Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

‘Yes, well.’ The surgeon dithered, hand pulling at his jaw. ‘Frankly, you know, I don’t feel too well. My stomach ... ’ He laid a hand on it, and grimaced. He wove a path towards the lavatory, entered and locked himself in. Sister Ord reported to Dr Barnes and the junior sister that the boss was suffering the squitters due to pressure of events and would remain glued to the lavatory seat until the drama was over. At least he could do no harm there but was technically available.

  Just before luncheon, the Bellman’s master died; soon after this two more of the survivors, men with widespread burns who had been among those screaming out in agony as they were embarked, also died. There was in fact nothing more that could have been done had he been present and compos mentis, but the doctor was seen to go to his cabin with tears running down his cheeks.

  ***

  Before the deaths had taken place Lieutenant Williams had reported to the Commodore with the plain-language version of the Admiralty’s signal. It was stark enough. Interception of German wireless traffic and patient work by the cypher-crackers of the British intelligence services had produced some vital operational information: two large U-boat packs were in station across the track of the OB convoy, between their current position as estimated by the Admiralty and the coast of Nova Scotia.

  ‘No orders, Williams. In the signal.’

  ‘No, sir. Just the warning.’

  ‘And no indication how far off the packs are.’ Kemp’s face was set hard. ‘We’re moving westwards of the meridian of Cape Farewell now — this is totally unexpected so far west. And more than I’d ever have expected anyway, against a convoy in ballast!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Williams paused. ‘It occurs to me, sir, they may have been moved into position ready to attack us homeward.’

  ‘Unlikely. Time at sea, time submerged and all that ... and they’re at risk from our escort. The Asdics ... they’d be giving the game away, surely?’

  Williams said, ‘They could lie doggo, down deep. Or they may not be right across the track. The Admiralty won’t be that sure, sir. They could be well out to either side, north or south ... just waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for what, Williams?’

  ‘Well, sir, our homeward run. Attack the HX.’

  ‘Or something else.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That did occur to me.’

  Each avoided implication of the Prime Minister by name or office. Kemp turned away and began pacing the bridge, up and down on the strip of coconut matting. Always he thought better on the move; at the convoy conferences he was always restive, sitting on his bottom and listening to other men giving detailed instructions and assessments and so on. In a similar fashion to a piper who played best when on the march, Commodore Mason Kemp found that motion helped his decisions.

  And this was a big one.

  He saw three alternatives: one, he could hold his course and speed and rely on the escort and the zig-zag; two, he could order an alteration north or south and hope to elude the hunting packs, if the OB convoy was their target, but either choice could be the wrong one; three, he could turn the convoy and steam back on a reciprocal of his present course. That would keep them in the clear, at least as regards the reported threat ahead. But it didn’t take Kemp many seconds to reject this alternative. It would be an act of cowardice and one that would be likely to upset the overall strategy of the North Atlantic and its intricate convoy system, the shuttle back and forth. And the U-boats, frustrated in their plans, might find that other target, Winston Churchill heading west aboard the Prince of Wales — if they didn’t know about that already.

  ‘Williams?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Lieutenant Williams, apprised not long after leaving the Clyde that his lord and master didn’t like being followed up and down the bridge, had hung back in the port wing. Now he came forward, the dog given its bone.

  ‘Pass the signal by lamp to the escorts.’ The destroyers had broken off their attack some while earlier and had reported no luck. ‘When they’ve acknowledged, make: Intend to maintain my course.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. A word about full alertness, sir?’

  Kemp snapped at his assistant. ‘For God’s sake, Williams, they don’t need that!’

  Williams, red-faced again, passed the word to Mouncey, who began clacking the big SP in the bridge wing. As the signals and acknowledgements were made, Kemp’s mind was busy. His own belief was that the U-boats were after bigger game than an empty convoy, a point he had already made to Williams. True, they might, just might, be awaiting the homeward run with all the Canadian troops embarked, all the ammunition and guns, all the other war materials and supplies for the civilian population that was facing the possibility of starvation if the merchant fleet was too far decimated.

  It might be that, or it might not.

  Surely, Kemp thought, the biggest prize of war for Adolf Hitler would be the despatch of Winston Churchill. The mind boggled at what the result would be back home and overseas, in every part of the world where British and Allied troops were fighting, backs to the wall in a war that wasn’t going all that well, when the BBC News bulletins and the world’s press blew the shattering facts, HMS Prince of Wales sunk, Winston Churchill dead. They might try to hold the truth, anyway for a while. But it wouldn’t be possible to keep up a pretence for any length of time. With that towering personality gone the facts would show in dither, in a lack of direction, in a terrible weakening of the war effort.

  If necessary, the OB convoy must be the decoy.

  SEVEN

  Mason Kemp believed, had always believed, in keeping his ship’s company informed of all matters affecting or likely to affect their welfare. This time it was their lives, and he gave them the facts whilst remaining silent as to the presence, not so far off by now probably, of the British Prime Minister and his entourage. He used the Tannoy and spoke of the information received that a large concentration of U-boats was somewhere ahead. There would be no interruption of the convoy’s progress and every man was to be ready in his own sphere of action.

  ‘Which means to be bloody sunk,’ Petty Officer Frapp said, thinking of his museum-piece guns in action against a U-boat, a small enough target at the best of times. The convoy was wide open and they all knew it. The merchant ships would just have to steam on stoically, taking independent avoiding action as and when necessary, and hope for the best. There had been more signalling between the Commodore and the senior officer of the escort and when the visual signalling became heavy, Kemp, with the need for secrecy in mind, suggested that the senior officer lay alongside and be embarked by breeches buoy for a conference.

  The senior officer concurred; and the destroyer turned sharply, heeling over to port to cross the columns with a big bone in her teeth and make her approach along the starboard side of the Ardara. When she was in position and the breeches buoy’s gear ready, the two ships equalized their speed, maintaining way throughout, the ropes were sent across and the senior officer, one Commander Phillips, was hauled across the gap, legs protruding like those of a spider through the breeches part of the buoy, hands holding fast to the ropes above his head, an undignified performance.

  He was brought to the bridge, where he saluted the Commodore. Kemp walked with him to the port wing, where they conferred together with Captain Hampton and Lieutenant Williams.

  Kemp spoke his thoughts about Mr Churchill. ‘He’s the first priority. Agreed?’

  Phillips said, ‘Yes, indeed he is, sir — ’

  ‘So my intention is to engage the attention of the U-boats. You understand?’

  ‘A sacrifice?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kemp said directly.

  ‘A big one.’

  ‘A big reward, Commander. A big man. A vital one! In any case, I have no alternative. We are at sea, so are the U-boats.’ Kemp returned to an earlier thought, the one that hadn’t lasted. ‘I can’t turn the convoy back.’

  ‘No, no, that’s true, sir. And of course I take your point about the Prime Minister. But — ’

  ‘The
n let’s consider it settled, shall we?’ Kemp said briskly. ‘It’s going to be up to you and your destroyers, I need hardly say — we’re just the sitting ducks, but if some of the buggers can be brought to the surface, we have guns to fire at them. And sometimes a lot can be achieved by ramming, as we all know.’

  Commander Phillips was sent back to his ship and as soon as he was aboard the destroyer moved away at speed to resume her position on the starboard bow of the convoy. The weather, unkindly enough, was improving all the time; apart from the swell, the sea was virtually flat as the sun began to go down the western sky. There was going to be a brilliant sunset, Kemp thought, blood-red amongst many other colours. Blood was on his mind: he was putting so many lives at risk. Just how many? Give or take a hundred or so, the convoy contained around three thousand souls. Churchill himself would not have considered his own life worth three thousand possible deaths, if the worst came to the worst — taking the most pessimistic view, that was. But this wasn’t Churchill’s decision and he wouldn’t have been the best judge of his own value to the Allied war effort. Kemp fought down strange feelings that rose in him, feelings of acting God, taking Prime Ministerly decisions in a very wide interest. He must not think that way. He was just the convoy Commodore, doing his duty as he saw it. But his heart bled for the lives at risk.

  Walking the bridge after the departure of Commander Phillips, Kemp looked aft along the boat deck and for an instant that seemed a lifetime he saw it as he had seen it in peacetime, as master of what had then been a luxury liner homeward bound from Sydney. Those nights in the Indian Ocean, the drifting music that used to come to him as he took a late-night turn up and down the master’s deck below the bridge, the gentle hiss of water streaming away into a tumbling wake, the moon’s beams slanting across the funnel and the lifeboats, touching the masts, bringing light and shadow across the first-class passengers, the gay evening dresses of the women, the dinner jackets of the men. The bridge watch changing at midnight, the off-going officer filling in the deck log and giving the course and speed to his relief, a similar changeover taking place at the wheel and down below in the engine-room, a never-ending routine at sea where the whole ship never slept all at once. In the passenger alleyways the cabin-crawling taking place, for passengers were human and never more so than when east of Suez ... the night stewards patrolling in uniform blues even when the rest of the crew were in whites, blue tunics buttoned to the neck, brass buttons, men of special status, reliable and discreet. One of them had once been a colour-sergeant of the Royal Marines ... where was he now? Still aboard, or recalled to Eastney Barracks and a draft to a warship? Most likely not the latter; he would have been too old.

  In point of fact ex-Colour-Sergeant Crump was still aboard the Ardara in his peacetime capacity of night steward and had not yet found an opportunity of making his number again with the Commodore, or Captain Kemp as he thought of him still. Captain Kemp would remember him, he was sure, and wouldn’t snub him when the occasion arose. There was no bull about Captain Kemp, no snobbery, he had always been man to man, and a man’s man with it. Crump had a lot of time for Captain Kemp, as had almost everyone else; even those who had felt the weight of his tongue from time to time recognized that he was fair and that they’d asked for it. Crump as night came down to end that day moved on along the darkened alleyways, the alleyways lit at night by only the police lights. Coming out from a cross alleyway, Crump all but bumped into the ship’s master-at-arms, prowling in soft-soled shoes. Master-at-Arms Rockett, an ex-RN regulating petty officer also too old for recall, was a soft-soled-shoe sort of man and had a face to match, pale and lowering and with eyes that didn’t meet another man’s gaze. Big feet, the prerequisite for the navy’s regulating branch, the ship’s police — big feet, so it was said, that crushed cockroaches whilst on the snoop at night, hence their sobriquet of crusher.

  ‘Well, Crump?’

  ‘All well, Master.’

  ‘Huh! Look down there, purser’s alleyway.’

  Crump turned and looked aft, just in time to see a nursing sister’s uniform turn into the passage leading to Pemmel’s quarters.

  ‘Sister Ord,’ MAA Rockett said with a sniff. ‘That on again, is it?’

  ‘Not my business to know that, Master,’ Crump said.

  ‘Oh yes, it is, you’re the night steward on this section — ’

  ‘Not for snooping on the ship’s officers I’m not. Not unless there’s a complaint. Which there never has been. Anyway, Mr Pemmel, he’s been sick, a day or two ago, had the doctor, so — ’

  ‘Sick my backside,’ Rockett said with a short laugh like a bark. ‘Pissed to the gills, is Pemmel, half the time. Think Miss Ord’s taking his temperature, do you? Time you grew up, Crump.’ He paused, said, ‘So just watch it, all right?’ and moved on, hands clasped behind his back, soft soles shuffling over the polished corticene. Crump shrugged, made a rude gesture towards the departing back, dismissed the ‘just watch it’ as a bit of bull designed to cover up the fact that Rockett didn’t know quite how to disguise the irrelevance of his earlier remarks, or innuendos, about Sister Ord and the purser vis-à-vis Crump’s duties, and went along to his pantry. Just as he reached it the purser’s buzzer sounded.

  Crump knew Mr Pemmel’s habits: he already had the sandwiches and coffee ready, two cups and saucers, two plates. A mixed lot of sandwiches, tastefully decorated with parsley which Crump grew himself in a couple of flower pots that lived in the pantry and were taken on deck to get some sun and air whenever possible. He went along to the purser’s cabin and knocked discreetly.

  ‘Come in, Crump.’

  Crump went in, stood at attention, one hand holding the tray, the other stiffly in line with the seam of his trousers. When speaking to officers, Crump was still the colour-sergeant and training died hard. ‘You rang, sir. The usual I don’t doubt, sir. Good evening, miss.’

  Jackie Ord smiled at him; Pemmel said, ‘Thank you, Crump. A man in a million. You’d be ready with the sandwiches even if the ship was going down.’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Care for a drink, Crump?’ Pemmel asked suddenly and surprisingly. The purser was not normally a generous man and he’d never offered Crump a drink before, though he tipped reasonably enough at the end of each voyage. ‘Whisky, is it?’

  ‘On duty, sir — ’

  ‘Never mind that and if there’s any trouble from Mr Rockett, refer him to me. Sit down, man!’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t mind if I do. Whisky, please, sir.’ Crump sat on the settee, his bottom right on the edge and his long, good-humoured face showing that he was ill at ease because he had sensed that both Mr Pemmel and Sister Ord were also on edge. He didn’t know why, unless they were worried about the nests of U-boats said to be ahead, and they were all more or less worried about Hitler’s antics. At a time like this Crump himself would have given his Royal Marines pension to be back aboard a battleship, say the Nelson or the Rodney with their bloody great sixteen-inch gun-turrets.

  Pemmel got up and brought out a bottle of John Haig, poured Crump a measure and after some slight hesitation added some to his cup of coffee, glancing at Sister Ord as he did so. ‘You?’ he asked.

  She shook her head; her answer was abrupt. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Pemmel said. He raised his cup towards Crump. ‘Bottoms up,’ he said.

  ‘Your good health, sir.’ Crump drank, feeling more and more uncomfortable. He was sure something was up, felt something in the atmosphere.

  ‘You were in the navy,’ Pemmel said.

  ‘Royal Marines, sir.’

  ‘Same thing, more or less — no, don’t bother to explain the difference, Crump. Point is ... you were in the last lot, weren’t you?’

  ‘I was, sir. Gunner Royal Marine Artillery in them days, sir, the Blue Marines. Royal Marine Light Infantry, they were the Red Marines — ’

  ‘Yes, Crump. You were in action, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Crump dr
ank some more of his whisky, and wiped the back of a hand across his lips. ‘On Y turret I was, sir, aboard the Good Hope — armoured cruiser, sir. We got it. I ended up in the drink for a bit, sir. Got picked up, of course.’

  ‘Yes. So you know what it’s like.’

  ‘To be in action, sir?’

  ‘To be bloody well sunk, Crump!’ Pemmel voice was high, very much on edge.

  ‘Yes, sir. It happens. Nothing you can do about it. Except swim, sir.’

  ‘You were all trained men — seamen. Trained for war, Crump.’

  ‘We were that, sir, yes — ’

  ‘Not aboard the Ardara we’re not.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, sir. I don’t honest. We’ve no passengers embarked — that’d be scary. But we’ve faced it ever since the war started, sir. Nothing different now. And you can rely on the deck officers, sir. Specially now Captain Kemp’s with us.’

  Pemmel gave a nervy laugh. ‘Captain Kemp can’t stop torpedoes. He may be a bloody marvel but he can’t jump overboard and ride ’em away like a horse.’

  Crump didn’t like that, didn’t like any sort of implied disrespect towards Captain Kemp. His normally kindly eyes hardened a little. He didn’t know quite how to react; he was about to drink up his whisky when the nursing sister got to her feet and said she was going to turn in. Pemmel nodded, and she left the cabin. There was a funny look in the purser’s eyes and after Sister Ord had gone he seemed to lose interest in Crump, who took the hint, drank up, thanked Pemmel again, stood briefly at attention, and went away. Odder and odder, he thought; it was as though he’d been brought in to defuse a delicate situation, be a sort of gooseberry to prevent something developing. When Sister Ord had gone, Pemmel had no further use for him. Crump moved along the alleyway, thinking, his face puckered. What Rockett had said — of course it was basically true. The purser was, or had been, running a hot affair with Sister Ord, Crump couldn’t help but be aware of that. Likewise, Mr Pemmel’s drinking habits — they were common knowledge, of course. Could be just the whisky, Crump supposed, and the purser was looking for a way out of bedding the girl just because he was incapable.