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

by Alexander Fullerton

  “Aye aye, sir.” Brocklehurst made a note.

  There was a knock at the cabin door: Nick called, “Yes?”

  Cox stuck his head in. “Sorry to interrupt you, sir. The blue fishing-boat’s just coming through the northern channel.”

  “Thank you, Mid.” The head withdrew, and the door shut. Nick said, “One item not yet detailed is the composition of the two skiff landingparties. We’ll go into that as soon as we know how many Norwegian volunteers we have. Otherwise, I think we’ve covered everything?”

  “Very good.” Torp rose, stood rubbing his behind. “Sitting so long, I been getting a sore arse.”

  Trench murmured, “Excuse me, sir?” He’d want to see to the reception of the fishing-boat.

  Nick told him, “Best if he berths on Valkyrien, Tommy.”

  “My paintwork, eh.” Torp slapped him on the back. “First you say I should sink her, now to scrape off the new paint.” Trench had gone up; the others were collecting their notes as Nick and Torp left the cabin. Torp’s suddenly raised spirits, Nick guessed, were symptoms of pre-action elation. Something happened to the glands, the blood-stream, with some kinds of men. Some got jumpy and others—Torp’s kind—got happy.

  Cold air, grey water: the blue boat was carving a broad white track across it, approaching Intent’s stern where Trench and the buffer, Metcalf, were waving to Lange to tell him to come around to the inshore side. He’d see what was wanted, because he’d have seen Valkyrien’s raked masts and tall funnel sticking up behind the destroyer.

  “Claus.” Nick put a hand on Torp’s arm. “One suggestion I’d like to make, in regard to this plan of yours, that back-door exit you mean to take …You know and I know that while you may get away with it, there’s a good chance you won’t. The Germans aren’t all stupid, and they know there’s more than one way out to the sea. If I had to bet on it I’d say you’ll either be stopped by some incoming surface craft, or strafed from the air. Anything that’s moving seaward, after the attack on Namsos—”

  “Yes, it is possible.”

  “So you’ll reduce your crew to a minimum?”

  “I guess so. You take the others?”

  “Of course. But what about Kari?”

  “I thought so.”Torp glanced at him, and away again. He either sighed or took a deep breath. “She has to be in Valkyrien during the attack.”

  “But she could transfer after it.”

  “Such delay, for one person—”

  “Instead of coming off by skiff, you come with me, all of you. I’ll put Intent alongside Valkyrien, and you can make a quick transfer, and away we go.”

  “You worrying for Kari, Nicholas?”

  “Nick.”

  “What?”

  “Short for Nicholas. Friends call me Nick.”

  “Ah. Sir Nick, I think.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Boyensen. He is talking with your stokers down there. You worry for Kari, Sir Nick?”

  “You’ve admitted the risk. You don’t have to run it, you could scuttle your ship. My opinion is you should. But at least you don’t have to put your daughter’s life at risk.”

  The blue boat was slowing, chugging in alongside Valkyrien. They could see the spars lashed to the cabin-top and along the side. They looked enormous: but Metcalf and his assistants would be paring them down with adzes before they shaped and fitted them. The heel of the new topmast would have to be squared with chamfered corners, and slotted right through for the top-rope sheave; and at two places above that they’d make “stops,” narrowings of the diameter where copper funnels would be fitted to take the upper yard and the rigging. Under the funnels there’d be another slot with a sheave in it for gantlines; and that was just the topmast, the yards would need shaping and fitting too.

  Nick said to Metcalf, “You’re going to have your hands full, Buffer, to get it done in time.”

  Petty Officer Metcalf nodded. “Keep at it all night if we ‘ave to, sir.”

  The boat was alongside and its lines were being secured. Torp said, “You take care of her for me?”

  “If you’ll allow me to.”

  “Sure.” The meaty hand patted his arm. “That is what we do, then.” He broke into Norwegian as he moved forward, answering a yell from Knut Lange which even to a non-Scandinavian ear had asked something very much like Where the hell’s Claus Torp?

  They were talking now. Or rather, Lange was. Unshaven, crop-headed, a triangular face that looked as if it might be all bone under the reddish stubble. He was down on his boat still and Torp was leaning down to him over Valkyrien’s bulwark. Lange talking quickly, urgently. Kari had come out of the deckhouse and she was listening: Nick could guess from her expression that whatever this news was it wasn’t good.

  The spars were being unlashed. Torp straightened, moved aft past the skiff which was still inboard. He’d caught Nick’s eye, jerked his head, and now he was waiting for him in the stern.

  “We have company.” He pointed northward. “Three Boche destroyers. They enter Altfjord last evening. At night, two are leaving, one stay at anchor behind the island. Knut told the people not to telephone—he thinks too much risk, better he tell me himself. But this morning one of the bastards is in Rodsundet. One now still anchored there, off Saltkjelvika, the other is going back out into Foldfjorden. Not fast, only— how you say, hanging around.”

  The picture was clear enough. One destroyer on each of the two main exits and another one outside. But—it didn’t mean they’d still be there tomorrow night. Also, there was still one other bolt-hole.

  Torp was as gloomy as he’d been elated a few minutes ago. Scowling, watching some of Intent’s sailors manoeuvre the first spar up over Valkyrien’s side.

  He swung round. “No raid on Namsos now, I think.”

  Nick met the blue stare doggedly. “There has to be.”

  “So you get your oil.”

  “Exactly. I can’t move without it.”

  “If you are lucky, okay, you get it. Then you have three Boche destroyers waiting for you. What good is that for you?”

  More good, Nick thought, than sitting here and waiting for the Stukas.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “How are you now, Everard?”

  The short answer might have been, alive …

  Mathieson, Hoste’s first lieutenant, wearing fearnought trousers, a woman’s embroidered blouse, and a tattered red cardigan, was standing and looking down at him, and Paul—wrapped in a blanket—was sitting with his back against the classroom’s wooden wall. The schoolhouse was—incredibly—centrally-heated; it was even conceivable now that they wouldn’t all die of cold, which a couple of hours ago had seemed almost certain.

  He told Mathieson, “I’m okay, sir, thank you.”Trying to get up, because he thought he should: the pain shot through his back, crippling him. It was only bruising and pulled muscles, Graham-Jones had said, nothing permanent or fundamental.

  Mathieson told him, “Stay where you are, man.”

  Randy Philips was singing “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” If Paris could have seen Randy it would have died laughing: he had on a skirt and a woman’s overcoat, a tight, waisted garment of blue woolly stuff.

  Mathieson was moving on, looking for someone or other in the long, narrow, crowded room, one of several rooms in the schoolhouse into which the ship’s company had flowed with the delight and disbelief of men transferred from hell to paradise. They’d trekked seven miles to this place—Ballangen, it was called, and it was about twenty or twenty-five miles from Narvik, someone had said—over rough, snowbound country, the snow in places six feet deep, guided by some Norwegians from the little timber houses near which they’d come ashore. The Norwegians had been marvellous: torn up their own clothes for bandages, deprived themselves of just about everything they possessed—clothes, food, bed linen, blankets … Like angels of mercy in a frozen purgatory which had begun for Paul on the rocky beach with Timson the SBA—sickberth attendant, Surgeon Lieutenant
Graham-Jones’s assistant—kneeling astride him and pumping ice-water out of his lungs. About half of Ofotfjord was gushing out and Christ, it had hurt, that bastard Timson crashing up and down on his spine which already felt as if it had been sawn through. There’d been a dream which he remembered clearly—if one could have clear recollection of something so nebulous. Less dream than series of delusions. As if he was his own father: or with him, but at times actually him, Nicholas Everard: and drowned, knowing himself to be dead, which had meant that Paul Everard had also to be dead, to be here with him and part of him. The pumping and the pain had gradually taken over—and even worse, the cold …

  Mathieson had turned back. He had a list of some sort with him and he’d been checking names off, for some purpose. Tall, fair-haired, yellow stubble glinting on his jaw. He said, “Mr Stuart and I were doing some figure-work, Everard. Your score seems to have been seven.”

  He didn’t know what the man was telling him. His face must have displayed that lack of comprehension; Mathieson explained, “Seven men you personally brought ashore.” He added, when Paul didn’t react, “Bloody good effort.” He’d turned aside, gone to talk to Perry, the cook, who was nursing a broken wrist. These injuries didn’t count as wounds; the wounded were in the little hospital, which was the reason for having come to Ballangen in the first place. That and the fact that it was farther away from Narvik and its German troops.

  Whacker Harris growled, “You’ll be gettin’ a fuckin’ medal if you don’t watch it, Yank.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  More jokes. All the time, from this pair.

  “Reckon you might at that.” Randy Philips didn’t look as if it was anything he could approve of. “You ‘eard what Jimmy said. Commen-bloody-dation, that was.” He sighed, glancing at Whacker. “Bloody HO, not at sea ten fuckin’ minutes, an’ they’re talkin’ to ‘im like that. I dunno.”

  “I don’t either.” Paul really didn’t. All he’d been told was that Mr Stuart the gunner, aided by PO Longmore the GM, had been bringing the Carley float inshore for the last time, after Hoste had gone down, and they’d found him wallowing face-down in the water. They’d been searching the ship one final time for any surviving wounded who might have been missed in previous searches, and drawn a blank, then loaded the float with small-arms and boxes of ammunition and got clear about a minute before she sank. When they bumped into Paul they’d thought he’d drowned, but pulled him into the float anyway and paddled ashore. After he’d been pumped out and had regained some appreciation of where he was and what was happening, Mr Stuart had torn him off a strip.

  “What you got between your ears, lad—solid bone? There’s a time to start and there’s a time to bloody stop, an’ there’s such a thing as ‘aving the gumption to know when you’re done in. What you want’s a bit o’ bloody savvy, you daft clown!”

  Now Mathieson had been congratulating him. One might wonder who was daft and who wasn’t. As far as Paul was concerned, the two cancelled each other out. Wondering more about that dream and his father, whether on some other plane they could actually have been together, in such close communication that they’d been virtually one spirit, and then by slipping back into life he, Paul, had deserted him … More delusion, he told himself. But it had seemed so real: more real than this present scene seemed to him: and the sense of desertion was horrible. Might his father know that it hadn’t been his choice?

  He told Philips, “I was just helping out, same as everyone else was. I do happen to be good at swimming. Nothing else about it’s special that I can see.”

  “Yeah, well, Jimmy reckons it was special. An’ it’s what ‘e reckons sticks, ain’t it.” He looked at Whacker. “Besides, if ‘e did pull seven blokes out—”

  “Way we got ‘im trained.” Whacker shrugged. He had a mauve shawl around his shoulders. “Brought ‘im up right, ain’t we. Now ‘e’ll go through for C bloody W an’ all that ‘ard work’s fuckin’ wasted, ain’t it … ‘Ullo, ‘swain!”

  “All right, ‘Arris, you foul-mouthed bastard.” The coxswain said it quite pleasantly. “And you, Philips. Jackson, you fit? Course you are. ‘Aven’t ‘ad a dose this year yet, ‘ave you? On your feet then … And you, Barker. Smith—Daley—Woolley—”

  “What’s this in aid of, Chief?”

  “Guard duty, Smith, that’s what. Lovely, out there in the snow. Dream of a white Christmas, can’t you. Long as I don’t catch no bugger dreamin’ … ‘Old off the bloody Germans, lads, that’s your job now.”

  Paul was struggling to get up, to go along with the others. CPO Tukes told him, “You stand fast, Everard. On the sick list, aren’t you?”

  “Hell, Chief, I’m not sick, I—”

  “Germans, ‘swain?” Green: the telegraphist who’d given Paul his first news about Intent. He asked Tukes,”Coming, are they? Jerries coming ‘ere?”

  “Green.”

  “Yes, ‘swain?”

  “Does your mother cry every time she sets eyes on you?”

  Green’s mouth opened and shut: he looked round as if for help. The coxswain told him, “You make me want to cry, Green … All right, you lot—in the ‘all, draw rifles an’ webbing from Petty Officer Longmore, then fall in outside. Shake it up, now!”

  Germans: presumably they would come sooner or later, Paul thought. So those rifles and revolvers might come in handy. Although the enemy would be busy around Narvik, one might guess, repairing damage and looking after their own casualties and defences … Mathieson was coming back this way. Tom Brierson, who’d been the killick of 3 Mess, went up to him.

  “Excuse me, sir. What’s likely to ‘appen next? I mean, are we staying ‘ere?”

  “For the moment, yes. It’s on the cards there might be a second attack, you see. Even a landing. After all, we gave them quite a hammering, and it wouldn’t take much to finish the job off. Also, we’ll have to put some troops ashore some time, some place—at least I imagine we will—and Narvik would be as good a place as any. Specially as we’ve softened it up for them.”

  Davis, an Asdic operator, asked him what they’d do if there was not a second attack or a landing.

  “Make tracks for the Swedish border, before the Huns come for us. As the crow flies the border’s only about 25 miles, but the way we’d have to go—because of the mountains—it’d be about forty. That’s according to a Norwegian here who says he’d guide us.” He turned towards the door. “But it does depend on the Huns too, of course. Bastards could show up at any minute.”

  Brierson came over and sat down beside Paul.

  “‘Ow’s it going, Yank?”

  “Not bad, Tom, considering.”

  “Done yourself a bit of good, they say.”

  “I don’t know how. What was I supposed to do, sit on the beach and watch?”

  “Some might. Goin’ through for CW, are you?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “I would, in your shoes.” The killick shook his head. “Bloody shame, skipper buying it. Good ‘and, old Rowan was.”

  Nick, on Intent’s bridge, was studying the hill where the lookout post was. Or where it should have been. Not a sign of any movement there. There could be, though: now that German ships had arrived in the outer parts of these fjords it was only a matter of time before some of them came up to visit Namsos. But for the moment that hill slumped grey and lifeless, with the westering sun vaguely brightening this side of it.

  Claus Torp had gone ashore to Sveodden to see about the wire-cutting expedition. And Knut Lange had left them again. He’d taken his boat away through the northern channel with the intention of crossing Namsenfjord and landing near a village called Skomsvoll, in a wide, open bay marked on the chart as Vikaleira. There was a road junction near the village, and Lange’s plan—he’d worked it out with Torp—was to send some of his crewmen overland up the east coast of Otteroy to the narrow strip between Altbotn and Lauvoyfjord. From Arnes on the east coast and from the neighbourhood of Alte on the west they’d be a
ble to see into both the anchorages in which the enemy were—or had been— showing interest. From where Intent lay now to Lange’s landing place was less than five miles, and the trip would only take him twenty or thirty minutes. The hike overland would be roughly another five, for which Claus Torp reckoned one should allow an hour each way, as quite a bit of it was hilly.

  “Good for young men.” He’d patted his gut. “Not for old gentlemen. For them—easy.”

  Lange would stay with his boat and send three crewmen ashore. Two would keep watch on the anchorages—or elsewhere, if the German ships had shifted their berths—and the third would be the runner to bring news back to him. He’d return here to Totdalbotn before dark tonight, to let Nick and Torp know how things were shaping up to that time, but he’d go back again during the night to receive his men’s first-light report.

  Nothing to do but wait. And see which way the cats jumped. The cats were on the exits from the mouse-holes: big cats with five-inch guns …

  Torp didn’t think they’d pull it off now. Nick saw two angles, in the light of this enemy naval presence. First, stealth became much more important. He thought it was just conceivable that the fuelling might be completed without firing a single gun. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible, and he was making it his aim now. Cutlasses and bayonets, not bullets; bullets only after—if—the enemy opened fire. The other point he had in mind was that the fact of Hun destroyers having been there earlier in the day didn’t mean they’d be there now—let alone tomorrow night. Of course, it was also true that by tomorrow night they might be up at Namsos: in which case …

  Well. Sufficient unto the day …

  His mind jumped three hundred miles: to Narvik. There’d been a signal just after noon from Vice-Admiral Battlecruiser Squadron to the light cruiser Penelope, saying: Present situation. Enemy forces in Narvik one cruiser five destroyers one submarine. Troop transports may be expected. Your object is to prevent reinforcements reaching Narvik. Establish destroyer patrol across Vestfjord … So Penelope was there now, with some unspecified number of destroyers; and Narvik—if this signal spoke the truth—was still bristling with Germans. It didn’t mention whether the destroyers were now operational or still suffering from punishment administered to them by the Second Flotilla: it seemed to Nick that if there was a whole clutch of damaged ships in there, anyone in his right mind would nip in double-quick and polish the bastards off.