Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  Then the shaded signal lamp came up again and Mouncey reported to the Commodore. ‘From the leader, sir: “Lost contact. This I do not like.”’

  Kemp said, ‘No more do I! But it’s somewhat cryptic I fancy. I wonder what’s in Phillips’ mind, precisely?’ The question was rhetorical. Kemp moved over to the telephone to the after six-inch and got Frapp on the other end. ‘Frapp, is Mr Williams there?’

  ‘No, sir. ’E went for’ard, sir, to take charge there.’

  Kemp rang off, went to the fore screen and called down in a carrying voice. ‘Lieutenant Williams?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘On the bridge, please. Pronto.’

  Williams came up. Kemp said, ‘You’ve served in destroyers. So have I, but in the last lot. We didn’t have Asdics then — lots of things we didn’t have. I’m out of touch, you’re not.’

  ‘No, sir ... ’

  ‘Get inside Commander Phillips’ mind.’ Kemp repeated the leader’s last signal. ‘What do you think he doesn’t like about the situation? I don’t propose asking him — the fewer signals the better, in regard to certain matters. But I want to make an assessment.’

  ‘Yes, sir. You say he’s lost contact ... and there haven’t been any more contacts.’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Well, sir, of course it’s easy enough to lose contact — ’

  ‘I know that, Williams. That wasn’t what I meant. If you’ve no ideas, let’s try this for size, shall we? I’d like your reaction. The packs have drawn off, they’re not interested in an empty convoy — I don’t know what that one contact was, maybe it was a false echo. But the Nazis could be waiting for something else.’

  ‘The HX homeward, sir?’

  ‘No. I answered that question earlier. They won’t hang about. They could have had a report about other matters. The Prince of Wales, Williams.’

  Williams’ lips framed a whistle that didn’t emerge: it was a tradition that you didn’t whistle at sea and Kemp was the sort of man who would jump on a whistler, hard and fast. He said, ‘Yes, that could be right, sir. That’s what Commander Phillips doesn’t like.’

  Kemp grinned. ‘Great minds! I think it’s a fair bet. The U-boats just aren’t around any more. We don’t know the actual course or position of the Prince of Wales, but Berlin could have had their ears to the ground. We all know about their bloody spy networks, Williams. And there’s something else we don’t exactly know but can have a damn good guess at: the Admiralty won’t know the U-boat packs have drawn off and are heading for bigger game.’

  Williams said, ‘We don’t know for sure either, sir. We can’t be sure we were spotted by a periscope. That’s really only guesswork too.’

  ‘Wars are often won on guesses, Williams, they’re the very stuff of decision! However, we’ll know before long. If no attack develops, they’ve gone.’ Kemp blew out a long breath. ‘That’s when I’ll have to decide whether or not to warn the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘She’ll have been alerted same as us, sir. By the Admiralty.’

  ‘Yes. But she won’t know the U-boats’ whereabouts or that an attack may be developing, Williams.’

  ‘But wireless silence — ’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s not a decision anyone can make yet. I shall make another assessment at first light. If there’s to be an attack, then it’ll come during the night, I fancy. And if that happens, there’ll be no need to worry about wireless silence. That’s all for now, Williams, thank you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Williams paused. ‘Will you be remaining on the bridge, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Williams.’

  Williams turned away and went down the starboard ladder to the Captain’s deck and on down to the boat deck, making aft for the 6-inch. From behind the gun-shield, PO Frapp saw him coming. Frapp sucked at a hollow tooth and spat disdainfully and skilfully over the side to leeward. ‘Here comes Johnny-come-lately,’ he said to the gun’s crew. ‘Watch out.’

  Williams halted by the gun. ‘We remain closed up, Frapp.’

  ‘Yes, sir. All-night job, d’you reckon?’

  Williams nodded. ‘The Commodore expects an attack to develop during the night.’ He didn’t add that the chances were no attack would come: no point in encouraging the guns’ crews to slack off, he considered them a sloppy lot at the best of times. What they needed wasn’t Frapp but a rasp-voiced gunner’s mate from the Whale Island gunnery school in Portsmouth. Frapp was something of an old woman and a bit past seagoing. Williams looked him over, superciliously. ‘Keep them up to the mark, Frapp.’ He peered closer. ‘That man. He’s not in the rig of the day.’

  Frapp said, ‘No, sir. It’s night.’ Then he, too, looked: Williams was right, one hand wasn’t in night clothing — still had his blue collar on. It should have come off after 1630 hours, as though it mattered when the gun’s crew were wearing their anti-flash gear. Frapp made a pretence at bawling the man out, more than ever convinced that Williams was a prat.

  ‘See it doesn’t happen again, Frapp. We can’t have slackness in wartime, you know.’

  He turned away to go for’ard again. Frapp said nothing; if he had done so, it might have been a mouthful that would have put him slap in the rattle and endangered his rate. He wouldn’t chance his arm to that extent. Officers could be rude to ratings but not the other way round.

  The Ardara moved on, the dark shapes followed in their columns, the destroyers’ wakes streamed back on either bow. Stars began to show, and a moon. The convoy became silvered with light, standing out sharply to any watching periscope. Throughout the convoy the guns remained manned on the orders of the Commodore, their crews weary but watchful, walking up and down where there was space, keeping themselves awake throughout a long night, most of them thinking thoughts far removed from their present environment. Home, women and beer ... the pubs of Queen Street and Commercial Road in Pompey, the dockside pubs in Liverpool and Birkenhead, Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, pubs in other parts where at the start of the war the canny Scots had produced whisky made from wood alcohol that had sent seamen blind — literally. Ladies of easy virtue loomed as large in their thoughts as the pubs, since the one led frequently to the other, a natural progression for a seaman ashore. Throughout the convoy the collected experiences of the land would have been a guarantee of hell’s everlasting fires, far too powerful to be redeemed by all the prayers of all the nuns and monks throughout the world since time began. But they were men and they were fighting a long, hard war against tyranny and dictatorship, and they had men’s desires. Perhaps God would not use too heavy a hand when they mustered at the last Defaulters.

  PO Frapp was one of those who might not make it: he hadn’t always been what Lieutenant Williams thought of as an old woman. He’d been quite a lad with the girls, once, before the fires had died down. A sweetheart in every port, had Frapp: Pompey, Guz, Chatham, Gibraltar, Malta, Singapore, Hong Kong ... currently he was thinking of Hong Kong, where there had been more than the one — Frapp had done two commissions China-side and the second time the first girl hadn’t wanted to know, having got married to a cook aboard an RFA, and he’d had to find another. He couldn’t even remember their names now, one had sounded like Hoo Flung Dung ... but the Chink women were wonderful in bed, nothing like them anywhere else. When he was a young AB he’d been told the Chink women were built different, that it went athwartships rather than fore and aft, but he’d soon found out that was just bull.

  Below in the bowels of the ship Mr Portway, whose experiences and far-flung womanizing were not dissimilar from Frapp’s, was thinking, or rather dreaming since he’d sat himself down in an alleyway near his fire hydrant and had fallen asleep, of Thurrock and Grays, of his wife and Mabel. It was Mabel’s fault that he awoke suddenly: he had an erection. Embarrassed, he shifted to conceal it, but went on thinking about Mabel and what they would do next time he was in Tilbury, and God knew when that was likely to be, what with the war having shattered all the schedules. Next time in, it would in all proba
bility be the Clyde again, not that anyone ever knew until they got there since no one was told anything of that nature, you just arrived somewhere and that was that, and then you sailed again and you didn’t know where for until you’d left port. The uncertainty made things very difficult for a man with two women to consider, both of them near each other and far south. Mrs Portway, once she had realized that Thurrock wasn’t going to see much of her husband while the war lasted, had made noises suggestive of wanting to shift up to Greenock or somewhere else handy. Mr Portway had dealt with that easily enough by hinting darkly at official secrets and the death penalty for careless talk that cost lives, and Be Like Dad Keep Mum as all the posters advised. If she went north, Mr Portway said, they’d be sure to pin it on him: she wasn’t supposed to know where the Ardara was.

  He wouldn’t in fact have said the same to Mabel, but Mabel had her job and he couldn’t afford to keep two women. Mabel had to pay her way. Currently Mr Portway was racking his brains as to how he might get her a job somewhere on the Clyde; he’d made a few contacts up there, useful contacts in hotels and so on, and something might be brought about. Mr Portway, as it happened, had no regular woman in or around Greenock, though there had been a few odd nights in Helensburgh ... Scots girls didn’t really appeal to Mr Portway. They were too direct, too outspoken and often abrasive, and for some reason or other he’d found the ones he had pursued had been Scottish Nationalists with a dislike of the English and the way their country had been taken over for war purposes by the navy. One of them, the last of his forays, had poked fun at his stomach, and that had hurt him. She’d wondered when he’d last seen his little willy other than in a mirror ...

  The junior third officer came along the alleyway and Portway scrambled to his feet.

  ‘All right, Mr Portway?’

  ‘Yessir. All’s well, sir.’

  ‘Good. It’s all quiet up topsides. With any luck ... ’

  ‘Funny, no attack, sir.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be if there was.’ The officer passed on, stepping clear of the run-out fires hoses. Mr Portway remained on his feet and decided it was time he made his rounds again. He did so; in the course of his tour of inspection he came upon Master-at-Arms Rockett with his long torch, seeking sin. Mr Portway reckoned that Rockett, too desiccated for the real thing, did it by proxy.

  ***

  The next day’s dawn was as splendid as the last evening’s sunset, a splendour of many colours. On the Ardara’s bridge the Commodore rubbed at tired eyes and stretched his arms, longing for his bunk. No attack: now the time for decision had come and couldn’t be delayed. The fact that there had been no attack must mean there were no U-boat packs, at least not where the Admiralty had expected them to be.

  ‘Williams?’

  ‘Here, sir.’ Kemp’s assistant emerged from the wheelhouse, where he had just got up from a catnap on the deck.

  ‘I shall have to warn the Prince of Wales — break wireless silence.’

  ‘It’s risky, sir. For the convoy, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. But there’s a greater prize for Hitler, Williams, as I’ve said before. Make a signal to the destroyer leader, by lamp: Propose warning ... propose warning prisoners-of-war of likelihood of their getting what we did not. How’s that?’ He saw the look of incomprehension and added testily, ‘POW, Williams. Phillips’ll get the drift. There’s still a need for secrecy within the convoy. God knows why, but I have to assume there is.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir. I think that’s fine, sir, if you really do —’

  ‘Really do what?’

  ‘Really do think it’s wise to break wireless silence, sir. As I said before, the Admiralty’s signal — ’

  ‘Yes. And as I said before, neither the Admiralty nor the Prince of Wales is aware of the current situation.’ Anger grew in Kemp: he was desperately tired. ‘I’ve already made my decision, Williams.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but — ’

  ‘But what?’ Kemp’s voice cut hard.

  Williams said stubbornly, ‘It’s my job to make representations, sir. Point things out.’

  The tone irritated. ‘You’re an assistant, Williams, not a consultant.’

  Williams flushed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I just — ’

  ‘That’ll be all, thank you.’ Williams went off to pass the signal order. Kemp knew he had been unfair and was already regretting it, but Williams was the sort who grated on a man when he was dead tired ... so damn tired, Kemp thought, that there was a possibility he wasn’t thinking straight. That was no use to anybody. In a gentler tone when Williams came back he said, ‘Let’s just hope it’s going to be in time.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Depends on how far off ... U-boats haven’t all that much speed submerged.’

  ‘No. And they won’t know the precise position.’ Kemp waited for the response from the escort commander. If Phillips came up with some cogent reason for not breaking wireless silence even for the Prime Minister, then maybe he would accept it, though since Phillips was RN he was probably to some extent hidebound about the use of W/T at sea in wartime. Kemp paced the bridge, so weary now that he cannoned off the screen at the extremity of the bridge and saw the look Williams gave him, the look that said the old buffer was past it.

  The leader was flashing now. Signalman MacCord reported the reply. ‘“Your 0433. Concur, sir.”’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Kemp gave something like a sigh. He said, ‘All right, Williams. Make: To Prince of Wales from Commodore OB 418, U-boat packs believed to be closing your position from west. All right?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Prefix?’

  ‘Most Urgent and Most Secret. Get it encyphered as fast as you can and transmit immediately.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ There was something smug about Kemp’s assistant and a moment later Kemp knew why. ‘I’ve already encyphered it, sir, during the night, word for word as it happens ... I anticipated — ’

  ‘You anticipated well, Williams. Well done!’ Kemp was astounded and in a way humiliated: Williams had hidden depths of efficiency tucked away and Kemp thanked God for it. This was something Kemp should have thought of for himself; perhaps he really was getting past it. Every second was vital — yes, he should have been more on the ball. It wouldn’t happen again. Williams, who had lost no time in taking the encyphered signal to the radio room, was quickly back to say the message had been transmitted. Naturally, there would be no acknowledgement: the Prince of Wales would not risk giving away her own position. The message had been transmitted three times to make as sure as possible that the telegraphists aboard the battleship picked it up.

  ‘That’s all, then,’ Kemp said. ‘Nothing more we can do now. I doubt if we’ll know the result until we reach Halifax.’

  But in that he was wrong. That same day, as the sun went down the sky to bring another brilliant painting to hang above the waters, the lookout at the foremasthead, sweeping round a full 360 degrees through his binoculars, reported a light signal from the rearmost ship of the convoy. Leading Signalman Mouncey read it off: ships, as yet unidentified, were closing from astern.

  Kemp said, ‘Sound the alarm, Williams.’ Once again the Ardara went to action stations, the ship becoming a busy beehive of running men above and below. As the overtaking ships, moving at high speed, came within visual distance, the challenge was made and answered, and soon after this Kemp recognized the silhouette of HMS Prince of Wales behind her escort, bringing her massive gun-power to head straight through the lines of the convoy. On she came, her escort parting to steam up the flanks of the outer columns, the great battleship herself passing between the two port columns to come close by the Ardara and the Commodore’s broad pennant that flew from the mainmasthead. There was enough light for those aboard many of the merchant ships to see the officers clustered on the compass platform, and to see someone else: a stocky figure wearing an overcoat and an odd-shaped black hat that was half-way between a bowler and a topper, standing for everyone to see, right for�
�ard in the eyes of the battleship, ahead of the centre-line capstan and the fourteen-inch turrets.

  As a gale of cheering swept across the darkening sea, Winston Churchill lifted his right hand high above his head, two fingers standing out in the familiar gesture.

  ‘And up Hitler and all,’ Petty Officer Frapp said at the after six-inch. ‘Good old Winnie!’ He roared the last three words out with all his voice, and the shout was taken up all along the decks. On the bridge Captain Hampton was standing with the Commodore as the Ardara’s ensign was dipped in salute.

  He said, ‘He’s blown it, sir. All by himself. Indiscreet?’

  Kemp laughed. ‘Not a bit of it! It’s a grand gesture — and it doesn’t matter now. He’ll be in Newfoundland waters long before we make Halifax.’ As he spoke the battleship’s flag deck came alive with a flashing lamp. Mouncey read, and reported.

  ‘From Prince of Wales to Commodore, sir. “Your 0445 appreciated. U-boat attack repulsed with bad news for the Führer. Surface raiders as reported earlier failed to show. Your escort will rejoin soonest possible.”’ Mouncey wiped a hand across his lips and added, ‘Message ends, sir.’

  Kemp nodded. ‘Thank you, Mouncey. Make back: Good luck to all aboard you and a safe passage.’ He turned to his assistant. ‘Read Prince of Wales’ signal over the Tannoy, Williams.’

  As Williams went into the wheelhouse another signal came from the battleship: the Stephen Starr had been encountered, the master had been transferred but had died. Kemp felt a curious emptiness inside. Poor Redgrave, so much endured for so little purpose in the end, another of the war’s heroes to be quickly forgotten, probably by the time the convoy reached Halifax.