by David Black
No. No brooding about Katty, because he’d had a little epiphany sitting there in the canteen with her and Chally. A revelation about what it all had meant. With her sitting there, next to her dashing, fearless reconnaissance pilot, in his blue pinstripe shirt and no tie, and his Army battledress jacket with RAF rings around its epaulettes instead of pips, and his wings and DFC ribbons sewn crudely on, and the side cap, with a little Maltese Centaury flower tucked into the badge like a cockade. Flamboyant Chally, larger than life Chally, compared to Harry, the survivor. She’d called Harry that once. A survivor. Was that why she had clung to the little things in life he’d offered: the easy intimacy of their time together, the human-ness, the sheer domesticity? Something she hadn’t had to work hard at; something sane, in a world exploding around her; something to concentrate on and take her mind off all the loud bangs?
But now Chally was back, and Chally loved loud bangs – was a loud bang himself. She’d said Chally wasn’t a survivor. And looking at him over the canteen table, Harry knew she was right. You just had to look at him to know there was nothing post-war written in his ‘to do list’. And how could Harry hope to compete anyway, with such a dazzling light; not the way Chally shone. And did he even want to?
Yes, for a while Harry could see how Katty had liked the easy silence he made for her, and had needed it, just like a trip up to Ghajn Tuffieha rest camp. But in her heart Harry knew she loved the razzle-dazzle more, and how bright Chally’s light burned; he could see that. And how, when she was standing in its thrall, it didn’t seem to matter that in the end it would burn her.
‘Signal from Umbrage, Sir. CO to decode.’ A disembodied voice coming up the pipe from the control room. Carey gave Harry a quizzical look then disappeared down the conning tower hatch. Five minutes later Napier shot up through it. ‘The Captain wants you down in the control room, I’ve to take the watch,’ he said. Harry confirmed their speed and course and went below. It was warm in the tight, red-lit space. Carey was standing by the chart table.
‘Umbrage has multiple HE coming down the channel between Marettimo and Favigana,’ said Carey, ‘and there’s a lot of depth charging. You know the way the Eyeties throw them about to let you know they’re coming.’
It was indeed an Italian Navy practice to send destroyers to drop depth charges ahead of a major convoy or fleet movement. It was a tactic designed to deter any enemy submarine from closing on a convoy, or a battle squadron’s track. But up against the Royal Navy, it tended more to attract the RN submarines than scare them off. And that was why Umbrage had broken radio silence. She’d heard the troop convoy coming, and was calling Nicobar and Uttoxeter to the party.
‘Are they sure?’ asked Harry.
‘Am I sure, is what I’m trying to decide,’ said Carey, pulling his bottom lip the way their old Skipper used to do. ‘Do we go running, and leave our billet?’
And as he said the words, Leading Seaman Butler, sitting in his ASDIC cubby across the passageway, said, ‘Sir, I’m picking up HE. It’s a long way away. I can’t tell how far, but it’s far . . . and it’s multiple . . . heavy ships . . . and fast. They’re to the north of us, just coming out of the shadow of Marettimo, Sir. So they’re at least a dozen miles off. Their mean line of advance . . . based on the bearing rate, is west . . . Oh, and there’s definitely a lot of them.’
Carey and Harry looked at each other. The targets Umbrage had reported were a good twenty miles to the east. ‘Start a plot on Butler’s targets,’ Carey said, and Harry immediately pulled the chart around and grabbed a pencil and parallel rulers.
‘They’re zigzagging,’ said Butler. ‘The bearing is red-one-five, and drawing for’ard.’
Harry drew a pencil line across the chart, stretching west from the northernmost tip of the tiny Italian island. ‘Whoever it is,’ he said, ‘I bet they’re running out to put a bit more west between them and where they think our subs might be. If it’s them, all they’d have to do is a dog leg and drop straight down to Tunis. It could be that the multiple HEs and the depth charging over in the channel is a feint, Sir.’
‘Bet I thought that first,’ said Carey, with his superior smirk. ‘Right. If it is, and our lot are the real target, how far west do you reckon our lot will go before they dogleg? Fifteen miles? Twenty to be safe?’
‘Twenty,’ said Harry and drew the line. ‘And they turn on to . . .’ – and he checked with his protractor – ‘. . . two-two-zero here, and it’s a straight run in.’
‘Righty-ho. Command decision,’ said Carey. ‘I say our lot are the real target. So I want to get ahead of them. Well ahead.’ He slipped the protractor from Harry and placed it on to Nicobar’s position, and drew his thumbnail down it. Then he took Harry’s rulers and drew a line from Nicobar running to intersect Harry’s projected course for the unknown ships.
Carey called over his shoulder, ‘Bring us on to two-four-zero.’ Then he turned to the control room messenger by the sound-powered telephone. ‘Tell the engine room to give me maximum revs to float the load. Number One, how long until we get there?’ he asked, jabbing at the little dot he’d made in the middle of the big blue sea. There was obviously no doubt in Carey’s mind now. This was the enemy. Everyone felt the heel of the boat beneath them.
On her builders’ trials in 1938, over the measured mile off Arran, Nicobar had hit a top speed of fifteen knots on the surface. Right now, with her throttles opened wide, and Warrant Engineer McAndrew kicking her diesels by way of adding more encouragement, Harry reckoned she was doing a bit more than that. They hadn’t gone to Diving Stations yet. Carey had the entire crew apart from those on watch, sitting down to a big dinner: broth, veal and ham pie, dehydrated potatoes served as mash with butter, and tinned runner beans followed by sweet rice and tinned peaches. And everybody agreed, Empney had made not a bad stab at it too.
Harry, being the Jimmy, had stood in to take the watch as Nicobar, on the surface, was running fast through the night. He was on the bridge with the two lookouts, his face turned into a warm wind coming from a desert that lay just seventy miles dead ahead, blowing warm spray at him beneath a riotous starlit sky. Nicobar, rising and plunging as she drove into the oncoming short, choppy seas. He felt a strange kind of marvel at the calm that had settled over him. He was going into action, but he didn’t feel frightened. It was more like a kind of elation. And it wasn’t just him, he’d felt it through the whole boat. Maybe it was because this was a plum target; Carey had made sure they all knew about that. If they hit this one hard, they’d really hurt the enemy. Maybe it was something to do with them pulling out and leaving the Maltese to their fate. Nobody was happy about that. And since this was their last crack at the enemy before they were being forced to turn tail and run for Alexandria, maybe they all wanted to make this one count. Because in this war, they really did have right on their side. Everybody knew that. It was obvious. Because this fight wasn’t about conquest, it was about putting an end to conquest.
Below, Butler, feeling pleasantly replete, was back in the ASDIC cubby with his headphones back on. He was calling the target’s bearing every five minutes now. The enemy were zigzagging, but the mean course from the plot was constant now: two-two-zero degrees.
Harry, plotting the arc of the bearings had worked out they were moving fast for a convoy at seventeen knots. But the zigzagging meant their rate of advance was much slower. Carey, studying the plot, realised Nicobar was going to cross the enemy’s track far sooner than he had estimated. Bloody marvellous, he said to himself, triumphant for a change, instead of his usual irony. This was shaping up to be a complicated attack, so every break counted, especially if he was to wreak the maximum havoc he intended. He had a plan. And oh, what a mad, audacious and finely calculated plan it was too.
He checked the almanac for the time for first light again: 05.20 hours; and for nautical twilight – the time when the sun is still below the horizon but is beginning to throw its light into the sky: 04.17 hours. Then he checked his calculations fo
r where Nicobar would be at those times, and where the enemy would be. It could work; it was going to work. Now he needed to confer with his First Lieutenant. Number One was going to be crucial to the execution, but hey! What was he worrying about? It was Harry. You could almost feel sorry for the poor Eyeties! He smiled, and did his calculations again.
Yeo was on the bridge now, and Harry was below, leaning over the plot with his CO, explaining what they were looking at.
‘Six merchant ships, Butler says,’ said Harry. ‘From the bearings he’s calling from the different contacts, I reckon two divisions.’ He stabbed at his scribbles on the plot. ‘The first division is the smaller of the two: three ships, not so big. The second is three big ones, which tallies with the liners Shrimp said they’d be. Then there are the escorts. Butler’s not sure about them. He thinks at least six destroyers, and a clutch of smaller stuff. MAS-boats probably. But he said they could be Jerry E-boats. They’re dashing about all over the place so it’s too difficult to pin a number. The two divisions, as you can see from the plot, are advancing in parallel, two destroyers leading . . . two out on their port beam, one sweeping astern. So it must be only one to starboard. You can also see from the plot, there’s a bit of a pattern at work . . . When they zig and when they zag, and when and for how long they run true. Which is careless, but then we don’t know how experienced their merchant skippers are. Or how scared shitless, or even just how thick and incompetent, and they have to do it by the numbers.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Carey. ‘It plays into our plan.’
And then Carey told Harry the plan. And when he’d finished, Harry was grinning from ear to ear. And so were the planesmen, and the Cox’n on the helm, and the Wrecker, and the control room messenger. All of them sitting there, in the otherworld red wash, amid the pipework and the cable runs and the valve handles and the gauges, all woven around them in their tiny little battle cocoon, bouncing and battering its way like a live thing into the head sea and towards the Italian convoy and its ships, laden to the gunnels with German tanks and guns and soldiers.
‘Steady on zero-four-zero,’ said Carey down the bridge voice-pipe, then, to Harry next to him, ‘Ring for half-ahead, together.’
As well as her CO and Number One, Nicobar had four lookouts on the bridge, as the boat swung around, practically reversing her course, heading north now, first light still over quarter of an hour away. They’d gone to Diving Stations at 03.30 hours, and the boat was closed up and ready for action. Yeo, below, was on the plot, and Harry had entrusted the Wrecker, Mundell, to take charge of the diving panel, with his top protégé from the Stokers’ mess to assist.
Harry had gone through in tedious detail everything that might be expected of him for every eventuality he could imagine, and Mundell, a twenty-year-man, Andrew man and boy, had listened with the best sullen, steel-plate expression he could muster, until Harry had finished by saying, ‘And of course I apologise, Mr Mundell, after all that, if I have offended your professional sensibilities, but I am the Jimmy and it’s my job to be a compulsive checker-upper, so there.’ Mundell couldn’t hide his smile at that.
Napier was in the forward torpedo room, with his torpedoes, fingering the firing lever, making sure the pins were out and it would work when he pulled it. He was singing to himself Grot McGilveray’s version of ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’. Beside him, the Leading Torpedo Gunner’s mate was checking the drain valves on all the tubes, making sure they were flooded and ready, and at the same time smirking over his shoulder to the other ratings around the space, and they were smirking back. It was all part of the preparation, their version of a psychological loosening of the limbs, because when the order came to fire, there’d be no room in the plan for any fumbling.
The PO Telegraphist was in the wireless shack, listening in across the frequencies, but picking up nothing of interest to them. He hadn’t been called upon to transmit anything himself, to summon the other two boats, strung out back along their patrol line. They were both too far to the east to get here in time, and anyway, Carey didn’t want to give away his position by signalling to the enemy and telling them by their radio noise that despite their attempt at a ruse to the east, there was still a sub astride their convoy’s course.
Across the passage, Butler was still listening to the HE and calling out the convoy’s progress. The enemy were closing fast now.
And in the engine room, McAndrew was pacing up and down between his diesels, oil can in hand, threatening under his breath the two huge, inanimate, thundering beasts of machined and precision steel with all the woe that would betide them if they faltered.
Harry, on the bridge, was polishing the head of the big TBT, the target bearing transmitter, that had already been hauled up and mounted, because Carey’s plan called for a surface attack, and the TBT was there to do the job of the Nicobar’s fruit machine. It was to be Harry’s job to operate it. ‘Its night-vision lenses will compensate for your rubbish night vision,’ Carey had told him, ‘and anyway, who else am I going to trust to remain calm enough to crank the right wheels to the right settings if someone’s shooting at us? And being on the surface, they might well be.’
And while Harry was doing all that, Carey, standing right beside him, would be in overall tactical control. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on the big picture, Number One,’ he’d said, ‘telling you who you should be shooting at, while you’ll be concentrating on the actual shooting. It’ll go like clockwork. Just you wait and see.’
‘Of course it will,’ said Harry, his voice dripping with irony. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ The two men, grinning at each other, knowing the answer.
The sky was beginning to lighten. Butler was reporting the target was on bearing green-ten, drawing left and coming diagonally towards their track. Carey and two of the lookouts were scanning out along the bearing, and Harry had knelt to turn the TBT there too.
Carey’s plan was to be in position when the sun came up behind the enemy, silhouetting them, while Nicobar lurked just beyond the line of its shadow. They were about to put it to the test. What, indeed, could go wrong? Everything, of course.
‘Two aircraft!’ called one of the lookouts. ‘Two o’clock high, off the starboard bow, green-five, at least ten miles away, heading south. I think they’re Savoia-Marchetti 79s, Sir!’
Harry immediately thought, Sharp eyes, and a lad who studies his recognition charts. Those were things First Lieutenants had to notice, even when there were other things on their minds.
Carey’s binoculars were on the two dots.
Harry’s were still on the horizon, looking for the convoy. If Nicobar dived now, they would lose speed and lose the convoy. If the S79s bombed them, they’d lose their lives.
Carey stepped to the pipe and called down, ‘Slow ahead, together, Mr Mundell! Cycle main vents.’ The order would take them down to decks awash.
And as he said it, the tops of the enemy convoy slipped out of the vanishing night, the light of the rising sun at their back. Harry saw them, and at the same time the other lookout called them.
‘Two ships, Sir! Superstructures up! Starboard bow!’
Shapes on the horizon now. Right where Carey said they would be. Carey leaned to the voice-pipe again. ‘Enemy in sight!’ he called down, telling the control room: here we go. The whole crew knowing now. The attack had started. Then he picked up the bridge mic.
‘Bridge, torpedo room,’ he said. ‘Mr Napier. Tubes one to four, make ready. We will fire on command.’
But the tubes were already ready. Back up on the bridge, the lookout watching the aircraft called, ‘One aircraft peeling off towards us, Sir.’
‘We’re a tuna boat,’ muttered Carey, still watching the two shadow ships take shape on the horizon. Then he said out loud, night glasses still stuck to his face, ‘The power of thought, gentlemen. Everybody think . . . we are a tuna boat!’
If they had to dive now . . .
Seconds passed . . .
‘He’s blinkin
g at us, Sir!’ called the lookout, but everybody on the bridge looking that way didn’t need telling; the aircraft was interrogating them with an Aldis lamp.
Nobody breathed. Nicobar was easing herself into her attack. The convoy was now well over the horizon. Nicobar had to stay on track . . . on the surface . . . but there was an enemy aircraft coming at them . . . They had to dive.
Carey leaned under the bridge parapet and grabbed the signaller’s blinker gun, the hand Aldis set, and he deliberately raised it, pointed it directly at the enemy aircraft, and started flashing back at it. And as they all watched, still not breathing, the aircraft turned away, peeling back towards its comrade, already flying cover over the advancing convoy.
‘For the record,’ said Carey, ‘I flashed him, “Waltzing Matilda, your billy’s boiling.”’
Shoulders rocking, across the bridge. The young lads, the lookouts, they’d loved that. If this was supposed to be war . . . with the Captain cracking jokes and all . . .
And Carey. All he was thinking was, God knows what that chump in the plane is thinking, except maybe, whoever is flashing at us, isn’t hiding; and anyway, they’re coming from the wrong side.
‘More ships, Sir!’ called the lookout. ‘I can see five now, Sir. Two are definitely destroyers, hull up now . . . Big bow waves. The rest are merchantman. Bearing red-ten. They’re coming on fast, Sir.’
