Killing Ground Read online

There had been no more U-Boat reports, but they were out there somewhere. It was like fighting something unreal and unreachable, Howard thought. Perhaps they know something we don’t?

  He glanced at Marrack’s impassive features. “What d’you think, Number One?”

  “I think,” he cupped his hands around the calculations on the chart, “they’re trying to herd the convoy as close to the ice as possible. In the summer we could have sailed further north, around Bear Island, but not now.”

  Howard nodded, seeing the slow-moving columns going on and on like that drifting lifeboat and its tattered crew.

  “I agree. The Germans probably know the Home Fleet has a shadowing force at sea big enough to cope with Tirpitz, if she is reported on the move. Then there will be our cruisers—they wouldn’t risk an encounter with that big bastard, and in any case they would have been ordered not to proceed beyond longitude twenty-five east.” He smiled dryly. “Just where we’ll need them most, of course!”

  Marrack grimaced. “They seem more intent on keeping the battleships intact than using them for this job.” He spoke with all the intolerance and contempt shown by destroyer and small-ship men for the ponderous goliaths of the Navy.

  The door opened slightly and Morgan, the navigator’s yeoman, peered in at them. “Fog warning, sir.” He glanced at his charts as if to check that nobody had put a dirty mug on them. “Cox’n said it’s quite usual so near to the ice.”

  Treherne patted his arm. “That ancient mariner would say anything!”

  Howard snatched up the chart-room handset in one movement.

  “Captain!”

  “Bridge, sir.” Bizley sounded very calm. “General signal from commodore. Reduce distances to avoid losing contact. To us, sir: Remain on station and maintain contact by radar.”

  “Very good. I’ll come up.” He looked at his lieutenants as he put down the handset. “We’ve got the fuel, and even without air cover after today, we may have one ally after all—fog. We could just shake ’em off our backs for a bit longer.”

  He tightened the towel around his neck and fastened his coat once again.

  Finlay bustled away to resume his watch, while Howard paused by the wheelhouse door and glanced inside. It was almost hot in there, and he saw the men on watch stiffen, then relax again when they realised this was not an official visit.

  The coxswain, Bob Sweeney, one of Gladiator’s only two chief petty officers, was standing near the plot table, red-faced and comfortable-looking as he chatted with one of the telegraphs-men. Sweeney should have been below, off watch. Maybe his instinct was warning him again.

  Howard nodded. “All right, ‘Swain?”

  Sweeney shrugged. “Fog’s goin’ to be a proper pea-souper, sir.” He had a pronounced London accent and had been raised in Stepney in the East End before joining up at the age of fourteen. He had seen it all, and had been due for retirement exactly two days before the Germans had bombed Warsaw. The coxswain was the core of any small ship. He handled defaulters, attended to problems of leave and welfare when one of the lads’ wives was having it off with the milkman while he was at sea. But in this ship there were not too many wives to worry about. For the vital task of entering and leaving harbour, going alongside another vessel, or at action stations, the coxswain was always there—at the wheel. It was good to know when all hell broke loose.

  The man now on the wheel was the chief quartermaster, “Bully” Bishop, a dark-featured leading seaman who was nicknamed for his savage temper when he was drunk ashore, which was often. How he had managed to retain the hook on his sleeve was a miracle, for he had lost all his good conduct badges along the way.

  He said, “I was in a fog once, sir.” His eyes never left the ticking gyro-repeater. “Worse than this—”

  The cox’n eyed him scornfully. “That’s right, Bully, you swing the lamp! The worst fog you bin in is when the shore patrols carry you on board!”

  Howard heard them chuckling as he faced the cold again and climbed into the upper bridge.

  He walked aft and peered towards the quarterdeck. But it was already lost in the slow-moving white mist, as if she had lost her stern completely. He made his way to his chair again and felt the cold air driving away the brief reprieve in the chart-room.

  He said to the bridge at large, “Good lookout all around.” He stared through the glass screen and watched the stem blunting itself in the bank of fog. “Might hit some straggler up the arse otherwise.”

  Their faces cracked into grins. They seemed to trust him, even the new hands. I must never lose my trust in them.

  It was eerie, but far better than being up ahead with all those ships around you. Any collision at sea was bad enough. Up here it was a nightmare. Ice thudded and grated against the hull, and he found time to pity the little corvettes. They would take it badly, especially as they had just one screw to drive and wriggle them amongst the ice.

  It would be dark soon. There was hardly any real daylight, and yet in the summer it would be reversed so that enemy aircraft could have a field-day.

  Sub-Lieutenant Bizley trained his binoculars over the screen and watched his breath falling away to join the fog. He had been in Channel fogs often enough, but on this comparatively high bridge you felt as if the ship had lost contact with the sea, that only the thick mist was moving. He stiffened as Midshipman Esmonde moved across to join him. He was always understudying someone, he thought impatiently. More like a soft, stupid girl than a budding naval officer.

  Esmonde asked timidly, “Will this fog make much difference?”

  Bizley recalled his disgust when the youth had fainted at the sight of the eyeless creatures in the lifeboat. Ayres had been close to that too. Now they seemed to think he was some kind of bloody hero.

  “Why? Scared, are you?”

  Esmonde seemed to cower. “I’m not frightened. Not any more.”

  The roar of an explosion seemed to come at the ship from several directions at once. The nearness of the ice and drifting banks of fog made a mockery of the frantic reports which echoed from every side.

  Howard jabbed the button. “Action stations!”

  He gripped the arms of his chair as the fog ahead of the bows seemed to change colour, to writhe as if some maniac painter had decided to change the substance of his canvas. Orange one second, deep scarlet the next.

  Voices ebbed and flowed around him as his men ran to their stations, hearts pounding, throats suddenly like dust.

  “Ship at action stations, sir.”

  “Warn the Cox’n, Pilot. Be ready for an instant change of course and speed.” He held out his hand and touched Marrack’s wet sleeve. “Stay here for the present, Number One.” He heard Treherne speaking into the voicepipe, knowing that the coxswain would be ready for anything. But you had no room for chance.

  Marrack polished his binoculars. “Think that one may drift down on us, sir?”

  “Not sure yet.” Howard tried to hear something else. There was more flickering light, but no further explosions. “Strange. I thought it was a double bang.”

  Marrack raised his glasses. “I heard that. But too close together for torpedoes, unless there’s another sub out there.”

  “Signal from commodore on R/T, sir. Retain course and speed. Do not lose contact.”

  Treherne muttered, “Some hopes!”

  Howard shifted uneasily in his chair. Another long-range, unlucky shot. There was always the chance of a hit, especially if they were using the much talked-about homing torpedo.

  God, those poor devils would stand little chance of being saved. He found himself wondering where the gap would be when the fog cleared and left them naked again.

  “Radar—Bridge!”

  “Bridge!”

  Marrack held his ear to the voicepipe while his eyes flickered in the savage glow of fires.

  He said quietly, “Radar reports a strong echo at one-four-zero, three miles.”

  Treherne exclaimed, “Why the hell didn’t he see it before?
” But nobody answered.

  Howard stood up as if he was afraid of disturbing something evil. Then he lowered his mouth to the voicepipe. “Captain speaking. Who’s that?”

  “Whiting, sir.”

  Howard spoke slowly to give himself time. Leading Seaman Whiting was the senior operator. A good man, who had been decorated for courage under fire at Dunkirk.

  “What d’you think?”

  The man took a deep breath. “No doubt in my mind, submarine on the surface. Stopped for some reason.”

  Howard turned to Marrack. “Go and give them some support, Number One. It may be a false alarm, a wreck or a piece of one, but if so we should have detected it earlier when we altered course.”

  He watched as Marrack hurried away. It had to be. Chasing the convoy while surfaced, then firing off a torpedo for fear of losing the chance in the fog. He said aloud, “It’s got to be!”

  “Gunnery officer, sir!”

  Howard found the voicepipe and spoke into it closely to exclude all the others. “Yes?”

  Finlay sounded as if he was right beside him instead of up there in his fire-control position.

  “I had a thought, sir. There was a double explosion.” He sounded very crisp, as if he were lecturing trainees on the parade ground at Whale Island. It was always hard to see Finlay as a junior librarian, which was what he had once been.

  “I heard it.”

  “I think the Jerry fired two fish but one exploded prematurely. Maybe it was touched off by a drifting floe.”

  Howard stared at the voicepipe, almost invisible now as the darkness closed over them again. The fire was still burning. Another dying ship; as if all the rest had been swallowed up.

  He walked to his chair and said, “Make by W/T to commodore. There is a U-Boat on the surface three miles to the southeast of my position.”

  Treherne said in a fierce whisper, “Suppose he orders us to stay put?”

  Howard thought suddenly of his father, and it gave him a strange sense of comfort. “Remember Nelson!”

  The yeoman finished scribbling in his pad. “Any more, sir?”

  Howard looked up towards the sky and tried not to listen to the groan of metal as a ship began to break up.

  “Am engaging. Ends.”

  “Hard a-starboard! Full ahead together! Stand by all guns and depth-charges.” He heard the jingle of telegraphs and pictured the wheelhouse suddenly stirred into activity.

  “Hard a-starboard, sir!”

  “Steady! Meet her! Steer one-four-zero!”

  He turned and looked over his shoulder as a shadow dashed up to the yard. Even in the early darkness the yeoman would not overlook that. The black pendant. Am attacking!

  Sub-Lieutenant Lionel Bizley clung to a safety rail beneath X-gun’s blast screen and stared astern at the mounting banks of Gladiator’s wake. As the revolutions mounted the ship appeared to bury her narrow stern deeper and deeper until the glistening deck was awash. It was a strange, sickening motion as the destroyer rose and plunged over each successive bank of swell, as if she were in her true element. The hull shook and trembled, the excitement of a wild animal going for the kill.

  Leading Seaman Fernie, a great bear-like figure made even more bulky by the oilskin he wore over his other clothing, lurched across the deck to join him. He had been checking the depth-charges, making sure that the settings were correct. Fernie was also the captain of the quarterdeck, and knew every wire, shackle and rivet even in pitch darkness.

  He shouted above the din, “The bugger’ll dive soon, sir!”

  Bizley looked at him, thinking of his motor gunboat at times like these. Gladiator must be doing close on thirty knots despite the troughs and glittering patches of ice dashing past in the darkness. There was no other comparison but speed, and the wild excitement which churned at your insides like madness.

  “The U-Boat might be waiting for us—have you thought of that?”

  He did not hear Fernie’s answer, nor did he care. In the little MGB there had just been him and the skipper and a dozen men. Here, he had to wait for the order, chase up anyone who was slow off the mark.

  The crouching figure with the headset wedged beneath his hood yelled, “Load with semi-armour-piercing! X- and Y-guns train to Green four-five!”

  Bizley watched the two four-point-seven guns swinging round almost to their full extent even as the breeches opened and clicked shut like rifle bolts.

  The communications rating called, “Sub still on the surface, sir! We will alter course and engage to starboard!”

  Bizley thought, Well, that’s bloody obvious, surely? He snapped, “Tell the gunlayers to check their sights while there’s still time!”

  Fernie watched him in the gloom, his eyes raw with salt. This young officer was a hard one to know. He grinned to himself. If you wanted to know him. He seemed to know what he was doing, but might prove to be a real bastard when he thought he had the weight. Not like poor Mr Ayres. A nice chap, but handling seasoned hands amidst a mass of mooring wires when entering or leaving harbour was not his cup of tea. Especially with the old Gunner (T) fucking and blinding all the while.

  Bizley stared at the depth-charges right aft and recalled exactly when his MGB’s pattern had exploded. If he hadn’t ordered the float to be paddled away they would have gone up with them. It had become much clearer with each passing day and he could sense a sort of wary respect from some of the ship’s company. What would have been the point of dying? The boat had been done for. The skipper would never have made it anyway.

  Even Gladiator’s captain, a straight-ringed regular who would have seen any flaw in his personal report, seemed impressed, especially at the idea that a decoration might be considered.

  He thought of his father and mother, what they would say when he next saw them. His father was a local bank manager, at the same branch where Bizley himself would have ended up but for the war. Paying out cash to people who looked down on him, who were not fit to clean his shoes.

  A telephone handset buzzed in its metal box like a trapped insect and Bizley tore it out and covered his other ear with one hand.

  “Quarterdeck!”

  It was the first lieutenant. A man with no emotion, Bizley thought. The one person who had made him uneasy by asking, “Surely somebody ought to have set the depth-charges to safe when your boat bought it?” Not two officers sharing tea and a momentary break from watch-keeping. More like being in the dock, or how he imagined a court martial would be.

  “The U-Boat is diving. Stand by to engage!”

  Somewhere a thousand miles away a gong tinkled and instantly B-gun, which was immediately below the bridge, shot back on its springs, the jarring crash of the explosion making some of the new ratings squeak with alarm.

  Fernie barked, “Easy lads, that’ll be a starshell, you’ll see!” He glared at Bizley’s back. He should have told them, not leave everything to others.

  The bursting starshell made the seascape starkly beautiful, with patches of drifting fog breaking around the destroyer’s headlong charge, while the hard glare transformed the swell into moving banks of searing whiteness. Bizley felt the deck tilting over, and saw the sea clawing over the side as the wheel and rudder went over.

  He tried to hold his glasses steady while he clung to the safety rail with his spare hand. Just for a brief moment he held it in the powerful lens, before spray dashed over him and soaked him from head to foot.

  He didn’t know what he had expected. He had seen submarines alongside in Portsmouth, had even been over one when he was at school. Shining and purposeful within, and somehow placid-looking from the dockside, like basking whales.

  What he had just witnessed had been something so incredibly evil he had been shocked by his sudden fear. He had even seen the tell-tale burst of spray as she had vented her tanks and begun to dive.

  “Target bears Green four-oh! Range oh-one-two. Moving left to right!”

  The slender guns moved in unison and then settled.

/>   “Independent—commence!”

  “Fire!”

  Bizley gritted his teeth as both of the after-guns fired together, the shells tearing towards the starboard bow where he had briefly glimpsed the enemy. She would be submerged now, damaged or not.

  Again the guns roared out while from the bridge and pompom mounting the arching balls of livid red tracer floated away towards the U-Boat’s last position.

  Bizley thought wildly that it would only take a few cannon shells to destroy the periscopes and she would come foundering to the surface. With something like a great sigh of disappointment the revolutions began to fall away as the captain conned his ship at a more manageable speed in pursuit. Radar would give over to Asdic, the searching echo beneath the sea, like the stick of a blind man in a great empty room.

  Bizley heard the breech-blocks snapping shut again.

  “X- and Y-guns ready, sir!”

  Surely at this range the German captain could not get away? He must have imagined that the convoy’s escorts had closed in to protect the other ships. He stared at his crew of depth-charge handlers. “You, get ready to fire!” It was somehow characteristic of Bizley that he never bothered to learn the names of anybody but key ratings, or, of course, trouble makers.

  He could picture the U-Boat—the thing—diving steeply, her commander using every skill to shake off his pursuer, the eerie ping of the Asdic against his hull.

  Once the bridge have got a perfect position it will be left to me. Some new methods of firing depth-charges were coming off the blue prints, but for the most part these were the only ones in service.

  A pattern over the stern, rolled off like great dustbins, while two other sets were fired abeam even as another pattern was rolled over the stern. In theory and the classroom, the explosions should make one great diamond-shaped design which ought to surround the target and sink it or force it to the surface.

  A sudden explosion rolled across the water. Another ship torpedoed? Or the last one blowing up?

  Bizley knew each charge took its time to reach the set depth. Even now … He swung round. “What?”

  Fernie held out the handset and replied just as sharply, “Gunnery Officer, sir!”