Warwick had at last got his own gun to fire, but the first shot screamed over the yacht to plummet into the sea a mile beyond. The Vierling had better luck. Like converging tongues the four narrow lines of tracer lanced across the yacht’s bridge, steadied, and then ripped down across the hull with the sound of a band-saw. Pieces of wood and steel, fabric and rigging were hurled in all directions, but above it all Marshall heard the siren still wailing, with probably a dead man clinging to its lanyard.
`All torpedoes fired, sir!’ Buck’s strained face lit up as another one struck the dock and erupted against the side in a violent explosion. The lighters had vanished, and from the big tug’s angle it seemed as if she had either cast her tow adrift or was endeavouring to swing it towards the shore.
`Report damage below!’
Marshall felt himself cowering against the steel plates as more bullets whined viciously nearby, striking sparks from the metal, ricocheting over the water and into the drifting smoke.
`Cod, we’re not hurting the bastard!’ Buck wiped his eyes and peered at the dock’s smoky silhouette. `Bloody hell!’
Blythe called, ‘Two men wounded on the casing, sir!’ Without waiting he bellowed, `Stretcher party to the bridge!’
The yacht was in a bad way, the Vierling’s cannon shells had battered her slender hull into a pitted shambles, with smoke and darting flames showing from scores of holes. One of the machine-guns had been brought to bear, and that too had cut down the yacht’s main armament, hurling the crew out of sight like so many tattered bundles.
An internal explosion flung a complete length of the deck into the air, and before it had fallen the yacht started to roll over, her bilge displaying another gaping hole where Warwick’s crew had scored one fatal hit.
`Aircraft, sir!’ The lookout was yelling like a madman. `Port beam!’
Marshall tried to control his reeling mind. The aircraft was far away, probably over the land which was now completely hidden by a rolling wall of smoke. Very tiny. Remote.
Buck yelled, `Another hit!’ He was waving his cap in the air. `Look at it!’
The torpedo had struck the dock some two thirds along its tall side. A column of smoke flushed upwards and then froze against the sky as if turned into something solid, whilst below the dock’s side Marshall could see tiny white feathers to mark where parts of the superstructure and machinery had fallen into the sea.
A figure blundered through the bridge, carrying a bag with a red cross on it. Through the crouching gunners and drifting smoke Marshall saw it was the young stoker, Willard, the one whose mother was ‘on the game’. The boy looked at him for just a split second and then grinned before leaping over the side and down the ladder to the casing. Others followed him, faces puckered up as they came in contact with the sunlight and the closeness of death.
Marshall cupped his hands. `Cease firing! Shift target to the tug!’
The yacht had nearly disappeared, and yet the gunners seemed unable to stop, pouring round after round into the splintered, burning hulk, ripping the sea into a maelstrom of spray.
The sixth torpedo hit the dock within yards of the previous one. Another tall column of smoke, but no flames. Marshall stared at the dock’s square outline, unable to believe that anything could survive such a battering. He felt his nerves jump as the deck gun reopened fire on the big tug, the first shell slamming down hard under her high stem.
`Aircraft’s turning, sir!’
Marshall swung the glasses abeam, seeing the small bright chip in the sky, how it seemed to hang motionless as it altered course towards the silent battle far below.
Buck was shouting, `Shall I clear the bridge?’
Marshall gripped his arm. ‘No! We must make sure of the dock! We’ll get alongside the bloody thing and engage with gunfire!’ He shook him savagely. `Tell the Vierling gunners to stand by to repel aircraft! There’s only one so far!’
Blythe looked up from a voicepipe. ‘No damage to hull, sir.’
Marshall nodded, unable to speak. If the hull had been holed by their own torpedo they might just as well go ashore and surrender right now.
`Aircraft closing, sir!’
Buck yelled, `Shall I use the two stern tubes, sir?’ He sounded wild with shock or anger. It was hard to tell.
‘No. If five won’t do the job then-‘
He pivoted round as a low, sullen rumble came across the water. It did not stop, but went on and on like some piece of massive undersea machinery.
Buck gasped, `Got her!’ He seemed unable to grasp it. ‘She’s done for!’
The dock was tilting towards them, very slowly, as if it was all part of a set plan. Only the surge of froth along the waterline betrayed the sudden inrush, the final collapse of one or more of the great ballast tanks. A tall derrick fell outboard and then hung downwards above the sea like a dead stork, and other fragments could be seen splashing along the full length of the side. The towing tug was burning fiercely, the hull outlined with sudden clarity by the falling waterspout of Warwick’s last shell.
Marshall snapped, `That’s it! Clear the casing first! Prepare to dive!’
He looked for the plane but it had dipped out of sight into the smoke. It could be anywhere. ire heard the klaxon screaming, suddenly loud through the hatch as the guns fell silent. Men clambered over the bridge, some dragging the wounded with them, others limping and cursing as they felt their way to safety.
The aircraft’s engines roared through the smoke, cutting a. bright path as it burst into view just two cables abeam. Marshall saw the bright stabbing dashes from its guns, the creeping pattern of splashes as the hail of bullets ploughed across the water, over the casing and away to the opposite beam. The Vierling followed round, the sharp cracking explosions andd darting tracers making some of the running seamen falter and, crowd over the hatch, too stricken to move.
Buck shouted, `Get below! Move your bloody selves!’ More bangs, and the attendant clang of steel on steel, before the plane had streaked out of range to begin another turn.
Marshall seized a man’s arm and pulled him into the bridge. The aircraft did not carry depth-charges, but one more attack like that and they might be crippled. Unable to dive.
He thrust his mouth against the voicepipe. `Hard a starboard! Full ahead, group up!’
Buck was hanging over the screen calling, ‘Here’s the last of ‘em!’
It was the stoker, Willard,
his round face as white as a
sheet, but apparently unmoved by the rattle of cannon fire, the oncoming roar of engines.
A lookout pointed wildly. ‘Hold on! There’s a bloke down there by the gun!’
Willard gasped, `Dead! Couldn’t help. Dead.’
But the lookout shouted even louder, his features twisted into a mask of despair. `Saw him move, for Christ’s sake!’
Marshall snapped, `Take over the con, Number One.’
He raised his eyes from the voicepipe and saw the man in question. Ile was lying spreadeagled below the gun’s long muzzle. He noticed vaguely it was still smoking from the last shell. But the man should have been dead. Willard was right about that. He seemed to have lost one leg, and there was blood all round him. Everywhere. Then he saw the man’s hand move. Very slightly. As if detached from its owner.
The plane had gone again and. was grinding round inside the wall of smoke. It had to be now!
‘Cease firing!’
He saw the gun crews tumbling towards the bridge, the machine-gunners already dropping their weapons through the hatch and leaping after them.
‘Clear the bridge!’
Buck swore savagely and then croaked, `Come back, you bloody fool!’
Marshall ran to his side and saw Willard was already halfway along the casing, his red-cross bag bounding on his hip like a schoolboy’s satchel.
He pulled Buck away and said, `Get below! That’s an order!’ When he looked again the bridge was empty.
‘He heard Gerrard calling to him up the voi
cepipe, his tone desperate. `What’s happening, sir?’
But Marshall was watching the stoker as he reached the man by the gun. He paused for just a few seconds and then turned to face the bridge. He opened his mouth, but the words were lost in the sound of the plane’s approach, and yet they still seemed to reach Marshall despite everything.
In the smoky sunlight he saw the brightness in his eyes; fear, tears, or just the sudden acceptance of death.
The enemy pilot had misjudged his attack, caught off guard perhaps by their alteration of course and speed. As the aircraft burst out of the smoke it was well astern, but the machine-guns were firing as before, some whipping through the German flag overhead, others whimpering away towards the pall of dense smoke above the blazing tug,
But some straddled the casing. Marshall saw the boy stagger sideways and then jerk violently through the safety rail to roll out and over the side.
Marshall shouted, `Take her down, Number One!’
When he reached the side he saw the stoker’s body being washed along the saddle tank, arms and legs moving languidly, his face still towards the bridge, until the racing screws sucked him down and out of sight.
The deck was tilting and the air full of noise. The plane’s engines, the roar of water in the tanks, the sea surging up and over the casing, carrying the other dead seaman towards the bridge in its path.
Marshall was aware of all these things but still could not move.
He knew someone had come to the bridge, and that his feet were on the ladder, the sky very clear, framed in the oval hatch above him.
Then he was in the control room, which was cloaked in brittle silence as the boat glided down as deep as she dared. He watched the depth gauges, listened to the regular reports from the echo-sounder. He knew exactly what was happening, yet felt no part of it.
They all seemed to be talking around him. As if instead of being here he was still up on the bridge, or drifting with Willard, out of reach, beyond pain.
Gerrard said, `Hold present depth for twenty minutes. Course zero-eight-zero.’
A deep echo rumbled against the hull. The dock coming to rest on the bottom of the channel. Marshall had heard such sounds many times. Now he did not even notice it.
Gerrard looked at him. `I’ve got her, sir.’
`Thank you.’ Marshall flinched at the sound of his own voice. `We should be all right now for a bit.’
He could feel his stomach contracting, the clamminess of his skin. As if he was going to be sick. If he could get to his cabin for just a few moments. It might restore something. Give him strength to go on.
Petty Officer Blythe strode past, his boots crunching on glass from shattered lights and gauges. The sounds dragged Marshall back to reality. He could take no time for himself. No matter what.
`What about damage? Are the wounded settled down?’
He gripped the coxswain’s steel chair as the hull swayed slightly in some deep cross current.
Blythe called from the bulkhead door, `Three wounded, sir. But I’m told they’re drugged well enough. Nothing serious.’
Marshall nodded. `Good.’
The yeoman’s chest and legs were soaked in spray. It must have been him who had come to the bridge. To look
for him.
He tried again. `Get the broken lights replaced and start reloading the bow tubes.’ He looked at Frenzel. `Chief, you’d better double check your department again. We shall make for the Otranto Strait tomorrow. Don’t want any oil leaks to invite trouble.’
Gerrard crossed to his side. `It’s all right, sir.’ He spoke very quietly. `I’ve taken care of it, I’d be happier now if you’d try and rest. You’ve done enough.’
Marshall removed his cap and stared at it for several seconds. The German eagle clutching the swastika in its claws, just as the last moments were tearing at his nerves until he wanted to scream aloud.
Gerrard added, `Why did you do it, sir? You could have been killed.’ When Marshall remained silent he said, `It was Willard, wasn’t it?
He nodded wearily, `Something like that. He was looking at me. Trying to show me what he could do. What it meant to him.’ He crushed the cap under his arm.
`There was nothing you could do for him.’ Gerrard’s eyes flickered across the control room, making sure everyone was occupied. `You knew that.’
`I suppose so.’ Marshall recalled the boy’s face as he had stood quite alone on the casing. The link between them for those last few seconds. `But I had to make him understand. To know that someone cared. Even if it was too late.’
Gerrard smiled sadly. `I guessed as much.’
More glass crackled on the steel deck, and Warwick stepped over the coaming and leaned against the door.
Frenzel asked, `You okay, Sub?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’ He looked at Marshall and shivered. `I don’t feel anything.’ He sounded surprised. `Not yet.’
Marshall walked slowly up and down the control room, only partly aware he was moving. He saw Devereaux bending over his table, but noticed that his hands and instruments were still. When he got closer he saw that his eyes were tightly shut, like someone in prayer. Buck was in the passageway beyond the bulkhead door talking to some of his men. Already engrossed in the whys and wherefores of the faulty torpedo. Warwick still standing limply beside the door, dressed in his shorts and wearing the heavy pistol. No matter how he felt, he had behaved like a veteran. Marshall tried to think back, to piece the events together in some sort of order. Buck and Warwick. A garage manager and a student who had been a pacifist.
He watched Frenzel, arms folded as he waited by his panel while an E.R.A. fiddled with a screwdriver to repair some of the damage caused by the faulty torpedo. Was he thinking of Willard, he wondered? Or had he already been written off. pushed away like so much waste?
Marshall said, `You can fall out diving stations. As soon as you’ve got things cleared up, tell the cook to prepare a meal.’ It was just as if he had to keep talking, keep giving instructions, if only to hold his other thoughts at bay.
Gerrard walked with him to the door. `I’ll call you if anything happens, sir.’ He tried to smile, ‘A.s always. You get some rest.’
This time Marshall did not fight back. He replied quietly, `That was a bad one. It seems to get worse every time.
Gerrard watched him go and then returned to his place behind the coxswain. Somehow he must get Marshall out of himself, he thought grimly. Not merely for him.,but for all their sakes.
Far astern, where they had last dived, the remaining tug
ad begun a cautious search of the area for survivors. Not
206 l
that the crew had seen much beyond the fog of blazing ships and gunfire. By nightfall she had given up and had turned once more towards the land.
Marshall lay on his bunk staring up at the deckhead, picturing the scene as if he was still there. There would be no survivors. Somehow he was quite sure. U-192 had not changed in that respect. They should have known. Understood. Now it might be too late.
Outside his cabin he heard someone sweeping up broken glass, whistling in time with each thrust of the broom. He was still trying to put a name to the tune when he fell into an empty, dreamless sleep.
10
Urgent mission
Marshall clenched his teeth against the chill night air and steadied his glasses across the forepart of the bridge screen. With the electric motors held down to minimum revolutions there was barely any sound but for the gentle swish of water along the saddle tanks, the occasional creak of metal as the boat swayed in an irregular offshore swell.
They had been on the surface for nearly half an hour, but everything was dripping wet and icy to the touch. After the bright sunlight they had seen during the day’s searches through the periscope, it seemed an additional strain on everyone s nerves.
There was a loud clang below the conning-tower, followed by a stream of savage cursing from Petty Officer, Cain.
Buck, who was stan
ding beside Marshall, lowered his night-glasses and said, `That bloody makeshift screen got a bit buckled when the faulty torpedo nose-dived.’ He groaned as more clanks and scrapes echoed over the slowmoving submarine. They sounded deafening after the silence.
Marshall said sharply, `Tell them to be quick. Keep the noise down.’
He lowered his eyes to the luminous gyro repeater. They were steering due south, the bows pointing directly into the Gulf of Sirte and the coast of Libya. Buck’s angry comment about the faulty torpedo was a reminder that time and distance still had meaning.
It was very dark, with only a sliver of moon and some high, misty stars to throw any reflection on the black undulating surface around them. For over a week after sending the great floating dock and its escort to the bottom they had been made to endure the frustration of uncertainty, while Frenzel’s fuel levels had continued to drop, and all but the most basic of food supplies had become exhausted. It vaas like being forgotten by that other world to which they had listened on the busy radio waves, or discarded in the face of some new crisis elsewhere. Then at last, as they had opened their special radio watch, the signal had come. When it had been decoded, and the brief references had been marked on Devereaux’s charts, Marshall had headed towards the North African coastline without delay. Someone had at last remembered them, and with any sort of luck would have the precious fuel and supplies waiting to be loaded. And rest.
It was strange to realise that the great curving mass of land which now lay hidden somewhere to port had seen some of the most bitter fighting of the North African campaign. Benghazi and Derna, and farther to the east the battered but defiant port of Tobruk. When he had last been here in Tristrarn, prowling along these same shores in search of enemy supply ships, it had looked very different, even at night. There had always been the far off mutter of artillery, the sounds softened by the vast wastes of the desert, the occasional gleam of a drifting flare and the instant pinpoints of small-arms as patrols stumbled on one another and fought it out with rifle and bayonet beneath these quiet skies.
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