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

by Alexander Fullerton

  “Aye, sir.” Crouch confirmed it. “All weighed off.”

  There was a V-shaped cove ahead, with its open end northwards, facing them, and the Germans were in the widest part of the V. The left-hand arm of it was coastline and the nearer part of the right-hand one was a spur of foul ground, rocks, and shallows. Torp’s plan was to take Valkyrien in between the Germans and the shore and then swing hard aport to come up across their sterns. As he reached them he’d put his helm over again so that Valkyrien’s stern would start a swing inwards towards her victims’, and at this point the charges were to be released. The least damage they could do would be to smash the Germans’ screws and rudders; in shallow water with the blast bouncing off the bottom of the fjord they might do even better. Internal damage was likely, and there’d be some results too from crashing the two ships together. The submarine’s beam tanks, for instance, stood a good chance of getting flattened.

  Torp was going to flash a torch aft at Crouch as the signal to knock the slips off the charges. In the stern now with Surtees on his right, Crouch turned half round so as not to miss the flash when it came. Each man had a hand on his own releasing-gear, having located it by feel, by groping for it in the dark. Nobody’d get a second chance. One hand on the slip and the other on his sub-machine-gun. After the swing Torp was going to reverse his helm again to steady her and then drive the ship out over the top of that shallow patch. God alone knew how. Well—one might hope that Torp did, too. It was the only way, he’d said, other than by turning up almost alongside the destroyer, beam-on to her, inviting the German gunners to reduce her to matchwood. Crouch hoped the geezer knew his way about it; Valkyrien, being a sailing ship, had a deep draught, a keel—she wasn’t built for hopping over shallow patches. Torp had said something about the explosions of the depthcharges helping, washing her over.

  Peculiar cove. Smashing daughter, though, the one the skipper was keen on. There’d been some bets placed, on the messdecks. He’d said to Surtees, when they’d been chatting on the trip down Namsenfjord, “Nice bit of stuff, that. Don’t blame the skipper ‘aving a go, eh?” Surtees had looked vague: “Thought it was ‘er was after ‘im. That’s ‘ow I ‘eard it … Got a missus already, ain’t ‘e?” Crouch had shaken his head sadly: “Bloody ‘ell, don’t you know anything?”

  Ahead, a glow of light, startling in the dark …

  He got up higher for a better look. Floodlight of some kind: on a ship’s deck. The Hun destroyer’s? The light was shaded, shining downwards. Squinting into the icy wind, standing right up and leaning out on Surtees’s side, staring out fine on the port bow: he could see men working around that light and a davit in black, curved silhouette. By its position it would be a torpedo davit. The half-lit picture, vague as it was with the flickering shadows, was cut off vertically with knife-edge abruptness where the ship’s superstructure for’ard blanked it off. But Valkyrien was edging round to starboard, further inshore, now that she’d cleared the reef: she’d be coming in fast towards her still unsuspecting victims. Crouch went back to his place in the stern, Surtees swearing as he kicked his legs in transit and got down on the other side of him. Watch for the flash now. He told Surtees, “Won’t be long, Billy-boy. Jerries workin’ on the upper, got a light on an’ all.”

  Sharper swing to starboard. And a huge light flaring: searchlight? Jet of brilliance: it had swept over them, but there’d been enough spill-off brightness to—

  A shout from for’ard. Torp—sounding furious. Crouch put a hand on Surtees’ shoulder, pressing him downwards as he passed him. “Stay there now.” The light’s beam had touched the funnel, swung on, then had second thoughts and started to come back. Crouch scuttled for’ard up the port side; he heard the bark of Torp’s old pistol from the wheelhouse doorway. Silly old bugger, might as well fart at it as use that thing … The killick leant with his left arm on top of the port-side bulwark, as a steadying point, aimed his Thompson at the centre of the glare and squeezed its trigger. The gun jumped upwards, as the GM had warned it would: you had to force the barrel down to get it where you wanted. The searchlight was full on them, holding them, and some sort of hooter was blaring from the German. The Tommy shuddering and hammering, its barrel flaming as he brought its stream of .45 slugs down across that blinding glare. Explosion of glass as it smashed and went out. Pitch-black again— worse, he was blinded, couldn’t see even his own hands. Done it, though. Stumbling aft, groping, pulverising Billy-boy’s calves again and Valkyrien pounding on, a fine old ship that had never been meant for war, for anything like this. She’d lurched to starboard.

  Crouch had found the slip entirely by feel. He asked Surtees, “You set?”

  “Yeah. Roll on my twelve.”

  Daft bugger … Crouch was beginning to see again. Valkyrien heeled to starboard as Larsen shoved the wheel hard a-port and she began her turn in towards the enemy’s sterns. Two sterns close together. Using the torpedo davit to plumb the U-boat’s midships area they’d had to secure them this way.

  “Stand by!”

  She’d steadied and she was about to pass close astern of them. The wire slips had to work now, and the slings had not to snag. Crouch couldn’t see the enemy, the target, because the old ship’s deckhouse was in the way. He wasn’t trying to anyway, only watching for the torch-flash. The Norwegian would have to be looking about four ways at once: target to port, rocks to starboard, torch signal towards his stern, and what Larsen was doing with the wheel. A machine-gun had opened up and tracer was arching overhead and astern. Valkyrien leaned over as she went into her zig to starboard.

  The torch flashed, yellowish.

  Crouch screamed, “Let’s go!” and at the same time struck at the slip in front of him with the stock of his Tommy gun. In the dark he missed it, bouncing off the wire instead: the gun skidded sideways and he’d skinned his knuckles. Surtees yelled, “All gone!” This bastard hadn’t. He had to feel for the slip again, shove the barrel of the Tommy under its latch, and lever it open. It snapped back and the wires’ ends whipped away and the charge fell clear. Surtees’s gun began to hammer, banging and flaming at lights and men running on the destroyer’s upper deck. Crouch put his gun up too and got one short burst off before it jammed.

  The German machine-gun had ceased fire. They’d probably be looking for some quite different kind of target: and they wouldn’t know anything about the charges yet. Crouch had the pan off his gun and he was working the cocking mechanism to clear it before he put a new one on. The pistols on the charges would be filling with water now and when they’d filled the hydrostatic valves would be triggered by the pressure in them. Meanwhile nobody was shooting, so why give the sods a mark to aim at? He told Surtees, “Hold your fire, Billy!”

  The first charge exploded and astern the fjord erupted, a huge white mushroom-head lifting, with the German ships in it: then the spread of it travelling outwards lifted Valkyrien’s stern and drove her ahead bowdown but with the whole length of her up on the enormous outrushing wave, which passed on under her so that she dropped stern-down, almost under water. A succeeding rush was coming, though, overtaking and slewing her off course and right on round, listing hard to starboard, and the second charge went off with a boom that sounded bigger than the first, with another swelling mushroom heading skywards: they heard the roar of the approaching wave just as the old ship rocked back to port, practically on her beam ends. She was in a maelstrom of heavy falling and rushing, over-sweeping sea, three-dimensional confusion: spinning her round, the torrent poured right across her, flooded over the bulwarks aft, swirled two feet deep before it drained down. But the engine was still pounding away and she was pitching less already, over smaller waves, follow-ups as the main deluge subsided: it had hit her, mauled her, and swept on. Rolling still but responding to rudder and coming back on course. Astern, the gun began to fire again, something like a twenty-millimetre by the sound of it: but it wasn’t shooting in the right direction from any German point of view. Valkyrien chugged on: perhaps she
had been lifted and carried over the shallow patch. The gun ceased fire. It was pitch-black and with any luck the Germans still didn’t know what had hit them. It would have done them in, all right, Crouch thought: he muttered, “Lovely grub, eh, Billy?” and Surtees answered, “Ah, very tasty, very sweet.” Out of some radio programme. Astern one gun fired once: main armament, one single shot. The crack of it was still echoing round the fjord and surrounding hills when the starshell burst—high and well beyond them, over the land to which Valkyrien was pitching over what was now no more than a choppy sea. The shell burst with a sharp thudding sound and the flare appeared and expanded immediately to flood the whole land-and seascape with its harsh magnesium whiteness.

  Now they’d seen her. Crash of gunfire astern. Small stuff—pompoms or Bofors—that kind of thing, and some of it was tracer. Surtees put his gun up, sighted, pressed the trigger: the Thompson banged twice and then jammed. A hand grabbed Crouch’s shoulder: Torp yelled with his face down close to him, “Set the charges! Half-minute only, then we beach!” The top of the old hooker’s funnel went, flared, and soared away in several burning pieces. Explosive shells ripped in flame and flying timber along the port-side strip of deck. Torp had gone for’ard, luckily for him, up the other side. Crouch grabbed Surtees’s arm: “Charges!”

  They were below, ready to be placed and lit. Arne Martinsen, the stoker-cum-engineer, asked Crouch, “We fix the boggers?” It wasn’t clear whether he was referring to Germans or to charges, but an affirmative answered either question. Martinsen was all sweat, coaldust, and oil: he’d have stoked her right up by now so she’d have all the steam she needed for this last sprint of hers. There was a crash from up top somewhere: she lurched—either thrown off course or dodging. The fitted charges were all together in an ammo box; he passed three of them to Surtees and took the other three himself. Surtees said, “I’ll do port side, right?” They were tin cylinders about a foot long and three inches in diameter, and Crouch had set them up himself before they’d sailed. It wasn’t a difficult operation: you slid the explosive into the tin, which it exactly fitted, and the detonator went into an aperture in the end of the explosive. One end of the fuse you poked through the hole in the tin’s screw-cap and then crimped into the detonator, and then you screwed the cap on. It was just a tin, now, with the fuse like white washing-line sticking out of it. On the other end of the fuse, whatever length of it was needed, you fitted an igniter, a tube of tin about the size of a small cigarette; the fuse fitted into one end of it and the other end, if you squeezed it with a pair of pliers or by stamping on it, started the fuse burning. It didn’t show, but if it was burning properly and you held it against your ear you could hear it fizz.

  Crouch lowered his three charges into the bilge along the length of the engine-space, one for’ard and one aft and one between them, and Surtees was doing the same on the other side. They should have been tamped down, really, but the confined space down there would contain the explosion, concentrate it enough, Crouch reckoned. They were leaving the ends of the fuses with igniters on them up on the footplates, ready to be set going.

  Torp leant in through the hatch: “Is it ready?”

  Surtees nodded: “Aye, sir.”

  “Fuses lit?”

  Crouch said, arriving at the after end, “We’ll light ‘em now, sir. Billy—”

  “Aye aye.” Surtees had the pliers. He went round quickly, squeezing each igniter and checking that it was fizzing, then dropping the whole length of fuse down into the bilge—out of reach, unless you took the plates up. The fuse would burn in water as well as out of it. Arne Martinsen had started up the ladder, leaving the engine unsupervised and lonely, driving itself to its own doom. Crouch pushed Surtees towards the ladder and then followed him up it. Into air even colder than it had been, after the heat below. Surtees asked Crouch, speaking with his mouth against the killick’s ear, “Oughter stay with the gaffer, like the skipper said?”

  The biggest explosion they’d heard yet—enough to crack the fjord wide open … Echoes now. It had been to the east of them—over the land ahead. Now another one exactly like it: this time Crouch saw a flash, a sort of yellow streak, very quick like a light that burns and fuses instantaneously as you press a switch. Valkyrien was heeling as she swung to starboard, and a shell burst on her beam—on land—a low headland which she was rounding: a fresh starshell had just suspended itself overhead, lighting everything in all directions. Bits of shell or perhaps stones flying, singing away overhead: and another shell-burst but astern this time, in the water, he’d heard it scrunch down and then the explosion and after that it was raining, a deluge of heavy rain that stank. They were practically on the beach, he realised. The whole trip across, from dropping the charges to this beach, was only eight hundred yards. So Torp had said. Five minutes, he’d said it would take them, All we got to do is stay afloat five minutes. Not too hard, huh? Norwegian minutes must be longer than the British kind, Crouch thought. Third huge bang: and the yellow flash again: sure of it now, he bawled at Surtees, “Them’s our fish, chum!” Surtees nodded, shouted back, “I reckon.” They’d helped look after those torpedoes, done maintenance routines on them.

  Shells scorched over: a starshell had been fading but another had replaced it. The shells had burst on shore, some way up from the beach. Torp yelled from the wheelhouse door, “Get for’ard, hold to something, hold on!” Surtees moved obediently and Crouch, who was ahead of him on the narrow strip of deck, moved too. He didn’t want to get too far from the Norwegian. It was still bright as day from that starshell but no more shells had come, not in the last fifteen or twenty seconds. Valkyrien lifted, flinging up, smashing and grinding on to rock. Torp had been thrown back—he’d been holding with one arm to the doorway and he’d been swung so that he’d crashed backwards into the side of the wheel-house. He shouted at Crouch, “I say go for’ard, damn it!” He’d given Surtees an almighty shove: Surtees blundered into the killick and they both went on towards the bow. The jolting and bouncing had stopped, and the ship was falling over on to her starboard side, subsiding slowly with the water tending to hold her up. She lurched again and Crouch slipped, fell against the bulwark, down on one knee in the swirl of sea that was pouring over now and also rising from astern, up the slope of deck. Larsen gave him a hand up, then went on ahead, and in fading starshell-light Crouch saw him jump over from the bow. Crouch followed him, thinking he could wait for Torp on the beach rather than hang back now and get sworn at: and Torp’s bellow reached him, “Get a bloody move on—jump!” Only the way he said it was “yump.” Tracer racketed overhead: spraying the beach, now that she wasn’t in the bastards’ sight? She couldn’t be, not in this little cove he’d put her in. Crouch swung his legs over the bulwark, held the Tommy gun up clear of the wet, and slid over, landing in about four feet of icy water. Ahead of him were Martinsen and Larsen, ten- or fifteen-yard gaps between them and between Larsen and himself, and behind him was Surtees and the fellow they were supposed to be looking after. Currently yelling Norwegian: then he put it into English—”There is a stream in front. Follow it to the road then go left and run!” Another starshell: time they gave up that lark, Crouch thought. More shells scrunching over—bursting on land, so they couldn’t be aiming for Valkyrien. Wouldn’t make sense to now in any case. Chocker, probably, wanting to get their own back, teach a lesson to the unruly natives.

  Martinsen had shouted something back to Torp: he had a high, carrying voice, trained by the need to yell over the sound of engines. He was clear of the water, climbing a steep slope with a gully to the right of it. Larsen was still in the water, the shallows, jogging through it. It was still too deep where Crouch was to move fast and he didn’t want to anyway, even though Surtees had managed to stay with the Norwegian back there. Aching cold water. More shells—falling to the left, exploding in the shallows, sending up sheets of sea and a hail of stones. Then to the left again, that sort of rasping whistle as they rushed down, the crashes of the explosions and the
air alive and humming with flying rock and salt water: and now more coming. He thought, Vindictive bastards! Then he realised: the new salvo was going to pitch behind him—where Surtees and the Norwegian were.

  Lange cut his boat’s speed. The oiler was a dark mass blacker than the night fifty yards off on the bow. A long, low rectangle with two smaller, upright rectangles on it. One of them was the bridge superstructure and there were lights showing from it. Careless: thought they were all right on the landward side, perhaps. Trench looked down, rapped with his knuckles on Midshipman Cox’s tin hat: “Clear about your job, you in there?” Cox said yes, he was. Trench looked past him, at PO Metcalf: “You, Buffer?” Metcalf growled, “I’m the bloke as chucks ‘em in the ‘oggin, sir.” The land was about a hundred and fifty yards to port: on the boat’s quarter now as Lange turned directly towards the oiler. Planks were ready on the wheelhouse canopy, to bridge the gap between boat and ship. The boarding party—all in helmets, officers and POs with revolvers and British and Norwegian sailors with rifles—lined both sides of the boat’s deck and packed the stern-sheets. Riflemen would fix bayonets after they’d boarded.

  Trench checked his watch’s luminous dial. One minute to zero hour. He leant into the wheelhouse, held up one finger to Lange.