Very few of these many craft were yet visible from Rob Roy's bridge, but Ransome knew they were stretched across the Channel, the rearguard still leaving the assembly area while the leaders were preparing for their baptism of fire.
Ransome levelled his glasses and watched the ripple of flashes which seemed to dart from the land itself. Seconds later the heavy shells began to fall amongst the invisible armada, while the air quaked to the echo of their explosions.
As at Sicily, the big ships were firing from below the horizon, the glow of each fall of shot giving shape to the land, like a terrible panorama of death.
Bedwortb cruised through the support craft with an impressive bow wave, her signal light flashing briefly like a solitary blue eye.
'Proceed as ordered, sir.' Mackay lowered his father's big telescope.
'Slow ahead together.' Ransome rested his hands on the screen and watched the first low shapes of landing-craft butting into the choppy water abeam. No bagpipes this time. It seemed wrong somehow. They had survived this far. The greatest invasion of all time had begun.
He saw some fast motor launches leading the way as the larger landing-craft turned obediently to follow.
Part of the Canadian Third Division, heading for the beach codenamed Juno.
Ransome thought of the pipe-smoking major he had met on the beach in Sicily. Perhaps he was here too on this bleak, terrible morning.
It prompted him to call, 'Yeoman! Hoist battle ensigns! Let's show 'em!'
Mackay stared at him, then nodded. 'Aye, aye, sir!' He jabbed the young signalman. 'Here, Nipper, help me bend them on!' He laughed aloud. 'Something to remember, eh, kid?'
Morgan raised his glasses as the lenses glowed red from a fiery reflection across the water.
'Some poor devil's brewed up, sir.'
Ransome turned away as more waterspouts burst skyward amongst the lines of landing-craft.
He looked above and watched as the first great ensign floated from Rob Roy's starboard yard, then a second one to port. This ship was too small for such a display; but it might give some of the watching soldiers heart while they waited, counting seconds, hoping the ramps would fall and their helplessness would end.
An upended landing-craft floated abeam, with two soldiers standing on the keel, casting off their boots and weapons as the hull began to sink beneath them. One of them waved, or it could have been a mock salute.
Great shells thundered overhead, and once when Ransome trained his glasses on a hardening ridge of land he saw a four-engined bomber fall like a leaf to vanish into the smoke. There was some sort of electrical storm making the clouds shine like silver, and a second plane fell without ever sighting its objective.
Ransome watched, and found himself hoping. Praying. But no tell-tale parachutes drifted clear. Their war had ended, here.
'Port ten. Midships. Steady.'
Morgan turned and looked up at him. 'Steady on one-six-zero, sir.'
The minesweepers had achieved what they came to do. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Ransome saw some of the big warships which had doubtless been the last to leave the assembly point surging past, guns high-angled and already shooting far inland.
Sherwood climbed to the bridge. 'Sweep secured, sir.' He watched the tall waterspouts shredding down near the landing-craft, some of which appeared to be swamped, only to emerge as determined as ever.
Ransome said, 'Go and clear the after guns. Stand by scrambling-nets. We'll be needed in support soon.'
He heard cheering and saw some of his men pointing and gesturing astern. Ranger and the rest of the flotilla had followed his example, and looked even smaller under their big White Ensigns.
Sub-Lieutenant Fallows stood with his hands on his hips and glared as Leading Seaman Guttridge strolled toward him on the forecastle.
'Buffer said you want some 'elp, sir?' It was as close to being insolent as he could get. Guttridge was still smarting over the hiding he had received when he had gone home to sort out his wife and her boyfriend. He had not expected the latter to be a six-foot tall commando, nor had he anticipated that her two brothers, both squaddies, would be there to fill him in.
She had screamed, 'You talk about bein' faithful, you slag! Wot about all the girls you've put in the club?' They had beaten the hell out of him. His body was still a mass of bruises. He was in no mood to put up with Bunny Fallows, bloody D-Day or not.
Fallows barked, 'This guardrail —' He pointed at the trailing wires. The explosion had snapped a small shackle like a carrot. 'It's a mess' 'Wot d'you expect me to do about it?' Guttridge saw the crew of 'A' Gun rising above the shield to listen to this unexpected diversion.
Someone shouted, ' 'Ere come the Glory Boys!'
A tight arrowhead of motor gunboats roared diagonally towards the port bow, their cannon and machine-guns already tracking round towards the land. With their ensigns streaming from each gaff, and the oilskinned officers wearing their dashing white scarves, they looked every inch the schoolboy's dream of the country's heroes.
Some of the seamen waved as Rob Roy plodded on at a steady eight knots.
Fallows yelled, T'm speaking to you! Don't you be so bloody insolent or I'll have that hook off your arm!'
He had to grip the remaining guardrail as the combined wash of the three fast-moving gunboats thundered around the bows and lifted them effortlessly on a small tidal wave.
Guttridge watched the sub-lieutenant and hoped he would lose his balance and pitch over the side. There was not a single matelot who would offer him a line.
But Fallows was clinging to a stanchion, his eyes popping from his head as he stared down past the receding bow wave.
He wanted to cry out, to make himself heard and obeyed. But in those swift seconds he saw only the mine as it spiralled lazily from the depths, where it had probably been lying for years undisturbed.
Guttridge saw his terror and yelled, 'Hit the deck! Get down!"
Then the mine rasped against the hull, and the world fell apart.
Lieutenant Trevor Hargrave stared overhead as another great salvo of shells thundered towards the shore. It sounded like a dozen express trains passing at the same time, so loud that you almost expected to see something.
The seaman with the quarterdeck handset reported, 'Sweep secured, sir!'
Hargrave nodded. How long would it take, he wondered? To stop fitting Rob Roy's faces to the men he now commanded?
He glanced around the bridge, at the crouching look-outs, the leading signalman who should have been Mackay as he took a couple of turns on a signal halliard and watched the big, clean ensign streaming out on the wet breeze.
Ranger was his command. Mine. He felt pride matched only by an unexpected sense of loss.
He saw Bedworth tearing through the groups of motor minesweepers, and smiled bitterly. In Falmouth he had bumped into an old classmate who was now a lieutenant-commander on the naval staff.
He had asked him about Bliss, and why he did not appear to get on with Vice-Admiral Hargrave.
His friend had grinned and punched his arm. 'By God, Trevor, they must be a close bunch in your family to smother such a juicy secret!'
When Hargrave had pressed him further he had explained, 'Your old man was once Bliss's commanding officer in a fleet destroyer. The word went round that he was chasing Bliss's young wife — and with some success to all accounts. No love lost since, it seems.'
Hargrave bit his lip. He found it easy to believe now, when once he would have defended his father's name from any quarter.
He felt the pain and the humiliation returning. The beautiful Ross Pierce had offered him her private telephone number.
'Next time we meet, Trevor, we may start a few fires together!'
And he had believed it.
He had phoned her at that number, a flat she owned with a Mayfair exchange, two nights before Rob Roy had received her final orders for Operation 'Neptune', the navy's equivalent of 'Overlord'. Obviously she liked him quite a lot,
but had held him at arm's length, which only made him want her all the more.
His father had answered the call, and Hargrave put down the receiver without speaking. It still hurt him more than he would have thought possible.
Sub-Lieutenant John Dent, whose sister drove staff cars in the WRNS, exclaimed, 'From the W/T office, sir. The first troops are ashore!'
Hargrave looked at the bleak sky, the choppy sea with its mounting litter of upended or burned-out landing vessels.
They had done it.
He thought of his father and the Wren officer together and tried to accept what he must do. He would use them both, just as they were using one another.
He heard muffled cheers from the wheelhouse and leaned over the voicepipe.
'Stow the noise down there.' He glanced at the gyro repeater. 'The course is one-six-zero, not two degrees off!'
He knew he was being unfair, that he was taking out his resentment on those who could not retaliate.
He looked round again. New faces. Probably clinging to Gregory's memory, his methods and personality.
Spray dashed over the glass screen and soaked Hargrave's shirt. He saw the sub-lieutenant trying to suppress a smile and said ruefully, 'I was wrong. D-Day or not, collars and ties are not suitable.'
There was a livid flash, followed by an explosion that hit Ranger's flanks like something solid. For an instant longer Hargrave thought they had struck a submerged wreck or an unmarked sandbar. Then he stared appalled at the tall column of water which appeared to be rising from the deck of Rob Roy, towering higher and higher as if it would never disperse. Ranger's first lieutenant, a young New Zealander, clattered on to the bridge.
'Dead alongside, sir! She's hit a mine, God damn it!' It sounded personal, beyond belief.
Hargrave watched as the white column cascaded down, the way she seemed to rock right over, and stay there.
The leading signalman shouted, 'From Bedivorth, sir. Take command of flotilla. Rescue M.Ls will close on Rob Roy.'
Hargrave stared at their sister ship until his eyes smarted. Pictures stood out like those in an album. Fallows, too drunk to answer his questions. Ransome in his little cabin, like the one he now occupied when Ranger was in harbour. Campbell, old Bone and the hostile Sherwood. Beckett and the Buffer, and the midshipman who had been killed.
He said harshly, 'Disregard! Make to Firebrand. Assume control. We are assisting.'
He pounded the screen with his fist as he had seen Ransome do.
'Full ahead together!' He was disobeying Bliss's direct order, but suddenly it no longer mattered. All the petty manoeuvring and the plans for his future counted for nothing.
Rob Roy was still his ship. She mattered. Men were dying unnoticed against the background of greater events.
He shouted aloud, 'Well, they bloody matter to me!'
The first lieutenant and the subbie exchanged glances. There was more to their new captain after all.
Ransome leaned on the chart-table with Morgan crowded against him under the canvas screen.
Ransome said, 'We shall remain on the present course until we reach this point.' He tapped the pencilled cross with his dividers. 'Six miles offshore.'
Morgan rubbed his chin. It made a rasping sound, as he often had to shave twice a day.
He said, 'After that -'
The explosion seemed to be right beneath their feet. The noise was shattering, and the hull rebounded from it with terrible violence,,
Ransome found himself on his knees, Morgan sprawled and coughing beside him. There was smoke everywhere, and when Ransome struggled to his feet he almost fell again, and knew that the deck's angle was increasing.
He reached out to help Morgan from the litter of broken glass and buckled voicepipes but a pain like hot iron lanced through his side.
Morgan clambered up beside him. 'What is it?'
Ransome clawed his way to the chair and held on to it, gritting his teeth against the agony. He gasped, 'Couple of ribs, I think!'
He stared round the tilting bridge, his mind shocked and dazed by the explosion.
Rob Roy, his ship, had hit a mine. It was probably fatal. He must think. Accept it. Carry out the drill he had always dreaded.
He shouted, 'Stop engines!'
The reply came back from the wheelhouse. 'No communications, sir!' He heard Beckett coughing. Then he said, 'Bit of a potmess down 'ere, sir. Steering gone — compass - the lot —'
Ransome beckoned to Morgan. 'Take over. Clear the wheelhouse. I must speak with the Chief.' He stared, sickened, at one of the look-outs. He had been flung back from that side by the blast; his head was smashed against the grey steel like an eggshell. There was a smear of blood down to the gratings, and much more of it running in the scuppers. Mackay knelt on an upended flag-locker, mopping his cheek where a piece of glass from the broken screen had slashed his face to the bone. The boatswain's mate sat with hands folded in his lap as if resting. Only the broken handset and his bulging eyes showed that he had been killed instantly by the blast; he was otherwise unmarked.
If he had not been crouching over the chart-table . . . Ransome controlled his thoughts with a terrible effort and pulled himself toward the ladder. In his sea-cabin there was another telephone which was connected directly to the engine-room.
Even as he reached it, he realised that the engines' beat had ceased. The cabin looked as if it had been ransacked by madmen.
He pulled the handset from its bracket, and Campbell answered before he could speak.
He said tersely, 'Taking water fast, starboard side forrard. Losing fuel from the tanks there too.'
Ransome pressed his forehead against the cold steel and nodded, his eyes closed. He had already smelled the stench of fuel. I le had been present often enough when other ships had died. Like their blood draining away.
'Get your men out of there, Chief.'
Campbell replied, 'The pumps are holding, sir. I'll stay with them.'
Ransome saw Sherwood watching from the door, noticed how his figure was set at a crooked angle; he knew it was the ship going over. Men were shouting, and he heard metal scraping across the deck, feet running, disorder when moments before —
Sherwood watched his anguish and said, 'All depth-charges are set to safe, sir. The Buffer's standing by with floats and rafts. The whaler's ready for lowering, but the motor boat's had it.'
He helped him to his feet, feeling his pain, and the worse agony for his ship. He did not mention that the motor boat which hung from its starboard davits had taken much of the blast when the mine had exploded.
Sub-Lieutenant Tritton had been smashed to the deck when the 'skimming-dish' had been hurled inboard, and was still pinned under the wreckage. Cusack was with him, and he had seen the frightened S.B.A. handing him his instruments. Sherwood felt sickened by the thought of his cutting away at flesh and then bone while the ship settled down more steeply in the water.
Shells roared from the sky, and a drifting L.S.T. took one below her bridge, where two abandoned tanks were already burning from the last straddle.
Sherwood considered it. They were just a few miles offshore, and those guns would soon shift their sights to Rob Roy once the L.S.T. had been put down.
Ransome asked, 'How many casualties?' He moved through the door, his arm around Sherwood's shoulders as they lurched toward the ladder.
'Bunny Fallows bought it, sir. Guttridge too. Some of 'A' Gun's crew are badly shaken up, but only Hoggan was seriously wounded.' He thought of the burly leading hand with the tattoo around his wrist. 'He's been blinded.'
The deck gave another lurch. Ransome pulled himself to the bridge and threw back his head to take several gulps of air. But for Campbell's quick thinking when he had stopped the engines, the next bulkhead would have collapsed under the strain, and Rob Roy would be lying on the bottom.
He heard footsteps and saw Cusack striding across the broken glass. Cusack sensed the question in Sherwood's eyes and shrugged. 'Had to take the leg off
. No choice.' He helped Ransome into the chair and said, 'Let me take a look.'
Ransome said, 'Too much to do. Shove off and see to the yeoman.'
Mackay was peering over the rear of the bridge, then turned, his eyes red with shock and disbelief.
'just a kid!' He stared around at their faces. 'That's all he was, for Christ's sake! What are we, that we can let this happen to boys like him?'
Sherwood climbed onto a locker, the same one that the young signalman named Darley had been using when he had reached up to free one of the ensigns which had become tangled in the halliards. The blast had flung him from the bridge like a bundle of rags. His slight figure lay on the deck below, his eyes still staring at the clouds as if he could not accept what had happened.
Ransome said, 'Get down there, Number One.'
Sherwood faced him. Was there any point in prolonging it? Then he saw Ransome's despair. 'I'll do what I can.'
Beckett climbed on to the bridge and touched his cap.
Like Boyes and the terrified midshipman who followed him he was speckled with chips of white paint from the deckhead, as if he had been in the snow.
'No casualties in the wheel'ouse, sir.' He stared at the L.S.T., which was now fiercely ablaze from bow to stern. 'A few bleedin' 'eadaches, that's about all.'
He saw Mackay and added roughly, 'Never mind, Yeo. Coulda bin anyone.'
Mackay picked up his father's telescope and wiped it on his sleeve. He did not even look up as another shell exploded in the sea less than a cable away.
Ransome tried again. Abandon ship. He had no choice, unless he put the ship before her people, his pride before their survival.
Morgan said hesitantly, 'Some R.M.Ls are heading our way, sir.'
Ransome levered himself to his feet. Thank God, Cusack had gone elsewhere where he was needed. He winced and clapped one hand to his side.
'Muster the wounded. Stand by to lower the Carley floats and rafts.'
He stared at the sloping deck, the corpses lying where they had fallen.
He was leaving her. After all they had done together. All those miles, and all those bloody mines she had swept so that others might be safe.
In Danger's Hour Page 33