“Alarm starboard—Stukas green five-oh!”
“—then stay down there and help, Sub.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Ashcourt took off. Nick told Pratt, “Warn the doctor.” It was only a matter of calling down the voicepipe to the plot, but Masai had been hit by two bombs and Gallwey would surely have some customers and might get some more during the transfer operation, if this was a new attack about to start. He looked up and saw them, another drove of Ju87s coming high and bloodthirsty over Crete, obviously from
Scarpanto. Only half a minute between assaults now: the Luftwaffe’s organization must be sharpening up. He stooped to the pipe: “Starboard twenty.” He told CPO Habgood, “Cox’n, I’m circling to go alongside Masai and take her ship’s company off. There’ll be some close manoeuvring and I expect we’ll have some Stuka interference while we’re at it.”
“Aye, sir. Twenty of starboard wheel on, sir.”
Nick explained to Houston what he was doing: he made it brief because Houston was about to get busy again. Even when they were alongside Masai the guns could still be used—all except the starboard point-fives, which otherwise might blow the heads off men in both bridges. And Houston would need to be careful which way he pointed “A” and “B” guns. Masai had acknowledged the signal and Afghan, on her port beam, had just opened fire at the approaching bombers.
“Midships. One-two-oh revolutions.”
Tuareg’s four-sevens opened up. About two dozen Stukas up there, in three groups. “Steer oh-one-oh …” There was more way on the ship than he’d have been happy with in normal circumstances, but it was essential to get alongside fast, get those men out of Masai before things got worse. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do while you were being divebombed.
“Course oh-one-oh, sir, one-two-oh revolutions.”
It was time to cut the speed. “Slow ahead together.” Gunfire getting faster, heavier; above the noise of it, like the beginning of some weird descant, he heard the first Stuka in its dive. He wondered whether there’d be many survivors from poor Blackfoot. Or any at all. The German flyers didn’t seem to like survivors, judging by the prevalence of machinegun attacks on men helpless in the water. It seemed pointless as well as barbarous: they must be very young, he thought, mindless, really rather horrible people. It could be that they were under orders to terrify, break their enemies’ spirit, shatter morale. There was another theory, that the pilots were fed drugs of some kind. But no time now for speculation: pompoms had opened fire.
“Steer two degrees to starboard.”
Masai’s for’ard guns were hard at it. A Stuka swept so low as it levelled that it passed right through the narrowing gap between the two ships, then banked to the left and curved away down Tuareg’s port side, getting a parting burst from the point-fives as it swept past. There was a medley of sirens overhead and all the guns were cocked up and blazing. He bent to the voicepipe again: “Stop starboard.” Tuareg was sliding up almost stem to stem with Masai: by doing it this way he was reducing the risk of new explosions in the other destroyer’s stern spreading fire or damage to his own ship: and he was keeping his screws well clear of trouble too. By now Johnny Smeake should have most of his men waiting under cover, ready to rush out of the screen door at the foc’sl break and flood over into Tuareg. Habgood reported that the starboard telegraph was to “stop.” Gunfire was at its peak, about as loud and continuous as it could get, and the ship was ringing to the percussions: by the noise of sirens there must have been two or three Stukas diving now. Looking quickly over the side of the bridge, down at the foc’sl deck, he saw Tony Dalgleish and Petty Officer Mercer, the buffer, standing with heaving lines looped ready in their hands: two other men, one a killick called Sherratt, were dragging up a coil of steel wire rope. He saw Chalk down there, and a man securing a line to the end of a ribbed gangplank: two other planks were ready near it.
“Slow astern both engines.”
“Slow astern both, sir!”
Bombs were exploding in the sea astern. This wasn’t going to turn out too badly, he thought … “Stop starboard.”
“Stop starboard, sir …”
“Stop port!”
A bit more of a bump than one would normally have been proud of: but the object hadn’t been to show off any ship-handling ability, only to get there as quickly as was possible without bumping hard enough for the ships to be thrown apart again. Lines, wires, and planks had gone over, and sailors were boarding thick and fast. Johnny Smeake in Masai’s bridge was waving and shouting something: Nick waved back but he couldn’t hear Smeake’s words. He looked down to see two wires made fast: and that at one of the gangplanks a line of Masai’s men were forming with a gunner’s mate organizing them and shells being passed from hand to hand: there was an outsize stoker on the plank as link man. It was four-seven HA ammunition and boxes of pompom, all worth its weight in gold. Pratt pointed northward and shouted something about Carnarvon coming: a Stuka was shrieking down, wild fury in the hideous noise, guns doing their best to shout it down, Masai’s “A” and “B” guns cocked up to port and barraging in front of a group of about six weaving, high-up bombers. Afghan was out on that side too, and all three ships’ pompoms were pumping vertically at the closer, more immediate threats, the planes already in their dives. Nick was looking down at the foc’sl deck again, at the rapid transference of men and ammunition: he heard the bombs coming—two Stukas diving simultaneously … The first eruption was right ahead, not more than ten yards from Tuareg’s stem and about five from Masai’s burning afterpart: the second plumped in well clear, farther out on the other side. There’d been the usual thick upflinging of sea as the first bomb splashed in and exploded: now a wall of sea flung back against the bow and into the gap between the ships, sluicing aft. The ammunition handler on the plank staggered, swaying wildly with a shell clasped in his arms: like a high-wire artist, he was on one foot and doubling backwards, but he’d somehow managed to throw the shell towards Tuareg—or it had simply happened, ejected from his grasp by his own strenuous efforts to avoid falling between the two ships and being crushed—and PO Mercer, leaning out from Tuareg’s side, had caught it. It weighed fifty pounds, that shell. The other man was sitting on the plank, his long legs dangling in the gap then whipping up out of the way as he saw his danger a second before the two destroyers lurched back together. A roar of cheers was drowned in gunfire and the shrieking of more diving Stukas: Nick shouted to Whiffen, his yeoman, to get the loud-hailer rigged so he could tell Johnny Smeake to send the rest of his men over, forget the ammunition.
From Carnarvon’s bridge all you could see of Tuareg and Masai was a muddle of bomb-splashes, smoke, shell-bursts, and diving bombers. Afghan was more easily visible as she dodged around the other ships at high speed, zigging to and fro to foil her own attackers while keeping far enough from the maelstrom in the centre to be able to keep her foursevens barraging over it.
Stukas hadn’t bothered the cruiser much. They’d made a few attacks, but with her high-angle four-inch guns she wasn’t as soft a target as the destroyers were, and the Germans tended to pull out of their dives well up, which considerably reduced their accuracy. During the last ten minutes there’d been a procession of flights of Ju88s coming over, and this had kept everyone busy; but they’d left now, having churned the sea up all around, and McCowan had switched all his guns to a long-range barrage above the Tribals, twenty degrees on the port bow; Napier was steering this course so as to allow all the guns to bear.
The director telephone was calling: nobody heard it, but Brighouse, the snotty, saw its light flashing and jumped to snatch it off its hook and offer it to the captain. Bell-Reid stared at Brighouse with his bushy eyebrows raised, as if amazed that the lad should have done something useful. Jack thought again of the possibility that brother Nick might, a long time ago, have been rather Brighousian … He was feeling no anxiety for Nick, no more than one would have felt for anyone else in that fairly desperate situation: less, in fact, because
he’d little doubt that when the smoke cleared Tuareg and her captain would emerge like muddied players from the bottom of a rugger scrum. Nick was a sort of indiarubber character, a bouncer-back: and didn’t he expect everyone else to be just as tough, just as uncaring?
Sarah said he was like flint. She said Nick was so inconsiderate, so lacking in normal human compassion that it was astonishing his marriage had lasted the few years it had …
Napier still had the director telephone at his ear: now, pushing it back on its hook, he was looking round and beckoning to the chief yeoman. Hegarty moved over quickly: his narrow face under the tin hat sharp, terrier-like. Napier told him, “That’s Tuareg, there.” He pointed at the right-hand edge of the smother of smoke and ships; Jack put his own glasses up again, and he could see Tuareg drawing out to starboard. Napier told the yeoman, “Make to her: Course one-eight-oh, 22 knots.” Hegarty had scrawled it on his pad: he began to shout it back, but the pompoms opened fire and drowned his voice. A Messerschmitt 109, a single-engined fighter, roared over from port to starboard, machine-guns racketing. Now another: and a third … Bell-Reid was using a telephone to get a first-aid party up to attend to a casualty in the pompom’s crew, and a replacement for him. The fighters had come over without anyone having sighted them, and now Bell-Reid was at the after end of the bridge blasting the port-side look-outs. Messerschmitts making a pass at the Tribals now … Putting his glasses on Tuareg again, Jack saw the single flash of her light telling Carnarvon’s signalman to go ahead, send his message. Tuareg had gone astern until she was clear of Masai and now she was circling away, gathering speed under helm, her pompoms engaging the oncoming fighters and her four-sevens in action too, pumping shells up at Stukas diving on Afghan: she looked magnificent, angry, and defiant. One of the Messerschmitts had flopped into the sea on the far side of Afghan: Afghan’s bird, by the look of it, he guessed.
A sudden upheaval took his eyes back to Masai, as a flash and a spout of water shot up beside her. That had been a torpedo, he realized, from Tuareg. Gunfire drowned the sound of it: the high, dark column of sea collapsed right across the abandoned ship, and literally within seconds she’d gone down.
Forenoon wearing on, sun high and hot now, blue sea, blue sky. Mean course south-east: the three ships were zigzagging in unison, following an ordered pattern of regular course alterations to fox any lurking submarines. There’d been only one attack—ineffectual, by high-flying Ju88s—since the force had left the Antikithera Channel.
The engineer commander had just been up to report to Napier on the machinery problems he was having to cope with now. Jack, thinking of engine-rooms and other cramped compartments below decks, wondered whether it would be as unpleasant as he imagined, to be shut down in the ship’s guts during action. He imagined that to be below the waterline, hearing the noise of battle and knowing you had two or three decks and armoured hatches between you and the daylight would be fairly nightmarish …
Perhaps it was only a fear of the unknown. Perhaps one’s imagination would always balk at the idea of being shut-in below decks. And in fact it was something he’d never be called upon to experience. One could be glad of that, to be spared it, but also regret that since one would never be put to any such test it would remain a potential weakness, a suspected Achilles’ heel.
He had a fleeting thought of Nick, of brother Nick’s expectations, the David syndrome. He told himself quickly, Don’t think about it. There’s no point …
“What?” He glanced round: startled, as if the interrupter might have read his thoughts. It was PO Tomkins, bringing him the signal log, which Napier and Bell-Reid had already perused. Jack rested it on top of the binnacle, leafed through the wad of signals.
Admiral King’s Force C, up in the Aegean still, had been under attack since 7:00 this morning. Three solid hours of dive-bombing: and it was still going on. Calcutta—an AA cruiser like Carnarvon—had sighted a transport, and it had been sunk by King’s destroyers; now the force had “numerous small vessels” and one Italian destroyer in sight: the destroyer was laying a smokescreen to protect its convoy’s retreat northward and the cruisers Perth and Naiad were pursuing. All this under constant bombing.
Admiral Glennie’s cruisers—Dido, Orion, and Ajax, who’d destroyed the invasion convoy last night—had joined up with Admiral Rawlings’s battle squadron west of Kithera. But there was a signal from C-in-C with time of origin 0716 recalling Glennie’s force to Alexandria. There was also one from C-in-C to Force B—the cruisers Gloucester and Fiji with two destroyers, Greyhound and Griffin—ordering them to a position off Heraklion. They’d been steering west, though, at 0700, and under heavy air attack; Fiji had been damaged by near-misses. Gloucester had reported that she had only 18 per cent of her outfit of ammunition remaining.
There was also a copy of Napier’s signal earlier on about the loss of Blackfoot and Masai in the Antikithera Channel, reporting too that Carnarvon’s maximum speed was now down to 22 knots.
Like a peacetime cruise, Nick thought. He’d been down to his sea-cabin for a shave, earlier on, and he was on the bridge now with Ashcourt as officer of the watch. Even if it had been Dalgleish or Pratt at the binnacle he’d have been up here: he was very much aware that as they slanted across the Mediterranean on this south-easterly course they were drawing nearer to Scarpanto and its nest of Stukas all the time. They’d be closest to it at 1600, when they’d be one hundred and forty miles south-west of it, and after that the range would be increasing until dusk.
He heard the zigzag bell ring, down in the wheelhouse, and Tuareg heeled very gently to five degrees of starboard rudder as the quartermaster of the watch brought her round to the next leg of the pattern. He had the diagram down there in front of him, the book of zigzag patterns open at the one Carnarvon’s captain had selected. On this one you lost 15 per cent of speed-made-good; but it was a lot better than being torpedoed, which was what tended to happen to ships that steered straight courses.
He slid up on to his seat, and thought about Fiona. Human problems tended to get buried, when you were having to concentrate on staying alive, afloat. The problems stayed in men’s minds but at the back of them, possibly influencing them indirectly in some ways but in storage until pressures eased. Problems like—he lit a cigarette—Fiona’s silence.
If anything happened to her, an MTC friend of hers, a Mrs Stilwell, would have written to him. Was to have written to him. Fiona had promised to arrange it: and similarly there was a letter addressed to her, back in HMS Woolwich the depot ship, that would be posted only if Tuareg ran into bad luck. The idea had been to set each other’s mind at rest: he could hear her telling him now. If you don’t hear, don’t worry …
Pretty silly instruction to give anyone, that had been.
He wondered about marrying Fiona. Not that either of them had ever referred to such a thing, but—well, it could come to marriage. Because … all right, because it was what he wanted: wanted—his worry for her brought it out and faced him with it clearly—very much indeed.
Old Hugh Everard might not take too happily to the idea. Hugh was a splendid man, but he was also rather strait-laced, a product of his own age: none the worse for that, but Fiona might be too modernly sophisticated for his taste. Once he got to know her it would be all right, but he wouldn’t fall for her as easily as he had for Ginny Casler. He’d try to, he’d do his best to like her, for Nick’s sake; they’d always been close, more like father and son than uncle and nephew. Many years ago, when Nick had been something of a rebel and the Navy hadn’t thought much of him, Hugh had given him his one big chance: he’d grabbed it, and had some luck, and as sole surviving officer of the destroyer Lanyard he’d brought her back—so badly damaged that she’d been unrecognizable—from Jutland. If it hadn’t been for that helping hand, Nick knew he wouldn’t ever have got anywhere at all.
Sarah? Sarah would hate any woman that Nick married. Any woman he knew, she’d loathe. No good trying to reason it out: it was simply how Sar
ah was. Perhaps because he’d married Ilyana? Because he should have stayed single, Sarah’s devoted and remorseful slave?
The zigzag bell rang again, and the quartermaster applied port rudder. Lowering his glasses, Nick watched the stem swinging, slicing round through blue water and edging it with white. On the beam, Afghan was also under helm, and on Tuareg’s quarter Carnarvon was taking part in the same stately waltz.
When Jack came up from lunch there were some new messages on the log. At 1225 Admiral King, still up in the Aegean with his Force C, had signalled Rawlings to the effect that he was in urgent need of support against the ceaseless air attacks. King had broken off his pursuit of the invasion convoy some time before that, earlier in the forenoon, and turned his ships to head for a rendezvous with Rawlings in the southwest; but the attacks had continued and his flagship, the cruiser Naiad, had been damaged. Her speed had been cut to 16 knots, she had two turrets out of action and some internal flooding.
Carlisle, sister-ship to Carnarvon, had been bombed in her bridge and her captain had been killed.
Jack glanced up from the log. He could imagine how things must be up there. Like all the attacks they’d been through themselves, only a lot more intense and with no breaks in the action, bombers on them all the time, hour after hour. It would be totally exhausting as well as nerveracking. Napier, on his high seat and with a luncheon tray in front of him, was staring at Jack across the bridge, probably to see his reaction to those signals. Napier called over his shoulder, “Noble, you can take this now.”
Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2 Page 11