“To Warlock, sir. From Lomond. “The signalman cursed as a spent bullet, clanged against the bridge and whimpered plaintively over the other side. “Assist Whirlpool immediately. Remainder form column on me. “
Ventnor was already altering course to join with Lomond and the other ships.
Whirlpool was maintaining a good speed, despite her lethal cargo of mines.
Drummond wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Acknowledge. Pilot, take her round to join Whirlpool. ” God, he felt raw from noise and shouting. Even from thinking.
“Signalman. Make to Whirlpool. I am coming to join your party. ,
Poor old Mark Kydd. It might cheer him up. “Aircraft, sir! Green one-one-zero!”
“Two of the bastards” Wingate cradled his good arm round the voice-pipes.
Very low this time, the bombers swept purposefully towards the scattered formation of ships.
“Barrage commence … commence!”
Warlock’s guns were joining in, trying to maintain a tentshaped area of exploding metal.
“Bombs coming down!”
There was a great sigh from somebody as two bombs burst alongside the crippled Whiplash. Her companion had been about to draw alongside to fire heaving lines across, but was now churning away, trying to give cover, to defend herself at the same time. Great shooting columns of water were all around and amongst the ships, and the sky was almost blotted out by shellbursts.
The second bomber droned steadily above its own reflection, the machine gunners spraying the ships as they pressed on. Drummond saw cannon shells from Victor’s Oerlikons rip
ping through the Junkers’ belly like claws, saw her falter and then plunge headlong. A cheer from B gun changed into a groan as the bomber crashed into the unmoving destroyer in a great fan-shaped curtain of fire.
“From Lomond, sir. Recover survivors if possible. Repeat if possible. “
Wingate said thickly, “Christ, what a foul-up!”
Drummond looked at him. “Tell Number One to prepare scrambling nets. Warn the doctor. This will have to be done rather smartly.”
Relieved of her earlier task, the Victor was already turning away to take station on the flotilla leader with Ventnor. They were all firing, so could probably see the remaining aircraft beyond the edge of the smoke-screen.
“Slow ahead both engines.”
Drummond watched the listing destroyer as she settled down more deliberately, half of her completely engulfed in flame. In the shattered bomber he saw an airman trying to get out. Like a trapped fly. He vanished in one great ball of flame.
“Stop engines.”
He heard voices yelling in the sudden quiet, the clatter of ropes and other gear as the deck party lowered the nets along side.
The stench and heat were overpowering, and the other destroyer was still fifty yards away.
A few survivors were swimming towards the side, others floated motionless, too dazed to help themselves.
Lyngstad said, “We are clear of the minefield now.”
As if it matters. Aloud he replied, “Thank you.”
He looked for Lomond and her consorts, and saw that they were already moving away in a small, tight line, the distance between them and his own ship growing more apparent with every second.
He listened to the coughing, retching figures who were being hauled aboard on either side. The yells of encouragement from gun crews, who moments earlier had been too stunned by noise and danger to take their eyes from their weapons. “Come on, mate! Grab ‘old of this then!”
Lyngstad said slowly, “She may take hours to sink completely.”
Drummond tried to freshen his mind. He knew what the Norwegian had implied, but it took time to put thought into action.
“Yes. Commander Cromwell may not have destroyed his secret orders.” He swung round. “Tell the torpedo gunner’s mate to prepare one fish. Right now!”
They were all too shocked to move in sequence. He saw Sheridan on top of the port ladder by the gate. Like Frank had been when the shells had cut him down.
“Well?”
Sheridan stared at him, surprised by the edge in his tone.
He said, “Can’t reach any more of them. There’s burning fuel on the other side of Whiplash. It could reach round here in minutes. “
Drummond ignored him.
“Slow ahead together.”
He waited, seeing the blazing wreck swinging slightly across his bows, tasting the stench, the misery. A ship like his own. Dying.
“Stop engines.” He turned and eyed Sheridan’s smokeblackened face. “Are you still here?”
“But this is madness, sir!” The words seemed to pour out of him. “The enemy will have a whole strike force of destroyers here at any moment. Bombers, too! All this is a waste of bloody time!” His arm waved above the screen, as if to encompass the burning ship and everything else. “What’s the use of making a senseless, selfish gesture?”
Drummond replied, “They don’t think it’s senseless.” Then he turned sharply, his voice like ice. “So get down there and help those poor bastards aboard! It’ll probably be your turn in a moment, and then you’ll know what it’s like to see your friends leaving you to fry!”
He knew Sheridan had left the bridge, but was almost blind with anger and despair. He felt Lyngstad touching his arm, his voice calm and steady.
“Easy, Captain. Give yourself time. “
He looked at him. “Time?” He smiled, the effort painful. “I don’t think that the choice is mine.”
“Torpedo ready, sir.”
“Very well.”
Hillier called, “They’ve picked up Whiplash’s commanding officer, sir. ” He was hanging over the screen, his hair steaming from the great heat across the strip of littered water.
“Send help for him.”
Drummond gripped the rail until the pain steadied him. He will want to come up here. He knows.
The other captain was a reservist like Selkirk. A merchant sailor who had found a place in war.
He was half carried up the internal ladder by the S.B.A. and a seaman. He was soaked in oil-scum and sea water, and there was dark red blood over his legs, mingling with the fuel.
Drummond helped to ease him into the bridge chair.
“Hello, Charles.” He looked at the S.B.A. “See what you can do.”
Cromwell groaned and tried to sit upright, the pain returning to freeze him motionless.
He gasped, “Sorry about this, Keith. But we did it. We hit the buggers, eh?”
The S.B.A. insisted, “I’ll have to get him below, sir.”
Cromwell shook his head. “Too late. Done for.” He coughed and more blood ran over his chin. “Put her down, Keith. For God’s sake, don’t let her lie there like that!”
Drummond looked at Wingate. The lieutenant said thickly, “Picked up everyone we could get near, sir. “
“Yes. Slow astern together. ” He waited, sensing the pain all around him. “Port fifteen.”
Cromwell was saying wearily, “My number one bought it. Lot of others, too.”
“Stop together.” Drummond wiped his eyes again, watching the other ship falling away as Warlock thrashed clear. “Fire torpedo.”
He felt the slight shudder as the torpedo leapt from its tube and started to cut through the oily water like a snake.
“Hard a-starboard. Full ahead together.”
Cromwell said desperately, “Lift me up!” He was scrabbling at the rail, his hands leaving stains of oil and blood.
The explosion rocked the hull as Warlock gathered way, her wash churning aside some wreckage and a few bobbing corpses.
Cromwell opened his mouth as if to shout, a last word perhaps. But his head fell forward and he said nothing.
The S.B.A. beckoned to his stretcher party. “Dead.” “Course to steer is three-three-five. ” Wingate watched as the dead man was taken from the bridge.
Drummond felt for his pipe. Ahead, through the thinning smoke, he could
just see Whirlpool, getting closer as his own ship reduced the lead she had just made. When he glanced astern the other one had sunk.
He felt very cold and sick. Two down. Five to go.
Sheridan had returned to the bridge. “We picked up fifty, sir.” He looked round as if expecting to see Cromwell. “I’ve put most of them in the wardroom. There’s no more space. “
“Now go down to the messdecks and see how the repairs are coming along.,”
Over the rear of the bridge screen he saw Sub-Lieutenant Tyson crouching beside the pom-pom platform. He was wearing a steel helmet, and seemed about to be sick.
He wondered vaguely how Keyes was managing, and Galbraith. All of them.
Wingate said, “Must have really caught them on the hop. We’re building up a bit of distance.” He did not sound very convinced.
The signalman called, “From Lomond, sir. Keep closed up on me.”
“Acknowledge.”
Wingate raised his eyebrows. “But we’re going all out now, sir. I’ve never known the old girl move like this.”
“I know. ” And Beaumont knows it, too. He’s just got to say something. To show his control. “But we’ll keep with Whirlpool as originally ordered.” He trained his glasses on the other destroyer’s racks of mines. “He will have to dump those anyway. ,
There was a drawn-out whistle and then a violent explosion, the sea bursting upwards within half a cable of the port side. “What the hell?”
Drummond crunched over broken glass to peer abeam. But the smoke was still too thick to ee anything. One shell, medium size. Fired blind perhaps.
Perhaps Sheridan was nearer the truth than he knew. Enemy surface ships from Altenfjord or Narvik, or an incoming patrol, It might even be Beaumont’s Moltke. Up here amongst them to settle the vendetta once and for all.
He knew he was dangerously near to laughing. Or weeping. “Tell Guns. No shooting until I say the word. Make a general signal to the flotilla. ” He was straining his eyes, willing himself to see through the smoke. “Am being fired on from south west. “
He heard it coming again. Whooooosh-Bang! The waterspout was no nearer.
Lyngstad said quickly, “I think it must be a patrol from outside the minefield. Older destroyers for the most part.” “Like us.” Drummond winced as a third shell detonated
astern of Whirlpool, deluging her quarterdeck in spray. “From Lomond, sir. Close on me. Whirlpool will discharge mines forthwith. “
Hillier asked, “What does it mean?”
Wingate was leaning painfully on his chart table. “Captain Beaumont intends to leave a small field of mines to delay
pursuit.” His eyes were hard as he looked up. “Right, sir?” “Yes. “
Drummond saw the frantic activity on Whirlpool’s decks, the falling away of her wash as she reduced to a safer speed for laying the mines.
“Ship at Red one-five-oh! Range oh-six-two!” Drummond said sharply, “Open fire!”
He saw the V-shaped cleft in the drifting wall of smoke which had been made either by a freak down-draught or some new off-shore wind. Through it, almost end-on, was the other ship.
Chunky, low-lying, and firing again, even as he watched. “Shoot!”
The jumbled voices across the intercom were drowned by the two aftermost guns firing together.
Drummond shouted, “Make to Whirlpool. Get rid of those mines now!”
A shell rumbled over the bridge like an express train and burst far away in the smoke left by the fading screen.
“Port ten!” Drummond gritted his teeth. “Midships.” He had to give the two forward guns a chance to bear on the target. Whooooosh Bang!
Splinters clinked on the deck, and one struck the motor boat with the sound of an axe.
Wingate called, “The first mine has been dropped, sir!”
Whirlpool had altered course, exposing her full broadside as she steamed at right angles to Beaumont’s little column. Splash. Another mine dipped and then vanished in Whirlpool’s wake.
“From Lomond, sir. Repeat. Close on me. “
They were all looking at him.
He said, “Disregard that signal.”
A shell exploded between the two destroyers, and seconds later Drummond saw several dead fish float to the surface.
“Shoot!”
Somebody yelled. “A hit!”
A bright orange eye showed itself in the centre of the other vessel’s low outline and then disappeared.
The mines were dropping from the little rails more rapidly now. The seamen had obviously been trained very well.
Just a few left and then…
Wingate said, “It might cause a delay, I suppose.” He looked at Hillier and added wearily, “I know. I just said that. “
Then came the explosion. It must have been heard for many miles. The great red glow which fanned out and surrounded the Whirlpool had such intensity and span that it looked like a hill of glowing lava.
When it had finally subsided there was nothing of the other ship to be seen.
Drummond felt the bridge closing in on him, crushing the life out of his body, his mind.
He said slowly, “Make a signal to Lomond. ” He stared at the churning patch of water until his eyes streamed. The shell must have burst amongst the last few mines. She had disintegrated. As if she had never been.
The signalman was staring at him. “Sir?”
“Say, mines laid as ordered. Warlock is rejoining you now. Wingate said shakily, “That’s it then.”
“Yes.” Drummond slipped on to his chair, not seeing the other captain’s blood. Not really seeing anything. “It certainly looks like it, Pilot.”
Within an hour of Whirlpool’s violent end there were two more air attacks.
At full speed, zigzagging as they had not done for many
years, with total disregard for safety-gauges and hull strain, the four surviving destroyers had fought back. Time had become meaningless, distance measured only by the span of a gunsight, the closeness of a bomb burst.
Victor and Ventnor shared a bomber between them. Lomond sent another racing for the Norwegian coast with a long trailer of smoke behind it.
And then, quite suddenly, it was over. Finished.
Drummond clung to the side of his chair, the tinny echo of the cease-fire gong still in his ears as he stared over the screen towards the other ships. Battered maybe, and each with her share of wounded, but there were still four of them.
He thought of Whirlpool, of Kydd’s face at the meeting when he had been told about the mines.
He walked slowly to the rear of the bridge, surprised that he could move without the chair’s support. Of the land there was no sign, and only a dull smudge along the blurred horizon showed the extent of the fight, and the cost to both sides.
The bodies had all gone from the bridge, and he realised dully that they must have been taken below during the ceaseless din of gunfire and barking anti-aircraft weapons. Tucker’s cap lay in a corner, his old brass telescope nearby. It was unbroken.
“From Lomond, sir. Reduce to cruising speed. “
“Acknowledge. “
He glanced at the navigator who was sitting on his chart table, his arm-sling very clean against his leather jacket.
“Did you hear that, Pilot?”
Wingate nodded. “Yes, sir.” He moved to the voice-pipe. “Half ahead together.”
Feet moved on a ladder and Vaughan appeared in their midst. He was hatless, and his white coat was spotted with blood. Like a butcher’s. He removed his rimless glasses and blinked at Drummond.
“Another has died, sir. ” He shrugged. “Did all I could. ” He looked at the sea, realising that there was no enemy. No land either. “What happened?”
Drummond eased his shoulders. He felt filthy and dead-beat. His mind simply would not react beyond simple matters of duty.
He said, “It worked, Doc. Caught them completely by surprise. I’m sure there must have been other reasons, but surprise
was one.” He thought of those who had been left behind, and of the gallant Norwegians. Of Archer, a man who had risked so much to make the raid a reality. “And courage.”
Wingate said, “There’s a long way yet, sir. We may be running head-on into a whole Jerry squadron!”
Hillier grimaced. “D’you know something? I think my ribs are cracked. ” He looked so stunned that even Vaughan smiled.
“Take your coat off. Let me have a look.”
Drummond turned away, brushing unseeingly against a lookout who was resting his elbows on the stained metal to keep his binoculars level. Below the bridge he heard the scrape and clang of metal as the guns’ crews cleared up the mess of empty cases and checked over their weapons for the next attack. They could not take much more. If another ship were to be sunk, the remainder would be unable to support each other. Perhaps that was what the enemy was trying to do. He stopped his racing thoughts with something like physical effort. The enemy was not a master-brain. It was people. Like himself and Wingate, Beaumont and Admiral Brooks. They could not always be perfect. Ready for everything.
Sheridan climbed up to his side on the gratings. He did not look at him as he’ reported, “The splinter holes are plugged as best we could manage, sir. The buffer’s party are going round the rest of the lower hull now. “
“Thanks, Number One.” He watched his profile. “What about you?”
Sheridan replied flatly, “I’m all right, sir. Glad we’re getting away from the land. Away from all that”-he shuddered, despite his heavy coat-“that bloody hell.”
He turned suddenly, his eyes bright and feverish. “Well, sir, was it worth it?”
“Strategically, of course it was. The Navy lost more ships at Narvik and achieved far less. More destroyers were sunk at Crete with nothing to show but a cruel evacuation job because of somebody’s blunder.” He nodded slowly. “This will rate as a success.” He hardened his voice. “Even if we never see land again.” He gestured to the other three ships. “Any of us.”
Sheridan licked his lips. “If we do get back, sir.” He looked away. “I’d like to apply for a transfer.”
“You would?” Drummond tried to feel something. To react or to care.
“I don’t happen to think this sort of operation warrants such … “
The Destroyers Page 24