Lieutenant of the Line

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Yes, Colonel.’

  ‘I’m glad you understand me.’ Their eyes met and held. Quietly Dornoch said, ‘damn well done, boy. Thank God you had the guts to do it—that’s all! But from now on—I don’t really need to tell you—keep your mouth tight shut. And make up your mind you’ll have to take some long faces from your fellow subalterns when the truth gradually dawns, as I dare say it will within the regiment. A young officer who gets away with it is never precisely popular, James! Bear that in mind, and make allowances accordingly.’ He paused, looking out once again across the wind-swept plateau where the fighting had taken place, and away to the hills. Then, with a change in his tone, he asked, ‘tell me, have you had time for a word with your cousin since you re-joined?’

  ‘Very briefly, Colonel.’

  ‘What did you think of him?’

  Ogilvie hesitated, then smiled. ‘I think his experiences have done him a lot of good, Colonel. The bounce has gone...so has some of the primness!’

  Dornoch laughed. ‘Yes, that’s true. He’s learned much about our way of life. He gave a good account of himself in action, too. I saw that he was armed, and sent back to the commissariat, and I’m told he was quite an asset to the de-fence of the supplies, or what was left of them.’ He added, ‘I believe we’ve all been changed in some degree by that march.’

  ***

  At his headquarters in Murree three weeks later Lieutenant-General Sir Iain Ogilvie pushed back his chair, got to his feet and walked across a deep carpet to the window. While the Staff Major who was currently waiting upon him stared at his broad, scarlet-clad back, Sir Iain stared out upon the dust and heat and sounds and smells of Murree. After a longish silence, he swung round and said, ‘that curious old sergeant my son dug up—Makepeace. A very sad case, that. Dreadful. I only wish we could make some recompense.’

  ‘I see no reason why we should not, Sir. If the inquiry shows—’

  ‘There’ll be no inquiry. Too damn late—haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what, Sir?’

  Sir Iain walked back to his desk and ruffled through some papers. Selecting one, he held it out. ‘Dispatch from Fort Gazai—came in this morning. Makepeace got hold of a gun, no one seems to know quite how yet, and shot himself. In a sense it’s the best way out for him, I suppose. I gather he had no wish to live, once he’d had the satisfaction of working the guns again against the heathen devils. No family left—only wretched memories.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk, looking abstractedly into space.

  The Staff Major asked, ‘what’s the procedure now, Sir?’

  ‘The procedure?’

  ‘Presumably there’ll be an inquiry into the suicide and how he—’

  ‘Oh—yes. Yes, certainly. I don’t know about an inquiry.’

  ‘The 114th’s Colonel has asked for a Court Martial. A Colour-Sergeant Barr, charged with negligence in allowing a prisoner in his care to get possession of a firearm. Don’t like it—my old regiment, you know. But there it is.’ He sighed. ‘Dare say we’ll have to strip Barr down to private.’

  ‘And Sergeant Makepeace, Sir?’

  ‘Buried in Fort Gazai with full military honours. Gun carriage and a Captain’s Escort. Pipes and drums of the I 14th. And God rest his soul! I’m delighted Dornoch did it that way.’

  That same evening Sir Iain took a stroll in his garden with his wife, who had joined him from Simla a few days after the first news had come in of the relief of Fort Gazai. He took her arm as they walked in the brief Indian twilight beneath the tall deodars, and as he did so he felt a tremor run through her body. He said abruptly, for he knew the reason for that tremor only too well. ‘My dear, do stop thinking about it.’

  ‘I can’t, Iain,’ she said. ‘That woman...it was so obvious she didn’t care two pence about the news. So long as she remains in India, she’s a threat.’ Another shiver ran through her. ‘Can’t you have her sent home?’

  ‘I’ve told you...I don’t know that my powers extend to widows, my dear. It’s her choice. She’s a free woman, after all.’

  ‘Don’t say it like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Awkwardly, the General patted his wife’s arm. They stopped, listening to the distant bugles sounding Sunset; in the fading light the British flags were being lowered on another day, one more day in the long life of the Raj. Last Post, which over the agonizing years of Empire had sounded over so many graves, cut poignantly through. the Indian evening. Sir Iain’s heart swelled with emotion beneath the starched shirt-front of his mess uniform, lifting the closely-hanging miniature medals and decorations against the blue and scarlet cloth.

  He spoke again, quietly, kindly. ‘Listen to me, Fiona my dearest. We know that young Shuja Khan escaped into the hills...we can take it he’ll have made his way back with plenty of his followers through the passes into Afghanistan and his father’s stronghold. Now, there’s a father who’ll be glad to reflect that he who fought and ran away...my dear, the Frontier will probably never be finally settled, there will always be wars, and quite possibly that march from Peshawar will need to be repeated before very long. What I’m trying to say is this—we’re lucky in that the boy’s come through this time. We may not always be so lucky. Let us count our blessings while we can, my dear—and not dwell too much on other things. It’s not as bad as all that, you know.’ This time, he pressed her arm hard. ‘This sort of thing doesn’t come very easily to me. I’m no hand at speech-making. But try to—to let your mind be at peace.’

  ‘Peace?’ She gave a quiet humourless laugh and when he looked into her face he saw that her eyes were shining through tears. Iain, there’s no peace, ever, for a soldier of the Queen—or for his mother. Or his wife,’ she added, putting her hand gently on her husband’s.

  If you enjoyed reading Lieutenant of the Line you might be interested in In the Line of Fire by Philip McCutchan, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from In the Line of Fire by Philip McCutchan

  1.

  It was all plain sailing still: all the way out from Scapa the Atlantic had been as clear as the skies. No U-boats, scarcely any wind — a winter miracle if a frozen one. This early morning, Dawn Action Stations had just been fallen out and the officers and ratings on the destroyers’ compass platforms and on the navigating bridges of the wallowing merchant ships of the convoy flapped their arms to keep the circulation going beneath the heavy duffel-coats and balaclavas; behind the gun-shields the crew stamped warmth into their sea-booted feet and thought of home and girls or beer in the pubs of Queen Street and Commercial Road in Pompey. Winter of 1940-41; and this weird respite in the almost continuous foul weather that harassed the North Atlantic convoys but at the same time gave them a strong measure of protection against U-boat attack. The hidden menace lay powerless in gigantic waves, but came eagerly to periscope depth the moment the weather was fair.

  On the port side of HMS Carmarthen’s compass platform, Donald Cameron, ordinary seaman on lookout, scanned his allotted arc through binoculars. His sector was from right ahead to the port beam, and God help him if he missed so much as a leaping fish. The trick was to spot what was there to be seen before the Officer of the Watch had done so; and on his vision, and that of the other lookouts scanning the other sectors in full protection — theoretically at any rate — of HMS Carmarthen and her charges, depended the lives of very many men. A split second could make all the difference to the destroyer’s ability to dodge torpedoes and to turn effectively to the attack herself.

  On this occasion, however, there was nothing: only the other escorts from time to time as they altered course to weave in and out of the convoy lines, chasing stragglers, passing orders by loud hailer; and the merchantmen them-selves, their masters and mates normally unaccustomed to sailing the seas in company. The station-keeping was naturally poor enough; merchant ships were not equipped for small alterations in engine revolutions such as kept the warships easily in station.

  But apart from a few near misses as the m
ass of ships weaved about it was peace, perfect peace in the midst of war; and it couldn’t possibly last. Donald Cameron, straining aching eyes through his binoculars, seeing things after a while that were not there, removed the binoculars for a spell of naked eye work, then went back to the binoculars to check. Again and again, and still nothing but the ships and the sea, which was covered with white horses, just the sort of sea condition that best suited a U-boat captain’s purpose, though in point of fact attack normally came during the night watches: at night the U-boats could cruise on the surface and make better speed — and, when surfaced, they enjoyed an immunity from the Asdics of the escorts. It was not unknown for daring captains to take their boats right into the middle of a convoy at night before despatching their torpedoes.

  But today fate had decided differently: the conditions were perfect for submerged day attack. Carmarthen’s Asdic picked up a contact and almost simultaneously the signalling started from the Senior Officer of the escort: more contacts had been established. A hunting pack of U-boats was in position. As aboard Carmarthen, to the orders of Sub-Lieutenant Stephenson, Officer of the Watch, the action alarm sounded throughout the ship and brought the upper deck alive with officers and men, Cameron spotted a feather of water, standing out a little above the small, breaking crests. Keeping his glasses on the feather he reported in a voice high with excitement, ‘Dead ahead, sir, a periscope!’

  Stephenson’s glasses moved to the bearing. ‘Right! I have it.’ He bent to the voice-pipe connecting with the wheelhouse beneath the compass platform. ‘Full ahead both engines, steady as you go!’

  The reply came up, metallic-sounding, phlegmatic. ‘Full ahead both engines, sir, steady as you go, sir.’ As Carmarthen’s Captain, a young lieutenant-commander carrying an immense responsibility, reached the bridge, a 45-degree turn to starboard was ordered by signal from the Commodore of the convoy, and as the convoy swung the warships increased speed, their wakes deepening and widening. The first casualty came within minutes: a three-island 10,000-tonner, in ballast for North America to bring home war materials, suddenly spouted water and smoke and flame from her starboard side for’ard and began at once to go down by the head. As her speed came sharply off, she was cut into astern by a tanker altering course to the Commodore’s orders, and then came a second explosion. Cameron saw more trails of torpedoes running through the lines of the convoy.

  It was to be a massive attack.

  Instinctively, Cameron felt for the inflated lifebelt nestling round his body beneath his duffel-coat, and pulled his steel helmet more firmly down upon his ears. As he listened to the quickening pings from the Asdic he felt he could congratulate himself on having beaten the set to it by giving the Officer of the Watch a visual bearing to attack...

  *

  Cameron had joined the Navy on a hostilities-only engagement some seven months earlier. At the age of nineteen, he had enlisted at the first possible opportunity, as a volunteer who had not waited to be called up for service. He had joined, not in the first place in the seaman branch, but in the rating of ordinary signalman. The first weeks were to prove that he would never be able to get the hang of flag-wagging, Aldis lamps and the Morse code, but he was a good seaman — his father had seen to that — and on being recommended for a commission in the executive branch had been transferred to the rating of ordinary seaman. That had been at the former Butlins’ holiday camp at Skegness in Lincolnshire, right on the wind-swept Wash, now a naval shore establishment known as HMS Royal Arthur. Cameron would not forget his arrival there, in a coach that had met the train from Portsmouth, where he had enlisted along with a number of other new entries.

  Over the gate was still set, in very large letters, Butlins’ welcoming message to holiday-makers: OUR TRUE INTENT IS ALL FOR YOUR DELIGHT. And an equally large and loud Chief Gunner’s Mate, the Navy’s equivalent to a Regimental Sergeant-Major, had drawn the draft’s attention to it with a wave of a hammy hand.

  ‘Now then. See that sign?’

  There had been a chorus of polite yesses.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t bloody well apply to you lot,’ the Chief Gunner’s Mate had said with a certain degree of satisfaction in his voice. ‘Get fell in properly...’

  They had shambled into some sort of line and had been taken by a petty officer and marched beneath the sign of welcome. Cameron was to find that its message certainly did not apply to the establishment’s wartime occupants. The training routine was hard, the life rigorous, the day long — it started at 0630 hours when the trainee sailors were turned out from the chalets in which they slept to muster for inspection by their petty officer instructor, and then set to ‘scavenge’ — scrabble about among the chalet lines and pick up any piece of paper or other un-Naval objects that might be lying around. The chalets themselves were more spartan than the holidaymakers had known them: each contained three men in two bunks, the double one being for decency’s sake split in half by a deep board. Here they washed and shaved in cold water which had afterwards to be emptied. After scavenging there was breakfast in a vast, noisy building, one of several that were known by such names as York House, Kent House and Gloucester House; and after breakfast Divisions, in the course of which the various classes marched behind a Royal Marine band playing, daily, ‘Sussex by the Sea’ and ‘Heart of Oak’, marching past the Training Commander and the First Lieutenant to be dispersed to the different classrooms or other training areas. Much of the daily routine was taken up with square-bashing and with long route marches into the surrounding countryside; the rest was devoted to instruction in Naval routine, shipboard organization and the art of signalling; the latter included many sessions at the semaphore flags, when the arms of the assembled trainees moved rhythmically to the tune, never to be forgotten, of ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. Every fault, however small, of work, dress or behaviour was pounced upon hard by the PO Instructor, one Yeoman of Signals Possett, a small, wiry man, a Fleet Reservist who had been called back for active service after some eight years on the beach. A kindly enough man when off parade, he tended to ramble on about the past when he had served in the old Iron Duke, Lord Jellicoe’s last-war flagship in the Grand Fleet.

  ‘You young lads,’ he would say fairly often, ‘you’ve got it soft compared to what we had at your age. Bloody soft! I tell you something, though.’

  ‘Yes, Yeoman?’

  Possett would give a characteristic hitch to his trousers. ‘Never had a good laugh ashore I didn’t! Not till I got back in the andrew. Then I laughed again. And every time I sees you lot I laughs again till I splits me sides.’

  It was not encouraging, but it was not unkindly meant. Cameron learned, as he was to continue learning throughout many facets of the war, that the chiefs and petty officers of His Majesty’s Navy were mostly the salt of the earth, hard but fair, utterly dependable, utterly honest. They chased and chivvied the new entries but the new entries, as their service proceeded, quickly realized that it had all been for their own good and that of their seagoing mates: one piece of bad seamanship, one signal read too slowly, one moment of slackness, could mean real danger. Yeoman of Signals Possett and his fellow petty officers were not going to have that happen. And many of the new entries needed a good deal of chivvying: they were a mixed bunch, some volunteers, some conscripts — some keen, others far from it. There were plenty of mutinous mutters about hardship. And the backgrounds were just as mixed. The majority were of the working class, from any number of trades from bricklaying to farming. There were clerks, waiters, bookies’ runners, shop assistants ... men from banks, solicitors’ offices, Town Halls, slaughterhouses. There were those who stood out on account of their appearance and their accents: the sons of professional men, of service officers, even of peers of the realm. Cameron was one of those who attracted attention from above, and after a couple of months of being observed discreetly by his Divisional Officer, he was summoned for a word in private. His Divisional Officer was a lieutenant of the Wavy Navy, the RNVR, named Stubbs.
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br />   ‘Sit down, Cameron,’ Stubbs invited — or ordered. ‘Thank you, sir.’ Cameron sat.

  Stubbs said, ‘I’ve been looking through your service certificate.’ The reference was to the ‘parchment’ that was started when a man joined and accompanied him as a continuing life-history throughout his lower-deck service. ‘You were at a public school, I see.’

  ‘Yes, sir. A minor one, sir.’

  Stubbs looked up sharply. ‘Not apologizing for that, are you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Cameron said, flushing. ‘It’s just that — well, it’s not the thing to confess to —’

  ‘Amongst your messmates. So you try to minimize it. I think I understand, but try to drop the habit. You’re who you are and that’s that.’ Stubbs looked down at the service certificate again, then up at Cameron, seeming to stare right through him. ‘School certificate, six credits, Matric exemption. Going on to college, were you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I’d have gone into my father’s business, sir.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Trawlers, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He owns a small fleet sailing out of Aberdeen.’

  ‘Yes. Yet you joined in Portsmouth, I see. How come?’

  Cameron said, ‘I was staying with an uncle, sir. He was in the Navy ... invalided out before war started. I had my nineteenth birthday while I was there, sir —’

  ‘And joined. I see. Like it?’

  Cameron smiled. ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ There was a pause, and he filled it. ‘I’m used to the sea, sir. My father often sent me away with the trawlers in the holidays.’

  ‘Yes, I was wondering,’ Stubbs said reflectively. ‘Yeoman of Signals Possett tells me you’ve taken to boat-handling like a duck.’ He grinned. ‘Knowing Yeoman Possett, the “duck” could be taken two ways, of course ... but I think I got the right translation. Tell me this: if you’d gone into your father’s trawling fleet, which I take it would have been on the management side, would you have got yourself some kind of seafaring qualification?’