There was only about half an hour of his watch left; and nothing to do, at forty feet, except keep an eye on the trim. If anything happened on the surface only Flyte, the asdic operator of the watch, would know it … Paul went through, and stood beside Wykeham at the trim. “Ready when you are.”
“She’s all yours, chum. Forty feet, course 020, starboard motor slow ahead, port stopped. OK?”
“Right.”Wykeham left him, and Paul went to look at the chart. There was a fix on it, slightly out of date: he up-dated it as a DR position, and marked the time of the reversal of course. Back in the control room, he saw that Flyte was looking agitated.
“Something wrong?”
Flyte shook his head: concentrating, and training the receiver to and fro. Then he pushed the phones off his ears.
“They’ve turned, sir. Green one-four-oh—bearing left. The other’s coming towards, sir, green one-seven-five.” Phones on again, and frowning with concentration … “HE increasing, sir!”
Ruck appeared, looking fed up. “Twenty-eight feet, Sub. Let’s see what they’re up to.”
Paul moved over to stand behind the planesmen. “Twenty-eight feet.” On his right, Flyte moved suddenly as if in discomfort. “Turbine HE right ahead, sir—red five—E-boat or destroyer, sir, fast HE—”
“All right.” Ruck, waiting by the after periscope, watched the depth-gauges as the needles crept past thirty-five feet: approaching thirty … He moved his hands: “Up.” Glancing round, telling Flyte, “Don’t know why you sound so surprised. These are Italian waters, you’ve got to expect to find a few Wops around.”
Lovesay chuckled. Creagh glanced over his shoulder and grinned at Dracula Jupp. When Jupp returned the grin, you could see why he had that nickname.
“Twenty-eight feet, sir.”
Ruck circling now: checking the close surroundings first, then studying the positions and movements of each of the ships up there. Sending the small periscope down, moving to the big one.
“Port ten.”
“Port ten, sir.”
Swinging around, using the air search: and pausing to watch something on the beam. The seaplane, possibly … Completing the circle now, switching to high power and settling the periscope on that bearing of red five. Shifting slightly right …
“Torpedo-boat. Little old three-funnelled job. Nineteen-twenties.” He raised his voice. “Pilot, get the Jane’s out. Three-funnelled Wop torpedo-boat. Five or six hundred tons with a very sheer stem.” He checked the bearing-ring and the ship’s head as he pushed the handles up, and told Creagh, “Steer three-three-five.”
To pass round the newcomer, obviously, up between him and the Sicilian coast. He ordered, as he moved to the chart table, “Sixty feet.” McClure was there waiting for him, with Jane’s Fighting Ships open at the pages of Italian destroyers and torpedo-boats. “This one, sir? Generali class?”
The hydroplanes tilted again as the planesmen swung their brass controlling wheels, angling the planes to take her down out of the trawlers’ way. It probably wouldn’t change Ruck’s intentions, Paul guessed, if another dozen A/S ships joined in up there. He saw himself as the hunter, not the hunted: those were simply nuisances to be circumvented.
“Isn’t that really something?”
Harry Dixon, Sauerkraut’s Canadian first lieutenant, was gazing astern. The Cornish coast, he was referring to. Falmouth astern, and Manacles, Black Head and the Lizard to the west. Eastward, the land faded and disappeared in haze. It was a gentle spring day with a pale blue sky and a low swell running in on the port beam. Course would be altered to southwest shortly, as soon as they were clear of the land, and the swell would be on the quarter then, so there’d be less of the rolling which, Jack Everard suspected, might be making for discomfort among the troops.
But that coastline, that soft, haze-hung panorama: Dixon was right, it was about as beautiful as anything you’d ever see. Too beautiful—it made you think about coming back to it.
Like Fiona. To whom he’d written …
He turned his back on it. “Yes. It’s pretty.”
The Canadian stared at him—critically, obviously thinking what a philistine this was. Or what a bastard. Which would match Sharp’s view, of course—for all the geniality and co-operation …
The Hunt-class destroyer Atherstone was leading, with the motor gunboat in tow. Astern of her came the other Hunt, Tynedale, and then Campbeltown towing MTB 74. The MGB and the MTB were being towed most of the way because of their limited range, which was compensated for in the MLs by those auxiliary fuel tanks. Sauerkraut, bringing up the rear of this centre column, had all the range she needed because she was diesel-powered.
The MLs were in two flanking columns, one line of them on each side, and the force had its own air cover in the form of a single Hurricane circling overhead. But even with all this solid evidence all around him, Jack found it hard to take in the fact that they were on the way, that after all this time they were actually en route to St Nazaire!
This morning C-in-C Plymouth had signalled to the naval force commander, Preparative Chariot. That had been the signal to embark, raise steam, stand by. And at twelve thirty, Carry on Chariot. The MLs had chugged out of harbour past St Anthony’s Lighthouse at 1400, and the three destroyers with Sauerkraut trailing them had followed an hour later. The naval and military commanders were taking passage in Atherstone; tomorrow night, before the force entered the Loire estuary, they’d be transferring to the MGB, which would then become headquarters ship and lead the force up the river.
Jack thought again, his eyes moving to the ML columns on either side, about wooden ships with petrol tanks on their upper decks. He was thankful now that Sharp’s ML had become unreliable mechanically and that the E-boat had been available in its place. Sauerkraut and the MGB, and MTB 74, might stand some chance, he thought, of returning to that Cornish coast.
On Sunday, possibly. This was Thursday. The assault was scheduled to take place at 0130 Saturday, with re-embarkation about 0300. ETA Falmouth, therefore, Sunday.
For some. But Mountbatten had said “We’re writing you off”—he hadn’t shirked it. And it was difficult to see much likelihood of any of the MLs coming out of it. If one or two of them did get away, it would be a miracle.
Lieutenant-Commander Hawkins hadn’t agreed. Or probably he had, in his own mind, because he was an intelligent man and he’d been in action, could guess, surely, at how it was going to be, six miles up that river: he probably hadn’t wanted to admit it. All he’d been ready to agree was that they’d undoubtedly incur some losses.
In his letter to Fiona, Jack had written that he expected to be in touch with her in about a week: that he’d either telephone or just turn up on her doorstep. He could imagine it: it was a happy fantasy, an escape, to shut one’s eyes and picture it. Himself at the door of the flat, ringing the bell: and the door opening, and Fiona finding him standing there, just looking at her: she’d catch the mood, say something like, You made it, then …
Sharp told his coxswain, Shawcross, “Come over to port a bit. You’re too far over, man!” Shawcross shifted the wheel a little, without moving his eyes from the stern of the Hunt ahead of them. He was young-looking for a petty officer, quick-eyed and intelligent. Sharp called to Jack across the bridge,”Like a joyride, isn’t it? Didn’t they pick the weather for us, begorrah?”
White Ensigns were whipping on the easterly breeze, bow-waves glistened white against grey hulls, sea and sky were near-matching shades of blue. Sauerkraut rolled stiffly to the swell, which had become longer and more regular as they drew away from land. Jack saw a signal-hoist rise to flutter at Atherstone’s yardarm: Shawcross had drawn Sharp’s attention to it, and he had his glasses up to study it while at the back of the bridge his signalman ran the red-and-white answering pendant to the halfway point, meaning “Signal seen but not yet understood.” It would be the change of course signal, though, the order to turn to the southwest for a run of about fifty miles to the point
where they’d turn south. They were making thirteen knots, so that the next alteration would come at about 1900. Sharp called, “Answering pendant close up!”
Meaning he’d read it now, as well as seen it … Jack went below, to confer with PO Slattery and Sergeant Bowater. The latest reconnaissance photographs, which Hawkins had shown him this morning, had the five Möwe-class torpedo-boats still alongside in the St Nazaire Basin. He hadn’t told his team about that particular problem yet, and now was as good a time as any.
Ultra had dodged trawlers all afternoon. With the watchkeeping rotation as it was, afternoons were pleasant—between the midday snack and tea-time, all Paul had to do was sleep. But he’d wasted this one by only catnapping, half listening to what was going on, mixing that with periods of semi-consciousness.
The torpedo-boat hadn’t stayed with the hunt: it had gone on southward, looking as if it might be heading for Augusta. Ultra had been left with the two pairs of A/S trawlers probing for her, and there’d also been some schooners up in the narrows, in periscope sight only when the boat was on her northern limit. Ruck had set this as latitude thirty-eight degrees north; to have gone beyond it, into the more confined waters, would have served no good purpose and only played into the trawlers’ hands.
The semi-wakefulness had been due, Paul guessed, to the general state of expectancy, the mind refusing to let its guard down. He’d been waiting for the alarm, the sudden order “Diving stations!”
Which hadn’t come by 1600, when McClure sent a messenger in to shake him. Paul must have heard him coming, because he was awake and sliding out of his bunk before the man had said a word. Yet tea and biscuits were on the table, and he hadn’t heard Shaw crashing that lot down in his customary suave manner …
Ruck opened his eyes and told him, “We’ll start heading south soon, Sub. I want to surface at least ten miles clear of dell’Armi at about eight.”
Paul took a mug of tea into the control room with him. He asked McClure, “What’s cooking?”
“Bugger all.” The Scotsman stretched, drawing himself out to his full five feet and four inches. “Twenty-eight feet, slow ahead grouped down on the port motor, starboard stopped. Course is 050.” He went to the chart table. “We’re here. Twelve minutes ago. OK?”
“Where are the trawlers?”
“On the quarter and astern. There’s nothing near us. I think the skipper wants to skid out of it pretty soon now, and moving out southeastward we’ll be miles clear of all that garbage. Bloody nuisance, they’ve been.”
“Seaplane?”
“It’s around. Or its brother is. Off and on, you know.”
“All right, then.”
“Awake, are you?”
“Go on, piss off.” He walked into the control room, leaving his tea on the chart table. Creagh grinned at him from the wheel, and Lovesay looked round and nodded. Flyte, frowning as he listened to whatever he was getting from his headset, glanced up abstractedly, like a man lost in thought. Paul stopped by the for’ard periscope, lifted his hands, and Chief ERA Pool put his hand down to the lever.
“Switched watches, Chief?”
Pool nodded. Smooth as a Fortnum and Mason floor-walker. “Thought we’d have a change-round, sir.”
“HE astern—loud—all of a sudden—increasing, sir!”
He swung round, hanging on the out-turned handles: and saw a trawler bow-on, high, rounded stem smashing through the waves straight at them.
A glimpse of another out beyond it—but he’d already snapped the handles up. “Forty feet!”
Lovesay repeated as he applied angle to the planes, “Forty feet, sir …” At the same moment Ruck arrived, and Flyte reported “Transmitting, sir!”
“Sixty feet. Starboard fifteen. Half ahead together.” Ruck asked Flyte, “In contact?”
“No, sir, I don’t think—”
“Hundred feet, Sub.”
“Hundred feet, sir …”
The trawler’s screws were audible, suddenly. They passed over somewhere on the submarine’s port side. Bubble well aft, needles circling round the gauges. Creagh reported that he had fifteen degrees of starboard rudder on. Ruck asked Flyte, “How the hell did he get so close without you hearing him?”
It had been close. Paul felt slightly breathless. He thought the trawler must have had them in contact when he saw it, that bow rushing at the periscope. It was extraordinary that Flyte hadn’t known it, if that was the case. And Newton had been slow getting on to the trawlers this morning, too.
There was also McClure, who hadn’t thought there was anything on the surface anywhere near them! Propeller noises astern now …
“Steer one-five-oh. Hundred and fifty feet.” He looked round at Flyte again. “Where are they now?”
Flyte looked lost, or sick. “I—can’t seem to—”
“What?”
“I reckon it’s the set, sir. Sort of off and on, like.” He tapped at his headphones. “Dead now. I think it was before, when I didn’t realize. Then all of a sudden—”
Ruck told the messenger, “Get Newton.” He went over to the asdic position, and Flyte passed him the spare headset.
“Course one-five-oh, sir.”
Screws chugged over. Out to port, but not far out. Either the same trawler or its mate, and either in contact or not in contact. It made a hell of a difference which, and there was no way to know, if the set was on the blink.
Which it very likely was, and might have been since this morning.
Depthcharges exploded on the port bow somewhere just as Newton arrived and joined Flyte at the asdics. The explosions indicated that the trawlers were, or at least had been, in contact. They weren’t close—but if it hadn’t been for one or two you’d heard during the Tripoli patrol they might have seemed close.
Ruck said, “Diving stations.” He left Newton to deal with the A/S equipment, and he hadn’t said a word to McClure: he’d be sorting him out later, no doubt, in private. He leaned against the ladder, with a foot on its bottom rung and his hands up on one above his head, looking like a man who couldn’t for the time being indulge in the luxury of anger.
Paul reported, “Hundred and fifty feet, sir,” and switched the telegraph to “stop pumping”: he’d got her about right but she’d be light for’ard now, from the hands having shifted to their action stations.
Wykeham muttered, “All right, shove off.”
He moved away, as Newton told Ruck, “Definitely not working, sir.” “The point is, can you fix it?”
U-class boats didn’t carry engineer officers, let alone EMs, electrical mechanicians: they didn’t have room for them. Hence a Chief ERA as head of the engineroom department, while the more specialist skills had to be called on from the base staff. Newton didn’t know—unless it was some simple fault, like part of the external wiring.
“Do what you can.” Ruck ordered, “Shut off for depthcharging.”
Screws were coming up the starboard side. A slowish, quite distinctive rhythm. He waited, draped on the ladder like a dummy hung up to dry. Listening with half-closed eyes, judging his moment. Watertight doors were swinging shut between compartments.
“Group up, full ahead together, starboard twenty!”
The other one might still be holding them in contact. No pings had been audible here inside the boat: but that didn’t prove anything. Differing conditions, perhaps a different kind of asdic set …
“Twenty of starboard wheel on, sir.”
“Both motors grouped up, full ahead, sir.”
At times like this, voices tended to become quieter, tones flatter.
For Ruck, Paul realized, it would be a matter of getting the timing exactly right. He wouldn’t want the enemy to detect his sudden avoiding action before the loss of contact hid it. Then he’d count on the exploding charges to provide him with an extra minute or two’s cover.
Like—now.
The noise was deafening: the percussions coming like blows. A whole series: seven—eight—nine …
<
br /> Total, nine.
“Group down, slow together. Stop starboard. Steer two-one-oh.”
That was another problem. Ultra had to get well away from the coast before she could surface to charge her battery. But under attack like this she obviously couldn’t hold a straight course or maintain a constant speed. She had to crawl—as she was doing now—and spurt, as she’d been doing a moment ago, and dodge … And if she did manage to get out far enough, when the enemy knew for certain she was here—well, there’d be a night hunt too.
“Port motor slow ahead grouped down, sir.”
“Course two-one-oh …”
Southwest. Southwest was the course Ruck wanted. At least they weren’t being driven in a totally wrong direction … Completing that other thought-sequence, though—if you were kept down all night, or most of it, it would mean starting the next day with a near-flat battery. All right if you were just going to plod up and down a patrol-line very quietly: but if there was any action, grouped-up business …
Newton was on his knees at the back of the asdic cabinet. Flyte had been replaced by Parker, the PO telegraphist.
Propeller noise, astern. Closing. Heads lifted, listening, as the sound developed into a regular scrunch-scrunch-scrunch, coming up the starboard side again. McClure murmured behind Paul, “Hang on to your hat, Yankee-doodle.” Paul looked round, preparing some rejoinder, but the sound of the screws had suddenly begun to fade and he and McClure were staring at each other, forgetting each other’s presence or even existence as they listened to it. Depthcharges might be in the water, floating down: most likely another batch of nine—any second now …
Nothing, except the underwater silence. The propeller-noise was a memory, an echo in the brain.
“Port ten.”
Ruck spoke quietly, and Creagh replied in the same low tone, “Port ten, sir.” Light gleamed on the brass wheel turning in his hands. “Ten of port wheel on, sir.” Almost a whisper.
Ruck told him, “Steer one-five-oh.” Back to the course he wanted, now. He glanced round, at tense but slightly hopeful faces. “Anyone so much as sneezes, I’ll shoot him.” He asked the two harassed-looking characters at the asdic set, “Any joy yet?”
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 23