Air activity seemed to have petered out. They’d seen gunflashes, and searchlight beams like pencils of far-off light, but if there’d been any bombs dropped they must have been little, quiet ones. And now, everything was quiet. At 0045, on Saturday 28 March … Boat’s engines grumbling, swirl and splash of the Loire water, the night tide rising to its peak.
Time passed slowly. Time hurt …
Campbeltown hadn’t grounded again, after that second scrape. Pretty soon the explosives expert in her would be activating the time-fuse in what had been her for’ard messdeck. She was intended to blow up at some time between 5 am and 9 am.
By which time, Jack thought, so many currently insoluble questions would have been answered, passed into history and the more immediate simplicity of life or death.
“Hey, damn it!” Tubby Sharp—indignant … “Put those bloody things out!”
Searchlights, on the shore … One on each bank: and the banks weren’t as far apart here as they had been lower down. Sharp yelled,”Don’t you know this is supposed to be a surprise?” Against those beams you could see the two columns of MLs silhouetted like black cut-outs. The beams swung to meet each other—and joined, a wide road of glaringly bright light clear across the river. Astern of the little armada plugging on towards its target … Then both lights suddenly switched off. Sharp said, “ That’s better.” He snorted. “Bloody cheek!”
Speed of advance fifteen knots now.
At 0110 Jack went below to get himself ready. Whitened webbing, ammunition, blue torch, Colt .45 by courtesy of the commandos, Lanchester sub-machine gun through the kindness of the Royal Marines. He cast an eye over the others, checking that they were properly kitted up, including the three torpedomen’s haversacks of plastic explosive.
Everyone very quiet now. Ready, and yet not ready. Needing to get on with it, as if there was a time-fuse in each one of them.
“We’re all set, then.”They agreed. He warned them to stay below, under cover, until he gave them the word to come up. Hesitating on the point of wishing them luck, he decided it would have been meaningless. They knew as well as he did what they were up against and how much luck they needed. Looking at them, he realized suddenly that he really did know them—and was one of them … It was a revelation: they were ten men of entirely disparate types and backgrounds, but they formed one entity and he was part of it, as well as its leader. Looking at them he was also seeing himself—clearly, perhaps for the first time ever. Understanding this, his mind opened to a second revelation—that he understood Nick Everard too, with the same suddenly cleared view: almost as if he was Nick …
He was back in the bridge at 0120, ten minutes to zero-hour. Sharp told him, “Two miles to go. You lot ready for the off?”
“Ready enough.”
And still no guns were firing. This crowd of small ships steaming up an enemy river—nobody seeing them, nothing opposing them?
0122: a searchlight flared out from the shore to port. Campbeltown suddenly, brilliantly illuminated. More searchlights coming on: the whole force was flood-lit. He held his breath, thinking, Here we go … But the ships, lit up, were still chugging up-river, closing on their target. From the leaders black water folding back, swirling white and rolling outwards, heaving in their wakes and outspreading to wash both shores. Ships astern, like Sauerkraut, pitching steadily across the wash. As lit up as players on a stage—with German gunners on those banks as audience. Campbeltown’s German Ensign was clear to see in the brightness surrounding her: and with those slanted funnel-tops she did look German.
Flashing now—morse, from the port area, a challenge calling on the ships to identify themselves. Sharp observed, “It’s going to get noisy in a moment, boys. Oh, my nerves …” Shawcross and Dixon laughed. But Campbeltown was flashing an answer to the challenge: she had a German-speaking signalman on board and he’d been primed with the signal-letters of the torpedo-boats she resembled. He was also ready with a claim—in fast German morse—that the squadron was about to enter harbour “in accordance with previous orders.”
He wasn’t saying whose orders.
The shore station had acknowledged that message. Searchlights were being switched off, one after the other, their beams dying back across the river’s surface.
Dixon muttered, “Would you believe it?”
A light AA gun opened fire, somewhere ahead. Possibly from the Old Mole. And another outburst of flashing from Campbeltown. Protesting …
The firing ceased. Force Chariot pushed on towards the port area. Just a few minutes now to touchdown. Then, suddenly, several shore guns opened fire. More joining in—as if they’d all simultaneously realized that they were being duped. Tracer arcing out at the ships: shells whirred over.
Campbeltown was hit immediately: a searchlight held her in solid white light as the German flag came tumbling down and a White Ensign rose rather grandly in its place. Under her own colours she was free to fight now. Her guns blazed into action, and the whole force was returning the German fire: pompoms, Oerlikons, bigger guns, commando mortars, Hotchkiss, Brens … Searchlights from the shore blinding gunners and helmsmen. Campbeltown was being hit repeatedly but she was dishing it out too and holding her course and speed. Tracer criss-crossed multicoloured as the force poured its heavy fire-power, the abundance of Oerlikons particularly effective, against the shore defenders.
Sharp was at the controls beside PO Shawcross, both men shielding their eyes against the searchlights and watching Campbeltown’s stern, keeping Sauerkraut glued to that wake; and Campbeltown following the MGB which was passing the end of the Old Mole now—that close, point-blank, and a gun on the end of the mole still in action … Abaft the E-boat’s beam to port was the long eastern arm of the avant-port, and then the warehouse area; the heaviest volume of fire seemed to be coming from ahead, but several searchlights had been shot out and as the E-boat swept past the end of the Old Mole that gun on it was hit and wrecked. Another at the shore end of the mole was in action, with tracer-streams from several MLs’ Oerlikons licking at it. Campbeltown taking a lot of punishment, and abreast the mole she’d altered course; Shawcross was putting his wheel over now, to follow her round to port. She’d have a straight run from where she was now to the dock caisson—if she didn’t blow up before she got there. The MGB with the force commanders on board would peel off to port, leaving the destroyer to press on. It was 0132 now: two minutes past zero-hour. The port column of MLs was curving away to land their commandos on the Old Mole—or try to—and one of them was already on fire. Jack was looking that way when tracer came streaming low from somewhere ahead and part of Sauerkraut’s bridge roof shattered and flew away, with a lick of flame spreading aft. The MGB had turned to port, brightly illuminated by searchlights and gunflashes; explosive bullets lashed across the E-boat’s forepart, the screen on her port side disintegrated: Dixon had yelled something and dived over towards Sharp. Campbeltown going strong, holding on, guns all in fast, continuous action: he was looking at her, seeing a shell burst orange-red on the side of her bridge, when she hit the centre of the lock gate. Bullseye …
Dixon bawled, “Come around to port a little!” Shouting it at Shawcross. Jack let Sharp down: he’d fallen back against him with a wet pulp where his head had been. Dixon was at the throttles, slowing her, getting set to slide in alongside Campbeltown, who was at rest now, embedded in the caisson. One of the starboard column of MLs, burning, swung in close across Sauerkraut’s bow, out of control. Having avoided her, Shawcross obeyed Dixon’s order. Half a minute, and they’d be alongside, but going aft to get his team up Jack saw several other MLs in trouble. The after part of this E-boat’s superstructure was burning too. Slattery was in the hatch, with his tin hat on—which Sharp had not been wearing, Jack realized—and the others grouped behind him. Jack asked him, “Got my Lanchester?”
“Here, sir.” Romeo Merrit passed the gun out, and Jack fixed it on the webbing harness to leave his hands free. Tracer everywhere and noise building
. He shouted to Slattery, “Hang on a minute.” No point having them up too soon, and a lot of point keeping them under cover. Campbeltown’s flash-lit bulk loomed closer, higher; an ML close to port, heading into the Old Entrance, was being hammered by what looked like Bofors fire, and commandos who’d been ready to jump ashore were going down in heaps. It could happen here, too: Sauerkraut slewing in, with her stern still on fire, towards the destroyer’s waist. Tracer hammering at the superstructure over their heads, ricocheting away in streams of lethal, screaming colour and shells or mortars exploding up there too. But she was their bridge to the dockside and they had to get on to her and over her. He yelled to Slattery, “Come on!” and poised himself to jump the closing gap.
Echoes of the last crashes still quivered in his skull. There’d been about ninety charges dropped since the Italians had found them again at ten o’clock. It was nearly 2 am now and there was no sign they might let go.
They’d lost her once—for about ten minutes. At least, inside Ultra they’d thought they’d lost her.
“Two hundred feet.”
“Two hundred, sir.”
“Port twenty.”
Creagh’s wheel whirled. “Twenty of port wheel on, sir …”
Depth and course were the only things Ruck was varying now, in his attempts to evade the attacks. There was no question of using bursts of speed, grouping up the batteries. It was one reason there wasn’t so much chance now of the destroyers losing her again.
“Steer one-double-oh.”
“One-oh-oh, sir.”
Calm, low-key. Ruck set the tone. He couldn’t stop himself sweating, but from his general manner you’d guess he still saw reasonable prospects of getting away.
There did have to be such prospects, too. Paul couldn’t shift this out of his mind, the plain but inexplicable certainty of it. He didn’t want to lose it, really, only he just kept feeling for it and finding it still there, like a rock that wouldn’t budge. There was no justification for it that he could see: but then he was, he reminded himself, inexperienced, ignorant, whereas Ruck and Wykeham knew a lot about this business and obviously did expect to get her away from the tormentors.
Screws over the top again. Scrunch-scrunch-scrunch …
Coming down now: canisters floating down, while their pistols filled—
And detonated, burst … A noise that could have been the submarine’s hull bursting: the blast threw her about, shook her …
Angling down again as the residue of noise boomed away. She’d been changing depth from 150 to 200 feet, and she was passing 200 now at a steep bow-down angle. Fore planes hard arise, after planes scooping to drag the stern down, get the angle off. That pattern had been near them and disturbing, but it had been shallow-set and a bit ahead of her. There’d been several worse, in the past few hours. Nothing breakable and loose was intact inside her now: even the glass faces of shut-off gauges had been shivered into splinters. Levelling …
The Italians might run out of charges?
Otherwise—apart from the senseless conviction that survival was something you could count on—what way out could there be? There was no chance of surfacing, so the battery couldn’t be charged and soon she’d have no power at all. And the air, which was already wearing thin, couldn’t be renewed. After a certain time you’d suffocate. This wasn’t speculation, it was fact. It would be getting towards daylight up there in about three hours, and you couldn’t surface in enemy waters in daylight, even if the hunters went away—which they would not, of course …
“Two hundred feet, sir.”
“Very good.”
Ritual acknowledgement in a soothing tone.
The after periscope gland was leaking badly again, worse than it had off Tripoli. It was supposed to have been fixed in Malta before this patrol, but obviously the fixing hadn’t been thorough enough. A couple of dives out of control down to 400 feet and more, plus the hammer-blows of pressure from close depthcharges, must have dislodged some of the packing. Chief ERA Pool had his eyes on it nearly all the time, as if he was expecting it to get worse.
Ruck glanced over towards the helmsman. “Starboard fifteen.”
“Starboard fifteen, sir …” Grunting to himself as he spun the wheel. “Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir.”
Until now, Ruck had only made alterations when charges were actually on their way down. He was varying his tactics now: trying anything that occurred to him because his old, well-tried dodges hadn’t worked?
It was that nightmare concept coming true: the brick wall whichever way you turned. And one disability leading to another: the loss of asdics, now a dying battery and air turning to poison. That leaking periscope gland wasn’t anything much—not for the moment—nor was the fact that the after ballast-pump was out of action. Not yet.
Pings. Squeaking on the hull. Tiny, nasty … Better not to hear them if you could help it. But you couldn’t help it: you listened because you wanted them not to be there …
Screws coming over again. Ultra still circling. The screws passed over, and he could hear the pings again. Usual routine: one ship holding Ultra in contact while the other one attacked. While holding the contact, it would be reloading its depthcharge throwers and resetting the depth at which the next pattern but one would explode. But there could easily be more than two ships up there.
“Midships.”
He’d put the rudder the other way, Paul guessed, when the charges began to go off. As they would at any second now. McClure began to sing in a jerky whisper, “Hold tight, hold tight—”
“Hold that Tiger.” Harry Roy … Or was it Alexander’s Ragtime Band? Wykeham was the expert in that area. Alexander’s best-known, most-played dirge was the music-goes-round-and-round-and-it-comes-out-here thing. McClure wagging his head to the whisper-singing, with his eyes shut. The exploding charges punched her bow upwards and flung her like a dart towards the surface. Ruck snapped, “Open one main vent!” Because letting her break surface would be doomsday—they’d ram or blow you to bits. He was on the deck, on his hands and knees: he wasn’t the only one who’d been thrown across the control room. Quinn wrenching the lever back. The point being that the explosions might quite likely have driven air into the tank from underneath through its open kingston: you had to vent it to let that air out. She was levelling—at eighty feet. Seventy-five …
“Open two, three, four and five main vents.”Then, immediately, “Shut main vents.” Because leaving them open was dangerous, one of the great thou-shalt-nots … Screws passed over—louder-sounding, because she was closer to them, nearer the surface. But getting down: passing the hundred-feet mark. Ruck checked the ship’s head, realizing he hadn’t given Creagh a course to steer: “Starboard twenty.”
Hundred and twenty feet.
The pattern went off to port. Ultra rolled away from the pressure-waves. The deckhead leak spurted, then slowed again.
“Can you do anything about that, Chief?”
“Not much, sir. Not as would help for more than a few minutes.” “We’ll just have to live with it, then.” It had slowed more, anyway. “Steer oh-two-oh.”
“Oh-two-oh, sir!”
Creagh sounded bright and chirpy. Ruck muttered to Wykeham, “D’you realize we’ve still got pressure in Q?”
“Yes.” Wykeham nodded. “Realized it a minute ago, sir, when I was thinking about flooding it to stop us breaking surface.”
They couldn’t vent it now, anyway, because of the air bubble it would send to the surface. It would be dark up there still, but the Italians would have searchlights on the water, watching for the fruits of their unpleasant labours.
Nobody knew what the weather was like up there now. It was about eleven hours since they’d had a periscope up.
Screws raced over. Right over, by the sound of them. And if they went on for long enough—
“Hundred and fifty feet, sir.”
Vickers-Armstrong would be gratified, he thought, if they could have seen their handiwork stand
ing up to such a battering. But it couldn’t last for ever. Sooner or later, he warned himself, there’d have to be one final pattern, one really close one; the thing was, to be ready for it. Not to be caught off-guard … And still, even recognizing the facts of this situation, there was the hope, the idea that something like—well, the destroyers using up all their charges, or—
A depthcharge burst to port, close enough to rock her violently the other way and throw her bow up; then one that sounded as if it must have exploded almost on the fore casing seemed to fling her astern. She was standing on her tail-end like a seahorse, ringing with the crashes and—he thought, jammed between the bulkhead and the chart table— finished … Three more charges then, all around her, shaking her and buffeting her so that the deckboards lifted, rattling, and slammed down again. The lights went out and he heard what sounded like woodwork snapping somewhere below or to his right. The boat was tilting over now, toppling bow-down, men and objects sliding and banging around and the sound of loudly spurting water.
Emergency lights came on. In the others it wasn’t a switch that had thrown off this time, it was simply that the bulbs had been smashed in their sockets. Wykeham told Ruck, “Pretty sure some battery-containers went, sir. I think in number one.” The luminous needle in the gauge showed they were passing two hundred feet: she had a steep bow-down angle again and she was going downwards fast.
“Full astern together!”
“Full astern together, sir!”
For how long? Half a minute, before the batteries gave up the ghost?
A whistle from the voicepipe in the after bulkhead. Pool went to it and answered the call. A voice reported thinly, “Voltage is falling off very fast, sir!”
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 28