That symbol dated back to the fourteenth century, and was normally known as the ‘king’s mark’, having been introduced by the English king, Edward III, to denote property that he owned. Later it was adopted by the British government as a kind of general indication of ownership.
‘The blasting cap is what actually fires the explosive, and that’s triggered by the pyrotechnic fuse, this kind of wire stuff. Inside this is a core of black powder. When you light the end of it, it’s designed to burn at a standard rate, usually about sixty seconds per foot, so you have time to light it and then get well out of the way before the charge goes off. Luckily, there’s plenty of fuse here, because we’re going to need quite long lengths of it to do some of the demo, especially when we sink the block ships.’
Dawson measured out the lengths of the fuse that he had calculated they would need for each of the demolition operations, cutting it into the appropriate sections with the blade of his bayonet. Then he picked up one of the blasting caps, slid the end of a length of the pyrotechnic fuse into it, picked up the pliers and crimped the base of the blasting cap around the fuse, using the smaller opening in the jaws of the cone pliers to compress the thin metal.
‘The first thing to remember is that you never do this close to the explosive, just in case the blasting cap detonates. The second thing to remember is to always use cone pliers or some other suitable kind of tool when you crimp the ends of the blasting cap. I met a guy once, a so-called explosives expert, who never used pliers. He reckoned he could do a better job, and faster, by using his teeth. The last time I saw him he was in hospital with most of his lower jaw missing because a cap had fired when he was crimping it.’
‘That’s the kind of mistake you only ever make once,’ Rochester said.
‘That’s true of most mistakes that people make when they’re working with explosives. It’s a kind of natural selection. That’s what another mining engineer told me. Do it badly wrong just the once and you’re dead.’
It only took Dawson a few minutes to attach the cut lengths of pyrotechnic fuse to the blasting caps. Then he put the prepared fuses into the haversack, and placed it on the ground some distance away from the tubes of dynamite that had been lashed together to make up the demolition charges.
‘We insert the blasting caps at the last possible moment,’ he said. ‘Just before we position the charges.’
Michaels and Barber returned a few minutes later, with the news that they had managed to commandeer a launch to get everybody out of IJmuiden.
‘It’s not very big,’ Michaels admitted, ‘but we can all fit on board. It’s got a compass, but that’s it as far as navigation instruments are concerned. It doesn’t even have any charts, but for the distance we have to go that probably doesn’t matter. After all, if you sail a boat out of any port in Holland and just keep going west, sooner or later you’ll end up on the British coast. And what it hasn’t got is a radio, so I’m going to go and see Commander Slater-Jones and see if he has access to a set. With a bit of luck, once we get out into the open sea he can try and whistle up some kind of Royal Navy ship so we can hitch a ride on that. That’s what I hope we can do anyway.’
Michaels inspected the charges that the KFRE men had prepared, and then Dawson and the three officers together checked that the fuses were the right length for the burn time they would need for each of the targets.
‘Right, lads,’ Michaels said. ‘We can get these in position right now, and I’ll just tell the commander that we’re ready to start.’
Getting the senior naval officer’s approval took less than five minutes, and then the men dispersed around the harbour, each small group heading for their designated target, one man carrying the charge, with another holding the prepared pyrotechnic fuse.
Michaels had been very specific in terms of the sequence of demolitions, insisting that the block ships would be the last targets to be hit, but he had not been concerned about the order in which the cranes and lock gates were blown. As it happened, the first of the lock gates was the closest target, and Dawson accompanied Captain Rochester and two of his men as they made their way towards it.
Because the hinge on the lock gate was some distance below the harbour wall that provided access, Dawson had prepared longer lengths of pyrotechnic fuse than he would normally have done. This was simply because the charge would have to be lowered on a rope into position several feet down, and obviously the fuse had to be ignited after that had been completed. Also, the extra length provided a greater margin of safety, and that was never a bad thing.
He watched critically as the KFRE soldier first lowered the charge over the side of the harbour wall and into the narrow gap between it and the steel lock gate, roughly measuring the distance. The man hauled up the charge again, took the blasting cap and inserted it carefully into the central stick of dynamite. Then he lowered the charge once more, hand over hand, while making sure that the pyrotechnic fuse did not pull out, or get tangled with the rope. Once the charge was in the correct position, he handed the end of the fuse to Dawson while he tied off the rope around a bollard.
‘Everything OK with this, Corp?’ the man asked.
Dawson nodded.
‘Looks good to me.’
Rochester glanced back until he spotted Captain Michaels, and waved to get his attention. Once he’d done so, he pointed at the lock gate, where the charge was now in the correct position.
Michaels looked around him, making sure that firing the charge would not be dangerous to any of his men or any of the other people in the harbour, then raised his hand to give a thumbs up signal.
‘We’re ready,’ Rochester said. ‘Fire it.’
The KFRE soldier lit a match and touched it to the end of the pyrotechnic fuse cord. Immediately, the fuse burst into life, a bright orange flame starting to burn at the end of it; a flame that began making its way steadily down the length of the fuse.
‘Fire in the hole!’ Dawson shouted, and repeated this twice more as they walked quickly away from the lock gate towards a safe area along the harbour wall. The expression obviously meant nothing to any of the Dutch workers, but they were all well clear of the site where the explosion was about to take place.
‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Rochester asked.
‘Fire in the hole? It’s an old mining term, sir. It’s been around for years. It means that an explosion is imminent. I think it refers to the way we blast out coal seams. You drill a hole into the rock, maybe 3 feet deep, something like that, then prepare a stick of dynamite with a fuse and slide it into the hole, with the end of the fuse outside. Once the fuse is alight, the flame of the burning black powder disappears into the hole, and when it does that there’s no way of reaching it or putting it out. So the fire really is in the hole.’
Just over six minutes later, they heard a loud and echoing explosion. As they watched, the lock gate, clearly still shaking and vibrating from the blast, toppled slowly sideways before hitting the water with a tremendous splash.
‘I think that’s buggered it good and proper,’ Rochester said. ‘Good work, Dawson.
For the next hour, IJmuiden harbour resounded with the noise of a succession of explosions, some larger than others, depending upon the target and its location. The destruction of the harbour cranes was perhaps the most spectacular, because they had needed to prepare multiple charges, formed from both gun cotton and dynamite, to ensure the simultaneous severing of different parts of the steel structure on one side of each crane.
The first one was destroyed shortly after the lock gate collapsed, the three simultaneous explosions of the cutting charges significantly louder than the first demolition, because not only had more explosive been used, but the detonation was in the open air, not trapped between a stone wall and a massive steel gate. For a few seconds after the charges blew, nothing seemed to happen. And then, extraordinarily slowly, the whole massive structure of the crane toppled sideways into the harbour. The base of it remained attached to the moun
t, the steel beams warped and twisted, and Dawson knew that the Germans would have to cut away the distorted metal and then recover the whole crane from the harbour – a major undertaking – otherwise that part of it would be completely unusable because of the huge underwater obstruction. Again, an excellent result from the point of view of the British troops.
The least impressive explosions were those on the two block ships, because the charges had been placed deep inside the hulls of the vessels and well below the waterlines. In each case, the noise was little more than a muffled thud, accompanied by two sudden sprays of water, one from each side of the target ship, a spray that vanished almost immediately. After that, nothing else appeared to happen to either vessel, but in fact both ships were steadily sinking to form a pair of massive blockades that would be immovable without the expenditure of enormous time and effort. And that, of course, was precisely the idea.
‘Now can we go home?’ Lieutenant Barber asked somewhat plaintively when they all assembled beside the harbour and stared at the second block ship, the faint echoes of the last explosion dying away as the vessel very slowly began to settle lower in the water.
‘I bloody well hope so,’ Michaels replied. ‘But before we go I should just check in once again with Commander Slater-Jones and try and sort out a radio. Hopefully he hasn’t got any other little jobs he’d like us to give him a hand with. The rest of you go off with Lieutenant Barber and wait near the launch for me to get back.’
Barber led the way along the southern wall of IJmuiden harbour towards the entrance and the open expanse of the North Sea beyond.
Dawson experienced an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu when he looked down from the harbour wall into the launch that Michaels and Barber had procured for them to make their escape from Holland. Significantly smaller even than the MTB in which he had arrived, it looked to him like an oversized rowing boat, the kind of craft that half a dozen friends might hire for a pleasant afternoon motoring up and down a river. It was, at least in Dawson’s opinion, clearly far too small to accommodate the entire KFRE group, and far too small and far too open to handle the waves of the North Sea.
There were no seats on which they could wait for the officer in charge to return, but there was a low and broad wall a few yards away, and Barber instructed them to sit on that until Michaels reappeared.
This he did a few minutes later, walking up to the group of tired and apprehensive men with a grim expression on his face.
‘I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that the commander is delighted with what we’ve managed to do in the harbour, but he has asked us to wait here rather than leave straight away.’ Michaels paused and looked at the men under his command, all of whom were staring at him with a kind of fixed and almost hostile intensity. ‘And he has got a good reason for asking that.
Chapter 16
15 May 1940
IJmuiden, Holland
Then Michaels smiled broadly and nodded.
‘There isn’t any bad news,’ he said. ‘The commander hasn’t got any more work for us to do, because basically we’ve already comprehensively buggered up IJmuiden harbour and made it unusable to the Germans without a hell of a lot of work. The reason he suggested we stay here for a while is because he’s been told that a British destroyer might be arriving here sometime this afternoon, and if it does obviously we can leave here on board that ship. Some of you’ – here he looked straight at Dawson – ‘might prefer that to chancing your arm in our requisitioned rowing boat down there. Anyway, for the moment we do nothing, so you can all relax.’
There’s an old mantra which is drummed into members of the British armed forces by the older and allegedly wiser regulars: Never run if you can walk; never walk if you can stand still; never stand if you can sit; never sit if you can lie; and never be awake if you can be asleep. And, like many expressions handed down in the military over the years, there is a good deal of truth in it. War is an uncertain business, and troops who are rested and preferably well fed will always be in a better position to fight or to handle the unexpected than those who are worn out.
So within a few minutes of Michaels announcing the new plan for the afternoon, a couple of portable stoves were already alight with cans of water coming to the boil on top of them to make tea, and most of the KFRE troops were grubbing about in their 24-hour ration packs for something to eat. And with a very few exceptions, all of the men were either sitting or lying down.
But four hours later, with the end of the afternoon approaching and no sign of a destroyer or in fact a Royal Navy vessel of any size, Michaels came to the obvious decision.
‘Get everyone on board the boat, Gordon,’ he said, ‘and you and David Barber get her ready for sea. I’ll go and tell the commander that we really can’t wait any longer.’
The launch appeared bigger than Dawson had expected when he reluctantly stepped aboard, but not by much. There was a small wheelhouse at the rear of the vessel, but forward of that it was completely open, a fairly wide entertaining space ideal for a small number of people, as he had guessed earlier. There were half a dozen folding chairs stacked at one end of the open area, but not enough space to unfold them. With all the members of the KFRE group on board it was quite cramped.
‘Find yourselves somewhere to sit,’ Lieutenant Barber instructed. ‘And get rid of those blasted chairs. Carry them up the steps and leave them on the quayside.’
That created a little more room on the open deck.
‘We don’t know what it’s going to be like once we get clear of the harbour, where it’s obviously very sheltered,’ Barber said. ‘It might be quite rough, and we only have about a dozen lifebelts on board, in that locker near the bow. Get them out now and hand them around. All non-swimmers are to wear one, and that includes you, Dawson. When we start off, find something to hang on to. If it’s rough, and you fall overboard, there’ll be nothing much we can do to rescue you, so make sure you stay on board this boat at all costs.’
There were actually ten lifejackets in the forward stowage, and Rochester supervised their distribution. Apart from Dawson, there were only four members of the KFRE group who couldn’t swim, so that left six available lifejackets. Barber and the other two officers would be in the small wheelhouse, and wouldn’t need to wear them unless the boat sank, when it probably wouldn’t matter one way or the other, so Rochester gave the flotation gear to the six people he considered to be the weakest swimmers. But in reality, none of them were in much doubt about their likely fate if the small launch foundered in the North Sea, lifejackets or no lifejackets.
Michaels returned a couple of minutes after Barber had got the engine running and the launch was ready to leave the harbour wall. He was carrying a canvas bag slung over his shoulder and another bag with straps in his hand. Both looked heavy.
‘No news of a navy ship,’ Michaels said briefly. ‘We’re on our own now.’
‘Cast off forward, cast off aft,’ Barber instructed, once the captain had stepped on board.
A couple of the soldiers freed the mooring ropes as the lieutenant had instructed. Barber turned the wheel clockwise, moved the simple gear lever into forward – it had only three positions: forward, neutral and reverse – and eased the throttle open. The launch moved smoothly away from the harbour wall, its speed beginning to increase as Barber increased the throttle setting.
Quite a stiff wind was blowing from the south-west, kicking up an endless succession of choppy waves that banged into the bow and left-hand forward side of the hull as the boat emerged from the mouth of the harbour.
The motion was similar to that which Dawson had experienced in the MTB, but much less pronounced, and he was pleased that it didn’t seem to be having much effect on his stomach, full of tea and a packet of the hard tack biscuits that were a staple part of British army ration packs.
Made from flour and water and with a dash of salt, they seemed able to last almost forever, and were included in the packs for that reason, and not because they
tasted good, which they didn’t. They were hard and essentially flavourless, and as a result had acquired a number of pejorative nicknames, including dog biscuits, sheet iron and molar breakers, names that most people who had eaten them felt were entirely accurate.
They weren’t a new invention. When King Richard I of England left the country to take part in the Third Crusade, he was reported to have taken with him what was described as a ‘biskit of muslin’ that contemporary accounts suggested might have been made from a similar recipe, and the ancient Romans had a biscuit called a bucellatum, also made from flour and water. Even earlier than that, Egyptian sailors had put to sea with supplies of dhourra cake, a kind of flat loaf of millet bread. And all of them had probably tasted just as bad as the British army hard tack biscuits.
The launch was probably capable of travelling at about 15 knots maximum on the flat calm waters of a river or canal or lake. But in the choppy conditions they ran into almost immediately they cleared the shelter of the harbour, this was reduced to perhaps 9 or 10 knots, simply because Lieutenant Barber had to spend most of his time making sure that he kept the bow of the vessel pointed into the waves to avoid it getting swamped. And not only did that require frequent small changes of direction as the sea state altered, but he also needed to increase or decrease the throttle opening depending upon what the boat was doing. In the troughs between waves, he could keep the power on, but as the stern of the launch rose into the air he had to reduce the throttle setting to avoid the engine over-revving when the propeller lifted out of the water.
All that manoeuvring greatly reduced the launch’s forward speed, and Barber was also not happy about their generally south-westerly track. If they could have headed due west for something over 100 miles, then they would probably have made landfall somewhere near Lowestoft or Great Yarmouth, but the south-westerly track that the launch was having to follow meant that it would be more likely to parallel the east coast of England and eventually end up in the Thames estuary, which was a much greater distance to cover. In fact, neither Barber nor Captain Michaels, the only two people on board the vessel with much experience of sailing boats of any size, didn’t even know if there would be enough fuel on board for a voyage of that length. They’d checked that the tank was full before they left IJmuiden, but they hadn’t been able to find any spare fuel cans to take with them to top it up. And without any knowledge of the engine’s burn rate, and with nothing in the wheelhouse that would tell them, they had no idea what its likely endurance was.
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