Marine H SBS

by Ian Blake

  The crews had also talked of ‘drop zones’ and ‘updraughts’, of ‘joes’ and ‘nickels’, of ‘The Hump’ and ‘undershoot’, of operations with codenames like ‘Badger’ and ‘Character’, and of the ‘Moonlight War’ which the Dakota and Liberator crews were continually waging – not against the Japanese but against the Burmese monsoon. They called it the ‘Moonlight War’ because they needed the light of the moon to see their drop zones, and could not operate without it.

  It had not taken long for Tiller to learn that ‘joes’ were Force 136 agents, ‘nickels’ were propaganda leaflets, and that ‘The Hump’ was the nickname for the air supply route between northern India and China. This meant flying across the Himalayas in all weathers; accidents were common.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was the dispatcher, who had an easy ride today as the aircraft was empty of both cargo and joes.

  ‘The skipper says do you want to go into the cockpit?’ he shouted above the roar of the engines.

  Tiller nodded and followed the dispatcher forward. The dispatcher opened the padded cockpit door to let Tiller in and then closed it behind him. On Tiller’s immediate right was the navigator, who looked up from the radar screen with its slowly sweeping trace and nodded to him. Ahead, with their backs to him, were the pilot and co-pilot, their instruments reflecting a pale green on the windows of the cockpit.

  The pilot, a young American US Army Air Force lieutenant, had already turned over the controls to his co-pilot and, with a cigar in one hand, was leaning back in his seat contemplating a huge colour photograph of a nubile, and almost totally naked, woman, which was stuck to the roof of the cockpit above his head.

  When Tiller appeared he stood up, and pointed to his seat. ‘Take it easy, Sergeant,’ he shouted. ‘I’m going to get my head down. Too much beer last night.’

  Tiller knew the co-pilot, a flight sergeant, from the sessions of gin rummy. The pilot grinned and stuck up his thumb and then bent and twiddled the knob of a trim tab. The Liberator neared the great bank of clouds and Tiller, wanting to have a last look at the ground, peered out of the cockpit window and watched the Burmese coast running jaggedly below him. Then the plane banked and they were heading into the Bay of Bengal, and moments later the cloud closed in. It whipped, vapour-like, by the windows of the cockpit and the Liberator bucked like a bronco. Tiller could see the whiteness of the second pilot’s knuckles as he gripped the rudder and remembered the ML crewman’s casual comment about how easily the wings of an aircraft could be torn from their roots in a monsoon storm.

  For three hours they jolted and bumped through the vapour, an occasional flicker of lightning the only relief in the near blackness. Then, quite suddenly, the clouds parted and below them the Bay of Bengal was spread out like a great plate of shimmering steel. To their right, beyond the horizon, was the Indian coastline. Heading northwards towards it were three lines of dots in arrowhead formation.

  The co-pilot pointed them out to Tiller and shouted: ‘Convoy.’

  ‘Where would it be from?’

  ‘Melbourne, probably. They offload at Calcutta, then the cargo’s taken by rail to Dimapur and Chittagong for distribution to the Fourteenth Army. That convoy route is the lifeline for the Burma offensive and for the Nationalist Chinese. Cut that and it’s the equivalent of cutting our jugular.’

  Intrigued, Tiller peered down at the tiny dots. The ships were isolated specks amid the vast expanse of water. ‘It looks a vulnerable jugular,’ he said. ‘How do we protect them?’

  ‘Air patrols mostly. Liberators flying out of Colombo and Calcutta. But of course they have a pretty strong anti-submarine escort with them. Not that the Japs often use their subs to attack anything as ordinary as a merchant ship. Not in the true tradition of the Samurai spirit.’

  Tiller looked puzzled.

  ‘Never heard of the Samurai?’ said the co-pilot. ‘Old Japanese warrior caste. All the Japs have been conditioned to follow the Samurai tradition of fearlessness and self-sacrifice. The Banzai charge and all that.’

  Tiller remembered the Banzai charge and the look on the Japanese officer’s face. ‘And suicide,’ he added.

  The co-pilot laughed. ‘It seems to us to amount to that sometimes. To them it’s a form of personal courage. It leads them to despise any form of defensive warfare. Silly bastards have lost all their best pilots. Know why?’

  Tiller shook his head.

  ‘Because they refused to have armoured cockpits as the armour slowed their aircraft down. What kind of logic is that?’

  Tiller shook his head in wonderment. ‘It’s hard to get inside their heads,’ he said.

  The co-pilot told him to look out of the other side of the cockpit. Tiller peered through the haze and could dimly see on the horizon a long string of islands.

  ‘The Andamans,’ the co-pilot shouted.

  ‘Long way from anywhere,’ Tiller shouted back. ‘Do we even bother to garrison them?’

  The co-pilot glanced up at him with an amused smile. ‘Didn’t you know, the Japs hold the Andamans. That’s the tip of the knife at our jugular, Sergeant. There are always plans afoot to recapture them but somehow it never happens.’

  Then, as abruptly as they had parted, the clouds closed in once more and the rest of the flight to Kandy took place in the gloom of monsoon rain. It was still lashing down when the Liberator descended through the cloud. Even so, from the air, Ceylon looked green and inviting.

  ‘The altitude of Kandy is 2000 feet,’ said the co-pilot, ‘so it won’t be too hot.’

  Immediately the Liberator had landed there was a hum of activity about the airstrip that Tiller had never come across anywhere else. The long, low hut that served as the airfield’s reception centre was thronged with servicemen from several nations and the strip’s apron was filled with an assortment of aircraft waiting for the weather to clear before taking off. Tiller reported to the reception desk and showed his movement order to the clerk, who ran her pencil down a long list.

  ‘Tiller, Sergeant Colin, Royal Marines?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Special Boat Squadron.’ The clerk looked up and flashed him a friendly smile. ‘Is that as special as it sounds?’ she asked. ‘I think it must be, as Special Operations Group have sent a jeep to take you to the railway station. It’ll be parked opposite. It’ll have a red and white shield on the front.’

  She stretched out a slim, bronzed arm and pointed with her pencil. Tiller noticed how the finest of fine down on her forearm glistened in the heat.

  He swallowed his lust and said: ‘Thanks. Tell me, what’s this place Hyatt’s Ferry like?’

  She had unusual hazel-coloured eyes. They rested on him noncommittally. ‘Wonderful beaches. I often go there when I’ve got a weekend off duty.’

  ‘Might see you there, then,’ said Tiller, picking up his kitbag and swinging it over his shoulder.

  ‘You might,’ she said. ‘The best beach has a snack bar called Sam’s. Everyone goes there.’

  He found the jeep, tossed his kitbag into the back, and climbed in beside the driver. She wore trousers, a lance-corporal’s single stripe on her khaki shirt, and dark glasses, and she drove the seventeen miles to Kandy with an expertise that Tiller found by turns unnerving and exhilarating.

  Being suddenly thrown into contact with female company after months of operational duty – the hospital at Cox’s Bazar had been staffed entirely by male nurses – made Tiller feel reticent, and it was the driver who did most of the talking. She chattered on about Ceylon, while Tiller looked at the passing scenery.

  ‘There seem to be almost as many women here as there are men,’ he said.

  ‘Almost,’ said the driver, ‘Supremo likes having plenty of women around. It helps make for a happy ship. That’s what he says.’

  ‘I believe him,’ said Tiller fervently.

  ‘And a happy ship is an efficient ship,’ said the driver. ‘It’s one of his sayings.’

  ‘And is it effic
ient?’

  The driver laughed derisively. ‘You must be joking. It’s one vast bureaucracy.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tiller. ‘It’s rife here, too, is it?’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘One of the fighting man’s biggest enemies,’ Tiller explained. ‘Disease, the monsoon, mother nature and bureaucracy. The Japs don’t get a look in.’

  She laughed. ‘You could be right.’

  She drove Tiller past Kandy’s Botanical Gardens, where the new supreme commander’s headquarters had been set up in a magnificent white palace, before dropping him at the station. He took a train to Jaffna, at the northern end of the island, where he was met by another jeep – but no female driver – and arrived at the camp soon after dark. He was shown to his quarters and then taken to Blondie Tasler’s office.

  Tasler pumped his hand enthusiastically and interrogated him closely on SBS operations in the Arakan. He soon detected Tiller’s liking for what the SBS were doing and said: ‘I know you want to return to Burma as soon as possible, Tiger. But I think Danforth’s right about putting you out of reach of the local bureaucracy for the time being. Besides, you’re needed more here right now.’

  Tiller’s heart sank. Here it came.

  Tasler grinned at the sergeant’s glum expression. ‘No, it’s not the instructor’s job. The Welmans have arrived at Trincomalee, but they’re still sitting on the docks. So you’re safe for the moment.’ He paused to light a cigarette, and then said: ‘You know all about Z SBS, of course?’

  Tiller nodded.

  ‘And Force 136 and what it does?’

  Again Tiller nodded.

  ‘So much for SEAC security,’ said Tasler wryly. ‘But at least you’re now allowed to know officially, as you were given security clearance in London.’

  ‘I was?’ Tiller said, astonished. It was the first he had heard about it.

  ‘Yes. By those two gentlemen who were in my office at Combined Operations that day you came to see me.’ Tasler paused and then went on so that Tiller knew there must be a connection between the two subjects. ‘Incidentally, Tiger, and I know you won’t like me raising this again, but it would be much easier all round if you would take a commission.’

  Tiller groaned inwardly. Tasler had raised the matter of him becoming an officer several times over the past few years and each time he had become more insistent. Each time Tiller had refused.

  ‘I couldn’t do it, sir. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable.’

  Tasler blew a ring of cigarette smoke into the air and watched it disintegrate. ‘You mean you know you can get away with doing what you want by staying a senior non-com, isn’t that right?’

  Tiller grinned at him. ‘I didn’t say that, sir.’

  ‘But it’s what you mean.’ Tasler shook his head in frustration. ‘You’re right, of course. Look what’s happened to us. After Bordeaux I get promoted and become a staff officer pushing a pen; you get promoted, seconded to the SBS, and are involved in just about every small boat operation going. However, there is one recommendation I insist you abide by.’

  Tiller looked at Tasler warily.

  ‘Your promotion to colour sergeant has just come through. I assume,’ the major added with heavy irony, ‘that that won’t conflict with your own personal arrangements for fighting this war in any way?’

  Once he was involved in the war, promotion had meant very little to Tiller. You were as dead as a corporal as you were as a sergeant and in the SBS, where every man was trained to act independently, rank counted for very little. But he felt strangely pleased that he was now the same rank that his father had reached nearly thirty years before.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ said Tasler tersely. ‘Supremo has ruled that all non-commissioned SEAC instructors should be a sergeant-major or its equivalent.’

  ‘I thought, sir . . .’ Tiller began.

  ‘Look, Tiger, I don’t run SEAC any more than you do,’ Tasler cut him off wearily. ‘Special Operations Group have you on strength as an instructor and if SEAC decide they want you as an instructor there is nothing much I can do about it. Luckily for you, at the moment they’re so stuffed up with bumf that they don’t know where the Welmans are or who should be trained for them when they find them. Tomorrow’s another day. At this moment I need you for a Z SBS operation.’

  ‘I’m on for that, sir,’ said Tiller eagerly. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘You’ll be on your own with this one,’ Tasler warned him. ‘But I want you fully rested for it. Take tomorrow and the weekend off. And that’s an order. Report here at 0730 on Monday morning. And get those crowns sewn on above your stripes as quickly as possible. Supremo won’t abide anyone improperly dressed.’

  The next evening Tiller found Hazel-eyes sitting in Sam’s snack bar as he somehow knew she would be. Later that night, much later, she suggested they were just ships that passed in the night, that was all, and on Monday morning Tasler said that he hoped Tiller was rested because he was not going to get much from then on.

  ‘Not rested, sir,’ Tiller said with a straight face, ‘but relaxed.’

  ‘See that Catalina?’ Tasler pointed to a high-winged, two-engined flying boat. It was moored to a large buoy in the strait between the sand spit where the camp was situated and a small island on which stood an old Dutch colonial fort – Fort Hammenhiel – where the SBS kept their stores. Either side of the Catalina’s fuselage were large Perspex blisters which held heavy machine-guns. A fuel boat was moored alongside it, pumping fuel into the wing tanks. ‘That’s your transport.’

  ‘American, isn’t it?’ Tiller asked.

  ‘The Yanks let us have quite a few,’ Tasler explained. ‘They’re reliable, you’ll be pleased to know. Very reliable.’

  ‘Where’s it going to take me?’

  Tasler turned away from the window. ‘You’ll know all about that in good time, Tiger. First things first. One of the techniques we’ve been trying to develop here is to parachute canoeists and their canoes into the water from a Catalina. You’ll understand that the vast distances out here don’t always make it possible to deliver canoeists to their operational areas by submarine.’

  ‘Sounds interesting, sir.’

  Jumping at night was part of a parachute course; jumping into water was not.

  ‘As long as you keep your legs together and release your parachute quickly, there’s no problem,’ said Tasler. ‘The problem is the canoes. They tend to get damaged or distorted by the air pressure if they’re slung under the Catalina and they’re too long to be launched through the fuselage door. And parachuting them in in pieces has proved a non-starter.’

  ‘Can’t the Catalina land on the water and the canoe then be assembled on the wing?’ Tiller asked.

  Tasler shook his head. ‘The fly boys don’t like that, though they’ll do it if they have to. But the sea is often too rough to land, which means they will have flown a long way for nothing. Also, the Catalina’s far too vulnerable to attack when it’s on the surface. We’re going to have to think of something else. Any ideas?’

  Tiller rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘We had a visit from a Yank a month or so back. Member of the OSS, apparently.’

  Tasler looked up sharply. ‘And?’

  ‘He had various useful stores. He gave us a number of what he called Pin-Up Girls. You know them?’

  Tasler nodded. ‘I’ve heard about them. What else did he have?’

  ‘He said OSS’s Maritime Unit had developed a fast rigid inflatable which is powered by a silenced outboard engine. Major Danforth asked me to make notes about it as he thought it could be of interest to the SBS.’

  ‘That chap who holds the land speed record has been trying to develop a silent outboard,’ said Tasler. ‘He’s here. Name of Malcolm Campbell. Hasn’t had much luck so far. Last one he made sounded like a waterborne air-raid siren.’

  ‘The one this bloke described is a 9.7hp Evinrude. They’ve made an
effective silencer for the carburettor intake and for the exhaust.’

  ‘That won’t silence it completely.’

  ‘No, but they’ve managed to make an acoustic felt cover for the rest of the motor which muffles the sound.’

  ‘How the hell did they manage that when the engine gets so hot?’

  ‘They’ve developed some kind of heatproof aluminium lining for the cover apparently. He said you can get within 1400 feet of the shore without anyone on land hearing anything. And at slow speed you can apparently get to within 280 feet.’

  Tasler whistled. ‘You might just have solved the biggest problem, Tiger. The other one is using an inflatable instead of a canoe. Our parachute expert is wrestling with that. Deflated, it’ll go through the fuselage door without any problem, of course. But somehow he’s got to find a way that allows the dinghy to inflate automatically once it hits the water. It would be too tricky for the operator to inflate it himself when he’s in the water.’

  ‘We’ll find a way somehow, sir,’ said Tiller forcefully. He knew he would have to if the operation was to be mounted before the powers that be realized that the Welmans had arrived. ‘You get an Evinrude and the OSS inflatable, and I’ll see to the rest.’

  In fact it did not take long to find the solution in theory once Tiller had talked to the Group’s expert on parachutes, but in practice it was far more difficult. By the Friday evening – when Tiller again met Hazel-eyes at the snack bar – they had lost quite a few inflatables and had still not solved the problem. By Sunday night Hazel-eyes had decided that she and Tiller weren’t ships which passed in the night at all, but were the helpless victims of a collision at sea and that she, for one, was sinking fast.

  On the Tuesday the parachute expert managed to adapt the inflatable’s carbon-dioxide bottle mechanism successfully so that it inflated the dinghy when it hit the water. On the Wednesday Tiller made his first jump into the sea, and landed reassuringly close to the inflated dinghy. Then, on the Thursday, the OSS dinghy and engine arrived from Kunming.