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

by Alexander Fullerton

  Jack was looking at another copy of the outline plan: it was the same drawing of the target area, but the fixed defences—German guns—were marked on it. All along the sea frontage, and on the Old Mole, and on every roof and other vantage-point. He glanced up at Hawkins. “Might be a bit of a duck-shoot, from the Germans’ point of view?”

  “Well—not quite that bad.” Hawkins made a face. “I’m not saying it won’t be a rough passage, because obviously it will be. But during your approach, a hell of a lot of Oerlikons on Campbeltown and the MLs will be giving as good as they get. Also, there’ll have been an RAF bomber force over the target area for a couple of hours before you get there. And then of course the commandos’ll make short work of those defences once they get ashore.”

  It sounded all right. It looked, he thought, bloody awful. But he’d remembered his question now.

  “You said Campbeltown was being lightened to reduce her draught so she can get up some river, sir. May I ask what river?”

  “You may. What’s more, I’m allowed to tell you. Reason being that for the purposes of discussions you’ll need to have now with Commander Ryder, you’ve got to know it anyway. But I’m also to impress on you that the rest of our chaps won’t be briefed until after the dress rehearsal; so for God’s sake—”

  “I know.”

  Hawkins pulled out a chart.

  “Here. The river is the Loire, and your target is six miles up it. And the deep-water channel—this, the Charpentier—as you’d expect, has shore gun-batteries zeroed-in on it every yard of the way. It also winds around, which would make the approach longer. So you’ll be taking a straight course—another reason for using MLs, of course, with their shallow draught—slam-bang across the mud-flats. Look.”

  He went on with his explanation—a planner explaining the logic of his planning, pointing out the features of the approach, the river passage through six miles of enemy-held territory. Jack staring down at the chart, seeing only the name—St Nazaire …

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ruck was on his knees at the periscope as Ultra crept in towards her target, the beached ammunition ship. He was down on the boards like that in order not to show too much periscope up top: they were in shallow water and holding a depth of only twenty-five feet because of the sandbanks under the boat’s keel.

  “Stop port.”

  “Stop port, sir.”

  If he did hit bottom he wouldn’t want to hit it hard or twist a propeller blade, for instance. He pushed the handles up and sat back, squatting on his heels as the long brass tube slid down into its well.

  “Got that fix on, pilot?”

  McClure nodded, glancing around. “Won’t get in much closer, sir.”

  “Then we’ll have to get out and walk.” He gestured for the periscope.

  “What’s on the sounder, Sub?”

  Paul checked it. “About five feet under the keel, sir.”

  Ruck circling again, crouched like some kind of ape, daylight flashing weirdly in his eyes. Using the air search on this circuit: it did seem likely there’d be aircraft patrols along the coast, particularly with this Italian ship stuck on it. There had to be some kind of life on the surface too, because there was a lighter alongside her and they were using the ship’s derrick to unload her, or possibly just to lighten her so they could get her off. But that lighter alongside had come from somewhere: and Ruck’s guess, propounded half an hour ago over the wardroom table, was that there’d be a tug and another lighter, and the tug would currently be hauling a load inshore before returning with the empty lighter and taking this one in. It was possible, in fact likely, that the ship had been beached deliberately after damage from an RAF bomb or some other submarine’s torpedo. About seven miles up-coast—eastward—there was a little harbour called Zarzis, which was the likely off-loading spot.

  He’d settled on the target again now. Ultra was rolling a bit: she was close up under the surface turbulence, and although the wind had dropped the sea was still lively over the shallows.

  “Gunlayer?”

  “Here, sir.”

  Creagh moved up beside Paul. The other four men of the gun’s crew were in the gangway by the wardroom. Other hands, the ammunition-supply chain which would establish itself after the boat surfaced, were clustered beyond them. The magazine hatch was open, with a few rounds of HE, high explosive, out on the corticene-covered deck beside it, and Shaw was down inside there, like an old buck rabbit looking out of its hole, waiting to pass more up.

  Ruck told Creagh, “Target’s a merchant ship, about four thousand tons. She’ll be on our port bow when we surface. Range 030. Point of aim the after well-deck. There must be a hatch open over one of the holds there: try to drop your bricks right into it. Got it?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Creagh’s mouth, part-open, revealed those broken teeth. Ruck finished, “No deflection. Shoot.”

  That told him to open fire when his sights were on the target. He didn’t have to wait for any further order.

  “Stand by to surface!”

  “Stand by to surface, sir …” Wykeham ordered, “Check main vents.” Ruck had gone over to peer at the echo-sounder, while the periscope went down behind him: now he’d come back to it. “Up.” The lower hatch was open and Creagh was on the ladder, waiting, with his gunlayer’s telescope slung from a lanyard round his neck. The trainer, next behind him, had his slung similarly. Normal gun-action drill was to take the boat down to forty feet, blow her tanks and hold her down by hydroplanes alone, at speed enough for them to grip the water to that extent, until she was so buoyant she couldn’t be held much longer: then you’d reverse the planes and she’d come up fast, fairly exploding into the daylight. You could open the hatch a few feet lower than usual because her upward momentum would carry her through that, at the cost of a bit of a wetting down the tower, and the end result would be the gun manned and in action before the enemy had even realized there was a submarine on the surface.

  But here, there wasn’t enough water for going deep. And anyway the target was a sitting duck.

  “Ready to surface, sir.”

  Ruck grunted acknowledgement as he started a final air search.

  This would be the first gun action of the commission. And Paul’s first submarine gun action ever, apart from innumerable drills and practices. Detailing the system for getting the gun’s crew out and the gun into action had been his own job: he’d had a drill-book to base it on and Ruck to check it over and approve it, but it was still his own initiative— and an original one, to some extent, since Ultra was the first of the little U-class boats to have a 3-inch gun, and she had no gun-tower hatch as the S and T classes had. How well or how badly this went was his own personal test: in particular, how many seconds passed between the order “Surface!” and the first shell leaving the barrel of the gun.

  Then, how many rounds it would take to score a hit, and continue hitting … He could feel the imminence of the test like a fist tightening in his gut.

  “Switch off the echo-sounder.”

  Still circling with the periscope … You could visualize the submarine’s keel with only a couple of feet of water under it now: that one screw turning in thick, stirred-up silt …

  “Twenty-two feet.”

  “Twenty-two, sir …”

  Surprise in Wykeham’s tone. At that depth the periscope standards—the heavy steel structure through which the periscopes moved, immediately above the bridge—would be just about covered, but only just … And she was rolling more as she rose higher. Ruck right down on the battery-boards with his eyes at the lenses blazing like a cat’s with the surface light in them. McClure with his back to the chart, biting his finger-nails: he’d grown a lot of black beard very quickly but it grew unevenly, sprouting in some places and thin in others. The gun’s crew were fidgety, like horses under starter’s orders with the start delayed. Gunlayer, then trainer—West—then Hayward and Booth, respectively breechworker and loader … While Creagh and West we
re unclamping the gun and getting it on to the target, those two would wrench open the watertight ready-use lockers for an initial supply of shells. Bewley, sightsetter and the fifth man up, would meanwhile be setting the range and the zero deflection. Behind him up the ladder would go Paul, and then Ruck, and after Ruck the two Vickers gunners who for the moment were waiting at the after end of the control room near the W/T office. Each of them carried his own machine gun and had a pan of ammunition slung round his neck; the second man would also bring up the top end of a rope which, with a bucket at its lower end, would constitute the ammunition hoist.

  Ropes passing through hatches were a submariner’s nightmare, but there was no other way to do it.

  “Twenty-two feet, sir.”

  A lot of movement on her. If she hit the ground like this she could do herself some damage. To the asdic dome, for instance. Ruck slammed up the handles.

  “Surface!”

  “Blow one, three and six main ballast!”

  Happening now, the thing you’d worked out on paper and then played like a game with the only enemy a stopwatch … Air roaring into the tanks: then there was room on the ladder and the tower was a vertical tunnel, boots and bodies filling it, a voice below shouting the depths and others passing the message on, echoey in the steel, wet-smelling enclosure as the hatch flew open crashing back to daylight, an upward rush into the bridge still awash with foam, sea noise and a cold, stiff breeze, the submarine wallowing in spray-topped waves. Paul got to the front of the bridge and leaned over, getting his binoculars on the target just as the gun fired, about eight feet below him, its noise penetrative, deafening. Breech open, new round slamming in, cordite smell familiar …

  The Italian freighter was obviously well and truly aground, listing this way—to port, towards the lighter. There was a load of ammunition boxes in a cargo-net suspended halfway down her rusty-looking side. Italian colours flapping briskly, and no sign of any French flag … No fall of shot yet either. Could have missed seeing it, in so much broken sea? A natural guess was that it might have been in line, but over … With a static target and Ultra virtually stopped, thus no deflection, you’d hardly be wrong for line—particularly at this close range, 030, meaning three thousand yards, one and a half nautical miles … Then the splash went up, a narrow white column—in line, and short.

  “Up four hundred, shoot!”

  Another shell went on its way. The time-standing-still effect of action was what had made him think he’d missed spotting that first one’s fall. Ruck was bawling down the voicepipe and the two Vickers gunners had mounted their weapons, one each side of the bridge, and fitted the pans on them: a spare pan for each would be coming up on the rope.

  Hit. Orange-coloured burst smothered immediately in black smoke, on the Italian’s stern. West, the trainer, had muffed that one. Paul yelled, “No correction, shoot!” Ruck was turning the submarine to point her seawards, one screw ahead and one astern. And searching overhead for aircraft: that would be the danger, if there was one at all. It was also the purpose of having the Vickers guns up here: in such shallow water it mightn’t be possible to dive quickly, and it might become necessary to hold an attacker off while you got the gun’s crew down … That load of ammo boxes had been let go, gone down with a run into the lighter as some Italian panicked. And a hit flared now on the freighter’s well-deck. Ultra swinging to starboard so that the target was already on the beam, the gun training slowly round as she swung. And a hit—orange spurt, then drifting smoke—on the listing side just near the lighter … “No correction, shoot!” A fire had started, aft there, by the looks of it. Mostly smoke, at the moment, and men jumping over-board from the lighter as another shell struck above them. The ship was on fire, and it was spreading, smoke thickening above a lick of flame. Ruck had his glasses on the target while the Vickers gunners watched the sky; then he’d dipped to the voicepipe to steady her on her present course. Paul yelled again, “No correction, shoot!” Firing over the quarter, and not waiting to see each fall of shot now: when one shell hit there was another in the air and a third in the breech about to follow it. The Italian’s afterpart was well on fire, smoke rising a hundred or more feet in the air above her and pouring landward on the wind. “No correction, shoot!”

  It was surprising that anyone could hear his voice; he couldn’t, now. But Ruck was sending the Vickers men down, and he’d stopped the flow of shells … Reckoning he’d done enough and that the flames would finish it?

  “No correction, shoot!”

  Hitting every time: but there could only be another half-dozen shells there. Plus a few ready-use, if Ruck gave them time to use them. There’d been an explosion in the lighter: he’d thought it had been just a shell falling short, but it was more than that, a small eruption outwards. He shouted again, “No correction, shoot!” Then heard, as the gun cracked and recoiled, breech opening and the empty shell-case flying back, Ruck’s voice bellowing, “Down! Cease fire, send ‘em down!” Paul blew the whistle on his lanyard, and to the gun’s crew it was an alarm signal—meaning, roughly, get below or drown … Ruck pointing—at two aircraft, coming this way from over Libya. Below, West had trained the gun fore and aft and unshipped his telescope; Creagh, telescope already slung over one shoulder, was engaging the clamp, down at casing level below the breech. The breech was open and empty, smoking; West slammed it shut as the last empty shellcases splashed into the sea alongside. Hayward appeared over the side of the bridge, his face streaked with cordite smoke. He’d have shut one of the ready-use lockers, and Booth—arriving now—would have fixed the other. One—two—three men inboard, in the hatch, Ruck roaring at everyone to get a bloody wriggle on: now West, and last Creagh. The aircraft were Heinkels, coming with their snouts down from way above and behind the cloud of smoke pouring out of the Italian ship. Ruck snarled, “Down, Sub!” and yelled into the voicepipe, “Open main vents!” He was shutting the voicepipe cock as Paul dropped into the hatch—thinking about the shallowness of the water, the likelihood of bouncing off the bottom. In the same moment the ammunition ship blew up: Paul saw nothing, only heard it, a roar of sound that broke out like any other explosion but was then prolonged, a continuing roar as the whole of the Italian’s cargo went up, hold by hold. He fell as far as the lower hatch, then climbed down into the control room, Ruck above him shouting, “Twenty-four feet!”

  “Stop together. Fore planes hard a-rise.”

  To level her, keep her off the bottom. But you had also to get her down and hidden: not that she’d be completely hidden, to an airman’s view, in water this shallow. Wykeham had to do the impossible anyway: get her under fast, and not hit the mud … Ruck was off the ladder and Tibbits was dragging the lower hatch shut. Twenty-three feet—twenty-six—

  “Half astern together!”

  She jolted hard as her forefoot hit the bottom, bounced, struck again.

  “Stop together.”

  There was a harsh, unpleasant scraping noise from under her keel. Twenty-seven feet showed on the gauges. Bow coming up now. Wykeham and the planesmen had been fighting to get it up, until a couple of seconds ago, but now as the bubble ran forward in the spirit-level there was a danger she’d start porpoising, break surface. Logan had a lot of rise on the after planes, to lift her stern and take the up-angle off … Explosion in the sea to starboard. A hard thump. And a second one, ahead and to port. Just the sound, and a slight tremor, as if the sea on that side had quivered against the hull. Then silence: and she was level, at twenty-five feet. That had been one pair of bombs: two from one aircraft, and another two to come? Ruck said, “That was the Eyetie blowing up. Beautiful … I’ll have a word with your gun’s crew later, Sub.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Slow ahead together.”

  Explosion astern, closer than the other two. Nothing to sweat about, though. Wait for the next … You held your breath and didn’t really look at anything: it was your mind waiting, other thoughts suspended, needing this bit over before it began to
work again. The bomb went in and burst ahead—like a steel door slamming in your face. That had been the nearest of the four.

  “Report any damage or leaks for’ard. I want the bilges checked too, please, Chief.” Pool moved aft to the engineroom to tell Fry, the stoker PO, what was wanted. Ruck asked, “Ship’s head?”

  “Oh-four-oh, sir.”

  “How’s that, pilot?”

  “Take us out nicely, sir.”

  “Why are we at twenty-two feet, Number One?” “Getting her down again now, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “You’d have been sorrier, if those bastards hadn’t been such lousy shots.” He moved closer to the periscope and stood watching the depth-gauges, waiting until she was deep enough for him to put it up. He muttered, “Anyway, we aren’t out of the woods yet.”

  “Twenty-five feet, sir.”

  He crouched down beside the well, glanced at Quinn and lifted his hands. He murmured as the glistening tube began to move upward, “My God, what a sight that was …”

  As soon as they surfaced that evening Creagh went down on to the casing to do a maintenance routine on the gun. It was mostly a matter of greasing it, with the grey grease called “non-floaters,” a special submarine lubricant that left no oily trail in the sea. Creagh did the job fast, at least as keenly aware as Paul was in her bridge that if an enemy showed up suddenly Ultra would have to dive and leave her gunlayer to swim around until she could surface again and try to find him. He sponged out the bore, and coated the breech mechanism and other moving parts with the heavy grease; then shells were brought up and passed down to him, and he refilled the ready-use lockers and screwed their lids down tight. He was below now, on watch as helmsman, patched grey with non-floaters and noticeably cheerful. Ruck had summoned him and his team to the control room earlier, to congratulate them on their first gun action and its success. It wasn’t every 3-inch gun, he’d pointed out, that opened its career by bagging a 4000-ton ship and a full cargo of ammunition—ammunition that would not, now, be used against the Eighth Army in the desert.