‘Do I smell whisky, sir?’ the gunlayer asked.
‘No, you don’t. The sergeant’s sick but he’ll be all right in the morning. Detail two of your gun’s crew to take him down to the petty officers’ mess and hand him over to his fellow sergeants.’
‘Leave the gun, at second degree of readiness, sir? The skipper—’
‘I’ll take any cans that are going. Just be quick, that’s all.’
‘If you give the order, sir.’ The gunlayer called up two seamen and explained the situation; the sergeant was handled gently but firmly and taken through the after door into the alleyway and out of sight. Cameron was left to wonder if he had given a display of weakness, if he had been guilty of subversion of discipline such as would react upon the ship’s company when the word spread, which it was bound to. If an officer turned a blind eye to one man’s drunkenness, how could he not do so in the case of a seaman when it arose—which, again, after the next spell in port, it was bound to? The men who went down to the sea in ships were never plaster saints and in Malta Cameron had seen some rip-roaring drunkenness making its way aboard to be put in the rattle by the Officer of the Watch. But it was done now for good or ill.
***
The following afternoon Rear-Admiral Vian hauled his cruisers off to the north-west and made his farewell good luck signal. He would be patrolling in his allotted sector off the Norwegian coast and in emergency could be contacted on the radio frequency allocated for Operation Forestay. He had had no need to stress the ‘emergency’ angle: Forbes was only too well aware that once the Castle Bay’s WIT opened up, it would consti’Bute a dead give-away of his position and that would endanger not only the ship itself but also the whole of Vian’s force. A wireless call would be a final resort, only to be made if and when they made actual contact with the enemy at sea.
The departure of the heavy ships left a naked feeling behind: everyone on the Castle Bay’s upper deck waved them away and looked after them with a kind of wistfulness as they drew clear with tumbling wakes and streaming ensigns, eventually to fade from sight towards the far horizon. Now the Castle Bay was really on her own. Colonel Bell was on the bridge with the Captain when the departure was made. As the boatswain’s calls shrilled out in salute to the Admiral, to be answered by the distant strains from the flagship’s Royal Marine bugler, Bell said, ‘Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.’
Forbes lifted an eyebrow, quizzically. Bell said, ‘Shakespeare. The Tempest.’
‘Don’t talk about tempests, Colonel! Anyway—you’re going to get your acre of barren ground pretty soon, only it’ll be a lot more than a perishing acre!’
‘Yes...’
Forbes said, ‘We’ll be off Vest Hammarfjord right on time, and after that there’ll be no delay. There’ll be a final briefing at 2100 hours in the wardroom, and from then on I’ll be on the bridge till our arrival, and probably most of the time after that as well.’
‘Hard life, isn’t it?’ Bell said with a grin.
Forbes laughed. ‘I’m not complaining, I’m used to it by now. All I ask is luck—that’s all! And I’ve a feeling we’ve had rather more than our share already.’
The Castle Bay steamed on, moving fast, throwing back the seas from her blunt stem, the wind whistling through her standing rigging and around the pock-marked funnel above the shell-torn casing. Just before the light went, the Norwegian coast came into distant view ahead, craggy, inhospitable, German-held and dangerous. In normal times there would have been the promise of spectacular beauty in that closing view, but not now. No one’s thoughts were of beauty as rifles and automatic weapons were given a last check through, as the inflatable dinghies were brought up from below and piled on deck, as the warrant officers and NCOs of the army contingent made last-minute inspections of equipment and personnel. There was plenty of ribald comment along the decks as the Castle Bay first raised the land: Adolf Hitler was about to get a nasty shock and at last it really was going to be a case of run, rabbit, run, if only the Navy delivered them successfully to do the fighting. Later, however, as the grim mountains came up more closely and began to loom through the darkness over the incoming vessel, tongues grew less active and the mood changed sharply. Men sat about in their platoon groups, waiting for the off and brooding until it came. Letters for home were scribbled on pads and posted in the ship’s post box; if the writers didn’t get back, perhaps the Castle Bay would. There was a lot of pencil sucking and many brows frowned in concentration; possible last letters were not too easy to compose.
The gunlayer of Number Four gun sought out Sub-Lieutenant Cameron.
‘Beg pardon, sir. Sergeant Mullins would like a word.’
‘Sergeant Mullins?’
‘Last night, sir.’
‘Oh. What was the outcome, Frewen?’
Leading Seaman Frewen closed an eye briefly. ‘All well, sir. Pongoes stick together, specially NCOS.’
‘I’m glad to hear it! Right, I’ll see him.’
Frewen vanished through a doorway; Sergeant Mullins came out and approached Cameron. He slammed to the salute, boots crashing on the deck. ‘Just to say thank you, sir.’
‘That’s all right, Sergeant.’
‘It meant a lot to me, sir. I’ll never be a bloody fool again. I’m a regular, and maybe all I’ll have left is the army before long. Thing is, sir, it’s the wife. Just before leaving Iceland I got a letter, sir. She’s not long to live. Got the TB, sir.’
Cameron felt a sense of shock: what a burden to carry into Operation Forestay. He said lamely, ‘I’m very sorry, Sergeant. Perhaps it’s not as bad as you think. Things get exaggerated sometimes.’
‘Yes, sir. I hope so, sir. I’m very grateful.’
Cameron nodded wordlessly. One thing was sure: last night, he’d done the right thing, no doubts on that lingered now. Mullins saluted again and turned about smartly, then marched away, arms swinging. Cameron hoped he would be coming back to the ship again when it was all over. Another thought: he was very glad indeed he hadn’t a wife to worry about... and that thought led to Mary Anstey in the Drafting Office in RNB Portsmouth. He was far from committed to her, which was currently just as well, but suddenly he found that he, too, had another letter to write to join the one already written to his parents in Aberdeen.
***
In the wardroom Forbes passed the final items of information. ‘The ship will stop engines as soon as we’re half a mile off Svalbard Point.’ This was at the entrance to the Vest Hammarfjord channel. ‘I estimate the time as being a little before 2300 hours. When the way is off the ship, the first pair of inflatable dinghies will be put over the side—one to port, one to starboard. The disembarkation will start immediately, but no dinghy will leave the vicinity of the ship until the whole lot are in the water and filled.’ He rubbed at his eyes, looking dead tired from long hours on the bridge. ‘Over to you now, Colonel.’
‘Right.’ Bell got to his feet. ‘I don’t need to stress that silence will be maintained—total silence. And I’m offering prayers that there won’t be a moon—there shouldn’t be, according to the weather reports. Now, to recap a few other points: Sub-Lieutenant Cameron will be in the leading craft with the Castle Bay’s First Lieutenant. Cameron will navigate and his movements must be very closely followed by each craft in the flotilla. We don’t want an initial balls-up and we all know the channel into the fjord is narrow and extremely tricky. Any navigational orders passed back from Cameron are to be obeyed instantly and without question. If any dinghy happens to pile up, the men embarked will take their subsequent orders from the naval command. Obviously, there must be no wireless communication unless it’s absolutely unavoidable—personally, I can’t visualize any event short of total abortion that is likely to justify the use of radio.’ He paused, glancing at his watch. ‘I think that’s about all except that we synchronize watches at 2300 hours.’
The officers were dismissed and Bell climbed to the bridge with Forbes. Along
the upper deck small cardboard packs of iron rations were issued to the commandos and the naval party: thick slabs of cocoa that could be eaten as chocolate, malted milk tablets, hard biscuits and the like, plus rudimentary first-aid kits containing bandages and iodine. Bell and Forbes didn’t talk much. Each had too much on his mind as the Castle Bay made in towards the coast, and the overall atmosphere wasn’t conducive to chatter. The ship slid through calmer waters now, in intense darkness; no moon, no stars. The long-range forecast had been miraculously correct so far. Forbes looked down from his bridge at the troop-packed decks. They were a mass of steel helmets above boot-polish-blackened faces, of FN automatic rifles and Bren guns and Sten sub-machine guns, of 2-inch mortars and knives and grenades. There was scarcely a sound from below, other than normal ship sounds. The tension was immense.
In his magazines, the Gunner was supervising the return of the explosives to the Royal Canadian Engineers’ demolition party. He held a mass of papers, bumph that needed signatures; he had taken the explosives on charge and he had to keep his yardarm square: the Admiralty ran on bumph. He ticked off the items as they were taken over, licking at a stub of indelible pencil, then he got his vital signatures and handed over the responsibility.
‘All yours, sir,’ he said to the sapper major. ‘And the best o’ luck with ‘em.’
‘Thanks. Seems stupid, doesn’t it?’
Hanrahan stared. ‘What does?’
‘Signatures. Sheer bull! They’re all going to be blown.’ The major laughed. ‘Or do I get the ferries to sign first?’
‘It’s just routine,’ Hanrahan said. He sounded chokker and he was. Everything was just routine, had been ever since he’d joined as a seaman boy in the training squadron, back before the last war. Routine had been his life, really: lash up and stow, turning out from his hammock early on cold, wet mornings; hands fall in, hands to breakfast, both watches of the hands fall in to be detailed for work part-of-ship or special duties, stand easy, out pipes, up spirits, hands to dinner... right through the day to evening quarters, hands to supper, stand up for rounds, and pipe down. Bull, that sapper major had said. Maybe it was at that. But the Navy couldn’t run without it. When war came, the routine stayed on; you got called back in after you’d retired to the missus and a two up, two down in North End, Pompey, rent ten bob a week. You picked up the routine again as though you’d never left it. One day, as a matter of routine, you died. But in the interval you got signatures for all explosives.
***
‘Stop engine,’ Forbes ordered.
‘Stop engine, sir,’ the quartermaster repeated back. The engine sounds ceased; the Castle Bay drifted on in silence. The loom of the land, of the great mountainous coastline, was all around them now, closing them in as they drifted in the outer fjord off Svalbard Point. The silence was intense, almost tangible it seemed, as intense as the darkness, but that constant faint lifting of the dark over water, though not as noticeable here as out on the open sea, was just about enough to reveal the gap in the mountains that indicated the entry to Vest Hammarfjord. Forbes pointed it out to Bell. ‘There you are. Your route in, Colonel.’
‘Right. How long now?’
Forbes shrugged. ‘A matter of minutes. Hang on till I can confirm we’ve lost way.’ He turned and walked over to the starboard guardrail of the bridge. He looked down: a leading seaman was stationed in the wing of the lower bridge outside the wheelhouse, tending a lead-line. A moment later the report came up in a Scots voice: ‘Ship stopped, sir. Line up-and-down.’
‘Thank you, MacInnes.’ Forbes turned. ‘Away you go, Colonel. And good luck. I’ll be here when you get back.’
‘If you’re not seen in the meantime.’
‘That’s unlikely. There’s no life in these mountains and we’re covered from seaward by a spit of land. Approaching the coast was the time of danger so far as being seen’s concerned.’
‘I’ll take your word for it!’ Bell grinned and held out a hand. Forbes took it in a firm grip. Bell went lightly down the ladder. Within the minute the first two dinghies were in the water and the disembarkation had started. Cameron and Lonsdale, the First Lieutenant, went aboard the first dinghy and paddled clear to lie off once their quota of troops had been embarked together with Bell and a leading seaman carrying a boat’s lead for the taking of soundings if and when required by Cameron. Two by two the dinghies were launched, two by two they were pulled to the lower platforms of the port and starboard accommodation-ladders and were filled by the troops slowly shuffling along the upper deck. As each came away from the ladder, it took station astern of the leader, which gradually paddled farther from the ship.
Within fifty minutes the entire force was waterborne: the whole thing had gone off with excellent military precision and discipline. As the last of the dinghies left the starboard ladder, a shaded blue light glowed briefly, twice, from the after end of the Castle Bay’s bridge. This was the signal to go. Lonsdale passed the word to the craft astern by means of an Aldis, also blue-shaded.
The flotilla moved off, the paddles kicking up a light spray as they dug into the still, silent water. Apart from their motion, it was like a mill-pond. Cameron looked up at the towering peaks that surrounded the entry to the channel he had to navigate. Last time he had entered it had been daylight; now, in the near-total dark, he had the feeling that he was moving into subterranean waters such as those to be found in the cave systems of the Pennines. He moved on towards the narrow, twisting channel running through to the main fjord beyond, passing directions to the paddlers. Lonsdale, with the shaded Aldis, passed these directions as necessary, to be read off by the army signallers positioned at strategic intervals down the line of dinghies. The entry was taken cleanly; the following craft, keeping as close as possible consistent with safety, made in behind him. So far, so good. The progress was painfully slow but Cameron, expecting this, was not worried about time: the channel was no more than five miles long, indeed a little under, and from the information passed by the Resistance the German base was within another mile of the channel’s inward end.
A mile inside the entry itself, there was a fairly sharp turn to port, with some rocks and shallow ground on the starboard side which should yet give plenty of clearance for craft such as the dinghies that had virtually no draught. The danger was a possible gash in the sides that would deflate the rubber skin. Using his prearranged signals via the First Lieutenant’s Aldis as they neared the turn, and hoping that all his detailed warnings had been well and truly borne in the soldiers’ minds, Cameron passed the word that the first hazard was coming up. As he negotiated the turn, making it in safety, he sent back a single blue flash to indicate the precise position. Each of the dinghies came round without mishap: as the word was passed from craft to craft up the flotilla that the last was round, Cameron breathed easy again.
Bell asked, ‘What’s next?’
‘The channel divides, sir.’
‘Ah, yes. And we take the left hand waterway?’
‘That’s right, sir. And there’s more rocks to be stood clear of at the fork. That’s where it’s going to be really tricky.’
‘Not all that easy to see, is it.’
It wasn’t; Cameron thought it would be a miracle if the whole flotilla entered the correct channel without some loss by tearing hulls. The banks were close, very close to starboard now, and for some distance there was a kind of ledge that he remembered, some three feet above the water, and behind this the sheer mountain-side. It wasn’t just his own recollection; the Admiralty ‘Pilot’ had made mention of the ledge along which a man could walk... and it might be advisable for him to get out now, since he could perhaps the better direct each individual dinghy as it neared the divide in the channel, and the rocks with their sharp jags. He was about to make the suggestion to Lonsdale when he heard a curious sound, alarming in the darkness, that seemed to be coming from high above, a sound like the close rumble of thunder.
CHAPTER SIX
The rumbling contin
ued but changed its character: it became a mighty cracking sound as though some giant from legend was splitting the mountain peaks with an enormous hammer. That was when Bell ticked over.
He said suddenly, ‘God, it’s a fall of rock!’
‘We’d better paddle like buggery,’ Lonsdale said. The fall sounded as though it was immediately overhead. Lonsdale lifted the Aldis to pass the word down the flotilla line. Cameron fancied they might be better off to jump out, make the ledge, and press their bodies close to the mountain itself; but there was no time to dispute the order of the First Lieutenant and if they were to move, then the sooner and faster the better. Behind the leader, in obedience to the signal from the Aldis, the craft in the sternmost half of the line crowded back along the way they had come whilst the front half dug their paddles in to go ahead. The flotilla now began to bunch dangerously in its two halves; one or two of the dinghies, judging from the sounds, had spilled their occupants already.
The noise from above increased, though as yet nothing could be seen. Then, very suddenly, from out of the darkness, the fall hit them. It was like an avalanche in its sheer size. The whole mountain-side seemed to have split apart or at least to have shed its top. Rock after rock came down, plunging into the channel, into the fragile dinghies, into bodies. Cameron felt something take his shoulder agonizingly and spin him into the ice-cold water. More rock fell around him, raising splashes as he tried to haul himself up the bank and on to the ledge. The din was tremendous now; the whole terrain, the whole of their immediate world, seemed to be breaking apart in fury. Smashed bodies were everywhere as Cameron stumbled ashore, men twisting in agony and screaming. It was almost impossible to tell who was who in the darkness, but Cameron was unable to find either Lonsdale or Bell in the vicinity.
***
Aboard the Castle Bay the PO Telegraphist took a wireless message with immense difficulty: reception was lousy when you were half enclosed by mountains, but he did his best to get it down on paper in its cyphered groups. In due course Paymaster Lieutenant Chamberlain had decyphered the signal; he entered the chartroom and woke Forbes, who was snatching some sleep on the settee.
Under Orders (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller) Page 6