A Funny Place to Hold a War

by John Harris

  ‘Batteries control panel smashed! Hydrophones gone! Radio equipment smashed! Hang on, hang on – say again! What’s that? Compressors wrenched loose from their straps!’

  Schutze had control of the boat now and was taking her down but, just when Lorenz was beginning to imagine they were safe, the telephone went again.

  ‘Engine room reports water entering through a loose valve in the drain pumps, sir!’

  Schutze frowned. Trying to control his impatience, he waited for further reports. They had been hard hit, he knew, and it would be touch and go. Lifting his eyes, he saw Lorenz standing at the entrance to the wardroom and for a moment wondered if the repeated attacks had anything to do with him. But no! No one would wish himself one of the most appalling deaths a man could think up. Schutze had been aboard a submarine which had been sunk by collision in the Baltic during training, and the horror of being trapped below was still with him. Even as the boat had sunk beneath his feet, he had heard the despairing screams of the drowning men behind him. The memory was still in his mind when another series of crashes indicated that their attacker was not yet done with them. There was a tinkle of falling glass and someone cried out.

  The telephone went. ‘Engine room, sir! Clutch between the diesels and the motors is jammed! High pressure lines have been ruptured!’

  For a moment there was a tense silence then a voice came unsteadily. ‘Depth gauges not working, sir. Steering gear and compass wrecked.’

  U-1022 was little more than a hulk. Already the air was foul and Schutze recognised the smell of chlorine that told him sea water had got at the batteries.

  ‘Take her up,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to fight it out on the surface.’

  As he banked the Catalina to keep the spot where the submarine had disappeared up-moon, Molyneux could see quite clearly the swirl of water where it had disappeared and the foamy rings where the depth charges had burst.

  ‘This bastard’s not a certainty yet,’ he said. ‘Let him have it as soon as he appears.’

  He banked the machine again, still down-moon, then the starboard gunner yelled, and as Molyneux’ head turned, he saw the conning tower of the submarine emerge, dripping water that sparkled in the moonlight. Immediately figures appeared, scrambling for the batteries of 20mm guns forward and aft of the conning tower. A machine gun crashed out and Molyneux saw tracer going into the group. The submarine’s after gun started firing but stopped again immediately. Then the forward gun started and a line of what looked like red golf balls soared up towards them. They came slowly at first, then very fast, but they seemed to take an incredibly long time to arrive and as they grew bigger Molyneux felt they were going straight through the Catalina. There was a crash as they were hit, and a tangle of bright pipes with oozing oil and a hole in the side of the aircraft you could put your hand through, but by this time they were overhead again and the last depth charges went down.

  The blast as half a ton of Torpex went off in a tremendous ‘whump’ lifted four huge columns of water in a mighty curtain that hid the sky and whipped the men round the gun platform overboard like dolls. One of them managed to cling to the gun with enough strength to crack his ribs as the water cascaded down and surged across him, but the guns had stopped. The submarine seemed to lift then it slammed back into the hole where the sea had been blown away beneath it, sending vast gouts of water out on either side.

  ‘God!’ The navigator’s voice came on the intercom, strained and awed by what they’d done. ‘We’ve blown her clean out of the water.’

  There was fire below now, then someone yelled that the last salvo had wrenched one of the diesels off its mounting. Lorenz was watching Schutze, his eyes wide and shocked. Schutze was still calm, trying to make his decisions quickly and without panic, but Lorenz could see the despair on his face. He had realized that fighting it out wasn’t going to work and, with the air fractionally improved by their brief appearance on the surface, was hoping he might manage to save the boat.

  ‘We’ll have to take her down again,’ he said, but they had just commenced their dive when there was a yell that the forward hatch had been blown open and, with the foredeck dipped below the surface, a torrent of sea water was pouring in.

  ‘Avast diving,’ Schutze yelled. ‘Seal the forward compartment! Take her up! We’ll have to abandon! Everybody on deck!’

  As the boat lifted, her bow weighted by the water she had taken on board, her stern appeared first, emerging at a steep angle. Men were huddling at the bottom of the ladder and Lorenz moved quickly among them. Schutze gave him a cold look.

  The depths were being called then the cry came, ‘Up!’ Immediately the men on the ladder flung open the hatchway and began to scramble out but, almost at once, Lorenz heard bullets clattering against the conning tower. Someone above him on the ladder cried out and there was a shout of alarm.

  ‘Get him out! Get him out! He’s jamming the hatch!’

  Above him a man had been hit and his body was preventing the rest escaping. A man who had managed to scramble through the hatch was trying to scream instructions but then, as Lorenz’s heart rose to his throat, choking him with his fear, he felt the boat stand on its nose. A man falling from above him almost swept him away. The screaming was growing louder now and Lorenz was having to use all his strength to cling to the ladder. His ears were full of the terror-stricken cries of men facing death, then a solid wet wall hit him, wrenching his fingers free and flinging him down. He fell into the control room but it was swilling with water and tilted to an impossible angle so that he slid across the floor to collide with the bulkhead. Trying to struggle upright, his mouth opened to scream and promptly filled with sea water, and the last thing he was aware of was the emergency lights in the control tower becoming obscured and blurred by the roaring green flood.

  Nine

  Eight submarines were sunk and only a single ship was lost. The Maréchal Grouchy bolted north for Conakry but was caught by the navy and taken under escort back to Freetown. It raised a lot of diplomatic fuss because she was supposed to be a neutral, but examination of her papers and her radio logs proved her to be anything but, and Vichy hastily dropped the matter. The vast convoy was supplied and watered and went on to the Cape and from there up to the Middle East. The new Sherman tanks, the new anti-tank guns and the new Priest self-propelled cannon helped defeat Rommel at Alamein and the rest is well known.

  From then on in North Africa it was all victory and the French West African colonies followed the lead of the Equatorial and occupied North African territories and declared for De Gaulle. It was also, in a way, the beginning of the defeat of the U-boats. There were one or two more big battles in the Atlantic, then the tide turned, and in May 1943, with forty-one U-boats destroyed in a month, Dönitz withdrew them.

  Many of the unimportant men who had done the hard work at Jum in the last few desperate days when the thing had hung in the balance never really learned what had been happening because, before it had been over forty-eight hours, a far more important event occurred. A telephone message was received at headquarters that sent Trixie Tristram running to the perfumed bower he shared with his friend.

  ‘The ship’s in, dear! We’re leaving in the morning!’

  This time it was true. Mail also appeared and someone said a new projector had arrived for the cinema, too, and they were going to have another go at Blood and Sand. But all the time-expired men were too busy handing out old unwanted clothes to the dhobi boys to be interested, the lineshooters occupied in packing up shields and spears made especially up-country to sell to British servicemen anxious to show their families what a savage place they’d been in.

  The following morning, choked at the thought that they were actually going home and suddenly not sure they wanted to, they headed down the ramshackle jetty for the last time and scrambled aboard the pinnace, feeling they’d done their little bit for the war effort and suffered their share of discomfort, and expecting at least a little attention when they r
eached home. They weren’t to know that when they arrived and tried to talk about it, men from such far-flung outposts as Grimsby and Felixstowe and Blyth and Aberdeen would sneer at them and sing ‘Sand In My Shoes’.

  Near the marine section slip, a gang of African technicians and a couple of white engineers were pushing a steam engine into place.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Pile driver,’ they were told. ‘There’s a big move on to open this place up. New jetty. New offices and crew room.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Feverel observed dryly. ‘Now we’re going home they’re going to make the bloody place fit to live in.’

  The mooring party had been taken over by a sergeant – no less! – who had sought out Feverel the night before and informed him that he intended to put things straight. He hadn’t even been in uniform when Feverel had left England and Feverel hoped he’d be able to cope – especially with the four-inch nails.

  As they climbed aboard the pinnace and the seaplane tenders which were to take them down-river to where their ship – that blessed transport that was to take them home! – waited for them, Ginger had already forgotten Lizzie Morgan and his promise of marriage, and was trying to remember the name of the sailor’s wife at Gosport he’d shacked up with before coming overseas. She wasn’t a bad-looking bint and he wondered how she’d look in the leopard-skin gloves, handbag and hat he’d made. Not bad, he decided, and he didn’t think Lizzie would miss him. Not much, anyway.

  As he reached the deck, Corporal Fox asked the white-skinned man in unworn khaki – another sergeant! What was the place coming to? – who now had the pinnace, for permission to handle the wheel for the last time, and two hours later they were alongside the transport.

  She was the most wonderful thing they had ever seen in their lives. Her name was Largs Bay and she turned out to be an ancient vessel from the last war with an enormous gun on her stern and stinking of rotten potatoes. As they scrambled up the side with their kit and their souvenirs, Nobby Clark was careful to make sure the bottom didn’t fall out of his splendid leather-covered cardboard suitcase. The line he’d tied round it held it splendidly and it was the end that fell out; in a fury, he flung it into the sea after its contents. Safely on board, Corporal Feverel immediately scrounged a tablet of sea-water soap from one of the crew and headed for a bathroom. Sneaking into the officers’ area, he found an unoccupied first-class cabin and took the hot bath he’d been dreaming of for nearly three years. But they were still in Freetown harbour and he had reckoned without the heat outside. His temperature hit the roof and he had to stand under a cold shower for half an hour to stop himself sweating. It didn’t matter much, though. He was going home, and he was only sorry Kneller wasn’t with them.

  Kneeling alongside him near the Bic with the bewildered Ginger, Feverel had looked for injuries. Kneller’s face was blackened so that his eyes looked spectral, and there were pale channels on his cheeks where tears had rolled down, but he was quite conscious and even appeared to be unhurt, despite the dazed look of pain on his features.

  ‘You all right?’ Feverel asked.

  As his hand had touched his shoulder, Kneller had stirred and looked up. There was an expression of agony on his face as he shook his head and patted his ears. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he said.

  Watched by the woman, Feverel had put his mouth close. ‘I said, are you all right?’

  Kneller had stared at him, watching his mouth opening and shutting, then a look of anguish had crossed his face again and he had crouched down with his head in his hands, moaning with the pain of shattered eardrums, and Feverel had heard his voice coming, muffled, through his fingers.

  ‘I can’t hear,’ he was wailing. ‘I can’t hear a bloody thing! I’ve gone stone deaf!’

  The ship left without him because he was in the hospital on Tower Hill, dazed, bewildered, and deaf as a post.

  Medals were handed out for North Africa, but West Africa, as usual, went unnoticed. Perhaps too many people had been involved. Perhaps they’d given too many for the desert and had none to spare. Perhaps, even, someone had decided medals would go to their heads, especially on top of a new jetty and new buildings and a new projector that had finally triumphantly worked its way through Blood and Sand. Perhaps the battle, despite the fact that they’d won it, had been too much a typical West African lash-up, and they were now entering on a new phase with everything done properly and didn’t want to be reminded of the old days, of dud projectors and four-inch nails.

  Whatever the reason, no one at Jum got a gong and, of course, Kneller never got his chance to sing, while Ettore Mori-Moncrieff never learned why he didn’t pursue the magnificent chance he’d offered him. There wasn’t much of a conflict going on at Jum but people could still get hurt.

  As the man said, it was a bloody funny place to hold a war.

  Synopses of John Harris Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  Army of Shadows

  It is the winter of 1944. France is under the iron fist of the Nazis. But liberation is just around the corner and a crew from a Lancaster bomber is part of the fight for Freedom. As they fly towards their European target, a Messerschmitt blazes through the sky in a fiery attack and of the nine-man crew aboard the bomber, only two men survive to parachute into Occupied France. They join an ever-growing army of shadows (the men and women of the French Resistance), to play a lethal game of cat and mouse.

  China Seas

  In this action-packed adventure, Willie Sarth becomes a survivor. Forced to fight pirates on the East China Seas, wrestle for his life on the South China Seas and cross the Sea of Japan ravaged by typhus, Sarth is determined to come out alive. Dealing with human tragedy, war and revolution, Harris presents a novel which packs an awesome punch.

  The Claws of Mercy

  In Sierra Leone, a remote bush community crackles with racial tensions. Few white people live amongst the natives of Freetown and Authority seems distant. Everyday life in Freetown revolves around an opencast iron mine, and the man in charge dictates peace and prosperity for everyone. But, for the white population, his leadership is a matter of life or death where every decision is like being snatched by the claws of mercy.

  Corporal Cotton’s Little War

  Storming through Europe, the Nazis are sure to conquer Greece but for one man, Michael Anthony Cotton, a heroic marine who smuggles weapons of war and money to the Greek Resistance. Born Mihale Andoni Cotonou, Cotton gets mixed up in a lethal mission involving guns and high-speed chases. John Harris produces an unforgettable champion, persuasive and striking with a touch of mastery in this action-packed thriller set against the dazzle of the Aegean.

  The Cross of Lazzaro

  The Cross of Lazzaro is a gripping story filled with mystery and fraught with personal battles. This tense, unusual novel begins with the seemingly divine reappearance of a wooden cross once belonging to a sixth-century bishop. The vision emerges from the depths of an Italian lake, and a menacing local antagonism is subsequently stirred. But what can the cross mean?

  Flawed Banner

  John Harris’ spine-tingling adventure inhabits the shadowy world of cunning and espionage. As the Nazi hordes of Germany overrun France, devouring the free world with fascist fervour, a young intelligence officer, James Woodyatt, is shipped across the Channel to find a First World War hero…an old man who may have been a spy…who may be in possession of Nazi secrets.

  The Fox From His Lair

  A brilliant German agent lies in wait for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. While the Allies prepare a vast armed camp, no one is aware of the enemy within, and when a sudden, deadly E-boat attacks, the Fox strikes, stealing secret invasion plans in the ensuing panic. What follows is a deadly pursuit as the Fox tries to get the plans to Germany in time, hotly pursued by two officers with orders to stop him at all costs.

  A Funny Place to Hold a War

  Ginger Donnelly is on the trail of Nazi saboteurs in Sierra Leone. Whil
st taking a midnight paddle with a willing woman in a canoe cajoled from a local fisherman, Donnelly sees an enormous seaplane thunder across the sky only to crash in a ball of brilliant flame. It seems like an accident…at least until a second plane explodes in a blistering shower along the same flight path.

  Getaway

  An Italian fisherman and his wife, Rosa, live in Sydney. Hard times are ahead. Their mortgaged boat may be lost and with it, their livelihood. But Rosa has a plan to reach the coast of America from the islands of the Pacific, sailing on a beleaguered little houseboat. The plan seems almost perfect, especially when Willie appears and has his own reasons for taking a long holiday to the land of opportunity.

  Harkaway’s Sixth Column

  An explosive action-packed war drama: four British soldiers are cut off behind enemy lines in British Somaliland and when they decide to utilise a secret arms dump in the Bur Yi hills and fight a rearguard action, an unlikely alliance is sought between two local warring tribes. What follows is an amazing mission led by the brilliant, elusive Harkaway, whose heart is stolen by a missionary when she becomes mixed up in the unorthodox band of warriors.

  A Kind of Courage

  At the heart of this story of courage and might, is Major Billy Pentecost, commander of a remote desert outpost near Hahdhdhah, deep among the bleak hills of Khalit. His orders are to prepare to move out along with a handful of British soldiers. Impatient tribesmen gather outside the fort, eager to reclaim the land of their blood and commanded by Abd el Aziz el Beidawi, a feared Arab warrior lord. A friendship forms between the two very different commanders but when Pentecost’s orders are reversed, a nightmarish tragedy ensues.