Killing Ground Read online

  The sea was calmer, with a long procession of low swells which lifted the ships with surprising ease before rolling on with nothing between them and the Norwegian coastline. Some of the destroyers had even managed to top up their bunkers from the fleet oiler, a nervous moment for any captain with his ship restricted by the hoses and lines.

  He said, “The motion is easier, Pilot.”

  Treherne rubbed his eyes; they felt sore from the bitter air and from peering for the sight of the nearest ships in case there was a collision. On the previous night, one freighter had lost contact with the next ahead and had increased speed to such an extent that it had almost run the other vessel down. Somebody had sounded off his siren, either to warn the rest or from sheer fury at the culprit’s carelessness, and had immediately been given a bottle by the commodore. As Marrack had remarked, “The enemy don’t need his bloody siren to find their way!”

  Treherne replied, “Ice, sir. There’s ice about.”

  “I think you’re right.” He heard someone laugh; it sounded so out of place—like a lost soul, he thought. He was surprised anyone still could crack a joke with each dragging hour tearing at the nerves.

  He could picture his men, huddled and crouched around the ship. Only half the company were closed up at their stations, but Howard had cleared the lower deck so that gun crews and damage control parties, stokers and fire sections could be close to hand if the balloon went up. Marrack was going round the ship for much of the time, keeping an eye on things, making certain that the men on watch were alert. Ready.

  “We’ll be up to Jan Mayen Island tomorrow, Pilot. The commodore will have to alter course if he wants to avoid the ice.”

  Howard felt himself start as something boomed against the hull. He said, “If we remain on this course the pieces will get bigger than that one!”

  Treherne grinned, his teeth very white in the faint glow. “Lucky it wasn’t a mine!”

  In the privacy of the chart table, Howard seized the opportunity to say, “Pilot, tell me about Ayres. Why did you swap him around with the other subbie?”

  Marrack had already told him of the new arrangement but he wanted to hear it from the big, bearded navigator.

  Treherne said, “He’s learned a lot in the past few days, sir. Bizley, on the other hand, has done some close-action, and I thought he would be better off with the after-guns and depth-charges. Ayres will do more good up here with me, I think, sir—anyway, that’s what I told Number One.” He gave what might have been a shrug. “So he changed the duties. I hope that was all right?”

  Howard nodded. “Good thinking.” He had always approved of his officers using their own initiative in such matters. It showed they understood, that they cared.

  Bizley on the other hand had seen action in Light Coastal Forces, and according to his report he had behaved well when his boat had gone down. He had taken charge of the remaining survivors and had got them clear before the depth-charges went up. That sort of behaviour took plenty of nerve and guts. The report even hinted that Bizley might be recommended for a decoration.

  They switched off the little light and backed out from under the protective canvas hood, shutting and opening their eyes to accustom them once more to the darkness.

  Marrack had arrived on the bridge and said, “Full readiness, sir. All watertight doors closed and checked.” The ship rolled steeply and an enamel mug jangled on the deck like Bow Bells. Ayres heard the yeoman of signals using some choice language to the man who had dropped it and recalled how he used to blush because of it. He saw Treherne speaking with the captain. He smiled to himself; “The Old Man,” as they called him, even though he was still in his twenties. He and the first lieutenant must be the same age, but Marrack looked much older. At that very second the two officers, who had been merely black shapes like the others around him, seemed to flare up like molten copper. Ayres exclaimed, “Oh my God!” He stared with disbelief at the expanding fireball which lit up the ships in the convoy like models on an uneven table. It took just the blink of an eye, and yet to Ayres it felt like an eternity before the shockwave of the explosion rolled across the heaving water and thundered against Gladiator’s steel flanks as if she, herself, had been hit.

  Alarm bells jangled insanely and from every voicepipe the chatter of hoarse voices filled the bridge.

  Howard could hear the men around him, their breathing strained and heavy, like people who had been running. In the flickering glare he saw their faces, grim, or shocked by the suddenness of disaster.

  Treherne called from the radar-repeater, “Two of the wing escorts are standing away, sir.”

  Howard said nothing, picturing the corvettes, veterans of this kind of warfare, as clearly as if they were visible. Another explosion rebounded against the hull and for a moment he thought a second torpedo had found its mark. But it was aboard the stricken ship, and he could see the glow of fires beyond her bridge.

  It was unlikely that the corvettes would make any contact, he thought. A U-Boat, probably sailing alone, had surfaced to chase after the convoy and had fired a torpedo, maybe more, at extreme range. The German captain was making off now, still on the surface, to call up his consorts to share the spoils.

  Ayres pulled himself from a voicepipe and shouted, “From W/T, sir, commodore has ordered increase speed to fourteen knots.”

  The yeoman said harshly, “No need to slow down any more. That was the poor old Mersey Belle that copped it!”

  A blunt shadow passed between them and the spreading flames: Bruiser, the big salvage tug, known by most of the sailors as the Undertaker. She would assess the ship’s damage, then either take her in tow or lift off the crew.

  Ayres said, “From commodore, sir. Investigate but do not remain with Mersey Belle.”

  “Acknowledge.” Howard rubbed his chin, feeling the bristles. “Too many damned signals.” He watched the flames intently. “I’ve a feeling about this one, Pilot. Pass the word to damage control. Number One can rig scrambling nets as soon as he likes.” The flames were blazing higher than the freighter’s derricks. Something really powerful must have been set alight by the explosion.

  “Sea-boat, sir?” Treherne’s eyes were glowing like coals in the reflected inferno. He felt it badly. Most of the ex-merchant service officers were like that. Seeing a ship dying. Not a man-of-war, going down with guns blazing or trying to ram an enemy cruiser like the poor little Glowworm, but ships that worked for a living, in the Depression and in times of peace. Without them England would not, could not, survive. Howard felt the pain jar up his arm as he banged his fist on the unyielding steel. And we are not protecting them. Not because we don’t try, but because the enemy are better at it.

  He saw a shaded torch on the main deck, men already moving to free the scrambling nets.

  Treherne repeated dully, “No sea-boat then, sir?”

  Howard raised his glasses and watched the other ship. Her shape had lengthened so she must have lost power on her engines and was drifting beam-on in the swell.

  “Negative.” He realised how sharply it had come out. “I’ll not risk men more than necessary.”

  “Escort commander reports no contacts, sir!”

  Howard thought of the pencilled lines on the grubby chart where so many had leaned on it in the night watches.

  “From Admiralty, sir. Immediate. There are now six U-Boats in your vicinity.”

  The boatswain’s mate muttered, “Roll on death, let’s ’ave a good rest!”

  Howard watched narrowly as sparks burst up from the helpless freighter, and her funnel seemed to crumple like paper before pitching overboard in a great splash.

  They were trying to lower a boat while the tug stood by, her screws beating up the water as she manoeuvred astern to keep station on the Mersey Belle. A ragged sheet of flame seemed to burst straight up through the deck where the tiny figures were trying to free the lifeboat’s falls of ice. They were like dried leaves caught suddenly in a wind and tossed into the fire. Not men an
y more, who had loved and hated with the rest of them, but little burning flakes; nothing.

  The yeoman said, “From Bruiser, sir. Mersey Belle has aircraft fuel on board.”

  Howard heard the brief click of his lamp and watched the tug’s screws beat the sea into a mounting froth as she swung heavily away from the flames. So that was it. He felt his fingers gripping the binoculars so tightly that his fingers became numb even through his thick gloves. There had been no mention of that in the convoy report. A last minute decision perhaps, just to fill another space.

  He felt his mouth go dry as a vivid red eye opened suddenly in the other ship’s side to spread across the undulating water and set the sea itself ablaze.

  “Port ten.” He did not recall moving to the voicepipes. He was just there. Where he belonged. No matter what. Those words again.

  “Midships.” He heard the coxswain’s thick voice, pictured the tense faces in the shuttered wheelhouse. The telegraphsmen, Treherne’s yeoman with the plot table and its moving lights, Midshipman Esmonde who was in charge of it and the charts it might need. Faces like carved masks, picked out by reflected flames through the steel shutters.

  “Steady.”

  “Steady, sir. Course three-five-zero.” Howard lifted the glasses from his chest and said, “Very easy, Cox’n. Like the last time, remember?”

  He heard him sigh. “Not likely to forget, sir.”

  Howard strode to the side of the bridge and sought out Marrack’s oilskinned figure by the guardrail.

  “Number One!” He saw him peer up. “This will have to be fast!”

  Ayres wanted to throw the glasses aside but could not move. Half to himself he whispered, “They’re trying to swim clear!” It was as if he was there, right amongst them. The shining faces in the water, the bulky life-jackets dragging them back, the desperate terror of their thrashing arms as they made frantically for the slow-moving destroyer.

  Treherne wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. Gladiator would stand out clearly in the flames; she was barely making headway through the water. At any second a torpedo might find her. He controlled his sudden anxiety with a physical effort. But he could hear one of the seamen repeating over and over again like a prayer, “Let’s get out of it, for Christ’s sake. Leave them!”

  Howard asked sharply, “Where’s the doctor?”

  A signalman called, “Sick bay, I think, sir!”

  “I want him. Here and now.”

  He lowered his head to the voicepipe, his lungs filled with the stench. They could not get any closer. At any second she might blow up, engulf Gladiator in her own pyre.

  “Dead slow, Cox’n.” He heard Ayres give a quick sob as the fire overtook two of the swimmers. He imagined he could hear their terrible screams. More explosions ripped through the freighter from her keel to upper deck. All the crates were alight, and some of the armoured cars had torn free of their lashings and were hanging drunkenly through the bulwarks, or burning with everything else.

  “You wanted me, sir?”

  Howard did not turn his head from the dying ship. “Yes, Doc.” It was amazing how calm he sounded. Perhaps it had got to him at last, and he really was going crazy. “I want you to be there with your team when those sailors are pulled aboard. They will be frozen, shocked and close to dying.” He let his words sink in. “There won’t be too many of them this time.”

  The doctor’s face shone in the fires, his lips parted as he took in each part of the scene which seemed to be drawing closer by the minute. Howard heard him going down the ladder, his feet dragging. Another second and I would have shaken the fear out of him. He stiffened, craning forward.

  “All stop!”

  He hurried to the bridge wing again, and felt a lookout move aside for him. The first gasping figures had reached the scrambling nets while others reached out to catch the lines being thrown to them.

  Some fell back retching and crying out as their hands, already black with their own ship’s leaking oil, let the ropes slip through their grasp. Howard tightened his jaw as he saw some of Marrack’s men clambering down the nets to help them, bowlines already made into heaving lines to pull them to safety. A few seemed to give up, and floated along the destroyer’s side. Frozen to death even within yards of rescue.

  Howard could feel the heat of the fires now on his face, saw steam rising from the lookout’s duffle coat. Oh God, just a few more minutes.

  One man was holding on to the nets but seemed reluctant to climb aboard. He was peering back towards his drifting ship but he was not looking at her. Above the roar of flames Howard heard him calling to someone who was still out there swimming, swimming. Then a terrible scream came from the sea of fire and the man on the nets completed his climb to the hands reaching out to help him. The scream had been his answer.

  Marrack looked up at the bridge and waved his hands. No more. Or if there were, they were already doomed.

  “Slow ahead together. Port fifteen.” He felt desperately tired. Like a sickness. A despair.

  A dull explosion rolled towards them and more blazing fuel gushed from the ship’s hull and crept up and down across the swell to the place where Gladiator had been.

  “Half ahead together.”

  The yeoman said, “From commodore, sir. Resume station.”

  Howard took off his worn, sea-going cap and shook his hair to the wind. The heat was fading already, the icy cold regaining its grip.

  “Take her round, Pilot. Revs for twenty knots.”

  He turned to watch as the Mersey Belle began to heel over, armoured vehicles splashing alongside, only so much rubbish now. There were two figures right up in the vessel’s stern. Don’t let them suffer like that.

  He offered a silent prayer as some of the flames vanished and he heard the grating crash of metal as the ship began to break up, the stern half diving first in a great welter of steam and bubbles, the two lonely figures still there to the end. A last great explosion rocked the destroyer’s sleek hull and then the sea was empty once more.

  At first light they rejoined the convoy, and as the visibility improved Howard saw that the formation was as before. As if Mersey Belle had never been. He said, “Fall out action stations. Get some hot food into the people. It may be the last for some time.”

  Treherne asked quietly, “And what about you, sir?”

  Howard gave him a curious glance. “Me? I’d like the biggest Horse’s Neck in the whole bloody world, but I’ll make do with some fresh kye if you can arrange it.”

  Treherne glanced at Lieutenant Finlay who was climbing down from his fire control position, and gave a brief wink.

  Just for an instant back there he had been worried. But Howard was OK. He thought of the men, dying in the water. He had to be.

  4 | Ice and Fire

  GLADIATOR’S small chart-room was situated abaft the wheel-house and opposite Howard’s sea cabin. The only light came from the chart table where everything was clearer to read and understand than the cramped ready-use hutch on the upper bridge.

  Howard and his three lieutenants stood around it now, sharing the illusion of warmth after the biting cold of the open bridge.

  Howard watched Treherne adjusting the course to another alteration from the commodore, oblivious to the condensation which fell like heavy drops of rain from the deckhead. Marrack and Finlay the gunnery officer waited in silence while they contemplated their own possible fate.

  It was past noon, and the pace of the convoy had dropped to nine knots as more and more ice-floes cruised slowly down their ranks. The heavy tug Bruiser had steamed to the head of the convoy, ready to assist if one of the deep-laden ships got into difficulty, or to smash her way through with her tough, oceangoing hull.

  The survivors from the Mersey Belle were aft in the wardroom. There had been only seven, but one had died an hour ago from his burns and other injuries.

  Howard had accepted the news in silence. It was terrible what war could do to your judgement, he thought. To me. In those e
arly days, learning the job, he would have been grateful, proud even, to have snatched just six men from the jaws of death. But experience made him ask questions now. Were a handful of survivors worth risking this ship? She had been stopped, outlined against the blazing fuel, an easy target for any U-Boat had there been one. They had to be worth it. Otherwise we are as bad as the men who struck them down without mercy. Every U-Boat commander knew that his weapon could be the vital one to win the war. Up here, in these bleak wastes, submarines and bombers alike were ordered to go for the main targets, merchantmen and aircraft carriers.

  As one senior escort commander had told Howard, “When the U-Boats start going for us, you’ll know we’re winning!”

  He heard boots scraping on the deck overhead and wondered what Sub-Lieutenant Bizley thought about being on watch alone while Finlay was down here. He must have done it many times in his racy motor gunboat. But this was quite different. A powerful destroyer, a company of one hundred and forty-five to consider, and signals which might burst upon him from any direction: the commodore, the senior escort, or the distant Admiralty.

  Howard still felt guilty at leaving the upper bridge even in the face of exhaustion. In the event of an attack, one more ladder to the centre of his “stage” might make all the difference.

  Treherne straightened his back, wincing. “There it is, sir. We know that the ice-edge is still to the southeast of Jan Mayen Island. The convoy has to make a turn very soon or get scattered amongst the floes.”

  Howard rubbed his chin, and tried to sip from his mug. It was empty, although he could not recall drinking the glutinous pusser’s kye so beloved by sailors.

  “At best we shall have to alter course to east-northeast, which will take us up to the final big change below Bear Island.”

  Treherne grinned. “Run like rabbits all the way for the Kola Inlet and our Russian ‘chums’—I don’t think!”