by Peter Albano
His mother, Brenda Higgins. He saw her face gazing down at him, silken auburn hair in long folds to her shoulders, blue eyes glowing with love. In her middle age, Brenda Higgins was still one of the world’s great beauties and wealthiest women. In fact, she was such a striking woman that even the unusual beauty of his “steady,” Kay Stockard, seemed inconsequential when the women were together. His mother would be bitter and filled with horror if she knew of his foolish deception and risk. She had sacrificed two husbands and a brother to the gods of war—had bitterly opposed Rodney’s entrance into Annapolis while coddling his war-hating brother, Nathan.
Restlessly, Rodney turned and glanced into the pilothouse. With the lids of its steel scuttles dogged closed, its interior was still very dark in the feeble morning light. Rodney could see a dozen men manning their stations, swaying gently with the motions of the ship like silent drunks. The soft green light of the compass repeater and binnacle tinted by the dim red glow of battle lamps rheostated down to their lowest settings gave an eerie aspect to every countenance. With the lower half of his face illuminated by the binnacle, the wheelman’s features glowed faintly with the green hue of a week-old corpse. There was another green glow at the back of the compartment—the newfangled radio detection and ranging machine (the British called it by the acronym Radar). Higgins watched the remorseless sweep of the beam, but it showed nothing, too, except ships in their own formation.
Admiral Tovey and the ship’s captain were in the armored conning tower with Commander Reed-Davis and the plotting team. The OOD (officer of the deck) was an experienced commander named Willard Blackstone. Standing just behind the helmsman and next to a manifold of voice tubes suspended from the overhead, Blackstone was in contact with the admiral and captain by both speaker and voice tube.
The speaker squawked and then Rodney heard Blackstone’s basso profundo strident enough to fill Yankee Stadium, “Starboard ten.”
“Starboard ten, sir. Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.”
“Steer one-one-five.”
“Steer one-one-five. Passing one-one-zero, sir.”
“Midships.”
“Rudder is amidships, sir. Steady on one-one-five.”
“Very well.” Blackstone turned to the rating manning the engine-room telegraphs. “Full ahead together. Give me revs for twenty-nine knots.”
There was a clang of bells and almost immediately the changed beat came up through the soles of Rodney Higgins’s shoes as the four great Parsons turbines six decks below delivered every one of the ship’s 110,000 horsepower to the four propellers.
“One-hundred-thirty-two revolutions, twenty-nine knots, sir.”
“Very well.”
Rodney stared into his glasses to the south and east where Bismarck was supposed to be but saw nothing but the same frustrating curtains of mist. At flank speed, KG V was straining her engines and pouring oil into her eight three-drum Admiralty boilers at a lavish rate that would run them out of fuel in a few hours. There must have been a report from a shadowing destroyer or cruiser. What other explanation was there for the change in course, the fuel-consuming speed? A U-boat? He felt a tremor. Was that it? But, there were no torpedo tracks. No wildly charging destroyers ripping the depths with depth charges. Every ship was holding station as before. It must be the Bismarck. But, damn, where was she?
Blackstone’s voice: “Radar?”
“No new targets. Commander.”
Blackstone’s retort was filled with the frustration felt by every man, “Dash it all! Where are the buggers?”
Rodney felt a new presence on the bridge. It was the navigator, Commander Reed-Davis. Raising his glasses and pointing, the navigator said, “We’ve reports our Swordfish got two hits, Mr. Higgins.”
Rodney dropped his glasses and let them dangle at his chest. “I know, sir. Should slow her a few knots, sir.”
“Not if she took one up the arse, Lieutenant.”
“You mean her steering gear is damaged, too?”
“You bloody well know it. The Fourth Destroyer Flotilla reports she’s steaming at a reduced speed on an erratic course to the south of us. We’ll bring her to book straightaway. And don’t let this waiting about get on your wick. Keep a close watch.” The commander returned to the conning tower.
Every man leaned into his binoculars like statues frozen by the Arctic winds. A tingling like electricity raced through Rodney’s body. The air was frigid and his breaths puffs of steam, yet the tremor was not from the cold. It came from within. Fear. The coldness of formless dread. The moment of truth was near and he was feeling the atavistic stirring of mortal peril. His reaction was the same reaction of all frightened men in the presence of other frightened men on the eve of battle. He squared his massive shoulders, stood as tall as his six-foot-one-inch frame would permit. Then, for the first time in his young life, he found a sudden insight into men and battle, realizing pride in manhood would not allow him to be less than any of the men who surrounded him. He smiled slyly to himself.
The speaker gave a preliminary squawk and then crackled with the gunnery officer’s voice: “All hoists filled, armor-piercing, full-charge powder, temperature of cordite sixty-three degrees, wind force five from two-eight-five.
“Very well.”
The hoists were filled with silk-bagged powder and projectiles like unlighted fuses to the magazines. A hit, a tiny piece of burning silk, could ignite a chain of bags that could destroy the ship. It was rumored Hood had died this way. It was common knowledge that battle cruisers Invincible, Indefatigable and Queen Mary had all blown up after magazine fires at Jutland. Suddenly Higgins felt an amalgam of fear and helplessness—the helplessness all men feel when their lives are committed to battle by other men. Tovey in his steel tower, committees of faceless admirals at Whitehall, even Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street, had taken control of his fate, deciding if he were to live or die. And he did not belong here; yet, at that moment, would not have been anywhere else. Bewildered by his mercurial emotions that changed direction and clashed as aimlessly as the seas in the eye of a hurricane, he brought his glasses up and clenched his jaw.
Staring through his binoculars a swelling excitement pushed his fears and doubts aside, his five senses fine-tuned—becoming the primeval sixth sense of the predator. He was both the hunter and the hunted, playing the most horrifying yet exhilarating game on earth—searching for like creatures of like intelligence. The air itself seemed to change, charged with static that brought up the hair on the back of his neck and made it tingle. A ship moving through the darkness filled with men determined to kill you gives off an energy you can feel. He wiped his glasses, narrowed his lids, hunched against the windscreen looking for a shudder in the patterns of sea, a shadow in the mists, the hint of something moving where nothing should move. Then, abruptly, the sun broke through the low-scudding clouds to the east, hurling shafts of brilliant sunlight like silver javelins to play upon the sea.
He gave a start as a dark shape on the far southeastern horizon stopped his glasses in midsweep. His heart barged against his chest furiously and he was suddenly incapable of swallowing. With trembling fingers he made fine adjustments to his focusing knob, pressed his glasses against his eyes until they watered with pain. Black smoke. A ship hull down. At that instant, it seemed that time slowed and his vision was suddenly concentrated to brilliant clarity. Clearly, he saw a director with its tube and lenses protruding like the ears of a startled rabbit. A great mast, the tip of a single raked stack. A British destroyer? Impossible. Not with a director that large, a single stack, massive upper works. It was a capital ship. Clearing his throat, he masked his excitement with a strained, flat voice, “Ship bearing zero-four-zero. . .” Hesitating in momentary confusion, he realized he was using American terminology instead of British. Correcting himself, he began again, “I mean, ship bearing green forty, hull down.”
Seaman Quinn shouted,
“It’s ’im. Tally bloody ho! Kraut at green forty.”
Leaping from the pilothouse, Commander Blackstone charged out to the wing of the bridge, hunched over the gyro repeater, and peered through the gun sight of the bearing ring. He read the azimuth, but before he could utter a word the foretop lookouts were heard, “Ship bearing green forty, range twenty thousand.” Then the radar operator’s excited shout as the target came onto his scope. Blackstone raced back into the pilothouse.
The sighting report spread throughout the ship like wildfire. Tinnily, the admiral’s voice came through the speaker, “Ship’s main and secondary armament load. Make the hoist, ‘Engage vessel bearing green forty, range twenty thousand. Fire when ready.’”
Battle. They were going to fight. Lieutenant Higgins felt the excitement charge his veins with sexual intensity, heard the hum of blood in his ears, felt the warmth of it on his cheeks. Incongruously, Kay Stockard’s nude body flashed in his mind—slender, long-limbed, hot, and trembling. Kay. He missed her. Maybe, he loved her. But why was he thinking of her now? He shook his head. Wondered at the mad kaleidoscope racing through his brain.
Rodney heard a hum overhead and Kay vanished. Looking up he saw the director turning slowly toward the enemy. A trained gunnery officer, in his mind’s eye he could see the entire intricate fire-control system at work and the men who made it function: the main director’s trainer and layer hunched over the eyepieces of the range finder, turning their cranks and bringing the split image of the target into a tangible whole; the control officer, spotting officer, rate officer, and cross-leveling officer poring over their instruments and plotting sheets. And far below in the transmitting station in the bowels of the ship—the brain of the fire-control system—were the deflection officer, clock operator, range operator, spotting plot operator, all working furiously over their fire-control table, computing speed of target, range, deflection, temperature of powder, curvature of the earth, even factoring in the number of times the guns had been fired. Then a continuous stream of elevations, ranges, and deflections were transmitted to the four turret captains who in turn relayed the data to their trainers and layers. An intricate system, but it worked with murderous efficiency.
Rodney heard the whine of electric motors and the whir of turret-training rack and pinion gears as below him turrets A and B swung to starboard, the six fourteen-inch guns pointing toward the stranger like tree trunks. He heard Quinn muttering, “I’ve ‘ad a bloody jugful o’ you Krauts. Killed me brother, you did—sank ‘ood, bonked London. Now thank the Lord for what you’re ‘bout to get, you bloody sods.” He giggled and salivated.
“Starboard ten,” Blackstone said. “Steer one-two-five. Ahead standard together.”
The mists pulled back like the curtains at the Metropolitan, the sun finally winning its battle with the haze and fog. Higgins could see the upper works of the intruder quite clearly. It was the Bismarck. Obviously not in full control, she was idling north and east on a meandering course. But she appeared intact, eight fifteen-inch guns trained to port, directly at Lieutenant j.g. Rodney Higgins. The American felt his guts turn to ice water and his Adam’s apple became a stone that clung to the back of his throat. His mouth had never been so dry.
Battleship Rodney was bearing off on the enemy in a reckless head-on approach, unmasking all nine of her forward-mounted sixteen-inch guns. KG V was closing the range and slowing. Bismarck must be damaged. Turning toward Bismarck reduced the range but cut down on X turret’s firing arcs. A silence so heavy it was a palpable force had settled over the ship. With blowers secured and vents closed, KG V seemed to be holding her breath. Higgins could only hear the gentle ticking of the gyro repeater and the sluicing of water as the ship’s stem slashed through the water. Then the voices of the gun-control personnel putting the guns on target broke through the gunnery circuits. “Guns loaded,” came from the turret captains. “On target, on target,’’ came from the trainers and layers.
Immediately the American heard the calm voice of the director-layer piped down from the main director, “Director-layer sees the target.” Rodney caught his breath. Those few simple words meant the man was ready, guns loaded, finger itching to pull the trigger. He heard Admiral Tovey’s shout through the speaker, “Shoot!” There was a high, festive tinkling of a chime much like the gay sound of bells on the harness of a horse pulling a sleigh through Christmas snow.
Despite clinging to the windscreen, Rodney was staggered by the concussion as six fourteen-inch guns fired as one, brilliant orange flame leaping thirty feet from the muzzles. The Vesuvian eruption lighted the sea and reflected from a cluster of low-streaming clouds, the ship jerking with the shock like a harpooned blue whale. Dust and chips of paint rained in the pilothouse. Flung high into the air, the bearing ring clattered on the steel deck. Quinn scooped it up. Rodney heard the radar man curse: his set had been knocked out of commission.
Although the American had clapped his hands over his ears, the great booming sounds of thousands of pounds of nitrocellulose exploding assaulted his ears as if he were sitting in the percussion section of a great symphony orchestra, played by mad musicians. Immediately a great cloud of brown smoke stinking of cordite enveloped the bridge with a smell like burned solvent and vaporized Vaseline. Thankfully, it was swept away abruptly by the stiff breeze. All eyes watched for the fall of shot. Taught a bloody lesson by the High Seas Fleet at Jutland, the British had given up on single ranging shots and adopted the Germans’ “ladder” method of ranging. Firing full salvoes, the spotters looked for ladder short, ladder long, then down ladder and rapid fire. “Short!” rang through the speaker.
Battleship Rodney’s six sixteen-inch guns flowered to life in a single gigantic hibiscus-orange flash followed by a billowing cloud of brown smoke. At that instant. Lieutenant Higgins saw a sight that froze his blood, sent tremors of horror racing up and down his spine like the clawed frozen feet of a hundred loathsome insects. Bismarck, looming large in his binoculars, had opened fire, the flash of her main armament lighting up scattered patches of fog and low clouds with scarlets and yellow like the open door of a giant blast furnace. With his glasses pointed directly at the muzzles, the blast leapt at Higgins with a glare that sent afterimages winking off his retinas. Hell. He was staring into the bowels of hell.
He dropped his glasses, blinked his watering eyes, and then he saw them—the most frightening sight he would ever see in his life. Eight fifteen-inch shells were actually visible, stubby purple-black pipes arching slowly in the clearing blue of the morning sky and dropping down toward him—directly at him. Lieutenant j.g. Rodney Higgins, USN. He stared with disbelief and a thought all men have when first exposed to enemy fire roared through his mind: They’re trying to kill me—Rodney Higgins. Why me? What have I done to them?”
Bismarck’s salvo was at least two hundred yards short, a great curtain hundreds of feet high rising majestically into the sky, the flash of exploding lyddite drowned immediately by the sea. One round was short, a defective barrel or broken driving band on the shell. Its impact was flat and it skipped across the surface like a flat rock thrown by a boy across a pond. Lazily, it sailed toward KG V. Mesmerized like a man menaced by a coiled cobra, Higgins watched the one-ton projectile leap from a crest not more than seventy yards away, turn end over end, flail the surface with first its base and then its AP tip like a ponderous pinwheel, and then finally crash in a burst of spray, disappearing into a cresting swell not more than fifty feet from the bridge. Rodney released his pent-up breath with a hiss.
The gunnery circuits crackled with flat, dehumanized voices, “Elevation two-four-zero-zero minutes, direction forty-seven degrees, deflection thirty-seven left, range one hundred minus eighteen thousand, four-zero-zero. . .”
Blackstone’s’ commands could be heard over the crackle of the speaker: “Starboard ten.”
“Starboard ten. Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.”
“Course one-three
-zero.”
“Course one-three-zero. Passing one-two-zero, sir.”
“Midships.”
“Rudder amidships, ship steady on one-three-zero.”
“Very well. All ahead together two-thirds. Give me revs for twenty-four knots.”
They were closing on the enemy, coming to point-blank range. Cruisers Norfolk, Dorsetshire, and the escorting destroyers scurried out of the line of fire, like small boys leaving the arena to the heavyweights. The great ships were built to duel at ranges that exceeded twenty miles. Yet, the men who commanded were rushing in close—near enough to fire over open sights. It would be a barroom brawl at murderous ranges where the great ships would pound each other to pieces like giants wielding sledgehammers against egg crates.
The ship rocked and staggered, the main armament firing again with barrels nearly horizontal. More waiting and watching. Huge fountains leapt a hundred yards beyond Bismarck. “Long! Long!” the cockney shouted. “We’ve bracketed the buggers.”
Battleship Rodney fired and Bismarck let go another salvo. But the German was forced to divide his fire against his two attackers. His shells roared over both targets. Higgins not only saw them, but he heard them this time, ripping overhead with a thundering sound like the Twentieth Century Limited. Four geysers shot into the sky two hundred yards beyond the battleship.
“Ranging! Ranging,” came from the director. “Secondary battery on target.”
The gunnery officer’s voice: “Main armament, down one hundred! Deflection eight right! Barrage! Commence! Commence! Secondary battery shoot!”
Lieutenant Higgins groaned as eight 5.25-inch guns in four turrets on the starboard side of KG V came to life with harsh cracking sounds like the tip of a whip snapping in a man’s ear. Firing eighteen rounds per minute, per gun, the battery set up a continuous drumfire, a torrent of shells deluging the enemy. Six fourteen-inch guns crashed out another salvo.