The admiral asked casually, ‘Where are you off to?’
Jolly sounded uncomfortable. ‘Thought I’d look in on the wounded, sir. Later, when they’ve settled in.’
Chadwick adjusted his beautiful cap and studied his reflection in a clear-view screen.
‘When you’re in a car accident you need a brandy, double-quick, Commander, not a month afterwards!’ He looked at the bridge at large. ‘And since nobody can be spared for the job, I shall go myself, now.’
Minchin, Growler’s P.M.O., glanced quickly through the scrawled docket which Rowan had brought with him from Pathan’s young doctor. He was a grave-faced man, and like many of his trade, outwardly callous.
He said, ‘You were lucky again.’ He signalled to one of his busy S.B.A.s. ‘I’ll have the wound re-dressed, then get you shipped to your own cabin.’ He looked around at the overcrowded sickbay, the bandaged figures, his white-coated team of assistants. ‘Can’t spare the space down here.’ He gave a cool smile. ‘Another few inches to the right and you’d have some metal where Pathan’s doc could not have extracted it.’
Rowan listened to a man sobbing behind him. The whole area seemed full of pain.
‘Was it flak?’
The doctor shook his head, his eyes already on the next stretcher.
‘Bits of your own plane apparently.’
A sort of hush felt its way through the cots and stooping figures.
The P.M.O. said softly, ‘God Almighty, it’s the man himself.’
Chadwick strode down the centre of the cots, his cap under one arm, his face set in a mask of composed gravity. A few paces behind, Dundas, his steward, followed with a large cardboard box.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I wasn’t expecting a visit. We’re in a bit of a mess here.’
Chadwick eyed the doctor gravely for a few seconds. Around him, and from the tiers of white cots, the less badly injured men were craning their heads, propping themselves on their elbows to see what was happening.
Chadwick replied, ‘I won’t disturb you. You’ve got plenty to do.’ He turned, his voice carrying easily to the other bulkhead. ‘And these brave fellows don’t want a damn pep talk from me.’
His humility caught the doctor off balance. ‘I don’t mean to imply –’
Chadwick raised his hand, brushing the apology aside. ‘But I could not stay away. Could not restrain myself from coming to tell them how proud, how very honoured I am to have them with me.’ He stared round the silent faces. ‘They told me we had a long way to go. That the Germans still held the upper hand in these waters.’ He cleared his throat. ‘With men like these I could take the whole bloody world. And I’ll tell them that when we get home!’
Rowan watched, fascinated, as several of the injured men started to clap and grin at the impeccable admiral. Most were unable to use their hands because of bandages and worse, but their pleasure at his words was obvious.
Chadwick walked slowly towards the door adding, ‘My steward has plenty of cigarettes and chocolate for you, lads. I’ll be back when we’re out of danger.’ He hesitated beside a bunk and looked down at a young seaman.
Rowan had seen him carried up from the tug. He could not have been more than eighteen, and appeared younger. He was barely conscious, and his eyes were little more than slits. Rowan knew from the coloured label tied to his cot that he was due for immediate surgery, an amputation.
The admiral touched the boy’s shoulder and said, ‘You can’t hear me. But God be with you.’ He strode away, the curtain swishing across behind him.
Rowan did not know what to think. Actor? Fraud? Or was Chadwick genuine in his grief, his sympathy with these few survivors?
An S.B.A. said gruffly, ‘Your turn, sir.’
Later as Rowan lay in his own bunk again, his leg throbbing hotly in its new dressings, he wondered what would happen to Chadwick.
He listened to the roar of engines, ebbing and fading as the Growler’s Seafires returned to their proper base, the varying vibrations of the hull and the mattress under his body as the ship changed course yet again.
It seemed an age before Bill Ellis came down to the cabin.
He sat on a stool beside the bunk and said quietly, ‘Hello, Tim. You gave us quite a turn, you know.’ His eyes moved along the blanket. ‘Oughtn’t you to be in the sickbay?’
Rowan moved his wounded leg slightly to reassure him. ‘I’m okay. They got the bits out. Poor Jonah, I didn’t –’
Bill interrupted, ‘Leave it for now, Tim. Try and rest. When we got that signal from Pathan to say you were picked up, it was like a bloody holiday. We thought you’d gone into the drink, and that bastard Turpin did nothing to inform the other ships about you.’
Rowan asked, ‘Have you spoken to our lads aboard Growler yet?’
‘Some.’ Bill looked at him steadily. ‘I guessed you’d ask.’ He sighed heavily. ‘You saw it all of course, the old Stringbags going in for the attack on the cruiser. It must have been something.’ He looked at the deck. ‘Most of them bought it. Andy Miller, Ron Kirby and Dutchy –’
Rowan gripped his wrist. ‘Which one?’
‘Little Dutchy. De Boer. Peter van Roijen got back and then had his undercarriage collapse. But he’s all right.’
Rowan closed his eyes, remembering each face with difficulty. As it had looked across the breakfast table, or dozing in the Ready Room. Drinking in a pub, or playing some energetic game on the flight deck. Pilots, observers, air gunners. Twenty-one of them wiped out in fifteen minutes.
He said at length, ‘It’ll mean an entirely rebuilt squadron when we get back.’ He forced a smile. ‘Looks as if you were wrong about the convoy.’
Bill shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Ops told me we should be safe in port in three days at the outside. But we’re in range of Banak airfield in the north of Norway. The big ships have had a go, and the U-boats seem to have had a few knocks, too. I’ll bet the air will be full of planes tomorrow.’ He looked unusually grim. ‘Perhaps we can even the score a bit.’
Rowan was getting drowsy again. ‘It’s good to be back.’
Bill watched him sadly. ‘In this old cow?’ He smiled. ‘I suppose.’
Rowan added, ‘The admiral was in the sickbay. He spoke to the destroyers’ wounded survivors.’
‘So I heard. From Villiers. I think he’s halfway round the bend because of all this. He was spouting something about lives being thrown away to cover Chadwick’s mistake, his misjudgement of the enemy’s movements.’ He looked at Rowan. ‘I know. He was a great chap. Once. But whatever happened when he was in the bag has knocked him for six. I wish they’d find him a shore job. He makes me nervous.’
Feet moved in the passageway and then the curtain was drawn aside. Bill lurched to his feet as the admiral stepped into the small cabin.
Chadwick nodded. ‘Relax, er, Ellis, isn’t it?’ He looked at the bunk. ‘Didn’t have a chance to speak with you, Rowan. I’ll not disturb you. Just wanted you to know that I’m very pleased with the way you handled things. A seaplane added to your score, and then the sighting of the cruiser. You did splendidly. Properly backed-up, you might have saved a few more lives as well.’ He did not elaborate but said, ‘Anyway, I shall see that you get some recognition. Time some of your sort were given some sea room, eh?’ He chuckled. ‘We’re not home and dry yet. But I’m optimistic. Anything I can arrange for you?’
Rowan said carefully, ‘If the enemy have a real go at us, sir, I’d like to do something. I never realised it was so hard to stay still and watch it all happening.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Chadwick grinned. ‘If and when we get a big attack I’ll get every man in the air who can still use his eyes and brain!’ He swung round as a telegraphist appeared in the door. ‘Yes?’
The telegraphist held out a pad, his hand shaking slightly.
‘From Operations, sir. As you requested.’
‘Yes.’ Chadwick’s grey eyes skimmed along the pencilled wording. ‘Thank you. Tell the bridge I’m com
ing up.’ To Rowan he said, ‘Visibility’s not so hot. More clouds about. It’ll make an air attack harder to hold off.’ He was thinking aloud. ‘I’d better get things moving. God help everyone if they foul this one up, eh?’
Bill stood aside as the admiral left the cabin. He murmured, ‘I could smell the brandy. Lucky chap. I’ll bet he needs it right now, too. I’d not have his job for a bloody peerage!’
He smiled. Rowan was fast asleep. He walked out quietly, drawing the curtain and switching off the light. He saw the big Dutchman walking towards him, his face set in a frown.
Van Roijen asked, ‘Tim okay?’
Bill nodded. ‘He’s pretty well drugged. It’ll do him good, he’s had a rough time.’
Van Roijen nodded. ‘You take walk with me, yes? I can’t go and sit in the bloody wardroom. All those empty chairs. Not yet anyway.’
Bill said, ‘Twice round the deck.’ He grinned. ‘Get some of that fat off!’
When they reached the starboard walkway the change in the sky was very apparent. More cloud at several levels, and only occasional patches of sky still visible.
The ships were in firm formation, shining dully in the grey light, and aboard the nearest sloop Bill could see the duffel-coated seamen at work with tackles and hoists, taking up extra magazines and clips of shells for the short-range anti-aircraft guns.
It was funny how you never thought of the things you had achieved. The dangers you had avoided. But only of the next one ahead, and the one after that.
Growler’s tannoy boomed. ‘All anti-aircraft weapon crews will exercise in half an hour.’ As an afterthought the quartermaster added, ‘Senior hands of messes to muster for rum.’
Van Roijen rubbed his hands. ‘The British! I wonder you did not issue the rum first!’
It was barely dawn when Growler’s company went to action stations. There was no alarm, but Chadwick was taking no chances. Breakfast was issued an hour earlier than usual, and the captain broadcast to the whole ship what might be expected to happen.
The gap was narrowing, the time for the Germans’ final attempt to destroy the convoy was running out. Every turn of the screws took the ships closer to their goal and brought the additional sea and air cover from the Russians nearer.
Chadwick stayed for some while in Operations and then spoke to the assembled air crews in the Ready Room. He had already been to most of the gun sponsons and had apparently visited the hangar deck. There, his reception had been cool, almost hostile, as if the riggers and mechanics held him personally responsible for the losses to the Swordfish crews.
As he made his way to the upper bridge his expression gave no hint of anxiety or resentment.
He saw Buchan’s shadowy outline against the glass screen and said, ‘It’s getting colder. Be winter soon up here. Poor bastards.’
Buchan watched him. ‘It may make our return run easier, sir.’
There were some far off explosions, several patterns, one after the other.
Then the signalman by a voicepipe reported, ‘Escorts have engaged a suspected U-boat, sir. Two miles south-west of the screen.’
Chadwick considered it. ‘Still a few of the buggers about. They’ll not get near us if we keep up this pace.’ He looked at the luminous clock. ‘Signal Hustler to begin her Swordfish patrols right away. No point in waiting.’
Buchan thought of Turpin and wondered what he would have done if Growler and not Hustler had stayed with the convoy. Would he have obeyed the last order to remain as convoy escort, or would he have flown-off his Swordfish to try and help the destroyers? And if the admiral had not been aboard, would he have ordered the death-or-glory attack which Chadwick had instituted?
‘Hustler’s acknowledged, sir. First patrol in ten minutes.’
‘Good.’ Chadwick watched the nearest sloop, gauging the pull of the wind and sea as she rolled awkwardly in a procession of broken waves.
Most of the officers and men throughout Growler’s stubby hull were thinking of what might happen, how it would affect each one of them personally.
From William Laird, the Commander (E), standing on his shining, quivering catwalk in his engineroom, to his lowliest stoker, each was unwilling to talk or meet another man’s eye. Laird often thought of what would happen if a torpedo exploded right here amidst his roaring world of machinery, demanding dials and all the complex mass of boilers, condensers and turbines. They never heard anything of the other world above. Rarely saw the sea but on their way back and forth from duty. Laird was good at his job, and had once been chief engineer aboard a Union Castle liner in balmier times. He had not seen much of that either.
A light winked above his little desk, and Johns, the second engineer, snatched up the telephone, covering his exposed ear with a grease-blackened hand.
He replaced the telephone and shouted, ‘Balloon’s gone up, Chief! Aircraft sighted!’
The Chief nodded. ‘Tell the boiler room and the Chief E.R.A.’ He watched the great, glistening shaft. The core of the ship and their lives. ‘What wouldn’t I give for a pint at the Nag’s Head.’ But nobody heard him.
In his immaculate operating theatre Minchin and the junior doctor, Surgeon lieutenant Barstow, were checking their instruments when the alarm shattered the stillness. Minchin was very tired, and had swallowed several pills to give him some extra energy. He knew he was going to need it. He had been working all night on the wounded survivors, and thankfully, most of them were fast asleep, too dazed or drugged to know what was happening. He had amputated the young seaman’s leg, but he had died just the same.
He looked at Barstow and smiled wearily. ‘My father wanted me to be an accountant. I think he had the right idea.’
Up on his special part of the island Lieutenant Commander Eric Villiers, Distinguished Service Cross and Bar, trained his binoculars on the Hustler as her first patrol of three Swordfish bumbled along the flight deck and climbed slowly away on the opposite beam. The other carrier altered course again to steer parallel with Growler, her upperworks and tattered ensign showing with brief clarity in a shaft of dirty light between the clouds.
He glanced at his little team, the ratings at the telephones, balaclava-helmeted and muffled against the wind which was coming almost head on across the blunt bows. All the way from bleeding Russia, he had heard his leading hand remark.
Above him the wind moaned through the lattice mast and radar lantern, and he imagined Buchan there with the admiral breathing down his neck.
Villiers rubbed his forehead with the back of his glove. He felt sick just thinking about it. He had had to pass the order to the air crews, knowing he was sending them to certain death. If Chadwick’s patrol had failed to discover the cruiser, every one of those men would have been alive. It was no use talking about the balance of values, or what would have happened to the convoy. War was about friends, not about strategy and grand designs.
One rating reported, ‘Red Flight standing-by, sir.’ He waited, watching Villiers’ strained face, his eyes white in the gloom.
‘Very well. Pass the word to the Ops Room.’
He tried to ease his aching mind. But he kept seeing the nightmare. Again, again, again.
Being taken prisoner of war in the Mediterranean had been almost a relief to Villiers. Like most of his friends, he had been in the worst part of the Middle East campaign from the beginning. It had seemed as if nothing could or would halt the enemy. Every day he had flown-off to cover a battered convoy, or in support of some beleaguered army position ashore.
He had been in a carrier at first, and when she had been torpedoed he had joined a mixed squadron in the desert. They had flown anything and everything. There had been naval pilots and R.A.F. mixed up together. South Africans and Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians, with methods and ideas as varied as their machines. But they had all been veterans, if only by staying alive.
He had seen the awe on the faces of new, fledgling pilots fresh out of England. The same look he had observed on Rowan’s face
when he had served with him so long ago.
Then one day it had ended. He had been shot down and immediately rescued from the sea by an Italian destroyer.
One prison camp to another, and finally handed over to the Germans and thence to a place outside Minden.
For some reason or other a lot of them had been moved yet again, to Denmark. To his companions it had meant more than a pleasant change from German hostility. It had brought England nearer. If not in miles, then in one overriding fact. They were amongst friendly, downtrodden people who had reason to hate the occupying power and who would do anything to aid an escape via the North Sea.
Villiers had listened to the others planning and dreaming about the day when it might be possible. Some had tried it, a few had actually reached home.
He had pretended to be as eager as the rest, hating himself for the deception, his outward willingness to join any such attempt. For deep down he was more afraid of facing the war than of remaining a prisoner. Equally, he was afraid of showing the truth to anyone but himself.
The camp had only been ten miles from the sea, and separated from it mainly by farms. When the word was passed to the senior British officer that the local Resistance was prepared to aid a limited escape, things moved quickly. The camp commandant was no tyrant, and had until recently served with distinction on the Russian front. He had had one arm and one eye and had wandered around the camp more like an inmate than its commander.
They had had a whole night to get clear, having made their escape with some civilian workers who had been called in to attend to the drains.
It had been so stupidly easy that some of them had laughed about it as they had hurried in two separate parties through fields and lanes, being guided all the time by their Danish rescuers.
There was to be a two-day wait in safe houses, small farms, where they were immediately hidden, willingly supplied with food and drink by the Danes.
Something had gone wrong. He still did not know if a traitor had informed on them, or if the German intelligence service was better than it was supposed to be. On the second day the Resistance men had arrived to take Villiers’ group away to other hiding places. But it had been broad daylight and they had been forced to leave singly. Villiers had been the last. He had lain in a hayloft above the barn watching the empty sky, feeling as if at last the war had passed him by. The sudden screech of tyres the harsh bark of commands made him think differently.
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