DOUGLAS REEMAN
THE
VOLUNTEERS
For Audrey, with love
William Morrow edition published 1985
1
THREE OF A KIND
THE CLOUDS ABOVE the port of Liverpool were bunched together for another onslaught although the wharves and docks were still glistening from an overnight downpour.
A typical Liverpool morning, some might complain; it would be April in a few days but looked and felt more like winter. Gladstone Dock was as usual packed with warships of every size and class. Minesweepers to keep the coastline clear, battered little corvettes, frigates, and here and there the longer, more stylish hull of a destroyer.
For this was Liverpool in 1943, the headquarters of the navy’s Western Approaches Command from whence each week the convoys left for the corners of the world where the war was being waged with unrelenting ferocity. And yesterday a homebound convoy had passed the Bar Light Vessel after running the gauntlet of the Atlantic, the “killing ground” as most of the sailors knew it.
The warships, ranked together because of lack of space, appeared to be supporting one another after their ordeal. Convoy escorts, whose efforts kept the routes open for the rusty lines of merchantmen without which Britain could not survive for more than a couple of weeks. Food, oil, guns, ammunition and the most precious cargo of all, men.
Alongside two elderly destroyers, veterans of the Great War, lay another, larger one which seemed to stand out from all the rest. HMS Levant had been the senior escort of that last homebound convoy and was only eighteen months old.
She was big and ‘well armed and, apart from a few scrapes around her raked bows, showed little sign of the many convoys she had watched, protected and chased since her keel had first touched water just two miles away at Birkenhead.
The forenoon watch were working unhurriedly about her decks and bridge, thinking probably of the next run ashore into this bombed, defiant and somehow wonderful city. Liverpool had from the very first convoy in 1939 opened its arms and its heart to the thousands of sailors, naval and merchant service who nightly thronged the bars and clubs, their refuge from the Atlantic and its bitter memories.
In his day cabin Levant’s commanding officer took a framed photograph of his wife from a desk drawer and stood it in place. He was thirty, but looked older, his face lined and reddened by hours and days on his bridge. The photograph’s reinstatement had become symbolic. A return, no matter how brief, to normal. The captain spent his convoys on the bridge or snatching a catnap in his cupboard-sized sea cabin behind it.
He looked around the cabin. Two days ago it had been the overflow from the sickbay, as had the wardroom.
They had lost twenty-two ships on the long haul from Newfoundland, and it was a miracle they had managed to rescue so many of their gasping, oil-soaked survivors.
He glanced at an unopened newspaper which the ship’s postman had brought aboard. The news would be all about the Allies’ change of fortunes. No more retreats, they were on the offensive. It was proclaimed that even the invincible Afrika Korps would be beaten into submission and driven out of North Africa once and for all. Then where? Sicily and Italy, it sounded an impossible dream after all the losses and setbacks. Norway and France, Greece and the Low Countries, Dunkirk and Singapore. They read like defeats and yet somehow they had given new strength to fighting men and civilians alike.
There was a tap at the door, and he sighed. Defaulters or promotions, a sailor requesting to see him privately perhaps about a letter which had awaited his return from that awful convoy. It was hard to think of such ordinary matters after the great roaring greybeards in mid-Atlantic, the dull thud of a torpedo and yet another tired merchantman toppling out of line, avoided if not ignored by her consorts. Close the gap. Do not stop. The merchantmen were the targets, helpless, obedient only to the flags and urgent signals from their escorts.
But it was none of those things. It was the first lieutenant.
The captain yawned, “Yes, Number One?”
“Pilot to see you, sir.”
“Yes. I see.” It was coming back to him. A flaw in the pattern of things.
The first lieutenant added unhelpfully, “There’s a signal to say his successor will be arriving tomorrow forenoon, sir.”
“Send him in.”
The door closed and as if from another world the tannoy piped, “Able Seaman Robbins report to the Cox’n.” His world.
He pulled out a clip of signals from his desk and stared at it. Lieutenant Keith Frazer, Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, had been in Levant for about a year, first as assistant navigating officer and then as navigator. Most big destroyers carried either a regular officer or a very experienced RNR officer for the job, but Frazer had served in two corvettes, one of which had been sunk in collision with a blazing freighter when they had been trying to take off her crew.
There were many Canadians in Western Approaches, ships as well as men, and the mixture seemed to work.
He leafed back to the original signal, that Frazer was to be interviewed about a possible transfer to Special Forces (Navy). He had tried to talk him out of it. Cloak-and-dagger brigade, he called them. The Atlantic could still lose them all the war. No commando exploit could win one. But it had been to no avail. Now Frazer was leaving the ship. It would weaken their close-knit team. He gave a bitter smile. If I was killed on the next convoy I too could be replaced, so why the difference?
The door opened and Lieutenant Keith Frazer stepped into the cabin.
Tall, with the shoulders and stance of an athlete, he already looked a stranger in his best uniform. A change from seagoing gear or a filthy duffel-coat.
The captain studied him gravely. He had got to know his navigator pretty well in the last year. Frazer was twenty-six
years old, but the crow’s-feet around his eyes and the lines at the corners of his mouth showed experience rather than youth.
“Well, Pilot? No change of heart?”
Frazer smiled and the strain dropped from his tanned face like a mask.
“I guess not, sir.” He turned and glanced around the day cabin. He too was remembering the last convoy. People who did not understand babbled continuously about invasions, the Second Front, an end to the war. In the Atlantic some convoys were better than others, but the toll was always too high.
The captain said, “I could still make a signal and get you out of it. Special Forces, you never know where you might end up. I’ve come to rely on you, Pilot.”
Frazer shrugged. It had sounded like an accusation. But he knew his captain and what mattered to him.
He replied, “I’ve been on the Atlantic since the beginning, sir. I want to do something else. Where I can see the enemy for a change, instead of being a target or the victim.”
The captain wanted to yawn but held it back. He said, “I wish you luck.”
Frazer turned slightly, the deckhead light glancing across the gold CANADA on his shoulder. He would miss Levant. She was a thoroughbred. No wonder the Old Man was in love with her. He thought suddenly of his father, Bill Frazer to everyone, never William, who lived now in Vancouver, an ocean and a continent away. He too was probably wondering why his eldest son !iad decided to join the navy, and then to transfer to the Royal Navy for the worst war of all.
Bill Fraser and his father had originally settled in Powell River, and from humble beginnings had carved out one of the biggest timber businesses on the West Coast. Now the company had expanded to Vancouver and north to Prince Rupert, but to Keith Frazer, who had been born in Powell River, his boyhood seemed like a dream. His father was doubtless a millionaire, and although he spent a great deal of his time sailing now, he still kept an eagle eye on the timber empire he h
ad helped to build.
There was no need for Keith to go to sea, he had insisted a hundred times. He was needed in Vancouver, especially now that the company was directly involved with building small vessels for the navy anyway.
Frazer realized that the captain was staring at him and said, “I’ll take my leave then, sir.”
The captain thrust out his hand. It was over.
Outside the drizzle had started and the steel decks shone like glass. Several members of the wardroom stood by the brow which crossed to the deck of a neighboring destroyer.
They shook hands, unusually silent and solemn. A few seamen gave him the thumbs-up and grinned. He would soon be forgotten. It was the way of the navy. Another ship, new faces. Never go back.
The first lieutenant, whose mind was already working on his daily routine, said, “Transport’s waiting, Keith. Remember, keep your head down.”
On the dockside Frazer paused, the rain bouncing off his cap and raincoat. When he looked back the Levant was almost hidden by the two elderly ships alongside. But he knew he would never forget her.
He heard a car start up, the driver revving the engine unnecessarily as he waited for his passenger.
Passenger? To what and to where, he wondered. He must be crazy to leave the world he knew, had learned and worked at since he had volunteered.
_ Perhaps he had had his mind made up for him. He quickened his pace, suddenly eager to go. To leave the Atlantic and its bloody cruelty behind.
He settled himself in the car and touched his pocket to make certain his orders were still there.
Special Forces. The officer who had originally interviewed him when he had applied for the transfer had been offhand, even rude. He must have been testing him. The fact he was here in this camouflaged car proved that he must have satisfied even him.
The Royal Marine driver saw the lieutenant give a small smile and sighed as the car bounced over some tracks beside a towering gantry. He had picked up plenty of officers like this Canadian. Quite a few had never been seen again.
Some two hundred miles southeast of Liverpool on the outskirts of Canterbury, a very different city, the rain passed over and there was even some determined sunshine.
The Royal Navy Detention Quarters, called Fort Mason, stood quite alone like a gray cliff, the walls too high for any passers-by to see what was going on.
In the center of the prison, for that was what it had been during the Napoleonic War, was a cobbled square over which the cells of the inmates and the offices of those who con-. trolled them stared like lines of small, mean eyes.
In one such office the senior Master-at-Arms rolled himself a cigarette from a large tin of duty-free tobacco and ran his tongue along the edge of the paper.
“Now then, son, let me just put it to you again-“
The only other occupant of the neat, cream-painted office was a strongly built man in a sailor’s square rig. He had short fair hair, a pleasant, homely face, but one which looked as if it was well able to take care of itself. On his left sleeve he wore the single anchor of a leading hand, on the other the red crown of the regulating branch. Ships’ police, sometimes less politely known as “crushers.”
Mark Ives was twenty-four and looked like a policeman, which was exactly what he had been before joining up. He had been serving in the East End of London when he had made his decision. A lot of friends had left to enlist, several had been killed or taken prisoner overseas. In spite of the bombing of London, Ives felt out of it. Other, older coppers could do his job. He wanted to fight.
In the beginning everything had gone well. His subdivisional inspector had tried to talk him out of joining the navy, much as the Master-at-Arms was about to do regarding his transfer to Special Forces, but he had stood firm. After serving in an old sloop, he had volunteered for Light Coastal Forces and had even completed a course to become a killick coxswain with his leading rate’s anchor, aboard an MTB or a motor gunboat.
It was just as if the old police system had picked him out at that moment. He had been transferred to Chatham Barracks, and then to this detention barracks where he had been for nearly five months.
“Look,” the MAA was warming to his theme, “once you’ve been in the job you know how it is. You’re a copper at heart, and you stay one. You belong here, my son. In a few more months. you may rate RPO, just think-a petty officer.” He glanced down at the matching gold crowns and leaves on his lapels. “Why you might even reach Master like me. This bloody war will go on for years an’ years yet, you see.” He sounded pleased.
Ives stared through a window and gritted his teeth. Near one end of the square was a high wall. It had been painted white, and then a mountain of coal had been piled against it. The opposite side of the wall was black where this same pile of coal had been leaning. That wall would now be washed and painted, and then the coal would be moved back in small hand barrows to repeat the whole process over and over again. He watched the bent figures of the prisoners digging with their shovels, their faces and arms shining black in the sunshine. Through the tough glass he could hear the bark of commands, the occasional shrill of a whistle as the prisoners were driven to greater efforts.
As every RPO said to an incoming prisoner, “You may break yer mother’s heart, but you won’t break mine.”
What a place. Everything at the double. Poor food, little sleep. Ives often thought the guards would have felt quite at home in a German prison camp.
The Master-at-Arms stood up and joined him by the window.
“You sorry for them? Don’t be. Skates, the lot of ‘em. Deserters, lower-deck lawyers, hard cases. Scum. They’re a disgrace to the Andrew.”
“I might as well have stayed in the Job, Master.,” He felt like hitting his superior, although his features remained calm. Not because of his words, but because of his attitude. He looked down at some other toiling figures, doing squad drill with full packs and equipment. Except that their packs were loaded with stones and they would march until they dropped. The Master-at-Arms was probably right about them being a disgrace. This treatment might break many of them, but others would become even harder.
Ives had seen the Admiralty Fleet order by accident when he had been working in the regulating office. Special Services. He had heard of them, of course. Raids on enemy coasts, small, quick actions which were highly dangerous.
He saw one of the drilling figures stagger and fall. The rest marched around him, frightened to look or help.
God, anything was better than this hell.
He said evenly, “I want to go, Master.”
“I see.”. He sighed as if unable to believe what he had heard. “Well you can -always apply to come back, my son.”
Ives reached for his cap. The Jaunty was unconvinced. The man in question added, “You know what they say about a volunteer in this mob? He’s a bloke who’s misunderstood the bloody question in the first place!” He rocked with silent laughter. “Never fear, you’ll be back, you see if I’m not right. “
He was still chuckling as Ives left to collect his gear and his travel warrant.
The duty Regulating Petty Officer peered in and said, “You didn’t talk ‘im round then, Master?”
“No.” He glared at him. “Get those idle buggers to shift themselves with the coal. They’re like a bunch of old women!”
Outside the high studded gates Ives took a deep breath. Even the air tasted different out here. He slung his bag over his shoulder and made his way towards a blue van with the letters RNDQ on its side. He had made his decision. There was nothing to lose. Ives’s father had been a copper too and had died in a punch-up at some stupid dog race. His mother had been buried in her little house in Bethnal Green during a hit-and-run raid. Now she lived, broken and completely mindless, in a home. No, there was nothing to lose any more.
The driver said, “I’m to take you to the station, Hookey. After that, you’re on your owh.
Ives nodded then turned to stare at the high, dismal wall. He seem
ed to hear the Master-at-Arms’s last words and shook his head.
Aloud he said, “Not this time, my son. I’ll never come back.”
The naval jeep with scratched red-painted wings splashed through a succession of puddles and swung into yet another deserted street.
In the front seat beside the driver Lieutenant Richard Allenby, RNVR, tried to balance a map on his knees and prevent himself from being hurled bodily onto the road. .
I must be mad. Raving bloody mad. What is this trying to prove?
Behind him he heard Hazel, his young rating, shifting amongst the tools and other gear which cluttered the jeep. He saw a policeman on a bicycle, wearing a steel helmet, pedalling slowly past, going the opposite way.
The driver muttered, “Got the right idea, that one.”
Nobody answered him.
Allenby was twenty-five years old and hailed from the county of Surrey. His even features were unusually pale, and his mouth tightly shut.
He could not find the answers to any of his questions. After the officers’ training college at King Alfred he had been appointed to a minesweeper. He had a knack of understanding mechanical and electrical gadgets that had left some of his instructors openly nonplussed.
Even now on quiet nights he thought about his months in the little minesweeper. Up and down, back and forth, monotony, strain, and every so often sudden death, with a sweeper being blasted to fragments by a mine someone had missed. He had had one chance of transferring to general service but something, a sort of wild impulse, had made him stay on with minesweeping.
His mother, with whom he shared very little of his work and his doubts, often asked him why he didn’t get promoted like some of the neighbors’ sons, or be in a ship with one of the household names.
“Like the Hood?” he had once suggested. Even that cruel joke was lost on his mother.
Two minesweepers had exploded in a single pyre within sight of their base. Nobody was saved, and when the burned and twisted corpses had been laid out for burial Allenby had felt fear for the first time. Before, it had been merely a sensation, elation, madness perhaps, but seeing those pitiful and familiar faces had made him afraid, and had also filled him with hate.
The Volunteers Page 1