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

by Alexander Fullerton

  Ultra had been clear of the Zera Spit and its sandbanks by noon, and she’d paddled eastward all day at periscope depth without seeing anything except a few passing aircraft. Some of which, probably, would have been scouting for her … The course now was 100 degrees, to bring her back to the billet northwest of Tripoli. With seventy miles to cover and all night in which to do it she was using only one diesel to push her along, while the other put new life into the battery.

  Moon streaked the sea. Before long it would be hidden behind cloud, but at its present low altitude it would be silhouetting the submarine to any observer astern or on the quarter. It gave one an unpleasantly vulnerable feeling to know it—particularly with Ruck’s fresh warnings in mind, his lecture on the subject of the U-boat threat. According to Intelligence reports, there were twenty-one German U-boats here in the Mediterranean. One had also to keep in mind, he’d pointed out this evening in the wardroom before they’d surfaced, that Ultra had sunk one ship last night not more than fifteen miles south of her present track, and blasted another into scrap-iron a few hours ago in the Zera shallows. The enemy would hardly be unaware of the presence of a submarine on this stretch of coast: and they wouldn’t be well-disposed towards it, either.

  “Port look-out relieved, sir.”

  That was the second one. Paul asked, without interrupting his own looking-out, “Who’s taken over?”

  “Stapleton, sir.”

  Baldy Stapleton …

  “Need to be on our toes tonight, Stapleton. They’re likely to be looking for us.”

  “Aye, sir. I was just thinking it’s a bit lit-up, like.”

  Searching: swivelling slowly, probing the peculiar areas of light, half-light and blackness. Hating that low-slung moon—at which, elsewhere, lovers might be gazing. In no danger from anything but romance, wine, soft music … Might one in years to come remember how it had looked on this night, and on others like it?

  “Bridge!”

  He bent to the pipe: “Bridge.” “Relieve officer of the watch, sir?” “Yes, please.”

  Food, then sleep: both were attractive propositions. Corned beef hash tonight, Shaw had said it would be … McClure emerged from the hatch like a black gnome, and lurched into the space beside him.

  “Shit. Bloody illuminations …”

  “Not for long. It’ll be in that cloud pretty soon. How was the hash?”

  “Smashing. There’s not much left, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Very funny.” McClure seemed to have come to terms with the death of his brother rather quickly. Perhaps the two successes Ultra had chalked up in the last twenty-four hours had cheered him. There’d certainly been a very cheerful atmosphere in the boat, since the forenoon’s gun action. Paul said, “Been a good day, eh?”

  “Bloody marvellous.” The little Scotsman had his glasses up, getting his eyes tuned in. “He’s good, our skipper. I mean, one of the best, don’t you think so?” He leaned closer: his voice was covered by the rumble of the diesels. “I heard some of the lads chatting—outside the galley, when I was in the heads. What it comes down to is they reckon he’s tops.”

  “Glad to hear it. It should help.”

  “Sure it’ll help. And I agree with ‘em.”

  “So who’s arguing?”

  It would help, certainly. It would put an edge on the ship’s company’s performance as a team: it was natural to take pride in being winners. And Ruck did look like one, right now … But McClure, Paul thought, had changed his views dramatically: less than a fortnight ago on that patrol up near Messina, he’d been making snide remarks about medal-hunting— going for a VC …

  Ruck had, of course, offered to stand a watch for him. It reminded Paul of a dissertation on leadership he’d once had in a letter from his father: the essential attributes had boiled down to a combination of professional competence and care for the men you led. Maybe Ruck did have that combination.

  McClure swung slowly, studying the moon-dappled seascape. Dangerously pretty seascape. The sea was almost flat, the wind right down … Paul lowered his own glasses.

  “Right, now, Bob. Three hundred revs starboard, standing charge port, course one-double-oh. Got it?”

  “Yeah. Bugger off, will you?”

  There was plenty of the hash left. He’d finished his meal, and he was smoking a cigarette over a mug of coffee when the BBC news bulletin started. It opened with a statement to the effect that Rangoon had fallen to the Japanese.

  Wykeham muttered, “They’ll be into India now. Little yellow sods.”

  Ruck winked at Paul, “Floreat Etona. Wish I’d had the benefit of a first-class education.” Backchat faded suddenly—none of them had realized, as the announcer went on in much the same tone, what they were hearing: it was an Admiralty communiqué, just released, on recent naval action in the Far East. There’d been a battle, three weeks ago, in the Java Sea: ships taking part had been HM Australian Ship Perth (Captain H. M. L. Waller, DSO, RAN), HMS Exeter (Captain O. L. Gordon, MVO, RN), HMS Defiant (Captain Sir Nicholas Everard, DSO and Bar, DSC and Bar, RN), the United States cruiser Houston and the Dutch cruisers De Ruyter and Java … Plus destroyers: and the whole force under Dutch command …

  Ruck said, “Wait for it, Sub. He’ll be all right.” He and Wykeham met each other’s eyes, and looked away again. Wykeham was in his bunk: he’d turned his head to stare upwards, listening … The announcer’s familiar voice continued:

  At 4:14 pm on 27 February this Allied force made contact with a Japanese force halfway between Bawean Island and Surabaya. Action was joined at extreme range. The Japanese force consisted of at least two Nati-class cruisers of 10,000 tons and a number of other cruisers. They had with them thirteen destroyers organized in two flotillas …

  Paul’s brain urged, I don’t give a damn how their bloody destroyers were organized, I want to hear just one simple, vital—

  HMS Exeter was hit by an 8-inch shell in a boiler room … Dutch destroyer Kortenaar hit by a torpedo and sank … Three British destroyers ordered to counter-attack: HMS Electra not seen again.

  Droning on. Dull, matter-of-fact, cold-blooded. Ruck’s face between his hands, elbows on the table, eyes fixed on the leather cup of poker-dice. Wykeham flat on his back, staring up. Paul hunched forward, trying to be ready to cope with the news of his father’s death.

  Underwater explosions occurred in the De Ruyter and Java. Both Dutch cruisers blew up and sank at once … Impossible to assess accurately the damage inflicted on the enemy … HMAS Perth, who had received some damage, reached Tanjung Priok at seven in the morning of Saturday, 28 February. With the enemy in command of the sea and air in overwhelming force, Allied command was faced with the problem of extricating the remaining Allied ships from a very dangerous situation. The way to Australia was barred by the 600-mile-long island of Java, with the straits at either end of it under enemy control …

  After dark on 28 February HMAS Perth left Tanjung Priok. During the night a report was received which indicated she had come into contact with a force of Japanese ships off St Nicholas Point at 1 pm. Nothing has been heard of HMAS Perth or the US cruiser Houston since that time.

  Paul muttered—talking to himself, not meaning to do it aloud—”Defiant— what about—”

  “Hang on, Sub.” Ruck, shaking his head … “Hang on.”

  The same night HMS Exeter left Surabaya accompanied by HMS Encounter and the US destroyer Pope. Forenoon on Sunday, 1 March, HMS Exeter reported she had sighted three enemy cruisers steering towards her. No further signals were received from HMS Exeter, HMS Encounter, or the American destroyer.

  Wykeham murmured, “What a bloody awful—”

  Dutch destroyer Evertsen encountered two Japanese cruisers in the Sunda Strait. She was damaged and was beached … The destroyer HMS Stronghold and the sloop HMAS Yarra are also missing and must be considered lost.

  The announcer’s voice rose a little:

  All other Allied warships which were in Java waters are known to
be safe, except for some small craft and auxiliaries about which information is not yet available. Next-of-kin of all known casualties have been informed.

  Pause: deep breath; change of subject …

  Paul wondered, That’s all?

  “Defiant’s all right, then.” Ruck said it: a flat statement. “Your father must have brought her out of it, somehow, Sub.”

  He couldn’t believe it yet. He’d been so keyed-up, defences raised and ready for that name Defiant to be the next one mentioned. He shook his head; Wykeham told him sharply, frowning at him from the bunk, “Of course she’s all right. The man just said so. There’s no question about it, Sub.”

  “None at all.” Ruck’s stare was almost angry—at his lack of faith? He pointed out, “They’ve admitted all those losses—poor bastards. There’s no earthly reason they’d have kept quiet about one light cruiser if she’d gone too.”

  “More than that.” Wykeham pointed at him: “That communiqué said all other warships are known to be safe. Not thought to be safe, known to be. So stop twitching, now. Your old man’s having a hell of a good time in Colombo, by now.”

  “Or Australia.” Ruck nodded. “Somewhere in Aussie would be my bet.”

  “Yes.” He looked at them both. “Thanks.” Stubbing out a cigarette, and reaching for another. They were right, and there was no reason to doubt it: his father must have brought his ship out of all that mess … Ruck told him, “Turn in, Sub. Get some sleep.”

  When he was next on watch, from midnight to 0215, there was no moon and the sea was barely ruffled. A long, low swell from the northwest was enough to give the boat a lazy corkscrew motion as she ploughed her white track eastward, still charging with one engine.

  McClure had heard about the Java Sea battle: Wykeham must have told him. He was glad for Paul, he said, that his father’s ship hadn’t been among those lost; Paul wished he could have been glad for that brother, the airman. You realized, at times like this, that it was the people left behind who felt the hurt and whose lives were damaged, and the dead who suffered least. He turned over the watch and went below, more than ready for another few hours’ sleep; getting off the ladder he had to step around Roffey, the leading LTO, who was crouching to take battery readings, prising up the brass inspection plate in the control room deck to take a sample of electrolyte for testing with his hydrometer.

  “How’s it coming, Roffey?”

  Roffey nodded rather pompously, with the manner of a doctor taking a patient’s temperature and reading more from it than a layman could be expected to understand … “Coming up nicely, sir. Couple of hours’ll do it.” He was a short, tubby man, and captain of Ultra’s football team. “They say your guv’nor come out of that shambles all right, sir.”

  “Yes, thank God.”

  CPO Logan, PO of the watch, joined in. “Good news, that, sir. Must be the only ship as did come out of it.”

  Roffey went on for’ard, to check the pilot cells in number one battery section, which was under the POs’ and ERAs’ messes and that end of the gangway. Number two section was under the control room and wardroom, with the two periscope wells passing down through it. In fact each section was a tank holding fifty-six cells, each cell standing waist-high and needing either a crane or about four men to lift it. There was a lot to be learnt about battery management, and Paul was aware he’d have to learn it before he could hope to become a first lieutenant.

  Not right now, though. Sleep, now. Thinking, as he turned in, that if that catastrophic action in the Java Sea had taken place three weeks ago— end of February—pretty soon now there might be a letter from his father. Maybe not after this patrol—but after the next, there might be one. And a rider to the news of his father having survived what must have been a massacre out there was the thought that with three Everards at sea the odds against all three of them coming out of the war alive had to be fairly heavy. So, if it was true that the real sufferers were the survivors, would you volunteer to be the one who did not survive?

  The hell you would.

  But Jack would have heard that communiqué, too. So would Fiona Gascoyne …

  Dreaming. Back in something like last night’s action: Ultra on the surface, himself on the bridge with Ruck; destroyers rushing towards them, their bow-waves high, white, menacing; Ruck’s mouth gaping wide like a frog’s as he screamed “Down, Sub, Klaxon!” Falling … Reaching for the klaxon button and not able to reach it, falling past it and panic rising because he hadn’t pressed it and she wasn’t diving: but Ruck must have done it anyway because he heard it now, sudden skull-splitting racket …

  “Blow Q!” Wykeham’s voice: “Shut main vents!”

  You heard them thudding shut as Quinn slammed the levers home, his hands travelling fast across the panel’s gleaming steel. The quick-diving tank’s indicator light went out and he shut that blow-valve too.

  “Main vents shut, Q blown, sir.”

  “Sixty feet. Group down.”

  Orders, acknowledgements, reports, all so familiar that they ran on as background to what might still have been a dream: but he was in the control room, beside the fruit machine, awake—just … And McClure standing crookedly, clasping one elbow with the other hand as he told Ruck, “Destroyer was broad on the bow, sir—”

  “Turbine HE green four-oh, sir, moving right to left!”

  “Hundred and fifty feet.” Ruck spoke quietly, with no trace of urgency in his tone. “Stop starboard. Starboard ten.”

  Paul checked the time, and realized he’d only been in the sack for twenty minutes. The deck slanted as Ultra nosed downward. McClure telling Ruck, who had time to listen to him now, “It was broad on the bow and steering to pass ahead, sir, but if I’d stayed up it’d have seen us for sure.”

  “You were right to dive.” Ruck glanced over towards Creagh. “Midships. Steer one-three-oh.”

  “Turbine HE on green three-oh, sir. And there’s another lot—green one-oh, farther off—”

  “Anything astern of them? To the right of them?”

  History repeating itself: like last night, the destroyer screen. And there was still that dream-like quality, a kind of unreality about it … Newton shaking his head: “No, sir. No others.”

  Destroyer sweep, then. A hunt for Ultra, very likely, for an enemy who’d made monkeys out of them last night and created a nuisance along the coast since then. And it sounded as if they’d come from the direction of Tripoli, so they might have been part of the escort with that ship last night.

  “Depth one-fifty feet, sir.”

  “Course one-three-oh, sir.”

  McClure muttered as he pushed past Paul, “That was what the newspaper and film people call a crash dive. Crashed my fucking elbow, in the hatch.”

  “Clumsy bastard.”

  “Oh, thanks—”

  “The HE’s ahead now, sir. Moving right to left. Slowing …” Newton’s eyes half-shut, his brain out there in the sea, on its own, nurtured by sound-waves. “Coming towards, sir!”

  It wasn’t good news. You could see in more than one face a desire for Newton to be wrong about it. But when a transmitting ship was coming towards you, you got a rising note, called a Doppler Effect, that was unmistakable. The hunting ship wouldn’t mistake it, either.

  “In contact, sir!”

  “Damn him.” Ruck scowled. “Shut off for depthcharging. Silent routine.” He shook his head. “Bloody nuisance …”

  “Second one’s red two-oh, drawing slowly left, sir.”

  Watertight doors were swinging shut, and the heavy clips sliding over to secure them. Shallow gauges, outboard valves on the heads and various other outlets or potential inlets were being shut or screwed down.

  “Second one’s in contact, sir!”

  You could hear the asdic impulses like squeaks on the boat’s hull. “Destroyer ahead has stopped, sir. Maintaining contact. Other one’s speeding up, closing.”

  Ruck frowned: listening, thinking it out, translating Newton’s reports into a
mind’s-eye picture of the scene up there.

  “One holding, one attacking, sir …”

  An attack was really a charge, using depthcharges instead of a lance. While one Italian held the contact the other would rush in and try to centre a pattern of depthcharges over the right spot. He had also to have them set to the right depth, if they were to be effective. A depthcharge pistol was about the size of a can of beans, and perforated with holes whose size could be adjusted. The pistol fired by water-pressure when it was full, so by reducing the size of the inlet holes you made the setting deeper.

  Ruck pointed a finger upwards. “Here he comes.”

  Newton moved the headset off his ears.

  It was a murmur at first, distant and rhythmic. Ruck leaned back against the ladder—waiting, listening. Wykeham watched the trim. Newton’s head was bowed, his hands locked together in a tighter grip than he’d have wanted anyone to notice. Creagh moving his wheel a little this way and that, minute adjustments of rudder to hold the submarine on her course. The planesmen were barely touching their brass control-wheels: the boat was keeping her depth all right, with both sets of hydroplanes level most of the time. Quinn squatted on the deck in front of his assembly of HP air valves and vent levers. Bearded, narrow-eyed, square-jawed … The other ERA, Summers, would be in the engineroom, isolated by the shut watertight doors at each end of it. And their chief, CERA Pool, was leaning against the wireless office bulkhead. Clean-shaven, and with thin, dark hair neatly brushed.

  Lovesay, on the fore planes, shifted his bulk slightly, and yawned. CPO Logan turned his head and scowled at him.

  The Italian destroyer was passing overhead now …