by John Wingate
The second stick of bombs fell as he groped his way upwards, the stairway crumbling beneath his feet as he did so. A black chasm yawned in front of him and a red mist swam before his eyes as he clutched the collapsing banister. There was a deafening roar, and the crimson world spun into widening spirals of nothingness, spinning, spinning wildly into whorls of dancing light until he fell and knew no more.
The sailors too had gone ashore to stretch their legs. They also had been caught in the raid, and one of them, Able Seaman Bill Hawkins, was strolling by himself down a deserted street. He looked up as the second wave of bombers lumbered over him.
“Nearly as ’ot as Lunnon!” he growled.
He stopped in his tracks, fists thrust deep into the flaps of his bell-bottoms. This scene of enemy savagery always hurt him. It was the smell that did it, the acrid smell of burning that brought back the agony of his first leave.
Yes, that was it, the sour rankness of smouldering wood, drenched by water from playing hoses. This smell brought it all back. The shambles that had once been the street in which he had lived and loved since he was a child. The urgent ringing of the ambulance bell, the scream of tyres as the vehicle had lurched to avoid him. “Stand back, Jack, there’s a perishin’ landmine in that there ’ouse!”
The terrible explosion that had blown him backwards, shattering the night, as he tried to burst through the cordon of restraining arms! The kind hands that had tried to comfort him, while he sank on to a pile of rubble, his head in his hands, his eyes glazed and staring before him. “Janet, Janet! Oh, my God, the kids!” was all he had whispered. The pub-keeper who had taken him in for the night, who could not understand him when he went without breakfast after the nightmare night. “I’m going back to the ship,” was all that he had said, as he had walked out into the bleak dawn.
Yes, it was the bitter smell that reminded him so vividly of something he wanted to forget.
“The perishin’ swine,” he whispered as he ran towards the flaming houses. The nearest was ablaze and one end was about to collapse. An old man stood coatless in the road, a thin arm pointing frantically at the burning house.
“Get them out. For Gawd’s sake get them out!” he shrieked.
Bill hesitated. To enter this shambles might mean certain death, for the doomed building was already cracking and creaking.
“There’s an orficer inside as well, Jack!” the old man screeched.
“Orficer?”
“There, look Jack, there’s ’is blinkin’ ’at!”
Outside what was once a door, a naval officer’s dusty cap lay, like a signpost on a deserted moor. Bill snatched up the battered object. There was only one like it, the cap which the young Captain of Chaser 25 always wore — a battered wreck of a thing, which he always called his ‘joss’ cap.
Hawkins hesitated no longer but charged in through the open doorway. Protected from the sagging ceiling by a smouldering beam, a huddled figure in dark uniform lay crumpled amongst the burning wreckage. To the right of the staircase and past human help, a woman lay twisted, her child whimpering in her stiff arms.
Bill grabbed the child, dashed outside and bundled it into the old man’s hands, and then bounded back into the furnace. His feverish fingers tore at the bricks, his huge shoulders heaved and strained against the beam. Masonry clattered around his head and flames licked, crackling wickedly along the floor.
He pulled the limp figure out by the legs and through the doorway as falling debris crashed around him. The building collapsed as he reached the open road, the limp body of his young Captain trailing after him.
Bill had not noticed the crash. He propped up the limp head in his lap and rolled back the closed eyelids. The eyes rolled, the body twitched as Bill tore off Peter’s black tie and collar and gently slapped the white face. The body stiffened, twitched, and jerked into consciousness.
“C’mon, sir, c’mon! You’re all right, sir, c’mon,” Bill pleaded.
Peter blinked and shook his head.
“You’re all right,” were the first words he heard, kind words from a hoarse voice he knew. Across his consciousness there drifted the faint sobbing of a child.
“Try standing up, sir, then we’ll get back to the ship.”
Peter’s groggy knees took his weight. He shook his reeling head, and passed a hand across his face.
“Where the dickens am I? Oh, it’s you, Hawkins?”
“Yes, sir, it’s me.”
“Good. Let’s get back to the ship.”
“Come on, sir, lean on me.”
“Thank you, Hawkins. I reckon we’re quits now.”
“I reckon so, sir. Let’s get going.”
The old man stared after them. In his arms a child lay sobbing. Tears trickled down his lined face as he wagged his old head in bewilderment.
The ship’s company of Chaser 25 knew little of this incident and the debt Able Seaman Bill Hawkins had repaid to his Captain. It was as Hawkins had wished, for he had asked Peter not to mention what had happened. Nevertheless, it was from this moment that the mutual respect of the two men for each other matured into comradeship.
They were utterly different in their temperaments. Hawkins was some ten years older than Peter. Of an impetuous nature, Bill Hawkins found it impossible to keep out of trouble. He always spoke his mind which made things less easy for him, particularly when irritated by those ashore who were dodging the war. The memories of his personal tragedy were yet too raw to allow for toleration.
Bill was not tall, barely five foot two in his socks, but his huge barrel of a chest gave him enormous strength, and for a man of his build he was light on his feet. His arms were long for his body which accounted for his success in the boxing ring. He had become the welterweight champion of the Mediterranean Fleet before the war, but he seldom referred to it. When roused, his blue eyes would dance with points of light and he would lean forward, poised on the balls of his feet.
Perhaps it was his intense hatred of the Germans which bound him to Peter. They were both on the bridge some three weeks later when the Chaser was returning from Weymouth with a small tanker. They had hugged the coast and were rounding up for St. Alban’s Head, a sharp bluff on the horizon.
As often happens in small ships, the last dog watch, from six to eight in the evening, was a time for relaxation and confidences. The tanker was giving no trouble, and Peter had strolled over to the starboard wing of the bridge where Bill Hawkins was keeping his lookout.
Neither knew how it had started, but for the first time in his life, Bill Hawkins haltingly told of the tragedy of his wife and children. Peter said little, but even though he was the younger man, he sensed the grief of the sailor and his silence gave comfort. When Bill’s flood of words came to a faltering halt, Peter felt a bond grow between them, knitting them together in a strange companionship. They should both have felt embarrassed, but it was not so. Peter gave the broad back a gentle thump and returned to the compass while the sailor scanned the grey horizon, his jaw jutting with grim purpose.
Peter had to admit that they were all desperately tired. He had only to look at Hawkins there, gripping the rail of the bucketing bridge with one hand, to realise that no one was really tuned to this business yet and how long would this dreary war drag on? They had only experienced six months of this, and the news of disaster grew daily worse. Invasion was imminent with the Germans massing in the Channel ports.
But I suppose we’ll all get used to it, he thought. After all, we’ve only been operating for six months and, he grinned to himself, we’re still afloat.
He already looked older than his years, as he propped himself against a folding seat on the starboard side of the bridge. One arm across the binnacle for support, Peter gazed through salt-encrusted eyelids at the red-splotched coaster, wallowing in the broken seas.
It’s odd, he mused to himself, here am I, in command of a ship at the age of twenty-one, and responsible for the safe passage of that little ‘widget’ of a ship on my po
rt quarter. I’m lucky. Some people never get this chance all their lives, but this is better than a C.W. convoy, any day! — and he pushed back his battered cap to scratch the side of his head, where even now there were a few grey flecks. He was not as tall as he looked, for his lean and wiry frame gave a deceptive appearance of height.
“It’s getting worse, sir.”
Peter looked up. The small figure of Jamie, his First Lieutenant, was hauling itself up to the heaving bridge. A small and wiry Scot from Glasgow, Jamie was always cheerful, but good spirits did not compensate for the limited experience that even Peter possessed. Peter found himself on the bridge continuously, whilst Jamie learned as much as he could during the full days that slipped by so quickly. Swathed in a steaming duffel coat, his diminutive figure was always poring over the chart table, anxious to learn all he could in between bouts of dreadful seasickness. Thrown from side to side and swaying to the violent motion of the ship, Jamie looked up from the chart table.
“It’s coming on to blow, sir,” he shouted across to Peter against the soughing of the wind now screaming in the rigging.
“Yes, Number One, and we ought to feel it as we go through St. Alban’s Race, just ahead there,” shouted Peter in reply as he pointed with outstretched arm to the broken water that lay ahead, where the small tanker was heaving and wallowing in the trough of the short swell, her upper deck completely awash as she plunged through the green seas.
“There’s too much wind for enemy aircraft, so we needn’t worry about them; but I don’t like this poor visibility,” Peter continued. By the time they had smashed their way through the broken waters of the Race, snarling and jumping in angry seas, the visibility had shut down like a smothering blanket. The flying clouds swept low over the tiny ships, pitching and yawing within a stone’s throw of each other.
Peter was anxious. Only another hour’s daylight remained in which to make the hazardous passage of the Needles, an opening barely half a mile wide. In these conditions and with this bad visibility, he would need luck on his side to pick up those jagged rocks, so aptly named. Peter hated them at this moment.
Jamie went to snatch a meal in the Ward Room aft, and once more Peter was left alone with his problems. The two huddled figures of the lookouts tried to peer through smeary binoculars for signs of the cruel rocks that stood sentinel for the Isle of Wight.
These perishing Needles, thought Peter, if I don’t sight them soon, either the Shingles Bank will get us or I’ll be late for my rendezvous with Chaser 27. We’re both out on patrol tonight. “Keep a sharp lookout, right ahead,” he shouted to the lookouts.
“Aye, aye, sir!” came their gruff replies, as they strained their red-rimmed eyes into the biting wind.
“There she is!” yelled Peter.
Sure enough, fine on the starboard bow, he momentarily caught sight of the black top of a leaping buoy which instantly disappeared in a smother of foam.
Peter sighed with relief and steadied his ship on the black jack-in-a-box of a buoy. Wearily he picked up the Aldis signalling lamp, lined it up on the bridge of the wallowing tanker and flashed, “Follow me.”
“Thank you,” the courteous reply came blinking back haltingly from the pitching bridge of the rusty coaster.
Peter shouted down the voicepipe and felt his ship vibrate to her increased speed, as she plunged and butted into the vicious seas now running through the entrance of the channel.
Yes, I am lucky to be Captain of this little hooker, he thought as his eye roved affectionately over the small French Submarine Chaser, known by her unromantic and prosaic name, Chaser 25. She had been rushed over from Dunkirk, her plates merely bolted together in the haste to deny her to the Germans. Six months ago, he had proudly taken her out of the Southampton shipyard, where she had been patched up and given two 0.303 French Hotchkiss machine-guns.
Only a small ship, of low freeboard, with a turtle-backed upper deck, she was one hundred and twenty feet long. Built for the Mediterranean, this wild English Channel weather was not for her, for she was very wet in bad weather.
He leaned over the side of the bridge to watch the red-splotched anti-fouling of her fore-foot, rearing out of the seething water. Her bows lifted high, paused, and came crashing down again into the swirling seas. Peter ducked as she took it green and turned his back to the solid curtain of water that spurted upwards to smother the bridge. Faintly he heard the dripping wetness swilling around the deck as it drained away in the scuppers.
He pulled a sodden towel closer around his neck and felt a cold dribble trickling down to his stomach and then stood up and instinctively took in the scene again.
Already he was drawing ahead of the little tanker, but the dark shapes of the jagged rocks, cruel and menacing, seemed very close. The breaking white seas unleashed their fury against them, leaping high in spouts of foam and driving spume.
I’d better round up now, he thought, though there’s not much sea-room with the Shingles Shoal a quarter of a mile to port. I think we’re through.
In the haze to port, he could see the white foam breaking wildly over the shifting shoals that formed the western limit of the channel.
He fumbled for his tobacco pouch as he leaned thankfully over the fore-end of the bridge, and allowed his tired eyes to drift across the lowering clouds which swept down upon the threshing waters.
Two black smoke puffs, that was all…
Two black cotton-wool puffs, which were already losing shape and trailing in the wind just below the cloud.
For an instant Peter was transfixed. Growing larger with every second that passed, the yellow snouts of two Messerschmitt 109’s hurtled down upon them.
Peter lunged at the alarm buzzer and its urgent summons sent men scrambling on deck. They clawed blindly along the heaving, greasy decks to the few machine-guns which were their only defence. One man slipped, half down on his knees, and his tin hat fell off to wobble gently over the side.
But it was much too late.
Below each Messerschmitt a black puff of exhaust squirted as they cut in their motors. The staccato roar of their engines, interrupted by the ruthless chatter of spitting guns, drowned even the howling of the wind. The fighters swooped down upon the small ship, raking her from stem to stern as they swung overhead at masthead height. Armour-piercing and incendiary bullets tore through her sides and rigging, twanging in an inferno of sound.
Whok-whok … whok, whok-whok!
The whine of the spattering lead made a strange background accompaniment to this devil’s opera.
“Get down!” Peter yelled desperately to the two lookouts, standing goggle-eyed in the wings of the bridge. Hurling himself at the unmanned Hotchkiss, he spun it round in a vain attempt to bring the sights to bear on the two black fighters now already overhead. He stared at the grinning face of the helmeted pilot in the leading plane, and saw him relax after jerking the bomb release.
Wheee, wheee … wheee, wheee!
The small bombs dropped, egg-like, from the black bellies streaking overhead. They were so close that Peter saw them distinctly, his eyes fascinated by the toppling, globular horrors. He held his breath and braced himself for the shock. The sea jumped up to meet him as the ship jarred and shuddered. Two bombs fell short and two between Chaser 25 and her small tanker. They plumped into the heaving seas, racking the ships in sharp spasms. The aircraft shuddered and climbed hard to port for the refuge of low cloud and disappeared in the murk.
Peter felt a warm sensation in the seat of his overalls. Instinctively his hand felt for wet blood, but to his relief and amusement found only a smouldering hole.
“All over!” yelled Peter to the men now standing by their guns, fingers itching to loose off a round. Angry eyes that stung with shame at being caught unprepared, peered skywards.
“Never mind! That won’t happen again, Number One, will it?” laughed Peter, a trifle breathless, to his First Lieutenant who had arrived panting up the bridge ladder.
“No blooming fear
, it won’t, sir!” growled Hawkins, now glued to his gun. “Those so-and-so’s ’ave got it coming to ’em” — and with that he smoothed down the ruffled hair on his blond head.
The signalling lamp from the tanker now ahead of them blinked anxiously.
“Thanks. Are you all right?”
Peter sent Jamie round the ship before replying and it seemed an eternity before he returned.
“By a miracle, sir, no one even scratched,” and he continued, grinning, “but the cook is livid. The cat has had kittens in the galley!”
“No casualties,” signalled Peter, “except to the cat, which has produced kittens. Proceed to Portsmouth independently.”
Another routine trip was over. In the dusk, the tanker waddled her way up the western Solent and disappeared into the November twilight from which the small smudge of another Chaser now appeared. She was Chaser 27, bound for the night’s patrol with the weary Chaser 25.
“Ah well!” sighed Peter, turning his ship round so that she faced seawards again. “I suppose another night’s patrol won’t do us any harm.”
Out loud he gave his orders, “Fall out action stations; cruising stations, Number One.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the First Lieutenant, an impish light glinting in his Celtic eyes.
“Cruising stations, Coxswain!”
This imperturbable man, old enough to be the father of both his officers, shook his head and grinned.
“Only six months, sir, and we’ve had more than you get in ten years of peacetime Navy. I wonder how long this war is going on?” And, with that observation, he clattered off the bridge.
Chaser 27 joined up and led the way out of the Needles channel, now growing indistinct in the gathering dusk. With its own idea of humour, the wind had now started to moderate and already the sea had dropped, leaving a long, oily swell lumping across the entrance to the channel.
Wearily Peter dragged himself over to the chart table to make sure of his night’s position, but, as he was doing so, the signalman started to pick up his Aldis lamp, giving ‘T’s in acknowledgment to a light that blinked astern.