Heart of War

by John Masters

  ‘She’ll capsize if that gets much worse,’ he muttered.

  On the bridge Leach, too, peered forward under his sheltering hand, and after a moment said, ‘I don’t like it … Number One, put the scrambling nets out on the starboard side. Away sea boat’s crew, but don’t launch. Stand by the nets until we see what we’ve got.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Lieutenant Commander Mainprice-King slid down the bridge ladder. At once the boatswain’s pipes twittered, and the chief boatswain’s mate began to bark orders that sounded distant and thin against the bellow and shriek of the wind and the smash of the sea.

  The lifeboat came closer. ‘Half ahead both,’ the captain ordered into the engine room pipe: then ‘Twenty of port wheel, quartermaster!’

  ‘Twenty of port wheel, sir … Twenty of port wheel on, sir.’

  ‘Starboard five … steady! Slow, both … Stop engines … Slow astern, port engine! Stop engines!’

  The cruiser, stopped in the water, rolled heavily, wind and seas now striking her full on the port side. The mast head and foretop seemed to strike the crest of each wave as it passed by, but just in time the trough followed and Penrith righted herself and began to lurch to port. In the starboard wing of the bridge, looking back along the steel side, Leach saw the lifeboat coming closer as the cruiser drifted down on it. It was full of men … and women … it must have been a passenger ship that had been torpedoed. They were lying in the bottom-boards, among swirling water, flotsam, coats, lifebelts. Boat hooks reached out from the scrambling net and Lieutenant Mountjoy and a couple of sailors dropped into the lifeboat. Leach saw Mountjoy stoop and take one of the people’s collars … turn him over … pause … onto the next, the next … the next … Mountjoy looked up toward the bridge and even from that distance Tom saw that his face was white, his mouth set, either in fierce anger or to prevent himself from vomiting. He gave some order to the sailors, which Leach could not hear, and scrambled back up the net to the cruiser’s deck. A moment later he appeared on the bridge.

  ‘S.S. Styria, Liverpool, sir. Thirty-one men, nine women, six children. They’re all dead.’

  ‘How?’ the captain interjected.

  ‘Exposure, sir … starvation and thirst, too, perhaps … the water barrel’s stove in … I told the men to delay doing anything until I’d spoken to you. Their eyes have all been eaten out … faces scratched.’

  ‘Gulls!’ Leach exclaimed. ‘I don’t remember when the Styria was sunk. It must have been some time ago.’

  ‘What …?’ young Mountjoy began: Leach raised his hand – ‘I’m thinking.’ After a minute he said, ‘Bridge messenger!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Get me the prayer book off the desk in my day cabin.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ The boy sailor darted down the bridge ladder.

  The captain turned to Mountjoy – ‘Weight all the bodies with a shell. I’ll read the burial service over them from the deck. Have a man in the boat and as soon as I’m finished signal him to scuttle it … Oh, and have a Union Flag dropped over them while I read. Haul it back as the boat sinks.’

  Mountjoy saluted, turned, and left. Tom came up onto the bridge. Leach looked at him – ‘I think that’ll satisfy the men’s sense of decorum, don’t you? What an utter swine the Hun really is.’

  Half an hour later, the burial service completed, the cruiser’s propellers began to turn again, thrusting the vessel ever westward, her long lean bows pointed to Cape Race on the south coast of Newfoundland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  The captain returned to the bridge, prayer book in his gloved hand, his face grim – ‘Who’s on watch?’

  Lieutenant Onslow from the far corner said, ‘I am, sir.’

  ‘You know the course?’

  ‘Yes, sir – west by south.’

  ‘Reduce speed to ten knots till this lessens. She’s shaking to pieces.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘Tom, come to my cabin, please.’

  Tom followed his captain down the ladders and aft along the lower deck to the big stern cabin. He waited, cap in hand, until Leach had sat down and waved him to a chair.

  Leach said, ‘I haven’t had a chance to speak to you since we got the orders … They’re going to institute trans-Atlantic convoys. That’s the only thing this move of ours can mean.’

  ‘They’ve been running them for some time on the Harwich-Scheldt route, sir,’ Tom said.

  ‘Started in December last,’ Leach said briefly, ‘and, since last month, on the cross-channel coal traffic – the French insisted. The Admiralty didn’t want to do it, but the French were losing too much coal … Now it looks as if the Anti-Submarine Division have had their way and we’re going to have all merchant ships convoyed, at least on principal routes … and they’ll need cruisers for the trans-Atlantic run. Destroyers haven’t got the endurance.’

  ‘And they’d have a very bad time in weather like this,’ Tom said, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘You’re soaked,’ the captain exclaimed, noticing the gesture – ‘Here.’ He opened a cupboard, took out a bottle, and poured a stiff tot into a glass – ‘It’s malt whisky … pure malt.’

  Tom took a swig, let the golden fire trickle down his throat and emptied the glass – ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘It’s about time … that they really accepted the convoy principle,’ Leach said. ‘Our losses have been staggering since the Germans instituted unrestricted submarine warfare … 200,000 tons of shipping sunk in January, but 500,000 tons in February, after they’d opened the all-out campaign … and the figures are still climbing … I believe that Admiral Jellicoe warned the Cabinet some time back that if the trend wasn’t stopped, we’d be starved out.’

  Tom said, ‘But Admiral Jellicoe doesn’t think the convoy system will work.’

  ‘It appears that he doesn’t have any other suggestions, so it has been forced on him.’

  The Navy phone spoke from the bridge – ‘Captain, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Object sighted ahead … foretop lookout thinks it’s another lifeboat … black painted … can’t see anyone in it, sir.’

  Leach said, ‘Steer for it. I’m coming up.’ He turned to Tom – ‘More corpses … more girls with their eyes pecked out … How clean Coronel and the Falkland Islands battles seem now.’

  An afternoon, evening, and night had passed. Penrith sliced into lessening seas at sixteen knots, 120 nautical miles west-north-west of North Rhona, heading to make a landfall off the southern tip of Iceland. The sun peered out now and then through driven clouds. Rain squalls blew down the wind, spattered the deck, and passed on. The surface of the sea was pale green where the fitful sun shone on it, dull green-grey in the cloud shadow.

  Tom Rowland worked at the little desk in his cabin off the quarterdeck. Someone knocked, and he said ‘Come in,’ without looking up. The graph of tonnage sunk on the Harwich-Scheldt route, since the institution of convoys, was interesting, and indicative, though it did not cover a long enough period of time to be conclusive. He glanced up, to see Ordinary Seaman Charlie Bennett standing just inside the cabin door. He motioned with his hand and the sailor closed the door quietly behind him. He held out his hand and Tom took it, pressing the soft palm with his fingers.

  Charlie said, in a low voice, ‘Any chance of leave when we get over the other side, Tom?’

  Tom shook his head – ‘Probably not for two or three months … and then what can we do in Halifax? We can’t lose ourselves there – it’s too small.’ He wished Charlie wouldn’t come in, on some pretext or other, so often. He had to come in now and then to clean the cabin, polish Tom’s boots and shoes, lay out his clothes, and the like, but … sooner or later someone would notice; and above all he didn’t want to put John Leach in an invidious position. He muttered, ‘Better run along, Charlie … Take my shoes.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Charlie said, grinning a secretive, shared smile. He let go Tom’s hand, opened the door, and slid out.

&nb
sp; The coast of Nova Scotia lay three miles ahead, pale grey under a pale sun. The sea was calm, as though half frozen, livid green in colour. A Royal Canadian Navy seaplane made a final circle overhead and then returned toward the land. On the bridge of H.M.S. Penrith, Captain Leach said, ‘Next time we come in here we may be escorting U.S. ships. Thank God for Mr Zimmermann and his stupidity! From the reports that have been passed on to us, the Americans seem to have gone through the roof when the news broke about this telegram.’

  Tom said, ‘It’s just in time, sir. We need the Americans badly now. There won’t be any Eastern Front soon – Rumania knocked out, Serbia practically gone, Russia tottering on the edge of revolution.’

  Leach said, ‘Our fellows are going to have a hard time in France this summer.’

  Tom said, ‘A lot of people seem to believe we must try somewhere else. I believe the Prime Minister’s one of them. They think the Western Front’s turned into a slaughterhouse – and nothing more.’

  The captain said grimly, ‘There’ll be as much bloodshed in London over that question as there has been in France, till it’s settled one way or the other … Meanwhile, if the Yanks do come in they will eventually be sending troops to France, hundreds of thousands of them. Who’s going to protect them?’

  ‘Their Navy will do what it can,’ Tom said.

  ‘Quite,’ Leach said, ‘but it can’t anywhere near do the job. We’ll, have to, and if we fail, thousands of American soldiers are going to be drowned, which will not make the United States a very enthusiastic ally.’

  Tom said, ‘All ships must have more depth charges, sir – even cruisers, certainly light cruisers. After all, any sort of ship can attack a submerged submarine. It doesn’t take great speed or manoeuvreability.’

  ‘Just enough speed so it doesn’t blow its own stern off,’ Leach said, ‘and we’ve got to be able to fire the things off the beam, not just roll them off the stern. … I wonder whether anyone’s trying to find out if eighty feet is really the right setting for the pistols. I talk with submariners whenever I get a chance and they all say that they wouldn’t hesitate to go below eighty feet if they were being attacked – or in danger of it.’

  ‘Wish we could capture some German depth charges, and see how they do it,’ Tom said. ‘They’ve been specializing in war under the sea for a long time, it appears.’

  ‘It should have been obvious, years ago, that that is what they were up to,’ Leach said, ‘but it wasn’t. We are a very stupid people, in some ways, Tom. We think the enemy must do what we want him to do, and then we are shocked and hurt when he does something different …’

  ‘And the one time he did come out in line of battle – he got away.’

  Leach nodded – ‘The rest of this war is going to be fought down there –’ he indicated the sea and its depths – ‘dirty work … It will be won by new inventions, Tom … new ways to trace submarines, perhaps even when their engines are stopped … new ways to attack them … depth charges dropped from aircraft, perhaps? Homing torpedoes?’

  Tom said, ‘The last letter I had from my nephew, Guy the R.F.C. ace – he said we should be bombing the submarine building yards. It makes sense – destroying the submarines is just as important as building more merchant ships, and if we can destroy them before they ever take to sea, so much the better.’

  ‘And building more merchant ships depends on our bloody dockyard workers,’ Leach said. ‘Always striking! I’d like to see them put in some of the ships they build – or refuse to – and sent out on the Atlantic without escort or convoy.’

  Tom said nothing, but thought – a good proportion of the Navy’s own men came from just such backgrounds as the striking dock workers; they certainly had fathers and brothers among the strikers; those in the Navy did their jobs silently, efficiently, without fuss or trouble; those ashore moaned and struck and complained …

  Leach took a turn along the bridge. When he came back he said, ‘Prepare to enter harbour!’ His tone had sharpened; the conversation was over. Tom said, ‘Aye, aye sir … Bennett, tell the Chief Bo’sun’s Mate to pipe “Hands prepare for entering harbour.”’

  Captain Leach stayed on the bridge, silent, watching. Tom set off round the ship, Ordinary Seaman Bennett in his wake, observing the preparations being made on the upper deck. The First Lieutenant headed for the fo’c’sle to take charge of the cable party.

  The cruiser glided between the narrow rock walls of the harbour entrance toward the little wooden city on the slope beyond. Blackbacked gulls wheeled and swerved round her stern where the Surgeon, having nothing to do in the harbouring process, strolled back and forth on the quarterdeck. On the fo’c’sle one anchor was ready for letting go – in case of emergency – though the ship was berthing alongside. Salutes had been paid to an armoured cruiser, and received from two Canadian destroyers; berthing wires and springs were ready … the minutes passed … she got her cable … the main engines were rung off … the hands piped to ‘Secure.’ Captain Leach had long gone below, but now his messenger came to Tom, saluting – ‘Captain’s compliments, sir, and he wishes to see you.’

  Tom straightened his tie, made sure his gold-leafed cap was on straight, and headed below to the captain’s day cabin, which occupied the stern of the ship directly under the ensign. Captain Leach sat at the desk, his cap resting on it. He looked up and said quietly, ‘This is going to be unpleasant, Tom, for me just as much as for you. More, perhaps.’ His thin face was set, the blue eyes boring relentlessly into Tom’s. Tom felt himself freezing, piece by piece, from the inside out, first the marrow in his bones, then the bones, then the flesh.

  ‘Three days ago an anonymous letter was slipped into my greatcoat pocket, somehow, without my knowing it. I don’t like anonymous letters – no honest man does – but in a disciplined service they do sometimes represent the only outlet for a man’s frustrations … or for a truth to come out which the writer feels ought to be known, but never will be in any other way. I read the letter. It said that you were a – the word used was “pansy” – and that you were doing indecent things with Ordinary Seaman Bennett – who is, I think, your seaman-servant.’

  His voice softened slightly as he continued, Tom rigid and cold in front of him – ‘What could I do? Appoint seamen to spy on you? Browbeat or bribe Bennett until he confessed? Not in my ship.’

  He got up suddenly and walked across the cabin, back, forward, not looking at Tom. Tom stayed rigid.

  ‘I thought of asking you point blank. But what could you say? If you denied it, the doubt would remain. If you confessed it, I would have to send you both up for court martial.’

  Abruptly he sat down again behind his desk. He said, ‘I have signalled the C-in-C requesting a transfer for you. He has agreed, without asking questions. You are to return on the first ship sailing from here to England – Navy or Merchant. In a confidential letter I am explaining why I want you taken out of this ship. From there on, what happens to you will be up to you … and to the 2nd Sea Lord, to whom this matter has been referred … Sit down, Tom.’

  Tom collapsed into an easy chair off the front corner of the desk. He knew that his face was white, his jowls pale green, as though he were about to be sick, or faint, or both. Leach held out a cigarette case – ‘Have one, Tom.’

  Tom shook his head wordlessly, staring at the middle buttons of the captain’s pea jacket.

  Leach said, ‘When you get to London, see someone, Tom. Try to get help … I’ve heard there are doctors who specialize in our minds rather than in our bodies … find out why people do certain things. If you can’t find that sort of doctor, see a parson, a priest … But for God’s sake see someone! You’re such a good fellow … and a good sailor … and officer … This has been the happiest commission of my service, thanks to you. I couldn’t bear to see you destroy yourself … I have a pile of documents to go through. Just sit there till you’re ready to go. I shan’t need you for anything the rest of the day.’

  He picked up a pi
le of papers and shuffled them, and read, or pretended to. Tom sat staring at the floor, the gold-leafed cap and the great crest of the Royal Navy, wreathed in gold laurel, resting between his pale, cold hands.

  The Admiralty, London:

  Saturday, March 31, 1917

  The Second Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., R.N., stood by the fireplace in his spacious office, facing Tom across the table. The Admiral’s Naval Assistant, Captain Buller, R.N., stood a little to one side. Tom stood to attention, cap under his arm.

  The Admiral said, ‘I am posting you to the Anti-Submarine Division. Report there immediately you leave this room.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘I do not have the manpower to have you watched at all times, and if I thought that really necessary, I would have you dismissed the Service as not worth the trouble. But you will be watched – from time to time. And if the allegation made in the anonymous letter to Captain Leach turns out to be well founded, I shall act at once, and without mercy, for the good of the Service. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You are to wear uniform at all times outside your house or flat.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  Tom wheeled about and left the room.

  The half moon hung yellow and serene over London … a bomber’s night, Tom thought, standing in the window of his flat, a night for the Gothas or the Zeppelins … calm, quiet, subdued movement in the street below, a humming murmur from the great city. He had eaten, but felt hungry and uneasy, the coldness that had knifed into him in Penrith’s stern cabin still there, under all other emotions and feelings. Three days after that interview he had sailed in a Canadian minesweeper recently built in Halifax and going to join the Harwich force … a hard trip in the usual foul early-spring weather, two days skirting the ice pack and watching majestic icebergs drifting southward into the shipping lanes … the skipper several years younger and junior to himself, but of course still the captain, as Tom was sailing as a passenger. He hadn’t gone near Bennett since the interview. Without a word being said, somehow another sailor had appeared as his servant, a grizzled old fellow really too experienced for such a job – he would be wanted in a turret … but of course that was where he would return, as soon as Tom left.