Storm Force to Narvik: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 1

by Alexander Fullerton

  “I—yes. But Valkyrien I am bringing from Mo i Rana to Trondheim. Then I am hearing on my radio the Boche is already there, so—”

  “The Germans are in Trondheim?”

  “I think they are in every damn place, you know?”

  They could be here at any moment, then … It wasn’t really a surprise— only confirmation of existing fears. At least he’d been wise not to take her into Trondheim.

  “Will you come below, Commander, and discuss the position over a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure, thank you.”

  “Join us, Tommy?”

  “Thank you, sir.” Nick saw Henry Brocklehurst emerging from the screen door, the entrance to the wardroom flat. Short, neat—he’d just shaved—a little cock-sparrow of a man, smart enough for Whale Island, the gunnery school, to which he hoped to return soon for his “long G” course. Nick introduced him to Torp: and beside Trench, Brocklehurst really did look like a sparrow. Torp grinning down at him and glancing at the bigger man, obviously thinking something of the same sort. Nick told him, “I’d like you to keep an eye on the bridge, while we’re below. Lyte’s up there, but we aren’t in the safest of spots.”

  Brocklehurst nodded. “Aye aye—”

  “Have you had any sleep yet?”

  “I kipped in the director, sir.”

  “My God …” Leading the other two down to his day-cabin, Nick asked Valkyrien’s captain, “D’you have any details of what’s happened in Trondheim?”

  “The forts are fighting but the town is captured. One cruiser, Hipper, and four destroyers with her, they are through the Narrows before alarm was given.” He snorted angrily. “We are not ready for the bastards, I think … Is your wireless not working, Captain?”

  “We lost our topmast. Messed things up somewhat. We’re on reduced power too.” He led into the cabin and saw that the coffee was already there, set out by Leading Steward Seymour, together with a plate of shortbread from his private store. “Sit down, please.” Seymour came in behind them, and stood hovering; Nick told him he wasn’t needed. He explained to Torp, “We were damaged in action with a German cruiser. Hipper-class—perhaps Hipper herself, if she’s in Trondheim now.”

  “You are lucky to be afloat, I think. Against Hipper? One H-class destroyer?”

  “‘I,’ as it happens. For Intent.”

  “‘H,’‘I’—who’s giving a damn!”A forthright character, this Norwegian. “From one look I see what you are. Otherwise I am turning round to run like hell, you bet. Valkyrien has no guns, you understand, she is for boys’ training. I bring her now from Mo i Rana to Trondheim so they put guns on her for patrol work in Trondheimsfjorden.” He’d stopped his prowling inspection of the cabin in front of a portrait that didn’t belong in here. It had strayed—thanks no doubt to the steward’s “straightening” —from Nick’s sleeping cabin. Torp let out something between a hiss and a whistle: “This is your wife, Captain?”

  He’d pronounced it “vife.” Nick told him no, it was not, and invited him to sit down. Torp said, lowering himself into an armchair, “I suppose you did not hear what has happened in Oslo?”

  “Only that Hun ships were bombarding the forts.”

  “So.” The Norwegian accepted coffee. “Thank you … Patrol boat Pol III, with commander my friend Wielding Olsen—also naval reserve— is in Oslofjord. Sight Boche—make challenge—no answering, so open fire. Pol III has one gun—forty millimetre, one. She was whaler—very small … You know what ships she is fighting? Blucher, Lutzow, Emden! Also torpedo-boats and mine-sweepers. Wielding has ram one torpedo-boat, then—finish. He himself—listen, I tell you—he is blown in half, his legs—all from here … He roll himself overboard so the men do not see him and stop fighting. Huh?” Torp’s jaw-muscles bulged: his eyes closed, opened again … “Wielding Olsen. My friend … I have this in Norwegian broadcast. Also our government—listen—they have ordered now to mobilise—and they are sending the calling-up orders today, by post!”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Torp looked at Trench. “Believe everything, my friend. Anything. So long as a German is not telling it, believe it. We have idiots in our government. You too, I think. I think your Navy could—could have been around—not laying mines, God damn it, but—”

  “Quite.” Nick put his cup down. “The point is, to decide what we’re going to do now. And the first thing is, Commander, I very much want your help.”

  “Okay, you have it. But the first thing is you must move up the fjord much higher. Here you are exposed all ways. If the wind veer one point you have bad conditions and lee shore southward. Also, if I was enemy, I come round the point here and before you can see who I am—boom!”

  “The problem is that we can’t move. This is as far as we could get. The cruiser—Hipper—hit us in the engine-room. Not only has it done us a lot of damage, but it killed all my artificers and I’ve no one left who can put us right. What I’d like to ask you to do, Commander, is go to Namsos as fast as possible and bring off some engineers. With whatever gear they might think they’d need. Would you do that for us?”

  “Sure.” Torp nodded, munching shortbread. Then he took a swallow of coffee to wash the crumbs down. He blinked at Nick across the table. “I also have wish to go to Namsos. I must go there. But for you maybe I have better plan.” He took a cigarette from the case that Trench was offering him. “Thank you. I think first I send my boat to Valkyrien for bringing my engineer to look at your troubles. You agree?”

  It seemed an obvious preliminary. But it would use up time … And what sort of old Scandinavian shellback would be the engineer of that museum piece?

  “Every minute counts, Commander. With the Germans in Trondheim —what, seventy miles from us—”

  “Halvard Boyensen is damn fine engineer. This is why I have been taking him to Mo i Rana. That old Valkyrien don’t work for just any damn-fool mechanic. So I take young—” he tapped his forehead—”smart fellow—”

  “All right.” It might save time, in the long run. “Let’s have him over.”

  “Good.” The Norwegian pushed himself up. “You stay. I tell them.”

  Waiting, finishing his coffee, Nick saw Trench glancing at the portrait. Fiona Gascoyne—a rich man’s widow. Thirty, thirty-one. Girl-about-town, and now in the MTC—Mechanised Transport Corps. Hence the existence and presence here of the photograph. She liked the look of herself in the MTC uniform—made for her, of course, at Huntsman. Nick had told her the obvious thing—that he preferred her out of it—and she’d said, “You’re not getting one of me like that, my pet!” But there’d be quite a number of those portraits around, he knew that. She made no secret of it, she was far from being a one-man girl. She wouldn’t be, she’d added, at least for quite some while. She’d been tied down all her life: she’d been very young when she’d married old Gascoyne, and the marriage had bored her stiff, but now she was free and rich enough to please herself—until she tired of it … Which from Nick’s point of view was perfectly all right. What seemed to be his mark were brief affairs or longer but essentially light-hearted ones. The long struggle with Ilyana and the continuing background of blind enmity from Sarah—whom he’d loved, twenty-plus years ago, to a degree beyond distraction—well, what was the point, when everyone ended up hurt?

  Trench murmured, “We’re in a bit of a spot, sir, aren’t we, by and large.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Tommy. If this plumber’s all he’s cracked up to be, we might be running lucky again.”

  There’d been some Norwegian sounds up there; now Torp came back into the cabin. “I have send for Boyensen.” He dropped into his chair, stubbed out the cigarette-end. “You guess what year my old Valkyrien is building?”

  Nick made his guess and knocked off a few years before he spoke.

  “Nineteen hundred?”

  Trench said less gallantly, “Eighteen-ninety.”

  “Not so bad.” Torp nodded. “Ninety-one.”

  Nick heard the moto
r skiff chug away from his ship’s side. He told his guest, “There’s one other urgent requirement we have, and that’s oil-fuel. I imagine that once we’re fixed up and can get into Namsos—”

  “Sure.” Claus Torp shrugged. “If the Boche stay away that long.”

  It was a lot to hope for. But there wasn’t anything one could do except hope for it.

  “I suppose there’s no chance of a tanker coming out to us with some oil?”

  “Yes—”

  “What?”

  “I say yes—no chance. No tanker.”

  Trench asked him, “Have you heard anything of Hun activity elsewhere than Trondheim and Oslo?”

  “Sure. Stavanger. Around midnight, one Norwegian destroyer sink one German transport full with guns—artillery. And there were being—” he moved his big hands about above his head—”landings by parachute, you know? For the airdrome, I think. Well, of course for that …But also Narvik—one report say ten or maybe twelve big destroyers—”

  “German destroyers?”

  “Ja—twelve, big ones—on approach to Ofotfjord …” He aimed a blunt forefinger at Nick: “You hear what our government have been saying, that Germans come because you British laying your damn mines?”

  “They can say whatever they like. But they’re talking through their hats and we all know it.”

  The large hands spread. Now that he’d removed his cap you could see that he was completely grey. Nick had amended his estimate of Torp’s age, from late forties to early fifties. Torp said, “I do not know it.”

  Nick thought, Then you’re an idiot … He wasn’t sure of him yet: whether there might be a useful ally under that rough exterior or whether he might be backwoodsman all through. He had no enormous hopes, consequently, of the engineer. Torp had a high opinion of him, but what was Torp’s opinion worth?

  He’d have the answer to that one soon enough. He explained, “This invasion—Denmark, then most of your ports—is obviously part of a well-planned operation. Separate assault forces, naval covering forces—you can’t launch such a project in 24 hours. In fact the troops must have been assembled several days ago—let alone the planning before that, the mustering of stores, equipment—”

  “Sure.” Torp nodded.

  “Well, our mining operation was carried out yesterday morning. At least, so far as we know, it would have been. So how can it be said to have precipitated the German assault?”

  “Maybe they learn what you have been planning and move first, very quick?” He glanced at Trench. “Is there more coffee?”

  “Might be.” Trench felt the pot’s weight. “Yes. Here …” He took up the cudgels while he poured out the dregs. “You realise we had to lay those minefields—that you Norwegians made us do it? To stop the Hun routeing all his blockade-runners and ore-ships through your precious territorial waters while your government weren’t doing a damn thing to stop it?”

  The Norwegian stared at him, half-smiling. He glanced at Nick, then back again at Trench.

  “You want to make some fight with me?”

  “Lord, no. We want to fight Germans with you, Commander.”

  “All right.” Torp nodded slowly, still looking hard at Trench. Then he glanced at Nick. “You got a good man here, I think.”

  Chandler had sent Midshipman Cox aft with some deciphered signals, and Nick looked through them while he and Trench waited on the upper deck for a verdict from the engine-room.

  Renown had been in action only about an hour ago against Gneisenau and a cruiser. Then another signal referred to Scharnhorst as being in company with Gneisenau. That one faded out: the fault of Intent’s poor reception, no doubt. Both were from Vice-Admiral Battlecruiser Squadron— Whitworth—to his destroyers—the Second and Twentieth Flotillas, under Warburton-Lee and Bickford. Then there was another from Admiral Whitworth ordering them to proceed to Vestfjord and patrol to cover approaches to Narvik; Whitworth, presumably, was chasing off in pursuit of those two German ships. So the destroyers would be patrolling Vestfjord on their own.

  He turned to the last of the batch of ciphers. It was from the Commander-in-Chief to Captain (D), Second Flotilla: Send some destroyers up to Narvik to make sure no enemy troops land.

  But Claus Torp’s information was that there were a dozen Huns up that fjord already. If Warburton-Lee sent just a few ships of his flotilla up, and they found themselves ambushed by twelve of those bigger, newer, five-inch destroyers the Germans had—in fact even if the whole of the flotilla went up, because there were only six of them, including Hoste with Paul in her …

  Not a comfortable thought. So don’t think about it … In any case, Torp’s rumours weren’t necessarily better founded than whatever reports had reached the C-in-C. In this kind of fluid, not to say muddled, situation you had to take everything you heard with a pinch of salt.

  “Here.” He passed the log to his first lieutenant, and asked Cox,”That’s all we’ve got?”

  “Afraid so, sir.”

  “When you go back, ask the PO Tel to come and see me.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Is the doctor up and about yet?”

  “Yes, sir. He thinks ERA Dobbs is going to pull through, sir.”

  Marvellous. And good for Bywater. But if Dobbs hadn’t elected to be such a hero he might have been more than just “pulling through,” he might have been on his feet and directing the repair work. The highly recommended Halvard Boyensen hadn’t at first sight inspired much confidence; he looked more like a farm-hand than an engineer. Red-faced, with a heavy jaw and small, deep-set eyes. He and Torp had gone straight below with Beamish, after the skiff had brought him. Nick looked at his watch again; it felt like an hour that he’d been waiting.

  Trench handed the signal log to Cox. And Nick remembered what Beamish had been telling him … “Mid. You’ve been giving our chief stoker some technical advice, I hear.”

  “Oh, no, I—” Cox had turned pink. “I only—mentioned an idea, sir—”

  “What made you go down there in the first place?”

  “Just—wanted to see the shape of things, sir.”

  “D’you have a mechanical bent, then?”

  “I’ve always—well, I like using my hands, sir, and”—he glanced down at the signal log—”that sort of thing.”

  “You made yourself useful, anyway. Well done.”

  The boy looked surprised. Perhaps he’d expected a reprimand, for trespassing in a department that wasn’t anything to do with him. “Thank you, sir.”

  Trench murmured, “They’re coming up, sir.”

  Claus Torp, leading Boyensen and Beamish, was wiping his hands on a lump of cotton waste. He stopped in front of Nick.

  “In Namsos, alongside, with power from the shore, all that, he fix all good as new in one day.” He raised two fingers, then four. “Twen’y-four hour, okay? But right here, working with your ship’s men, two day.” He pointed at Boyensen. “He say he can do this, but—” a shake of the head—”two day here, too damn dangerous, I think.”

  “You’re thinking of towing me to Namsos?”

  “Sure.”

  “But is he certain of what he’s saying? Can I count on it a hundred per cent?”

  “Yes. I tell you, he is damn fine engineer.”

  He still didn’t look like one.

  “I want to be sure of this, Commander. Your man’s saying he could do the job here, without other help or gear?”

  “Sure. But much better in Namsos, with other help, tools also, and shore power. I think also very bad here if Germans coming.”

  Against that, it was also obvious that in Namsos they’d be in a deadend, trapped. But the priority must be to get the ship back into a state of operational fitness as quickly as possible. If he took the chance of getting bottled up at Namsos, she’d be mended in a single day—and fuel at the same time … For fuel, she’d have to go to Namsos anyway.

  “What’s your ship’s speed?”

  “Six knots, full speed. We t
ow at maybe three. You think?”

  Behind the Norwegian loomed the burly, bearded figure of PO Telegraphist MacKinnon. Sent aft by young Cox, of course. Mr Opie, the torpedo gunner, had appeared too: shaved and spruced up, pulling at his nose while he tuned his ears to the proceedings. Nick was thinking that from here to Namsos was about fifteen miles. Five hours then; possibly only four, then twenty-four alongside. Say thirty hours in all.

  “All right.” He nodded to Claus Torp. “I’d be grateful for a tow.”

  “Up and down, sir!”

  It meant that the ship was up to her anchor so that the chain cable was vertical. Trench, in the front of the bridge, acknowledged the foc’sl report; he glanced enquiringly at Nick, who nodded and told him, “Weigh.”

  The cable began to clank again as the foc’slemen recommenced their circling, leaning on the capstan bars. Weighing was by hand because the auxiliary generator would have been hard put to it to provide enough power. Internal lighting, communications, and fire-control systems had priority. Young Cox was down on the foc’sl with Lyte; Nick reckoned he’d been shut away with fine nibs and coloured inks for too long.

  Off to starboard, Valkyrien was displaying her cut-away stern, and white water under her counter showed that her engine was chugging ahead, already putting some strain on the towing wire which had been led through Intent’s bullring and had its eye fast on the starboard Blake slip. Black coal-smoke leaked from the Norwegian’s tall, pipe-stem funnel as she kept enough pull on the wire to hold the destroyer’s bow from falling off landward when the anchor broke clear of the seabed. To start with, Trench had sent one end of a floating coir rope over to Valkyrien with the skiff on Torp’s return trip to his ship; then the Norwegians had winched it over with a stronger hemp cable attached to it, and finally the hemp had been dragged across, pulling behind it the towing hawser of flexible steel-wire rope.

  “Anchor’s aweigh!”

  Hanging over the flared edge of the foc’sl, Lyte had seen the cable swing, proof that the hook had been wrenched out of its clay-and-sand bed. He’d got back now, out of the way of a man with a hose and another with a broom; it was their job to clean the muck off the chain as it clanked up towards the hawse-pipe. If it wasn’t cleaned there’d be mud and weed collecting in the chain-locker down inside the ship, and before long there’d be a fearful stink as well.