Killing Ground Page 8

  He snatched it. “Bizley, sir.”

  Over the line Finlay’s Edinburgh accent was even stronger. “Keep your team on the jump, Sub. If the U-Boat comes up, I need to know wherever it is, right?”

  Bizley handed the big leading hand the instrument and said, half to himself, “I’m not a bloody child!”

  Fernie patted one of his men on the arm. “Could have fooled me, mate!” He gestured to the throwers. “I give it about half a minute.”

  The men peered at one another, their faces and scarves covered with frozen rime.

  “Done, Hookey! Gulpers at tot-time!”

  The communications rating shouted, “Continuous echo, sir!”

  “Fire!”

  Bizley ran to the guardrails and saw the port depth-charge flying lazily away, then it lost itself in a welter of spray. He knew without looking that a full pattern had rolled off the stern, and found he was trying to moisten the roof of his mouth, which felt like old leather. He stared as if mesmerised as a great column of spray shot from the sea astern, and the crack of explosions seemed to shake the ship from truck to keel, as if Gladiator and not the enemy was being torn apart.

  Fernie called hoarsely, “Come on, lads! Reload the throwers, chop, chop!”

  Bizley shouted, “Taken over, have you?”

  The big leading hand seized a stanchion for support as the deck tilted steeply once more. The ship had lost contact. The Old Man was going for another search.

  He took time to confront Bizley’s fury and thought of the pleasure it would give to poke him right in his stupid, arrogant puss.

  But he was a good leading seaman, and was hoping for a chance to rate petty officer. They at least had space to stretch their legs.

  He retorted, “We’re going in for another attack, sir. If we make a pass over the target with nothing to drop on ’em, it won’t be me what gets a bottle from the Old Man!”

  Bizley swung away. “Don’t be impertinent! I’ll be watching you!”

  The breechworker of Y-gun whispered sarcastically, “Don’t think ’e likes you, ’Ookey.”

  The deck swayed upright again and men peered at one another, breathless with all the heaving at tackles and struggling with the unwieldy charges.

  “Ready, sir!”

  “In contact, sir!” The man in the headset crouched like an athlete and tried not to think of the target as a form of warship, which contained men, Germans, who wanted to kill all of them.

  Minutes dragged by while the ship appeared to weave her own pattern through the sea, as if she and not her company was trying to sniff out her enemy.

  “Continuous echo, sir!”

  “Fire!”

  Someone broke free from the huddled group of figures by Y-gun’s open shield and ran to the guardrail.

  “We must have got it!” His voice was almost breaking. “She can’t have got away!”

  Fernie seized his arm as the great columns of water cascaded down and were soon swallowed up astern in Gladiator’s frothing wake.

  “Hold your noise, Croft!” He shook him and felt the complete lack of resistance. Just a kid; he had only been aboard since Leith. What a way to begin. He glanced at Bizley’s intent shape and hissed, “Don’t let him see you! Get back to your station!”

  Bizley shouted, “Next pattern!” He peered astern until his mind throbbed. But no slime-covered hull or bursting air-bubbles appeared. He glared angrily as one of his men fell sprawling while the deck lurched over in another violent turn.

  Perhaps the submarine had been sunk after all. He had seen on the charts that there were places where the depth was as much as two thousand fathoms. Even now, the enemy could be falling like a leaf in that perpetual darkness until the hull was crushed like a tin can, and their lives with it.

  “Lost contact, sir.”

  Bizley heard someone say wearily, “Gulpers, then?”

  But all he could see was the shadow in the depths.

  “Steady on zero-seven-zero, sir.”

  Howard peered down at the faintly glowing compass repeater. Every bone in his body seemed to be protesting at once, and he felt that if he stared into the darkness and thinning mist much longer he would go blind. He heard the regular ping of the Asdic and thought it was louder than usual. Mocking him as he took his ship this way and that in a careful search. The area was becoming larger every time. The U-Boat could be miles away right now, or licking its wounds in readiness for another attack.

  Howard realised that he had thought nothing about the convoy since he had seen the surfaced submarine, so black and stark in the drifting flare. He had heard the machine-gunners and pom-pom crews cursing and shouting as they poured tracer at the target even as she had begun to dive.

  The wildness of battle after all the frustration of convoy duty, seeing their helpless charges marked down time and time again.

  Howard lowered his head and felt his neck crack. “Alter course ten degrees to starboard.”

  Sweeney’s muffled voice came back; a man of endless patience.

  “Steady on zero-eight-zero, sir.”

  He heard Treherne’s clothing scrape over the chart table as he recorded this latest change of direction.

  What does he think? That I’m obsessed, unable to concentrate on anything else? It was probably what they all thought.

  A shadow moved from the bank of voicepipes and he heard Ayres say, “The first lieutenant reports, lost contact, sir.”

  “Tell him we’re not giving up!”

  Treherne straightened his back and hoped he had not forgotten to put some newly sharpened pencils in his coat. He had heard Ayres’s careful message and Howard’s abrasive retort.

  He means he’s not giving up. The thought troubled and impressed him.

  Treherne started as Howard remarked, “You know, Pilot, we’ve been fighting bloody U-Boats for two-and-a-half years now.”

  Treherne relaxed slightly. “God, is that all it is?”

  Howard shrugged his shoulders more deeply into his coat. “And that was the first one I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  To himself he added bitterly, And I lost it. Any moment now and we shall be recalled to the convoy. What was the point of …

  It was Marrack again, using the bridge speaker to save time.

  “In contact, sir! Bearing one-five-oh, moving slowly right to left!”

  Howard slid from his chair. “The crafty bastard! He’s crossing our stern, making a run for it!”

  “Hard a-starboard! Steady, steer one-five-oh!” He turned to Treherne even as the wheel went hard over. “Warn Bizley!”

  Again they tore through the uneasy water and dropped another full pattern of charges. Gladiator was doubling back on her tracks as the last towering columns fell back into the sea.

  “Slow ahead together!”

  A boatswain’s mate called, “Signal from commodore, sir. Rejoin without delay.”

  There was a far-off explosion. Yet another victim? Or the unknown ship that had blown up in the fog?

  Howard swung round. “What the hell are those men doing?” They were cheering, the voices ragged and partly lost in the sounds of the sea and the great thrashing screws.

  Treherne ran to the side and seized the screen with his gloved hands. “Oil, sir!” He cocked his head and sniffed like a hunting-dog. “You got him!”

  Howard stared at him blankly as his mind explored the pattern. “Perhaps—we’ll probably never know. Releasing oil is an old trick of theirs.”

  “No contact, sir!”

  The boatswain’s mate coughed nervously. “W/T office is waitin’, sir!”

  “Yes.” He thought about climbing into his chair but the effort was too much. “Reply. Am rejoining convoy. One U-Boat possibly sunk.”

  He heard Treherne rapping out the change of course and speed to the wheelhouse and said, “We can’t claim a kill, but it will give the others some comfort.”

  The U-Boat might still slip away, he thought. But it was already damaged, and would have a
hard time of it to reach port in Norway.

  Hitting back, instead of taking it all the time.

  It was what it was all about. He found that he was in his tall unsheltered chair again.

  Treherne said, “I’ll get some hot drinks laid on for the gun crews and watchkeepers.” He turned away, shaking his head. The captain was fast asleep.

  5 | Bright Face of Danger

  “AFTERNOON watch closed up at defence stations, sir.”

  Lieutenant Finlay nodded. “Very good.”

  The new watchkeepers moved restlessly, or glanced at one another as if to reassure themselves.

  The yeoman pointed over the screen and said to his youngest signalman, “Just you watch the commodore’s ship, see?” He saw the instant anxiety on the youth’s face and added abruptly, “I’m goin’ to th’ mess for some mungie—my guts are pleadin’ for grub!” He touched his arm. “Call if you need me.”

  Howard was moving along the port gratings, lifting his binoculars every so often, watching the convoy, his ship, and the faces around him. They had found the convoy in the early dawn, with the promised snow flurries outlining the bridge and gun mountings like pieces of a giant cake.

  He raised the glasses and studied the distant columns of ships, partly lost in the irregular flurries of snow. He had noticed the change in the pattern on the radar as soon as they had caught up. Two more ships gone; one, hit by the torpedo, had burst into flames and after losing steerage way had somehow collided with the American tanker John L. Morgan. It must have been an agonising decision for the commodore, to steam on and leave the entangled vessels blazing together in a single pyre until that last explosion they had heard when hunting the submarine. What a hideous way to die. One corvette had boldly attempted a rescue and pulled seventeen survivors from the blazing sea. It was not many for two such large ships.

  Someone handed him a mug of hot, sweet tea; so much sugar you could almost stand a spoon in it.

  He leaned over the littered chart table and massaged his tired eyes until they focussed properly.

  What had happened to the U-Boats? Was it possible, after all, that the one which had been damaged and then driven deep by Gladiator’s onslaught of depth-charges had been the only one close enough to shadow the convoy, and home others on to the precious targets?

  He tried to think like the U-Boat’s commander but found, not for the first time, that he could not. But he might, he just might have tossed caution aside when the fog had drifted protectively over the plodding columns of merchantmen, more afraid of missing the chance of a shot at them than of anything else.

  It was like the scales of justice, he thought vaguely. You added the pros and measured the cons against them.

  The commodore had decided to make his own judgement and altered course east-southeast sooner than expected. It would cut a day off their final passage, and if the U-Boats were elsewhere, there might still be a few odds in their favour.

  He straightened his back and looked at the sky, knowing the young signalman was watching him despite the yeoman’s advice.

  A strange day. The sky was full of low cloud and the snow still swirled over the bridge, making the nearest ships difficult to recognise. That was good. Beyond the clouds he could see lighter, brighter patches, as if the sun might try to break through. He smiled grimly. That was bad.

  What a barren place. It was impossible to see it set against all the other war fronts. Here, they were totally isolated and alone. Going on and on, with nothing gained by previous Russian convoys to offer even a hint of encouragement.

  He wondered how his father was making out in the little house in Hampshire. Even if he owned a car, the petrol ration would have been denied him. There were the local village shops, of course, but if he had swallowed his pride he could have visited one of the several naval establishments. There was one situated quite near, well outside the tempting target of Portsmouth, where he would surely have been offered some extra rations. No, he was not the type.

  Howard’s mother had died immediately after the Great War from the devastating flu epidemic which had followed the Armistice. He could remember little more than a shadow of her now. His brother, Robert, three years his senior, had often tried to describe her to him; instead she had become even more of a stranger.

  Robert was an acting-commander now, on a course in Portland before being offered one of the new escorts, as second-in-command of a whole group. He would likely have found a billet nearby for his wife Lilian. That would mean the Guvnor, as they called their father, was all on his own. Unless … There had been another woman after their mother had died; maybe more than one. It was like entering the Navy in this family, he thought; you never really questioned it.

  In his mind he could see him now. So different from here. Spring over Portsdown Hill and in the many villages lying off the Portsmouth Road which sailors had used for centuries.

  The Guvnor had lost himself in his garden, digging for victory, so that he was almost self-supporting. What he did not need he shared with his old chum, Mister Mills. Howard could never recall his being called by any other name. An army veteran from that other terrible war, who nearly caused a riot in their quiet village by running the engine of his little van on Armistice Day while everyone else stood in respectful silence, heads bared, faces sad.

  When someone had accused him of insulting the dead, Mister Mills, not a big man, had seized him by his lapels and had retorted hotly, “What d’you know, eh? An’ what do all those po-faced hypocrites know? You bloody well tell me that!”

  He had served in Flanders, the Menin Gate, the lot. He knew well enough. They made a strange but companionable pair, Howard thought.

  A voicepipe muttered tinnily and Sub-Lieutenant Bizley snapped, “Forebridge?”

  Howard paused with an unfilled pipe half drawn from his duffle coat pocket. It was amazing how the past few days had changed Bizley in some way. Tougher, more confident, and yet …

  Bizley faced him, his face and eyebrows wet with dissolving snow.

  “W/T, sir. From Admiralty, Most Immediate. A large enemy surface unit has left Tromsø, heading West.”

  Howard returned to the chart and remarked, “Not many other ways they could go, I’d have thought.” It gave him precious seconds to think, to escape their eyes as they listened to Bizley’s clipped voice.

  “When? Does it say?”

  He pictured the other escort skippers like himself, the big Canadian in his Tribal Class Beothuck, Spike Colvin in their sister-ship Ganymede, all studying their charts, measuring the distances, weighing the chances.

  Bizley returned from the voicepipe. “Not known, sir.”

  Howard stared at the jagged outline of Norway’s northwest coast. The big warships had often used the Tromsø anchorage, Scharnhorst and Hipper, even the biggest of them all, Bismarck. It made good sense because of the heavily defended airfield there.

  Perhaps this was the moment the Home Fleet had been anticipating, and their own heavy units were already smashing through the Arctic waters to seek out the enemy, cut them off from their base.

  Over his shoulder he said, “Call Pilot to the bridge, Sub.”

  What men had braved capture and torture to provide this piece of intelligence? But where free people were oppressed, there would always be the brave few to outshine the collaborators and the black marketeers.

  “Sir?” Treherne’s heavy boots thudded across the bridge while he brushed some biscuit crumbs from his beard. He listened to Howard’s news and said, “I think we’ve slipped past the U-Boats, sir. The one we put down—” he grinned at Howard’s frown, “but can’t ‘claim’ must have been the only boat close enough to matter.” His grin vanished. “As to this signal of joy from the Admiralty—well, we were sort of expecting it.”

  Howard shrugged. Treherne was never afraid to speak his mind, to admit if he was wrong. Marrack was an excellent first lieutenant, but you could never imagine him admitting being wrong about anything.

  “The
Russians are supposed to be sending additional support for the last part of the trip.” He saw the scepticism in Treherne’s eyes and added, “But we have to be prepared to crack it on alone. We’re in range of enemy aircraft all the rest of the way now, and tomorrow the Home Fleet will begin to withdraw.”

  Treherne grimaced. “Poor old Jack. Pull up the ladder, as usual!” He saw a shaft of hard sunlight lance off the gyrocompass and looked at the sky. “All we have going for us is that we’ve lost them. So far.”

  Howard stared ahead towards the elegant Lord Martineau, but the commodore’s ship was still invisible.

  Aloud he said slowly, “The Boss knows a thing or two. But being blown up makes you careful.”

  Treherne eyed him wryly. “Also, sir, despite the RNR handle, he’s still a merchant navy man at heart!”

  The yeoman climbed on to the bridge and banged his gloved hands together. He studied the young signalman and said angrily, “What did I tell you afore I went for some grub, Rosie?”

  Howard turned aside to look at him and saw the youth staring over the screen, just as the starboard lookout reached the end of his own sector.

  Ordinary Signalman Rosie Lee was almost incapable of speech, let alone the words of identification he had learned since he had completed his training. He pointed blindly and gasped, “There!” He swung round and looked at his captain and repeated, “There, sir!”

  Howard realised that it was the same signalman who had reported that other aircraft, the one that had directed the U-Boats. Even as he thought about it the starboard lookout swivelled his powerful glasses on their mounting and shouted, “Aircraft, sir! Bearing Green eight-oh, angle of sight three-oh, movin’ right to left!”

  Every man squinted into the patch of hard light where the reflected sky gave the sea its only pretence of warmth.

  Howard found it as it flew, so very slowly; or so it appeared on a parallel track, like some huge disinterested bird.

  He said, “Signal the commodore.” Howard kept his words to a minimum so there would be no hint of despair. They had got this far, and had lost only three of their charges. Until now.