by David Black
Harry and the Maître groped themselves to their feet and lurched to the tubes. Harry was still clutching the operating handle. It took both of them in their shaky state to fit it to the correct head; then together they began to turn. The Maître had been right about it needing Hercules. We’re at periscope depth, thought Harry – thirty-five feet; one atmosphere – the sea was coming in at just under thirty pounds per square inch instead of the normal fourteen. Not too bad. Just keep leaning on it. Every turn of the threading is another fraction shut; every grunt, the closer we are to home. And then Harry felt the bump as they came up against the backstop, and both he and the Maître collapsed, leaning on each other. As they lay, draped over the handle, the jet of water started to die, and the solid fan collapsed to a sluice and then a dribble, as the torpedo tube drained itself of seawater.
Bassano was on his feet, but still bent double.
‘You two can stop cuddling each other,’ he rasped. ‘The door’s shut now.’
‘I love it when the Captain has these bright ideas,’ said Harry, creaking his body upright. ‘They’re always such fun.’
Chapter Thirteen
Harry was in his favourite spot at the back of the conning tower, behind the periscope, sunning himself and sharing a smoke with Thierry. They weren’t exactly friends, not after the punch on the nose incident, but profuse apologies and the intervention of the Captain had brought about a truce. That, and the impression Harry had made on the young firebrand Frenchman with his efforts in the forward torpedo room, wrestling a hot-running, 1,400kg, live torpedo, and helping to get it out of the boat before it exploded and blew them all to kingdom come. Thierry had also rather admired Harry’s self-deprecation when the Captain had complimented him on always seeming to be on hand when it came to saving the boat from being blown up.
Harry had blushed, thanked the Captain, and hurriedly denied any heroic intent behind his actions.
‘It’s down to being a Liaison Officer. It’s not a proper job,’ Harry had explained to the wardroom. ‘Which has its advantages. Don’t get me wrong, Sir. I’m not complaining. You do get a lot of time to lie about, picking your nose and scratching yourself. On the other hand, when emergencies crop up, as they do from time to time, well, everybody else, having proper jobs to do, tends to be very busy; so there’s only you left to do the stepping in. Can be a bit of a bugger, really, but it’s the price one has to pay for all that picking and scratching, I suppose.’
Thierry could still see Harry, as he sat there, plonked on a stool in the passageway, with only a corner of the wardroom table to call his own, and that stupid grin he had, spread all over his face, as he self-deprecated away, furiously. It was the way these rosbifs didn’t seem to mind people laughing at them; he’d never understand such lack of pride. God only knew how they were going to win the war.
Thierry took another drag on the Lucky Strike Harry had proffered him from his duty free stash. The morning sun was warm on their backs as they leaned on the rail and looked towards the distant, sandy smudge that was the Delaware coast, and discussed all the ways they had hated cold, drab, joyless Halifax, Nova Scotia – and that was just the women.
They were back at sea with all the drudge and entanglements of the shore left behind, and a clean run south under clear June skies, with the air warm and the soporific lullaby of the long, placid oceanic swell beneath their keel. A steady twelve knots on the surface, with the eastern seaboard of a still-at-peace United States never more than fifteen miles on their starboard beam, and a huge Tricolour streaming from the top of their aft periscope stand to a cleat at the very back of the conning tower rail; just in case any nosy US Navy warship patrolling on the fringes of international waters was in any doubt as to who they were dealing with.
A three-watch bill, meals at sensible hours throughout the day, and Harry’s evenings taken up rehearsing the Radegondes for their very first sods opera, scheduled for the forward torpedo room on Thursday night after the last dog watch. It was enough to have made everyone on board quite philosophical now about the sheer cross-grained, bloody-mindedness of their reception in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Fresh from having just sunk two U-boats and thwarting a wolf pack attack, thus allowing a fully laden eastbound convoy to escape scot-free, they had expected something a little more benign.
The port authorities had begun the farce by attempting to confine the entire crew to the boat for the duration of her stay; a nasty, vicious thing to do to any crew arriving damaged after an action at sea, but downright bloody impossible for a submarine, where there is nowhere to put the crew if you intend to repair the boat.
Admittedly, the armed motor yacht that met them coming in – commandeered off some millionaire and painted grey – had been very welcoming, with lots of cheers and whoops from its ageing Royal Canadian Navy crew as they escorted Radegonde into the narrow neck of Halifax harbour. But there the pleasantries ended. They had been perfunctorily bossed about via a speaking trumpet from a disreputable Harbour Master’s launch, finishing up at a berth almost too tight for Radegonde at some general cargo quay; hemmed in by a pair of Lakers. Then some vast, black, American sedan, carrying an impatient Royal Navy Lieutenant had come to whisk Captain Syvret away – the RN bod didn’t even shake Syvret’s hand as he bundled him into the back.
No one else came to greet them until eventually a young, fat Canadian customs officer waddled up the gangway, an attaché case stuffed with forms clutched over his wobbly belly, followed by two hayseeds in ill-fitting uniforms, looking like they’d just fallen off the back of a combine harvester. Tubby from customs had then peremptorily enthroned himself in the wardroom, and produced the first of his lists. If it hadn’t been for his uniform, which bulged and creased over a truly considerable surface area, he could have been some cherub, adumbrating divine compliance in an Italian Renaissance fresco.
All the officers and senior rates had been ordered into his presence and then, in a grating nasal twang, he informed them the two hicks were there to search the boat once the paperwork was completed. He then began interrogating the crew as to whether Radegonde was carrying any of the following contraband; the list was as long as it was comic, but every box was going to be ticked, or he would see to it they would die while he was trying. By the time he got to ‘. . . are you carrying any pornography . . .’ Le Breuil was so bored by it all, he gave way to flippancy. ‘We don’t even have a pornograph,’ was all he’d said. But it had been enough. Flippancy had been the only excuse Tubby’d needed for the arbitrary exercise of his petty powers; a bullied boy at last conferred with a licence to bully others.
He had calmly folded the contraband form with an exquisite daintiness, and filed it back in the attaché case; then, with a smirk, he’d opened a cardboard-bound docket book, filled in a docket, tore it off with a flourish and handed it to Harry as, he sneeringly observed, the ‘only English speaker here’. Then summoning all the dignity his bloated figure could command, he’d bestowed a final thin simper of satisfaction on them, and waddled to the conning tower ladder. A matelot had to apply direct assistance to his backside to get him up out of the boat.
Harry had read the docket: No crew or supernumerary would be allowed ashore for the duration of Radegonde’s stay in port, nor any stores, equipment or personal luggage to be unloaded. An armed civilian policeman would be posted at the gangway to ensure compliance.
Harry had shown Captain Syvret the docket on his return, expecting an explosion of outrage. But it had obviously been just one more bit of bad news in a day full of bad news for Captain Syvret. He hadn’t even the energy to appear surprised.
‘Brandy,’ was all he said to Harry across the wardroom table. Then, when he had half emptied his drink, he had started to talk.
‘I’ve met Canadians for the first time. A lot of Canadians. Bad. Then I got to meet one of your fellows. In fact, your Royal Navy Grand Sublime Poo-bah for the port. Good. A very charming and remarkably forthcoming fellow.’ At that he had paused and wrinkled his bro
w before continuing, ‘You Royal Navy fellows are all . . . very . . . charming and remarkably forthcoming. And straightforward, yes, that’s the word’, and he nodded and smiled at Harry as if conceding a significant point. ‘And today that was a blessing. The Canadians don’t like us. Which I had already gathered. They don’t want us here. We complicate things somehow. Schedules. Dockyard space. Being French. Apparently Durandal has been in before us.’
‘Durandal?’ asked Harry. ‘Your big-gunned, submarine battle-cruiser, and not the sword of Roland, I take it?’
Syvret gave Harry an irritated look, then went on as before: ‘No French Poo-bahs here in Halifax though. They’re having to train one in specially from Ottawa. Just for me. To discuss matters. So your Poo-bah tells me. Tricky, that one. Politics meets propaganda apparently. No good is ever going to come out of that.’
‘Your government; they’re not happy?’ asked Harry.
Syvret laughed a sardonic laugh. ‘Depends who you talk to, according to your fellow. The diplomatic types want me guillotined for not single-mindedly pursuing my mission. On the other hand, the uniforms like the idea of two U-boats sunk. They like it a lot, apparently. Who knows, we could be talking about them having me replace Thierry as Joan of Arc’s love child. Not bad for a first attempt, eh?’
And that was how Harry had found out he’d been right to wonder whether Radegonde’s attack on the U-boat wolf pack had been the first time she had fired her torpedoes in anger. It had.
He thought back on the shambles of that night; the utter, falling-over-your-own-feet chaos of the attacks, and he still laughed at it. It might have been Fred Karno’s Army in the control room, and Abbott and Costello in the torpedo room, but not only had they sunk two U-boats, they had disrupted the attack entirely; had allowed the convoy to veer away so that the U-boats had lost contact completely. And you can’t argue with success, Harry, he thought.
‘It’s not funny,’ Harry had said, laughing. ‘You damn well bloody might have killed me.’
‘Well, it was your idea we attacked in the first place. And we didn’t kill you,’ said Syvret, sighing. ‘So what are you worried about. Have another brandy. There. That’ll make everything better. N’est-ce pas?’
‘My idea? You said you wanted to do it to irritate Thierry,’ said Harry, adding, as an afterthought, ‘Sir.’
Captain Syvret looked huffy. ‘I lied.’
Harry laughed again, although he wasn’t sure he should have. ‘You lied, Sir?’ He kept having to remember to say ‘sir’, because Syvret was the most un-sir CO he’d ever served under, and Harry was becoming concerned how easily he seemed to be slipping into insubordination. Also, there were times when Harry wasn’t quite sure whether he was having a serious conversation with his Captain, or not.
‘You know that repeating everything I say back to me as a question is very irritating, you horrid little rosbif Sub-Lieutenant?’ Syvret had then said, in a very flat voice.
Harry, shocked by himself, and immediately contrite, had drawn himself up, coming to attention in his seat, not knowing whether to apologise, or keep his mouth shut. Syvret had offered no clue, glaring at him through gimlet eyes. Then he’d said, ‘I did it because, from the look of the bloodlust in your eyes, you might have attacked me instead if I’d said no’, and then he’d waited, with his eyebrows arched, as if daring Harry to ask another question.
Syvret himself had then broken the tension, laughing; he had thrown himself back on the banquette, all the gloom he’d come aboard with gone. Leaving Harry to reflect that they did things differently in the Marine Nationale; and he had still to work out where the boundaries were.
‘You want to see the look in your eyes now, Harry!’ he’d roared, and then added through his mirth, ‘I like having you as my friend, mon brave!’ Then he’d paused, gestured for more brandy, and said, ‘That look you had, Harry. You remember. That look you have when you want their blood. You reminded me what we’re all supposed to be doing here. Sinking Germans.’
Those words again. It had lodged in Harry’s head, what Syvret had seen in him. So much so that he was thinking of them again now, as he leaned on Radegonde’s rail, sharing a smoke with Thierry, this French marine he’d once punched, for God’s sake! Thinking about something else when he should have been luxuriating in the simple joy of seeing the United States of America for the first time; being amazed, even, that he, young Harry from Dunoon Grammar School, was actually seeing the actual United States; the first of his class to do so.
Instead, here he was on the bridge, his thoughts taken up by the total shambles of this patrol, or mission, or whatever it was being called now by the people who had dispatched them.
First, they’d been ordered to make the transatlantic voyage as part of a convoy; in company with other ships so that an eye could be kept on her. The Admiralty hadn’t been keen apparently, on Free French ships wandering all over the ocean like they owned it. But no, her errant Captain, and an ever-contrary Free French naval staff, had insisted on an independent passage.
Second, she was only supposed to refuel in Halifax. She wasn’t there to take up busy dockyard space, or for her crew to go sightseeing. And what had happened? She had sailed in with serious damage to her forward casing and one of her torpedo tubes; with cracked battery cells, ruptured high-pressure air lines and internal piping, smashed fittings and the 101 other tedious little breakages resultant from a damn good shaking.
And third, nobody from whore to port Admiral wanted to welcome another free-roving mob of Free French sailors after Durandal’s stay. They hadn’t liked having Durandal in Halifax. The officers being just as bad as the matelots. If indeed Free French they were. For, in between their brawling and refusal to pay for anything, from a nice time to bunker fuel, they all had a lot to say about Churchill, de Gaulle and the war in general; all of it linking both men, and events, to unnatural acts involving farmyard animals. As far as Durandal was concerned, Halifax hadn’t seen a more ill-natured, tight and quarrelsome crew in a long time. They were even worse than Americans.
But whether the Canadians had wanted Radegonde or not, her crew had had to be put ashore, while the Radegonde herself went into dry dock, throwing schedules and maintenance plans out of the window. Harry had not had much to do with the boat after that. Most of the crew went into barracks and the rest, and her officers, spent most of their time on board, making sure the dockyard Johnnies did as little damage to her as could be helped. He’d later heard that the survival of the vin rouge tank and its plumbing had been a particularly hard-fought battle.
Harry, meanwhile, spent most of his time around the Royal Navy’s wardroom ashore. In the weeks Radegonde spent in Halifax he was only once invited to dine at HMCS Stadacona, the Royal Canadian Navy’s shore establishment; this was a better record of hospitality than offered by the Royal Navy’s Third Battle Squadron, then in town for the purposes of escorting convoys. It was an oversight for which Harry was eternally grateful. For you can imagine his surprise when on entering Halifax Harbour, he’d first clapped eyes on the squadron’s clutch of R-Class battleships anchored out in the Bedford Basin; and discovered that among them was his first posting, HMS Redoubtable.
He’d stared at her a long time, remembering how life had been, and might have been yet. She, and the other ships of the squadron, Revenge and Ramillies, had certainly looked impressive, there in the Basin. But Harry remembered what his friend Peter Dumaresq had called them: targets. As they sailed in, an astonished Harry had stared at the battleships’ towering, imposing presence from Radegonde’s bridge, with the little Harbour Master’s launch below, nipping and harrying them to a berth. And he remembered back to when his judgement had been far harsher.
His life aboard Redoubtable as a junior RNVR Sub-Lieutenant had been nothing less than preposterous; one endless round of futile ritual to sustain a weapon so blunt and unwieldy and slow as to be useless in modern warfare. Now, after that close encounter out in the Atlantic with the wolf pack, target wa
s the word that again sprang to his mind; how could anyone imagine such a ship protecting a convoy from U-boats?
So Harry had steered clear of the Third Battle Squadron sailors; after all, they lived in a different Navy from him now. But that sight of the big ships had spurred something in him, a germ of an idea; a lesson he had learned, that needed to be considered and communicated. He’d had to commandeer the wardroom portable typewriter to type out his patrol report for the Admiralty, so once he’d finished it and before he sent it to the transatlantic teleprinter, he sat down to compose his thoughts.
Even in the dead, flat, effacing language of such official naval documents, Harry’s patrol report was a veritable roller coaster; but what he was proposing to append under ‘observations’ was far more presumptuous. He hadn’t even been sure whether he should mark it to be forwarded on, or even to whom; he, a mere hostilities-only RNVR Sub, the lowest marine life form, barely a step above the bacterial. But with nothing else to do except hide from the wardrooms of three capital ships, and only a small town in which to do it, he went ahead anyway. He’d read enough Admiralty bumf to know that ‘drab it down’ had to be the order of the day, and so the title he finally lit upon had been, Proposals for the establishment of operational hunting/support groups along the north Atlantic convoy lanes and Western Approaches.
