Being found by the gunboats had been a bloody miracle. Bob Stack in the guise of deus ex machina—yet another quote from Kingsmill, which Sworder had countered with ‘Or fairy godmother, say.’ Kingsmill’s raucous laughter, then: ‘Some fairy!’
Bucking and rolling southward. Stack and Moncrieff in their MGBs were following a mile or so astern.
‘Ship red four-oh, sir!’
Sworder had sighted it. Newbolt swung his glasses to that bearing. To roughly where he’d been expecting it; in fact, searching for it: Stack having given him radar ranges and bearings—one large and one smaller blip…
‘Warship green one-oh, sir!’
OD Holland, that had been, the lookout behind him on this starboard side. (Singing lookout—when he so far forgot himself and no-one had the heart to shut him up, or the noise was such that it didn’t matter. Trivialities flashing in and out of mind while facing what might well prove cataclysmic.) He had the first of the two sightings in his glasses. A Torpedoboot. This side of the Heilbronne’s screen, obviously; on her beam, in fact: the escort that Holland had just picked up would be ahead of her or on her bow. He left Holland’s to look after itself for the moment, concentrated on and around this one. Wanting a sight of the Heilbronne—logically, the larger of those radar contacts.
There. There. Large as life.
‘Ready both, Tony.’
‘Ready both, sir!’
The Heilbronne was down by the bow, for sure. Quite a steep bow-down slant. There was a certain amount of water-disturbance around her forepart, but you wouldn’t call it a bow-wave: she was making about—three, four knots, he guessed. Five at the most. And that escort—to the left of her, from this point of view—was definitely a Torpedoboot. Range about—fifteen hundred yards, say. He let his glasses hang on their strap for a few moments while he closed the throttle slightly—to more or less eliminate bow-wave and wake—then set the torpedo-sight for a ninety-on-the-bow shot and enemy speed four knots. Or make it five. It would be no more than five, but you could guess the German would be fairly desperate to get into Cherbourg, nagging at his engineers to squeeze the last half-knot out of her, might be more easily satisfied with a round number such as five. The for’ard bulkhead would be the danger: there’d be a slowing effect from the damage itself and from her angle in the water—her screws, for instance, would be close to breaking surface—but the risk of the bulkhead bursting would be worrying them most.
‘Tubes ready, sir. Close the guns up?’
‘No. Not yet.’
And then the thought: I’m off my bloody rocker…
To expect to get away with this—pass ahead of that sod unseen. Knowing that once seen you’d be finished. Having only eight knots—but even without that—any second now, expect the starshell!
He pushed the throttles shut.
Lie cut, let the sod pass, then cross astern of him at a range where you’d have—well, at least a hope…
Kingsmill was beside him. Wanting to know what was going on. Newbolt was aware also of the jut of the Badger’s beard this way. His shout came across only weather-noise now: ‘Losing steerage way, sir!’
‘Yeah. Going to cross astern of this one, not ahead.’
Then there’d be some catching up to do. But having eight knots, when the target had only four or five…
Let him get out to say twenty degrees on the bow, then go ahead. Estimating it roughly: half a mile to cover at four knots—seven and a half minutes. Going ahead then at eight knots with, say, a thousand yards to cover before you crossed his stern—add three and a half minutes.
‘Tony—tell me when seven and a half minutes are up. Better get the torpedomen back up meanwhile.’
‘Lost steerage way, sir…’
It was going to feel like a bloody hour. Other snags were (a) Mike F. might get his attack in first, and (b) if you failed, the target would be that much closer to Cherbourg.
This was right, though.
Not that you could count chickens, even this way. Giving oneself a better chance, that was all.
‘Mid—’
‘Sir?’
‘Nip aft, let’s have a puddle of smoke around us. Take one hand with you. Pickering, maybe. Leave him on it. A squirt now and then—OK?’
To thicken the darkness around her. It was only a matter of manipulating a couple of valves. The chemical from the cylinder expanded into ‘smoke’ when it came into contact with the damp sea air.
* * *
He’d told Kingsmill not to close the guns up yet, because he hadn’t wanted itchy fingers too close to triggers at this stage. Not to run the slightest risk of it. Tubes being ready, incidentally, meant amongst other things that Torpedoman Lloyd, who still had some bullets in his thigh but who’d been treated and bandaged up by Kingsmill and was adamant that he was fit for duty, claimed to be feeling hardly any discomfort, was down there on the starboard tube, with AB Mottram to give him a hand if he should need one. And AB Burrows on the port side, as usual, each of them with a mallet handy.
They’d be back in shelter now, anyway, abaft the bridge.
‘What’s that, Tony?’
‘Six minutes gone, sir.’
The Torpedoboot was about ten degrees on the bow to starboard. He’d reckoned on making it twenty, but—
No. Belay that. Wait for the seven and a half minutes. If he’d had to guess just then he’d have said four minutes gone, not six. Grit your teeth and count your blessings. Sitting again: making himself sit. When he’d ordered the tubes to the ready he’d flapped the seat up to give himself room behind the sight, and after making the hard decision he’d banged it down again. Making himself do it.
Patience not being one of his best-known virtues.
563 was tossing around like flotsam. Shrouded, some of the time, in the ectoplasmic smoke… It wasn’t easy to hold glasses steady—on the barely-visible smudge of the Torpedoboot inching slowly, slowly across the dark interlocking circles of the lenses: which were wet again, God damn it…
‘Skipper, sir—time’s up!’
‘Thank God.’ He’d dried the front ends of the glasses, put them up again. Green two-oh, two-five even… Glasses down: right hand on the starboard throttle, easing it open. ‘Starboard wheel, Cox’n.’ Thrum of power trembling through her. ‘Steer due south.’
‘Close up the torpedomen, Tony.’
Second time of asking. Sweating a bit now. He’d passed closer astern of the ‘T’ than he’d originally intended, and since then brought her round thirty degrees to starboard, to push up between it and the target. Torpedoboot—the nearest one, the only one which for the moment mattered most—thus broad on the bow to starboard, Heilbronne less so on the port bow and at a range now of about seven or eight hundred yards.
Call it seven-fifty. Might fire at six hundred. Less, for preference, but it was a matter of getting there—unspotted, getting as close in as you could while gaining enough bearing to be in a position for—well, it wouldn’t be a beam shot.
Hundred on the bow, maybe.
Still some way to go, too, clawing in at a relative—overhauling—speed of only four knots—obliquely, aiming for the centre of the gap of sea between the target and that ‘T’.
Thanking God meanwhile for the camouflage of broken water…
After firing, disengage to port, obviously. With the Torpedoboot where it was—as well as an ‘M’ farther up ahead there—and having only the starboard engine that would be the quick way round in any case.
Well—hardly quick—at eight knots. And there was another ‘T’ back there, somewhere astern of the Heilbronne. Bugger ’d be putting its oar in, by that time.
‘See the target, Cox’n?’
‘Can just, sir.’
‘Soon as the fish are away, hard a-port. Bring her to east-by-north, north-east say.’ Over his shoulder then: ‘Mid—after we’ve fired, start making smoke.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Getting out, might risk pushing her up to ten or twel
ve—having fired, being then several tons lighter, that much less strain on the ailing engine?
God only knew where Mike F. would be coming from. Have to keep him in mind, as well as the other escorts. Range now—say six-fifty yards. The Heilbronne a slow-moving, bow-down two-funnelled hulk, dragging herself like some huge wounded animal painfully but doggedly southeastward. Wouldn’t be able to get herself round all that quickly either, he guessed—thinking of her taking avoiding-action—with her bow that deep.
563 was rolling hard, suds piling over and streaming aft. He checked the settings on the torpedo-sight again—hundred on the bow, enemy speed four. OK… Dispensing now with binoculars. Fingering the firing-levers, checking them for about the fourth time too—that he’d taken the safety-latches off.
Sufficient unto the night being the cock-ups thereof…
‘Skipper, sir—’
‘Yeah—damn!’
He’d heard it—what Sworder had seen—the ‘T’ opening up—at last… Twenty-millimetre—streams of it, mostly red—and doubtless the heavier stuff coming with it too by now. He’d had only a brief sight of the start of it as he’d more or less flinched that way a second ago, but he’d also heard the crack of a four-inch: instant assumption being starshell coming…
Concentrating on the target again now, and his relationship to it via the torpedo-sight. Having no way of doing anything about any of the rest of it—and not wanting to be blinded, either…
Range not much more than five hundred yards. Five-fifty, say.
The starshell burst open right overhead: green brilliance spreading and the tracer thickening—Heilbronne opened-up too now, gun-flashes and tracer from her afterpart—inescapable in its blinding effect, this lot.
‘Stand by!’
Kingsmill bawled it too, for the men on the tubes to hear. Newbolt crouching, peering narrow-eyed along the sighting-bar, his fingers crooked around the twin firing-levers in the recess below it.
‘I’ll fire on the turn, Cox’n. Use five degrees of port wheel.’
‘Aye, sir—’
‘Port wheel now!’
Swinging the line of sight to meet the Heilbronne’s deep-ploughing stem—which seemed almost to hesitate, draw back for an instant before it crossed it. The two crossing each other now…
‘Fire both!’
Muffled thumps from both sides, the jolt and double whoosh of the fish departing. The Badger was already winding-on more rudder. Newbolt with his glasses up: tracer coming in a storm—there’d been some hits back aft, he’d felt them. But he’d got her. As long as the fish ran straight. Please God, he had. Well, it was certain, it had been that kind of shot—when you felt it in your bones, knew you had.
The task now—the really tough one—was to get his boat and her crew away.
Chapter Ten
Furneaux’s view of it was from the south: bringing 560 westward across the shallows to overhaul the Heilbronne on this inshore side, by that time needing to gain only about another five hundred yards before he could have turned in to attack. Would have too, wouldn’t have waited for young Newbolt to make his move first; this wasn’t a game of ‘after you, Claude’. Especially with Cherbourg practically in spitting distance, minutes weren’t for wasting. Anyway Newbolt had pulled it off, and 560’s crew had been cheering—with the crash of the hit still echoing in their skulls after the leap of fire that had lit the sea between here and there… Furneaux had barely had time to order starboard wheel and to open the port and centre throttles—to bring her up from twelve knots to about eighteen—before the big one—second hit, starting like the first but expanding laterally as well as vertically, covering most of the ship’s length and with burning debris soaring out of it: the Heilbronne spilling her guts into the sky. She’d have had U-boat stores in her holds, of course, ammunition and torpedoes, maybe drums of shale—or whatever Kraut torpedoes ran on—Furneaux realized: looking round at the others, the boat and surrounding sea lit up in spasms of new flare-ups: seeing John Flyte goggle-eyed and open-mouthed, Hugh Lyon too—astonishment in his darkly unshaven and, in Furneaux’s view, slightly bovine countenance: a degree of shock, even momentary paralysis.
How many dead in those few seconds?
Some would be dying over there, too, though. Ones that mattered, over there.
Only the coxswain seemed totally unmoved. You might have thought that in Huddersfield this kind of thing was commonplace. Reminding Furneaux: ‘Got starboard wheel on, sir.’
‘Yes. Steer north, Cox’n.’
‘Steer north, sir—’
R/T crackling: then Bob Stack’s voice. As from some other world… ‘Dog Two—Topdog. George three-zero. Stand by to follow Master Gunner, engaging to starboard. Got to get past the bugger somehow, haven’t we. Over.’
Atmospherics, then, louder than before. Volume turned up, somewhere… Moncrieff’s voice broke through it: ‘Darned right, Topdog. Master gunner starboard it is. Out.’
PO Thompson intoning, ‘Course north, sir…’
Perrot, then—from the starboard side behind Furneaux: ‘Green two-oh, sir—563, or looks like—’
‘Wait… Yes—yes, it is. Well done…’
Mark Newbolt. The Torpedoboote were very much on him: it was their tracer that had, as it were, fingered him. He was on the bow to starboard—to the northeast—twelve or fifteen hundred yards away. All of fifteen hundred yards, probably… The sea was on fire in that region—oil from the Heilbronne, patches of wind-driven flames spreading over an area of several acres. Drifting east, of course. Newbolt—563—seemed to have port helm on. Alternatively—well, he’d had only one engine working, and if it was the starboard one his wheel might simply be untended. Please God that wasn’t so, but one had to allow for the worst. Even the best wasn’t all that promising: having turned away to port—as he must have, after firing—and—well, he might have steadied now. On—east-north-east, roughly… On course as if to pass midway between those two—who weren’t going to let him. The sea around him was jumping with shell-bursts and lashed by smaller stuff—which would include 37-mm, not all that small. There was a lot of tracer over and around him, and the Torpedoboote were closing in towards him from the east and north—dishing out the punishment generously, meanwhile—and a third, an ‘M’ that had been in the lead, was on its way back to lend a hand. Not in range yet, that one. The ‘T’ that was supposedly about to receive the gunboats’ attentions had to be the one roughly due north from here—because up there was where Stack would be and the other, to the right, was the one that had been on the Heilbronne’s quarter before this lot started.
That would be the one to hit. But there was a choice here: whether the best thing would be to get to Newbolt—go straight for the ball, so to speak—and either distract enemy attention from him—giving him a fighting chance, if he was capable of using it—or to get in alongside him and take him and his crew off. In the process, putting this crew’s heads on much the same block: especially having one’s own uncertainties in the engineroom department. If you could get away with it, though—well, you’d have done it, all units could disengage. Whereas the alternative was to leave Newbolt on his own to survive—please God—for a few more minutes, and go for that ‘T’. Snags in that choice being that with only one torpedo you’d have to get in good and close to make sure of it: and they’d see you coming, with all that burning sea behind you. As they’d be seeing Newbolt now. To start with you’d pass around this western end of it—its source, not only originally but where oil must still be floating up, he guessed, igniting when it joined the stuff already burning on the surface. But there was also the problem with the engines: potentially much the same as Newbolt’s—lack of speed when it came to disengaging. Not easy, therefore… But conclusive, if the gunboats were taking care of the other one.
You’d still have the ‘M’ to look out for, of course…
He had his glasses back on 563: wincing, at what might have been a four-inch hit on her forepart. Like a huge camera-f
lash, with bits flying in the split-second’s brilliance. One of the bits had been fairly substantial, could have been his Oerlikon.
Lost him again—beyond the drifting fires. If that had been a four-inch hit—well, God help him… Seeing an answer of sorts, though. Thinking about it while shifting his glasses to the ‘T’—which was moving from left to right—the same way as the oil was spreading—spreading fast, with this still-rising wind driving it—the ‘T’ probably steering to head Newbolt off. If he was still there to be headed off… Range from here about—1,200 yards. He lowered his glasses, let them hang on their strap, and reached to the throttles: eyes still straining to see beyond that patchwork of shifting light and darkness. The burning oil made it harder to see, not easier. A constantly flickering effect, together with alternating light and dark as the flames were thrown up or sucked down in the troughs.
And that—plus the extent of the continuing eastward drift—was the answer. To make use of it.
He was easing the throttles open, for as near as he could get to twenty-five knots. In full awareness of Coates’ warning about the flooded stern compartment.
Had to take some risks…
‘Starboard wheel, Cox’n!’
Through the oil, not round it. Touch wood, semi-invisible damn near all the way… ‘Number One!’
‘Sir—’
‘Listen.’ Letting the left hand know: which he was aware he hadn’t done as much as he should have, in the recent past. A hand on Lyon’s beefy shoulder: ‘Listen—we’re going to spoil the paintwork, somewhat…’
‘Master Gunner open fire, sir?’
‘No—hold on, Alan…’
Ben relaxed again—slightly. He’d pulled rank, more or less, in taking over the starboard twin Vickers .303s, for this ‘Master Gunner’ shoot. Had wanted to be the Master Gunner, but they hadn’t let him, had granted that honour to ‘Banjo’ Bennet, gunlayer on the starboard point-fives. Well, fair enough… The boat was up to her flat-out speed of thirty knots now, pounding southward with Moncrieff’s 866 in close station astern and the Torpedoboot fine on the bow to port, steering about east-south-east at seventeen or eighteen knots, easy to see—with glasses anyway, and by now probably with the naked eye—in silhouette against the widening drift of burning oil-fuel half a mile to the south.
Band of Brothers Page 17