Turn Left for Gibraltar

by David Black

  ‘There are two enemy fast patrol craft closing on us from astern!’ Rais yelled down the hatch. Only he was up there now. ‘Dive the fucking boat!’

  But they couldn’t. Not with barely thirty feet under the keel now. And anyway, Harry watching it all unfold, watching Grainger step into the middle of the control room, knew it wasn’t Rais’s show any more. It was going to be Number One who was going to get them out of this, or no one would, because there was no time any more. And in those flashing fractions of seconds, looking as the red light in the control room picked out every hard, selfish, arrogant and disdainful plane on Grainger’s face, you knew that not the slightest notion he might fail had entered the First Lieutenant’s mind.

  ‘Wrecker!’ called Grainger to the Outside ERA. ‘Open four main vents . . . Trim us down . . . ’til the water’s coming over the Skipper’s boots!’ Then to Tuke, ‘ASDIC! Water under the keel?’

  Tuke called, ‘Going through thirty feet now . . . thirty-five feet.’

  ‘Keep singing it out!’ said Grainger, staring hard at Harry’s plot. Harry, looking at it too, could see what Grainger saw: they weren’t going to be able to outrun the MAS-boats to deep water.

  Suddenly Grainger called, ‘Port thirty!’ And as the boat came around, he called a new course for her, heading directly inshore now, instead. ‘Group down’, and he rang for slow ahead, both on the telegraph.

  Bang! Bang! Two more shells went into the water, but it sounded as though they’d missed ahead. Rais was screaming down the hatch, but Harry couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  Grainger nodded to himself, a little grimace of satisfaction on his face, then he yelled up the tower, ‘You must stay on the bridge, Sir! Can you see the enemy?’

  He turned to Harry. ‘They can’t see us,’ he said. ‘The Eyeties can’t see us. They must have been firing on our muzzle flashes. Bloody crappy old ordnance. Fucking Admiralty’ll throw nothing away.’

  For Harry, leaning over the plot, the physical reality of what was happening had a shape now, he could make sense of it; the MAS-boats must have been in the shadow of the headland to the north of the bay. That was why the lookouts hadn’t spotted them as they waited for the enemy submarine to show up, as it had on every previous night, and start attacking the next switching station. And when Umbrage had opened fire, they had their target and were now closing on it.

  And that, Harry realised, was why Grainger was doing exactly what he shouldn’t be doing: heading inshore. As far as the Eyeties on those MAS-boats were concerned, the only sane thing for the enemy to do was to turn and run for it to open water, and dive. But Grainger had known he couldn’t escape, so he stopped running for deep water, and was taking them inshore, and into the shadow of the land to hide their silhouette against its loom, just as the MAS-boats had done when they’d set their ambush. And just as Umbrage hadn’t been able to see the MAS-boats then, Grainger was now hoping the MAS-boats wouldn’t be able to see Umbrage now.

  Grainger called the course change to bring them on a parallel track to the coast. Harry, just by looking at his own plot now, could see they were already deep in the land’s shadow, while out there, on the dark water, the MAS-boats were closing fast on where they believed Umbrage was heading, while, in fact, she had slunk quietly off to the side. That was some fancy footwork you just performed there, Mister Grainger, he thought to himself, with a smile.

  Tuke called out, ‘The high-speed HE . . . Both targets are coming up fast . . . They’re passing us to starboard on heading two-zero-zero degrees. They’re both going to pass us, Sir . . .! Still going flat out, Sir.’

  But they didn’t need Tuke any more. They could all hear the high-speed whine now as it reached them through the water, and through the steel of Umbrage’s pressure hull – the same demented sewing-machine sound Harry had heard before, that curdled you like ripping linen. Harry sketched their progress across the plot. Then he marked their own. Their course was already taking them over a looping contour marking the limits of the S/O line. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Then Tuke called, ‘Fifty feet beneath the keel, Sir . . . Sixty feet!’

  The noise of the MAS-boats was fading to nothing now. Grainger leaned to the voice-pipe and called, ‘Now, Sir! Down the hatch.’ Then he turned to the Wrecker: ‘Open all main vents, periscope depth.’ And he hit the klaxon twice to order the dive.

  In the sudden noise of the vents blowing, Rais’s voice cut through, a weird echo from the tower, ‘. . . Two clips on!’, and he plunged into the control room, stumbling to his knees on the deck plates.

  ‘Depth?’ called Grainger.

  ‘Twenty feet!’ came the response from the Wrecker. The conning tower would be under water now, and the periscope stands. Umbrage was down at last; down, but far from deep.

  Rais’s face was eerily calm, as he levered himself up to his feet, and then he turned and leaned over the plot. Looking at it, Rais could pretty well judge where Umbrage lay, relative to the shore, and where the MAS-boats were, rushing away. He said nothing. But before Harry could wonder what his silence foretold, Tuke burst in.

  ‘HE! Two high-speed targets closing fast, bearing red-twenty!’ he called.

  The MAS-boats had reversed their course and were coming back at them. But how could they have seen . . . Of course they hadn’t seen! They’d heard. A diving submarine, flooding tanks and venting air makes one hell of a bloody racket. If the MAS-boats were able to fire on their muzzle flashes, they’d certainly be able to charge towards their noise.

  The whining started again. They could all hear it, rising to an intense scream, as it went directly over their heads. And as the noise was passing, they heard the deep slap of something very heavy hitting the surface of the water, a mighty splash directly above them, and then the noise had passed, still moving fast, but moving away, out over deep water. And then two sounds together. The first was another splash, further off, ahead. But the other was a bloody great CLANG! and everyone in the control room felt it as well as heard it. And right in front of Harry’s eyes, the two periscopes, snugged down in their wells, seemed to jump up, and then were dunted downwards again. And almost instantly, the gland packing around them failed and the grease alone that smoothed the running of the periscopes as they moved in and out of the boat could no longer hold back the pressure of the sea. A dozen or more flat, dancing planes of water began jetting down into the control room, drenching the Coxswain, and the planesmen, and the Wrecker on the trim, and Grainger too. And almost instantly there was another reverberating clang, louder this time: the sound metal makes, when it crashes against and bends and twists other metal, and suddenly it was as if a great hand had reached down and slapped Umbrage’s conning tower sideways, so she wobbled like a bouncy toy.

  Every eye looked upwards, towards the scraping on the conning tower.

  ‘Midships,’ said Rais, back in command, and just as the words left his lips . . .

  BUUDUUDDUMMM!

  The noise came through the bow: a shock wave that hit the boat, as if she had been grabbed like a tweaked nose, and shaken. ‘A depth charge,’ said Harry, stating the bleedin’ obvious for the likes of the Wrecker and Grainger, but not for everyone; not for the younger lads in the control room. ‘Off the starboard bow, but not that close,’ he said, because the sheer terror in some of their eyes told him he needed to. ‘Warm-ish you might say, but nowhere near boiling hot. Not yet.’

  His words got a few weak smiles, as they were meant to: look at us lads, staring it in the face and laughing. Then the smiles were wiped off.

  ‘We don’t need the running commentary,’ said Rais, deliberately not looking at Harry. ‘Keep your mind on the plot, Mr Gilmour. It was looking a bit raggedy-arsed the last time I tried to read it . . . Where are we now?’

  ‘A little under two hundred yards off the beach, running parallel, course one-seven-zero, speed three knots,’ replied Harry, without even referring to his plot.

  ‘Well,’ said Rais, ignoring him and loo
king up instead, addressing the control room, ‘I don’t think we have to ask who the unwanted guest is upstairs, bumping around in the attic.’

  They could all hear something large rolling around above them. The older hands all knew what had happened – one of the Eyetie depth charges had actually landed on their bridge and was still stuck in it.

  ‘What were the chances of that happening, eh?’ said Rais, all light-hearted now. ‘But not to worry. No, no, no. Depth charges only explode when they reach the depth they’re fused to, so as long as we don’t go deep, we’re all right . . . probably. Ha! Now all we have to do is see it off the premises.’

  Rais, all banter. Ho! Ho! Ho! But the mood was gone. He’d killed it with his snapping at Harry, and he couldn’t bring it back. Everybody in the control room had realised what the Navigator had been trying to do with his commentary, and understood. And all he’d got in thanks was his nose in a poke. So it was back to business as usual with Rais. What had happened would be all over the boat by change of watch.

  Two more distant bangs, but they were heard not felt. Depth charges, but a long way off. MAS-boats didn’t carry many depth charges, they must be out, thought Harry. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare.

  ‘Tuke,’ said Rais, ‘what are our friends doing?’

  ‘They’ve moved out off the starboard beam now, Sir,’ Tuke replied. ‘Bearing zero-nine-five. Seem to be carrying out a search pattern, Sir. Slow speed. They’re a bit of a way away.’

  Rais issued orders for them to turn now, and head directly away from the coast. It was over.

  There was no doubt in Harry’s mind that Grainger had saved them.

  While Rais had still been on the bridge screaming orders that could not be executed, Grainger had taken command without a moment’s hesitation or even word of explanation.

  In those vital seconds, he’d countermanded his CO’s order to dive the boat. And when he’d realised he’d stood no chance of beating the MAS-boats to the deeper water, that he was in a race Umbrage was never going to win, he again without hesitation changed his plan, opting to dodge them, instead of trying to outrun them.

  If Grainger had been obeying Rais’s orders, they’d all be dead.

  But Rais was back in command again. And he was issuing orders. They were going to head further down the coast, staying inshore where he was certain the MAS-boats wouldn’t look for them. Then sometime before first light, they would come up, inch by inch, until it was just the conning tower hatch that was above the water. A handful of their burliest Stokers would then go up and manhandle the damn thing over the wall and into the Oggin, that hopefully would be barely deeper than their keel so as not to disturb its pressure fuse and blow them all to kingdom come.

  And then they’d head for home, their two unfired torpedoes notwithstanding. You couldn’t hunt and sink an enemy with no periscopes to see through, and no one was in any doubt, their periscopes were well and truly buggered.

  Just after 05.00 local time, the Stokers went up into the conning tower. There was a bit of a problem at first because of the way the depth charge was lying; it was jamming the tower hatch shut. Rais didn’t want to surface completely and send the boys up the torpedo-loading hatch. For some reason, after everything, he’d suddenly become nervous about having sailors clambering all over the casing and conning tower in daylight. Grainger trimmed the boat using main vents so the conning tower was awash, and when she was five degrees down angle aft, he ordered ‘Group up!’, and they tore off at full ahead, together. The wave coming over the conning tower casing washed the depth charge backwards amid several tearing metal screeches, but at least the damn thing had moved, and the tower hatch was clear. The port ballast tanks were partially flooded to give her a list so the side of the tower hung clear of the casing. The damn thing wasn’t that much of a beast as it turned out; the Stokers estimated it at barely more than 350 pounds.

  ‘Don’t bloody waste time weighing it,’ Rais had hectored them. ‘Get it over the side.’

  So over it went, on its way into forty-seven feet of water, with the men giving it an extra heave, silently imagining it was something else they were heaving over the side.

  The periscopes, when Grainger went up to inspect them with Parry-Jones, were indeed totally unserviceable. The depth charge had hit the stands slap-bang in the middle, putting a huge vertical dent in them, and twisting the tops of each periscope tube outwards, so that depending on the angle you looked at them, they resembled that most English of rude gestures. This was a major dockyard repair job they were looking at. Home, it was going to be.

  The conning tower fairing aft, too, was all bent and bashed in.

  They dived, and Harry went directly to the chart table, and began plotting a course for the Sicilian Channel. They couldn’t risk the more direct route down through the Straits of Messina, with all its shipping, not if they couldn’t see what was happening upstairs. Harry decided he needed a cup of coffee, so he went forward, heading for the galley. Wykham was on watch, standing behind the helmsman. God knows what was going through his mind, right now. What a bloody awful patrol it was turning out to be. What was going through Harry’s mind was: we should have expected them to come after us, coast crawling, doing the same thing night after night. We might as well have posted a sign. How could I have been so stupid. How could the CO? And why didn’t Grainger say something?

  But as the kettle boiled, his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of two people entering the wardroom, next door aft. Almost immediately a low conversation started up and quickly became more intense. It was Rais and Grainger. They’d been aft for a confab with the Warrant Engineer, Mr Crabtree, about fuel and repairs. Now they were back. Harry eavesdropped. He couldn’t help it, and pretty quickly he wished he hadn’t.

  ‘. . . So, perhaps, Mr Grainger,’ Rais was saying, ‘you’d like to explain to me, why you deliberately refused to dive this boat when directly ordered by me to do so?’

  Harry leaned his head into the passage. He could see Grainger who was sitting facing him, and Rais, the back of his shoulder sticking out so close Harry could touch it.

  Grainger looked as if he’d been slapped. He wasn’t looking at Harry, instead his mouth opened to reply, but Rais interrupted, ‘Or under whose orders you decided to assume command of this boat, while I, her Captain, was still on the bridge?’

  Grainger and Rais were looking at each other. The unreality of what was happening froze Harry. Everything. Everything was wrong. Again.

  ‘Do not answer those questions now, Mr Grainger,’ said Rais, in a thoroughly reasonable voice. ‘We will be addressing them at greater length later. In the presence of higher authorities. I will be entering the events and your name in the log. Meanwhile, I expect you to attend to your duties until we have returned to Malta. Carry on.’ And then Rais noticed Grainger was looking at something over his shoulder, and he turned. It was Harry, of course. Grainger had finally noticed his head around the galley partition wall. And now Rais was looking at him, with a look of undiluted loathing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Harry was sitting on his own, propped up on his single cot in his little stone cabin, at the back of the Lazaretto. Shirley’s letter was in his hand.

  He was a bit drunk. It was what you did, after you’d tied up in front of the entire wardroom, who already had drinks in hand, leaning over the Lazaretto’s gallery to admire the mess your conning tower and periscopes were in. You stepped ashore and went up and joined them. At least that was what Harry and Grainger had done. Wykham they left behind, to supervise the half a dozen poor sods and their pails of Izal and their cleaning; along with Parry-Jones, who had to wait to explain why their periscopes were in such a mess to the boys from the periscope workshop, and to help them rig the little derrick mounted in front of the wardroom, to lift them out. There was other damage, too, to repair: from the depth charge that had gone off under their bows, and then from all the other depth charges: all thirty-seven of them that had been drop
ped during five hours’ worth of sustained attack they’d endured off Marittimo Island, two days ago as they’d been limping home.

  God, it had been an awful patrol. So, for the initial relief, there had been Scotch. Harry had taken his first one from the concerned hands of another young Sub. ‘Welcome back, Jock,’ he’d said. ‘You look like you really need this . . . and the next five that are standing off, waiting to join.’

  After the second, he’d found he didn’t mind all the ribbing, about their bent periscopes and their Jolly Roger.

  The fact they hadn’t even been able to fly their Jolly Roger properly, entering harbour, had caused much hilarity. Because they couldn’t raise the bent periscopes to fly it from, they’d had to resort to a clumsy jury-rig from the re-rove aft jumping wire, which had parted when the Eyetie depth charge had hit their periscope stands, to a cleat at the base of the conning tower. Which meant you couldn’t properly make out all the little home-designed emblems, cut out of cloth and sewn on by the Bosun. These depicted all the demolition jobs they’d carried out on the Italian railway’s electric switch gear: nearly two dozen little red boxes, with little lightning flashes on top, for the electricity they conducted, and a ragged bite out of each, representing the holes Umbrage had blown in them; nor their one white silhouette of an electric loco.

  Nor the one white bar for a merchant ship sunk by torpedo. There had been a debate about whether they should have sewn that on. But they had.

  On their way home, periscopes or no periscopes, Rais had taken them into an attack. Using their ASDIC alone, they had fired their two remaining torpedoes and there had definitely been one detonation, but nobody knew what it was they’d hit, and nobody knew whether they’d sunk it, because that was when the depth-charging had started. What a story that had been.