targets to the attacker.

  Not that there was any great comfort in that when the column was only two ships long and you were one of them…

  He thought it was a good letter he’d written to Julia, but the one to Annabel might be improved upon. In much the same way as their parents, she tended to smile, as if giving him up as hopeless, incorrigible, at any mention of his girlfriends, and he thought he might have left himself open to – well, not exactly a dismissive, but a less than wholeheartedly sympathetic reaction. Tear it up and start again, he thought: explain Julia’s background in greater depth, how utterly different she was from girls he’d associated with in the past, and how differently he thought of her and always would. He’d touched on this, obviously, but he thought maybe not convincingly enough; Annabel actually had to believe it, not simply reflect that it was something he wanted her to believe. And perhaps the most challenging aspect of it was to get across to her this essential point: that the relationship was not only different but special – serious, long-term, not in the least casual as others had been – to make the truth of this clear without its apparently conflicting with the fact she’d become pregnant.