The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6

by Alexander Fullerton

  There’d be more wounded than they’d have stretchers for, now—or floats for.

  “Foremast’s joining us, sir.”

  Clegg had made his mind up that despite the sea, and the fact Calliope might turn turtle at any moment, he was going to risk getting right in alongside her. It was the only way, now, to save those people’s lives.

  “The whaler’s manned, sir!”

  “Get ’em out of it. I’m taking her alongside. Starboard side-to …” He called down, “Slow ahead port, slow astern starboard.” He’d had her lying broadside-on, so he had to turn her where she lay before he could move her in closer … “Is Cramphorn ready?”

  “Yessir.” Cramphorn was Lyric’s doctor. “Your day cabin and the wardroom—”

  “Stop starboard. Starboard twenty-five.”

  “She’s going!”

  Clegg saw it himself, at that same moment. She’d resumed the roll to starboard which had checked at about the same time as the bombs had struck. There might have been some counter-flooding at that time. Now the resumption was at first slow, but by the time you’d seen it happening the momentum was increasing, becoming swift, unstoppable …

  “Stop port. Midships. Slow astern together.”

  Wash and suction from the roll were capsizing the floats, turning them on end, spinning them like leaves in a whirlpool. Most of them empty now, some with men clinging: but bodies in Neill Robertsons couldn’t cling … Foremost—Clegg had seen her moving up but had not had time to take her movements into consideration—was backing off, too: she’d been approaching gingerly, stem to stem with the cruiser, her captain—Batty Crockford—aiming to put his bow alongside Calliope’s foc’sl, and there’d been a crowd of men gathering there, ready for the chance to jump over.

  Gunfire beginning again, swelling from the direction of the convoy …

  “I’ll need the whaler, after all.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  “Stop together …”

  Roar of aircraft engines mingled with gun noise. Lyric’s after foursevens were engaging some attacker, and now her pompoms and Oerlikons had joined in. Clegg had to leave all that to his control officer in the tower: his concern was Calliope, and the darkening that wasn’t dusk or doomsday but the cruiser’s forepart lifting to shadow the space of sea between them: she was on her side and the roll seemed to have stopped again, stern buried and the long foc’sl lifting completely out of the water now, rising towards the vertical and displaying her scarred body naked to the day for these last agonising moments. Lyric and Foremost both in action; Calliope’s raised forepart alive with men—some holding on, some jumping into the seething foam. Bomb splashes shot up on her other side, then one off Foremast’s port bow as she drew away, and a fourth exploded in the sea between Lyric and the dying cruiser. A scream of fury from a sailor on “B” gundeck, harsh as a seabird’s shriek, cut through the petering-out of gunfire: “Christ, lay off, you bastards!” Guns had ceased fire: a new sound was the rush of escaping air as Calliope, vertical now, slid stern-first into littered, convulsing sea.

  Trench said into the TBS microphone, “All right, Sam. Resume your previous station. Out.”

  Tone as flat as he felt. Clegg had just reported that seventeen of the bodies who’d been dragged on board Lyric might be kept alive: but none of them was Nick Everard. Before that, Crockford of Foremost had reported having picked up fifty-three men of whom twenty-two had died or had been dead before they’d arrived on board—leaving thirty-one, many of them in very poor shape. Here again, no news of Everard.

  “The Earl Granville’s in trouble, sir.”

  He swung round on his high seat. McAllister, his navigator, had binoculars aimed through the space between the Tacora and the Carrickmore. The Earl Granville had been on fire for the last couple of hours. She was down by the bow, after an explosion in her for’ard hold which her master had claimed would not prevent him maintaining the present eight knots—and now she was turning out to port and seemed to be losing way.

  In fact she’d stopped her engines. There was no bow-wave at all.

  Radstock was closing her, and Northern Glow was only about six hundred yards astern. There were no bombers overhead, and nothing on the radar screen either, at this moment: Trench suspected there might not be many other moments like it, between now and sunset. The idea of putting the Earl Granville in tow—perhaps of the Berkeley—entered his mind; but it would slow the whole convoy by several knots, prolong the exposure to attack still further, as likely as not cause further losses. Better, he thought, to cut those losses—especially as she looked burnt-out, had flooding for’ard and fires in ’tween-deck areas elsewhere, was hardly worth risking other ships and lives for.

  He reached for the TBS again, and called Legend, told John Ready to close the Earl Granville and talk to her master. If she couldn’t keep up she was to be abandoned and sunk. He slid off his seat. “Hold the fort, pilot. I’ll be in the chartroom.”

  One of the things he’d learnt from Nick Everard was that as long as options were open, a wise man kept them all in mind. The most dangerous thing was to act like a tram on tracks, unable to re-think a plan or intention when changing circumstances demanded a new approach. Everard had taught a lot of people a lot of things simply by demonstrating that objectives which might seem unattainable could often be reached by varying the route to them. This was exactly what he was thinking about now—and he was motivated not only by the natural and proper desire to get as much of these cargoes into North Russia as could possibly be fought through, but also by what felt like a personal obligation to Nick Everard to do so. In Trench’s mind it was still Nick’s convoy, his own position that of caretaker.

  Everard had been Trench’s CO at Narvik, where their performance in the destroyer Intent had—well, had been highly productive, after a thoroughly forbidding start. Nick had subsequently given Trench a boost in his own career with a glowing personal recommendation. It was one of the characteristics of the man that he’d always stood by the people who’d served under him.

  Trench leant over the chart-table. He was escort commander now, and he didn’t want to be off Moloch’s bridge a moment longer than necessary. But the plain fact was that the distance between here and Archangel—he set dividers against the latitude scale—was, say 350 miles to get to the White Sea, then another 160 or so through to Archangelsk, as the Russians called it. Roughly 500 miles. A hell of a long haul at eight knots and under this intensity of attack.

  Suppose PQ 19 diverted to Kola. From dusk this evening. Hold this present course for five or six hours, then at sundown alter course for Kola. That would be a run of only two hundred miles.

  It was probably the only way to get most of the remaining cargoes through. It was also—Trench thought—most likely what Nick Everard would have done. In fact the more he looked at it, the more obvious it became. He pulled a pad towards him, and began to rough out a signal which could be put into a more complete form presently …

  To SBNO North Russia, repeated to Admiralty and AIG 311, from Moloch … Calliope sunk by torpedo and bomb attacks in position—?—as—?. 48 survivors including wounded picked by Lyric and Foremost, but commanding officer is missing.

  He poised the pencil over that word “missing.” Then he decided, scowling, that it was as good as any other word for it. He wrote, Earl Granville, and left a space for a mention of this new loss, which surely was imminent. McAllister could fill in all the blanks—positions, times etcetera. Trench scrawled swiftly.

  Oiler Sovyetskaya Slava holed by near-miss and reduced to 8 knots maximum. This and continuing air attacks make diversion to Kola Inlet essential. Course will be altered at dusk to 220 degrees. Request fighter cover and early rendezvous with local escort. Estimated position of PQ 19 dawn 13th—?

  McAllister could fill in the missing bits. You didn’t keep a dog and do your own barking. He left the signal on the chart, and ran up to the bridge.

  “Slow together.”

  McA
llister passed the order down. Trench’s intention was to drop astern for a loud-hailer chat with the commodore, tell him about diverting to Kola. McAllister told him as he straightened from the voicepipe, “The Earl Granville’s abandoning, sir.”

  Cramphorn took the stethoscope from his ears and told Sick Berth Attendant Bowles, “Don’t bother.”

  Bowles had been wrapping a pre-warmed blanket around a lanky, ginger-haired body, the ninth of eleven hypothermia cases and the second to die after being brought down here. This was the captain’s day cabin, interconnecting with sleeping cabin and bathroom. Officers’ cabins which led off the flat outside had also been commandeered. Lyric rolled suddenly and powerfully to starboard, sending camp-beds and stretchers sliding … Cramphorn said, “Get him up to the lobby.” He was checking the list. “No identification?”

  “Got ’im on this one, sir.” Bowles had it. “Name of Keeble—torpedoman. No identity disc, but that Killick knew ’im—bloke with the duff left ’and.”

  Cramphorn had been operating on a leading seaman—he’d finished the job only a few minutes ago—an amputation at the wrist of a hand that looked as if it had been chewed by a shark but in fact had been caught in the block of a boat’s falls and crushed. Cramphorn had been using the officers’ bathroom as an operating theatre, an advantage of the cramped space being that he could jam himself in between his patient and the bulkhead and thus avoid being flung off his feet during the course of the operation. While he’d been doing that and another job, Leading SBA Murchison with Bowles and two wardroom stewards as assistants had continued the treatment of hypothermia cases, a production-line system devised by Cramphorn and involving immersion for ten minutes in water at a temperature of 45 degrees—sea water, in the skipper’s bathroom, which connected with the adjoining sleeping cabin—then a rubbing-down with warm towels, and finally enclosure in blankets, also pre-warmed. Cramphorn had studied the experiences of others, mainly of doctors in small ships on Arctic convoys, and he’d trained this team, making the best use he could of limited facilities. He’d impressed on them that too much warmth would be as fatal as too little: but he’d still been worried, having to leave them at it on their own while he was operating, that their enthusiasm and anxiety for the patients might run away with them, so they’d overheat the bath-water … But what really determined success or failure—meaning life or death—given reasonably good treatment and men who hadn’t been in the sea more than a few minutes, was the individual’s physique. They were all unconscious now, of course, knocked out by the cold, and the questions were firstly, whether consciousness would be regained in time, and secondly, whether there might be brain damage, which could be either temporary or permanent.

  Only two to go, now. Murchison and the others had put three men through the defreezing process while Cramphorn had been performing his two operations. They were the only surgical cases he had, although he’d expected dozens. The reason, of course, was the cold water: badly wounded men had simply not survived. And this was the best time of the year: in January, one minute in that sea would be as effective as a bullet in the brain.

  “This lad’s for an ’ammock, sir. Carry on, shall we?”

  “Hang on.” Cramphorn went over, with his stethoscope. All bunks were now occupied, and this next patient, and then one other, would go into warmed (body-temperature) hammocks slung in the wardroom flat. The two stewards were carrying the red-headed torpedoman through there now, and up the ladder to the quarterdeck lobby; Bowles had gone next-door to give the last man his towelling. Staggering like a drunk as Lyric, under helm and heeling, pitched to a head-on sea.

  “Be better off in an ’ammock, I’d say.”

  Less likely to be thrown out, he meant. But all the bunks had leeboards on them, and bedding strapping the patients in tight. Cramphorn asked, applying his stethoscope, “Got this one’s name and rate?”

  There was a heartbeat, thank God. Faint enough, and breathing so shallow you’d only detect it by vapour on a glass, but there was life—despite an appearance of death, dead-pale complexion which emphasized a puckered scar running from the left eye to the corner of the mouth. No beauty now, this fellow—but largeboned, deepchested, and Cramphorn had no doubt he owed his life to that powerful constitution. His life so far— and to have survived even this long, after at least several minutes in that sea, was fairly miraculous. Wonders never ceased; and David Cramphorn, who’d been a medical student when the war had started four years ago, marvelled at them all.

  Murchison had answered that he didn’t know this patient’s name or rate.

  “Weren’t no disc on ’im, nothing.” Checking his own list again. “Yeah, I’m right. We ’ad to cut the suit off of him. It ’ad a label sort of thing saying Everard … ’ere, flaming ’ell!”

  Reeling—he’d been squatting on his heels—and grabbing as he fell at the camp-bed, to stop its slide across the deck. On the new course the motion was worse than it had been. Cramphorn checked his own notes. “You did say Everard?”

  “Yeah, but didn’t seem to be ’is name, like, more just …”

  “On a suit, you said?”

  “Sort of—well, flying suit, might’ve been. Zipfastener, an’ all. Couldn’t shift it, so Lofty Smith pulls out ’is pusser’s dirk an’ …”

  A pusser’s dirk was a seaman’s knife. Cramphorn had looked round as the stewards came back in. One of them came over to help with this patient, the nameless man who’d worn a flying suit, and the other went through to help Bowles. Mention of a flying suit had confused Cramphorn for a moment; he’d thought of Jones, the young Fleet Air Arm pilot they’d picked up and who was still on board—how anyone in Calliope could have been in his suit … But there was no connection—except Jones had also been in the drink, for about ten seconds …

  He’d found that name in his notes now.

  “Parrot.” Addressing the steward. “I’ll lend a hand here. You nip up to the bridge, give the skipper a message. Tell him we have an unconscious hypothermia case down here who I believe may be Captain Sir Nicholas Everard.”

  “Cor, stone the crows!”

  Staring down at the pallid, lifeless-looking features …

  Cramphorn added, “Be bloody careful how you go.” He’d jerked his head, drawing the steward’s attention to the pounding of heavy seas across the deck above their heads.

  Trench had been talking to the commodore by loud-hailer, explaining his intention of diverting to the Kola Inlet. He finished, “Then we can collect the homebound lot from Archangel—or they might sail with a local escort and we’d meet them at sea. How does it strike you, sir?”

  He lowered the hailer. On the far side of the strip of lively sea that separated them, Insole raised his.

  “I agree—it’s the best thing, in the circumstances. Mind you, Trench, the Russkis won’t like it.”

  Trench said, not into his loud-hailer, “Bugger the bloody Russkis!”

  “Hear, hear.” A grin from Willy Henderson, Moloch’s first lieutenant. Trench had the hailer up again: “Have to like it or lump it, won’t they?”

  There’d been a call on the radar voicepipe, and McAllister had answered it. Trench told Henderson, “Two-eight-oh revs, Number One.” McAllister reported, “Radar has aircraft formation closing on two-five-three range seventeen miles, sir.”

  “Red flag, yeoman.”

  “Red air warning flag—hoist!”

  Moloch was surging forward … Trench’s thumb on the alarm buzzer to bring his ship’s company back to their action stations. The respite—he checked his watch—had lasted three quarters of an hour. Focussing his glasses now on the smoking hulk of the Earl Granville: she was a long way astern, and Legend was still there with her. They should have got all her crew out of her by this time, and with a new wave of bombers coming in they’d better be told to get a move on. He looked round, to tell his yeoman, Halliday, to call Legend on TBS, but someone else piped up on the radio-telephone at that moment. It was Lyric calling, Sam Clegg, h
er skipper, wanting to speak to Commander Trench.

  CHAPTER NINE

  . . .

  “So where is he now? I mean, where’s Calliope?”

  Setter was plugging through a choppy sea, this evening, in a rising wind that promised badly for tomorrow. The weather forecast had been right, it seemed. Up to now the going hadn’t been at all bad, but at this halfway point it looked as if Messrs Gimber, Steep and Towne were in line for some discomfort.

  Paul told Crawshaw, “I’ve no idea. Last time I saw him was in London, and his ship was at Chatham. In dock, bottom-scraping or something. By this time she could be anywhere.”

  “They might have sent her down to the Med.” Massingbird, the engineer, eased the lid off a tin of fifty Players. He was a graduate of the Royal Navy’s engineering college at Keyham—Devonport—but after these few days at sea he looked more like a recent escaper from Devil’s Island. He added, “Salerno, all that malarkey.”

  MacGregor brought the conversation back to where he’d started it in the first place—the Everard family.

  “What about Admiral Sir Hugh Everard? I know he’d retired before the war and went back to sea as a convoy commodore—but is he still doing that?”

  “No. On the beach again, much to his annoyance. Arthritis—he can hardly move. He’s my great-uncle; nice old guy.”

  “He’s more than that. What about his part in the Battle of Jutland— when he commanded the battleship Nile, right?” Paul nodded. MacGregor told the others, “He turned her out of the line—positively Nelsonian, and what a sight it must have been! Poor old Warspite was getting really bollocked by the entire Hun battlefleet, and he turns Nile straight towards them and draws their fire!” MacGregor wagged his head. “Not a doubt he saved Warspite.”