The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5

by Alexander Fullerton

  Gunfire, astern.

  “Plot—where’s Astilbe?”

  “Course two-four-oh, sir.”

  “Astilbe bears oh-eight-oh, five thousand eight hundred yards, sir, crossing left to right!”

  So that gunfire—starshell, he could see it now—would be Paeony’s. Whom he wanted here, up on the convoy’s port bow, just as Astilbe— and thank God Graves didn’t have to be told what to do—was moving over to the starboard bow.

  “Steer two-six-oh.”

  Harbinger lurching, shouldering through the troughs. The convoy was a dark scattering on the beam: he didn’t need to be any closer to it than he was now. And if Paeony had a target down there now it would be silly to blame Guyatt for not being somewhere else: systems of defence were no good unless they found and stopped attackers, which presumably was what he was doing.

  That had sounded like a torpedo hit. Some way off—beyond the convoy. And now more gunfire. It gave him another thought: if those two Germans were trying to close in to attack on this flank, some starshell might discourage them—as long as it didn’t conveniently illuminate the convoy for them.

  TBS: and it was Paeony: I think the Cimba’s been attacked again. If not her, then Stella … I’ve just put down a U-boat, sir—on the convoy’s port quarter steering oh-six-oh at about seventeen knots. Should I stay with it, or look after Stella, or resume station?

  “Tell him, ‘Rejoin, passing one mile to port of convoy.’” It might help to ward off those two, the deep-diver and its pal. He told Bearcroft before he’d started calling Paeony with that answer, “Then by W/T to Stella, plain language, ‘What is your situation?’” He bent to the pipe: “Port twenty.” To bring her around, turning inwards towards the convoy; then he’d steer the convoy course, zigzagging … He called to Warrimer, “Load A, B and X guns with starshell.”

  “Twenty of port wheel on, sir!”

  When he’d got her round and steadied on that easterly course he’d fire starshell at maximum range on, say, 020, due north, and 340—to put a band of light behind any U-boats that might be encroaching. As long as the shells burst on the far side of them, it couldn’t do any harm. Better warn Guyatt … But U-boats might be there and not attacking yet: Guyatt’s information that the one he’d put down had been hurrying eastward suggested they might be trying to gain bearing on the convoy on this eastward course: joining the bunch who’d attacked earlier?

  Gritten’s report a few minutes later seemed to confirm it: while the first three starshell were still hanging, yellowing the undulating northern seascape as they drifted down … Gritten had been listening to several U-boats conferring with each other, on bearings that varied between northwest and due east.

  “Starshell, stand by!”

  It might keep them at a distance: or slow them down, while he slanted Harbinger northeastward, taking her out between the convoy and what seemed likely to become the area of their next concentration. Also Paeony would be coming up this way now, and by turning outward he was leaving room for her. “Starshell ready, sir!”

  The 271, in the last ten minutes or so, had had three or four surface contacts none of which had remained on the screen for more than a few minutes. There were some doubts down there whether the set might be playing up.

  “Course, oh-five-oh …”

  A perfect time, he thought, for the RDF to pack up. Right in the middle of this particularly fateful night, and when the mechanic was away on board Paeony. He cursed himself for not having brought him back: he could have done so, and he’d thought of it … Harbinger rolling hard as she turned her quarter to the convoy and her beam to the weather: and a call from the W/T office presaged the reply from Stella, at last. The Cimba had been torpedoed for a second time, and had sunk. Broad had been busy picking up all the survivors he could find, and he was now plugging eastward, about six miles astern. If the convoy held this course and speed he’d be back with it in less than an hour … But twenty minutes after that message had come in, there was an explosion somewhere astern. The crashes of the three four-inch, as Warrimer maintained the starshell barrage, came closer and infinitely louder on its heels: as the ringing echoes died, Garment reported from asdics that there’d been a torpedo-hit somewhere astern of the convoy. A few miles astern, he guessed.

  Stella. The last of the three …

  Starshells bursting out to port. Like street lamps, while they lasted, over black, empty-looking ocean. And TBS calling: Eagle, this is Gannet … He was sure it was going to be a report of Stella having gone; then he heard Guyatt’s report that it was a straggler two or three miles astern. Guyatt had Stella on his 271 screen, and he said she was in a good position to look after it. White distress rockets streaked up at that moment: and Guyatt too was turning to investigate.

  “Tell him no, resume station, leave it to Stella!”

  Nobody had said anything about any ship straggling, until now. And Paeony must have had her on his RDF screen—whoever she was … The northern horizon had three separate pools of yellow over it as the starshell flares sank lower and the illuminated areas under them contracted. The W/T office bell rang: Wolstenholm almost flew to the voice-pipe, as the ship rolled that way to help him; he called, having cracked his face hard on the pipe’s rim, “From the Orangeman, sir—struck by torpedo starboard side number four hold!”

  The Orangeman was one of the two who’d had engine trouble earlier in the day. Sandover had slowed the whole convoy for her and for the Omeo, who’d been sunk in tonight’s first attack. But TBS was calling again, and it was Astilbe, who hadn’t been heard from for some while: Eagle, this is Fox: I have three U-boats on the screen, ranges four, five and seven miles, oh-four-five to oh-eight-oh …

  “Chief—by W/T to the commodore—U-boats are concentrating about five miles ahead on present course. Suggest emergency port.”

  Crack on at full speed, get up there with Astilbe?

  But there were some on the beam as well …

  “U-boat on the surface red six-oh, sir!”

  Warrimer had it in his glasses, by the last glimmer of starshell light: he lost it again before he could direct the guns to it and without anyone else having seen it. There’d be no point in chasing out there: it would probably have dived, and all you’d be doing would be leaving this sector unguarded. He called into the pipe, “Starboard ten. Steer oh-seven-oh.” He told Warrimer to stand by with more starshell. “What was it doing when you saw it?”

  “Parallel course, sir, going like a bat out of hell.”

  It made sense. Shifting eastward, getting up ahead again for a third bite at the cherry … “Chief. Make to Paeony on TBS, ‘Convoy is about to make emergency turn port. Give Stella amended course to rejoin thereafter.’” Because Paeony would have Stella on her screen …

  The minutes passed. Fifteen, and no acknowledgement from Sandover. Then—at last—siren … Like a wail out of the night, a cry for help. And Astilbe calling again: the U-boats she’d had on her screen had vanished from it but had now reappeared and were closing rapidly: Graves was turning out to meet them head-on, firing starshell …

  The convoy was turning now. On its new course, the attack in Astilbe’s sector would be coming in on its starboard bow. Nick told Bearcroft, “W/T to commodore: ‘Request second emergency turn port immediately.’” He wished to God he could have been up there now with Astilbe, and had Paeony here to look after this sector. Harbinger’s starshells were bursting out to port again, and distantly he could hear a popping of gunfire from Astilbe: he’d swung round for a quick check on the position of the convoy during its turn, to see whether any of its nearer part was visible from here—because the turn would bring it closer, he’d be on its port bow as it steadied and before Sandover turned it again: he had his glasses up, searching for it, when the Burbridge, the Cressida and the Redgulf Star were hit, in four explosions fast as drumbeats, and a pause with the first leap of flame—like a knife in his gut as he saw it and knew it would be the oiler—then a fifth …


  It was the cavalry charge this time. It had to be, to get in there fast enough to synchronise with the others, the four attacking from the convoy’s front. Looff, with Drachens Two and Eleven to starboard of him, was pounding southeastward on his diesels, under the impression that he was on the convoy’s quarter, at least abaft its beam. He didn’t know the convoy had made one forty-degree turn and was about to make another.

  Starshell broke again, back on his quarter. There’d been plenty, in the last hour, hour and a half. He’d last surfaced, for the umpteenth time, five minutes ago, after yet another quick dip to avoid detection, and still intent on gaining bearing on the convoy but not with any thought of attacking this soon. He’d surfaced—having got himself clear of the destroyer, earlier on—and started eastward at high speed, signalling to Köning and Weddigen to follow and telling Waldo Speyer, Drachen Twelve, to shadow the enemy from astern. For roughly ninety minutes, chasing eastward on a course parallel to the convoy’s, he’d dived and surfaced a dozen or more times under the intermittent light of starshells. He’d surface, run hell for leather for ten minutes, dive, surface again … Cursing the starshells. He’d seen one of the others—or it could have been both of them, a different one each time—twice at close quarters in the brief, highspeed surfaced periods. Dodging up and down like ducks: but they’d managed to transfer themselves eastward at more than twice the convoy’s rate of progress overall. He’d been worried about the enemy’s RDF, but not so very greatly, seeing that the escorts were so hugely outnumbered, so hampered and restricted as a result of it.

  Waldo Speyer, trailing the convoy, had knocked off a straggler only minutes ago, and it could have been the sound of Speyer’s single torpedo hitting that had prompted Becker in Drachen Three to signal Attacking! and start moving his four boats in towards the convoy’s front. Becker’s initiative had been premature, to say the least: but he must have thought he was about to be left out of the action, that others were starting without him. So Looff in turn had had little option but to attack as well, else he’d have been left out of it.

  “See either of ’em?”

  Yelling at Oelricher. The quartermaster poked a gloved hand to starboard. “One sir, half a minute ago, but—” His voice was drowned in the roar of the sea as it burst over, thumping against the forefront of the tower and geysering upward. The wind and sea was in fact astern, but she’d been bow-down, driving into that one. One other U-boat, Oelricher had meant, in that shouted reply. If a third was with them—Looff couldn’t be absolutely sure of it—it ought to be close on the other side of—well, Weddigen’s. He guessed Weddigen would be with him. Speyer, having polished off the straggler, would be pushing up to attack the convoy’s rear.

  Starshell—on the bow, to starboard.

  An escort on the convoy’s near quarter? He thought they’d be all up around the merchantmen. Except for the trawler …

  Gunfire: again to starboard … Oelricher yelled, pointing again as the boat whipped over in a savage roll, “Convoy in sight port bow, sir!”

  Naked eyes were more use than binoculars, in these conditions. Looff suspected that either Köning or Weddigen had run into trouble out there. Not that he had time to concern himself with it … He’d dried the glasses and he had them focused on the vagueness which could only be the nearer part of the convoy. A grey smear in black surround with a hint of white here and there: it shifted confusingly if you stared straight at it, as opposed to moving the glasses to and fro across it. But still, becoming clearer …

  He wasn’t on the quarter, he was on the bow!

  “Ship’s head?”

  Oelricher checked it: “One-three-seven, sir!”

  “Bring her to one-five-oh. Stand by tubes one to four. Open bowcaps.” He was stooped over the master sight, lining his binoculars with it. Oelricher passing figures to Heusinger in the tower: enemy speed five, course oh-three-oh, own position thirty on the bow, range—

  “Tubes one to four ready!”

  Starshell right overhead: yellowish light flushed the rolling, heaving surface and she was lifting to a big one, foam streaming and her afterpart drowned, when he heard the crashes of torpedo-hits: four, he counted—then a fifth … Fire—a gush of bright flame rising, starshell-glow dimmed by an expanding fireball shooting skyward, more flame spreading under it to silhouette Looff’s target for him. He had two freighters in line, overlapping …

  “Fire one!”

  Siren: for the second forty-degree swing to port. White rockets fizzing up from the centre of the convoy. Ulrich Weddigen’s quartermaster in Drachen Eleven screamed, “Destroyer!”

  Pointing wildly, as the boat rolled and nearly threw him off his feet. Weddigen, jammed into the fore-corner at the master sight, saw a flash of gunfire before he saw the ship itself. He was narrowly on the destroyer’s port bow: it was bow-up, ascending a rolling hump of black, white-fringed Atlantic, ship and seascape behind it lit by the glow radiating from a burning merchantman a mile away. “Hard a-starboard! Dive, dive!”

  There was time. Since his boat was moving fast, she’d turn fast. If he’d tried to hold on, the Brit would have had him cold.

  “He’s diving, sir!”

  God alone knew where A and B guns’ shots had gone … Carlish shouted, “U-boat green one-five, sir!”

  And that was another one! Within a couple of cables’ lengths of the first!

  “Starboard ten. Depthcharges with shallow settings, stand by …” The image of the blazing oiler filled his mind: and she’d been abeam of the Burbridge. There’d been five hits … Warrimer intoning over his telephone into the ears of the sightsetters at the three four-inch mountings and the multiple point-fives amidships, “Shift target: second U-boat green one-five, range twelve hundred yards …”

  The third torpedo of Looff’s salvo of four had just left its tube when Oelricher saw the destroyer bearing down on them at high speed and close. As he yelled the warning, U 702 was plunging into a trough—forecasing buried, tail up, the sea from astern swamping over, boiling through the “conservatory” and around the raised sill of the hatch. He’d have kicked the lid shut if he’d seen that one coming and had time to care about a bit of wetness down below. But for those few seconds the destroyer had been out of sight: Looff at the master sight shouting with impatience and waiting for her to rise. At last … “Fire four!”

  Then he had time to see how close the Brit was. The shock flattened his mind into a two-dimensional black-and-white still photograph: with himself in it, looking on, and the end he’d always dreaded—one of them—staring back at him out of his own eyes before the blaze of colour from burning sky ahead, in the next fifth of a second, jerked him back into reality … He screamed, “Starboard twenty!”

  She was taking an age to answer her helm. But he’d get by—just—and then reverse the rudder … One of the destroyer’s for’ard guns fired again, but it was too close to depress enough. Once he was astern of the Brit he’d pull the plug, be well on the way to safety before a destroyer with her comparatively large turning circle could drag itself around … Machine-guns flamed and blared from a mounting between funnels looming tall as houses: Oelricher flung back against the for’ard standard and collapsed. And she was swinging in—Looff had been distracted in those two vital seconds, looking round at him: he yelled into the tower, “Hard a-port!” And just that much too late: she was still swinging, and the two ships struck, beam to beam, the destroyer leaning over as huge-seeming as a battleship as they smacked together with a crash and the sound of steel ripping as if it was cloth: it was the top edge of U 702’s bridge that had gone, and that side of the 20 mm gun-platform and all its railing … Careering on, port rudder taking effect now to turn her close under the destroyer’s stern: she’d been flung on her beam by the impact, a whole mountain of foam avalanching over: a four-inch crashed and flamed from the destroyer’s stern as it swung too and the machine-guns opened up again, bullets in a torrent with ricochets from the after bridge and the periscope standards. H
eusinger and his fire-control petty officer were dragging Oelricher down into the tower, clumsy in their haste: Looff had ordered the wheel amidships but had to delay his shout of “Dive, dive!” by perhaps ten seconds—which felt like ten minutes … He yelled it as he fell into the hatch—he’d been crouched for shelter against the machine-gun fire—and as the vents banged open to flood her tanks a shell struck glancingly overhead, whirred away without exploding … Dragging the hatch shut and clipping it, yelling down to Walther to take her to two hundred metres, he was mewing in his mind Please God, please … Hedging his bet on the pressure-hull having suffered no damage … He was stepping off the ladder in the control room when Harbinger’s depthcharges went off: close, shatteringly loud explosions, the worst he’d ever heard or felt. U 702 shifted bodily in the sea: men were flung off their feet, all lights went out and the gyro alarm began to shriek again: some high-power circuit blew, an arc of crackling blue flame … Looff heard a shout of “Bad leak over the port engine, sir!” There’d been other yelling too. He was opening his mouth to stop the dive, shut main vents and blow her to the surface, when Franz Walther forestalled him with a bellow of, “No bother, lads, we’ll soon have this lot to rights!”

  The gyro alarm shut off, and emergency lights came on as if responding to that shout from the engineer. Looff felt personally removed, dazed, staring round at the half-lit shambles. Men sprawling everywhere, broken glass and other gear, and Oelricher’s bloodstained, blood-leaking body. Walther reached down to grab an arm belonging to Kurt Hopper, the second engineer, and haul him to his feet. He pointed at the depthgauge needle which was swinging past the fifty-five metre mark, and at the trimming order instrument switched to “pump from forward”: “Look after this for me, laddy. She’s heavy, you’ll need to take plenty out. Depth ordered two hundred metres. I’m going aft to see what this rubbish is about a leak.”