A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4

by Alexander Fullerton

  Not only spring-like it was spring, and it was beginning to smell, feel and look like it. Soft, mild days and cool sparkling nights; dewy mornings loud with birds; clear skies, blue sea, and the scent of new growth, of a new year budding.

  How many here would see it bloom?

  Petty Officer Slattery, torpedo gunner’s mate, diced a passing turnip with a second burst from his Lanchester, and the rest of the crowd applauded. Slattery was a medium-sized man, dark and stockily built, with heavy shoulders and a receding hairline. After he’d had his turn the three leading torpedomen came forward, and all of them scored. Don Merrit, dark and smooth-faced, known to his mates as Romeo: Pug Rayner, a thickset, bearded Londoner: and Barty Lloyd, a smart, well-educated young Welshman who could have gone in for a commission except he said he wouldn’t touch one with a barge-pole. Then the Marines. Sergeant Bowater—a big man with the look of an amiable St Bernard—and Corporal Dewar, contrastingly compact and tough-featured. And Marines Laing and Bone: Laing fair, quiet, a farmer’s son from East Sussex; and Bone red-haired and wiry, wild-looking. Bone was Romeo Merrit’s main rival for any female talent that happened to pass within striking distance.

  Finally, Harry Pettifer, the ERA. His exceptionally large hands, wrapping themselves around the Lanchester—the naval version of a Sten gun— made it look about half-sized. A number of turnips hurtled past before he grooved one and then missed the next. He shook his head as he turned away, working the bolt to clear his gun’s chamber. “Not my day.”

  Slattery asked Jack quietly, “When d’you reckon the day is, sir?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t be far off now.”

  He hoped it couldn’t be.

  The briefing was to be held tomorrow, on board the commandos’ troopship, the Princess Josephine Charlotte. The audience at this session was to consist of thirty-nine commando officers and Jack Everard. Other ranks, and naval personnel, were to get their briefings later. The Army did of course have a lot more detail to absorb than the Navy had. The ships had only to get the troops to the target and—with luck—bring some of them back.

  Slattery sighed, stretching his short, thick arms. “Shan’t be sorry to be on the move.”

  A quiet voice, and a mild, thoughtful manner. You might have expected men who volunteered for this sort of work to be thugs, killers, but they weren’t at all. They were physically tough—if they weren’t so to start with, the training brought them up to scratch—but the real hallmark was intelligence and individuality.

  Courage? Jack thought that perhaps it was at this stage the real guts were called for. In the long, often boring waiting period, when you had time to think about it, wonder why the hell you were doing it anyway …

  The Princess Josephine Charlotte had brought the soldiers down from Ayr in Scotland, which apparently had been their main base. They were hand-picked men, drawn from about eight different commando outfits, and during recent weeks they’d trained in several different places. Some, on demolition training, had been at Cardiff before the naval team was sent there. Others had been up at Rosyth, and a lot of them had trained for a while in Southampton. Before they’d been earmarked for this particular operation they’d done stints in the Outer Hebrides, climbed mountains in the Highlands: there didn’t seem to be much they hadn’t done.

  The code-name for the operation was “Chariot.” And at this stage Jack was wondering whether the target might be Brest. Except he couldn’t think of what naval target might be in Brest now, considering that Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen had got away upchannel from Brest a month ago … And there were no clues to be picked up from the fact that a consignment of tropical clothing had been delivered to the MLs and other ships in the last day or two. The indication was supposed to be that the 10th A/S Striking Force was about to set off for foreign parts, and a rumour had been started that their destination was Freetown in Sierra Leone. At the naval headquarters nobody made any attempt to deny this: it was obviously a red herring, to confuse Nazi spies who might or might not have been thronging the Falmouth pubs.

  Jack had picked up only dribbles of information. The officer driving that MTB with the bow torpedo tubes, for instance, was a man called Wynn. There was an MGB too—motor gunboat—involved, and some destroyers. Two of these, Hunt-class, were already in Falmouth, and another—about which there was a lot of secrecy—was in Devonport, Plymouth’s naval dockyard, undergoing some kind of refit. This was why the naval force commander, Commander Ryder, had been away in Devonport. What else … Well, the military commander was a colonel by the name of Newman. And all the commandos had been as sick as cats all the way to the Scillies and back again.

  Trolley came down the hill, looking for Jack.

  “Ready to move off?”

  “Absolutely.” He got off the wall he’d been sitting on. Eyes still resting on the downward sweep of greenery, green turning hazy where it ran to merge with a distant and even hazier blue. Deep shadow where a belt of still mostly leafless woodland dipped through a valley, a cleft between the hills. You could see roofs down there, and a church spire, chimney-smoke hanging like paint on canvas. Timeless, and precious: and—oddly, when you first recognized this—not at all in conflict with the sense of purpose that imbued them all. Because for centuries Englishmen had left for war with such pictures in their hearts, and God knew how many had died still treasuring them. From this very coastline, for instance, Drake, Frobisher, Grenville … A muscle worked in Trolley’s jaw as his eyes moved across the landscape. Harbouring similar thoughts, Jack wondered? Thoughts of the summer you mightn’t see? You’d need to know a man a lot better than he knew Trolley before you spoke about it. And in any case, this—groping for a half-formed concept, he told himself that the summer still would come, would come and fade and come again a thousand times: and this hillside, England itself—

  “Making new friends, last evening?”

  “What?”

  Trolley had turned his back on the view. “Very smart little number. Can’t say I blame you in the least!”

  “Oh …” Back to earth: he realized what Trolley was on about. He told him, “Happens to be the girlfriend of—well, a relation of mine.”

  “Really?” Trolley laughed. “Nice story, anyway!”

  Late yesterday he’d dropped in at the naval HQ on the seafront, to confirm that he’d received his summons to the military briefing. While he was there, he also visited the SDO—signals distribution office—to pick up anything that might have been in the NTU’s pigeonhole or in Sharp’s. In fact both were empty. But as he was leaving through the former hotel’s foyer he heard quick steps behind him, and then a girl’s voice calling his name.

  “Lieutenant Everard?”

  He stopped. It was a young Wren, and he’d noticed her in the SDO. Not only because she was attractive but also because she’d stared at him while he’d been in there. She looked very young: he’d have guessed she wasn’t more than seventeen. Dark hair and blue eyes—a combination that had always attracted him—and a wide, rather sensual mouth. It was her mouth he was looking at as she asked him diffidently, “Excuse me, but— could you be a relation of Paul Everard?”

  He nodded. “I’m his uncle.”

  Her expression changed. She thought he was giving a silly answer …

  “All right. Sorry. I just thought—well, your name isn’t all that usual, and in the Navy it does seem to have—well—”

  “Connotations? I know. Relations by the score, and most of them ancient mariners. I am Paul’s uncle, though. Half-uncle, actually. His father and I are half-brothers, you see, although I’m only a couple of years older than Paul.”

  “Oh.” She was very pretty when she smiled. “I see!”

  “And who are you?”

  “Sally Thirsk. I knew Paul up in Scotland. I was stationed at Greenock for a while, when—”

  “You poor little creature! Greenock, of all—”

  “—when he”—she’d faltered—”was up there in his submarine. I th
ink he must be in Malta now, but I haven’t heard, since—”

  “Lazy young swine. In his shoes, I’d be writing to you twice a day. Reams and reams … I’ll tick him off, if you like.”

  “Don’t bother. But I’ll write and tell him I’ve met you.”

  “You’ll scare the daylights out of him. In his book I’m a bad hat.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “A really dangerous character. You just ask him.” If her eyes hadn’t been blue, he thought, she’d have had a look of Dorothy Lamour. In fact she did have.

  She asked, “And are you?”

  “Of course not. It’s a total misconception.” It was also one of the most kissable mouths he’d ever seen. He thought, Paul’s as well as Nick’s? It was an amusing thought, and it certainly wouldn’t have involved any hardship … But—he thought, looking down into the intrigued and fascinatingly innocent blue eyes—it was no more than an amusing thought. The fact was, he felt sure he could have: that was the pleasure in it … Her smile had faded. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Shall we go outside for a moment?”

  Past the sentry in his gaiters, and a short way down the seafront, eastwards. Presumably she wanted to be out of earshot of the sentry before she asked him something about Paul. But make a time-change and a clothes-change, he thought: himself in flannels and this girl in a cotton frock, strolling on a seaside esplanade on a warm evening … If you took away those barbed-wire barricades—

  “What I wanted to ask—although I suppose I ought not to—what is all this about?”

  “All what?”

  “Well, the whole thing. I’ve only been here a few days, but nobody seems to know anything. Then this rumour about Freetown—but—well, it all seems so peculiar, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anti-submarine work, or—”

  “It doesn’t?”

  Facing her, on the seaside pavement. Smiling, as if her question puzzled him. And it did, really: what the hell did she care? “Evening, Jack.”

  Trolley, with a commando major: in step, and heading for the hotel entrance, glancing at the girl, grinning at Jack. He turned back to her, as the sentry came to attention and saluted the army visitors … “Sally—if you’re writing to Paul, give him a message for me? Tell him I got engaged, before I left London.”

  Tubby Sharp’s new sub-lieutenant, a Canadian by the name of Dixon, had arrived down from Scotland, and Bellamy, pronounced fit for shore duties only, had been given a job in the naval HQ helping with the administration of the ML flotilla. ERA Pettifer reported late on Tuesday that Sauerkraut was fit and ready to go: the stern gland had been repacked, various engine adjustments made, and the modifications which had been started in Cardiff were complete. The new Oerlikon needed testing, though, and Sharp decided he’d take the boat out for machinery trials and gunnery practice on the Wednesday. Pettifer and the rest of Jack’s team opted to go along for the ride, but Jack couldn’t because he had to attend the military briefing.

  The door of the troopship’s wardroom was shut and locked before the briefing started. Colonel Newman, the military force commander, had the floor; he also had a scale model of some dockyard port, and a large wall-map. Jack had barely had time to do more than glance at either of them before he had to take his place, beside Trolley, in a suddenly hushed and expectant crowd of commandos.

  Operation Chariot …

  No notes were taken, and a lot of ground was covered very fast. When it was over and he was walking back along the quays to where the minesweeper was berthed, Jack set himself to rerunning everything he’d heard, putting it together in his memory, particularly the parts of it that affected him and his Task Unit …

  There’d been a warning, to start with, that what they were about to be told was not to be divulged to anyone at all. It wasn’t even to be discussed with their naval colleagues—the ML skippers, for instance. And this briefing was to provide only a broad outline of the nature of the operation: details would be given in the Operation Order—which they’d find to be a forty-page document of close type and diagrams—and in separate briefings of individual parties.

  They were not going to be told, at this stage, the geographical location of the target area.

  Security was vital, the element of surprise paramount. They would be making a landing and carrying out demolition work deep inside enemy-held territory, and it was known that, apart from fixed defences, guns, searchlights, etc., a strong garrison force of German troops was barracked no more than a mile from the target area.

  Here was a scale model of the port; and here, a large-scale diagram of its layout. The assault would be timed to take place at 0130, and re-embarkation should be completed by 0330. In those two hours, or possibly in less than two hours, a number of specific targets would be destroyed.

  There would be an air-raid by RAF bombers starting at 2200, opening with an attack on the dockyard and shifting at midnight to the town. Bombing would continue even after troops had gone ashore. The object of this air attack was to distract and confuse enemy gunners, and particularly to occupy the German dual-purpose, high-angle/low-angle guns during the ships’ approach to the landing points.

  Ships allocated were as follows: two Hunt-class destroyers, HMS Tynedale and HMS Atherstone, as escorting ships in both directions; one ramming destroyer, HMS Campbeltown; one MGB, motor gunboat, the headquarters ship in which the military and naval force commanders would embark; one MTB, with delayed-action torpedoes for use against lock gates; and sixteen MLs, of which twelve would carry commandos and four would have torpedoes for use against enemy patrol vessels which might be encountered en route. It was very much hoped, of course, that no such contingency would arise: the object was to achieve total surprise.

  The primary target was the outer gate or caisson of this very large dry dock. The destroyer Campbeltown would cut through the anti-torpedo boom protecting it, and then ram it head-on. Campbeltown, formerly the USS Buchanan, an old four-stacker and one of the famous fifty lease-lend destroyers received from the United States, was at present in dockyard hands, in Devonport. Among the changes being made to her was the installation of an exceptionally powerful explosive charge in her bow. This would be set off by time-fuse some hours after she embedded herself in the caisson. But she would also be carrying commandos who would land over her forepart on to the caisson and thence ashore.

  Object of the operation: why it was so important to destroy this particular dock … It happened to be the only dry dock on the European Atlantic coast big enough to accommodate the new German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship to the Bismarck. Bismarck had been hunted down and sunk by the Royal Navy about a year ago, and the Navy was hell-bent, naturally, on bringing the sister ship to battle and destroying her in a similar manner. Meanwhile, however, she was at Trondheim in Norway, posing a considerable threat to our convoys supplying the Russian armies through Murmansk. Even more important, there was a danger of her breaking out into the Atlantic, where our convoy routes were already in mortal danger from the U-boats. If Tirpitz, a monster of more than 40,000 tons, added her fire-power to that effort, the Atlantic might well become impassable to convoys. Not only would Britain starve, but the enormous effort of building up forces and munitions for an eventual Allied landing in Europe would be halted. But for Tirpitz to set out on such a foray, she’d need to be assured of having a base on the Atlantic coast where she could be docked for maintenance and repairs. This—the port represented by the model—was it. The only possible one. There was no other dock large enough to hold her. If it could be smashed, the Atlantic would be closed to the Tirpitz; consequently its destruction was of the greatest strategic importance.

  In addition to the giant caisson at the outer end of the dock, there were other important installations marked down for destruction: for instance, the mechanism for sliding the huge gates to and fro, certain bridges and other lock gates, a power station, pumping equipment and fuel storage ta
nks.

  There was one other major target not directly connected with the primary object of the operation. For this, a separate team of Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel had been added to the landing force. Their part of the operation, which was linked with the main one but basically separate, would be described later. First, a look at the general topography …

  The big dock—the primary target, with the caisson that would be rammed at its south end—was also the entrance to an inner basin. You could see it as a sort of wide canal with gates at each end: it became a dry dock by shutting the gates and then pumping the water out of it. It was nearly 1200 feet long and 165 feet wide. The caissons were vast constructions built of steel and sliding on rollers: each was 54 feet high, 167 feet long and about 36 feet thick. No pushover … And the King George V dock at Southampton, on which many of the demolition experts present at this briefing had spent so many weary hours, was virtually a twin of the target dock. In that Southampton dock they’d learnt to place their charges by feel alone, in pitch darkness, and they’d find they could do the same thing on this German—well, French—dock too. Similarly, the teams who’d be blowing up pumping equipment and winding-gear would find that the games they’d played had been very close indeed to the real thing.

  The big dock that was the primary target led into the inner, northern basin. It could be seen on the diagram and on the model. It had a name, but at this briefing names weren’t being mentioned. The northern basin was divided by a swing bridge from this large rectangular one immediately to the south of it. This one too could remain nameless for a while, but it was roughly 800 yards long and 150 wide. At its bottom end was another entrance and/or exit, again with lock gates at each end, also one lifting bridge and one swing bridge and the machinery to operate them. And a power station. This southern entrance was in fact the main entrance to both those interleading inner basins, and it was approached from seaward through a harbour area, enclosed by a jetty and a breakwater, known as the avant-port. But all those lock gates and installations were listed for destruction.