Eight-fifteen. Number One, in the Control Room, reaches for the microphone that hangs from an air-pipe on the deckhead. He flicks the switch on with his thumb and says:
“Diving Stations… Diving Stations.” Within a minute each man is in his place, his station for diving, surfacing, attack. Again the microphone carries an order through all compartments:
“Stand by to surface.” Reports come in, vents shut, blows open.
“Ready to surface, sir.” The Captain is straining his eyes into the periscope. The man with the headphones, Saunders, reports all clear all round. The periscope hisses down into its well, and the Captain puts a foot on the ladder as the Signalman steps back from opening the lower hatch.
“Surface!” High-pressure air rips into the ballast tanks as the hydroplanes are swung to force the boat up. The needle in the depth-gauge rises, slowly at first, then faster, and the Captain and the Signalman climb up through the hatch into the conning-tower. As the submarine breaks surface the Captain opens the top hatch and heaves himself quickly up on to the bridge. The diesels roar into life and the submarine gathers way through the dark deserted sea: her sleek hull gleams shiny black while the water still drips from her sides. Down below in the warm, lighted compartments men are lighting the first cigarettes and pipes of the day. The comfort and sociability of smoking draw men together, and in this strange world of their own, remote from others of their kind and near only to their enemies, men from all walks of life and all parts of Britain are perfectly at home.
* * *
Stand alone on the front of the bridge while the submarine forges slowly ahead, one engine driving her at slow speed while the other pumps new life into the batteries. There are two seamen, lookouts, on the after end of the bridge, binoculars at their eyes, but you, the Officer of the Watch, must see anything before they see it. The Captain is asleep, or as near asleep as he ever is, down below, and in these narrow Straits which are enemy territory you alone are responsible for the safety of the ship and the lives of the men in her. For the two hours of your watch the binoculars are never lowered from your eyes, not for longer than it takes to pass an order or quietly to acknowledge a report through the voice-pipe: to and fro and all round the glasses sweep, minutely careful, missing nothing. You must see the enemy, if he is there, before he sees you, and if you fail in this you can call yourself a failure and there is no place for you in a submarine.
As you sweep, questions ask themselves and are answered automatically in your mind: What will I do if I see a dark shape there, a bow-wave there, coming towards at speed? If a strange recognition signal challenges from the darkness on the starboard bow, what action will I take? What will be my first order down the voice-pipe if I hear an aircraft which the Radar has failed to pick up? Watchful, straining eyes, a tense mind and a body taut and hard, only the regular swish of water sweeping over the saddle-tanks and the low throb of one diesel breaking the silence of pitch-black night. Over all, the constant hope: an enemy worth sinking, and you must sight him not one second later than it is physically possible to sight him. That is all you have to do, alone on the bridge, and to every detail you must do it, because you are part of something in which only the highest standards are acceptable.
This is Patrol Routine.
* * *
Remember how it started? In a garage, for you, on the same Sunday, of course, when it started for the rest of the world. You were making screens for blacking-out the windows, tacking thick cardboard on to frames of thin deal slats that you’d made to fit the windows. You were the son and the only male of one of thousands of households that were getting ready for a war. You knelt on the garage floor, that summer morning, and hammered in the nails while your mind was full of the war which, being very young, you had been looking forward to for some time.
You were on leave from the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. In a year or so you’d be at sea as a Midshipman, and you hoped the war would last that long so you could go to sea and fight and make up for having thoroughly disliked the time you spent at Dartmouth. Not that it was your fault, really. At the age of thirteen the brass buttons and a photograph in the Illustrated London News had been enough to give you nightmares of failing the entrance examination. Besides, there was an Admiral with your name, and there had always been your name in the Navy List, so they said, your aunts and your mother, that is. So when you were thirteen you went to Dartmouth, in a uniform, and you were told that you were a Naval Officer and that you were expected to behave as such, but when you arrived at Paddington on your way home after the first term and you strolled into the refreshment bar and asked for a sausage-roll and a pint of bitter the barmaid smiled and said, “Sorry, sonny, no beer, not under eighteen.” You were still a little boy, after all. Your House Officer didn’t think so, though, or else he had less idea than his job demanded of how to treat little boys. He sent for you one day, during Stand Easy, and you ran up the narrow stairs wondering what it was that you had done now.
“Shut the door,” he said, and you shut it, taking care not to let it slam, and you faced him squarely, ready for something.
“When did you last see your father?” he asked, abruptly, as though the question embarrassed him. It struck you as being a silly question, and you had a quick flashback to the picture of a little boy standing on a hassock in front of the Roundhead officer who was doing his job of hunting down Englishmen who had committed the crime of loyalty to their Sovereign. You gave him the obvious, the only answer.
“Last leave, sir.”
Your House Officer put his hand flat on the desk and stared at the back of it. Then he looked at you, and you felt as though he didn’t believe you. He said:
“Well, he’s dead.”
There was a pause, while you looked into his impersonal eyes: you felt no emotion because it had come so quickly. He looked away, back at his hand, and he asked, still looking at it:
“I suppose you can carry on with your work?”
“Yes, sir,” your voice said, and your hand turned the knob on the door and your feet took you down the stairs, running, because otherwise you’d be late for the class, and there would be no excuse for that when you had said that you were able to carry on with your work.
Lots of other boys loved Dartmouth, and that made you feel very different, abnormal. If so many were happy, it must be you that were wrong. So you always said, when they asked you how you liked it, that you loved it, every minute of it, and they always believed you.
And you felt you ought to like it.
The big screen for the french window in the dining-room was just finished when your sister shouted from the drive that the broadcast was coming through, and you dropped the hammer and ran with her into the drawing-room, where your mother was sitting as stiffly as though she were sixty and not thirty-five. The Prime Minister spoke, said that a state of war existed between us and the Germans, and then they played the National Anthem and you stood to attention, which you had been taught people never did in their own homes. Your mother looked as if she was going to cry, so you left as quickly as you could to finish the job in the garage. You knew that what made her unhappy was the fact that you would soon go to sea and stand a chance of being killed, and this was something you couldn’t deal with because what made her so miserable was the very thing that made you happier than you could remember.
A few years ago, whatever you felt, you could have cheered her up, shown her that you loved her and made her believe that things would be all right. But now: well, you’d been to Dartmouth.
* * *
A thin trail of exhaust from the throbbing diesel curls over the submarine’s wake. The tense, watchful atmosphere of the night patrol hushed your voice so that you speak quietly into the voice-pipe, although if you shouted no enemy could possibly hear. A lookout pauses to wipe the sea dew from his binoculars with a wad of periscope paper. It is half-past one, and in half an hour the watch will be changed and you can go below to sleep until, just before the light comes, t
he submarine dives for the daylight patrol. For the three weeks of the patrol you follow the same routine of two hours on watch, four hours off, except for the times when your off-watch spell is broken by the alarm buzzer, or the klaxon, or the sudden shout of “Diving Stations” that means an attack. When it means an attack, you’re glad to be woken, however tired you are.
Sweep all round for the thousandth time, blink and start again at thirty degrees on the port bow, sweep slowly right, over the bow and down the starboard side, stop at about thirty degrees on the bow, sweep left again. Stop with a jerk at ten on the port bow: something darker than the night. No good staring straight at it or you’ll lose it, sweep to and fro just across it, don’t act until you know it’s real and not one of those things that are so easy to see in your imagination when you’re looking for them. This one is real. Note the bearing, keep your glasses on it while you order one of the two lookouts to get down below. Into the voice-pipe:
“Stop starboard, out engine-clutch, break the charge. Captain on the bridge. Stand by all tubes. Night Alarm.”
Down below your orders are shouted through the compartments and you hear the buzzer making long buzzes, an urgent, penetrating noise like a dentist’s drill in a sleeping sailor’s brain. The Captain’s on the bridge and you show him the target, but it’s a full minute before he gets it in his glasses.
It could be anything from a junk to a destroyer. Send down the other lookout: you may have to dive in a hurry. It’s not likely to be a destroyer, but from this angle it looks damn like it. Slow ahead on the motors, creep round the target at the same distance. Whatever it is, it’s under way, started on the port bow and has crossed to starboard, moving very slowly, but that’s no indication as to what it is because even a destroyer can go slowly when it wants to, when, for instance, it’s hoping that a submarine may be in the neighbourhood on the surface. Creep round, watch the target. Close in from astern, and suddenly, as clearly as though it was daylight, you can see that the tallness is not the superstructure of a destroyer but the sails of a big junk.
Voice-pipe again:
“Stand by Boarding Party.”
“Carry on below, sir?”
“Yes.” You fall through the hatch on to the ladder and drop into the Control Room, move aft quickly through the hurrying men. Over your bunk in the wardroom hangs the belt with a .38 revolver and a short Italian bayonet strung on it. Grab the belt and strap it on as you check up on the Boarding Party who are mustering in the Control Room. They’re all there with their gear: revolvers, heaving-lines, a wheel-spanner, and Shadwell the Torpedo-man has a bag containing two fitted charges, lighters and a pair of pliers. That’s all you need.
“Boarding Party ready in the Control Room, sir.”
“Very good. Come up, Sub.”
On the bridge again, you see the junk plainly, even without binoculars. She’s right ahead with her stern towards you.
“Up Vickers guns.” Two seamen appear out of the hatch and mount machine-guns on each side, slap on the pans of ammunition and stand ready.
“Boarding Party on the bridge.” They pour up through the hatch, five of them.
“Ready, sir.”
“All right, Sub. Down you go.” The Captain hasn’t taken his eyes off the target for one second since he first saw it. He stands hunched in the front of the bridge, a silent, familiar silhouette of a man as you swing a leg over the side of the bridge and climb down the cut-away footholds on to the catwalk, walk around the side of the bridge on to the fore casing. The men are behind you and you lead them for’ard, right up on to the sharp bow, between the anchors. Crouch down so that the Captain can see over your heads, and watch as the distance lessens between you and the stern of the junk. The submarine is propelled by her electric motors, and there is no sound except for the swish of the sea under the bows and over the tanks, and as you get closer you hear also the creak of the junk’s gear. The submarine’s bow swings off a foot or two to starboard and suddenly with the slightest of bumps you’re there, the high wooden poop towering over you, and you jump, your hands grabbing the top edge of the junk’s stern rail. Swing over, land quietly on the poop, your rubber-soled shoes make no sound. The men are behind you, swarming over.
“Sails down, Bird.” The Second Cox’n and two others run to the mainmast, back at the ancient cordage, and as you throw open the door of the shelter in the poop, the yard crashes down across the junk. A light line holds the submarine’s bow alongside.
There are three Chinese in the shelter, screaming and shouting, scrambling over each other, mad with fear and excitement.
“Shut up! Speak English?”
“Yes, master.”
“Good.” One of the Boarding Party is behind you. “Get these Chinks aboard.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The crew are hustled away. The junk’s papers are in an old box in the corner, and you stuff them into your pockets. Out of the shelter, you drop down into the after hold, Shadwell with you. Using the bayonet you prise up a board, and under it six inches of dirty water cover the bottom of the ship.
“Five-minute fuse.” Shadwell chops off the right length of fuse and you drop the charge into the water. The old junk creaks and groans as you work by torchlight, preparing to send her to the bottom. All set, you scramble up on deck, and shout:
“Ready, sir!”
“Carry on!” the Captain’s voice hails back out of the darkness.
“Clear the junk.” The Boarding Party jump down on to the submarine’s casing: you retire alone into the hold with Shadwell’s pliers to fire the tube on the fuse and finish the job. Shining your torch down through the bottom boards you kneel there to check that the charge is in the best spot. There’s a grunt in the dark over your head and you spring back, your torch lighting up a Jap face with a snarl on it, a yellow hand with a knife in it. The Jap has been hiding on top of the cargo, dragging himself laboriously forward through the narrow space between the top of the stack of cases and the deckhead. Another foot, and he’d have had you with that knife. The .38 jerks in your hand as you fire twice, and one bullet gets him just above the left eye. He slumps forward, dropping the knife, which is big and heavy: it falls on the boards where you were kneeling a moment ago. You hardly notice that blood is dripping from him as you dive down to the boards again, grab the pliers and fire the fuse: see it begin to splutter then get away fast, jump down on to the submarine’s bow and flash your torch at the bridge. The submarine backs away from the deserted junk that hasn’t long to live.
A minute passes and the Captain mutters, “Should have gone off by now.” You’ve been thinking the same thing. Another minute passes and there’s a whumph and the junk’s stern lifts a clear foot in the water, then drops back and she begins to settle. Just after two o’clock there is no junk left, and the Captain asks whose watch it is.
“Number One’s, sir.”
“All right, Sub. Tell him to come up when he’s squared things off.”
“Aye aye, sir.” You would also like to square something off, with a Chinaman who talks English but can’t tell you when there’s a guard on board. You ask him. He says that he was frightened and forgot, and that when the Jap wasn’t taken away with them he thought that he’d been disposed of and he hadn’t liked to ask questions. The Chink looks hurt when you tell him that he’s a bloody fool.
You drink a cup of the Cox’n’s cocoa before turning in, and while you drink it you look through the junk’s papers, spread out on the wardroom table. Her cargo was rice and small-arms ammunition, and had been meant for Burma. By the light of the single red bulb in the wardroom you parcel the papers together in a big envelope and stow them away in the correspondence locker. The Captain will need them to put in with the Patrol Report. You open your drawer and take out the Torpedo Log and Progress Book, on a spare page at the back of which is a record of torpedo stores expended: you write in neatly the date, “one 1 ¼ lb charge, fitted,” and in the last column, “one junk, about eighty tons.” Blot it and close t
he book, and you realise that you’re still wearing your belt: you slip it off, take the four unused cartridges out of the revolver and stick your head round the bulkhead into the Control Room. The Gunlayer is on watch, sitting on one of the planesmen’s seats, waiting to go up and relieve a lookout.
“Clean this for me, will you, Smith.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He flicks it open and squints through the barrel at a light.
“Used this tonight, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Kill the flipper, sir?”
“Yes, just before he killed me.”
“Blimey. Would they’ve made me Gunnery Officer, sir, if you’d copped it?”
“Flippin’ likely,” mutters the Cox’n. “Ninety days is all I’d give you, you bastard.”
“Speakin’ of parentage,” replies the Layer, gazing into the barrel of the revolver again, “I ‘ave always made an ’abit of being very polite to Cox’ns, but recently I ‘ave to admit it’s been flippin’ ’ard to keep it up.”
“What I’ve been wondering,” muses the Cox’n, jerking his thumb up towards the deckhead, “is what the ‘ell we carry a gun up there for when there ain’t nobody in the ship’s company with the slightest flippin’ idea of ‘ow to work it.”
“If I was the Gunnery Officer,” answers Smith, “I’d take exception to that remark.” But the Gunnery Officer has gone, and is climbing into his bunk when the Captain stumps in, discarding a wind-jacket.
“Did I hear some shots, Sub, when you were down below?” You turn and look at him.
“Yes, sir. Two. A Jap was creeping up on me while I was fixing the charge.”
“You fired both the shots?”
“Yes, sir. He had a butcher’s knife.”
“You’d better type a statement, and I’ll put it in with the report.”
“Aye aye, sir. Diving at five?”
“About then.”
* * *
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