Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ***

  Captain Redgrave was aware of very little now and was barely conscious of the great camouflaged side of the Prince of Wales as a motor-boat from the destroyer escort brought him alongside in a Neil Robertson stretcher and he was hauled to the battleship’s quarterdeck. He was unaware of the identity of the stocky man in civilian clothes and a yachting cap who was watching the embarkation and smoking a cigar. When Redgrave had been taken below to the sick bay and the attentions of the surgeon commander and his staff, Churchill said that he was to be kept informed of Captain Redgrave’s progress.

  ‘Such brave men,’ he said to the battleship’s Executive Officer. ‘Armed with popguns ... and always at sea. Without them, Britain would starve.’

  Already the Prince of Wales was moving at speed again, heading west with her escort, zig-zagging continually through the seas. The Prime Minister remained on the quarterdeck, his mind projecting ahead. A message came for him, brought by a surgeon lieutenant from the surgeon commander: there was no gangrene — it would have been unlikely at sea in any case — but there was septicaemia and it was now too late to operate. Recovery was not expected.

  Late that afternoon Redgrave died. No time was lost in disposing of the body. The battleship’s captain came down from the compass platform to stand with the padre, and watched by the Prime Minister, Redgrave’s body slid from under the folds of a Red Ensign provided by the chief yeoman of signals. When the Prince of Wales reached safe harbour in Placentia Bay the news would be sent home to Redgrave’s owners who would inform the family, what was left of it — the father and sister, that lonely pair in York.

  ***

  Jackie Ord had worked tirelessly in the Ardara’s sick bay, fighting off weariness as she looked after the injured men. The burns cases were horrifying, pulpy flesh all red and blue, burned through to the bone in some instances. Pain-killing drugs were having their effect but there would come a limit to their use: the build-up could be dangerous. The ship’s surgeon had come back after a while to do his duty and no one mentioned his lapse, but he was useless: very likely he hadn’t seen a serious burns case in his life, or anyway not since his student days many years in the past, added to which he was running again on alcohol power and the fumes were wicked, enough to set light to. Dr Barnes was the saviour — him and Jackie.

  When he saw she was almost out on her feet he told her to go off and have a zizz.

  ‘But I can’t — ’

  ‘We’ll manage. We’ve already done all we can — you know that.’

  She nodded; from now on it was a case of watching and keeping them under and re-bandaging when necessary. So Jackie went along to her cabin and dropped on to the bunk fully dressed. But she couldn’t get to sleep; she was over-tired and her mind was too restless. After a while she gave it up, sat up in the bunk and lit a cigarette. She picked up a book: Gone with the Wind, which she’d started back in the Clyde anchorage whilst awaiting the forming-up of the convoy. But she found she couldn’t concentrate. She was thinking of the injuries, the burns, the terrible screaming when the merchant seamen had been brought aboard and transferred below. It had been harrowing. Jackie was young still, her experiences had not been those of war. Trained at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, she had done time as a staff nurse in casualty after qualifying, and there had been traumas — road accidents, would-be suicides, burns too — but nothing to compare with this. She forced her thoughts to happier, easier days, which meant Cambridge: she was a local girl from Cherry Hinton, so she’d not been far from home, and she loved Cambridge and its particular atmosphere — the Backs in summer and winter, King’s College Chapel and the Christmas carols, tea at The Whim in Trinity Street with a gaggle of probationers — or with Tom. Tom Bulstrode had been an undergraduate at Clare, doing medicine the long way round — BA first, three years at Cambridge then on to St Thomas’s in London for his medical degrees. They were probably going to be married, though they’d both agreed not to rush it. Soon after qualifying Tom had joined the RAMC and had been killed at Dunkirk. So had ended — so young — a chapter of her life. She had been devastated.

  She was thinking of Tom now. Had he been like her current patients, before he died, screaming in agony, perhaps calling for her? Of course she would never know: the official bulletins, the notifications of death in action, didn’t go into that sort of thing. Even his parents wouldn’t know. She’d been back to see them — they, too, lived locally, in a small house in Fenstanton on the old Roman road that ran from Cambridge to Huntingdon. It had been a sad and harrowing visit. There were so many memories, days off, when they coincided, often spent bicycling around the villages, Hilton, Elsworth, Conington or through St Ives to Needingworth and other places, sometimes as far as Ely and back along the A10 to Cambridge. It was good flat country for bicycling and always the sun had seemed to be shining on the dyke-crossed fens. In his last term Tom had bought a small car, an MG, and they had extended their range to King’s Lynn and Hunstanton and Cromer. Tom had once deviated off the A10 to show her the flood-control system near Littleport, the Old Bedford and the New Bedford, and had bored her with a long explanation of how it all worked and what would happen if it didn’t.

  Tears came to her eyes: she would have given anything to be bored again.

  She lit another cigarette: chain-smoking, which was bad. She thought of Andy Pemmel, so different from Tom, so dissolute — though he could be nice. She had drifted into that, seduced by sheer loneliness and unhappiness and Andy’s attentiveness, though she knew very well that the attentiveness was directional, one end only in view. Dr Barnes had tried to warn her off — purely disinterestedly she knew, since he was engaged to a girl, not a nurse, whom he’d met when at Bart’s, and he was so obviously the patient, faithful sort, a plodder in love and medicine — conscientious but unimaginative ...

  In the end she found sleep, deep and dreamless, really flat out to the point of unconsciousness, as though drugged. She was aware of nothing, didn’t stir when there was a knock on the cabin door and Pemmel entered, more or less on spec. But she did wake when she heard him shout at her.

  ‘Jesus, what the hell!’

  On the heels of his words she found herself being drenched with a fine spray of water, she saw the flame and smoke and she felt burning, a sharp pain in the flesh of her shoulder. The cabin seemed to be full of smoke and Pemmel was dragging her from the bunk. There was a fine mist of water: the sprinkler system had gone into automatic action. At first, coming so quickly from deep sleep, she thought there had been an enemy attack. Then she heard Pemmel shouting at her again, something about how bloody daft it was to smoke in bed.

  ***

  The alarm had gone automatically through the ship as the sprinkler operated: Mr Portway, who had turned in for a late-afternoon nap, woke instantly and ran out of his cabin pulling on his uniform jacket. The working alleyways were crammed with stewards and galley hands, bar staff, laundry staff, all the denizens of the bowels of the ship surfacing at the threat of fire. Mr Portway pushed through, shouting at the top of his voice and causing worse confusion until the junior third officer appeared at the head of a ladder and took charge, after which Portway gathered his hose party and once again ran out the flat reels of canvas from the fire hydrants. No one seemed to know quite what was happening, not until the senior nursing sister’s cabin sprinkler was isolated as having gone off.

  For a while the Commodore was equally in the dark. The fuelling operation was finished by this time and both destroyers were back in their proper positions ahead of the convoy and out to either bow and aboard the Wensleydale the gear had been stowed away and the tanks trimmed by use of the pumping system that allowed transfers between one tank and another. The report of fire below on C deck had come as a shock: fire at sea was one of the worst hazards, for fire, once it had taken a grip, was devilish hard to get under control and if the flames should reach the upper decks then they would be fanned by the wind beyond any ship’s resources. When fire came as
a result of enemy attack, that was one thing and had to be accepted. But when it came internally as it were, then nine times out of ten it was due to one thing only: sheer damn carelessness, unforgivable aboard a ship at sea.

  Kemp was livid when the report reached him: fire in a nurse’s cabin, due to smoking and falling asleep.

  ‘Is the girl hurt?’ was the first thing he asked.

  It was Pemmel, making the report in person since he had been first on the scene. ‘No, sir. Shaken but not hurt, apart from a little burning.’

  ‘Doctor’s report?’

  ‘Nothing serious, sir. He’s dusted her with boracic powder, I believe.’

  Kemp said, ‘Well, well! I shall dust her with something else, Purser. Send her up to the bridge.’ He remembered his own position aboard and turned to the master. ‘Have I your permission, Captain, or will you see her?’

  Hampton made a gesture of negation. He preferred to leave this to the Commodore. He was as furious as Kemp; the girl deserved the weightiest of brass-bound wrath, and the Commodore was the Commodore, an extra sort of God. Kemp turned back to Pemmel. ‘Thank you for what you did, Purser.’

  ‘It was nothing, sir. I just — ’

  ‘You smelled smoke, did you?’

  Pemmel hesitated: he’d gone to Jackie’s cabin for quite different reasons. He said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you took immediate action. I dare say that girl owes you her life, or anyway her lack of burns.’ Kemp paused. ‘I don’t believe we ever met before the war.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Pemmel seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘Different ships ... we didn’t cross.’

  ‘And your last ship?’

  More embarrassment: Pemmel began to stammer. He had been, he said, deputy purser in the Aramac just before the war had broken out. Kemp remembered then, but said nothing. The DP of the Aramac — there had been a scandal, a minor one, involving a female passenger. Minor it might have been but Kemp was surprised that Pemmel had made full purser after it; the exigencies of war, perhaps. Other pursers — he knew a couple — who were paymaster lieutenant-commanders RNR had been called up to the fleet. The scandal wouldn’t have been a scandal if Pemmel hadn’t been caught in the act, of course — the one unforgivable crime was being found out. So to some extent it had been bad luck. But Kemp was old-fashioned and didn’t approve of cabin-crawling, certainly not on the part of senior officers who had a responsibility to the Line. Now, as he gave Pemmel a dismissive nod, he came close to the truth: it hadn’t, in all probability, been smoke that had attracted the purser to Sister Ord’s cabin. He smiled, grimly. No smoke without a fire!

  His remembrance of Pemmel’s past did nothing to soften his attitude when Sister Ord reported to the bridge. He took her into the starboard wing; everyone else moved away discreetly.

  ‘Now, Miss Ord.’ She was pretty — damn pretty! Lovely figure — but that couldn’t weigh. ‘First of all ... have you anything you wish to say?’

  `No, Commodore Kemp.’

  ‘No excuses?’

  ‘No ... ’

  He liked that, not that there could have been any possible excuse. But she’d probably been dead tired and could have said so. He went on, ‘I see. No doubt you realize just what might have happened.’

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were very bright. Kemp began his rebuke. He told her what fire at sea could be like, the many deaths that inevitably resulted when a fire got a hold. The damage to the ship, a valuable ship in time of war, much needed for trooping. The fact that they were part of a vital convoy and that a fire aboard the Commodore’s ship would have played havoc. The fact that the ship’s company had already been warned that the enemy lay ahead across the convoy’s track, that attack could for all anyone knew come at any moment.

  She nodded, didn’t meet his eye, held her hands clasped in front of her body, a schoolgirl getting a blasting from the headmistress. Was he becoming headmistressy, or was it just because he had a girl to deal with this time?

  Anyway, he laid it on thick. It was heinous. So many lives at risk from thoughtlessness.

  She began to cry and Kemp broke off in mid sentence. Now he was out of his depth. Did he bring out his handkerchief, say ‘There, there,’ and wipe away the tears? He coughed, cleared his throat, and lifted his voice.

  ‘Williams!’

  Lieutenant Williams approached at speed. Kemp inclined his head towards the girl and Williams took over, very efficiently. Kemp glowered as they went down the ladder, Williams’ hand on the girl’s undamaged shoulder. Williams was proving his use: crying women looked as if they were right up his street. Kemp gave an impatient grunt. All he did was scare the pants off them ...

  ***

  Dusk began to descend, the approach of any convoy’s worst hours, the night hours when the zig-zag became a nightmare for the officers on watch as they altered course according to the laid-down pattern and kept their eyes on a number of things at once, the shaded blue stern lights, the great black bulk of ships moving across their bows as the convoy altered its formation. The escorting warships were now at dusk action stations, as were the naval gunners aboard the merchantmen. The convoy had been steaming slap into the sunset, a brilliant one, all colours of the rainbow and great streaks to either side, almost like those you saw, Petty Officer Frapp thought, east of Suez, the sort that struck you with awe if you had any imagination at all. Frapp had not, in fact, a great deal of imagination but he’d always been very impressed with spectacular sunsets because in his view they said something about God. Their beauty was way beyond anything that man could produce. There had to be some power beyond this life and this world to produce anything like that.

  And perhaps, coming tonight, it was an omen, or rather a promise that all would be well. Frapp removed his cap and stared into the last flickers of the dying sun, into a sort of purple look that lay over the water; to the leading hand of the gun’s crew behind him it looked like an act of obeisance ... perhaps old Frappy was a sun worshipper. In fact the cap’s removal was simply to facilitate the scratching of an itch on Frapp’s bald skull, as the leading hand realized a moment later. Frapp, forgetting sunsets, got to work on his guns, keeping the crews busy, exercising action, laying and training on different ships of the convoy, depressing the angle of sight to bring the gun to bear upon an imaginary conning tower which would in fact be the actual point of aim if they should go into action against U-boats during the night.

  When the stand-down came half an hour after full dark Frapp relaxed, pushed his cap back from his forehead and felt for a fag which he didn’t light, not on the upper deck: the strike of a match, even just the red glow from the fag itself, could be seen through a periscope. But it was nice just to feel the cigarette between his lips.

  ‘All right, you lot, fall out. Stand fast the duty watch.’ Frapp smacked a hand against the breech of the six-inch as though saying goodnight, sleep tight, hope the bed-bugs don’t bite ... Frapp didn’t want to have to turn out during the night and he didn’t want to have to fire his guns in anger. For why? Because he fancied they might simply blow up and fragment the gunners. They were poor old has-beens, stored in the arsenals for years and years, dragged out of ancient cruisers long gone to the breaker’s yard. Not long after leaving the Clyde PO Frapp had been visited whilst exercising action by an old bloke from the liner’s crew, a night steward who’d been a Royal Marine in the last lot — Crump by name. Ex-Colour-Sergeant Crump had almost talked to the after six-inch and said he believed it had come from the old cruiser Glasgow, built back in 1909 and present at the battles of Coronel and the Falklands and partly responsible for sinking the German cruiser Dresden. Well, if that was true, it was something, though Frapp didn’t know quite what beyond senility. It certainly wasn’t going to sink another Dresden ...

  A shaded signal lamp began flashing from the escort on the port bow and on the heels of the message the alarm rattlers sounded throughout the Ardara. Alongside Frapp the telephone from the bridge whined and F
rapp answered. ‘Six-inch aft — ’

  It was Lieutenant Williams’ voice. ‘Alarm port, Frapp — contact! All guns’ crews stand by. I’ll be down as soon as possible.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Frapp said into a line that had already gone dead. He sounded sour and was; the Commodore’s assistant, at exercise action, had fancied himself as a gunnery officer and gone into several flat spins yelling out such orders as ‘Still, misfire, carry on,’ and ‘Shoot, shoot, shoot,’ and ‘Check gun-ready lamps,’ just as though the Ardara was fitted with a director. It sounded efficient, or Frapp supposed it did to Williams, but he thought the two-striper was a right fit. Meanwhile the six-inch crew was coming back to the gun, fast.

  Frapp said, ‘All right, lads, this is it or looks like it.’ They took up their stations and Frapp saw the gun trained round to port. He waited for the next order from the bridge.

  NINE

  The minutes passed. Nothing happened. The ships moved on. Kemp asked suddenly, ‘What d’you make of it, Hampton?’

  Hampton shrugged. ‘Getting into position?’

  ‘The bugger’s already in position. Just ahead of the convoy and ready for the flank. Perfect!’ All eyes watched from the bridge but there was nothing to be seen. The night was dark; as yet there were neither moon nor stars to give some light; just the faint glow that was always present over the sea. Yet it would, Kemp believed, be possible to spot a torpedo trail unless the setting was exceptionally deep. So far there were no trails. They went on watching and waiting. The port escort had gone in to investigate but nothing seemed to be developing.

  ‘It’s a bloody mystery,’ Kemp said.

  ‘False alarm?’ Hampton suggested.

  Kemp laughed. ‘Could be. Echo off a whale — it’s been known before now!’ With a massive attack foreshadowed in the Admiralty cypher, there would be jittery men aboard the escort, Asdic ratings who might jump a mile if they got an echo from a sardine. And there had been, so far as Kemp was aware, just the one contact. It didn’t quite represent a whole U-boat pack. The starboard escort was still standing guard and hadn’t reported anything, so it could be assumed the right flank was clear and nothing ahead either. The destroyer would be sweeping all round, through three hundred and sixty degrees.