Convoy Homeward

by McCutchan,Philip

  Kemp, standing by the square port of his cabin and staring out across the troopship’s fore decks, hadn’t moved when Finnegan had asked in embarrassment if there was anything he could do. Finnegan had had to repeat the question.

  ‘Thank you, Finnegan. No.’

  Finnegan had then left him alone with his thoughts and his anguish.

  *

  Within the next quarter of an hour Kemp was back on the bridge. His face, very pale, was set into hard lines that deterred any expressions of sympathy. The only reference he made to the broadcast from Germany was made obliquely to Maconochie.

  ‘There seems a likelihood that the Stuttgart is homing onto the convoy, Captain. We could be in action at any time after about the next twelve hours. Before that happens, we’ll need to carry out a sea burial. Pumphrey-Hatton. I shall attend, of course.’

  Maconochie nodded. ‘I suggest the afternoon watch. Three bells.’ He paused: currently this was a fraught situation. He said, ‘I’ll have the bosun informed.’ Bosun Barnes would have to see to the preparations, the plank, the Union Flag, the canvas shroud, the bearer party. Bearers were, it seemed, on the Commodore’s mind as well.

  He said, ‘We’ll have to liaise with Harrison. Or Carter — or both. The bearer party must come from the military.’ His tone was expressionless. ‘Pumphrey-Hatton … a difficult man but very much a soldier. I’m wondering if he’d prefer a native guard or an Australian one. I believe he’d have preferred the rifles. Same sort of traditions as a regiment from home.’ Kemp half turned his head. ‘Finnegan?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Commodore?’

  ‘Take soundings. We don’t want to hurt any feelings.’

  Finnegan went below and made contact with both colonels. The sea committal was carried out as planned at three bells in the afternoon watch. The bearer party was provided by the riflemen, Colonel Harrison being only too glad to spare his Australians the duty. It was, however, the Australian padre who conducted the service with both Kemp and Maconochie in attendance. Among the immediate attendance were Colonel and Mrs Holmes. Mildred had been reluctant; she disliked funerals and there was something extra about a funeral conducted in the midst of possible terrible danger to them all; but Holmes had insisted. It was their duty: the late brigadier had been one of themselves.

  During the short service it was observed that the Commodore had tears in his eyes. By this time all aboard knew the reason why. Mildred Holmes remarked sotto voce to her husband that Lord Haw-Haw ought to be shot.

  ‘After the war,’ Holmes said, ‘he will be.’

  *

  The absence of the heavy cruiser Vindictive had made itself felt once she had detached for the Freetown base. There was a naked feeling, a feeling of being exposed. The biggest warship now left was the escort carrier Rameses and she hadn’t a great deal of speed and manoeuvrability, and her guns were not of heavy calibre — her Barracuda torpedo-bombers and her Seafire fighters, the naval equivalent of the land-based Spitfires, were her armament. They might well be called upon. Before the light faded that afternoon, they were. A signal was flashed to the Commodore from the senior officer of the escort, informing him that Rameses had been ordered to fly off one of her Barracudas to spot ahead, searching out the oncoming German raider. If contact was made, the Barracuda would refrain from attacking and would return to the carrier to make its report. Rameses would then fly off her full squadron and the convoy would deviate westwards in an attempt to stand clear of the Stuttgart. It would be up to the Commodore thereafter if and when he ordered the merchant ships to scatter.

  ‘Always a tricky decision,’ Kemp said. ‘There’s danger either way. You can stay and maybe form a compact target, or you can risk being caught without the escort. So we’ll play it by ear when the time comes.’

  There was another point to be considered now: the signalling between the Commodore and the escort would have been noted from the troopship’s decks and obviously the flying-off of aircraft from the carrier was going to be very plain to see. Kemp said, ‘The time’s come to give them the facts, Captain.’

  Maconochie agreed. Kemp, as signs of activity were seen on the carrier’s flight deck, went to the Tannoy in the wheelhouse. His words were brief and to the point. ‘This is the Commodore speaking. Rameses is about to fly off aircraft on a spotting mission. Troops must not crowd the starboard side to watch, since to do so would bring us too heavy a list.’ He paused, cleared his throat. His voice was unaccustomedly husky. ‘It is believed the German raider is coming down upon the convoy from the north. You may all be sure I shall take avoiding action in good time once the Stuttgart’s position is known. I am expecting to rendezvous with HMS Duke of York shortly.’

  That was all; ‘shortly’ was but a hope. Kemp believed the battleship to be still well to the north. It was perhaps too much to hope that she would intercept the Stuttgart before the latter picked up the convoy. But if by some chance she did, then her big guns should make short work of the German.

  Within the next ten minutes a lone Barracuda was seen to be taking off from the carrier. The sound of its engines was heard aboard the Aurelian Star as she cleared the flight deck and gained height, heading north to seek out the enemy. Gregory Hench heard it from his stool in the B deck lounge, the stool to which he seemed anchored. Miss Northway heard it as she came up from her cabin to take a walk on deck and worry about the immediate future. She was looking for Captain Mulvaney but failed to find him amongst the troops thronging the upper decks. In the lounge she joined Hench: any company was better than none. Hench sat gloomily, nursing a double whisky just provided by Maclnnes. He looked up as Gloria Northway joined him. He said, ‘Speaking again, are we?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. And don’t sulk. You’ve been sulking ever since —’ She broke off, realizing what she’d been about to reveal, not that it mattered all that much.

  ‘Ever since what?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing, Greg.’

  ‘Ever since that loud-mouthed Australian screwed you.’

  She laughed. ‘He didn’t, as a matter of simple fact.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. I mean no, it’s a fact he didn’t. He turned up at the wrong time.’

  ‘Wrong time?’

  ‘Oh, don’t you be thick too. Anyway, he seemed offended and took himself off. Now he’s sulking too, I think.’

  Hench had ticked over. He said, ‘In a few days’ time he won’t be.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she agreed. ‘That is, if we’re still around. You heard the Commodore’s broadcast, I take it?’

  He nodded, and ordered another large whisky and a gin for Gloria — why not? He might as well lose with a good grace, especially if they were all going to die within a day or so. He said, ‘Nothing we can do about it. Except wait and see.’

  ‘And pray.’

  He jeered. ‘You, pray?’

  ‘I’m going to, Greg,’ she said seriously. ‘I may not be used to praying and I’m darn sure God won’t be rating me very high, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  She took the gin from Maclnnes and sipped. Then she said, ‘I heard one of those Aussies talking, Greg. He said there are no atheists in a fox-hole. I think he was right.’

  Hench didn’t answer; he stared down into his whisky, into the comforting amber glow. Maybe that was his God. If you were going to die, what better way to go than pissed as a newt so you felt no pain? He signed a chit for another large Scotch.

  Below decks, others worried about the prospects for a safe arrival in the Firth of Clyde. The Holmeses worried, though the old colonel tried not to show it. It was, of course, Mildred whom he worried about rather than himself. He was a soldier. Death in action was always on the cards for a soldier from the moment he left Sandhurst or his regimental training depot. A wife was different. But if one of them was left — either one — what would become of the other? Holmes couldn’t begin to visualize life without Mildred. Love and companionship apart, he would be lost. He couldn’t even boil
an egg — had never had to. Servants in pre-war Britain, native houseboys in Africa … life on his own in England would be insupportable. And Mildred, if she was left and he had gone? Of course it was easier for a woman, women were domestic creatures anyway and they could cope better. But she would be in a financial mess, only a widow’s pension to live on, a pittance when based on his service pay of so many years before when the pay of officers had been itself a pittance.

  After the Commodore’s broadcast Holmes put his arms around his wife and held her close. He told her that he loved her; she said she knew that though it had been a long time since he’d said so; and she loved him. She said quietly, ‘If you go, Stephen, I shall follow you. I mean that.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No. Don’t think about it, my dear. It isn’t going to happen. Commodore Kemp —’

  ‘He’s not God,’ she said. Holmes could think of no adequate response to that.

  *

  Once again Chief Steward Chatfield was gathering up his overtime sheets and other documents concerned with payments and stores requisitions. Never mind a sinking if it came, the Superintending Chief Steward ashore in Liverpool would demand all relevant bumph. Life — or death, come to that — was like that, you always had to show a chit.

  The photograph of Roxanne went in with the bumph; she would be nicely cushioned by the stewards’ overtime. Chatfield was still worried about that Morris Eight as he prepared to face German gunfire and maybe leave Roxanne a widow though possibly not a sorrowing one. Chatfield’s mind switched to his home: all his furniture, his bits and pieces, things that had come down from his mum and dad, from his grandparents too. Things that in many cases had not appealed to Roxanne. The stuffed owl beneath a glass dome that had been his dad’s pride; the reproduction of a painting, The Monarch of the Glen, in which an antlered stag on a mountain-side stared arrogantly at a bit of Scotland; an antimacassar, pink and blue stitching, that his gran had laboured over for hours; a chocolate tin that had been presented by Queen Victoria to his uncle along with all the other troops on active service in the Boer War; a PO that his dad had bought in Arundel and was said to have been used by Queen Victoria on one of her visits to the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle. It was now in Chatfield’s parlour, in use as a receptacle for a pot plant. Things like that, all treasured, though not by Roxanne. Roxanne didn’t like what she called antiques; she was all art deco, modern stuff. Now, if he went, the stuffed owl and all the rest would no doubt pass to the sod he still didn’t know was called Cocky Bulstrode. Either that, or it would all be chucked out as junk.

  It was a nasty thought, with the bloody Stuttgart no doubt all set to blow the Aurelian Star out of the water. It wasn’t bloody right. Wasn’t bloody right at all. Chief Steward Chatfield reflected on the air raids on Southampton. Maybe a bomb would sort out the Morris Eight. The Lord, Chatfield understood, moved in a mysterious way and in so doing was wont to sort out the good from the bad. Chatfield had always been an honest man. Well — more or less; he was, after all, a chief steward and perks were perks, anyone knew that.

  *

  Within minutes of the returning Barracuda’s approach to the carrier’s round-down and its hook being caught by the arrestor wires stretched across the flight deck, Kemp had been informed by the lamp flashing from CS23’s bridge that contact had been made with the Stuttgart, which was approximately seventy-five miles ahead of the convoy’s track and steaming south at an estimated 25 knots. While Kemp and Maconochie conferred with Chief Engineer French and the officers of the trooping staff, the torpedo-bomber squadron took off from the Rameses and headed north on their killing mission. Kemp was reserved as to their chances.

  ‘The German’s got fairly massive ack-ack,’ he said. ‘And Barracudas aren’t all that manoeuvrable. We’ll still be very vulnerable.’ Already the convoy had altered away from the raider’s track, steaming west-nor’-westerly and maintaining the zig-zag against possible U-boat attack. ‘We may be lucky and miss her — it’s a chance either way. We may come inside radar range, in which case she’ll home onto us, but —’

  ‘Are you going to scatter the convoy, Commodore?’ This was OC Troops. Kemp shook his head.

  ‘Not yet, Colonel. Time enough for that when we get a further report from the aircraft.’

  ‘Not much time surely? Closing speed, what, 40 knots or so? She’ll be on us within a couple of hours.’

  ‘Yes, I know. If she finds us. But she’ll be engaged by the escort, don’t forget. The escort’s the only screen we have and I have to consider that.’ Kemp’s face was grey with tiredness and anxiety: he could be making the wrong decision, he was always aware of that. But there were the risks inseparable from any scatter order, the over-riding risk that individual ships on their own could become easy prey to a U-boat … the whole idea behind the convoy concept was that there was safety in numbers. Not always, though; and it was Kemp’s responsibility to decide.

  As the conference broke up, Kemp thought suddenly about Featherstonehaugh, whom he had yet to see. It wasn’t fair on anyone to keep him hanging on but certainly now was not the time. Once the threat from the Stuttgart was over and done with, the matter would be a first priority.

  *

  The reconnoitring aircraft had not approached within range of the Stuttgart’s AA armament; but she had been spotted by the German lookouts shortly after the radar had picked her up on the screen. Captain von Bellinghausen was not unduly worried: the presence of a carrier with the convoy’s escort had been known but von Bellinghausen had full confidence in the ability of his anti-aircraft gunners to deflect any bombing or torpedo attack. Those gunners would put up a virtually impenetrable shield of lead and shrapnel, and the British would go down like ninepins.

  Nevertheless, it was plain that the British convoy would now know for certain of the presence of the Stuttgart; therefore it would be necessary to re-think the situation, just a little, in order to outwit the enemy. Von Bellinghausen tried to, as it were, insert himself into the mind of the British commander. The British were a wily race; where the German, or at any rate the Prussian, mind was straightforward and forthright, the British mind twisted and turned so that it was very difficult indeed to determine what they might be expected to do next …

  Captain von Bellinghausen spoke to his navigating officer. ‘Clearly the British will alter course.’

  ‘Ja, Herr Kapitan.’

  ‘In which direction would you expect them to alter, Friske?’

  Friske said confidently, ‘To the east, Herr Kapitan, in order to remain closer to the shore of Africa. There is the British base at Freetown in Sierra Leone —’

  ‘You believe they may run for Freetown, Friske?’

  ‘It is possible, yes, Herr Kapitan.’

  Von Bellinghausen stalked his navigating bridge; he was deep in thought. There was truth in what Friske had said, but von Bellinghausen was doubtful. If to run for the safety of the Rokel River and its filthy native Kroos in their deplorable dug-out canoes with persons defecating over the sides was what the British would think that he, von Bellinghausen, would think … then their duplicity would have to be matched by his own wits. The British might in fact move westerly while the Stuttgart moved easterly and then he would miss his prize.

  It was a quandary, but not for long. Von Bellinghausen made up his mind. ‘Friske,’ he said, ‘we alter course south-westerly. I believe the convoy will attempt to escape on a north-westerly course, hoping to outflank us and then to make their rendezvous with the battleship from Scapa Flow.’

  ‘Ja, Herr Kapitan.’ The navigating officer bent to the voice-pipe and passed the orders to bring the Stuttgart onto what was to prove a closing course with the convoy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The convoy had increased speed to the west-nor’-west, each ship managing to squeeze out the extra three knots that was the most Chief Engineer French could extract from his own engines. More than that and they would rattle to pieces, he had told the Commodore, might even b
e at risk of shearing the holding-down bolts, he had added — which was an exaggeration but not so far from the truth all the same. The ship had been continuously at sea from the beginning of the war and never enough time in port for a full engine-room overhaul.

  On the bridge Kemp and Maconochie, as the sun went down in a brilliant scene of orange and green, scarlet and purple over the shores of South America far to the west, maintained an unbroken vigil of the horizon behind the ship. Their binoculars searched for the first signs of the enemy: the masts and then the funnel, indicating a ship as yet hull-down … and then the emerging upperworks, the bridge and the gunnery control tower, then the heavy fore batteries of the raider. The Stuttgart had the legs of them; once sighted, the uneven battle would be joined at once, starting with the cruisers of the escort. The destroyers and the aircraft carrier had altered to take them onto a course to intercept the enemy, while the cruisers, remaining with the convoy, stationed themselves between the merchant ships and the bearing from which the raider might be expected to appear. If the raider was sighted the cruisers would make smoke, laying a screen to hide the convoy and confuse the aim of the German gunnery controllers.

  It wouldn’t really help much; but it was all that could be done. And if the German did appear, then Kemp would scatter the convoy.