Convoy East
Philip McCutchan
© Philip McCutchan 1989
Philip McCutchan has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1989 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
ONE
I
II
III
IV
TWO
I
II
III
IV
THREE
I
II
III
IV
V
FOUR
I
II
III
IV
V
FIVE
I
II
III
IV
SIX
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
SEVEN
I
II
III
IV
EIGHT
I
II
III
IV
NINE
I
II
III
IV
TEN
I
II
III
IV
V
ELEVEN
I
II
III
IV
TWELVE
I
II
III
IV
THIRTEEN
I
II
III
IV
FOURTEEN
I
II
III
FIFTEEN
I
II
III
SIXTEEN
I
II
III
IV
SEVENTEEN
I
II
III
IV
V
Extract from Convoy of War by Philip McCutchan
ONE
I
John Mason Kemp, hunched into his bridge coat, shivered in an icy wind coming off the dark waters of the Tail o’ the Bank: no snow, it was a little late in the year for that, but a nasty heavy drizzle blown along the wind. Smoke from the funnels of the drifters lying in the comparative shelter of Albert Harbour joined the drizzle. Some of the drifters were moving out, their wet decks crammed with libertymen returning to the ships at anchor or at the buoys; more seamen waited on the dock wall, or moved for the remaining drifters as the shouts of the petty officers directed them aboard. A typical Greenock scene, far from new to Kemp, for the war had been going on now for more years than he cared to remember: so many sinkings, so many shattering deaths among the crews of the merchant ships in convoy, among the ships’ companies of the naval escorts.
‘There she is,’ a voice said at Kemp’s side.
‘What?’
‘The picquet-boat, Commodore.’
‘Ah, yes.’ A dark shape was moving in through the entrance, edging past an outward-moving drifter. In the shaded lights of the port Kemp saw the bowman and sternsheetsman, clad in oilskins, lift their boathooks high above their heads then bring them down to a horizontal position across their chests as the picquet-boat closed the gap towards the waiting Convoy Commodore.
Kemp turned to the officer at his side, a lieutenant-commander of the Naval Control Service staff, wearing, as Kemp himself did, the gold stripes of the Royal Naval Reserve, the professional reserve of merchant service officers in naval service for the war’s duration. ‘My thanks again to FOIC for the use of his boat.’
‘The least we could do, sir. Goodbye — and good luck.’
They shook hands. The NCS officer saluted as the Commodore went down the steps, greasy with rain and oil and seaweed, to be saluted again by the midshipman of the picquet-boat as he stepped aboard.
‘Permission to carry on, sir?’ This was the midshipman.
Kemp nodded, thinking of his own sons in naval uniform, little older than this youth. ‘Carry on, please,’ he said. No time was lost now; there was more smart work with the boathooks fore and aft as the picquet-boat was borne off the wall and headed for the harbour entrance and the windswept waters beyond, out to where the convoy and its escort lay waiting. The sailing orders were for midnight; the destination was Alexandria through the war-torn Mediterranean, and then Trincomalee in Ceylon. A troop and armaments convoy, under very heavy escort that as far as Alex would include the battleship Nelson currently lying at the flagship buoy and wearing the flag of a vice-admiral.
II
Kemp had reached Upper Greenock station early that afternoon, after a long train journey from his home at Meopham in Kent, via Charing Cross, Euston and Glasgow Central. He’d had a month’s leave following an exceptionally arduous convoy, the longest leave he’d had since the start of the war when, as Master of the Mediterranean-Australia Line’s Ardara, he had arrived in Tilbury from Sydney to be greeted by the chairman of the Line with the news that he was required for Admiralty service as a commodore of ocean convoys; and from that moment his life had changed irrevocably even though within a couple of years of convoy duty in various ships chance had found him aboard the old Ardara again, for she too had been mobilized into the fleet and was acting as Commodore’s ship leading a convoy of former liners to pick up Canadian troops on draft for service in Britain. Gone for as long as the war might last were the days of glamour, of soft light and the music of the liner’s orchestra, of a whole spectrum of passengers, rich and important or not so rich and seeking a new life in Australia or New Zealand. Old and young, crusty and convivial, all of them more or less interesting when, as Master, Kemp met them at his table in the first-class saloon or at the cocktail parties that were his lot to give and which on the whole he didn’t much enjoy: what he called social tittery was not in his line and he was always thankful when bad weather or other navigational matters gave him the excuse to hand over to his Staff Captain, who, together with the purser, was more directly involved in formal entertainment than the Master himself.
With the transition to war, all was grey paint and austerity, the expensive furnishings gone, the cabins and staterooms largely ripped out for conversion to troop accommodation and the decks strengthened to take gun-mountings. And the casualties had begun right at the start when on the first day of the war the liner Atlienia, filled with women and children, had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic.
Leave, as for everyone else in the services, was a welcome oasis and a necessary one if sanity was to be preserved. But this last leave had been a disturbing one. Mary his wife was overtired, not to say overwrought; a husband and two sons at sea, and all the worries of wartime housekeeping — the shortages, the queues, the ration books, the blackout, the air raids, the transport difficulties. Not only all of that, but granny too. Kemp believed he must be the only master mariner in his early fifties with a grandmother still alive — not only alive, but resident in his home. It was hard on his wife to have a grandmother-in-law who was bed-bound and cantankerous and getting more and more trying, but both of them were fond of her and Kemp, of course, especially: Granny Marsden was not only his grandmother but a lifelong friend, a mother to him after his mother had died young, and she was now not far short of her century.
Loyally Mary had tried not to add to her husband’s worries but, knowing it was better for her to unburden,
and guessing easily enough at the trouble, he had come right to the point after the first week’s leave.
‘It’s granny — right?’
‘Well —’
‘Yes, it is. And I understand, of course.’
‘That stick,’ she said. ‘That bloody stick!’
Granny Marsden was in the habit of banging her walking stick on the floor, which to those below meant the ceiling, for attention. Bedpan, false teeth dropped, open the window, shut it again, a glass of water, draw the curtains, bedpan again.
Kemp asked, knowing the answer, ‘Can’t we get help? A nurse? Even a daily woman.’ He said it without hope; they’d been into all that that before. Everyone was on war work, factories, buses, trains, the women’s services, forces’ canteens and clubs. There wasn’t even a nursing home available, and she wouldn’t have gone if there was, and Kemp wouldn’t have had the heart to throw her out in her last remaining years. But they did go into it all again and Kemp ended a fruitless discussion by saying, ‘Well, she can’t go on for ever, Mary.’
Mary sighed. ‘She’s got a better chance than Hitler,’ she said. A banging of the stick summoned her, and she went up the stairs, came down again to say John was wanted in the sick room, and, like a little boy, the Commodore obeyed. He guessed what it was: granny had a chocolate for him, or a biscuit. She always had; and fifty-odd years couldn’t be easily set aside.
It was another worry for the Commodore to carry with him to sea; Mary was only human, could take so much and no more.
III
In Glasgow another worry had awaited Kemp: he had breakfasted in the station hotel after the night train from the south — there were no longer any restaurant cars on the trains. At his table he was approached by a lean woman, spinsterish and hungry-looking, in the uniform of a first officer WRNS, two-and-a-half blue stripes on her cuffs.
‘Commodore Kemp?’ she asked brightly.
‘Yes.’ His heart sank as he got to his feet, napkin in one hand. So soon! He knew who she must be: the niece of old Sir Edward, chairman of Mediterranean-Australia Lines, who had told him she would be aboard the Commodore’s ship — there had obviously been an unwelcome breach of security somewhere — and would he keep a friendly eye on her. ‘You’re — er — Miss Forrest?’
‘Jean Forrest, yes.’
He indicated a chair. ‘Do sit down, please. Er — you’ve breakfasted, Miss Forrest?’
‘Yes, I have, thank you, Commodore Kemp. But I’ll join you if I may.’ She sat down facing him across the coffee pot with the ersatz-like coffee, the toast, the tiny pat of butter, the dried egg powder masquerading as scrambled egg. He summed her up: fortyish, nervy, potentially bossy but currently anxious to please and, above all he feared, for he had a long experience of women at sea, anxious for a man. Not unattractive in a bony, rather arid way. She shouldn’t have found it all that hard to get a man, at any rate in wartime when the old inhibitions were slipping away fast.
She fiddled with a spare fork. ‘The convoy—’
‘We’ll not discuss that in a hotel dining-room, Miss Forrest.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
He gave a cough, feeling embarrassed: she had looked what she probably thought of as prettily contrite. He said, ‘Your uncle—’
‘Yes, he’ll have spoken to you, I know.’
‘He asked me to—’
‘You mustn’t bother too specially about me, Commodore Kemp.’
‘I’ll do what—’
‘It’s my girls, you see. The Wren draft.’
‘Again, that should not be—’
‘Discussed. No. I’m awfully sorry. I wasn’t going to say anything important.’
Kemp frowned. He had a strong dislike of being interrupted when speaking, an even stronger dislike of having his sentences finished for him. He said, ‘Well, I’m relieved to hear that, Miss Forrest. It’s unwise to say anything at all that might be picked up. Tell me, is Sir Edward better?’ When he’d called upon the chairman half-way through his recent leave, being caught up in one of the London air raids for his pains and spending a fraught two hours with his shoulders holding up a beam so that the rescue squads could bring out the injured people from inside a building, Sir Edward had complained of a vicious attack of lumbago. He was indeed better, Jean Forrest said, and went on to talk of London and the blitz. Safer conversation: Kemp kept her at it for a polite ten minutes, then excused himself. There was something about her that suggested she found the war boring as well as dangerous, an interruption of her peacetime routine of coffee at Harrods, meeting friends for lunch, then afternoon tea followed later by a dinner party or perhaps a theatre. In Kemp’s view, there were more important things in life.
Reaching Greenock, he attended the convoy conference where the shipmasters and naval escort commanders were given their route instructions by the staff officers of the Naval Control Service. There was an overall appraisal of the situation in the Mediterranean and in the waters beyond the port of Suez at the southern end of the canal: the Italian fleet and the German dive-bombers continued to be active in the Mediterranean, and as ever the period of most danger would come between Gibraltar and Malta. The escort, however, was strong and would remain so until arrival off Alexandria where the troops would be disembarked in support of the armies fighting west from Egypt where a big push was expected soon. When the convoy sailed from Alex, Nelson and the covering aircraft-carriers, Indomitable and Victorious, would be withdrawn and the merchant ships would sail on with four heavy cruisers and six destroyers. As far as Alexandria at least it was a big escort for a comparatively small number of merchant ships: a vessel to detach to Malta with supplies of food and medical equipment, three troopships for Alex, eight large cargo vessels fully laden with armaments — guns, ammunition, tanks, armoured vehicles — for Trincomalee. And aboard the Commodore’s ship, the freighter Wolf Rock of 15,000 tons, a draft of twenty WRNS ratings together with First Officer Jean Forrest and two Third Officers, one-stripers, taking passage to Trincomalee to join the base staff of the Admiral commanding the British East Indies Fleet.
The conference was a long one, extending into the afternoon. It was followed by an informal meeting with the Flag Officer in Charge and his Chief of Staff. There was a farewell drink before Commodore Kemp left Naval HQ in the early dark for Albert Harbour and the Wolf Rock.
IV
The Commodore’s staff, those who went with Kemp from one convoy to another, had joined the ship the previous day. Now, Petty Officer Lambert, yeoman of signals, having checked his flag locker for the umpteenth time, had gone below to the petty officers’ mess to write a last letter to his wife in Pompey. Last before leaving he meant — no call to be too pessimistic; the Wolf Rock’s Chief Officer, Mr Harrison, had announced a final mail that would leave the ship aboard the last drifter to come alongside, ready to go inshore with some base maintenance men at 2200.
Lambert wrote slowly: fast as you like at reading a lamp in any weather, fast to interpret a flag hoist, mostly without need to refer to the signal books, he was a poor composer of letters home. There never seemed to be anything worth writing, not unless you wanted to have the letter mutilated by the censoring officer before it left the ship. You even had to be careful in writing of the weather, in case Hitler got a buckshee weather report, and you could never mention where you’d been or where you were now or where you were going next, of course. That stood to reason. But what else was there? Assure the wife of your undying love, but she knew that already. Repetition could become stale, though there were different ways of expressing it, some of them carnal, but he’d gone through all of them too over the years, pre-war and since it all started. Testimonials of love and desire from Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Colombo, Port Said, Malta, Gibraltar, the West Indies, South Africa and other places. In his ditty box he kept a number of nude photographs, snaps really, of Doris to keep the fires fuelled. She had a good figure still and it was useful to look at it before going ashore: by proxy, she kept him away
from the world’s brothels and likely disease. When you had a body like that to go back to, you kept yourself clean, not like the single men and the ones married to old bags. As Yeoman of Signals Lambert laboured pencil-wise with expressions of basic love, he was interrupted by heavy footfalls and a loud voice.
‘Finished, Yeo?’
Lambert looked up, met the sardonic eye of Petty Officer Ramm, gunner’s mate and in immediate charge of the Wolf Rock’s armament of one 6-inch gun, obsolete for years, and assorted ack-ack and close-range weapons mounted fore and aft and in the bridge wings.
‘Nearly, GI. What’s the rush?’
‘Subby.’
‘Subby, eh.’ The reference was to Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan, RCNVR like the Commodore’s previous assistant who had been killed in action. Finnegan had the chore of censoring the outward mail. Finnegan, again like the dead Cutler, was an American who had pre-empted his own country’s call to arms by joining up in Canada early in the war. Lambert knew the story behind Finnegan’s appointment to Kemp’s staff: Commodore Kemp had had a lot of time for that previous assistant, Cutler, had been so impressed with American keenness and efficiency that he’d asked for, and got, a replacement from precisely the same stable. There were not so many of them; Kemp had been lucky, but he was highly thought of at the Admiralty and all the strings had been pulled. Now, Lambert knew the new Commodore’s assistant was dead keen, anxious to prove himself worthy of his predecessor, to prove that any American was as good as if not better than any limey officer. So he took even his censorship duties seriously, as those on the Commodore’s permanent staff were well aware. Lambert said, ‘Wetting ‘is pants to get the job done, eh?’
‘Before the drifter leaves, yes.’ Petty Officer Ramm gave a large yawn. He’d been ashore, sampling the fleshpots of Greenock and, as he would have put it, was shagged out. Pre-war, he’d been known in every ship he’d served in as Ramm by Name and Ramm by Nature. He changed the subject. ‘Any buzzes, Yeo? About this run.’
Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) Page 1