by Dudley Pope
Yon probably carried most of the strain: in addition to the responsibility for the entire mechanical workings of this steel box of tricks he, as a result of the German Navy’s way of running their U-boats, was second-in-command and responsible for diving and surfacing. In addition, though, he had to make up for the fact that neither Ned nor the Croupier had submarine experience: their wartime lives up to now had been devoted to dodging or sinking them. Yon was at this moment asleep on a mattress spread just beside the chart table, occupying the only six feet in the control room where no one would accidentally tread on him.
Jemmy was on the bridge. Ironically, back at the Citadel in London, when Captain Watts had discussed who Ned should take, Watts had had doubts about Jemmy. Not about his courage or his brains, but because in Jemmy’s case both had been stretched to breaking point: no man with any imagination could become the great submarine ace of the Mediterranean without eventually paying an exorbitant price in nervous strain. Finally Ned had insisted on taking Jemmy. All right, he had a terrible twitch, nightmares several times a week, hands that trembled like tuning forks, but Ned knew instinctively that Jemmy had not lost his nerve. He had been under a terrible strain, but the trip in the City of Norwich, the week in the lifeboat, and now command of a U-boat had, in a curious and quite inexplicable way, removed the strain. Yes, the twitch which had vanished for a while had now come back, though far less violently, and Jemmy was, instead of being wound up and taut like an overtuned violin, relaxed, jocular and obviously enjoying himself. Both Ned and the Croupier had recognized that Jemmy’s apparently casual behaviour during the destroyer attack was the real Jemmy in action, not an act to keep up the morale of the ship’s company. Joan, Ned thought to himself as he climbed the ladder into the conning tower, is in for a surprise, and it will also do her complexion the world of good.
He looked up the hatchway. ‘Permission to come up on the bridge?’
‘Ah, granted sir,’ Jemmy called down. ‘Turning into a decent sort of night. Wind’s chilly. What did the sights produce?’
Ned gave him the latitude and longitude.
‘We’re well inside the range of the Brylcreem boys,’ Jemmy commented. ‘A Liberator with radar, a Leigh light and a basketful of depth-charges could do for us!’
‘What does a Leigh light look like from down here?’
‘Damned if I really know.’ He turned to the four lookouts. ‘Any of you seen a Leigh light?’
‘Caught winkles at Leigh-on-Sea, sir,’ one of them muttered.
‘Yes, and had to borrow a bent pin to get ’em out: that’s the trouble with you Essex people,’ Jemmy growled.
‘Well, I’ve seen one fitted on the wing of a Liberator on the ground,’ Ned said. ‘As far as I know it’s a fantastically bright searchlight designed by a chap called Leigh, though whether he’s a sailor or an airman, I don’t know. Quite a bright idea – excuse the pun. Leigh realized the only time U-boats ran surfaced outside the Black Pit was at night, so even if Coastal Command picked them up on the radar, it was dam’ difficult to aim depth-charges from the air and drop them on to a radar blip. So with this powerful spotlight the planes work like a poacher with a torch lashed to his shotgun. Very unsporting – you ever done any of it?’
‘No,’ Jemmy said. ‘Snares and ferrets, but never torches. How does it work?’
‘Well, with the torch lashed to the barrel but switched off, you creep along in the darkness to a place where you know there’ll be plenty of rabbits – they come out at night to dance and play, you know, and hey-nonny-nonny. As soon as you’re sure there are one or two there, you aim and switch on the torch. The light hypnotizes them and they sit up and stare back. You can either aim using your sights – that’s difficult because the light dazzles you too. Or, you have to have the torch lined up with the barrel so that if the target is lit you just squeeze the trigger and you’re bound to hit.’
‘I don’t see what’s unsporting about that,’ Jemmy said, snuggling his head down into the collar of his oilskin. ‘If you’re a poacher, your livelihood depends on knocking off a few bunnies. And with meat rationing the way it is, they fetch a good price, not being rationed.’
‘Well, I think it’s unsporting,’ Ned said. ‘Like shooting a sitting bird!’
‘That’s the only time I can hit the bastards, when they’re sitting still!’ Jemmy protested. ‘But this Leigh light – that’s bloody unsporting.’ All Jemmy’s submarine loyalties bubbled up. ‘Doesn’t give a sub a chance. A bloody great aeroplane screaming down out of the night and switching on a spotlight – why, dammit, the commander might be having a pee over the lee rail just at that moment!’
‘You have the vulgar and limited view of a submariner,’ Ned said. ‘So have I, until we’re safely berthed!’
He watched the U-boat’s long wedge-shaped bow slicing through the quartering seas and listened to the snoring of the diesel exhaust and sucking of the air vents. Strange to think that at this very moment up there in that blackness a British aircraft might have this boat showing as a blip on the radar, and be arming the depth-charges and getting ready to switch on the Leigh light.
‘Yes, well,’ he said to Jemmy, making sure none of the lookouts could hear. He then described the idea which had occurred to him at the chart table.
‘Bloody risky,’ Jemmy commented. ‘Might work if we’re quick enough. We don’t get a second chance, that’s for sure. All of us had better do some dummy runs.’
Chapter Twenty
As memories of the depth-charging faded, both Ned and the Croupier settled down to submarine existence. For both of them the watch system had been a way of life for as long as they could remember, except for the brief time at ASIU and, for Ned, the long time in hospital as doctors fought to save his arm.
Now well inside the area covered by Coastal Command’s searching planes, the boat was being driven hard on the surface at night but moving submerged by day, surfacing a couple of times so that Ned could get some sun sights because, for several evenings, clouds had built up with the last of the light to hide the stars, even though the horizon was clear.
Ned was keeping his balance against the pitching by holding the forward side of the bridge with the lookouts to one side and behind him, each responsible for a ninety-degree sector of the sea and sky, and going through the routine of lifting binoculars, searching the horizon, dropping the binoculars on their strap, rubbing their eyes and looking again.
The wind was from the west, gusting occasionally to fifteen knots, so that the U-boat thundered along eastward in a cloud of her own diesel exhaust, giving the men on the bridge a headache and a metallic taste in their mouths. The long, narrow boat, most of it like the proverbial iceberg, with only its conning tower and upperworks above water, pitched heavily as long swell waves swept under, lifting first the stern, seesawing the hull as the crest passed beneath, and then lifting the bow and burying the stern just in time for the next wave to repeat the sequence.
With the after side of the conning tower open and leading on to a flat gun platform on which the two 20 mm cannon were mounted, with another climb down to the heavier gun, a large following sea was the most dangerous. A rogue sea rushing up astern before the boat had time to start lifting could swamp the bridge and, although in bad weather everyone wore a safety harness securely clipped to rings in the conning tower, Ned had long since noted that the harness only stopped you being washed away; there was nothing to stop a heavy sea smashing you against the steel plating, staving in ribs, breaking arms and legs, or cracking skulls. In a heavy following sea, Ned reckoned, the boat would momentarily submerge, a proposal which shocked Jemmy, who suddenly found himself in a minority.
Ned found that, providing he forgot about the cash register and the cookery book, he enjoyed his watches. The low conning tower, the feeling of being perched astride an enormous log being driven along by some unseen force, was exhil
arating. For the first ten minutes of the watch, anyway… Then, if it was not raining, a rogue wave would slap the side of the conning tower, dodge up and over the spray deflectors, and deposit a few gallons of water on the heads of the five men. Never an honest bucketful hurled at a man’s back or sides, where it would just run down the oilskin coat and trousers and boots tucked inside the trouser legs. No, it always hit the face, at the side or front, so that it squirted down to soak the towel carefully wound round the neck to seal the openings that no oilskin designer had yet managed to close successfully, and after a couple of minutes of has-it-or-hasn’t-it, the first of the drips would start their chilly decent along the spine, inside woollen underclothes and jerseys.
It was, Ned thought wryly, like sailing before the war: though thrashing to windward in a yacht was more uncomfortable than pounding into a head sea in a submarine because the submariner, at the end of his watch, could go below, hang up his wet clothes to dry, rub down with a towel and turn into a dry bunk, and the cook would provide hot food and drink. That never seemed to happen in any yacht he sailed in.
Clare – it was now about two o’clock in the morning in London. Was she on night duty? Was she asleep in the nurses’ quarters? Was she having a couple of days’ leave and staying in Palace Street? One thing was certain – she would not be writing to him. Although she had no idea exactly what he was doing, she knew there was no way of him getting mail.
He turned and called to the lookouts over his left shoulder.
‘You fellows asleep? Haven’t heard any reports!’
‘Not exactly a busy shipping lane, sir,’ one of them said.
The two to starboard merely cursed the spray settling on the lenses of their binoculars. It took a lot of rubbing and polishing to get rid of the smears.
Down below, lights dimmed, Jemmy, the Croupier and Yon would be sleeping, the green curtains drawn across the front of their bunks. Hazell, who never seemed to sleep, would be in the wireless cabin, listening on the U-boat wavelength, faithfully copying down anything he heard and calling the Croupier if he picked up a signal from B der U for this boat. The big Blohm and Voss diesels at this distance were a comforting burble of exhaust. An ERA at the forward end of the engine room could watch the dials and gauges of both engines. Exhaust manifold temperature, cylinder head temperature (eighteen of them)… The electric motors would be spinning, making electricity instead of using it, and feeding it into the great banks of batteries. The air compressors would have refilled all the big tanks with compressed air, used for starting the diesels and blowing the water out of the ballast tanks when surfacing.
He turned up the faint light on the dim bridge gyrocompass: the quartermaster was steering well. He hauled back the sleeve of his oilskin enough to look at his wristwatch. An hour and a quarter left of the watch.
He should marry Clare when they got back. It would change nothing, except it would all be legal. She would have a husband and a mother-in-law. And get a widow’s pension if he was knocked off. Curiously enough they had never really talked of marriage in terms of a date and a ceremony. He almost laughed aloud at the thought that lovers in bed together rarely discussed wedding rings.
Suddenly the bridge, the whole boat and the sea turned a brilliant white: a Leigh light! This was it! Would it work? He crouched over the hatch and yelled: ‘Hard a’port, quartermaster…slow ahead port, full ahead starboard…’ To the nearest lookout he snapped: ‘Grab that signal lamp, call up the bloody thing!’
The great white eye was diving steeply: any moment the bombs or depth-charges would be bursting round them. He slammed down the hatch and clamped it shut: a near-miss could send tons of water below. The sharp turn and change in speed will have told Jemmy all he needed to know.
Come on! He looked aft and the enormous light was diving steeply but not quite directly at them: the U-boat was just beginning to turn under rudders and engines.
Would it work? When Ted dive-bombers kept up their attacks on the destroyer Aztec, when he found himself senior surviving officer, he had tried to guess whether each attacking pilot was left- or right-handed, assuming a right-handed man turned more easily to the right. And that was the reason why he and Jemmy had planned this sharp turn to port the moment they were caught in a Leigh light: they hoped that by the time the boat was turning the bomber would be too low and too committed to swing round to conform.
Christ! A stick of bombs erupted along the starboard side like half a dozen fire crackers: fifty yards away and at least three of them sending up water spouts in what would have been the U-boat’s length had she not turned. They sound like sharp cracks up here; down below they must seem almost like direct hits.
He flung open the hatch and Jemmy came up like a jack-in-the-box.
‘She’s all yours, Jemmy,’ Ned said quickly. ‘Give me the Aldis,’ he snapped at the lookout, who had been so impressed by the bomb bursts he had stopped signalling.
That was her still turning, Leigh light blazing away: Ned guessed that as the plane climbed away the pilot had seen the U-boat on the surface and had reckoned the bombs had so damaged her that she could not dive. Or could not dive because of some other attack…
Dot-dash…dot-dash…dot-dash…
The Morse letter A, and used for calling up. Ned kept fingering the second smaller trigger and felt rather than heard the mirror clicking as it aimed the narrow beam. Dot-dash…dot-dash…dot-dash…
The plane was not answering – a signal lamp was unlikely to be as close at hand as a packet of sandwiches – but she now shut off her Leigh light: instead she was starting a slow circle round the U-boat, like an enormous owl inspecting its prey.
There – a long dash: acknowledging the signal: but the pilot was staying well out of range.
Ned aimed the Aldis carefully: dash-dot-dot-dot…dot-dash-dot…dot-dot…dash… Quickly he spelled out ‘British’, by which time the plane was well astern, in a perfect position to make another bombing run.
But Jemmy must have the boat back on a straight course again, both engines full ahead.
Ah, there was a dash in reply.
Damnation! The suddenness of the Leigh light going out had left him almost blinded. Where the hell was the plane now? Oh yes, she had put on navigation lights. Wary…they knew all about those twin 20 mm cannons and, although curious about the signalling, were not going to get themselves shot down.
Ned aimed again: dot-dash-dash-dot…dot-dash-dot… Slowly he spelled out ‘prize’, received an answering ‘T’ and, with the plane turning ahead, saw her signal lamp flickering urgently. He read the letters aloud. ‘Stop…no…more…men…on…deck.’
‘Fair enough,’ Jemmy said. ‘Now tell ’em all about it, Ned!’
Ned’s index finger was already aching, but, pausing after each word for the acknowledging ‘T’, and having to dodge round the periscopes as the plane circled, with one of the lookouts keeping the flex clear, he continued the message.
‘Signal… Admiralty…attention… ASIU… York…’ He had to repeat his name twice before getting a ‘T’.‘ …Spree…successful… need…air…cover…stop… Yorke…to…pilot…highly…secret… do…not…radio…and…use…scrambler…phone…stop… Report…our…transmitter…busted…report…our…position.’
After the series of ‘T’s a brief signal winked back.
‘What…about… Whitstable…’
Ned laughed: the pilot had a sense of humour in the way he was checking up whether they were really British.
‘Don’t…eat…natives…when… R…in…month.’
The plane, on the port beam, suddenly switched on its Leigh light and came low so that it had the U-boat in profile.
‘Wave, you buggers,’ Jemmy snarled at the lookouts. ‘Smile…look happy, just in case he hasn’t believed a word of it and is going to straddle us with another stick.’
But the plane roared over, shut off the Leigh light, and continued circling with its navigation lights on. Its signal lamp winked again.
‘Remain…surfaced…give…course…speed.’
Ned replied: ‘Wilco…zero…eight…zero…sixteen knots.’
Jemmy laughed. ‘“Wilco” – masterly. That’ll get ’em. No Ted would know that.’
‘Wilco’ had become RAF wireless slang for ‘will comply’, but as with all slang it sounded wrong the moment it was used even slightly out of context.
Again the plane’s signal lamp winked. ‘Is…that… ASIU…?’ Ned spelled out: ‘Anti… Submarine… Investigation… Unit… that’s…our…mob…tell… Captain… Watts.’
The plane then asked: ‘What…phone…number?’
‘Jesus,’ Jemmy said, ‘They’re really checking up on us.’
Ned answered: ‘Whitehall…9000…tell… Joan… Jemmy… sends…love.’
The plane sent one last signal before flying off: ‘Have…good …trip…please…report…my…eggs…landed…closer.’
The navigation lights went out and Ned handed the signal lamp to the lookout.
‘Put it back in its box, very carefully. It’s worth a hundred times its weight in gold!’
The Croupier’s plaintive voice came up the hatch. ‘Permission to come on the bridge and share the fun?’
‘Granted. The show is over,’ Jemmy said. ‘Ned won the box of chocolates.’
‘From what I heard from the conning tower, we ain’t home yet,’ the Croupier said. ‘Those Brylcreem boys will balls up the message and kidnap Joan, too.’