Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  Vernon began to feel sick again, and had difficulty in preventing the revolution of the cabin. He closed his eyes.

  “All right,” said the steward. “Dip your thumb in this; it’s antiseptic.”

  Vernon dipped his thumb in the bowl, and pain shot up from the tip like a tongue of flame. The water turned red.

  “This’ll be awkward for you on the gun,” said Carter.

  Vernon knew it would. Hell! he thought. Why did this have to happen? Hell!

  The pain ebbed. The steward was drying the thumb on a piece of gauze; then, not unskilfully, he bandaged it. He seemed pleased with his work, looking down at it with a half-smile on his face, as though congratulating himself.

  “Thanks,” said Vernon. “Thank you.”

  The steward went to a locker and took down a bottle of rum and a glass. He poured a liberal tot and handed it to Vernon.

  “Here! Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Sergeant Willis was annoyed. “Of all the bloody silly things to do! I suppose now you expect to be excused duty. Mucks everything up.”

  Willis’s tone nettled Vernon. “I don’t expect anything of the sort. I’m capable of doing watches, and I can still lay the gun.”

  Willis felt that he had been unjust. After all, a man did not smash up his thumb on purpose, and Vernon must be feeling a bit sick. Still, it did make things awkward; there were a lot of jobs a man with a smashed thumb could not do. But worse things could have happened—and probably would. When he spoke again his tone was less acid.

  “All right; we’ll see about that. But there’s no need for you to go on watch to-night; two men will be enough. Get some sleep into you; you’ll need it. For that matter, we all shall.”

  When the carpenter slipped on the ice Vernon had got used to having a bandaged thumb. It would not go into his glove. But Cowdrey slit the thumb of the glove and enlarged it with a strip of blanket. It was a neat job of work, and Vernon was grateful. Cowdrey thought nothing of it; he would have done the same for anyone; but the simple act of kindness warmed Vernon’s heart. It was strange how such conditions, cramped, uncomfortable, dangerous, often brought out qualities of decency and kindliness in men, so that they pulled together for the good of all. Here was true comradeship growing from the common need, the common suffering.

  On the third day the carpenter slipped on the deck-ice and sprained his ankle; and five minutes later an American freighter in one of the outer columns began firing into the sea with all guns that could be brought to bear.

  Bombardier Padgett, who was on watch on the Bofors, peered through his binoculars, but could discern nothing in the water which might have caused this burst of fire, and was mystified. For two minutes the firing continued, then ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

  “So what?” said Padgett.

  Others, perhaps, were asking the same question, for a destroyer, bow-wave creaming back from its razor stem, rushed to the scene and dropped two depth-charges. Then she raced to the head of the column and made a report to the commodore through her loud-hailer. The words floated across and could be heard clearly by the gun-crews of the Golden Ray. There was a satirical quality about them which brought grim smiles to many faces.

  “The Silas P. Manderson reports having bumped a U-boat and fired upon it. I can detect nothing, but have dropped two depth-charges for purposes of morale-boosting. It is my belief that imagination played a major part in this epic engagement.”

  The loud-hailer switched off with a click, the propellers of the destroyer churned the sea to foam, and she swept away in a wide curve to take up her position again in the defensive ring.

  “Just like the Navy,” Padgett observed. “Disbelieving shower. Lot of ruddy Thomases.”

  “If you believed everything the Yanks told you you’d have the jitters proper,” said Cowdrey. “Trigger-happy! That’s what they are.”

  “Pays to be on this job,” said Payne. “Shoot first and ask questions after; that’s the best motto.”

  “And run out of ammo half-way to Russia. Lot of sense in that!”

  “All the same, you can’t be too careful.”

  On the third day the carpenter slipped on the deck-ice, and his swearing could be heard from poop to bridge.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Arctic Convoy

  WHEN daylight came on the fourth day there was, for the first time, no escorting aircraft. It made the men in the ships feel lonely not to see the familiar shape of the Catalina flying-boat that had been with them on the previous day. It was as though that last link with home had been cut, and they were alone on the dark and dreary Arctic Ocean. The cold was hardening now, closing on them with steely fingers, feeling for the blood in their veins; it took the wind for an ally and came shrieking down from the North Pole, from the regions of eternal ice. Snow came with it too, and the ships became pale ghosts, moving on under the iron dome of the sky into a world of death and darkness, moving on towards the rim of the ice.

  Daylight came late, a weak shadow of its southern self, and stayed only an hour or two. The sun, barely peeping above the grey horizon, rolled for a brief while upon the lip of the ocean and then sank to rest. It had no power to warm the men on watch, and they could observe it with undazzled eyes, observe it appear and disappear, like a new penny thrust up through the slot of a money-box, only to be withdrawn again.

  At night the aurora borealis flickered across the sky, its streamers twisting like cold flames, changing colour, growing and fading, casting an eerie glow over the vessels of the convoy and holding all who watched them spellbound by their wonder. It was as though a great luminous hand had been thrust up over the northern horizon, its fingers groping across the heavens; at any moment it seemed those fingers might fall upon the convoy and force it down into the bottomless depths of the sea.

  Then came the moon, hanging like a child’s plaything amid the drifting stars, and washing the ships with silver.

  Vernon, for the first time in his life, was wearing long woollen underpants; the gunners called them John L. Sullivans. He was glad to wear them, glad to wear a thick vest, a flannel shirt, two pullovers, battle-blouse, lambswool jerkin, Army greatcoat, and duffel-coat; glad to wear two woollen Balaclava helmets under the hood of his coat, two pairs of trousers, and thick sea-boot stockings and leather sea-boots. Even so, dressed like a walking clothes-store, even so, the wind came through; even so, the cold crept up from the feet, up and up as the dead hours of the night watches dragged slowly past.

  And still it grew colder.

  On the fifth day the enemy found them. A Dornier 24 flying-boat came up over the southern horizon and, keeping just beyond gunfire range, proceeded to circle the convoy. Round and round, hour after hour, it flew; and the gunners, standing at action stations, watched it with angry eyes and cursed their impotence.

  “If only we had a carrier!” moaned Padgett. “Even a Woolworth would do. If only we had a carrier!”

  But there was no aircraft carrier with the convoy, not even one of those converted merchant ships known irreverently as ‘Woolworths.’ There was nothing—nothing but the outranged guns—and they were powerless to touch the German plane, flying so leisurely in wide circles and signalling to its submarine allies, signalling all the time.

  When night fell they lost the Dornier, and in the night they altered course, trying to throw their pursuers off the scent. But when day came the Dornier found them again, and an hour later it was joined by six friends, Heinkel torpedo bombers. Then the alarm was really on; then the ships really awoke; then the air suddenly became full of glowing tracer and bursting steel, and the crackle, bark, and boom of the guns flung noise towards the sky as though to burst open that great steel door and drive on to the freedom of eternity.

  Vernon sat on one side of the Bofors gun, watching through his sight a Heinkel coming in low across the line of ships. Andrews was in the other seat, and Miller was on the platform, loading. Vernon could see the Heinkel crawling along the wire of h
is gun-sight, and he waited for Sergeant Willis to give the order to fire. It was a sitter: it was not doing more than a hundred knots. Surely it was in range? Why did not Willis give the order? What was he waiting for? Was he waiting to see the colour of the pilot’s eyes? Now, now, now!

  “Fire!” yelled Willis in Vernon’s ear.

  Vernon pressed his foot on the firing-pedal, and the gun began to rock on its pedestal, flinging out shells at the rate of two a second. It was a harsh, staccato song that the gun sang, but it was sweet music to the men on the platform.

  Vernon could see the tracers curving away towards the Heinkel, and he could see that they were missing; Andrews was giving too much aim-off; you did not want so much with a plane coming in at that angle.

  “Left, you idiot! Left!” he yelled; but he knew that he was wasting his breath, for the voice of the gun beat his voice aside, and no one heard him. But Andrews was bringing the gun over, bringing it on to the correct line; the tracers were creeping nearer to their target.

  Now, thought Vernon, now we’ve got the bastard.

  And then the gun jammed, and Willis was swearing at Miller. “You bloody, misbegotten fool! Don’t you know how to load yet?”

  Miller was struggling to free the shells in the auto-loader, but Willis thrust him aside.

  “Gimme the unloading mask,” he yelled. “You there, Payne! Don’t stand gaping; gimme that mask. Hell! You’d think there was all day!”

  But the action was over. Two Heinkels were in the sea, and the others were away, heading for base. And one ship lay crippled on the water, with a black column of smoke joining it to the grey ceiling of cloud.

  The gunners cleaned the barrel, gathered up the empty shell-cases, and the convoy steamed on, leaving one ship to sink slowly into the oblivion of the Arctic Ocean. It was only a beginning.

  That night they began to hear depth-charges. It sounded as though some one were beating on the plates of the ship with a hammer, beating in a rapid series of strokes. The gunners who were below looked at one another; all knew the meaning of those swift hammer-blows.

  “Tin fish now,” said Payne. “Pleasant outlook. How many more days to Murmansk?”

  “Five or six probably,” said Petty Officer Donker, rubbing the knob on his neck.

  “God! Five or six days of this!”

  “You get used to anything,” said Donker, grinning slyly as more depth-charges drummed against the plates. “Even that.”

  Vernon found it impossible to sleep. He lay on his bunk fully clothed even down to his sea-boots, using his kapok life-jacket as a pillow. He hoped he did not show what a sickening fear there was in him, and he wondered whether the others were as afraid as he. Old Donker, for instance, with his weather-beaten face and knobbly hands—was he afraid? And Payne, the fat, balloon-like Payne—was he thinking, as Vernon was, of the icy sea beneath their feet? What chance was there of survival in that? And suppose a torpedo struck just where this cabin was! It had been painful enough having the end of his thumb crushed; what would it be like to have one’s belly ripped open, one’s limbs torn to ragged tatters of flesh? The thought made him feel sick; this was what it was to be cursed with a vivid imagination. In such a situation complete lack of imagination was the greatest gift of all.

  He looked from one to another of his fellow-gunners: Miller, the small, ugly Londoner, still sulking over the loading incident; Randall with his black hair and dark eyes that seemed always to be gazing inward at his own soul; Andrews, a boy not fully able to conceal his fear; Cowdrey, the short, bald, cheerful Cowdrey, still smiling; Padgett, who did his daily quota of press-ups and could lift a Bofors barrel with one hand; Willis with his ram-rod back and grim mouth; and Warby, slow, willing, gentle Warby, who should have been ploughing the land, and not the sea.

  Vernon smiled as the last sentence formed in his brain; that was from one of Housman’s Last Poems. Vernon had tried to be a poet, never with any real success. His poetry was like the rest of his life, mediocre. What was it about him, he wondered, what fundamental weakness had always held him back, robbing him of the success he only attained in dreams? Perhaps it was some lack of mental courage, or perhaps mental laziness. He could build castles in the air, but never one with solid bricks.

  Lying on his bunk, gazing up at the dirty iron ceiling above him, listening to the drumming of the depth-charges and the occasional quiet slap of water against the side of the ship, he let his mind drift back over his life, finding in it always, not complete failure, but that partial failure which is so much harder to bear.

  He had started life with certain advantages in what Miller would have called the “privileged class.” His father had been a solicitor in a small country town, not wealthy, but well enough off in the world’s goods to be able to send his son to a minor public school and thence to Cambridge. It was at Cambridge that he had conceived the ambition to be a poet, and the acceptance of one or two verses by obscure, ephemeral magazines which paid nothing for contributions and appeared like daffodils in the spring, only to die with an equal haste, fanned the flame of his ambition. The act was to be a disservice, for, scribbling his verses, he neglected his studies, and after three years of university life he came down from Cambridge without a degree and with the unwelcome knowledge that to suppose he could ever hope to become a poet of note was but to deceive himself.

  It was at about this time that his father died—he had been a widower for some years—leaving behind him only a sad hash of debts and unwise investments. When this business had been cleared up Vernon found himself practically penniless and without a job.

  For four years he drifted from one underpaid teaching post to another; he seemed to be unable to think beyond the teaching profession, and though he cared little for such work, the long holidays appealed to his indolent nature. When the War started he was at a preparatory school not far from London run by a certain Mr Clement Tennyson, M.A. The War appeared to Vernon as a heaven-sent opportunity to escape; he volunteered at once, and said good-bye to Mr Tennyson and the pupils without regret. Perhaps in the Army he would at last find his right vocation, quickly gaining promotion, medals, and glory on some field of battle.

  For eighteen months he lived in a wooden hut with a varying number of other men, manning an anti-aircraft gun in a locality which the enemy, for reasons best known to himself, studiously avoided. Vernon applied in turn for a transfer to the Commandos, the R.A.F., and the Navy, all without success. He put in for a commission, and was turned down on the grounds that he was not “officer type.” He was bored, frustrated, and mentally stagnant. The granting of his application for a transfer to the newly formed Maritime Regiment came as a relief from torment.

  Vernon’s eyes were sore from the effect of the cold wind; his face burned, and when he passed his tongue over his lips he could taste the salt caked on them. He turned on his side and tried to sleep, but his cheek came into contact with the little red electric lamp clipped to his life-jacket. He swore softly.

  In the night one of the tankers was torpedoed. It happened in Padgett’s watch. The tanker was level with the Golden Ray in the next column to port. Padgett heard the explosion of the torpedo first, then another explosion as the petrol ignited, and at the same time a burst of flame soared up towards the sky.

  “Jesus Christ!” cried Payne. “Jesus Christ! She’s caught a packet.”

  There was a red glow lying on the water, and the red spout of flame mounting into the air took with it a black cloud of thick and filthy smoke. From the Golden Ray the gunners could hear the dull roaring of the flames, and they could see on the deck of the tanker tiny black figures of men running. There was something unreal about those figures; they were so small, so far away; one could hardly identify them with men whose flesh could feel the blistering touch of that furnace raging between the bridge and the poop. In a way they were like ants whose colony has been disturbed, running away from the scene of destruction. Across the forward cat-walk they scampered to cluster in the bows, cru
shed tightly against the rails. But the fire followed them, and one by one they dropped into the sea, trying always to avoid the flame. And even into the sea the fire went after them; it would not let them escape, but spread out over the surface of the water, groping for them with burning fingers. And so they died, roasted in an ice-cold sea.

  But the tanker burned on, and the ships astern of her altered course and passed her by, passed her by and left her burning. And as they passed by, some on one side, some on the other, the red glow of her funeral-pyre fell upon those other ships, and it seemed that the life-blood of the tanker had splashed them all. So they pressed on, all of them driving onward into the night; but now there were only eighteen ships where there had been an even score.

  “Oh, God,” muttered Payne, “who’s next on the list?”

  On the seventh day it snowed—fine, hard snow that came beating up on the wings of the wind like a million tiny darts, pricking at the exposed flesh, and finding its way under scarves and Balaclavas, finding its way to necks and arms and backs, bringing everywhere an added chill and an added discomfort to those on watch. It found its way also into the mechanism of the guns and the racks of ammunition lying ready for the next emergency.

  “One thing,” remarked Andrews, “Jerry’ll never find us in this lot.”

  But on the eighth day the weather cleared, and the enemy picked them up again. And this time he came with twenty aircraft, and they were Junkers 88’s, which dive-bombed the ships and reduced the numbers of the merchantmen to sixteen. And in the night the submarines took up the attack and claimed another victim.

  In the gunners’ cabin the iron stove glowed red, and the glow extended half-way up the pipe. Yet the deadlight clamped over the port-hole six feet away was caked with ice an inch thick. Some of the gunners were sitting round the stove, their feet thrust out towards the warmth. They sat on boxes, for there were no chairs in the cabin and only long wooden forms in the mess; but sitting there or lying on hard bunks was paradise compared with being on watch.