For the last twenty or thirty minutes—since about the time they’d turned for the run down into Almyro Bay—there’d been outbreaks of gunfire to seaward. The sound of it came from the north-west, where the flotilla would be heading when this landing job was done. Admiral Glennie’s ships, he guessed: they’d have been sweeping eastward on a track to the north of the Tribals’ westward one, and they must have run into something … He thought, waiting for the all-clear signal from the shore, Come on, come on …
The boats were alongside, full of men and ready to shove off. On the port side one motorboat—with Sub-Lieutenant Chalk, RNVR, in charge—had the whaler astern of it in tow, and to starboard the other motorboat waited on its own. All the boats had been scrounged or “borrowed” from Alexandria dockyard by Dalgleish—who was down there on the iron deck now, waiting to send them away. Nick had his glasses trained on the islet, the causeway, and the land behind it, and Ashcourt was at the after end of the bridge acting as a link between Nick and Dalgleish. Half a cable’s length to starboard Blackfoot was a low, rakish silhouette, and Masai lay beyond her; one motorboat-load of marines had already gone inshore from Blackfoot to check that the immediate surroundings were clear of Germans, and the destroyers were at action stations, their guns ready to respond instantaneously to any opposition.
Afghan was guardship, two miles out in the bay and keeping an Asdic listening watch. She’d come in and land her troops when the first of these three finished and moved out to take her place.
Ashore, across that gap of starlit water, nothing moved. Gunfire in the west—ashore—was a sporadic crackling like the sound of fireworks at a distance. It was quite different from the heavier explosions that came from seaward—still came, although less frequently.
Ayios Nikolaos … Ayios, according to the pilot, meaning “saint.” Where the causeway reached the beach was the mouth of a river, the Almiros, and its westward-reaching valley carried a track which later curved northward to the southern shore of Suda Bay. Suda, which Winston Churchill had thought should be turned into a Mediterranean version of Scapa Flow, an impregnable naval base. Royal Marines were improvising defences for it now, marines of the MNBDO, Mobile Naval Base Defence Organization, under a General Weston.
Nick saw the all-clear: a morse “K” on a blue lamp from the shore. And now a second later it had been repeated from the island. He told Ashcourt, “Away boats!”
Ashcourt called down to Dalgleish, “Away boats, sir!”
Nick asked Pratt, “Depth all right still?”
“Yes, sir. We seem to be static.” Pratt added, “That action’s still—”
“I know, Pilot, I’ve got ears …”
Pratt had been talking about that gunfire: and Nick was wanting to finish this quickly, get out there … The motorboat from the starboard side was chugging out ahead of the ship, waiting for the other one with its whaler. Nick had given orders that they were to stay together, move to and fro as one unit. Motorboats’ engines were notoriously unreliable, and by doing it this way you ensured that if a boat broke down there’d be only a minimal delay before it was added to the tow. As a last resort, if both power-boats failed, the whaler had its oars and would tow them. There were fifteen marines in the 27-foot whaler, thirty in each of the motorboats, so two round trips would complete the job. The boats were all clear now, moving shoreward, and he could see the other destroyers’ boats off to starboard, the phosphorescence at their sterns and their dark shapes against the shiny surface. Blackfoot’s and Masai’s would be landing on the north side of the islet, while Tuareg’s had this side to themselves. In both approaches, the seaward extremity of the island had to be widely skirted, because of off-lying rocks; Tuareg’s boats had farther to go than the others had, but the lack of competition for landing space ought to give their coxswains an advantage.
Apart from the desire to get out to sea and to where the action was, he wanted Tuareg’s boats to finish first: in particular, to beat Blackfoot’s. He’d have made sure of it, he knew, if he’d put Ashcourt in charge of the operation, instead of young Chalk; Ashcourt had two years’ experience of boat-handling as an RN midshipman behind him, whereas Chalk had come straight from Oxford via the Joint Universities’ Recruiting Board. He needed experience, the feel of responsibility, though, and it was in the ship’s interests as well as his that he should get it. Besides, with a first-class killick coxswain in each boat he couldn’t go far wrong.
“Boats returning, sir!”
Ashcourt sounded as if he’d caught the regatta spirit too. Or he was thinking about that gunfire. Anyway, those were Tuareg’s boats: the others must still be behind Ayios Nikolaos.
Blackfoot’s having put the advance party ashore hadn’t given her any advantage, because the marine colonel had a few extra men in his contingent anyway. And unless Tuareg’s boats did something silly now—like breaking down—they’d win easily: they were more than halfway from the shore, and the first of the others had only just come in sight.
“Sub, tell the first lieutenant to stand by with the second flight.” He went to the engine-room voicepipe and told Redmayne, the engineer lieutenant, “About three minutes, Chief, then I’ll be turning the ship.” The boats were making their approaches; down on the iron deck Dalgleish, aided by Mr Walsh the gunner (T) and PO Mercer the chief buffer, would have the rest of the landing-force ready at the top of the nets.
Nick thought that if he’d been in Reggie Marsh’s boots, he’d have been flashing to Afghan now, telling Pete Taverner to start moving in.
There’d been no flashes or colour in the sky, nothing visible to accompany that gunfire. No sound for the last few minutes, either.
Reggie Marsh had had a pat on the back, apparently, for snapping up that convoy off Benghazi, at the beginning of the month. Aubrey Wishart, who was a rear-admiral on A. B. Cunningham’s staff in Alexandria, and who’d been a close friend of Nick’s for more than thirty years—since a somewhat hazardous submarine patrol to the Golden Horn, back in 1918—Wishart had told him that the C-in-C had been impressed by the neatness of that interception and the clean-sweep of the convoy.
Well, it had been an efficiently handled affair. Perhaps Reggie Marsh wasn’t as muddle-headed as he’d been in earlier days. Perhaps one should accept him now at apparent current value, forget the longer-standing, less favourable impressions?
Tuareg’s boats were going to beat Blackfoot’s hollow. They were clear of the ship, heading away shorewards and going well, and the other two destroyers’ boats were only just getting in alongside. Dalgleish—or rather Mercer, his right-hand man—would be getting the scrambling nets up now and overhauling the boats’ falls, ready for all three to be hooked on and hoisted. Tuareg would be under way and gathering speed seaward the moment those boats’ keels were clear of the water.
“Sub, tell the first lieutenant I’m about to turn the ship.” He went to the wheelhouse voicepipe. “Port twenty-five. Slow astern starboard.” Straightening, he asked Pratt, “All right for water?”
“Three and a half fathoms, sir. Fine as long as we don’t go any closer in.”
That was why he was turning her astern. The ship was trembling now as the one screw churned, driving a swirl of water up her starboard side. He could see her stem against the land, moving to the right as she began to swing around with stern way on.
“Slow ahead port.”
Pratt said, “We’ve made Captain (D) look a bit slow off the mark, sir.”
“We had the best billet, Pilot.” He stooped to the pipe again.
“Midships.” Tuareg was turning nicely, spinning on her heel. For ten minutes now the only gunfire had been from the land fighting, the westerly direction. He guessed that the sea action, whatever it had been, must have been about thirty miles offshore. Ashcourt reported, “First lieutenant says they’re standing by and ready to hoist the boats, sir.”
“Very good.” He told Pratt, “See if you can spot Afghan out there.” And into the voicepipe, “Stop both
engines, Cox’n.”
“Stop both, sir … Both engines stopped, sir!”
The swirl of sea would settle now, leaving calm water in which the boats would shoot up to the dangling falls and hook on.
Oh-two-thirty: one watch slept around their weapons or at their stations below decks, while the other half of the ship’s company stayed awake. Pratt was sleeping in the chartroom and Nick had told Dalgleish to get his head down in his—Nick’s—sea-cabin, which was next to the chartroom, just one ladder down from the bridge. Ashcourt was at the binnacle as officer of the watch.
The flotilla had formed up six miles east of Cape Malea three-quarters of an hour ago; they’d idled northward across Almyro Bay while Afghan had been landing her quota of Royal Marines and then come racing out to rejoin them. The four Tribals were in line-abreast now, steaming at 30 knots on a course of 336 degrees, north-north-westerly. Marsh in Blackfoot, had put Afghan to port of him and Masai to starboard, with Tuareg out on the sweep’s starboard wing; Afghan and Masai kept station on Blackfoot and Tuareg kept station on Masai. The ships were five cables, half a sea mile, apart from each other. If it had been a decision for Nick to have made he’d have had one-mile or even three-thousand-yard gaps, to widen the coverage of the sweep; there was no moon, but stars gave light enough for the flotilla to keep in visual touch without much difficulty.
Nick thought he should try to dismiss his reservations about Reggie Marsh. They were based, after all, only on recollections of the man as he’d been more than ten years ago. Pete Taverner of Afghan and Johnny Smeake of Masai seemed to think well enough of him as their Captain (D), and he passed muster—presumably—with the great A. B. Cunningham …
Poor old ABC. It irked him badly, Aubrey Wishart had told Nick, that he had to run this widespread battle from a shoreside headquarters. He’d sneered at it as “soft-arsed accommodation” … Cunningham was 100 per cent seaman and seagoing commander: but obviously with so many ships involved and over such an area, with the desert coast and Malta to look after as well as the Aegean, and the Italian fleet still a potential menace lurking in its harbours, and having to keep in close touch with Army HQ in Cairo as well as with what existed of the RAF —it was obvious that he couldn’t be stuck out at sea.
About now, Nick guessed, the flotilla was passing through roughly the area where that action must have been. It was a reasonable guess that Admiral Glennie with Dido and Orion and the other ships of Force D might have run into an invasion convoy and disposed of it, then continued their eastward sweep. Whether that made it more or less likely that this flotilla would meet any other invasion groups farther north was an open question; but the orders were that they should sweep as far as a position 36 degrees 30 north, 23 degrees 45 west—it was the midpoint of a line drawn between Cape Malea and Milos Island—and then come about to course 190 degrees so as to be down in the Antikithera Channel by first light.
Having, as likely as not, seen damn-all.
He planned to take an hour or two’s rest after they’d turned to the southerly course, which would be at about 0400. Dalgleish and Pratt could be up here then, and he’d sleep in his bridge chair and be back on his feet, rested and fit for another day’s work, by dawn action stations.
In the cocoon of ship and sea noise, using binoculars to study a hazy, vague horizon while the four Tribals’ hulls lathered white tracks northward into the Aegean, your mind could slide from one thing to another without interrupting the concentrated effort of looking out. He was thinking again about Jack: Jack saying, when he’d consented to dine on board Tuareg as Nick’s guest in Alex about three weeks ago, something about war reducing men to the state of wild animals. It was the Stuka attacks he’d been thinking about, the impression of ferocity, blood-lust.
“Oh, those people could teach wild animals a thing or two,” Nick had agreed with him. “But several million decent people in Europe, in countries they’ve invaded, have been shut up in cages in conditions you wouldn’t inflict on any animal. Those Stukas you didn’t like the look of have already flattened cities and bombed columns of helpless refugees. They’ve struck at countries who were falling over backwards to stay clear of war—it’s like a gang of thugs walking up to innocent passersby and attacking them. They’re gangsters. You either surrender, or look the other way until it’s your turn, or you fight.”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t be fighting. I’m only saying—well, it’s a revelation; people who preach that war’s foul are right—even the Oxford Union—”
“No, Jack. The foulness is in instigating war, making it necessary, not in standing up against it. It would be degrading not to be fighting them.”
“Well, as things are, certainly. But …” Shaking his head, perhaps confused by the contradictions of it … Nick wondering whether Jack remembered anything of the David-at-Jutland business, the truth he’d told their father—wishing immediately afterwards and ever since that he’d kept his mouth shut—whether Jack could have remembered it, and if so, whether he’d have allowed it to worry him. Because the physical likeness to David was unmistakable. Even his manner, his way of looking at you …
But perhaps he’d changed, in recent weeks? Wasn’t there a degree of new self-assurance behind that defensive reserve? And the talk about war—wasn’t it possibly the nearest thing to a conversation they’d ever had?
Hopes, to counter fears …
But they hadn’t talked all the time about war. Jack heard regularly from his mother, with reports of Mullbergh, the Everard house and estate in Yorkshire, and some items from her letters he’d been prepared to pass on. Sarah, and Jack when he was at home, lived in the Dower house; Mullbergh and its land was Nick’s now. It had been taken over by the War Office as some sort of training centre, while Sarah kept an eye on the management of the four farms and also accommodated some girls of the Women’s Land Army in her Dower house. It had been an exceptionally hard winter: when she’d last written, at the end of April, the whole West Riding had still been deep in snow.
And London lay in partial ruin, with bombers over night after night. But Blithe Spirit and Arsenic and Old Lace were still showing to capacity audiences, and Carroll Gibbons and his orchestra still played at the Savoy. There had been a Communist-organized demonstration at the Savoy a few months ago: because Cabinet ministers, foreign press, representatives, and diplomats still ate well there despite shortages and rationing. The Communists, whose Soviet masters were, of course, allies of the Nazis, were calling it a “bosses” war.
“Object in the water green four-oh, sir!”
He swung his glasses to it …
“Looks like a caïque, sir.”
Nick thought Ashcourt was right. And there was no bow-wave or wake; so it was stopped, and probably damaged. About three thousand yards away.
“Bring her round, Sub.”
“Starboard fifteen!”
“Signalman—make to Masai: Investigating object bearing”—he checked the bearing quickly and roughly—”bearing oh-one-five.”
Ashcourt said into the voicepipe, “Midships.”
“Midships, sir … Wheel’s amidships, sir.”
“Steer oh-one-five.”
No need to rouse the other watch. The invasion troops had been reported as coming in convoys of caïques, and this was as likely as not one of them, but it was alone and quite probably holed, half full of water: that was how it looked. He’d been hearing the clacking of the lamp, and now the familiar rhythm of the AR end-of-message sign: Blackfoot would probably have read the signal, and if she hadn’t Masai would, anyway, be passing it on. He told the signalman, “Stand by the eighteen-inch, starboard side.”
The searchlight, he meant. There was an eighteen-inch diameter light on each side of the bridge and a twenty-four-inch one on the platform aft …That “object” was a caïque: almost certainly a victim of the action they’d heard earlier. But not necessarily: caïques had been used extensively during the Greek evacuation, ferrying troops from shore to ships
, and this one could have drifted from any of the islands … The purpose in taking a close look at it now was to check whether there might be anyone alive in it.
“Messenger—go to my sea-cabin and shake the first lieutenant.” He glanced round to see what the rest of the flotilla was doing. Masai was following, about a mile astern, and he could see Blackfoot, when he used binoculars, in silhouette; Marsh hadn’t altered course, but he’d reduced speed.
About half a mile to go. Nick told Ashcourt, “Two hundred revs, Sub. Steer to leave it close to starboard.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Ashcourt called down, “Two hundred revs. Steer three degrees to port.”
“Ship green nine-oh, sir!”
A second look-out amplified: “Destroyer, sir!”
He was at the binnacle, displacing Ashcourt. “Sound surface alarm, Sub.” He called down, “Full ahead together, starboard ten.”
Dalgleish was in the bridge: “Challenge, sir?”
Nick told him, “No. Stand by the searchlight sight.” He wouldn’t expose its beam until he told him to, he’d just have it trained ready to illuminate the target: which was showing two red and two white lights, fixed, on its foreyard. The surface alarm S’s were jarring through the ship, and Nick was telling Houston in the director, “Unidentified ship starboard—”
“I’m on it, sir. Eyetie, I think.” The merchant banker up on the foremast was talking into his headset before Nick had moved from the voicepipe: “All guns with SAP load, load, load …” Nick called, “Signalman, make to Blackfoot: Enemy destroyer bearing one-one-oh.”
“Searchlight ready, sir.”
“Searchlight on!”
The light’s beam sprang out across the sea, fixed immediately on an Italian torpedo-boat of the Partenope or Climene class. Short, high foc’sl, long and lower afterpart, single funnel. Afterpart all smashed: mainmast gone, wreckage where the deckhouse and a stern gun-mounting should have been … the fire-gongs clanged, and the four-sevens flashed and roared. Eyes blinded, ears stunned. Fire-gongs again, a distant tinny sound, and shells exploding, orange explosions in the Italian’s bridge, an Italian caught up in his second action of the night. Those hits had set his bridge on fire: but he was speeding up—you saw the bow-wave rising—and coming round to port: the gun on his stubby foc’sl spurting flame. Just that one gun, all he had left: it would be a 3.9. He’d reversed his helm—turning away now, Tuareg’s four-sevens firing fast, plastering him. It was conceivable he was turning to fire torpedoes.
Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2 Page 7