by James Philip
If the idiots had stopped to think they might have realised that two or three rounds pumped into the unmissable hulk of the Clemenceau, anchored barely two hundred metres off shore, might easily have set the carrier on fire and left her a burning wreck. Likewise, the thin-skinned destroyers moored nose to stern in the northern part of the anchorage would have been susceptible to crippling damage even by the 20-millimetre anti-aircraft cannons mounted on a couple of the Revolutionary Guards’ lorries. However, true to form the numskulls had just blasted away at the biggest, toughest ship in the bay instead of doing the logical thing; running away to fight another day.
Not that Rene Leguay was complaining.
For all its faults, his plan could not have worked any better; in drawing the fools’ fire onto the Jean Bart – on which the majority of his people were safe behind virtually impenetrable cemented armour – he had minimised the fleet’s casualties and ensured that perhaps, two-thirds or more of the FI’s bully boys had been blown to pieces on the corniche or drowned in the cold waters around the flagship.
In total, there had been less than a dozen casualties – none fatal – on all of the other ships combined. Inevitably, Jean Bart had not been so fortunate, suffering seventeen dead and fifty-one wounded, including many with injuries which still threatened their lives.
Most of the battleship’s casualties had been manning or sheltering in the lightly-skinned gun houses of the Jean Bart’s 100-millimetre 55-calibre, or 57-millimetre 60-calibre anti-aircraft batteries. What little available ammunition on board had been transferred to two of the 100-millimetre and three of the port 57-millimetre mounts, all of which had shot themselves dry inside two to three minutes. So, notwithstanding that from a distance the Flagship seemed to bristle with 100- and 57-millimetre anti-aircraft cannons, it was now completely defenceless against air attack.
Warned that the gun houses of the smaller calibre weapons offered little protection from anything but infantry weapons, people caught topsides, or drawn to the upper decks through curiosity – or more likely, just wanting to see the hated Revolutionary Guards blown to smithereens by the ship’s big guns – had had nowhere else to hide when the enemy’s 75-millimetre anti-tank rounds, and heavy machine gun fire had started coming inboard.
Sadly, several people had been killed and injured on the bridge, watching the battle from the open wing of the compass platform.
Back in November 1942, when the Jean Bart had been moored at Vichy-controlled Casablanca, still fitting out, she had been struck by as many as seven 16-inch rounds fired by the USS Massachusetts – not to mention at least two bombs by US Navy dive bombers – and although ‘sunk’, in that she settled on the shallow, muddy bottom of the harbour alongside the dock, not one of the one-ton American shells had penetrated her main belt, or deck armour.
Knowing this, it was hardly to be wondered at that the relatively small-calibre artillery and anti-tank guns of the Revolutionary Guards – even shooting over open sights at very close range – had failed to strike a single telling blow.
From his low but unrestricted vantage point in the stern of the Clemenceau’s captain’s barge – practically all of the Jean Bart’s boats had been destroyed in the battle - Rene Leguay had counted at least a dozen hits, none of which had so much as dented the castle of steel’s outer shell. Unfortunately, the damage above the great armoured raft around which the rest of the ship had been built, was painfully obvious, even from a distance. The 75-millimetre shells and countless cannon and machine-gun rounds which had peppered the bridge, and raked the amidships superstructure, had made quite a mess and started several small fires. As the barge had approached the irregularly mottled flank of the leviathan, Leguay identified where stray projectiles of several calibres had bounced off the two giant, quadruple-barrel main battery turrets forward of the bridge, and aft of the superstructure, the port and central triple 152-millimetre secondary turrets.
He could see daylight through the big, ugly hole in the funnel. Men were still aloft trying to reconnect severed connections to the main mast radio and radar aerials. Incidentally, he was able to confirm with his own eyes the report that a direct hit had disabled the port boat crane; this at least was a thing he could afford to be sanguine about since most of his flagship’s boats were splintered driftwood…
In his exhausted, pain-wracked condition the gangway steps were a sore trial to him.
Eventually, reaching the brow, soaked in sweat and trembling with exertion, he straightened to his best ability and saluted the officer of the deck, a weary, stern-faced matron wearing an Engineering Committee armband at her left bicep over a greasy grey boiler suit. In common with his welcome on board all the other ships of the Villefranche Squadron, his orders to the effect that he did not wish to be ceremonially piped on and off deck, had been signally ignored.
Aurélie Faure had assured him this was a personal compliment to him from the crews of his fleet. The action of two nights ago was a defiant blow that every single man, woman and child of the squadron had been aching to strike. During his day-long tour of the fleet, on each ship the people evacuated from houses and streets destroyed by the Revolutionary Guards and in the subsequent battle, had surrounded Leguay and his ever-present companion. But for Aurélie’s warning frowns and unashamedly possessive demeanour, they would have slapped his back and mobbed him so enthusiastically that his wounds might have split open, and given the severity of his wounds it was not beyond the bounds of possibility he that he could easily have bled to death on the deck of one of the warships; not a very dignified way for a hero to exit stage left!
“It is good to have you back on board, Mon Amiral,” the matronly engineer – strictly speaking, only an artificer under training in the bowels of the monster – but today, like everybody else, called upon to do whatever needed to be done and thus, finding herself officer of the deck at the gangway.
The woman was clearly immensely proud to be the one with the honour of welcoming her Amiral back onto the flagship.
Indeed, it was a funny old world…
Yesterday, notwithstanding the chaotic aftermath of the previous night’s desperate battle, the oiler La Seine had edged alongside the Jean Bart’s undamaged starboard side and taken aboard two-thirds of the flagship’s bunker oil, some twelve hundred tons, just enough tonnage to re-invigorate the rest of the fleet.
All the big ships in the anchorage bar the old cruiser, the Jeanne d’Arc, had managed to light off boilers, and to turn at least one of their screws. Now thin, grubby flutes of greyly translucent, shimmering smoke rose into the oddly still winter air above the other warships. The bay was again a scene of purposeful activity, with several patrol boats, ship’s launches and fishing craft moving between the ships transferring personnel, shifting scarce stores and ammunition. Deeper into the bay La Seine, high on her load markings again having swiftly emptied all but the dregs from her bunkers was in the process of being lashed alongside the Jeanne d’Arc.
The Fleet had to escape Villefranche: the great natural anchorage had been its haven; at any moment it could become its prison and then its graveyard.
Privately, Rene Leguay was amazed that the FI had already granted him further two priceless days grace.
Even so, everything seemed to take so damned long…
That night the oiler would slowly drag the Jeanne d’Arc close to the Jean Bart so that a tow line could be carried across…
“You need to lie down, Mon Amiral,” Aurélie commanded, her tone betraying that she knew, unlike most of their people that their admiral had been much more badly injured than they had known, or he was prepared to admit, in the battle. Only hours before his tour of the fleet a further, agonising surgery had been carried out to remove several further shards of detritus, shrapnel imbedded in his lower back. That seemed to have gone well but Rene Leguay had been as weak as a child in the following hours and was, even now, fortified by stupidly reckless doses of Benzedrine and Codeine, practically out on his feet.
/> Rene had been on the verge of collapse more than once that afternoon as he conducted one, agonising visit after another to his ships. Twice, at Aurélie’s insistence, ignoring his feeble protests, they had had to take him out of sight, and hastily re-bandage his seeping wounds. Presently, he was ashen grey and fatigued beyond measure…
Standing, swaying on the deck of his flagship, Leguay realised belatedly that the only reason he was still on his feet, was that Aurélie had put her arm around his waist and he was leaning on her.
“Help me!” She called desperately; afraid he was going to pass out and, in a moment strong, gentle hands took the load.
Presently, Rene Leguay was laid, with strange tenderness on his lightly injured left side on the big bunk in the Admiral’s day cabin beneath the quarterdeck.
“I have things to do,” he protested, impotently, his words slurring.
“Sleep a couple of hours first,” his anxiously watchful personal angel of mercy declared implacably. “I’ve sent for the surgeon to check your dressings. Keep still, man!”
In truth, by then Rene Leguay needed no encouragement to lie still, unmoving: it hurt a lot less than any of the other alternatives. Aurélie had moved behind him, her hands cautiously exploring his clumsily stitched gashes. Her tender touch seemed to make the aching go away…
“How is our Russian friend?” Leguay asked when the Jean Bart’s exhausted surgeon arrived.
“Capitaine Kolokoltsev is very unwell. He’s feverish. I’m sorry, there is not much I can do for him, sir. He needs anti-biotics and much more intensive care than we can give him.” The other man apologised before, with a contemplative hesitation, he collected his courage. “You should be in the sick bay with him, Mon Amiral!”
Leguay protested feebly when the much younger man dug a small bottle of pills out of his pocket.
“These will help with the pain…”
“I thought we were out of morphine?”
“The Clemenceau sent over everything left in her medical locker.” He must have looked to Aurélie Faure for support at this moment. “These will help you keep going…”
Leguay swallowed a couple of the pills, washed them down with brackish water from a cup Aurélie had to hold to his lips, and then he slept, painless in an opiate-induced oblivion.
Serge Benois, the battleship’s greying Gunnery Officer, and by default, the Jean Bart’s second-in-command, reported to the cabin about an hour-and-a-half later. He took off his cap, wiped his hands on his slacks.
“How is he?” He asked, nodding stoically to the unconscious fleet commander in the gloom of the big cabin lit by a single dull bulb near the hatch.
Aurélie vented a shuddering sigh, thankful that Serge Benois was one of the few people in the fleet with whom she could be honest.
“He badly needs to rest. I don’t know how he got through today,” the woman replied, not attempting to conceal her angst. “I really don’t know…I thought he would collapse a hundred times…”
Tears trickled down her pale cheeks.
She sniffed, a little ashamed of her weakness.
The man patted her arm, nodding paternally.
“Look,” he guffawed quietly, sighed. “I ended up on the Jean Bart because it was the only place in the Navy a drunk like me could go on drinking himself to death without doing any damage.” At this point Serge Benois grimaced, chuckling lowly, self-effacingly. “Then I met him,” he declared. “I thought he was just another FI shit from Toulon. A week later he threw me in the brig to sober up for a couple of days, then he had me brought to this cabin.”
The flagship’s second-in-command grinned.
“‘I plan to save this fleet’,” he said to me. “That was the day he threw a couple of those fucking pimps over the side,” Benois smiled ruefully. “Remember that?”
Aurélie blinked at him.
She had no idea where this was going…
“Yes,” she agreed, “that was a good day.”
The man shrugged: “Sorry, I know you had a hard time when you first came on board…”
Aurélie knew the man had not meant to remind her how she had inveigled her way on board the battleship. Or that, when Rene had first come to Villefranche, she had still been at the mercy of the Jean Bart’s gangsters and pimps.
“That was the day things started getting better,” she smiled, tight-lipped.
The lined, prematurely aged Gunnery Officer glanced again at the unconscious form of the one man at Villefranche under whom, all the disparate elements crewing the ships of the ghost fleet could, and thus far, had loyally coalesced.
He chortled gruffly.
“He said to me: ‘Serge, the people in Toulon are shits and our Front Internationale comrades in the Auvergne are fucking lunatics. One way or another we have to save the fleet. Do you think you can stay sober long enough to help me?’ And here we are. Still, more or less alive.” He looked to the woman. “So, just so you know, you’re not the only one on this ship, or in this fleet, who loves the Old Man.”
Aurélie allowed Serge Benois to wrap her in a fatherly embrace; having sobbed on his shoulder for a few restorative seconds she swiftly recovered her composure.
“Let him sleep,” the man murmured. He straightened, visibly focused on the business of the moment. “There are things le Amiral will need to know when he comes to,” he prefaced. “Shipboard status: he’ll have seen that the old girl looks a bit worse for wear topsides; but most of the damage is superficial. Basically, repairs are in hand and our people are doing their best; I’ve prioritised re-stringing the main mast aerials so we’ve got a working FM short-range ship-to-ship comms system again. Otherwise, things on board are as under control as they are ever going to be. Number One main battery turret: we’ve finally got all four big guns loaded again. Between you and me I’ve got no idea if the turret will traverse, or how fast, the next time we hit the switch.” He grinned, piratically and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “On the bright side; while we’re at anchor the big guns are pointed in more or less the right direction. What is it they say about being thankful for small mercies?”
Aurélie Faure had snatched up a notepad, her pencil scratched urgently.
“The surgeon told you about the Clemenceau suddenly discovering a locker full of drugs?” She checked.
The man nodded.
“Better late than never.”
“It is good that everybody is pulling together, Serge,” Aurélie retorted mildly
“I suppose so.” Having come to report the general status of the ship he got on with it. “We still have about six hundred and some tons of oil in the bunkers. That is enough to get us out into the Mediterranean and a couple of hundred miles from shore. Regrettably, nowhere near enough to get to Malta, or Gibraltar, and we don’t want to go anywhere near the Spanish. I suppose Genoa is an option. Those bastards on Corsica would feed us all to the fishes…”
Aurélie stopped scribbling and gave him an impatient look, reminding him that he needed to deliver the rest of his report, if she was to properly inform the Fleet Commander when he awakened from his drug-induced slumber.
“Sorry. I’m still hopeful we can bring Number Three 152-millimetre turret back into service.” He considered this, counting in his head. “We’ve got about fifteen reloads per barrel for the secondaries. The De Grasse and most of the destroyers have still got bullets in their magazines but like us, not very many of them. So, even after the other day’s fight, we’re not completely defenceless. Except against air attack, that is. In that regard, I’ve got people working to bring the air search radar on the fighting top back on line. That’s no use to us in harbour but out at sea it might give us a few minutes warning of trouble.” He changed the subject. “Rations. With several hundred more civilian mouths to feed that’s going to be a problem in two or three days from now. There’s resistance on some of the ships to sharing their rations, although Amiral Leguay’s order for the flagship’s stores to be opened to the rest of the fleet has
temporarily taken the sting out of that for now. La Seine’s skipper is hoping to start moving the Jeanne d’Arc sometime in the next hour or so. The Chief is getting ready to turn our screws just in case it looks like we’re going to get rammed. On that subject, I’m fairly confident that we can manoeuvre if and when required. Not very fast, obviously, but we can probably move at about an hour’s notice. Most of the other ships are hoping to be ready to move sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”
Serge Benois sighed, continued soberly.
“Once we pass a line to the Jeanne d’Arc her deadweight is liable to make us drag our anchors. We may have no choice but to tow her out to sea if that happens.”
“Why can’t she anchor?” Aurélie asked brusquely, grimacing apologetically for her flash of impatience the next moment.
Serge Benois had not taken offence.
“She’s going to have to cut her forward chains. Everything’s seized up. Her capstan motor is a rusted heap of junk.”
“Okay,” the woman murmured, realising that she should have just listened in the first place.
Serge Benois ran a grimy hand through his thinning hair.
“Le Amiral is right about us having to get out of here in a hurry. The bastards have got two, maybe three submarines at Toulon, or wherever the Hell they’ve hidden them away the last few years. All they have to do is put them off the entrance to the bay and we’re not going anywhere. Then they can starve us out, mortar or shell us twenty-four hours a day from the hills, or more likely the other side of the hills hereabouts, or try what they tried the other night, except plan it properly next time…”