Go in and Sink! Read online

  Douglas Reeman

  GO IN AND SINK

  1973

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  Author’s Note

  The Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 proved to be the turning point in the Second World War. Too many setbacks and retreats had left Britain and her Allies almost beyond hope, and the proposed invasion, the biggest amphibious operation ever planned, needed to be a success, perhaps more than any previous undertaking. Over the years, that first combined stab at Europe’s underbelly has been overshadowed by other events, and greater invasions, but none was more vital at the time.

  My story is fiction, but most of the background is based on what actually happened. A German submarine, U-570, was in fact captured by the British and used against her previous owners. The then unknown secret weapon, a radio-controlled bomb which could be launched and directed by an enemy aircraft, may seem to us almost antique in this age of nuclear weapons, but in 1943 it was a threat which almost tipped the balance against us.

  Had the Germans discovered our intention to invade Sicily, instead of through Greece and the Balkans, it is almost certain that those deadly bombs would have broken the back of our sea forces before a landing could have been completed. As it was, several cloak-and-dagger ruses were successfully used. A dead body dressed as a Marine officer was found on a Spanish beach with supposedly secret details of an Allied invasion through Greece. Other schemes were employed to make the enemy believe in this idea, so that when the attack began his forces were wrongly deployed to repulse it.

  Two months later, when the Allies struck at the Italian mainland and hit the beaches at Salerno, there were many who realised just how thin the margin of success had been.

  The Germans, then prepared and ready, brought those radio-controlled bombs into immediate use. Many men were lost, and fine ships put out of action. Among the latter were famous veterans of the Mediterranean campaign, including the battleship Warspite, the cruiser Uganda, and the American warships Philadelphia and Savannah.

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  1 A good catch

  It was just nine o’clock on a February morning when His Majesty’s Submarine Tristram edged against the greasy piles at Fort Blockhouse, Portsmouth and her lines were taken by the waiting shore-party.

  In the forepart of her conning tower Lieutenant Commander Steven Marshall watched the wires being dragged to the bollards along the pier, felt the steel plates beneath his boots vibrating uneasily, as if, like himself, his command was unable to accept that they had arrived safely.

  In the early morning, while they had idled outside the harbour until the tide was right to enter Haslar Creek by the submarine base, he had studied the land as it had grown out of the gloom, searching his thoughts for some sensation of achievement. Now, as he glanced briefly at the curious faces along the wall and below on the pier he could sense little but anti-climax. Even his men looked different. It did not seem possible. For fourteen months they had lived together in their own confined private world within this hull. From one end of the Mediterranean to the other, with each day bringing some fresh challenge or threat to their very existence.

  There had been a few new faces during that time. To replace the dead and wounded. But for the most part they were the same men who had assembled fore and aft on the Tristram’s casing when she had slipped out of Portsmouth to join the war and seek out the enemy.

  `All secure aft, sir.’

  Marshall turned slightly and glanced at his first lieutenant. Robert Gerrard, tall and thin, with the slight stoop brought about by service in this and other boats. Even he seemed strangely alien in his reefer and best cap. For months they had seen each other in almost anything but regulation dress. Old flannel trousers and discarded cricket shirts. Shorts and sandals in kinder days. Dripping oilskins and heavy boots when the Mediterranean showed its other face, the one never seen on travel posters.

  `Thank you, Bob. Ring off main motors.’

  He turned back to watch the busy working party on the pier. There were two Wrens sheltering below the wall on their way to some office or other, their arms crammed with files and papers. One of them waved to him, and then they both scuttled out into the wind again and vanished. A party of new trainees was being mustered on the rampart above, a petty officer no doubt pointing out the finer points of a returning submarine. Few appeared to be paying much attention, and Marshall could guess their feelings at this moment in their service.

  From the periscope standards above his head flew their Skull and Crossbones which the coxswain had cared for so proudly over their long days and nights at sea. Sewn above and around the grinning death’s-head were their recorded battle honours. Bars for vessels sunk, crossed guns for those hair-raising attacks on ships and coastal installations alike, stilettos for the cloak-and-dagger jobs, landing agents on enemy shores, picking up others with valuable information. Sometimes they had waited in vain for these brave, lonely men, and he had prayed their end had been quick.

  The new intake of seamen at the submarine base would see the flag, would picture themselves and not his men on the scarred casing.

  The deck gave a quick shudder and lay still. They had officially arrived. This part at least was over.

  From aft a generator coughed into life and a haze of exhaust floated over the hull. Marshall thrust his hands into his pockets, momentarily at loss. There was nothing to do. Soon the boat would be taken to the dockyard. Stripped out and refitted from bow to stern. He sighed. God knows, she needs it. The silent recruits would also be seeing the submarine as she really was. Pitted from continuous service in all conditions. There was hardly a square yard without a dent or a scar of some sort. Splinters from shellbursts. Buckled plates below the conningtower from a very close depth-charge off the Tunisian coast where they had stalked the Afrika Korps’ supply ships. The deeper furrow across the bridge itself was from a burst of cannon fire from an Italian fighter outside Taranto. It had killed the lookouts even as the boat had dived deep. A cruel justice, if you could see it that way. They were the ones who should have seen the danger to

  themselves, and therefore to all those under their feet who depended on their constant vigilance. They had died because of that hair’s-breadth between life and oblivion which every submariner should recognise.

  A wooden brow was being hauled out from the pier now. He saw the captain of the base and some other officers with oak leaves around their caps waiting to go through the formalities. He did not recognise many of them. It was hardly surprising. A lot had happened in fourteen months, and not only in the Mediterranean.

  `Dismiss the hands, Bob.’

  He faltered, suddenly unsure. ‘I’d like to speak with them before they shove off on leave.’

  The words had come out at last. These men, his company of fifty officers and ratings, would be scattered to the corners of the British Isles. To share their leave in their own ways. With parents and wives, girlfriends and children. Merging for just a few weeks in that other world of rationing and shortages, bombing and pathetic determination.

  When the leave was over they would be sent to other boats. To form a hard core amongst men like the recruits on the wall. To crew new boats which were being built to replace those strewn across the beds of a dozen disputed seas.

  He shivered, feeling the wind cold and clammy across his face. 1943 was now a month old. What, when his own leave was over, would it have for him?

  He leaned over the screen to watch his men hurrying gratefully for the main hatch. In white caps, their hands and faces deeply tanned, they looked out of place. Vulnerable against the grey stone, the cruising wavecrests of the Solent, the rain-haze across Portsdown Hill. He sighed again and climbed out of the bridge
and down to the casing.

  The base captain was genuinely welcoming, his handshake hearty. Other faces moved around Marshall, a pat on his back, more handshakes.

  The captain said, `Good to see you, Marshall. By God, it’s a tonic to read what you’ve done out there. Just what the doctor ordered.’

  Another officer suggested swiftly, `Now, if we could go to your office, sir?’

  Marshall was tired, and despite a clean shirt and his best uniform felt dirty and unkempt. You did not shake off submarines merely by walking ashore. They all said that. The smells seemed to get right inside you. Diesel and wet metal. Cabbage-water and sweat. And that wasn’t the half of it. But he was not too weary to notice the brief exchange of glances. A sense of urgency.

  The captain nodded. `Fair enough.’ He touched Marshall’s arm. `I expect you’ll find things have changed a bit since you’ve been away.’ He walked to the brow and returned the trot sentry’s salute. `Heavy bombing all round here. Terrible.’ He forced a smile. `But the Keppel’s Head is still standing, so things can’t be too bad!’

  Marshall fell silent as he walked through the familiar gates, allowing the conversation to flow around him almost unheeded. Even out of the wind he felt chilled to the marrow, and wondered how long it would take to get away from this unexpected gathering. He saw young officers marching to instruction, others sitting in a classroom where he had once sat. Gunnery and torpedoes, first lieutenant’s course, and then finally the one for command, the Perisher as it was guardedly called. Fort Blockhouse seemed to have altered little. Only he seemed an intruder.

  Into a large office, where a fire burned invitingly in its grate beneath a picture of a pre-war submarine lying in Grand Harbour, Malta. He found himself studying it intently, recalling the setting as he had last seen it. Rubble and dust. Endless bombing, and a population eking out their lives in cellars and shelters.

  A steward was busying himself with glasses at the far end of the room, and the captain said cheerfully, `Early in the morning, I know. But this is special.’

  Marshall smiled. He remembered this room well enough.

  The base captain of the time had had him here on the carpet. Had given him the most severe dressing-down over some lapse or other. Later, that same captain had called him to tell him his father had been ‘lost at sea. The two extremes of that particular captain seemed to sum up the whole submarine service, he thought vaguely.

  Glasses filled, everyone turned expectantly towards him as the captain said, `Welcome home. You and your people have done a fine job.’ His eyes dropped to the breast of Marshall’s reefer. `A D.S.C. and bar, and damn well earned.’

  They all raised their glasses, and it was then that Marshall caught sight of himself in a wall mirror behind them. No wonder he felt different. He was different, from these officers anyway. His dark hair, unruly at the best of times, had grown too long over his ears. There had been no time for a haircut during their last stop in Gibraltar, and anyway the starboard motor had been playing up. Again. He had noticed only that morning while he had been shaving that there were tiny flecks of grey in his hair. Very small, but they were there all right. And he was twenty-eight years old. He smiled briefly at his twin in the mirror saw the shadows below his grey eyes momentarily vanish, the mouth twitch upwards, so that he was young again, for just a moment.

  The staff officer who had hurried them to this room said, `The maintenance commander is ready to have Tristram moved to the dock area, sir. As soon as her crew are paid and have got their ration cards and travel warrants they can be sent on leave.’ He swivelled his eyes to Marshall. ‘Unless …’

  Marshall raised his glass to his lips for the first time. It was neat whisky. He could feel it searing his throat, stirring his insides like a returning confidence.

  He said quietly, `I will speak with them first, if I may.’

  The captain nodded. `Of course. It must be quite a wrench after all this time, eh?’

  `Yes.’ Marshall emptied the glass and held it out to the hovering steward. `It is.’

  He was behaving badly but could not do anything about it. They meant well. Were doing their best to make him welcome when most of them probably had a hundred jobs to do.

  Quite a wrench.

  Perhaps it was the way the urbane staff officer had written off his command already. Just so much steel and machinery. Material of war. He wondered if some of the Tristram’s company were feeling as cut-off and lonely as he was right now. Would they be able to talk about what they had faced and endured? The chilling suspense of a depthcharge attack. The nerve-grinding tension of stalking their prey, the order to fire, the ticking seconds before a telltale boom of a torpedo finding its target.

  Tristram’s return was special, the captain had said. In one way he was right. Five other boats of the same class had left Portsmouth for the Mediterranean. With many more they now littered the sea-bed, their companies sealed inside them.

  The captain said evenly, `I was sorry to hear about young Wade.’

  `Yes, sir.’ The whisky was like fire. ‘He was due to come home the week after it happened.’ He did not notice that the others had fallen silent as he continued in the same unemotional voice, `We did our Perisher together, and even when I got Tristram he was given Tryphon. We were always running into each other..’

  new voice asked, `How did it happen?’

  The captain shot the man a fierce stare, but Marshall replied, `We were on the bread-run.’ He gestured vaguely. `Taking food and ammunition to Malta. Nothing but a sub could get in. Even then we had to lie on the harbour bottom during daylight to avoid the bombers. Tryphon left Malta before dawn that particular day. She was never heard of again.’ He nodded slowly, `A mine, I expect. God knows, there were enough of them about.’

  Even as he spoke he could recall exactly that last meeting Bill Wade with his black beard and huge grin. The drinks and the ancient Maltese playing a piano in the next room. Almost his last words had been, `Never thought we’d make it, old man. I guess we were just meant to survive.’ Poor Bill. He had been mistaken about that.

  The base captain glanced at his watch. `I think we’d better get things moving.’ He nodded to the others. `I’ll just put Lieutenant Commander Marshall in the picture.’

  The officers filed out of the room, each pausing to murmur a word of congratualtion or welcome, and finally the steward, who closed the door noiselessly behind him.

  `Sit down.’ The captain moved to his desk and squatted comfortably on one corner. `Did you have any plans for leave?’

  Marshall rested his arms on the sides of the chair. The whisky and the warm room were making him drowsy. Detached.

  `Not really, sir.’

  It was easy to make it sound so casual. No plans. His mother had died before the war after being thrown from a horse. She was a beautiful rider, a superb horsewoman. But she had died nonetheless.

  His father had been axed from the Navy some years after the Great War, but had been recalled immediately when the Germans had marched into Poland. After his mother had died, Marshall’s father had withdrawn into his own private world, so that they had drifted very much apart. Some of his old spirit had returned when he had been recalled to the Navy, even though he was to be employed in merchant ships. As commodore of a westbound Atlantic convoy he had been attacked by a U-boat pack. His own ship and several others were sunk. It was a common enough story.

  `I thought as much.’ The captain seemed to be hesitating over something. Playing for time. `Fact is, there’s a job waiting for you, if you’ll take it. I’d not be so blunt about it if there was more time. But there isn’t. It could be dangerous, but you’re no stranger to that idea. It might even be a complete waste of effort. But the appointment demands every ounce of experience and skill.’ He paused. `It needs the best man available and I think it could be you.’

  Marshall watched him gravely. `You’d want me to decide right away?

  The captain did not answer directly. `Ever heard of Ca
ptain Giles Browning? Buster Browning they called him in the last war. Got the Victoria Cross among other things for taking his submarine into the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli fiasco. A real ball of fire to all accounts.’

  Marshall nodded. `I read about him somewhere.’ It was not making any sense. `Is he involved?’

  ‘He was out of the Service soon after the war. Axed, like your own_ father. He came back to do various jobs, training depots and so forth, but now he’s been landed with some special appointment in Combined Ops.’ He smiled. `It’s all very vague, but it has to be.’

  Outside the thick walls a tug hooted mournfully, and Marshall pictured Tristram resting at her moorings. Soon she would be empty, with only a few damp and tattered pin-ups, the pencilled doodlings around the chart table where the navigator had controlled his nerves during each attack to mark their passing.

  Why not? There was no point in spending a whole leave going from one hotel to another, visiting friends, or…

  He said suddenly, `But I’m not to be told what it is, sir?’

  `It’s a new command.’ The captain was studying him intently. Searching for something on Marshall’s impassive features. `If you accept, I’ll have you whistled up to Scotland tomorrow morning where you’ll meet Captain Browning.’ He grinned. `Buster.’

  Marshall stood up. His limbs felt strangely light.

  `I’ll have a go, sir.’ He nodded. `I can but try.’

  `Thank you. I know what you’ve been through, so do all those concerned. But you, or someone like you, are what we need.’ He shrugged. `If things change, you’ll take your leave, and there’ll still be a command waiting for you. You might even get Tristram again if the refit works out all right.’

  The staff officer peered round the door. `Sir?’

  `Lieutenant Commander Marshall has agreed.’ The captain added softly, `You’d better send for Lieutenant Gerrard and brief him.’

  The door closed again.