Turn Left for Gibraltar

by David Black

  That was why, in the interests of good Anglo-French relations, Max had told the Bonny Boy, ‘That accusation of yours, lose it.’

  But now it was back, and Max didn’t like being disobeyed.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said the Bonny Boy. He knew never to contradict or argue or dissemble before Max, especially when he was in this mood. He’d served alongside Max in the Great War, both of them in submarines, both winning their Victoria Crosses. He knew him well, and cordially loathed him.

  Max had done considerably well for himself since those days, better than the Bonny Boy had.

  And that was why the Bonny Boy loathed him, why he’d always kept to hand, lest he needed to rehearse them, the veritable archive in his head of the grievances he had against Max Horton, the conspiracies he knew Max must have fomented to thwart the Bonny Boy’s interests and further Max’s own.

  ‘Well . . .?’ said Max.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the Bonny Boy lied. ‘I have no knowledge of this particular recommendation.’

  ‘Really?’ said Max, eyebrows arched. ‘The whole country knows the story. You do not read newspapers. Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘These recommendations come through by the bucketful, Sir. We merely append all the available background. You surely don’t expect me to have oversight on every . . .’

  ‘Bucketful? You are telling me what this young officer did qualifies as part of a bucketful?’

  ‘I don’t know who . . .’

  ‘I do not care “who”. But I know what I smell. Some petty little grudge is going on, doing its little worming worst in your department. The morale of hard-pressed submariners rests on the prompt recognition of their sacrifices. That is why it is vital all such awards are processed and Gazetted with the utmost dispatch. One of your duties is to make it happen, not to sit idly by while your people are indulging in whatever jealousy or spite or other squalid malice moves them.’

  Max, his face now a mask of naked authority, while his fingers tapped the desk. When he spoke again, it was in a tone that brooked no discussion: a Vice Admiral issuing his orders. ‘I have no intention of soiling my hands getting to the bottom of this. And neither will you. It stops here. Now. Fix this, this day. I expect a report that will meet with my approval when I return from my afternoon round of golf. As for that . . . piece of paper there . . . the contents of which you once drafted . . . it ceases to exist, forthwith. Have I made myself understood this time, Captain Bonalleck?’

  The Bonny Boy felt his face burn crimson. That that little shit Gilmour should still be able to reach out and cause this to happen to him. How dare he? He wouldn’t forget. Gilmour was on his list. One day, mark my words, you little shit. One day.

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A tanker, at least nine thousand tons, left crippled and burning after Nicobar had put two torpedoes in her, so they had to beach her at the entrance to Tripoli harbour; and an Italian Spica-class torpedo boat, a little one-thousand-ton job just like one of the new Royal Navy frigates, sunk with just one torpedo. Not a bad score for their latest patrol. They crept back into Marsamxett Harbour after nightfall, eighteen days from setting out. Bill Sutter had insisted on flying their Jolly Roger even though it was too dark for anyone to see it.

  They secured alongside the shell of the Lazaretto. There were no problems to report, the snag list wouldn’t have filled a sheet of airmail writing paper and after he’d made his report, Carey assured Shrimp they’d be ready to sail again in the time it took to load more torpedoes, dried spuds and tins of Maconochie’s stew. But Carey’s optimism and vim failed to put a smile on the Captain (S)’s haggard face. There was news, he said, and none of it good.

  He’d skip going into how much more pulverised Malta had been since Nicobar had sailed; Carey could see that for himself when the sun came up, always assuming he’d want to stick his head up long enough to look.

  There were other things to tell. Last week the Yank aircraft carrier USS Wasp had dashed down the Med from Gibraltar, and got close enough to put the 47 Spitfires she was carrying within range of the island’s barely functioning airfields. All had made it in, and then within a matter of hours, nearly all had been knocked out by German aircraft, mostly caught refuelling on the ground.

  Then there was the matter of the Royal Navy’s losses. There was another boat overdue, presumed lost; he didn’t want to name her yet, just in case. Call him superstitious. Which brought him to the matter of whether the base was any longer tenable. The unpalatable truth was that Tenth’s submarines now no longer had to go out on patrol to get sunk. Christ, when you totted it up; the past few months had seen P36 get it just after she’d returned from patrol. She was now sitting in eighty feet of water, right under the Lazaretto gallery. Then there had been the Polish boat, Sokol, and the Greek, Glaukos; both had been operating with the Tenth. Jerry had hit Sokol twice, the first time right after she’d come in, and again while that damage was being repaired. Glaukos, Jerry had practically blown all the way back to Piraeus from a berth alongside one of their floating pontoons. Pandora, one of the Magic Carpet boats, had been too slow unloading supplies from Gib, over at Hamilton Wharf. She’d taken a direct hit that had put her on the bottom and killed twenty-five of her crew. P39 had been blown in two while being patched up over in Dockyard Creek. And another Magic Carpet boat, Olympus, had just sailed for the trip back to Gib, with Pandora’s survivors as passengers. She had made it just six miles beyond St Elmo Light before she struck a mine and went down. Barely a dozen of her crew had managed to struggle ashore.

  And that mine was one of many now getting dropped by Jerry’s bombers in and around Grand Harbour. Hardly surprising, since nearly all the targets on the island had been bombed, and then bombed again. So Jerry had taken to dropping mines, sometimes in the harbour itself, but mainly in the swept channel and further out, way beyond where returning and departing submarine crews would expect them.

  Which brought him to his news about Urge. She had sailed on patrol yesterday evening, and promptly hit a mine somewhere out in the approaches. ‘She was lost with all hands,’ said Shrimp. Urge had been ‘Tommo’s’ boat: Lieutenant Commander E.P. Tomkinson, the Tenth’s top ace after Wanklyn had gone, and also Shrimp’s close friend. The most experienced CO with the most experienced crew left in the Flotilla. They should’ve been bomb-proof, but they weren’t.

  But Shrimp had nothing to say on that matter, because he was saving the worst news for last. He passed Carey a signal flimsy from Sir Andrew Cunningham, C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet.

  ‘We’re quitting,’ said Carey later, not looking at Harry while he gave him the news – staring into space instead. ‘Shrimp showed me the signal. All boats to make their way to Alexandria on completion of patrol. The risk to boats returning to Malta to replenish is now officially deemed too great.’

  Harry stared into space too. The two young men sat on wood and metal chairs ‘rescued’ from a bombed-out school, at a metal table in the middle of the cavernous rock-walled oil tank where the Tenth had lived for the past few months; in their shapeless grubby white pullovers and battered caps on the backs of their dishevelled heads; under watery yellow lamps that cast long, strange shadows into the tank’s furthest reaches. A Leading Seaman Writer sat way over, by the stretched sheet that cordoned off Shrimp’s ‘office’. From where they sat, he looked tiny in the vast vaulted space: a little juxtaposition to emphasise the forlornness of everything. From the outside world, there were no sounds of bombs going off right then, just the echoing clack of the Writer’s typewriter. And of course, the reek of oil.

  ‘Do the poor bastards out there know yet?’ Harry asked. He was talking about the Maltese civilians. Wondering how they would take it. Having gone through everything, and finding out the Royal Navy was abandoning them. Oh, the two minesweepers might be staying and the couple of MLs. But if the island’s main offensive unit was departing, it wouldn’t take the people long to work out how it was going t
o end. Without the submarines continuing to operate, what would be the point in Britain hanging on?

  They’d all had conversations with Maltese people about the bombing. Harry didn’t know a sailor who didn’t feel guilty, or at the very least embarrassed, and he assumed the soldiers and airmen felt the same. Surely everyone on the island must feel the British had brought this down on them: wouldn’t it be better if . . .? And the answer was: what would happen to us if you left and the Germans came? We’d be a little people in their way. We’d be moved off our islands, shipped off to camps somewhere. It wouldn’t matter where, because they’d be German camps. We all know about German camps. You’d better not be leaving.

  But ask any British serviceman and they’d tell you: ‘Not a chance, mate. We’re not leaving. We’re British, we keep buggering on. It’s in our blood.’ And it was. Nobody had to make a rousing speech to tell you; you were going nowhere. Here we stand, you replied, and you knew it to be true because it was what we British had always done. And that had been all right with Harry, because he was buggered if he was going to stand anywhere else, and certainly not for some fucking Jerry. He didn’t know anyone who thought otherwise. And if someone said ‘All just jingoistic rubbish!’, you just pointed to all the fighter boys who’d taken off to defend the islands’ skies and hadn’t come back again; all the merchant navy lads who’d set sail in ships loaded with cargo to keep the islands fed and alive, and never made it through; all the submarine crews who had sailed on patrol and ended up overdue, presumed lost; and to Peter Dumaresq and the ships’ companies of Force F, and all the New Zealanders off HMS Neptune and the other ships’ companies of Force K. That was how it was: in it together, since the war started.

  Except now they were leaving. Harry felt sick, and when he looked at Carey, he knew he felt sick too.

  ‘It’s not right,’ said Harry.

  ‘And neither is your port bollock,’ said Carey, surprising even himself at how little of the Toorak toff was left in him.

  Harry set off on foot a good hour before first light, to pick his way through the rubble to Lascaris. You cannot imagine his astonishment when, going out of the front gate, or what was left of it, he found himself in step with Leading Seaman Grot McGilveray.

  ‘Off to see yon Katty, are we, Sir?’ asked the newly scrubbed sailor; the whole hot water arrangement was still in operation at Lazaretto, and McGilveray had chosen to make use of it before heading off on his run ashore, unlike his First Lieutenant. And of course he’d know about Katty. The whole island knew about the blonde Polish nightclub singer; who else’s photograph would they expect to see in the nightlife pages of the Times of Malta? And who else would you talk about, but the beaux in her life.

  So Harry just said, ‘Yes.’ What was the point in dissembling? ‘How about you, McGilveray? Where are you off to at this godawful hour?’

  ‘Off to make sure our Missus’s family is still wi’ us.’

  ‘Missus? You’re married, McGilveray? Here?’

  ‘Wey’ aye. Five year now. Bonny lass. Rosann’s her name. Local, like, nice family too.’

  ‘I’d never have taken you for a married man, McGilveray.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to come home ta a wee bit kiss and cuddle and know the lass means it. Better than scatter’n’ yer cash up and doon the Gut on floozies ya wouldn’a even ride in ta battle, if ya was sober, like.’

  ‘I hope you find them well then, and still with a roof over their head.’

  ‘Aye. Me too, Sir. They’re doon Hamrun way, so it’s no’ central. No’ that that makes much difference these days. Fookin’ Jerries.’

  And then they took their leave of each other, their faces two pale blurs in the pre-dawn gloom. As he walked away, Harry noticed McGilveray had all along been clutching a bag behind his back – stores being reallocated from Empney’s galley probably. Good luck to him and his family, thought Harry. They were going to need it.

  Harry turned to head off his own way, and as he did, he heard McGilveray’s plangent tones echoing back out of the darkness, obviously singing to himself as he went. ‘I’m Popeye the sailor man, I live in a caravan, I sleep wi’ ma granny an’ tickle her fanny, I’m Popeye the sailor man . . .’

  The sun was coming up when Harry made it to the sandbagged entrance to Lascaris and slipped inside, nodding to the sentries. Neither asked to check papers: everybody knew the Royal Navy lad who’d torpedoed two Eyetie cruisers and was squeezing that Katty Kadzow in his spare time.

  He went down all the stairs into the bowels of the place, then along to the canteen. It was still quite empty; the morning rush hadn’t started yet. Just two or three RAF types. One of them was Chally.

  Harry collected a huge mug of steaming tea from a still half-asleep Maltese behind the canteen counter, and went and sat opposite him.

  ‘Ah!’ said Chally, as Harry sat down. ‘Gilchrist! Have a seat, while you’ve still got time.’

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ said Harry, ignoring the name nonsense, wondering what he meant by ‘still got time’.

  ‘Been here all week, old chap. Back in the saddle, as they say.’ He winked an arch wink. ‘How about you? Haven’t seen you about. Been out to play in Benito’s backyard, have we? Just back?’

  ‘Just in a few hours ago.’

  ‘Well, don’t get comfy. There are several big fat troopships sitting right now in Palermo. I’ve been doing portraits of them for the past few days, and call me an amateur, but I think they’re about to sail. They were filling them with master race reinforcements at any rate, last time I looked. Off for another shufti this morning.’

  Over Chally’s shoulder, Harry saw Katty come into the canteen. Her hair was pinned up and wrapped in a scarf and she was wearing an all-in-one siren suit. When she saw them together, she didn’t even blink or miss a step, just pressed on, with a wave, to collect her own mug of tea. When she came back to the table, there was no suggestion of an effusive welcome back for Harry, and he was left convinced that this was not the first time she had seen Chally this morning. She sat down beside him and looked at the table, before looking up at Harry opposite, her expression completely opaque.

  ‘All I can say,’ said Chally, exuding a presence too vast to register any undertone or nuance from those around him, ‘is that you two have let the whole bally dance hall go to hell in a wheelbarrow since I left. Well, it’s not bloody good enough.’

  ‘It’s all Harry’s fault,’ said Katty, her eyes level on Harry. ‘He keeps going off in his little boat, and he’s never here when you need him.’

  Harry heard his name being called from somewhere else.

  ‘Is there a Lieutenant Gilmour, Royal Navy, here? A Lieutenant Gilmour?’ It was an erk in a tin hat, webbing and a pistol on his hip, head craning around the canteen.

  Harry stood up.

  ‘Lieutenant Gilmour? You’re ordered back to Lazaretto with immediate effect, Sir. Right away, Sir. Most insistent.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was some twenty minutes after nightfall, and Nicobar was running on the surface to her billet at the western end of the patrol line, fifteen miles south-west of Marettimo Island. Both diesels running, charging the batteries with the spare amps that weren’t being used to turn the main motors. It was a clear night, dark of the moon, so there was a riot of stars out, and getting a fix had been child’s play. Yeo, the Navigator, reckoned he had their position down to the very yard. They were well clear of the vast QB 255 mine belt, so no need to worry. They could open her up in these waters. But Carey was still nervous: this close to QB 255, you never knew whether a mine might have slipped loose from its mooring and gone drifting.

  It felt good on the bridge. The wind was coming from the south, right off the desert, warm and not kicking up too much of a sea yet. The wait would’ve been quite pleasant for those on lookout, had they the leisure to enjoy it.

  There were three troopships coming their way: the Lombardia and the Toscana, sister ships, fourteen thousand tons a
piece, and the Sovrana dei Mari, eighteen thousand tons. And in a line reaching back to five miles off Marsala, were going to be Nicobar, Umbrage and Uttoxeter to meet them.

  The three boats were all that Shrimp had left in Malta, but this enemy convoy was a big one. All of them were going out to get it. There would be three other transports with the Italian liners, and an escort of a total of ten destroyers and torpedo boats. As for shagbats, the sky would be black with them.

  The other vital piece of intelligence was that because Rommel’s next offensive, the one that everyone knew was coming, was so imminent, the troops this convoy would be carrying weren’t going to be risked on a long sea crossing. Rommel needed these troops. So they wouldn’t be heading down the coast to Tripoli, nearly four hundred miles away, to be landed closer to the front line at El Agheila, just to save them a walk. The intelligence was, said Shrimp, it would be a quick dash out of Palermo and across just 230 miles of intervening sea to Tunis. They could lump the long walk, Rommel needed them ashore and not as bait to Malta’s subs.

  ‘Jerry might be pounding us to rubble here,’ he had told them at the briefing in the oil tank, ‘but our submarines still frighten him.’

  And then it had been down to their boats, and the minesweeper HMS Billericay had led them out, line astern, during the Luftwaffe’s afternoon tea break, while four of the island’s remaining Spitfires circled at angels one-eight, ordered to hang about even after the submarines had dived, to give Billericay half a chance of getting back in without too many holes in her.

  Harry, on the bridge with the CO, wasn’t thinking about Katty, or Flight Lieutenant Challoner. If he was brooding about anything, it was the whole tin of cigarettes he’d had to bribe the dghaisa man with to take him back across Marsamxett Harbour, the tin he’d brought for Katty and in the end had decided against giving her. And even that hadn’t been enough for the dghaisa man who had started screaming at him, after the first Jerries had come over, and the batteries on Tigne Point and Fort St Elmo had opened up, and all the shrapnel had begun raining on them: a thousand little gouts of water across the harbour, looking so pretty, except they were chunks of metal coming down at terminal velocity – 120 miles an hour. So that not even wooden boat hulls could stop them, and neither Harry nor the dghaisa man had wanted to think about what they could do to mere flesh and bone.