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

by Alexander Fullerton

“Neat job on those destroyers, sir.”

  He nodded. “What’s the score here, Tommy?”

  “All in hand, sir. She’s the Tonning. Naval auxiliary, fourteen thousand tons, reputedly capable of fourteen to 15 knots, launched 1938. There’s a gun-mounting for’ard but no gun. Six officers—they’re under guard in the forepeak—and 28 crew. She has approximately eight thousand tons of oil-fuel in her. Captain’s name is Grossman. Inoffensive little chap, knows he’s beat, as it were.”

  “Do we know if they got any distress call out?”

  “They did not, sir. We were in the bridge before they knew anything was happening. It’s panned out very nicely and our chaps have done a first-class job.”

  Beamish went hurrying past. Nick asked him, “All right, Chief?”

  “Will be, sir, in ‘alf a shake. The connections’ll do us all right, that was the main ‘eadache.”

  He’d gone on. Nick asked Trench,”Steam up? Ready for the off when we’ve oiled?”

  “Top line, sir, according to Cox. And Boyensen’s just gone down to get things in hand. One rather useful thing—or it could be—is that there are two engineers, ERA types or possibly more like warrants, who say they’re Danes and want to join us. They say they were pressed into German service. Will you take a look at them?”

  “We certainly need plumbers.”

  “I meant for this ship, not—”

  “Naturally. But let’s wait for Torp.” Touch wood … “They’ll be his crew if we take them on, and he may even talk their lingo, or vice versa.”

  The oil pipe was across now, linking the two ships. Beamish was back on the destroyer’s iron deck with a gaggle of his stokers. Nick asked Trench, “Have you sorted out swimmers and non-swimmers yet?”

  “Cox is attending to that detail, sir.”

  “How has he performed?”

  “Well, sir—”Trench smiled, thinking about it—”I’d hesitate to use the expression ‘tower of strength’ in relation to one of such diminutive stature as Midshipman Cox, but otherwise it might not be inappropriate.”

  “That’s good news. But you’ve developed rather an ornate turn of phrase, Tommy?”

  “It’s because I’m happy, I think.”

  He looked round: Norwegians on the oiler’s port side were shouting, pointing out into the dark. Nick heard Lange’s name among the less unintelligible sounds.

  So the boat was coming. No relief in that: only sharpened anxiety, a preference not to know … Trench said, turning back, “There’s one thing, sir—I promised Lange he could fill his boat’s tank with diesel before we all shove off.”

  Kari was coming, hurrying across the gangway. Nick nodded to Trench. “Of course. Better warn Beamish, though.” Lange was intending to take his boat up through the Leads to Ranenfjord, Mo i Rana, about a hundred and twenty miles north. It was the place from which Torp had fetched Valkyrien, there were no Germans there yet, and Lange had family near by. Nick was watching Kari as she came up to them.

  “I heard the boat was coming.”

  He’d tried to avoid this, but he was going to have to face it with her. And Torp might be in the boat …

  He took her arm. “Let’s go and meet him.”

  Over to the port side, ducking under the two catwalks. There were several Norwegians waiting to take the blue boat’s lines. Kari pointed, wordlessly: it was the white bow-wave that she’d seen. Watching it as it approached and the boat began to reduce its speed, Nick felt sick with the conviction that her father would not be in it.

  The boat was circling into a position from which to come alongside. The Norwegians along the oiler’s side waited silently, motionless as statues, watching it approach. You could see their anxiety in that stillness. An arc of white curled shorewards as the boat swept round, rolling on the swell. Then it had steadied, and Nick could see men standing just abaft the wheelhouse door. Two of them. Then there’d be Lange on the wheel and his mechanic crouched in the little engine-space … But he’d known this. Right from the start of the operation, when it had become obvious that Valkyrien was going to have to do the Altbotn job. There’d been five in the Valkyrien party, and Lange and his two men … Kari’s hand had tightened on his arm. The boat was slewing in, its starboard screw going astern. More men in sight than had been visible before. Then as it bumped alongside two figures moved to launch a plank across, and almost as it crashed down a large-built man climbed on to it and came shambling over with another man on his back. As he entered the pool of light at the oiler’s side Kari plied herself away from Nick and rushed forward. Claus Torp allowed PO Metcalf to take Surtees off him, and Crouch, following, helped Metcalf in lowering the injured torpedoman to the deck.

  Surtees announced for general information, “Two bloody miles ‘e carted me!”

  Crouch told Nick, “Shell-splinter in ‘is leg, sir. I thought the both of ‘em ‘ad ‘ad it, till ‘e gets up an’—”

  “Get him to the sickbay. Pass the word for a stretcher.”

  Kari was in her father’s arms, hugging him, sobbing against his chest. The clinch had been her idea, not his: he’d looked surprised as she’d leapt at him and clasped him. Now he was patting her shoulders as he stared at Nick over her dark head.

  “You sank them both, huh?”

  “Yes. How about yours?”

  “Oh, sure. Well, maybe not sink, but—you know …” He looked down at his weeping daughter. “What you been doing to this woman—frightening her?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The surface of Ofotfjord gleamed dully under drifting mist. Fir trees formed dark streaks and patches on the high snow-bound slopes and the sky backing the mountains was like dirty cottonwool. It was a harsh, miserable place, Nick thought, this trap of a fjord where three days ago his son’s ship had gone down.

  One-thirty pm: one German destroyer had already been sunk, although the action had barely started yet. The German had been hiding in Djupvik Bay, on the starboard hand as the British force debouched from the narrows into the wide part of the fjord, and Warspite’s Swordfish floatplane, hammering its way up-fjord with the racket of its engine bouncing from the mountain-sides, had radio’d advance warning of its presence. Bedouin and Eskimo, had raced round the headland with guns and tubes ready trained to starboard, and it had needed only a few salvoes to silence the enemy’s guns. Then a single torpedo from Bedouin had blown his bows off. Finally as Warspite steamed by in massive, lordly fashion she’d spared one thunderous blast of fifteen-inch and the already hard-hit enemy turned belly-up and sank.

  The echoes died as the force pressed on. Earlier the leading destroyers had streamed their paravanes, mine-sweeping gear, but no mines had been encountered and they were getting the wires in now, out of the way before the business of destruction started. Leading the force were four of the modern Tribal class—Bedouin, Cossack, Eskimo, and Punjabi— and behind them, screening the battleship which now flew Admiral Whitworth’s flag, steamed the smaller destroyers Hero, Icarus, Kimberley, Forester, Foxhound, and Intent. It was a foregone conclusion that when this force withdrew there’d be no German ship left afloat in the Narvik fjords.

  Studying that southern coastline, Nick wondered where exactly Hoste had sunk. Not far offshore, they’d told him last night. “They” being the captains of two other destroyers who’d come to get oil from Tonning. They’d also told him that according to Norwegian accounts quite a number of survivors had got ashore: but later one of them had stumbled into admitting that the ship the Norwegian sources had mentioned had been Hunter, whose survivors were reported to have crossed the mountains into Sweden.

  So in fact there was no news. Except that Hoste had been sunk and that before she’d foundered she’d been very badly knocked about. The anxiety was bad now. It had been suppressed, buried under the planning and the action, but now it was in the front of his mind and everything he looked at he was seeing through it. The signals from Admiralty and from C-in-C: or those destroyer captains wringing his hand and showering him
with compliments: he’d felt none of it.

  Last night had been spent off Hamnvik, in Folla, a fjord-complex on the southern side of Vestfjord. The oiler was still there, with Claus Torp as her master and young Lyte in charge of a four-man armed guard on the prisoners. Tonning was suckling the fleet’s destroyers as they needed it, and in a day or two she was to be moved up to Harstad where a base was being established.

  Kari had repeated, last night, “Your son will be all right, Nick. You will see.”

  “I know.” He told her, “You convinced me two days ago.”

  “Did I really?” He’d nodded. He’d been grateful for her attempt to convince him, that was all, her genuine desire to give him that comfort. But she was looking at him now as if she didn’t quite believe him: she was anything but stupid. “I hope I shall meet him one day. With you. Perhaps at your house—” her hand had moved towards a pocket—”of which I forget the name— “

  “Mullbergh.”

  He’d given her his card, given her father one as well, telling them that if ever they came to England they were to make themselves at home there whether or not he himself was around. Which most likely he would not be, of course. He’d written Sarah’s name and the Dower House address and telephone number on the backs of the cards, and also the name of his old butler, Barstow.

  “This—” Kari had turned the card over—”Lady Sarah Everard—”

  “My stepmother. My father’s widow. She has a house—that address I’ve put there—which is part of the estate.”

  “Is it very big, your estate?”

  “About four thousand acres. I sold off a lot of land a few years ago to raise cash for putting the rest of it in order.”

  “That is still a great deal of land. And you are all sirs and ladies—”

  “I’m a baronet because my father was. My elder brother would have been, instead of me, but he was drowned at Jutland. Paul—” he made himself say this—”Paul will become a baronet when I die. And when a baronet gets married his wife becomes Lady Whatsit. It’s of no great consequence, Kari, it makes no difference to the sort of people we are.”

  “I am very happy with the sort of person you are. But I should not like at all to become Lady Whatsit.”

  “I think I can promise you that you won’t.”

  “Then I shall visit you at Mullbergh.”

  “If I’m not there, you’ll make another visit later?”

  But the Torps might not come to Britain. Troops were at sea, bound for Narvik from the Clyde and from Scapa Flow. Half a battalion of Scots Guards were in the cruiser Southampton and the rest of that Brigade plus another one as well were following in five troopships. If a landing was successful, the Torps might elect to stay; Claus almost certainly would.

  All that news had come from the destroyer COs last night. And various other bits of information—such as the cruiser Penelope having been sent to find a German tanker reported to be in a fjord fifty miles south of Narvik: there’d been no tanker though, and Penelope had hit a rock. Nick wondered if that tanker might have been Tonning, missed by Penelope because it had moved down to Namsenfjord. It seemed quite likely.

  Gunfire ahead. A long way off, though, and drifting smoke was combining with mist patches to blind them. There was also Warspite’s lumbering bulk ahead. Nick reached for the director telephone and asked Henry Brocklehurst, “Can you see anything?”

  “Three or possibly four Hun destroyers, sir—fighting a rearguard action by the looks of it, withdrawing towards Narvik. The Tribals and I think it’s Hero and Forester are engaging them. But we’ve got snow falling up there now and it isn’t helping much.”

  The Germans couldn’t withdraw very far. The fjords behind them were dead-ends. According to what had been said last night there were supposed to be two cruisers somewhere about, and if that was so the destroyers might be falling back to join them. On the other hand Warspite’s Swordfish hadn’t seen any cruisers or it would have reported them.

  Chandler said, “Seems we aren’t getting much of a look in, sir.”

  The comment, in one’s present state of frustration, was infuriating. Nick forced himself to answer equably. He said, “Things will probably open out presently.”

  “But if we’re bound to stay astern of the flagship, sir—”

  “For the time being, Pilot. Not necessarily forever.”

  Those were the orders. Intent was, so to speak, watching the admiral’s back for him. And you couldn’t blame him if he felt a bit nervous in taking a thirty-one-thousand-ton battleship up this narrow waterway, if he took all reasonable steps to protect her. One wouldn’t blame him in the least—if he hadn’t picked on Intent …

  They’d slipped out of Rodsundet with the oiler just after 2:30 yesterday morning. Tonning’s best speed had turned out to be 12 knots, not 14, but by 6:30 with fifty miles behind them he’d reckoned he was well enough clear to break wireless silence, and he’d sent for the doctor, Bywater, to come up to the bridge. Nick had been on his high seat in the port for’ard corner, with Chandler at the binnacle and young Cox as assistant OOW. Intent had been steering NNE at 12 knots, driving through a low swell and with a light north-west wind on the bow to throw a little spray now and then across the foc’sl, and the oiler ploughing along two cables’ lengths astern. Sklinna light-tower had been a pimple on the horizon just abaft the beam to starboard. There’d been no interference, no Stukas coming after them. The cloud-cover would have helped, of course, but he’d been half expecting air activity: the Altbotn destroyer could have got some kind of alarm call out and this had been a weakness in his plan for which he’d had no remedy. The only hope had been that the Altbotn captain might not have guessed at the involvement of a British destroyer: he’d been hit from Valkyrien and the attack could have been mounted locally by Norwegians. He couldn’t have known until much later, when survivors or men released from the tanker came ashore, what had happened to his two flotilla mates.

  Bywater had saluted. “Morning, sir.”

  “Ah, doctor. How are your patients?”

  “Dobbs is very happy to have company, sir. He’s mending well. To be honest, I think I must have taken too gloomy a view of his chances in the first place. I mean if he’d been as badly damaged as I thought he would have died.”

  “Better an error that way than the other.”

  “I suppose so, sir … Surtees will be all right. I took a lump of metal out of his thigh—and he’s complaining it hurts now and didn’t before I got at him. It’s a clean wound, though, there shouldn’t be any problems.”

  “Good. Now I’ve got some real work for you.” Nick handed him a signal which he’d been drafting. “Read it out, would you, so we can see if it makes sense.”

  Chandler came closer to hear it. Cox too. Bywater cleared his throat, and read: “To Commander-in-Chief, repeated Vice-Admiral Battlecruiser Squadron and Admiralty. From Intent.”

  That alone would be enough to create a sensation. Intent was supposed to have been sunk four days ago. Bywater read on:

  “In position 65 degrees 22’ north 11 degrees 36’ east course 020 speed 12 escorting captured oiler Tonning, fourteen thousand tons, with prize crew of Norwegian naval reservists under Lieutenant-Commander Torp Royal Norwegian Naval Reserve and four Royal Navy ratings under Sub-Lieutenant Lyte RN as guard on prisoners. Tonning has eight thousand tons marine diesel remaining and is flying White Ensign. Two German Beitzen-class destroyers torpedoed and sunk 0100/12 in Rodsundet 64 degrees 36’ north 11 degrees 16’ east where oiler was taken simultaneously by boarding. Also one destroyer and one U-boat immobilised by depthcharges in Altbotn position 63 degrees 35’ north 11 degrees 13’ east, the charges being dropped from former Norwegian sail-training yacht Valkyrien commanded by Lt.-Cdr. Torp. Submit air attack on Altbotn would complete destruction of the two damaged vessels. Intent has six torpedoes and 90 per cent ammunition remaining and is now fully operational. Regret have been unable to communicate while in Namsenfjord repairing action damag
e sustained dawn 8 April. Repairs effected under supervision of Norwegian engineer from Valkyrien. Consider Gauntlet to have been sunk in same action but have no certain knowledge owing to total loss of visibility when about to attack Hipper with torpedoes. Gauntlet had rammed enemy and was in sinking condition. Own casualties 8 April one ERA wounded, all other ERAs and Commissioned Engineer and two stokers killed. In Altbotn action this morning one torpedoman was wounded. Both wounded men’s condition is satisfactory. Time of origin 0630 GMT/12.”

  Bywater finished reading. Chandler said, “That’s one hell of a signal, sir.”

  Nick thought so too. He still had a sort of lurking guilt-feeling about the Gauntlet action but he didn’t think he’d be blamed for it. Not now.

  “But one thing, sir—” Chandler’s tone was hesitant—”should there be a mention of our leaky fuel-tanks?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure they are leaking, Pilot.” He told the doctor, “Get that into cipher, check it very carefully, then tell MacKinnon to bung it out. Mid—you can go down and lend a hand with it.”

  Signals of congratulation had come in all through the forenoon. There were also orders to escort the oiler into Folla, where she was to anchor. Intent was to remain with her, pending receipt of further orders, and another destroyer would arrive off Hamnvik to oil and also to transfer two ERAs to Intent on loan. Commander Torp was requested to provide fuelling facilities to destroyers who would be requiring oil during the next 24 hours. Commander-in-Chief and Admiralty both sent Commander Torp congratulations on the Altbotn operation and thanks for the assistance rendered to Intent.

  Nick had signalled his ETA in Folla as 2200/12, and passed all the messages to Claus Torp by light. He was glad that C-in-C and London had had the nous to recognise Torp’s efforts.

  In London a paymaster commander took a copy of Intent’s signal to Third Officer Casler in her office.

  “Might this extraordinary communication be what your recently departed admiral was hoping for, Ginny?”