by Dudley Pope
‘Has you know,’ the sergeant continued, ‘this is not a standard British calibre. Jerries and Eyeties use nine millimetre. And it’s thanks to the Eyeties we’ve got the Sten, which is a lovely gun. Drop it in thick mud, spray it with water, hold it with one hand hanging upside-down from a tree, and the Sten always works.
‘You see, as the Eighth Army chased the Eyeties across the Western Desert (this was before that Jerry general, Rommel, arrived) we captured Eyeties by the scores of thousands and nine millimetre ammunition by the millions. All those millions of rounds and we didn’t have a gun to fire even one of ’em, except some Eyetie pistols and things. So what did we do?’ he asked.
‘Welded up some gas pipe and made the Sten,’ Jemmy said.
The sergeant stared at him in disbelief. This twitching bastard had just shot his story stone-dead. ‘You’ve ’eard about it already, then?’
‘No,’ Jemmy said quite truthfully. ‘I just deduced it. Sherlock Homes was my mother’s father, you see.’
‘Ah, a very smart man ’e was,’ the sergeant said, somewhat mollified. ‘I’ve read most of ’is cases. You must be very proud.’
Jemmy nodded shyly and admitted he was. With that, the sergeant produced three more Stens and settled down to explain the mechanism.
After an hour’s break for lunch the sergeant took them out to the range and that evening they dined at the officers’ mess, heads aching and eardrums numbed by chattering Stens and the heart-stopping crash of the ‘black bangers’.
Ned was just leaving the mess for the hut that would be the quarters for himself, Jemmy and the Croupier for the week while they went through the Marine commando course, when a ’phone call arrived.
It was Captain Watts, who started by reminding him it was an open line and then asked: ‘How is it going?’
‘Noisy but instructive. Today they concentrated on our brains, with Stens and grenades. Tomorrow they start on our bodies.’
‘Bodies?’ Watts exclaimed. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘The Tarzan stuff, sir. Swinging across rivers on ropes, climbing trees, that sort of thing.’
‘That reminds me,’ Watts said. ‘Clare wants to know how your hand is standing up to this.’
‘All right so far — I’m wearing a glove. I’m not sure about this rope stuff — the skin is still very soft.’
‘Listen, what the hell use is swinging across rivers on ropes going to be? You need to be able to lob the “black bangers” into tea cups at ten yards, and use a Sten with more accuracy than a garden hose. Why not concentrate on those for the next two days, and then come home to Uncle?’
Ned sighed with relief. ‘Aye aye, sir. The Jollies are keen to help us, but because we can’t tell ’em anything, they think we are going to storm Berchtesgaden and kidnap Hitler.’
‘A couple of days be enough?’
‘Plenty, sir. Both Jemmy and the Croupier are keen cricketers, and I seem to be lucky with the Sten.’
‘Lucky? That’s an odd word to use about a sub-machine gun!’
‘Well, I’ve outshot the instructor five out of the six times we’ve been to the butts!’
‘I bet he’s as mad as hell,’ Watts commented.
‘Oh no, sir: he reckons it proves how well he instructed me.’
‘See if he’s ever been to Whale Island. He sounds like one of their gunnery instructors. I’ve never heard of a Whale Island GI get caught out or admit he’s wrong! I’ll tell Clare and your mother you’re a bit deaf but okay.’
‘I think Clare is on duty tonight.’
’In a way. I’m taking ’em both out to dinner.’
‘I sometimes suspect your motives, sir.’
‘I should hope so,’ Watts said. ‘Makes me feel quite young, to hear you say that! By the way, the chaps you and Jemmy listed are being rounded up. No problems, so far.’
Chapter Six
As she opened the front door her stance made him hesitate a moment. Black shadows under her eyes — that was normal after a week of night duty. But she was leaning to the left, the right side of her body still partly hidden by the door, and she was curiously still and now the welcoming smile was falling apart as her lips trembled.
Ned slid inside the hall and as he turned to grasp her saw the right leg below the knee was swathed in bandages and before she had time to speak she was holding him, her body jerking gently with dry sobs.
‘What happened?’ he whispered.
‘St Stephen’s — hit by three bombs. The surgical ward — only three of us… The rest were killed… Twenty-seven.’
‘When? You weren’t on duty last night.’
‘Three night ago, early in the evening.’
‘But Captain Watts took you and mother –’
‘No, that was just a story we made up in case you heard the hospital had been hit.’
‘Your legs — what happened?’
‘I was buried in the rubble for a while. A beam trapped me.’
Realizing that they were still standing at the open door, he led her into the sitting room then hurried back to bring in his bag, and shut the door.
She was lying back on the settee, white-faced but still trying to smile. ‘Just a few cuts,’ she said, gesturing at the bandages. ‘They didn’t even keep me in.’
‘With half the hospital knocked down, that doesn’t surprise me. ‘Where’s mother?’
‘She’s out shopping. She’s been nursing me. Not the biter bit, but the nurse nursed.’
He held her hand and, realizing that he was being too heavy-footed when the situation needed a light touch, he said: ‘I hope she’s bullying you, as you used to bully me.’
‘She is, and I’m beginning to feel sorry for the way I treated you.’
There was something about the way she was lying back on the settee, as though trying to hold her breath. Pain from the leg? Her brow was covered in tiny pearls of perspiration.
‘You ought to be in bed.’
‘No, no… I just caught my ribs as I leaned back on the cushion.’
‘You can’t “just catch” your ribs. Did you bruise them?’
She smiled ruefully. ‘I broke two and there is some bruising, but not too much.’
‘And I hugged you at the door.’
‘It was worth it. Don’t worry, darling, everything is strapped up. Remember, I’m a nurse!’
‘And I love you. Bed, that’s where you belong. I’m surprised mother let you stay up.’
‘She didn’t actually. I guessed what time you’d get here if your train wasn’t late and got up!’
He leaned forward and helped her stand. ‘Come on. I don’t have to go to the Admiralty until tomorrow, so I can sit with you and tell you tales of daring on the Spanish Main by eighth great-grandfather Yorke.’
‘I’d sooner we made love,’ she said, but winced as she put her bandaged leg to the floor.
‘So would I – there, put an arm round my shoulder. No, that won’t do because of your ribs. Keep still, I’ll carry you. No, it’s catching your ribs, isn’t it?’
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘a lacerated leg and two broken ribs is nothing. I love you spoiling me, but I dressed myself and came down the stairs to meet you, so I can get back up again.’
‘I’ll undress you, though.’
‘Yes, that would be therapeutic.’
‘I wish…’
‘We probably can if you’re gentle and I’m careful,’ she murmured as she reached the door.
An hour later, as they were lying side by side on the bed, she said suddenly: ‘The man in your bed was killed.’
‘You do pick the oddest times to pass on news. Post-coital tristesse?’
‘Perhaps, though I never normally get it. I was really just thinking for the tho
usandth time that it might have been you. Do you remember that night when –?’
‘Yes, I was expecting a bomb to land on me and it was Nurse Exton in the darkness trying to protect me.’
’Were you thinking of me at that moment? You hardly knew me!’
‘Yes I was: we had just been teasing you about your twisted stocking.’
‘Yes,’ she said dreamily, ‘I thought you might have been thinking about me.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Darling, I felt certain physical manifestations as I tried to cover you up against the bombs.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I remember wondering if you had, but after the bombs went off you hurried around the ward tidying things up.’
‘It was very flattering, darling.’
‘And now a bomb has hit the ward.’
‘It was awful,’ she said. ‘the ward was full of patients. I was sitting at the desk in the middle with the green-shaded lamp, writing up notes. The raid had been going on for a couple of hours but it seemed to be Highgate and Hampstead that were getting the worst of it. Then the gunfire started creeping nearer, but as that happens most nights I didn’t pay any attention.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Well, I was so busy writing – I had a dressing to change in fifteen minutes, a burn case – I didn’t hear the plane: just five or six quick whistles, or hisses. I knew they’d be close because you’d explained that the long whistles are passing safely over you.
‘I heard two explosions – they fell some yards short – and then; well, not an explosion, just an enormous thump right overhead. The lights went out, the walls caved in and the floor collapsed – I felt the desk slide away and my chair tilted over backwards. There was an awful sensation like falling down a dusty well. Oh, that dust; I could hardly breathe. Things kept hitting me – falling beams from the floors above, plaster, and so on. Then suddenly it stopped and I couldn’t move. It was pitch dark, of course, and there was something crushing my right leg yet I could move my left. And there was a big beam or something across my chest and the end of it – I could see this when the rescue team came with torches – was pinned down by a big piece of stone from the walls.
‘The shouting and groaning from the other trapped people was worst. One man had been in agony in the ward and was put under morphia. Then after the bomb its effects began to wear off but he didn’t realize what had happened. He was only a few feet away from me but separated by bricks and plaster and beams. He coughed as much from the dust of the plaster.’ She shivered.
‘No,’ she said in answer to his question. ‘I didn’t feel pain. Shock numbs that for quite a while. No, I thought of you and thanked God you had not been in the ward. I thought – you mustn’t laugh, but you know how absurd one’s thoughts are in such a situation – about my hair being full of plaster dust and I would not have time to get it washed and set before you came back. Then I realized the beam across my chest might have cut into me. I couldn’t move an arm or hand to feel, but I was afraid my breasts were cut and if they were scarred you wouldn’t love them so much – oh, I know it was absurd but I was all alone in the dark with (or so it seemed) most of St Stephen’s Hospital on top of me. Then I could smell gas, which was escaping from some pipes, and I hoped someone would shut it off at the main before we were blown up or suffocated.’
‘How long before you were rescued?’
‘About twenty hours. I think I passed out from time to time. Then I remember seeing dawn coming, with the light creeping through the debris like seeping water. The Heavy Rescue people had to be very careful when they tunnelled, shoring up as they moved. The worst of it was that the few they rescued alive were already surgical cases and in splints or plaster, or something. Most of them had to be hoisted on to stretchers, or splinted up, before they could be moved. Those tunnels through the wreckage: often not much bigger than the height of a prone person.’
‘Often – how many tunnels did you see?’
‘The three surgical cases near me, and myself, were the last to be got out alive. I suppose about fifty yards. The tunnels twisted and turned – they cleared them and shored them up wherever they could find gaps. I thought they’d stopped searching, thinking everyone was either dead or rescued. The poor morphia man was just groaning now. Suddenly somewhere above I heard a man shout “Quiet!” I guessed it must be the rescue team listening. So I called to them. Shouted, actually, and they answered, and said they were on their way. They shouted from time to time, to locate me. The man had stopped groaning by now, and I’m afraid he was dead when they found him.’
‘So you were out in time for breakfast, eh?’
‘No, it was nearer tea time. They had to saw through the two beams; but it took time to shore up the big piece of stone: they were afraid it would slip and crush me once the beam was not holding it.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, they dragged me out and put me in an ambulance. Your mother had been waiting there for hours – from the time she first heard we’d been hit. The ambulance was full so she could not come with me, but apparently she ’phoned Captain Watts and both came to St George’s – that’s where I was taken – and Captain Watts talked them into releasing me as soon as I was strapped up and bandaged.’
‘He telephoned me. Said he was taking you and Mother out to dinner.’
‘Yes, we agreed on that story, in case you heard rumours, and he said you’d all finished your work and could come back.’
‘Playing with “black bangers” and rattling off Sten guns, while you were lying trapped in all that rubble.’
‘“Black Bangers”? What are they?’
He realized that he had said too much and when he did not answer her question she said as though to herself (he was reminded momentarily of Ophelia): ‘Sten guns are like Tommy guns, for close range, they have nothing to do with the Navy hunting U-boats.’ Her hand reached out to hold him. ‘Oh darling, are you going away again?’
She knew enough about secret operations not to ask why: she simply asked if, and she deserved an honest answer.
’Yes, as soon as possible, but that’ll be at least two weeks.’
‘You’ll be away long?’
‘I doubt it. A month, perhaps.’
‘Will it be dangerous?’
‘Not as dangerous as night duty at St Stephen’s.’
As the grey-painted bus pulled up alongside the flooded dry-dock, Ned saw the U-boat lying low in the water, a long sausage covered with a strangely flat casing running its full length, forming the deck. The whole vessel had leprous patches of rust, and a white ensign drooped from a staff at the after end of the conning tower.
Buses were the same as ships’ boats – the senior officer present was the last on board and first out – and he swung down to the ground to find himself facing an angry Captain. A captain ‘E’, in fact; the coloured bands between the four gold bands indicated that he was an engineer.
‘Yorke? What the hell have you got a busload of people for? I understood there would be two, perhaps three of you.’
So this was Commander (E) Percy Shoar, temporarily in charge of the prize U-boat.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Ned said carefully, walking a couple of paces towards him and leaving the doorway clear for the passengers in the bus to disembark. ‘I think there must be a misunderstanding.’
‘I should dam’ well think so!’
Shoar was about five feet six inches tall; he was a couple of stone overweight, and from his complexion he combined a liking for gin with high blood pressure.
‘Perhaps we could go to your office?’
‘Get those beggars back in the bus first!’
Ned gave the order to Jemmy and as the door slammed shut turned to follow Shoar, who led the way to a small, single-storey brick building at the end of the dock. His
office was almost entirely filled by a large drawing-board along one wall, and lead weights held down several drawings. Instead of sitting at the desk and offering Ned the other chair, Shoar stood with his hands pressed down on the drawing board and, half turning to Ned, said: ‘What the devil is this, a travelling circus?’
‘Captain Watts has spoken to you, hasn’t he sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he explained?’
‘He told me some of you fellows wanted to examine our prize and familiarize yourselves with the deck and accommodation, yes?’
‘That’s what we’ve come to do, sir.’
‘But there are more than a couple of dozen of you and some of them are ratings. Damnation, man, this whole business is highly secret. Secret – and you bring an excursion busload. Why, do you expect us to be selling Licorice Allsorts and Sherbet Dabs?’
By now, Shoar was shouting, and Ned waited a few moments. ‘The men I have brought with me are a special team intended for a very special operation, sir.’
‘What operation?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not free to discuss it, sir.’
‘Then you can keep away from the bloody prize! Get yourself and your busload out of the dock. Out, Yorke, out!’ he shouted, pointing to the door.
Had the man not been so ill-tempered, Ned realized he would probably have lost his own temper. As it was the more Shoar shouted, the calmer Ned felt. He glanced at the telephone. It had the special switch so that it could use a ‘scrambler’.
‘Would you call Captain Watts at the Admiralty, sir? ASIU? He will explain.’
‘No, I dam’ well won’t! Spoke to him last week and agreed to you and a couple of chaps having a look. That’s quite enough. Not going to have my own chaps’ work interrupted by a bunch of sightseers. They’re doing highly secret and vital work.’
‘May I use the telphone, sir?’
‘I suppose so. But I must stay here,’ he said, and gesturing at the drawings on the drawing board he added: ‘All these are highly secret.’