There was a muffled explosion overlapped by a second before the bells had stopped their clamour, and some paint flakes floated down across the cot.
The S.B.A. replaced the handset. ‘I think we’ve got company, sir.’
The curtain across the door was wrenched aside. It was obviously the destroyer’s captain. A tough-looking commander with a dirty brown sweater beneath his reefer, and long leather sea boots.
He said, ‘A cruiser you say? That must be her now. Anything else?’
A seaman in a steel helmet hovered in the passageway.
‘Captain, sir. First lieutenant wants to speak to you, please.’
‘Wait,’ He looked at Rowan.
‘Two destroyers. Big ones.’ He watched the captain’s mind working. At any moment he would be taking his ship into action. He was needed on his bridge, and needed to be there. But he had come here all the same. To be certain. To glean what information there was which might help. Even to discover the reliability of it from Rowan’s face and manner.
When Rowan had blurted out all he could remember the captain nodded. ‘Good. Thanks. At least there are no more surprises.’
He strode down the passageway, calling for the yeoman of signals as he went in the same level, unhurried voice.
‘Now, sir.’ The S.B.A. stood looking at him. ‘Some ’ow I’m goin’ to get you dressed in somethin’ warm.’
Outside the little sickbay bells rang, ammunition hoists clattered up and down and men stood to their weapons and waited.
From his bridge Commander Nash watched his information being flashed to the commodore and the senior officer of the escort.
He said, ‘Make a signal to the flat-top, Yeo. Tell her we’ve picked up one of her chaps. His name’s Rowan.’
He turned, watching the twin columns of bright water far away to starboard. The big cruiser was out of sight, out of range. She was employing a few frightening tactics in the hope the merchantmen would scatter. Then the U-boats would pick them off at leisure.
The navigating officer watched his captain filling and lighting his pipe.
He said, ‘Funny Hustler didn’t report a plane missing, sir? I’d have thought her captain would be worried.’
Nash looked at him through the match flame. Not if you knew Turpin as I do. ‘Didn’t see any point probably.’
He turned as a signalman handed him a pad. He read it slowly and then nodded.
‘Yeoman!’
The petty officer lowered his glasses. ‘Sir?’
The captain gave a small smile. He had known the yeoman of signals a long time.
‘Hoist battle ensigns, if you please.’
9
Into the Fire
THE SICKBAY DOOR banged open and a lieutenant, with scarlet between his wavy stripes, hurried to a small cabinet, jammed some things into his pockets and made to leave again.
The S.B.A. asked, ‘What’s ’appening’, sir?’
Rowan watched the confusion on the young doctor’s face. Could barely have qualified before entering the Navy. Probably his first ship, too.
The doctor glanced at them, his eyes anxious. ‘Nothing much.’ He swayed against a cot as the destroyer pitched and shook violently. ‘Cracking on more speed. The other destroyers are with us.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I must think.’
The S.B.A. had managed to get Rowan into a heavy submariner’s sweater and some trousers. He had had to slit one of the legs because of the heavy dressings. The efforts had worn out both of them, but the doctor’s obvious fear helped to revive them.
The S.B.A. said, ‘You’d better go to the wardroom, sir. My mate’s got it ready to lay out casualties. They’ll be expectin’ you.’
The doctor blinked rapidly. ‘Yes. I will.’ He tried to smile at Rowan, but it made him look worse. ‘You’ll be fine. Just stay here and –’
More explosions rumbled against the hull, like distant thunder, and he hurried away without another word.
The S.B.A. said under his breath, ‘Poor little bugger. Fair enough at takin’ a splinter out of a kid’s finger. ’E’ll be bloody useless when the bits an’ pieces start to fly about.’ He picked up his Red Cross satchel. ‘I’m off then.’ He grinned. ‘You stay ‘ere, like the man says.’ Then he too was gone.
Rowan lay back on the cot, feeling his ribs while he listened to the sea and the engines. When the S.B.A. had got him sitting against the cot’s side, and had struggled to get him into the sweater, he had realised that his body was a mass of raw bruises. Some where the parachute harness had jerked his shoulders. A great livid one on his ribs where he had hit Jonah’s cockpit, or had been thrown over when the Walrus had landed. He looked as if he had been in a brawl.
He thought back slowly. But there was nothing there. Just vague pictures without time or proper connection between them. But he could recall exactly the pilot who had been blinded in one eye. His companion, and the taste of brandy on his lips. Jonah spiralling down. His last-second refusal to accept he was really crashing. Going into the drink.
Rowan felt the returning despair and anger. But for Turpin’s arrogant stupidity Hustler would have flown-off a full patrol. Then, no matter what had happened, one at least would have got back with the warning. He heard the intermittent boom of gunfire. What a bloody foul-up.
He thought of Bill, wishing he were here. What had he once said about war? The effort to remember was painful. But to Rowan it was very necessary if he was to hold on.
He nodded. Bill had said that war was a series of disasters welded together by insanity. That was it.
The Pathan lifted and then plunged into a deep trough, making the racks of bottles and jars rattle in protest. Rowan tried to stand, holding onto a stanchion for safety. Naked but for a borrowed sweater and somebody’s trousers. In this place he did not own one single thing.
Above the sickbay desk, where in more normal times sailors queued to prepare themselves for runs ashore, or to face the doctor afterwards, there was a mirror. Rowan studied himself as he would a complete stranger. It was odd, he thought. Above the white sweater his face looked younger. The tousled hair and dark brown eyes could have been out of an old school photograph. He peered around him. Robinson Crusoe. He had gone into the drink, and barely remembered it. He had been rescued, and had lost that, too. Now he was in a different ship altogether, and could recall nothing. He grimaced, dragging himself hand over hand along the cot. If he was to catch another packet he would have to prepare. He saw some battered sandals under a table and thrust his bare foot into one of them. Not much for a survival kit, he decided.
Another explosion made him hold on more tightly. That was much nearer. He heard the clatter of a gun mounting, the sudden bark of the destroyer’s own armament. Crash-crash. Crash-crash. Two pairs. He made himself think it out. They were shooting their two forward mountings. Which meant they were attacking the enemy. He thought of the captain’s face and wondered how he could have imagined otherwise.
The commodore would keep the old anti-aircraft cruiser and the smaller escorts. The cruiser from the Home Fleet and all the big destroyers would turn towards the Germans. They would try to hold that big cruiser off until the shadowing force arrived. Like the US. Cavalry. He swore aloud, furious with himself for being unable to control his haphazard thoughts. It was like madness.
The sickbay shook again to gunfire, and after that it did not stop for more than a few minutes at a time.
I must get out of here.
He heard heavier guns firing, the sudden swoosh of shells passing directly overhead. The cruiser was having a go now.
He opened the door and peered along the narrow passageway. At the far end were two ratings with axes and fire-fighting gear. Some of the damage control team. They did not even glance at him as he lurched between them, using the handrail above one of them to hop past. Their faces were frozen in concentration.
Rowan saw another steel door, the clips shut, a seaman standing beside it with a telephone to his ear. At action stati
ons he would no more open that door than make a bacon sandwich.
The next salvo from the enemy was perfectly timed, it had to be, for the violence of the explosions told Rowan it was a straddle. Despite hearing the short, abbreviated whistle, he was unprepared for the tremendous force of the detonations. They seemed to lift the hull and shake it bodily before dropping it again, slewing it round so that the passageway rattled and bucked until he thought it would split open. As it swayed upright again he heard the racing screws as before, the irregular bang of gunfire.
But there was a difference. The telephone was dangling from its lead, the seaman lay on his back staring at the deckhead, and there was a red smear down the steel plates, beginning where two holes had been punched through by splinters.
He stooped over the man but he was dead. Rowan noticed that he had a cigarette already rolled for smoking tucked inside his jumper. For when it was over.
Without further hesitation Rowan knocked off the clips and pulled back the door. For a long moment he clung to it, staring at the towering bank of broken sea which surged back from the bows, at the dense, choking smoke, and at the buckled devastation along the Pathan’s deck. He was on the starboard side, and could see half of the ship’s motor boat trailing from its davits. Bright gashes glinted through burned paintwork, and there were two bodies sprawled below an Oerlikon gun. The long steel barrel had been sheared off. Like a carrot.
He staggered and hopped past the after funnel. It too was punctured by splinters. There was smoke everywhere, and he guessed the destroyers were laying a screen to protect the cruiser.
Whooooosh – Bang. The salvo ploughed into the sea and threw up four towering columns of spray. Water deluged over the ship, hurling one of the bodies through the buckled davits and into the sea like a rag.
He struggled on, past another gun mounting, where the crew, like members of some strange order in their anti-flash hoods, watched him blankly, until one yelled, ‘Where you goin’, mate? You’ll catch cold out ’ere!’
The two gunnery ratings grinned at each other as if it was a tremendous joke.
Rowan reached a bridge ladder and clung to it, sucking in air and the stench of cordite while he gathered his strength. It was icy cold, but he was burning all over. Had he been naked he would not have cared. He saw the streaming battle ensigns, so bright against the scudding clouds, and wanted to cheer. Or cry.
Up and up, past another Oerlikon, its helmeted seaman peering through his sights at the greasy smoke.
‘Here, take my hand, sir.’ A signalman was holding him, while an astonished sub-lieutenant stared as if he had just come out of the tomb.
The captain was on the gratings, his glasses trained over the screen. The navigating officer crouched over his gyro-repeater, and around the bridge messengers, lookouts and a bosun’s mate waited at voicepipes and handsets like clumsily-made waxworks.
More great crashes.
The captain remarked, ‘Over. They’ve shifted target to Kirkwall.’ He added, ‘Tell Chief to make more smoke.’ To the navigating officer he said, ‘Alter course, Pilot.’
‘Starboard ten.’ The lieutenant saw Rowan and smiled. ‘Good God!’
The captain turned. ‘You might as well stay as you’ve come this far.’ He waited as a seaman helped Rowan to the bridge chair. The cruiser Kirkwall is doing well.’ He seemed very calm. ‘She’s hit the enemy twice, and we are going in with torpedoes.’
His eyes glowed red and orange, and the intercom at the rear of the bridge snapped, ‘Kirkwall’s been hit. Just abaft the bridge.’
Rowan peered over the screen and saw something sticking out of the water like an upended submarine. It was the stern of a destroyer.
The captain said sharply, ‘Captain (D). He caught a full salvo.’
There were several small figures splashing wildly around the upended wreck, one of them waved his arms as the destroyer raced past. Rowan saw him swept aside by the bow wave. Buried under a wall of water.
‘All tubes at the ready, sir.’
‘Very well.’ The captain thrust his unlit pipe into his pocket. ‘I hope to God you’re right about there being only two escorts with the big chap.’
Rowan winced as more heavy shells exploded off the port bow. Tons of water cascaded over the forecastle, and splinters whined and cracked against the hull like grape-shot.
Around the bridge the voicepipes kept up their clamour.
Two men killed down aft. X-gun out of action. Four casualties in boiler room.
When the smoke billowed upwards in the wind Rowan saw the cruiser. She was steaming between the destroyers, her guns high-angled as she fired again and again at the German. Rowan still could not see the enemy, and his eyes watered too much anyway. He stared instead at the cruiser. He could even forget the ear-shattering roar of gunfire, the insane chatter of orders and requests which came from every side, as he watched the Kirkwall steaming in to close the range.
Everyone aboard must know they had no chance at all. Six-inch guns against the massive German battery and those great steel plates. But if the destroyers were going to get close enough to loose their torpedoes she had to make a diversion.
He heard someone say brokenly, ‘Oh, see that one! Jesus!’
A bright, fiery ball burst up from the cruiser’s forecastle, shooting smoke and fragments into the air. They were still falling after the cruiser had passed the spot and was still charging towards her enemy.
The captain said, ‘Soon now.’ He trained his glasses. ‘If we can get just one hit on the bastard!’
‘Captain, sir! Pitt has been straddled!’
Rowan stared above the heads of the lookouts, seeing the destroyer on Kirkwall’s port beam slewing round in a welter of spray and pressurized steam. As the smoke screen cleared slightly he saw that twenty feet of her bows had gone and the force of her charge was doing the rest, ripping her apart as she drove forward into the waves.
She began to capsize immediately, her screws still turning like those on a toy boat, as the stern lifted through the smoke.
The yeoman shouted, ‘Signal from Kirkwall, sir. Have flooding in engineroom. Must reduce speed immediately. Good luck.’
‘Acknowledge.’
The captain still had his glasses trained on the sinking destroyer. He gave no hint in his voice of what the signal really meant. That, with the captain of the flotilla dead, the cruiser out of the fight, he was now in overall command of the attack.
Then he looked at Rowan. ‘Might need you yet.’ He turned towards the bows again.
‘And if you can’t hit her, sir?’
‘Then I’ll ram the bastard.’ He said over his shoulder, ‘Tell the torpedo gunner to stand by. He is, of course, but he likes to be spoken to occasionally.’
Rowan watched the simple joke make its way to the grubby faces near him.
He felt something touching his leg, and when he looked down he saw one of the signalmen adjusting his dressing.
The youth said anxiously, ‘It’s bleeding again, sir.’
Rowan made to reply when the whole world exploded.
Someone was trying to lift him, and when he wiped his streaming eyes with his sweater he realised it was the yeoman.
‘Can you look after yourself, sir?’ The man’s face was cut and bleeding. ‘It’s a god-awful mess here!’
Rowan struggled across the gratings, coughing out smoke as he groped his way to the forepart of the bridge again. There was broken glass, splintered woodwork and fragments everywhere.
He saw smoke billowing above the port side of the bridge, and knew at least one shell must have exploded inboard. The shock had flung him from the captain’s chair and halfway across the open bridge, yet he could feel nothing.
As his proper hearing returned he heard men yelling and calling for help, and further aft someone screaming like a tortured animal.
The mast was gone, and the bridge upperworks, including the radar and gunnery director, had been completely wrecked.
&
nbsp; As he pulled himself up the side of the chair he saw the captain lurch to his feet, his eyes everywhere as he tried to sense the hurt to his ship.
The navigating officer had been practically cut in half, and most of the men at the rear of the bridge were either dead or badly wounded.
The captain staggered to the compass and then looked at Rowan. He did not ask if he could cope, he merely snapped, ‘Take over from Pilot. Bring her round to one-seven-zero.’ He knocked off the cap of a voicepipe. ‘Report damage, Number One. Send a stretcher party up here, chop-chop.’
Rowan leaned over his voicepipe. ‘Wheelhouse!’
He heard somebody coughing violently, then, ‘Wheelhouse, sir! Able Seamen Lewis on the wheel!’ He sounded close to breaking.
‘How is it down there?’
A pause. ‘Cox’n and two of the lads are dead. The plot’s done in an’ Mr Prince is bleedin’ terrible. I think ’is leg’s ’alf off.’
Rowan knew nothing of these people, but guessed the wretched Mr Prince was probably the midshipman.
He watched the gyro-repeater ticking remorselessly round. Guns were hammering from every angle, and above the shattered remnants of the screen he could see the dull, hazed silhouette of the German heavy cruiser. From the air she had looked formidable enough. But now, angled across the horizon like a chunk of rock, she was awesome. He watched her guns flash, counted the seconds, and then winced as the falling shells exploded somewhere astern.
He had to win the confidence of the man on the wheel. It must be terrible for him. In semi-darkness behind steel shutters, his friends mangled and dying around him.
Rowan said firmly, ‘Starboard ten.’
‘Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.’
Rowan clung to the compass, feeling the pain again, his limbs quivering uncontrollably as if he had a fever.
‘Midships. Steady.’
He saw the captain glance at him before he was away again at the opposite corner of the bridge, his voice rapping out orders to the new faces which had arrived amongst the chaos.
Rowan waited, willing the helmsman to acknowledge. It was a miracle that the ship was still responding to screws and rudder.
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