Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2

by Alexander Fullerton

  The tray, he meant. He was reaching for a cigarette. A thump from the pneumatic tube announced the arrival of yet another signal from the office down below. Petty Officer Hillier, the signal yeoman of the watch, was removing it from the carrier; Napier watched him through narrowed, deepset eyes as he flicked a lighter to the cigarette. Behind him, where a tall snotty named Burk was taking over the bridge watch from a short one called Wesley, you could see weld-marks where voicepipes had been patched up by the ERAs after that Messerschmitt had jumped Carnarvon during a Nauplia lift.

  Hillier had clipped the new signal to the log and taken it to Napier, who was studying it. He nodded, expelling smoke. “Show it to the navigating officer, please.”

  And another thump in the tube … Jack took the log from Hillier as he passed: the signal on top was from Rawlings to King and to the C-in-C: Rawlings was taking his battle squadron into the Aegean to support Force C. Jack, imagining the scene up there again, thought how extremely lucky Carnarvon was to be out of it, gently shepherding the two Tribals home to Alex. PO Hillier had taken the new signal straight to Napier: he told him, “It’s addressed to us, sir.”

  Carnarvon was to leave the destroyers, and proceed at her best speed to join the battle squadron, Force A1, via the Antikithera Channel.

  “Course, Pilot?”

  He was already at the chart, getting it: and thinking, I should have touched wood … He answered Napier, “Three-two-oh, sir.”

  “Yeoman, make to Tuareg: Proceed independently to Alexandria. I have been ordered to return to Antikithera.”

  Tuareg wouldn’t have had those signals, because she didn’t carry the code books for them. As a destroyer and a private ship, not a flotilla leader, she’d only take in plain-language signals and ones intended for her or for other destroyers. Durkin, a killick signalman, was already at the lamp and calling Tuareg.

  Napier told Bertie Tyler, who was officer of the watch, “Come round to port to three-two-oh.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Tyler lowered his tanned face to the voicepipe. “Port fifteen.”

  Jack took a reading of the log and noted the time, and went to the chart to mark it up. Seventy-five miles to Antikithera: best part of three and a half hours. By that time they might tie up with the battle squadron and Force C as they came out of the Aegean.

  One-thirty pm … Nick watched the cruiser swinging away on to a north-westerly course, the course for Cape Elaphonisi and the Antikithera Channel, the Stukas’ playground. He glanced round, and told the signalman on watch, “Make to Afghan: Speed 30 knots.”

  He’d cut the revs again after dark. It would be necessary to idle away some of the dark hours anyway, because you couldn’t enter harbour until the sweepers had cleared the channel at first light. German aircraft were in the habit of planting mines at night in the Great Pass, the Alexandria approach. But it would be as well to get past the Scarpanto airfield’s close radius as quickly as possible, now that Carnarvon’s reduced speed wasn’t tying them down.

  “Make that executive, signalman.”

  Lever was already passing the speed order. Nick told Pratt as the lamp stopped its clattering, “Three-one-oh revs, Pilot.”

  Behind him a voice murmured, “Burning the midday oil, are we?” Johnny Smeake, Masai’s captain. Pratt had called down for the speed increase. Smeake was a commander, recently promoted. “Mind me cluttering up your bridge?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The former captain of Masai was fair-haired, skinny, with eyes that looked gleamingly blue in the reddish colouring of his skin. It was the kind of face that turned red when others tanned. Nick asked him, “Your chaps all being looked after?”

  “Doing us proud, thank you.” He’d taken the loss of his ship hard, though. He said now, “Should have sunk her last night, you know. Pointless, trying to tow her out. I was glad of it at the time—who wouldn’t be, but …”

  “Yes.”

  The point didn’t have to be elaborated. Very few of Blackfoot’s company could be alive at this moment. Smeake turned away, stared out over the quarter at the cruiser’s diminishing shape. “Going back for another dose of it. Won’t be too healthy up there by this time.” He looked at Nick—“My chaps are going to be okay, incidentally. Mending well. Frightfully lucky, all things considered.”

  Only three of the Masai’s crew had been wounded, and none killed. It did seem like a lot of luck. Smeake added, “Wonder what they’ll find for us to do now.” He brought out a cigarette case:“Smoke?” Nick shook his head. Smeake said, “Bloody shame, only two ships left out of four. If there’d been one more—mine—we’d still have looked more or less like a flotilla, and they might have given it to you.”

  Oddly enough, that thought had occurred. Nick said, as if it didn’t much matter to him, “They’ll tag us on to some other lot.” Chalk was just coming off the ladder and there was a signal in his hand. Bad news, Nick thought, guessing it from the boy’s expression.

  “Greyhound’s been sunk, sir, and Warspite’s been badly damaged. Two plain-language signals—”

  “Let me see them.”

  Warspite, thirty-thousand-ton battleship, was Admiral Rawlings’s flagship. She was more than that, she was floating history, a famous and distinguished ship. But the import here and now was that Rawlings and his battleships must have linked up with King’s Force C, which meant that Force C must have run into very serious trouble, or Rawlings wouldn’t have taken his ships into that rain of bombs: and it was obvious now why they’d turned Carnarvon back.

  “Then there’s this one, sir.”

  Plain language again: an order from Flag Officer Force C to the destroyers Kandahar and Kingston to go and rescue survivors from Greyhound.

  You could guess how it would be: Men in the water, German aircraft diving to machine-gun them, ships under constant air attack, struggling to get them out of it, but facing the huge risk of presenting stationary targets when they stopped at each boat or raft or individual swimmer … The signal office telephone buzzed, and Nick took it off its hook: “Bridge.”

  “Plain language signal, sir, Flag Officer Force C to Fiji, sending her to the support of Kandahar and Kingston.”

  He put the phone down. In bits and pieces and from a distance that felt almost criminally safe, he was witnessing what sounded unpleasantly like the beginnings of defeat. Like a tide starting to come in: swirls here and eddies there, a movement gathering momentum and force, compounding on itself, building a sense of looming disaster. Personal issues flickered inside the wider, vast ones … With an effort, he pulled himself together. He told himself that he was overtired, overstrained: that this was a time for strength, purpose, not for letting one’s imagination drift: that he was a professional and that in the long run professionalism and staying power, not drugged Stuka pilots, would win and come out alive.

  “What was it?”

  “Fiji.” He told Smeake, “Being sent to support—”

  “Alarm port! Red eight-oh—Stukas, sir!”

  One of the port-side look-outs had shouted it. Nick had caught the first two words and his thumb was already on the button stabbing out “As” for air action stations. At the same time he was looking out on the port beam and seeing those unpleasant, mosquito-like things glinting in the sky, a small high cloud of them coming from Scarpanto.

  Four-thirty pm …

  Carnarvon pounded steadily north-westward. There was still a long way to go to Cape Elaphonisi but the ship was already at action stations. Twenty miles was no distance to a Stuka, and just over the horizon Stukas would be as thick as flies.

  An hour ago the cruiser Gloucester had been hit. Badly, by the sound of it. Half an hour before it happened there’d been a signal ordering her and Fiji to withdraw from the area where they’d been sent—separately, one after the other—to support attempts at rescuing Greyhound survivors. Both cruisers, as Napier had observed to Bell-Reid, must by that time have been extremely short of ammunition for their four-inch AA guns.r />
  Things looked pretty bloody awful. Jack was at the chart putting on it such information as could be gleaned from the recent signals. All the heat of the action seemed to be in the Kithera area: Greyhound had been sunk near Pori Island, which was about five miles north-west of Antikithera. The air attacks were constant, with no let-up at all, and it had been like that since early morning. Hour after hour: bombers overhead all the time …

  Gloucester was obviously in a bad way. She’d reported boiler damage and reduced speed and suffered a series of internal explosions. Fiji, who’d been damaged earlier in the day, was standing by her, and they were both under constant attack.

  Bell-Reid growled, “No air cover, and now no ammunition. Luftwaffe must think it’s Christmas.” He rounded on Buchanan, the engineer commander, who’d just arrived in the bridge and was hurrying towards Napier. “Can’t you make this tub go faster?”

  “Going too fast already.” The commander (E) wasn’t joking. Tin-hatted and wearing a lifebelt outside his white boiler-suit, he stopped beside the captain’s seat. “Sir, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but—”

  “I can’t slow down any more, Chief. There’s all hell loose up there, and we’re wanted in a hurry.”

  One of the signals on the log was from the C-in-C to all ships at sea: Stick it out. Keep in V/S touch. Navy must not let Army down. No enemy forces must reach Crete by sea.

  Buchanan cleared his throat. He said quietly, “If we don’t slow down, sir, we won’t get there at all. I’m extremely sorry, and we’ve been doing everything we can, but—”

  “What speed?”

  Napier’s question cut across the apology: Buchanan looked surprised, as if he’d expected a longer argument.

  “Fifteen knots maximum, sir. If we exceed that, we’ll break down altogether. Then …”

  He’d shrugged, glancing skyward. Napier growled, “The consequences of a breakdown, Chief, I do not need to have pointed out.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  He shook his head. Grey-faced, ill-looking. “All right, Chief.” He told Willy Irvine, who’d been waiting for the order, “Revs for 15 knots.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Irvine called down, “One-eight-oh revolutions.” CPO Hegarty was removing a new signal from the carrier; on his way towards Napier he paused to let the engineer commander, leaving the bridge, pass ahead of him.

  The pointers were dropping in the rev indicators; the chief quartermaster reported from the wheelhouse, “One-eight-oh revolutions passed and repeated, sir.”

  Napier said, looking up from the new signal to meet Bell-Reid’s questioning stare, “Valiant’s been hit by two bombs. Only superficial damage, thank God.”

  Valiant was the one battleship with Rawlings. Like Warspite she was Queen Elizabeth class and another Jutland veteran. They’d all had at least one expensive face-lift since that war, of course … As the speed fell off, Carnarvon felt as if she was crawling. Napier told Hegarty, “Take down a signal, Chief Yeoman. To Flag Officer Force C, Flag Officer Force A1, and C-in-C. From Carnarvon. Engine defects have reduced my speed to 15 knots. Present position—course … In code, please.”

  Hegarty came down to the chart table, where Jack was getting the position for him, a bearing and distance from Cape Elaphonisi. The course was still 320 degrees. It would be dark, Jack thought, before they got close enough to anyone to be of use to them: and before that they’d almost certainly get a ration of attention from the Stukas. He wondered whether Tuareg and Afghan were getting any as they passed through the Scarpanto area. Yet another signal had come up: Napier glanced back almost fearfully as CPO Hegarty, who’d sent Carnarvon’s signal down for ciphering and transmission, went to unload the tube—beating Midshipman Brighouse to it by a whisker. Hegarty glanced at the signal as he crossed the bridge with it, and Jack thought he saw him flinch. Then he was passing it to Napier.

  Napier had glanced at it; now he was holding the signal out to Bell-Reid. He saw Jack staring at him and he looked away with a slight shake of the head. Bell-Reid was scowling down at the flimsy sheet of paper with the blue-pencil scrawl on it: Bell-Reid furious, Napier sad. Hegarty murmured to Jack as he squeezed past, “Gloucester, sir. She’s sunk.”

  There had been nine Stukas in that afternoon attack, and eight of them had flown back to Scarpanto after they’d dropped their bombs. One had fallen to Afghan’s four-sevens during the approach run, before any of them started diving, and the early loss had seemed to put the others off their stroke, so that the attacks weren’t pressed home as hard as usual. Perhaps that one had been the leader.

  Houston was officer of the watch, with young Chalk as his number two: Chalk had no watchkeeping certificate yet, of course; he’d learn the trade by standing watches with the more experienced officers. Nick had sent half the ship’s company below again because he thought it was unlikely there’d be any more Stuka visits now; it was getting on for 7:30, Scarpanto was nearly two hundred miles away and the 87s would have bigger and better targets well inside that range. In an hour and a half it would be dusk.

  The end of a rotten day. He thought perhaps they hadn’t seen—or heard—the last of it yet. He was at the chart, making such sense as he could of the scraps of information that had been coming in.

  They’d had A. B. Cunningham’s exhortation about not letting the army down; then the news of Gloucester’s sinking. More recently there’d been a signal to some of Force C’s destroyers, telling them to rendezvous with the cruiser Fiji 24 miles north-west of Cape Elaphonisi: Fiji had been steering south then at 27 knots. Until Gloucester had sunk, those two cruisers had been together. And the battle squadron, one could deduce from other plain-language messages, must be about thirty miles west of Fiji’s position and steering either south-east or south-west, still trailed by swarms of Stukas. He guessed that Carnarvon would have joined the battle squadron by this time, and that they’d all be heading north again as soon as it was dark, to resume the anti-invasion sweeps.

  Depending, of course, on which ships had any ammunition left. Gloucester must have been down to about her last shell when they’d sunk her, and Fiji couldn’t have much left. The destroyers would be low on fuel too; the need for bursts of high speed when you were dodging bombers sent consumption soaring. There’d be quite a few ships who couldn’t be sent back into the Aegean: it was the dawn you had to be wary of, being caught up there short of oil and out of ammunition … Dawn was a bad time anyway, he thought. Dusk—days were worth living through for the dusk at the end of them. Even a day like this one.

  “Captain, sir.”

  He glanced round, knowing from that throaty voice that he’d find himself looking at the broad, cheerful countenance of PO Whiffen. But this evening it wasn’t all that cheerful: and he had a signal in his hand.

  “It’s Fiji, sir.”

  “What about her?”

  Guessing it: just giving himself time to adjust to more bad news.

  “Hit an’ stopped, sir. Kandahar an’ Kingston’s standin’ by her.” London believed that a fleet could operate four hundred miles from its base in the face of total enemy air superiority. Or they were pretending to believe it, because they hadn’t the aircraft to send out or didn’t want to spare them from the defence of Britain. Which might be difficult to argue with, but brought one back to the basic, underlying failure, the failure to be ready for a war which everyone who wasn’t blind had seen coming.

  Chalk looked twitchy, and even genial Harry Houston had a graveyard look. Nick told them as he came up from the chart, “It’s what we’re for, you know.”

  Houston nodded. As a former merchant banker he ought to know something about risks, Nick thought. What annoyed him about their obvious gloom was that they were showing what he was feeling and not showing. Houston murmured, “But Gloucester was such a lovely ship. Practically brand new, and …” He checked, shaking his head.

  Fiji was even newer. Nick didn’t bother to mention it, but Fiji had been launched in 1939, two years later than
Gloucester. Houston said, “Rather a good chum of mine in her.” He glanced round, as Dalgleish came towards them from the ladder.

  “News isn’t so hot, sir.”

  “No.” But it could get worse, he thought, and it very likely would. “Are you up here to take over, Number One?”

  “Thought I might, sir. Unless our city slicker here doesn’t want any supper. I did hear he was going on a diet.”

  Houston glared at him. “I heard you were seen in Mary’s House, last time in.”

  Mary’s House was one of Alexandria’s more exclusive brothels. Nick snapped, “Shut up, both of you …” He was too tired and it had been too foul a day to stand listening to their backchat. One minute they were glum as hell, the next pulling each other’s legs like children. Compared to him, he thought, they were practically children … He told Houston, “When you go down, tell Mr Walsh I want his return of ammo expenditure tonight, not after we get in in the morning. You might give him a hand with it.” Mr Walsh, the torpedo gunner, was responsible for the magazines: and Houston might as well work a bit of fat off. Nick looked at Dalgleish, “And everything else, Number One, is to be on the top line before we dock. I want a word with Chief, too, about his defect list. We’ll almost certainly be coming straight out again, and I don’t want any hold-ups. All right?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Tell Chief I want the tanks dipped now.” Dalgleish nodded. Nick added, “I’ll be in my sea-cabin.” He glanced at Chalk. “When you go down, Sub, tell my steward I’m hungry, will you?”

  He was eating supper in the cupboard-sized cabin below the bridge when Petty Officer Whiffen brought him the news that Fiji had sunk. Lying stopped, she’d been attacked again. The destroyers Kandahar and Kingston were picking up survivors. Then five minutes later there was another signal: it was an order to the destroyers Hero and Decoy to go to Ayia Roumeli at the western end of Crete’s south coast and bring off the Greek king and the British minister and his wife, and various other personages. There was no harbour or jetty at Roumeli, he knew, so these important people would have to be taken off the open beach: and to get there they must have trekked on foot or perhaps mule-back right across the mountains.