by Alan Evans
He could guess at the feelings of the German captain and his crew, hounded into this dead-end and knowing the enemy were gathering outside. Smith had bitter experience of that earlier in the year when he commanded the cruiser Thunder in the Pacific. The German captain was a bold man to have got this far. He would need all his boldness.
They were close! The Short’s dive steepened and her speed mounted. Smith could make out the details of Walküre now, the big-gun turrets, one forward, one aft and two either side of the centre-line — and Dauntless had hit her forward! — the 5.9s and 3.4s, those last with barrels at high elevation pointing up at the Short.
Smith gulped, eyes still scurrying over the ship that grew bigger beneath him with every second, seeking more signs of damage, finding none but seeing instead the flames winking from the guns along her deck. He clung on to the cockpit coaming as Rogers threw the Short heavily about the sky in an attempt to put off the gunners, the lumbering seaplane cavorting clumsily, a duck trying to imitate a wasp. Shells were bursting around them now and tossing the Short about. The Lewis jammed into Smith’s back, painfully reminding him that it was there and he turned and cocked it, stretched to aim it down over the side of the cockpit, squeezed the trigger as the Short pulled out of the dive. Walküre still lay far beneath them but they would never get closer in the face of that gunfire.
He did not see whether he hit anything or anybody but he felt the jerk as Rogers let go the bombs. Smith swore as he saw them fall, one to starboard and two to port of Walküre. Three near-misses, but misses all the same. Three. It only proved Pearce had been right because Walküre was anchored and still they could not hit her. He had said, “Sit the Short on the funnel” — but the gunfire made that impossible. But only three? Where was the fourth?
Walküre was sliding swiftly away astern of them now, her guns still hammering away, chasing the Short. Smith leaned out, peered down and saw the fourth bomb still hanging below the fuselage, looked up and saw Rogers bent to one side as he worked at the toggle release, flying one-handed. The engine was hiccoughing and Smith saw oil flying on the wind. Right ahead of them was the big freighter; Rogers was easing the Short around and they were going to pass close above her stern. Smith felt the lurch, tried to bring the sight of the Lewis on to the bridge of the Friedrichsburg, the lurch putting him off so he fired the Lewis at the sky but he saw the bomb burst, right on the water line of the Friedrichsburg and under her stern. He saw the chunk of steel plate spinning skyward and turned to slap a hand at Roger’s back and yell at him. That was a hit.
Rogers glanced over his shoulder, gave a quick excited grin then turned back to his flying. Smith dropped down in his seat and shoved the Lewis away from the back of his neck. They had not hit Walküre but he was not disappointed; it had been too much to hope for. They had hit the freighter and that was a pointed reminder to her that she was still in a war and not safe here. He had seen Walküre at anchor and knew now that she was not coming out for a while and in a few hours Maroc would be up. As for attacking her ...
He stopped making plans. The engine of the Short was still coughing and Rogers had gained little height, if any, since they had rid themselves of the two-hundred-and-sixty pounds of bombs. Now Smith became aware that there were great holes torn in the fuselage and they were only four or five hundred feet above the waters of the Gulf. It stretched out before him to an empty horizon. To his left, the Amanus mountains lifted clearly visible because the Short was nearer to that shore but the Taurus range to the right, on the other side of the Gulf, was hazy in the far distance.
He looked behind him and saw Walküre and the freighter, the latter marked by a tendril of smoke, but both of them tiny now. He thought they must still have close on twenty miles to fly to reach the open sea, Dauntless and Blackbird. The Short’s maximum speed was around eighty knots but they weren’t making that or anywhere near it. He remembered that when they took off the wind had been out of the north so that was a crosswind for them now, better than dead foul but no help. He looked over the side of the cockpit and down at the white etching of the wave crests beneath him, the Short’s shadow, cast sharp by the sun, sliding over them. They were making fifty, possibly sixty knots but no more than that. So they had to stay in the air for twenty minutes.
He realised that his neck hurt, and his head at the back, where they had caught the Lewis. At some time he had skinned his knuckles and he sucked them where they bled. The Turks had launches patrolling the Gulf, none of them in sight at the moment but if the Short came down in the Gulf it would mean a prison camp for Rogers and himself. Twenty minutes ...
*
Dauntless and Blackbird were in sight now to the northwest, hull up on the horizon. Maroc and the chaser had still not arrived. He shouted at Rogers, pointed, and the pilot nodded and heeled the Short into a gentle, banking turn towards the ships. In minutes Smith could see they were steaming south from the north headland at the mouth of the Gulf, patrolling. Now the Short’s engine died. In the silence, with only the wind’s sighing through the wires strung between the two planes, Smith heard Rogers say clearly, “Hell and damnation!” He eased the nose of the Short down so it glided towards the sea which was not far below. Smith squinted at the ships. Blackbird steamed astern of Dauntless but the gap between them was widening. Had the cruiser cracked on speed or —? No. Blackbird was stopping and now Smith could see the reason: the seaplane coming down out of the north. That was Cole and his pal Hamilton in Delilah. But what were they doing here? They were supposed to be flying a reconnaissance from Adana all the way to the Bagcha tunnel and that was a round trip of close on two hundred miles, about three hours.
Rogers shouted, “Hang on!”
They were slipping just above the surface of the sea now, Rogers turning the Short just a point, right into the wind, straightening her, keeping her nose down, flying her. The floats touched so gently as to raise only a feather of spray but the Short kept on sinking so that briefly the spray rose. But then they were slowing, stopping. They were down but not yet home and dry. The seaplane bobbed and swung on the choppy sea as the wind pushed at it and the Short had a lot for the wind to push at. Rogers was using the rudder in an attempt to keep the Short into the wind but not succeeding. Smith stood up to see over his head: Dauntless was big and rapidly growing bigger, cracking on speed now with her stern tucked down and a big white bow-wave. Slender and graceful, despite the stains and scars of battle, he thought for the hundredth time what a beauty she was and how lucky he was. In a few minutes she would be up with them.
The Short lurched under him and he lost his balance and sat down with a bump. The big boxy floats, riddled with bullet holes, had filled with water and sunk so the fuselage collapsed on the sea. The tail of the Short went under as the wind pushed her astern and now she was being blown back with her propeller stuck up in the air and her tail in the sea. Rogers shoved up out of his seat to sit on the fuselage, blaspheming steadily and pulling off his shoes. “Can’t do anything with her, sir. Not now. She’s going to sink in a minute.”
He was right. The wind blew the Short sideways and the weight of the engine and the water-filled floats dragged down the wings and fuselage inside a few minutes. In that time Dauntless came up, stopped and lowered a boat. It picked up Smith and Rogers as they paddled around with their shoes hung around their necks but the Short had gone.
As they sat in the sternsheets of the boat Smith said ironically, “I suppose this swimming home is standard procedure for you.”
‘Captain Webb’ Rogers took it philosophically, “Oh well, sir. It could have been a lot worse.”
Smith agreed. “If you hadn’t got us this far we would be prisoners.”
“Not only that, sir. There were an awful lot of holes in her where lumps of shell went through. They might easily have gone through us.”
Smith remembered Cole talking about Wilson, the lieutenant of the Norfolks who was killed while flying as his observer over Lydda, “... cut him to pieces below the wa
ist.”
Smith swallowed sickly.
But why had Cole returned in Delilah now?
The boat was alongside Dauntless and he climbed the ladder and thrust his shoes into the first pair of hands he saw. “Give them to Buckley and tell him I want another pair and some clothes.” And to Rogers: “Come on.”
Rogers followed as he climbed the ladders to the bridge where Ackroyd waited, face serious. Smith dripped water as he peeled off his shirt. Someone handed towels to him and Rogers but Smith was asking Ackroyd, “Why did Cole return early?”
“They were hit, sir.” He paused, then went on, “Hamilton’s dead. Cole is hurt pretty badly. They’re sending him over to us for the surgeon to handle.”
Smith was still for a second then went on mechanically rubbing at his face with the towel. First Wilson, now Hamilton. The big lieutenant of artillery had seemed indestructible, even after his fall, bursting with life. He and Cole had been closer than brothers. Now Hamilton was dead and Cole was hurt.
“There’s some good news, sir.” That was Ackroyd. Smith lowered the towel to rub his chest and saw Ackroyd was smiling now. “Signals, sir.”
Smith leafed through the signals and saw the reason for that smile. The armoured cruiser Attack would arrive in thirty-six hours. Another French battleship, a new one, Ocean, was tearing up from Malta and would arrive soon after Attack. A transport was to be sent from the Adriatic carrying four M.A.S. boats, the Italian torpedo-boats with electric motors for silent night attack, ideal for slipping into the Gulf over the minefields and slamming torpedoes into Walküre. Smith looked up and grinned. Ackroyd said, “One way or the other we’ve got her.”
Smith agreed but now Blackbird ranged alongside, the way coming off both ships. Blackbird was stopped. Dauntless’s propellors thrashed astern, then stopped as she nudged in gently against the seaplane carrier. The lines flew over and the ships were briefly lashed together. Blackbird’s winch clattered and the stretcher with the blanket-wrapped Cole was swung up on the derrick and swayed over to the deck of Dauntless.
Smith rubbed at his loins with the towel wrapped around his waist. He said, “Mr. Bright.”
The midshipman answered quickly, “Sir?”
“Ask the surgeon if I can talk to Mr. Cole as soon as convenient.” He wanted to see Cole, wanted to know what had happened to him and Hamilton.
“Aye, aye, sir!” Bright dashed away.
Rogers, naked as the day he was born and rubbing at his hair with a towel, stood out on the wing of the bridge and carried on a shouted conversation with Pearce in Blackbird. Smith heard ‘Delilah’ mentioned. Buckley came with clothes draped over one arm as Rogers turned his head, and said, “They’ve sent Hamilton’s map and notebook over with Cole, sir. And it seems Cole wants to talk to you.”
At that moment a seaman brought a canvas-wrapped bundle to the bridge. “Come over with the pilot, sir. For you.”
Smith nodded at Buckley. “Open it.”
He grabbed his clothes from Buckley and dropped them on the deck, picked out the shirt and pulled it on. He carried on dressing as Buckley took out a big clasp knife, cut the twine lashed around the sailcloth-covered packet and unwrapped it. It held a map clipped to a board and a sketchblock of plain, unruled paper. Buckley held them out for inspection and Smith stooped over them as he tucked shirt into trousers.
This was Hamilton’s map, Hamilton’s notepad.
Both of them were spotted with blood. The pad had a hasty sketch in the corner, the back of a head in a flying helmet, shoulders humped up grotesquely each side, obviously meant to be Cole. Then the notes in Hamilton’s bold, scrawled hand. Of Archie, the anti-aircraft battery on the northern shore of the Gulf, the bouncy crossing “Up and down like a see-saw”. Then: “Beautiful, incredibly beautiful, the sunlight on the mountains and the ravines so deep and dark.” And then: “Adana station: the scrawl became bigger: “Germans at Adana! More than a company! Five hundred! Flat cars with guns. Caught them napping! Not a shot fired and I could count the buttons on their shirts! Good old Cole. Good old Delilah!”
That was the last entry.
Smith slowly folded the map and put the notepad carefully inside it. He looked up to see Rogers and Ackroyd staring at him. Rogers asked, “Something wrong, sir?”
“They found the Afrika Legion.”
Ackroyd burst out, “That’s bloody marvellous!” Then as he saw Smith’s set face, “Isn’t it, sir?”
Smith did not answer him but said to Rogers, now dressed in shirt and trousers lent by Jameson, “Let’s go and see Cole.”
*
He lay in a cot in the sick bay, his face as white as the sheet tucked up around him. Merryweather came to meet Smith and Rogers at the door and said, “He wants to talk to you.”
Smith stared past him at Cole. “I need to hear him. Is it — is he all right?”
Merryweather said bitterly, “There’s nothing I or anyone else can do for him. I can’t understand how he’s still alive.”
Smith heard the catch of Rogers’ breath. Merryweather stood aside and Smith moved forward to kneel by the cot. Cole’s head turned, eyes looking for him.
Smith said softly, “Hello, old son.”
Cole whispered, “Hamilton? How is he?”
“He’ll be all right,” Smith lied.
“Good.” Cole smiled. “I was worried about him.”
He was silent, then Smith prompted, because he had to ask, “What happened?”
Cole whispered, “Got over Adana. Hell of a trip — you know what it’s like — up and down like you were in a bloody great lift — and the wind. But Delilah took it like a bird. She’s a beauty! And Adana. Train there. Lot of Germans. Hundreds!”
Hamilton’s pad had said five hundred.
“... Afrika Legion. Must be. Guns. Got right down low, buzzed them. Not a shot fired at us. Then — Archie, I suppose. Don’t remember anything. Found I was still flying or Delilah was flying herself. Couldn’t see Hamilton or hear him. Don’t remember much about the rest. Saw Blackbird. Kept dozing off but got down. Delilah got us down. Good old Delilah. Is she all right?” He peered anxiously at Rogers.
Who nodded. “They got her aboard. A few holes, that’s all.”
“Great.” Cole was silent, eyes closed.
Smith waited, watching the pilot. He felt a touch on his arm, turned his head and saw the surgeon point at the door where Midshipman Bright waited. Smith glanced back at Cole but the surgeon was bent over him, one hand moving in a gesture of dismissal. Smith and Rogers rose and left the sick bay.
Bright said, “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but the first lieutenant said to fetch you at once. There’s a local boat alongside and that Arab chap has come aboard, the one we put ashore south of Jaffa.”
Smith stared at him, remembering Edwards saying arrogantly, “I’ll find the Legion for you, if it’s there. Just have to grease a few palms, maybe cut a throat or two but I’ll find it.” Edwards about to leap into the surf on an enemy shore: “His throat or mine. And I bet it’s his!”
“Where is he?”
“In his cabin, sir, the one he had before. He said a friend had brought him. He asked if his kit was still aboard and then if he could use the cabin. An’ he said he wanted to talk to you so the first lieutenant said he could have the cabin and you would see him all in good time, sir, when you were ready.”
Smith’s lips twitched as he pictured Ackroyd telling the colonel that and enjoying it. He said, “Very good,” dismissing Bright. He wanted to hear what Edwards had to say.
Rogers said unhappily, his mind on Cole, “I’d like to get back to Blackbird, sir.”
Smith asked, thinking ahead, “What’s the state of air-craft? How many available? Two?”
“Yes, sir. The captain —” that was Pearce, captain of Blackbird, “— said Delilah wouldn’t be ready to fly for a few hours but the other two are on stand-by.”
The gig took Rogers back to Blackbird and Smith strode aft to the wardroom flat a
nd Edwards’s cabin. The soldier sat on the bunk in his white robes, his open suitcase beside him and his tunic across his knees. He looked thinner, his cheeks sunken and he was dirty as if the dust was ingrained into his skin. He had pulled off the head-dress and his hair was matted. A bottle of whisky stood on the desk and he held a glass in one hand while he rummaged in the pocket of his tunic with the other. He pulled out his cigarette case as Smith entered and a photograph came out of the pocket with it and fell to the deck at Smith’s feet.
Edwards said, “Blast!”
Smith stooped and picked up the photograph, rose slowly. It showed the head and bare shoulders of a young woman, a half-smile on her full lips that the camera had frozen in open invitation. He asked neutrally, “Friend of yours?”
Edwards stuck a cigarette in his mouth, took the photograph, glanced at it and grinned. “Livvy? Not exactly a friend, old boy. More a sort of tenant. When I met her in Cairo she was living in some scruffy married quarter — too many service wives around watching her for her liking. I’ve got a flat I only use when I can get to Cairo and that’s not often enough, so I let her have it. Her husband doesn’t get to Cairo much either, so it works out very well.” He gulped at the whisky and sighed appreciation. “Don’t know what her husband does or where he is and I don’t care. Livvy’s a nice little piece, though now she’s hinting at a divorce and giving me those ‘what-about-it’ looks. To hell with that. As soon as I turned my back she’d be after somebody else. I know I’m not the first by a long sight. She’s notorious.”
He tossed the photograph carelessly on to the desk, dismissing the subject, and showed his teeth in an exultant grin. “I want you to send a wireless signal to Finlayson. I’ve found the Afrika Legion.”
“So have we.” Smith held out Hamilton’s map and pad, saw the grin wiped from Edwards’s face. “We’ve located some of them, a half-battalion or so at Adana but we don’t know whether that’s an advance guard, rear-party or what. We’ll send your signal, of course. It’s just as well we are here to send it.” That was said casually but he knew the message had got home, that but for Dauntless and her wireless it would have taken Edwards a week or more to reach Finlayson with his information. But then Smith said honestly, “Congratulations. It was a tremendous piece of work. You’re an extraordinary man.”