“I’m not fuckin’ fussin’, I’m—”
“Don’t bloody argue, then. Come on …”
“Twenty-eight feet.”
“Twenty-eight, sir …”
“What happened, Number One?”
“Messerschmitt 110, sir. One bomb in the sea to port, and it strafed us with its guns. Came out of nowhere. Sorry, I should’ve—”
“Spilt milk.” He looked angry, all the same. “Port fifteen.” He steadied her a minute later on the reciprocal of her former course, heading seawards. He was at the periscope, looking astern at the island, when Paul came back. He’d muttered, “We’re well out of that.” Then the periscope was hissing down. He told the men around him, “They’re bombing the be-Jesus out of the place.” He glanced at the clock: it was eleven-thirty. “Trouble is, if we bottom here, we won’t know when it stops.”
To settle her on the bottom in water shallow enough to use the periscope would mean leaving the swept channel, and then you’d be risking mines. The enemy were sowing them in the harbour approaches most nights now, and it wasn’t practicable to clear more than the channel.
He reached for the Tannoy. “D’you hear there. There’s an air-raid in progress ashore, so we’ll stay out here until it finishes. No peace for the wicked …”
Janaway was going to be all right. He’d passed out while CPO Logan was probing for the bullet, but it had turned out there wasn’t one in there anyway. It had passed through, doing no serious damage. Logan had cleaned both ends of the wound and dressed it with sulphur powder, and dosed his patient with some pain-killer. Janaway was fed up—he called it “chocker”—at the prospect of missing the next patrol. The coxswain explained, “Reckons it ain’t safe ashore, sir.”
He was probably right, at that. The raid was still in progress four hours after it had started. With Sicily so close, of course, the bombers could run a shuttle-service. When Paul came off watch at 1415 the sky had been foggy with shellbursts and with smoke and dust rising from the battered island. He’d seen a lot of Junkers 88s and some 87s, Stukas, and the assault was still in full swing when Shaw dumped a tray of tea and biscuits on the wardroom table. It was in Wykeham’s next watch, an hour later, that the red flag crawled down the mast on the Castille fort.
Ruck looked up from an Edgar Wallace thriller. “About bloody time. Bring her round, Number One, and let’s crack on a bit of speed. Pilot, put a fix on and give me an ETA one mile from St Elmo.” He looked down at his book, then up again at Paul as a new thought struck him. “Sub, you can be first up, this time. Just in case.” Paul stared at him, wondering in case of what. Ruck explained, “I’m not risking a valuable first lieutenant again.”
Paul nodded: he was stuck for a suitable comment. Ruck added returning to his novel, “One of the telegraphists can take Janaway’s place.”
Half an hour later he was at the top of the ladder inside the tower, with Leading Telegraphist Dawson close below him. He’d taken both pins out, and released one clip; he waited with a hand on the other, hearing Wykeham chant, “Twelve feet—ten—eight—open up, Sub!” He pulled the lever of the clip down and felt the lug swing free, forced up with his other hand on the handle underneath the hatch: it swung up, thudded back. Then he was in the bridge with sea still sluicing away out of the drain-down holes, fore casing awash and the turned-out hydroplanes just clear of the surface, running with white foam. He’d checked all round and overhead with the naked eye by the time Dawson joined him with the Aldis lamp. It was plugged in inside the tower, its rubber-coated cable snaking through the hatch. The signal station was already calling on the submarine to identify herself.
Paul had the voicepipe open and they’d drained it down: he called down, “Tell the captain, all clear all round.” Engine clutches were in; the diesels started banging away, all of it happening without his having to pass down any orders.
“Pendants and message passed, sir.”
The pendants were P40, Ultra’s call-sign, and the message was to S10 requesting medical assistance be made available for Janaway.
The Jolly Roger hung like a dead cormorant from the after periscope. The Ensign was a lifeless-looking object too, drooping forlornly. Both of them had been dragged through the sea for half a day. It was disappointing: you only flew the Jolly Roger when you were returning from a successful patrol, and you liked it to be seen.
There was a signal coming. Paul bent to the pipe, adjusting course by a few degrees, aiming for the gap in the anti-torpedo boom. Dawson had put his lamp up and flashed a go-ahead.
P40 from S10. Berth alongside Lazaretto. Sorry you have been kept waiting at the door. Then confirmation that an ambulance would be waiting to transfer their wounded man to hospital. Paul passed it all down the voicepipe to the control room, adding, “Tell the captain we’re about to enter, there are no aircraft in sight and no red flag.”
Only the slightest touch of sarcasm. But there’d have been a smile or two, down below. Ruck came up a minute later—immaculate, fit to appear on a flagship’s quarterdeck. He told Paul, “That’s your regular job from now on, Sub. We’ll get you a tin hat.” He bent to the voicepipe: “Harbour stations!”
Paul went on down—over the side of the bridge, down cut-away footholds and round a narrow ledge to the fore casing, then for’ard past the gun. There was a gathering of Maltese on the foreshore to port, and more of them up higher on the stone balconies on that Valletta side. They were cheering and waving as Ultra slid into harbour. Ruck seemed not to have noticed them, so Paul waved his cap, and the cheering rose to a howl of welcome. They could see the black flag was up there, anyway: the Maltese loved the 10th Flotilla, for going out and attacking the people who’d been bombing and half-starving them for the last two years, and they knew all about Jolly Rogers.
Lovesay, the second coxswain, arrived, with the other four men of the casing party. They made their preparations for securing alongside, then fell into line, Paul right for’ard where the casing narrowed, the leading seaman next to him, then the others. Facing to starboard, because that was where the Lazaretto base would be when they reached it—passing the entrance to Sliema Creek and then the eastern point of Manoel Island, its massive fort dominating this view of it. There was a strong smell in the air—burning, and dust, and oil-fuel. Shale, too. Lovesay muttered, “Some sod’s caught a packet.”
“Smells like it.”
“Reckon it’s Talbot, sir?”
The base was officially known as HMS Talbot.
Beyond Lovesay, Dracula Jupp observed, “Fryin’ tonight.” He got a chuckle from his mates. But the submarine base was the Luftwaffe’s prime target now—or at least of equal attraction to them as the airfields. Further cheers, and clapping—from a crowd on the Valletta side again, and also from a group on Manoel Island. Soldiers among that lot—probably gunners, the Royal Malta Artillery, who had AA guns on the island and Bofors around the submarine base. Ultra was altering slightly to starboard, and round the bulge ahead was the Lazaretto building. Should be, if it was still standing. Paul smelt shale-oil very strongly now. Not just as a mild aroma, the perfume they all lived in and were so used to that they didn’t notice until girls complained about it, but a powerful, penetrating stink.
Lovesay’s nostrils twitched. “We been clobbered, all right.”
Coming into sight of the base now …
Engine noise ceased suddenly. Ultra moved on under her own momentum while the engine clutches were being disengaged. You had to use the motors for manoeuvring in harbour, because the diesels couldn’t be put astern. He felt the thrust of her screws again as the main motors took over.
There were no flames, or smoke. At first sight the sprawl of weathered stone seemed to be just as it had been when they’d last seen it. The building stretched along the water’s edge with a stone gallery a few steps above water level and an equally long balcony above it. There was a U-class submarine alongside already, and another in the process of securing between buoys just off shore. Both were
gleaming wet, obviously just up from hiding underwater. The one alongside—Paul read her pendant numbers on the side of the bridge—was Unslaked. Groups of officers and ratings on the balcony and in the gallery below it had stopped to watch their arrival, and on Unslaked’s casing a berthing party stood ready to receive them. Then suddenly, looking to his right, he saw the new bomb damage. The wardroom area, the officers’ cabins at the eastern end—a lot of that part was roofless, ruined. Two-hundredweight slabs of quarried stone had been scattered around like playing cards.
“See that, sir?”
“Yeah. I see it.”
He also noticed that Unslaked was flying her Jolly Roger.
From Ultra’s bridge, the shrill note of a bosun’s call … Paul said quietly, “Casing party, ‘shun.” Ruck was saluting Shrimp Simpson. A pipe from the balcony shrilled in answer: and there was Shrimp—a short, stocky figure in his gold-peaked cap, at the salute. Then the falling note of the “carry-on,” and an echo of it from Ultra. Formalities completed. Paul said, “Right turn, dismiss, get a line over, Second.”
Heaving lines soared and dropped as the motors went astern to stop her; then she was sliding gently in alongside the other boat. Paul saw that Unslaked’s third hand, an RN sub-lieutenant called John Hewson, was with the berthing party. Or just loafing there. He called, “Hi, John. Bad news here?”
Hewson nodded. Tall, red-haired. “Plenty. But did you hear we sank the other troopship?”
“You did?”
He nodded again. “Got back here at first light. Been sitting on the putty all day. What’s the ambulance for?”
“Tell you later.” He was supposed to be at work, and he didn’t want Ruck or Wykeham bawling him out with Simpson watching from the balcony hardly ten yards away.
As soon as the plank was down, linking the two submarines’ casings, Ruck went ashore to report to Shrimp. And Hewson prowled across to talk to Paul. Then some of the base specialists, technicians, came across and went below, to consult with Wykeham and Chief ERA Pool about defects and repairs. It had been a hell of a raid, Hewson told Paul. Two-thirds of the officers’ quarters had been opened to the sky, electric light, telephones and mains water had been cut, the submarines P36 and P39 had been damaged, and the fuelling lighter had been hit, set on fire and sunk. There’d been some casualties, too—the list of dead included the captain, first lieutenant and two officers of the Greek submarine Glaukos. They’d been running—too late—for the rock shelter.
A young naval doctor, an RNVR two-striper, came aboard with two SBAs and a stretcher. The doctor found the plank tricky to negotiate, treating it like a tightrope and seeming to hold his breath as he tottered over it. Panting, he stopped on the casing, waiting for the sickberth attendants to join him.
“How the hell do we get a stretcher with a man in it over that?”
Paul moved closer. “I think he’ll be able to walk. It’s only a shoulder wound. He’ll give you a hand over, I expect.”
The SBAs laughed. The doctor grinned. “All right. All right …” He climbed gingerly down into the TSC. Paul asked one of the SBAs, “Where’s our PMO?”The letters stood for principal medical officer. The base had its own surgeon captain, even though he’d lost his hospital in an earlier attack. The SBA said, “He’s dead, sir.”
“What?”
“In his house, ashore. Bomb. Two days ago.”
Janaway came up on his own two feet and with one arm in a sling. He was arguing about having to go to hospital at all, but the SBAs hauled him off and the doctor made the return crossing in the same odd, teetering manner. Logan went along too, taking Flyte and another telegraphist, Braidmore, with him, and they came back with two sacks of ship’s company mail. Then a messenger arrived, one of Simpson’s base staff, with a message to Wykeham from Ruck: one half of the ship’s company was to stay aboard, and the others were to be ready in half an hour to board transport that would take them to the rest camp. This started a stream of men, hammocks and kitbags out of the hatch and across the planks. Everything seemed fairly chaotic for a while.
One of Paul’s letters was from his father. For some considerable time after the mail had been distributed he made attempts to settle down and read it, but there was a lot to do and Wykeham kept giving him one job after another. Finally, when he’d actually got as far as slitting it open, Ruck came back aboard, took over the chair from McClure and demanded their attention.
“Listen, all of you. Here’s the position—and it’s not good …”
He gave it to them haphazardly, as items occurred to him, as he recalled what Simpson and his staff officers had told him … The damage to the base and to submarines, services cut off. Work in progress now to restore lighting, water and communications. Base officers whose cabins had been wrecked were shifting whatever remained of possessions or furniture to a former oil tank, a rock cavern with a floor area of one hundred feet by forty and a ceiling height of twenty. It had an uneven floor with pools of oil in the depressions, and the stink was horrible. But it was underground and safe, and there were dry areas of floor which were being connected by plank bridges laid across the foul areas. Shrimp’s secretary, Miss Gomer, was transferring her office work, desk and typewriter, down to this reeking dungeon because his day-cabin had had its roof blown off.
All personnel, officers and men, would henceforth mess together in the open air, using trestle tables. Submarine officers were to be put on lodging allowance and to sleep in the flats in Sliema, but they could use the oil tank as a changing room. Despite, presumably, the presence of Miss Gomer. All other sleeping accommodation would now be in double-tiered bunks in the rock shelters—which Shrimp Simpson, during the past eighteen months, had had burrowed into the sandstone cliff which backed the whole building.
As of tomorrow at sunrise, submarines would spend their days on the bottom of the harbour. Only one boat would stay alongside Lazaretto, risking bombs, while the entire base staff concentrated on readying just that one submarine for sea. All other work on submarines would be done at night. Periods in harbour would be reduced to a minimum, partly because of the problems here in Malta and partly because with Rommel preparing for a resumption of his offensive—an assault on Tobruk was expected, followed by an attempt to drive through into Egypt—the only good place for the 10th Flotilla submarines to be was out on patrol, cutting the Axis supply lines.
Ruck asked Paul, “Think you could take the boat out and dive her on your own, Sub?”
Paul stared at him, wondering if he was serious. It looked like it. The idea in its first impact was startling … He nodded, hoping he hadn’t shown the sudden fright that he’d felt.
“Don’t see why not, sir.”
“Nor do I. You can do it once under the first lieutenant’s supervision. If he tells me you’re competent, you and he’ll take alternate days.” He looked at Wykeham. “All right with you?”
“Well …” Wykeham looked scared. “Sounds dicey, but I dare say we’ll survive it.”
McClure was looking at Paul enviously. Paul was “third hand” and the Scot was fourth, because Paul had finished the submarine training course at Blyth a few months before McClure had started his, and he’d done a stretch in a training boat before being appointed to Ultra. Both he and McClure were still what sailors called “as green as grass,” but Paul was slightly less so. It seemed a lot of responsibility to be given, this soon; but he guessed that after he’d done it a couple of times he’d think nothing of it.
Ruck gave them the better news now, recent patrol successes. Ultimatum (Harrison) had blown a U-boat apart off Sicily somewhere, and Unslaked had completed the destruction of their troopship convoy. Both those former liners had been identified now, and Intelligence reported that the troops aboard them had been German.
Unslaked had hit with two torpedoes out of a full salvo of four, and like Ultra had escaped without a counter-attack. Several supply ships had been sunk off the Tunisian coast, and a convoy rounding northwest Sicily and steering
for Cape Bon had turned back after a freighter had been hit and a destroyer sunk. The freighter, with a deck cargo of German army vehicles, had beached itself, and the RAF had been invited to finish it off before the trucks could be got ashore. And Torbay, from the 1st Flotilla at Alexandria, had been right inside Corfu Roads, torpedoed two ships in broad daylight and sneaked out again.
Wykeham handed Ruck his mail.
“Ah. Thanks.”
“One of ‘em’s scented, sir.”
“From my grandfather, I expect … Listen. We’re getting three days in now, four at the most. Means the watch ashore gets two full days in the rest camp …”
Later, and after he’d read his mail, Paul went ashore, for a stroll and to look around. Only he and Wykeham and the duty watch were sleeping on board, so as to be on the spot to take her out at first light and dive her. Ultra’s diesels were pounding away and so were Unslaked’s, the combined racket shattering the night’s peace while the batteries were charged. Diesel exhaust drifting in near-still air added to the reek of shale. When the fuel lighter had been hit, the entire area had been sprayed with it.
Three other submarines lay at buoys, a floating brow reaching to them like a water snake lying black on the water.
The wardroom, although its eastern end had suffered and its messing facilities had ceased to exist, was still in use. It was a big, cellar-like space, entered from the long waterfront gallery. Dim now, candle-lit … A fireplace in the centre of it was open on four sides, so that in cold weather it could be surrounded by yarning, gin-drinking submariners. There were only a few groups of officers in here now: one of them, comprising only COs, included Ruck and the tall, ragged-bearded David Wanklyn VC. And Johnny March, Unslaked’s captain, and beyond him— Paul thought that was Tomkinson, captain of Urge. Another of the aces. Might Ruck, he wondered, become one of the top scorers before long?
McClure’s mutter echoed in his memory: Going for a VC, are we? After Ruck had sunk that tanker. It had been a silly thing to say. They were all here to sink enemy ships; if someone happened to get this or that medal in the course of doing it, OK, he got it. It could certainly never have been in Wanklyn’s mind, and it wouldn’t be in Ruck’s either.
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 11