by James Philip
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, sir.”
The Chief of the Defence Staff brushed this aside.
Both men were relieved that the latest news from Cyprus was much better than they had anticipated. Rear-Admiral Nigel Grenville had signalled that the enemy, having sallied from its north-eastern enclaves on the island had, his assaults exhausted and repulsed at heavy cost, started surrendering in droves and Operation Grantham had overnight ceased to be a massive amphibious landing on a hostile shore and become a huge chaotic mopping up exercise. Even stay behind guerrilla groups were laying down their weapons.
“Nigel Grenville,” The First Sea Lord went on, “is detaching Hermes, her fleet train and the 23rd Support Flotilla to return to Malta. Hermes needs time in dry dock so she’ll probably proceed to Gibraltar after she’s flown off her air group and disembarked her war supplies and all air group personnel. I’m promoting Nick Davey, Captain D of the 23rd Support Flotilla, Commodore and putting him command of all destroyers, frigates and escort vessels based at Malta. I’ll leave the minutiae of how he re-organises the rest of the Mediterranean Fleet to Nigel, who is to be promoted Vice Admiral and C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet with immediate effect - when he returns to Malta from Cyprus. Any organisational arrangements we make in the coming days will inevitably be of an interim nature pending decisions about what to do about the situation in Iran.”
Both men’s ears still rang from what they had learnt from Nicolae Ceaușescu earlier that morning. Dan French had been unsettled by the man’s uncanny – rather eerie - resemblance to the late Arkady Pavlovich Rykov; the two men could have been brothers. This despite the fact that Nicolae Ceaușescu’s features were drawn and haggard and his mouth contorted now and then with pain from the stump of his amputated right leg high above where his knee had been. Eventually, with the pleas of his guardian, Eleni, becoming ever more plaintive he had been given morphine and wheeled away but not before Rachel Piotrowska had dispassionately translated his incredible story.
First there was his headlong flight from Bucharest as Soviet troops swarmed across the city. Then there was the crash of his Mil Mi-6 helicopter on an unknown island that turned out to be Samothrace in the Northern Aegean Sea in a storm. The tale grew more incredible with every twist; the loss of his gangrenous leg, sawn off in a ruined house with a clasp knife without anaesthetic. At death’s door Eleni had nursed him back to life, just the first of many times she had saved him from death’s waiting jaws. It was all too incredible – that was the only word to describe his odyssey – for the man seemed to have more lives than a proverbial lucky cat! Escaping Samothrace with a handful of faithful bodyguards his leaking fishing boat had been run down in the night by the Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz. At each stage in the drama he had simply jumped out of one frying pan into another! Upon regaining consciousness in the sick bay of the old dreadnought he had immediately assumed the false identity of the feared KGB Head of Station in Istanbul and Thessalonika. On and on the scarcely believable saga continued. Right up to the moment the Yavuz had fired the first broadsides in the Battle of Malta...
Nicolae Ceaușescu had glossed over exactly how the information about Operation Chastise – in Russian Operation Nakazyvat – had been extracted from Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, the member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR whom he believed to be the master of Krasnaya Zarya. His audience had listened, largely in deeply thoughtful silence, as the tortured husk of a man had slowly, surely recounted the details of the storm which, even as they listened, must already be falling on the Near East. The Great Game was afoot; two Soviet tank armies, supported by hundreds of aircraft driving south to the Persian Gulf like an unstoppable steel wave at the very moment the Anglo-American axis was in a state of near total crisis and disarray.
Sir David Luce sighed.
“Back in England they plan to make a huge song and dance about Friday’s battle. Medals galore in fact! They plan to promote Peter Christopher to Captain and award him and John Pope of the Yarmouth Victoria Crosses. John Pope’s posthumously, obviously,” the First Sea Lord explained. “Peter’s far too damned young to have his fourth ring but,” he shrugged and raised his tea cup to his lips. “Julian would have been tickled to bits to think his boy was the youngest post captain in the Royal Navy!”
“They ought to give Joe Calleja the freedom of Malta,” Dan French suggested. “Or of any place he cares to name,” he added, “after what he did!”
“And the George Cross,” Sir David Luce guffawed. “That was what my two tame politicos were talking about earlier.”
Dan French’s eyes went glassy as he recollected his earlier conversation with Rachel Piotrowska.
“Yes,” he sighed, “that sounds about right.” He bit the bullet and with a bitter taste in his mouth he declared: “Look, there’s a matter that I must broach with you, sir.”
“Oh,” the First Sea Lord did not like the sound of that. “You had better spit it out.”
Knowing that there was no way to sugar the pill Dan French paused momentarily to order his thoughts.
“Lady Marija and Jo Calleja’s older brother, Samuel,” he explained sombrely, “who had previously been missing presumed dead was captured in a Soviet uniform at the Citadel on Friday. He had since been interrogated by the security people and made a full confession of his treachery...”
Chapter 73
11:01 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
RAF Luqa, Malta
Commander Sir Peter Christopher looked at his surviving Talaveras. Two buses had collected the rest of his walking wounded from Kalkara that morning and there were fifty-six men on parade on gritty tarmac. The burned out wreck of the control tower and the shattered hangars behind it framed the pictures and movies that the crowd of pressmen continued to snap and record as he had inspected his men.
He nodded to Lieutenant Dermot O’Reilly, his senior surviving officer.
The Canadian bawled an order and the parade stood easy. About half the men on parade clasped a mimeographed sheet in one hand; the words of the Navy Hymn passed around in the minutes before this short ceremony commenced by Ministry of Information civil servants who knew little and understood less about Royal Navy and its traditions.
“Before I joined you this morning,” Peter announced, his voice steady above the clamour of the bulldozers and the repair teams still labouring on the distant taxi-ways. “I was called away to receive bad news from RNH Bighi.”
He paused, unable to prevent his eyes flicking a glance sidelong to where Marija and Rosa stood with Captain Lionel Faulkes protectively circled around the battered wheelchair bound figure of the ‘civilian hero’ of the Battle of Malta, Joe Calleja. Other women, several in RAF blue had gathered behind them, listening sombrely.
“Leading Seaman Morris ‘Mo’ Akers died of his wounds overnight,” Peter said, his jaw assuming a grimmer set. “As did Lieutenant-Commander Miles Weiss. I regret that I did not know Leading Seaman Akers as well as I would have liked. He joined Talavera after the action at Lampedusa and he distinguished himself in the fight to save the USS Enterprise. As did you all.” He stopped to compose himself. “Miles Weiss had been my friend since before the October War.”
Miles Weiss had been his best friend in the Navy. No, his best friend... He had seemed battered and bloody after he staggered out of the Talavera’s wrecked gun director mount after that big shell had ripped off the top of it and hacked down the destroyer’s great lattice foremast like it was made of balsa wood. Onboard the USS Berkeley he had complained of a headache and been diagnosed with a bad concussion. At Bighi he had repeatedly put himself to the back of the queue; only when he had collapsed a second time and begun to retch and vomit uncontrollably had he been prioritised by the impossibly hard-pressed medical staff at the hospital. By the time he was wheeled into an operating theatre he was unconscious, fitting spasmodically. It seemed he had had a massive cerebral haemorrhage, probably the consequence of proximity t
o the passage of the large, high velocity projectile which had destroyed the gun director. In the way of these things his fate had probably been sealed in that moment and afterwards there was nothing anybody could have done to help him.
But Peter still felt he had let his friend down.
Talavera had left fourteen of her two hundred and fifty-two man compliment on shore when she cut her lines and raced out to sea, in the confusion five civilian workers had been trapped onboard including Joe Calleja; whom at least two men claimed to have seen deliberately ‘stepping onboard’ the destroyer while his fellow dockyard workers were scampering, and in some cases hurling themselves ashore. Of the two hundred and forty-three men who had steamed into the Battle of Malta the fifty-six men, plus Joe Calleja constituted the unwounded and walking wounded contingent of survivors. A further thirty-eight men remained in hospital, or had been otherwise designated as unfit to attend this parade. As the initial impenetrable fog of war slowly cleared it was now apparent that one hundred and fifty-one men – including four civilian dockyard workers – had died during the Battle of Malta, or were listed as missing in action presumed dead or had subsequently died of their injuries. Included in that number were eight of Talavera’s ten divisional officers holding the rank of lieutenant or above. Several other men – as many as six - who had suffered severe flash burns or swallowed oil while they were in the water when Talavera had suddenly broken her back and sunk while still alongside the USS Berkeley, were not anticipated to survive.
Marija and Rosa were crying.
Peter Christopher would not allow himself to cry.
He swallowed hard.
“Many of Talavera’s dead have no other resting place than the sea. Now it seems likely that the exigencies of the Service will prevent us attending the funerals of our comrades who died on land, or whose bodies were recovered from the sea by the brave, selfless acts of our American friends and allies.” As many as a dozen of the USS Berkeley’s crewmen had leapt into the iron grey waters ten miles off Sliema to save the dying, the drowning and to recover the bodies of dead Talaveras. Several US Navy men had gone overboard without safety lines in their anxiety to help their British allies and two young Americans had died when Talavera had finally given up the fight and broken. “At this sad time we should also remember Midshipman Alois Karl Rendorp, and Seaman Casey O’Leary of the USS Berkeley who sacrificed their lives onboard Talavera courageously fighting to save the lives of our friends and shipmates.”
He removed his cap; unbidden, his men followed his example.
“We will now sing the Navy Hymn.”
The line of VIPs; with the two Cabinet Ministers, Admiral Sir David Luce and Air Vice-Marshal Daniel French to the front had doffed their caps and hats. The Naval Chaplain of Malta stood awkwardly apart. He had offered to officiate at this brief memorial; Peter had firmly, politely rebuffed him.
Peter looked towards the second bowed group of men paraded to the left of his Talaveras; thirty-one men from HMS Yarmouth. The Rothesay class frigate had gone into battle with one hundred and sixty-one officers and other ranks on her roster. Yarmouth’s commanding officer, Commander John Pope had been killed early in the action and none of his eight divisional officers had survived the battle uninjured. By the time Petty Officer Stanley Bloom had run the burning wreck of his ship aground in St Paul’s Bay over half her crew were dead. Others had died in the water and of their injuries since. Of her original one hundred and sixty-one men only seventy-eight had thus far survived.
“We, the survivors of Her Majesty’s Ships Yarmouth and Talavera today share the honour and the glory of a battle fought to the limit of our strength and our powder; today we remember comrades and shipmates lost in battle. For all the days to come our two ships’ companies will forever be united by the travails of that battle. I salute you all!”
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
Who biddest the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Saviour, whose almighty word,
The winds and waves submissive heard,
Who walkest on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O sacred Spirit, who didst brood,
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
Who bade its angry tumult cease,
And gavest light and life and peace:
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Trinity of love and power,
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoever they go;
And ever let there rise to Thee,
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
After the parade was dismissed Marija walked stiffly, trying not to limp and hobble in front of so many witnesses and rolling and clicking cameras to hand her husband his walking stick. His right leg was immobile, agonizingly swollen at knee and ankle; not that he would admit of any physical impediment.
Spying the approach of a pack of VIPs and dignitaries he smiled wanly, dug out a handkerchief and gently dabbed at Marija’s tear tracks.
His wife had no care for the great men who thought to own her husband.
Marija buried her face in his chest and sobbed while the camera flashes exploded and the men from the Ministry of Information began to rub their hands in quiet satisfaction.
Chapter 74
13:07 Hours (GMT)
Monday 6th April 1964
Great Hall, Christ Church College, Oxford
The last person who had tried to govern the United Kingdom from Oxford had come to an untimely end beheaded on a scaffold at Whitehall. Of course, Margaret Thatcher’s position was only incidentally analogous to that of King Charles I. By the time Charles Stuart had retreated to Oxford his war had already been lost; he just did not know it at the time. She was confident that her war was only just beginning and she was fairly sure that her people did not want her head on a block quite yet. Not that she did not inwardly concede that such a day might not come; for in this brave new World any leader who failed to consider that possibility was an out-and-out fool and basically, deserved everything he, or she got.
In the absence of Iain Macleod, the Leader of the House, one of his protégés thirty-six year old James Prior, the Member of Parliament for Lowestoft had stepped up to the mark.
Margaret Thatcher had been impressed by how well the mild-mannered, rather staid man, whom she had never really got to know before or after the October War, had acquitted himself. Notwithstanding that the leftish factions of the splintered Labour Party and the more vociferous of the Powellite dissidents from her own party had attempted to give him a rough ride; Prior had cut a decent, officer-like, gentleman farmer type figure and guided the house through the preliminaries without serious mishap.
“Statement by the Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher!” The Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Robert Grimston the sixty-six year Member of Parliament for Westbury in Wiltshire called. He had stepped into the Speaker’s shoes at short notice just before the session was scheduled to commence; the Speaker of the House Sir Harry Hilton-Foster having been discovered in a state of collapse in his rooms at Christ Church College by his clerks. Grimston’s appointment as Deputy Speaker had been the subject of an appeal – a parliamentary objection - back in 1962 but he had been dutifully ready to step into his sickening predecessor’s shoes for some weeks despite the fact that he himself, was neither in the full flush of youth or health.
Margaret Thatcher slowly rose from the front bench. She missed the rambunctious presence of Iain Macleod and keenly felt the absence of Airey Neave, the man who had stood by her shoulder and guarded her back the last year. T
oday she was flanked by a grim-faced James Callaghan, a large, lugubrious man on one side and by a solemnly hang-dog William Whitelaw on the other. Behind her the Party faithful had coalesced in a solid phalanx and had started to drum their hands on the hard pews installed in the Great Hall only in the last week.
The Prime Minister looked around.
Before the October War standing in the pit of the old House of Commons confronting one’s political foes across the chamber virtually eye to eye had been a pipe dream; not a thing a woman, any woman might dream. When she had been appointed as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in 1961 she had been frankly, astonished. At the time she had been the first of the 1959 intake of MPs to be brought into Government and the youngest woman in Harold MacMillan’s administration. Before the October War she had never believed that a woman would be Prime Minister in her lifetime; the Party and the electorate were too stuck in their ways, too prejudiced and too narrow minded to ever install a woman to Downing Street. No matter what she had felt about it that was the way of things and there had seemed to be very little she could do about it. And then the night of the October War had changed everything. That night had robbed her of so much and yet ironically, opened up so many unimagined possibilities. She had ridden the crest of the wave of her good fortune these last seventeen months. Edward Heath had recognised her true capabilities and promoted her, eventually, into his inner circle. Iain MacLeod – the man most people imagined to be Ted Heath’s natural successor – had dropped the premiership into her arms before she knew what was happening. Serendipitously, at around that time she had briefly discovered a new, wise, brave soul mate who might, in happier circumstances have guided her through the struggles to come. But it had not been meant to be. Julian Christopher was lost to her and the nation and today, her own future lay balanced on a knife-edge.