The Volunteers

by Douglas Reeman

  The rating who had taken the wheel said brightly, “I just realized somethin’, sir. The numbers of this boat add up to thirteen.”

  Frazer said sharply, “That’s all I need.”

  Allenby lowered his night glasses. “From Leader, sir. Form line abreast.”

  As they waited for the signal Ives brushed past and resumed his place at the wheel.

  Frazer noticed that in seconds Ives had donned his best shoregoing jacket, gold badges and everything. He recalled what he had said before sailing. “Must do it right.”

  Allenby strained his eyes. “Execute!”

  With a minimum of fuss the three boats broke from their line and formed up abreast of the senior officer. A cable apart. Just enough.

  Frazer found himself listening to the engines. Throttled down, throaty. It always made him doubt, think that one might stop.

  “Pass the word. Action stations everyone.” Frazer heard the soft patter of shoes and rubber boots.

  Would the convoy be in the right place?

  Why did he even question it? The convoys could only move at night because of the prowling fighter-bombers, and even then they took a risk in the narrow Channel.

  Frazer answered his own question. Deep inside he was hoping they might fail to make contact. It was the first time he had really considered dying. Being killed. He did not have to look far for a reason.

  “Boat closed up, sir.”

  Frazer tried to see his features in the dark. “You get down aft, Dick. You know the score.”

  Allenby said. “I expect it will be all right.” He sounded as if he no longer cared.

  The lookout said, “Leader’s stoppin’, sir.”

  Frazer leaned across. “Stop engines.”

  Goudie would know better than anyone. In the sudden stillness the boat rolled uncomfortably in the current and the sea noises intruded like strangers. A halliard cracked against the mast, something rolled across the deck and was immediately snatched up by an invisible seaman.

  Ives felt the wheel pulling at his grip as they drifted aimlessly. He thought he could smell the land. It was, after all, just .a few miles away. No star shell, no sudden challenges. The Germans might be anticipating an invasion, maybe they already knew and were waiting at the beachheads. They would certainly not be expecting this sort of crazy venture.

  Frazer was thinking along the same lines. He heard Balfour shifting his feet and wondered how he would cope. He was glad he could not see his eyes. Blue, like his sister’s.

  Curiously enough it was Balfour who heard it first.

  “Engines, sir.” He pointed vaguely over the glass screen. “Port bow, I think!”

  Frazer heard it too and almost fell as he lowered his face to the compass. Northeast. Close inshore. As near as they dared. It had to be them. He found that his hands were shaking and angrily he thrust them into his pockets.

  He hoped Goudie and the others had heard it too. They could not use a light or the R/T. It would wreck everything.

  He forced himself to remain still and listen.

  Rum-rum-ruin. The beat of big German diesels. Like the Siebel ferry. He screwed up his eyes to make himself concentrate, to remember what Goudie had ordered. The convoy would be in line ahead. They would not risk a larger formation in the confined waters even though they were safe from the minefields.

  Frazer said curtly, “Stand by.” His, voice sounded like someone else’s. He heard Ives clear his throat very carefully like a man will do in church between hymns.

  “Watch Goudie’s boat.”

  Easier said than done. His boat was farthest abeam and had drifted well clear on some perverse current.

  We could do with Quinlan right now, Frazer thought. He could tell the size and the number of vessels merely by listening to their engine beats. He wondered if the German midget submarines had their crews with them. Or their torpedoes. As they carried two per boat it might be one hell of an explosion.

  “He’s off, sir!”

  Frazer yelled, “Full ahead all engines! Tally ho!”

  The other boats were instantly revealed by their mounting bow waves and careering wash as they swung round to regain their stations.

  Frazer said, “Port fifteen. Steer nor’-nor’-east!” If only they had a damn gyro.

  But Ives had her, and the boat was already rushing across the sea as if she was planing. The other two MGBs vanished in the spray as Frazer continued to steer astern of where the convoy should be. He bit his lip as wild lines of vivid tracer tore across the water, twinned with their deadly reflections below. Then a heavier gun joined in and within seconds a star shell burst above the sea like a blinding snowflake.

  Frazer gripped the rail below the screen as the boat bucked over some steep wavelets. He could see the dark hulls of the transports. There seemed to be three of them. Churned water rolled amongst them and he guessed that the lively escorts were forming up their defense. Or attack.

  “Open fire!” The bridge quivered as the two-pounder and the twin Oerlikons aft joined in the din, and from the other boats Frazer saw every gun being brought into action. The star shell could cost the enemy dearly.

  “Hard a-starboard!” Frazer held on tightly as a wreck buoy loomed out of the darkness and tore along the port side.

  Ives brought the boat round on course again, his face set in grim determination as the sea was criss-crossed in tracer and bursting cannon shells.

  He heard Weeks shout, “Here come the cavalry!” And then his twin Vickers machine guns clattered into life as two low-lying launches burst between the transports, caught momentarily in the drifting flare.

  The other MGBs vanished as Frazer brought his boat round the stern of the rear transport, the Oerlikons striking livid stars and hurling wreckage into the sea.

  Allenby needed no signal and moments later two columns of white water shot up with the sound of a giant drum. The charges must have hit the seabed even as they exploded. The transport slewed round, steering gone. A quick change of helm and Allenby released another two charges right alongside. So close they could feel the scorching heat of the blast, see pale blobs of faces before the clattering guns cut them down.

  Balfour shouted, “She’s done for!”

  They turned on a sixpence and shot past the transport’s listing bows in time to see one of the MGBs fighting a duel at close quarters with two of the Vendettes. But one was already on fire and the other was being raked from bow to stern, while the third MGB dropped her charges close to the leading transport.

  A tall waterspout shot skywards just fifty feet abeam and Frazer imagined for a few seconds that somebody’s depth-charges had misfired. Then he heard a flat whistle and another column of spray deluged across their course.

  Coastal battery. Shooting wild and probably blind in all the confusion. E-Boats would be charging down from the northeast. It could not last.

  The MGBs turned wildly with their engines screaming as they rallied for another attack. Men shouted to each other through the smoke and there was the clink of metal as fresh magazines were jammed home, empty shells kicked into the scuppers.

  The leading transport and the one which Frazer had tackled from astern were out of control and listing over. They might sink in the shallows but they could not now be hidden from the air. The RAF would take care of any salvage hopes.

  There was just one transport remaining. In the leaping glare of gunfire Frazer saw an MGB tearing across the water, cutting a white furrow as she went in to the attack. A shell exploded nearby and Frazer saw the boat’s number very clearly 194: it was Archer.

  Ives shouted, “Something’s wrong!”

  Frazer stared and saw tiny figures splashing down from the transport’s side and striking out in all directions. They were abandoning without waiting for a fight, and some of the frantic swimmers were swept under Archer’s keel and into those racing screws before they knew what was happening.

  Frazer heard Goudie’s voice harsh and angry from the R/T speaker. No need fo
r caution now. It was as if he were here amongst them.

  Balfour gasped as Goudie yelled, “Break off! She’s got the explosives!” But the din of cannon shells exploding into and through the transport’s hull must have drowned the warning.

  Frazer shouted, “Hard a-port!” The deck went over and the sea licked over the side like a millrace. No wonder they had baled out.

  Then came the explosion. It crashed and echoed along the coast as if it would never stop. The transport burst apart in a single column of fire. It seemed to last forever and yet Frazer knew it was a matter of seconds. The whole area was pockmarked by falling debris from the explosion, and a piece of steel plate the size of a door crashed onto the afterdeck where it missed Allenby by inches.

  Frazer saw the stern half of Archer’s boat break clear from the burning wreckage and vanish, her screws still turning as they carried her to the bottom.

  The coastal battery used the fires to guide their aim, and shells began to fall thick and fast between the two surviving MGBs.

  “Goudie’s stopping, sir!” Balfour sounded frantic.

  The other MGB was dropping in the water as the power died away. She must have been hit by shell splinters, and in the glow of the fires Frazer saw Goudie on his bridge, with Kellett the skipper clinging beside him, obviously wounded.

  Frazer shouted, “We’ll take ‘em off! Stand by to go alongside!”

  They moved slowly together, the crash of the coastal guns intermixed with the cries of the wounded aboard the sinking boat. Through it all Frazer knew they had achieved what they had set out to do. He felt like laughing, like cheering it was all so mad, so impossible.

  He heard a short, abbreviated whistle and then felt the jarring crash of an explosion. He reeled against the side of the bridge and stared at the flickering spectacle of the shattered two-pounder with the remains of Sullivan hanging from it like meat.

  Frazer tried to think it out. But for the two-pounder that last shell would have burst deep inside their frail hull. It would have ended. But he could not think clearly, and as he saw Balfour staring at him, his face horrified, he felt the pain for the first time. Two sharp, red-hot prongs probed deeper and deeper into his side and shoulder until he knew he would scream. Faintly, he heard Ives tell someone to take the wheel and felt him supporting him against the side of the bridge as Allenby dashed from aft.

  The other boat was alongside and they were both shining redly in the reflected fires.

  Allenby seized Balfour’s arm and shook him violently.

  “Get down there and help them!” He shook him again. “It’s what you joined for, remember!” He pushed him to the ladder and then ducked as another shell exploded on the opposite end of Goudie’s boat. All this Frazer saw, even though the pain held him speechless, barely able to breathe.

  Goudie framed against the flames and yelling, “Made it! We bloody well made it!” Then the explosion alongside and the lethal rain of splinters.

  When Frazer looked again, the other boat was sinking fast. Goudie was still propped in one corner of his bridge. But he was headless.

  Allenby cupped his hands. “Bear off forrard! Half ahead all engines!” He gripped the helmsman’s wrist so that he . jumped as if he had been hit. He was still staring, sickened at Goudie’s headless corpse right alongside.

  “Hard a-starboard!” He watched, not even ducking as another shell exploded in a bank of smoke. “Steer northwest.” He heard the pumps below. They were badly mauled but still working.

  Frazer felt Ives’s strong fingers rip open his jacket and shirt, and sobbed aloud as he wedged two shell dressings into place.

  Ives said, “Nothing broken as far as I can make out.” He looked at the man on the wheel and snarled, “Watch it, sunshine! You’re all over the bloody place!”

  Allenby watched as Ives lowered Frazer to the deck and rolled bundles of flags under his side to keep him steady.

  There were no more shells and the only sound they heard was the continuous drone of aircraft, an endless procession overhead.

  At first light the sea was no longer empty.

  Ives said, “Strewth, look at it!” He sounded unusually moved.

  Frazer, teeth gritted against the pain, was lifted up to his old place again, his blood already dry on the gray paintwork.

  He must not miss it after all they had done. Goudie would have been the same, bless him. With Allenby beside him and the new telegraphist supporting him from the other side, he watched the fringe of the armada moving towards France. Landing ships for men and for tanks, with some brave mad man playing the bagpipes. Like Ives and his best uniform, he was showing his own defiance.

  A destroyer tore out of the dawn mist, and astern of her a big cruiser, her forward turrets already trained, the guns at maximum elevation as she prepared to offer covering fire.

  The destroyer headed for the battered motor gunboat, glasses trained on the dead and the living. She could have been Levant.

  It would be something to talk about, Frazer thought wearily. To tell her. To be able to tell her.

  He wanted to share it with Allenby but his face defied intrusion as he watched the purposeful lines of ships. Nothing could stop them. No matter what happened later, they had done what they had set out to do.

  Frazer touched the punctured plating at his side and heard the clatter of an Aldis as Allenby answered the challenge.

  Ives watched him and heard him murmur, “Lucky thirteen.” And they were still together.

  EPILOGUE

  SUB-LIEUTENANT ALEX BALFOUR looked up at the bridge and saluted.

  “All secure, sir. “

  Like the other hands on deck and in the moored motor gunboats nearby, he was self-conscious under the combined stare of hundreds of Germans.

  Ives stepped down from the wheel and looked at the wreckstrewn harbor. Beyond it there was an endless ridge of shattered buildings; the destruction from bombing seemed total.

  It was hard to believe. For this was May 1945, the war in Europe was over and here they were in the enemy’s stronghold, Kiel. Even in a small MGB it had been difficult to pick up safe moorings. Sunken or partly submerged ships lay everywhere. Some with famous names like the Admiral Hipper, now listing with her starboard side under water, internal fires still burning. And the huge liner New York, once a proud member of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, which now lay half submerged. It was said that her hull was still packed with corpses. Last-moment refugees who had been caught in an air raid.

  Almost the worst part was the silent army of watching Germans. Waiting to be told what to do, where to go. Frazer had already been ashore before changing moorings. Near the bombed railway junction he had seen the women too. Holding up photographs for passing surrendered troops to study. Have you seen this man? My son? My husband? You did not need to understand the language, Frazer thought.

  Ives took a pair of binoculars and studied a German destroyer. It had been blasted bodily out of a dock and now lay on one side. It was incredible.

  He glanced at Frazer as he took a letter from his pocket. Some mail was already getting through. It was obvious from Frazer’s expression who it was from.

  Ives thought of the metal identity disc around his neck. The impossible seemed more hopeful now that he was here. There ought to be a sense of triumph, of their hard-won victory. They had come a long, long way together and yet he remembered most clearly that action on the morning of D-Day. It was a pity Lieutenant Allenby was not here, Ives thought. But he had been moved from Special Operations after that one.

  He glanced at the listless German sailors. The enemy. Knowing jolly jack, it would not be long before they were handing out bars of nutty to the German kids.

  When he turned to Frazer again he saw his change of expression.

  “Something wrong, sir?”

  Frazer looked down at his letter, her familiar handwriting which had helped to get him through even the worst of it.

  He said, “Dick Allenby’s dead.” As he said it he coul
d see him, as it must have been.

  Ives exclaimed, “But how?”

  Frazer said, “There was a parachute mine in some marshes. It was no danger to houses but it was near a river. Dick Allenby went to deal with it.” He did not mention what she had told him in the letter. That over the telephone line Allenby had told his rating to take cover. The mine had gone active. There were only seconds left before it exploded. Later that same rating had told his captain that Allenby had made no attempt to run, but had just waited there. He remembered that he had spoken just once. A girl’s name.

  Ives struggled with his emotions. “He shouldn’t have gone! It wasn’t his job any more.” He felt lost and somehow cheated.

  Frazer folded the letter again. “I know. ” He smiled at him as they both remembered. “He volunteered.”

  End