Twelve Seconds to Live (2002)

by Reeman, Douglas

  ‘Warn all guns, Toby. Be prepared for small units at close range.’

  He saw Allison’s face light up, his eyes shining like two pinpoints of fire, the bridge fittings and machine-guns suddenly standing out against the darkness beyond. Then came the second explosion, the sound rolling across the sea like the crash of tropical thunder. The whole bridge shook, while faces peered into the dying explosion like strangers, caricatures. Then, abruptly, it was dark again, but Foley heard the tell-tale splashes of fragments falling into the water, some clearly visible from the bridge, like leaping spirits from the ship which had been ripped apart. She had not had time to drop all her mines after all.

  ‘Starboard twenty! Meet her! Steady!’ Like listening to another stranger, unemotional, cold. Almost indifferent.

  Just as they had rehearsed, had carried out so many times. Revolutions for twenty knots, until they knew what was happening. Keep station on the senior officer. Hold the formation, no matter what.

  Spray dashed over the screen, like pellets against his skin. The deck bounced across the ragged wake from Brock’s boat, Bass bending his legs slightly to withstand the motion, his teeth bared against the spray as if he was grinning. Allison was clambering into the bridge but stopped dead, his head thrown back to listen, staring around as if he expected to see it.

  Foley heard it, too. An abbreviated whistle, rising suddenly to a high-pitched whine: a shell passing overhead.

  ‘Get down! Down, all of you!’

  But there was no explosion, no scream and rattle of shell splinters, not the bloody suddenness of a direct hit.

  Chitty covered his face with his sleeve and gasped, ‘Star-shell! All we need!’

  Foley tried to shield his eyes against the glare. It was often described as turning night into day, but that was only half of it. It was like being pinned down, defenceless and stark naked in an unwavering, glacier brightness. The whole of the upper deck was laid bare, wide open; men who had been faceless shadows were, in an instant, larger than life itself. Foley saw two other MLs, still altering course to take station astern, their bow waves lifting and creaming away from the raked stems, one training her forward gun although there was nothing in sight, and the gunners were too blinded to see it if there was.

  There was a patch of foam, caught momentarily in the light. Large, obscene bubbles too. All that remained of the minelayer.

  Foley swung away and looked for the leader, Brock’s ML436. Making plenty of wash, turning slightly to starboard, ready to form a screen for the remaining minelayers. The hull was casting a perfect reflection on the heaving water; even the dazzle-paint was clearly visible. Night into day.

  Allison was clinging to the side of the bridge, staring down, barely able to find the words.

  ‘Port beam!’ He jabbed the air with his hand, his face working with disbelief.

  Foley almost knocked him from the grating as he flung himself across the bridge.

  It was so close that he could see every detail. Low in the water, its small curved dome showing no more than a foot or so above the surface. It was barely moving, but in the relentless glare which had stripped the flotilla of secrecy and protection he saw the face and eyes of the midget submarine’s crewman. Exactly as Masters had described it. As if the face beneath the perspex dome was staring up, straight at him. In seconds 366’s wash would hide everything. In his racing thoughts he sensed that the flare was already beginning to fade. When darkness came . . .

  He cupped his hands. ‘Chitty!’ He saw the signalman glance up at him, but he was already swinging and depressing his twin machine-guns towards the water. ‘Open fire!’

  The three-pounder was training round from the forecastle, but the target was too close for it to bear.

  Foley winced as the twin Brownings rattled into life, the bullets cutting a path of leaping spray across the churned water, the tracer making certain of Chitty’s aim. Only seconds, but it seemed endless. The sparks and the foam churning around and over the little dome, the crewman’s eyes flashing in the unbroken burst, his mouth wide like a black hole, a last scream, perhaps, as the torpedo-shaped hull exploded and went out of control. Another star-shell burst, well away to starboard, fired from a vessel closer inshore. Firing blind, not that it mattered. The Germans were prepared, and eager to prove something.

  Foley saw the leader’s boat altering course again. ‘Keep station, ’Swain!’ He watched the compass. Coming round, north by west. Breaking off the operation.

  The mines had been laid. Tomorrow or the next day, the enemy would come out and try to sweep them. He should be used to it by now; they all should. But this was different. A minelayer had been sunk, by one man. The target might just as easily have been a troopship or landing craft, packed with soldiers heading for an allocated beach, like Sicily and Italy.

  By one man.

  ‘Leader’s alterin’ course again, sir!’

  Foley dragged his thoughts into order again, but could still see the staring face of the trapped crewman.

  The R/T repeater crackled into life.

  ‘Leader to Dogfish!’ Brock sounded hoarse, angry even now. ‘Bandits to the nor’-west, closing! Tally-ho!’ The speaker fell silent.

  Foley licked his lips. ‘Hard a-port!’ He almost lost his balance as the helm went over. ‘Meet her! Steady! Steer North forty-five West!’ He did not hear Bass’s acknowledgment as the triple screws added their chorus to the din.

  The flare was already dying, but Foley saw the bow waves of the nearest MLs crisp and white against the dark water. Where were the three promised motor gunboats? Their extra firepower would be needed, perhaps vital.

  ‘Stand by, all guns!’

  Allison said, ‘I’ll lay aft, sir!’ He stopped as Foley grasped his arm.

  ‘No. Stay here, Number One. I need you with me, all right?’

  The flare had died, but he had seen the surprise on Allison’s youthful face. Experience, instinct; why had he told him to stay, breaking the rules?

  Allison leaned towards him as if to speak, but stared ahead instead as vivid trails of tracer lifted from the leader’s boat and ripped away across the water. Brock was in the van; he had made the first sighting.

  Foley wedged himself against the flag locker again, his binoculars grasped against his chest.

  The guns were moving, as if independent of the hands on their controls. Each man knew what to do, what to expect. Fire as you bear. They must have given the same order at Trafalgar.

  He thought of Claridge’s boat: some of his men had never been in action before, not with the same boat and company. He recalled being shown a photograph of the girl he had married.

  ‘Here it comes, lads!’

  Foley watched the bands of tracer lifting, it seemed from the sea itself, crossing and intertwining before tearing down onto an invisible target.

  The enemy had opened fire.

  12

  The Quick and the Dead

  Sub-Lieutenant Tobias Allison gripped one of the handrails below the bridge screen and felt his arm take the weight of his body as the boat heeled over again. It was hard to keep a sense of direction, the helm going this way and that, zigzagging and yet holding a mean course and bearing with the frothing wake of the next ahead. The tracer criss-crossed from every angle, the sharp rattle of cannon and machine-gun fire closing from all sides, as if 366 was the sole target.

  Crouched around and below the bridge, Allison could occasionally see other figures, unmoving, clinging to their weapons, or waiting to reload them if they ‘ran dry’.

  No wisecracks this time, the only voice that of the skipper, and indistinct rejoinders from the coxswain.

  Allison swayed over once more, his shoulder against the dripping bridge, feeling the mounting power and thrust of the engines. In deadly earnest. He found it hard to accept that he was still unafraid. He was part of it, no longer an awkward responsibility. He looked over at Foley, one arm thrust out to steady himself. He must have stood like that a thousand times,
he thought.

  For Allison it seemed this part of his life had already been decided, as if he had had no hand in it. He had entered the navy straight from school and been sent to the boys’ training establishment, H.M.S. Ganges at Shotley. It overlooked Harwich harbour, and Felixstowe, the main Coastal Forces base on the east coast. Every day, while he had been learning to master the mysteries of bends-and-hitches, splicing or parade ground training, he had seen the little ships entering or leaving harbour, MTBs and motor gunboats, and others which could be twinned with ML366. Eventually he and his class had been allowed out on the water, boat-pulling in the big twelve-oared cutters. Hard work, but it took him closer to the dazzle-painted escorts, and the ‘little ships’.

  The seamanship instructor, a grizzled old petty officer, had remarked, ‘Don’t get mixed up with them lot! Won’t last long if you do!’

  Neither, it seemed, did many of the escorts.

  After Allison had been granted a commission at the officers’ training establishment, King Alfred, he had been appointed to a destroyer, one of those hard-worked escorts based at, of all places, Harwich. Air and E-Boat attacks, they had had their share of both. The destroyer was an old ship, one of the V and W class which had been built for the Kaiser’s war. A happy ship, everyone said, with a tough and experienced company. Three days after Allison had begun training for Coastal Forces he had heard that the old destroyer had gone down in the North Sea, torpedoed by an E-Boat. Won’t last long if you do!

  He dragged himself round as another, deeper explosion boomed out of the darkness, followed instantly by a vivid mushroom of fire.

  Somebody said, ‘Got one of the buggers!’

  Allison tried to moisten his lips, swallow, but his mouth was dried out. He saw the tracer swooping down across the port bow, the immediate crack-crack-crack of the three-pounder. It was not going to rip overhead. He wanted to call out, to move, but he could do neither. More shots now, cutting low down over the churning water, no tracer this time. He looked for the skipper, but he was almost shrouded by smoke from the three-pounder as it funnelled over and into the bridge.

  He heard him call, ‘Depth charge!’ Then, ‘Steady!’ Like somebody calming a startled horse.

  Allison gasped aloud as the deck jumped under his seaboots. A shell had smashed into the hull and exploded. He gritted his teeth and made himself consider it like a spectator, picturing the deck beneath him, hearing sounds he now knew were steel splinters tearing through the boat.

  His eyes pricked with acrid smoke and he forced himself to stare at the cloud which was spiralling from the companion ladder, dark and solid against the grey paint.

  He turned to alert the skipper and gazed at him with shocked disbelief as Foley gripped the voicepipes and beckoned to him urgently.

  ‘Deal with the fire, Number One! If it reaches the fuel . . .’ He doubled over and a seaman caught him around the waist.

  Bass said harshly, ‘’Ear what ’e said, sir? We’ll all fry if that lot brews up!’

  It was then that Allison saw the E-Boat, spray bursting over its stem like something solid, the stabbing flash of cannon fire reflected against the armoured cupola bridge. Fifty yards at most, but she seemed to be right alongside.

  He was unable to move until he felt Foley’s hand on his arm, and then around his wrist, like a band of wet metal.

  ‘Do it! You told me you could!’ The grip slackened. ‘Get me up, somebody!’

  Allison shook his head. ‘Look after him, ’Swain!’ He lurched away. ‘You two, come with me! Cover your faces!’

  He was running, half falling as another explosion rocked the hull, and for a second he imagined that the fuel had blown. A column of water fell across the deck, choking and blinding him. His reeling mind told him that a depth charge had exploded. He could almost hear Foley’s voice. At minimum setting. It must have burst right alongside the E-Boat. He heard the screech of engines, violent bangs, as if the racing screws had been blown from their brackets and were hacking through the E-Boat’s hull. All firing had ceased, except that which seemed a great distance away. He sensed that their own speed was reduced, the deck swaying drunkenly in the sudden backwash.

  Above it all someone was screaming. High-pitched, inhuman, making thought impossible. Then it stopped, as if somebody had slammed a door on it.

  A hand was holding his arm, and for another hazy moment Allison imagined he had not moved from the bridge, that Foley was still gripping him, willing him to move, to act.

  But it was the signalman, Bob Chitty, squinting through the smoke, an extinguisher in his free hand.

  ‘All set, sir? Ready if you are!’

  Together they groped down the ladder, past the W/T office and the wardroom. Allison stared at the telegraphist, the rating who had relieved Bush, crouched over his switchboard, one hand to his ear as if he was listening to some important signal. Water was spurting through the side where cannon shells had found their mark, and the spreading puddle of blood around the telegraphist’s feet told the brutal truth. Allison muttered, ‘I don’t even know his name!’

  Chitty merely glanced at him. ‘The fire’s in the galley. Let’s ’ave a go at that first!’ He retched, biting back the coughing fit. If you gave into it, you were bloody done for.

  He called over his shoulder, ‘Ready, Smithy?’ He heard the other figure switch on his extinguisher, caught the pungent smell. Chitty wiped his face. The galley would be bloody useless after this. He almost laughed aloud. As if it mattered. At any second now another kraut would come charging out of the smoke, all guns blazing, and then . . . He could scarcely breathe, but the fire was retreating almost as he watched, a few spurting flames still flickering from a cupboard full of pusser’s jam and marmalade. He thought of the coxswain, Dougie Bass; he fancied himself a chef from time to time. He wouldn’t be too happy about this pot-mess.

  The laugh nearly overwhelmed him again. He’d seen a few others crack up like that. He studied the young subbie, fanning his face with his cap, his fair hair plastered to a forehead blackened with smoke. Tobias. He relented slightly. Not a bad bloke, for an officer, that is. Green as grass. Maybe not so green any more.

  ‘Okay, sir?’

  Allison sucked in several deep breaths. The leaks would be dealt with by the pumps. There was no more fire. It was impossible to believe that the whole space had been a mass of flames, until you looked at the burned and blistered paintwork, the charred clothing hanging outside the messdeck. And through that bulkhead, the fuel was unharmed. Not that we’d have known much about it.

  ‘I must go up. Can you cope down here?’ Then he grinned and reached out as if to grip his hand. ‘What a stupid question! I’ll send someone to relieve you.’

  Chitty crunched into the blackened galley. He had expected to die. To be killed, not for the first time. He had seen the E-Boat surging towards him when his twin Brownings had jammed. He had also seen the skipper stagger, lose his balance; he had felt it as if it was his own pain. He had seen a few go like that.

  It was strange to think about it. He had started work, earning a few bob, as a lookout for a street bookmaker in London. He was always quick on his feet whenever the police arrived or some rival bookie tried to break up the pitch; the betting slips had been safe in his keeping. He had graduated to being a bookie’s tick-tack man at the local dog racing stadium, where he had become adept at using his hands to signal the odds and the chances in a sign language not unlike semaphore. Then working the fairgrounds, chatting up the girls, having a snog on the Ghost Train when a chance was offered, always just this side of the law. He smiled to himself. Even learned to shoot with a .22 on the fairground circuit.

  He heard the engines increase their revs. On the move again. His companion, Smithy, who was raking through some burned-out boxes, said, ‘Close thing, Bob.’

  Chitty held out his hand and studied it gravely. The green young subbie had shaken it. This hand. What was he? Nineteen years old? He peered at the low deckhead. Right now, he co
uld find himself in command.

  ‘You shouldn’t ’ave joined . . .’

  The man called Smithy grinned, some of the strain draining away as he replied promptly, ‘. . . if you can’t take a joke!’

  Allison had to stop halfway up the companion ladder while he pressed his cheek against the handrail, to steady himself, and accept what he had just done. The rail was like ice, and like the breeze that greeted him it helped to drive away the memory of the flames, and the smoke which had seared his lungs. And the dead telegraphist, hunched intently over his instruments as if waiting for some last signal.

  As his breathing eased he could hear Chitty and the one called Smithy laughing and coughing alternately while they raked the charred remains of their messdeck. A cramped space where men ate their meals, wrote letters, slept, or just sat and waited for the shrill of action stations. It was not much, but it was all they had.

  He gripped the rail and hauled himself bodily into the bridge. At school, Allison had never had much interest in sport or team games, but he had always enjoyed acting in amateur dramatics, be they Shakespeare or something lighter. He had even tried his hand at producing some of them: quick changes of dress or make-up, scenery or fittings to be moved while the youthful audience whistled or stamped beyond the lowered curtain.

  He breathed deeply, staring around the small bridge. It was like that now. Waiting for curtain-up, the players rearranged slightly, but not what he had been expecting. Dreading.

  He saw Foley sitting on a locker, supported by Leading Seaman Nick Harrison, who next to the coxswain was the ML’s key rating. Gunlayer on the three-pounder, Buffer of the upper deck when they were in harbour, he was a true seaman who could turn his mind and hands to almost anything. Allison looked quickly forward. The three-pounder was pointing over the port bow, a sprawled corpse nearby, jerking occasionally to the hull’s movements as if still alive. The loading number: he must have been cut down in that last savage burst of cannon fire.