Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘She’ll not take it for long, Captain.’

  ‘For long enough, she will.’

  ‘How long’s long enough, for —’

  ‘You’ve had your orders, Mr Turnberry.’ Champney had slammed back the voice-pipe cover: there was to be no argument. Turnberry cursed but carried on, grinning to himself after a moment. The Old Man knew he, Turnberry, always argued the toss, stood up for his engines, which he regarded as human, and knew, too, that there was usually an element of exaggeration in what Turnberry said. Yet there was truth in it: engines were not made to withstand speeds over the statutory maximum other than in short bursts. And they didn’t want a buggered-up engine. At the same time they didn’t want to take a bomb. Or a projy from the Italian Navy.

  Turnberry watched the revolution counter: just a few more and then that was it. Never mind the orders, he wouldn’t go beyond what he considered the danger point.

  He stood on the starting platform, glances darting everywhere as the revolutions increased and greasers stood by, probing now and again with their long-necked oilcans, keeping all the bearings running sweetly. All in order.

  But not for long.

  II

  When the aircraft were heard overhead Rose Hardisty had already mustered her charges in what First Officer Forrest said was the safest place, as safe as possible from bombs while at the same time as handy as possible for abandoning ship if they had to, a place decided upon by discussions between the Commodore, Captain Champney and Jean Forrest after the boat had become jammed: the alleyway outside the chief steward’s cabin, one deck down beneath the deck officers’ accommodation and with a hatch handy for an exit to the upper deck. They were mustered here when the first wave of dive bombers came in and there was a near miss on the port side of the Wolf Rock, a little aft of the engine-room. Below, Chief Engineer Turnberry was thrown violently from the starting platform as the ship lurched to starboard. The noise of the close explosion had been terrifying, everything had started to judder and ring with the concussion, and Turnberry’s first thought was that the ship’s side and with it the engine-room bulkhead to port must surely have been breached.

  But no: no water came in. Turnberry, picking himself up while his ears recovered from temporary deafness, believed that not even a seam had been sprung, which was quite a miracle in his view, or maybe the near miss hadn’t been as near as it had felt and sounded. The voice-pipe from the bridge was whistling at him: the Captain again.

  ‘All right below, Chief?’

  ‘So far, yes —’

  ‘No damage?’

  Turnberry said, ‘No damage in the engine-room. I’m going through to the boiler-room for a look-see, but I reckon all’s well.’

  ‘Report as necessary, Chief.’ Champney replaced the voice-pipe cover. Turnberry clicked his tongue; no need to tell him to report as necessary, of course he would do so. He went through to the boiler-room and as he’d expected found everything in order. In the meantime his second engineer was carrying out a check round the double bottoms beneath the engine-room deck plating. More thuds came as Turnberry went back to the starting platform, more near misses but not quite so near as that last one. Second Engineer Guthrie came up from the double bottom, through the hatch, his overalls covered in oil and filth: the double bottoms were no nice picnic area.

  ‘All right?’ Turnberry asked in a shout over the engine racket. ‘All right, Chief. No seepage that I could find.’

  Turnberry nodded. His face had tightened up after that big crump: it wasn’t his first time under attack, far from it, but each time it grew worse. One day, a man’s chances must run out. They said a cat had nine lives; maybe the same applied to human beings. Turnberry reckoned he’d had a good many of his nine if that was so. He remembered some of the Russian convoys, the long, hard slog through to Murmansk or Archangel with supplies for Joe Stalin, who’d never seemed particularly grateful for the risks run by British seamen, RN and merchant service, as they fought both the Jerries and the appalling winter weather when everything froze on deck — rigging, anchor gear, guns, the decks themselves like skating rinks, all under tons and tons of ice with the naval gunnery rates constantly chipping away at the armament to try to keep the barrels and breech blocks clear. Every time a sea had come over, it had seemed to freeze in the instant of hitting the deck. One thing about an engine-room: you kept warm whilst on watch. That was the only advantage — that, and the fact you were safe from shrapnel and shell splinters. That apart, engine-rooms were mantraps if anything happened. The tracery of steel ladders that ran up to the air-lock and the exit to the engineers’ alleyway enforced a single-file track to the open air. And it was the chief engineer who by virtue of his position had to be the last out.

  Turnberry often thought about that, having no wish to die. If he died now, it would be a very inconvenient time. Things were happening in his private life. Just before sailing from the Clyde his wife had gone into hospital for a serious operation, a hysterectomy. At best there would be a long convalescence. His daughter aged fifteen was on her own; no viable grandparents to help out — his wife’s parents were dead as was his own father, and his mother was suffering from early senile dementia and had to be supported in a private nursing home that was costing the earth. A breadwinner lost at sea would be no help to anybody. And the buzz had it that Adolf and Musso were determined to stop this convoy getting through. Somewhere out there, Turnberry was convinced, there was something — a bomb, a torpedo, a shell — with his name clearly upon it.

  In the meantime, Champney was flinging the Wolf Rock all over the show, turns to port and starboard under full helm, the engine-room seeming at times to turn turtle, but so far no alterations to the revs, the telegraph remaining on Full Ahead. Turnberry looked up at the clock behind the starting platform: five minutes since that first close shave, just five minutes that had felt like a lifetime.

  III

  Sub-lieutenant Finnegan, carrying out his orders to stand by Susan Pawle, looked down at the bunk. A girl with one leg made a different shape beneath the blanket from the normal in Finnegan’s experience. He felt embarrassed, tried not to look, but found his eyes drawn to it. He tried to make reassuring conversation, though Susan appeared half doped and very drowsy.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m here to look after you. Commodore’s orders, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She stirred herself a little and tried to smile, but it didn’t work out. ‘I hate being a burden.’

  ‘No burden, ma’am.’ Finnegan looked across at Rose Hardisty who, having mustered her flock, had turned them over to First Officer Forrest and come to be with Susan Pawle, resuming her old one-time role as nanny. She had got to her feet when the Commodore’s assistant had come into the cabin, but he’d waved her back to her chair where she sat, Finnegan thought now, like a warder in a women’s gaol, heavy-faced, stolid, all tits and bum. ‘I don’t want to be in the way, ma’am —’

  ‘Oh, you’re not, sir, and please don’t you call me ma’am, just PO, sir.’

  ‘Like Petty Officer Ramm?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And do talk to the young lady, sir, and cheer her up, she can do with a young gentleman’s company.’

  Finnegan grinned and said, ‘Why, okay then.’ He racked his brains, trying to think up something that wouldn’t be trite or flippant. Half his mind was on events up top; the sound of the dive bombers could be heard clearly, the scream of aircraft engines at full throttle, the rattle of the close-range weapons and the loud crack of the 6-inch as Petty Officer Ramm did his best to keep the Jerries away with his bursting shrapnel.

  He looked down again at the girl. Her eyes were wide, and they were very blue, a deep blue that could for all Finnegan knew be Irish. Her mouth was trembling and the long, dark lashes below the blue eyes were wet with tears. He felt immensely sorry for her. He said awkwardly, ‘Mind if I sit beside you, ma’am?’

  ‘No. And my name’s S
usan,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, ma’am, Susan.’ He sat on the bunk, close up against the single leg, his rump uncomfortable on the bunk board. ‘Mine’s Frank. Frank B. Finnegan from the good old USA.’

  She asked which state.

  ‘Montana,’ he said. ‘Cow country. Far from the sea. Too far. I’ve always dreamed of going to sea. Used to go over to Frisco, watch the ships. Dad, he spends his life in the saddle. You like horse riding, that’s the place.’ He came to a stop, red in the face. He’d been talking just for the sake of it, trying to do as Rose Hardisty had suggested — cheer her up. But you didn’t cheer a one-legged girl by talking tactlessly about horse riding. He tried, clumsily, to cover up. ‘I mean, well, you don’t have to ride, not if—’

  ‘All right,’ she broke in. ‘Don’t bother. I’ll get used to it. I never wanted to ride anyway.’ Again she tried to smile and he met the attempt with a friendly grin.

  ‘Guess I’ll keep my big mouth shut,’ he said. ‘I’ve often been told it’s too goddam big for my own good. By Commodore Kemp among others. But I guess he’s gotten used to me now, we get along fine. He’s a great guy.’ He grinned again and added, ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Why has he sent you here?’ she asked directly.

  He said, ‘Why, I told you...Susan. To look after you.’

  ‘You mean see that I’m taken to a boat if — if anything happens.’

  ‘Well, maybe, yes, but nothing’s going to happen. We have a darn big escort, and now we have Force H as well, out of Gibraltar. Plenty of destroyers as well as the big stuff. Any Eyetie submarines, they’re going to be depth-charged to hell and back again, ma’am, take my word for —’ Finnegan broke off; he could have killed himself, felt the furious vibrations coming from Rose Hardisty, heard the PO Wren’s sharp intake of breath. How could he have done it? He’d heard the girl’s history, the submarine that had failed to return. He muttered, ‘Jeepers creepers. Gosh, I’m darn sorry. Said I had a big mouth...’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Susan said bleakly. He saw that her lips were trembling. He’d brought it all back. ‘I’ve got to get used to it. The war’s going to go on, and I’m going to hear people — talk like that. I’m going to hear it on the news broadcasts and read about it in the papers.’

  He said nothing; just sat there, Rose Hardisty’s gaze on him as though he was something nasty brought in by the cat.

  Susan Pawle said in a sudden and surprisingly harsh voice, ‘I want to talk about it. No-one has. They won’t. They keep off it. And I do want to talk about it. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ he said gently. ‘You talk all you want, ma’am, Susan.’

  She talked, as outside the attack continued and every now and again the Wolf Rock shook like a dog coming out of the water, her plates reverberating to the shock waves of bombs and depth charges as the German aircraft came in again and again and the destroyers went into their attacks on the Italian submarines that had prowled out from Cagliari. She spoke of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, of drinks in the lounge bar of the Victoria Hotel, of the Wrennery established in a requisitioned house named Tigh-na-Mara on the shore of Rothesay Bay, of those parties in the ward-room of the Cyclops, the depot ship; of long walks around the island, of expeditions up the Kyles of Bute or across Inchmarnock Water to Arran and the little town of Lamlash beneath Goat Fell. She spoke of boat trips up to Lochgilphead and along Loch Fyne to Inverary, of Mediterranean-blue water washing the shore beneath the great, historic pile of Inverary Castle, seat of the Dukes of Argyll, chiefs of Clan Campbell...and with all this her memories of Johnny Pawle came out, and Finnegan formed a vivid mental image of a tall, goodlooking, fresh-faced lieutenant RN R, Kemp’s own service, who had come from the Union Castle Line into the wartime Navy, and had gone on that last patrol with a smile and a kiss and a promise of many, many more rambles in the future and when the war was over a return to the Union Castle liners, sailing at set intervals for the Cape, with a cottage somewhere in the country near his home port of Southampton.

  And she talked of the other, harsher things: she revealed her nightmares, her torments, her mind filled with underwater explosions, tearing pressure hulls, escaping fumes, flooding compartments, shattered bulkheads, men flung this way and that, the boat nose-diving to the bottom, the claustrophobia, the feeling of panic that must never be shown by the officers above all others, the deaths by being blown apart or from slow suffocation, the grisly corpses floating in their steel coffin until they became skeletons to last until the end of time. Johnny Pawle, lieutenant RNR with a lifetime ahead of him, just bare bone, moving to the scend and surge passing over the sea bed.

  Finnegan listened, never interrupting. Rose Hardisty listened too; her Wrens, and Petty Officer Ramm, would perhaps have been astonished if they had seen her cheeks wet with tears.

  IV

  ‘Got the bugger!’ Ramm said in a loud shout, a shout hoarse with a sense of localised victory. ‘Well done, Stripey!’

  Stripey Nelson, gunlayer on the 6-inch aft, reached behind his white anti-flash gear and wiped sweat from his face with a filthy handkerchief and tried to look modest. Of course, it had been sheer luck and he knew it, but he might as well make the most of it. He had caught the Stuka at the end of its dive and had pressed the tit at precisely the right moment and the Stuka had simply disintegrated, there one second, gone the next and its crew with it.

  ‘Dead-eye Dick, that’s me, GI,’ he said. Ramm didn’t respond, already the 6-inch was loaded again, a projy nicely up the spout. With the gun now elevated to its HA firing position, Stripey Nelson blasted away into the night sky, trusting to luck, more or less, that the resulting shrapnel bursts would bring down another Jerry. There was light all around as the anti-aircraft batteries of the cruisers and capital ships kept up a continuous fire. Stripey’s namesake along with her sister battleship Rodney looked like the centre of a firework display as tracer from the close-range weapons spread in all directions and the gun-flashes from the heavy ack-ack lit sky and water in their vicinity. The cruisers, extended towards the surface ships, were in action of their own. The merchant vessels, doing their own dodging manoeuvres as ordered by the Commodore, were all intact still. A bloody miracle, Stripey Nelson thought when he had a moment to look and think. There wasn’t in fact much time and only a matter of moments later there was none at all: a Stuka came suddenly out of the darkness, falling like one of its own bombs.

  Just before it came out of its dive slap above the stern of the Wolf Rock, its cannon opened, laid well and truly on Stripey Nelson’s bulky figure, and Stripey died with a series of bullet holes running the length of his spine; as he died the six-inch itself and all the rest of its crew disintegrated as a cannon shell took the ready-use ammunition waiting in the racks to go into the breech. The Commodore’s ship was racked with what sounded below decks like a gigantic explosion. To Chief Engineer Turnberry this was the one with his name on it, though it hadn’t yet killed him personally. He had shouted the order for the engine-room personnel to get up the ladders when he was called by the bridge.

  ‘Captain here, Chief. What’s it like?’

  ‘No damage here. What’s it like up top, that’s the bloody point?’

  ‘A shambles on the upper deck aft but we’re all right, no penetration of the after holds. Bosun’s running out the fire hoses — I believe we’ll last. Keep the speed up, Chief.’

  Turnberry grunted irritably as he replaced the voice-pipe cover. Keep the speed up, indeed! After that last one speed was definitely his own first priority, just so long as the engines responded without protest. He sent the engine-room hands back to their posts.

  On the bridge Kemp was joined by his assistant. Kemp said, ‘You had certain orders, Finnegan.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But when I heard —’

  ‘Stay with her, sub. You can do nothing for the gun’s crew now. We’re short of a 6-inch — that’s all. Mrs Pawle’s —’

  ‘That PO Wren can cope, sir. Tough as old boots
.’

  ‘Possibly. If necessary, you’ll carry more authority. So go back to that girl. How’s she taking the explosion?’

  ‘Pretty badly, sir.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Kemp said. Turning away from Finnegan, he looked astern. Matters had gone well for the convoy so far, less well for the escort. Three of the destroyers attached to Force H had been hit by the dive bombers; two had gone down, one was drifting with her after guns blown right out of their mountings and with a heavy list to starboard. She had signalled that her rudder was useless and one shaft was out of action. The Vice-Admiral commanding Force H could not at that moment spare a ship to take up a tow but a signal would be made to Gibraltar asking for an ocean-going rescue tug to be sent with the utmost despatch. With the fleets engaged, there was no point in maintaining wireless silence and in the main transmitting rooms of the warships the Safe To Transmit boards were in position. Soon after the signal had gone to Gibraltar, there was a massive explosion on the port beam of the convoy and flames shot into the sky.

  Lambert reported, ‘Cruiser, sir.’

  ‘Can you identify?’ Kemp asked.

  ‘Not yet, sir, but I don’t reckon it’s one of ours. Eyetie, sir. Not one I recognize any road.’

  Within the next few minutes confirmation came from the Nelson, steaming majestically in the centre of the convoy, giving the vital troop transports the close protection of her batteries: an Italian cruiser had indeed blown up whilst being engaged by the 15-inch guns of the Malaya. Kemp caught Champney’s eye and read the unspoken question: he nodded in reply and Champney flicked on the tannoy in the wheelhouse.

  His voice boomed out along the decks and alleyways of the Wolf Rock. ‘This is the Captain speaking. An Italian cruiser has just been sunk.’

  There was cheering from the men on deck, with an extra one from Petty Officer Ramm. That, he said to himself, helped to even up the personal score, one Eyetie cruiser for Leading Seaman Stripey Nelson and the rest of the 6-inch crew. Currently, Ramm was supervising the clearing-up operation along the upper deck, along with the ship’s bosun, Tod Ridgway. In fact, things were not too bad considering, as Ramm remarked.