After the meal Mike went for’ard with Ormrod to say goodbye to the troops and out of curiosity see their equipment. Four canoes on the deck now, middled between the torpedo-reload racks and crammed with gear ranging from paddles and bailers to tommy-guns, food, drink, medical stores including Benzedrine, bombs of different kinds, grenades, fighting-knives with nine-inch blades, entrenching tools, hand-guns according to individual choice – Ormrod’s choice for instance being a long-barrelled, silenced .22 pistol.
Mike asked him, ‘What, no cheese-wire?’, and he nodded towards Colour-Sergeant Gant: ‘His speciality.’ A shrug: ‘Funny, everyone asks about cheese-wire.’
‘A leatherneck speciality, might say?’
Gant smiled politely. Leatherneck being slang for a Royal Marine, and cheese-wire in this context coming in a noose with wooden handles that was primarily for silent assaults on sentries. Used skilfully, it amounted to beheading. Gant had a pleasant smile, and looked young for his rank. Shrugging: ‘Bit of a knack to it, sir, really.’
Ormrod agreed: ‘Certainly is.’ He was buckling a waterproof luminous compass to his left forearm. He hadn’t blackened his face yet or donned the dark-wool hat he’d shown them earlier, remarking ‘Absolute must for Ascot, this.’ They were dressed as they pleased,looking mostly like farm workers or mechanics, nothing like members of any armed force. Mike shook hands with them all and wished them luck, told them he’d see them on Tuesday; and they were joined at about this stage by the TI, Coltart, who’d be running things in this compartment when it came to removing the strong-back from the hatch then getting it open and the boats out – up the ladder and out on to the casing, where Jarvis with Tubby Hart and a few others would be waiting to assist as necessary.
‘All right, TI?’
A grin, and a mocking look at Gant: ‘I’m all right, sir …’
Ormrod muttered as they went for’ard, ‘Good fellow, that.’
‘Torpedo Gunner’s Mate, CPO. He was a boxer – fought for the Navy’s Portsmouth Division a year or two pre-war. More importantly, knows what he’s doing and keeps on doing it.’
Ormrod had stopped, in the gangway opposite the POs’ and Leading Seamen’s mess, where for the moment they were on their own. Speaking quietly – on the seabed with no machinery running it was extremely quiet – ‘One thing, skipper …’
‘Uh?’
‘If when you’re home you happen to run into that girl – as you might, uh?’
‘Not impossible, I suppose. Not likely either, but –’
‘Give her my love?’
‘Well …’
‘Just that, nothing else.’ He started forward again – between the galley and the heads now,still no one noticeably in earshot – only Cottenham the master chef whistling between his teeth while dishing up, potatoes steaming in pans … Ormrod continuing, ‘Should you happen to run into her, Mike –’
‘I’d give her your love – in the unlikely event, et cetera – but no passing of messages either way.’
‘No, wouldn’t ask you to. How did you happen to meet her, though? I wouldn’t have thought you and Melhuish were the closest of chums?’
‘I met them both in London at another submariner’s wedding, as it happens. But now listen – I wish you all the luck that’s going.’ He put his hand out. ‘We’ll be saying prayers. Just bloody well be here on Tuesday – uh?’
* * *
She’d lifted off the sand a few minutes before nine p.m. and McLeod stopped her with fifty feet on the gauges while Harris the HSD listened-out carefully all round and confirmed no HE, no foreign body hanging around to make a nuisance of itself. Before they’d blown ‘Q’ and then some main ballast he’d reported he wasn’t getting anything, but on the bottom she’d been lying with her snout in sand and weed, and the asdic dome was in her forefoot, the leading edge of her keel; he’d had to make sure of it. He told McLeod now, ‘Surface!’, waited for Walburton to open the lower lid for him, climbed into the tower.
McLeod’s reports from below him, then: ‘Twenty feet – fifteen’: he had the first clip off the upper lid at the count of twelve, and the second at ten, the signalman’s weight latched on to him and holding him down by the final shout of ‘Eight!’, and with the aid of the internal pressure had the hatch open and slamming back, himself up and out, arriving solidly in the front of the bridge: voice-pipe open, and yelling into it ‘Group up, half ahead, steer north’, then ‘Up casing party and folboats.’ Ursa pitching a bit as well as rolling, in the white pool of her emergence, but the canoeists were ready for that, twenty-four hours ago had been expecting worse. He was sweeping all round with binoculars – Walburton too, and stars well in evidence, which would help the casing party as well as canoeists – casing party now in the still streaming bridge behind him, Jarvis asking ‘Go on down, sir?’
‘Yes, please.’ Jarvis, Hart, Brooks and Barnaby, over the starboard side there, down the outside of the tower, necessarily quick and sure-footed in not quite total darkness getting around it and for’ard past the gun, piling into the break in the casing that gave access to the hatch; Jarvis’s rap on it with a wheel-spanner would have told the torpedomen and troops inside that they and the boats were awaited topsides.
‘Hatch is open, sir!’
Walburton, sounding surprised. Well, it had been quick, well synchronised. Mike too had caught the splash of yellow light,and now a radiance partially obstructed by bodies getting the canoes and in eight cases themselves out on to what was effectively a mobile steel platform with free-flood holes in it, holes that would be serving as hand-holds as well as securing-points for ropes’ ends that would really come into their own when the folboats were in position and manned. In a few seconds, that should be: one pair of them well forward of the hatch,between the hydroplane guards – invaluable at this juncture – and the other pair abaft them, less easy to hold in place – and movement around the hatch again – two of the casing party having slid into it, leaving only Jarvis and Hart outside, slamming it shut, extinguishing the yellow glow, a howl from Jarvis of ‘Fore-hatch shut!’, the pair of them then pounding aft. Mike told Walburton, ‘Down you go’, and called into the pipe, ‘Stop both motors.’
‘Stop both, sir. Both motors stopped.’ Jarvis and Hart were back in the bridge, panting like dogs. ‘Fore-hatch shut, sir, canoes ready to float off.’
‘Well done. Go on down.’ Into the pipe again then, ‘Open number two inboard vent.’
Main ballast tanks other than numbers one and six didn’t have outboard vents, you could only vent them inboard. With this conning-tower hatch open you weren’t building up any internal pressure, and you could stop the venting and flooding process as you wanted – flooding number two now sufficiently to weigh her forepart down, drowning the fore casing and allowing the boats to float off. Calling down ‘Shut number two main vent’ and watching them drift away, until they were well enough clear of one another to use their paddles.
18
Tuesday now, Dog plus 2 as it had been, time 0120, McLeod in the course of being relieved as OOW by Jarvis, Mike down for a break after spending recent hours up top. Crucial stage approaching, Ursa on her way inshore to make the 0300–0400 rendezvous. Please God. She was banging around a bit, wind north-by-west, on the bow and making it damp on the bridge; he was hoping there’d be some degree of shelter further in, enabling one to embark the men at least, though probably not the boats. If the men had made it to this point: the double uncertainty was what was making one bloody sweat. He’d been on the bridge most of the time since they’d surfaced, would be up there again before much longer, was meanwhile taking this break at the wardroom table with a mug of kye that had been organised for him by the PO Stoker, ‘Caruso’ Franklyn, who for some reason was standing in for Hec Bull as PO of this watch.
McLeod came down: pausing in the control room to accept an offer of kye from Franklyn, who sent Newcomb to the galley for it. Mike heard McLeod agreeing with something Franklyn had said: McLeod’s response
being ‘Yes, Spo. Bloody hell, yes.’ Responding to something like ‘Hope to God the poor sods’ve made it, sir’, no doubt. The same hope or fear having been expressed at least a hundred times a day since the float-off. McLeod came on through then, shedding a wet Ursula suit and looking for a cigarette, remarking as he accepted one of Mike’s, ‘Been a hell of a long three days, sir.’
‘Tiring, rather.’ He yawned. ‘Anxiety neurosis, could be.’
Actually three and a bit days, not three, since he’d watched the canoeists with their circling paddles getting clear of Ursa, then turned her seaward and restored her to a normal trim while putting another mile between her and the beach – on her motors still, to keep her departure as quiet as her arrival had been. He’d had to wait longer than he’d expected for the blue-flash signal confirming they were ashore, but it came all right; he’d started the generators and altered to southeast, with Cape Passero thirty on the bow and revs to push her along at five knots as well as bring the box up.
Then, what one could think of as three days not entirely wasted. They’d snooped along this stretch for instance for fishing-boats,and found none where it would matter. Between Pozzallo and Passero had been the greatest regular concentration, day and night. But that first night he’d got a signal off to Shrimp confirming that the Comiso team had landed, and Sunday forenoon in the control room as well as offering up the customary naval prayers he’d asked God to protect the commandos, further their endeavours and bring them safe home again. The ‘Amens’ had been fiercely insistent, and every man not on watch had been present, creating trimming problems for McLeod – whose watch it had been anyway – and Mike was asked several times during the rest of the day whether he reckoned the commandos stood any real chance of making it back. He couldn’t say more than that Ormrod had been quietly confident, and that they were highly trained and experienced in the work they were doing; they truly had given the impression that for them it was nothing out of the ordinary. In the boat generally though, there’d still been a lot of speculation and anxiety; most exchanges were on that subject, and still were. Just about everyone was on tenterhooks. Which was unusual. Submariners had never been worriers by nature. They were saddened when another boat was lost, often desperately so, but they didn’t anticipate calamity, shorten the odds before they had to. If you’d been inclined to you’d have been scared on your own account, consequently not much use. Which was not to say that being depth-charged for instance didn’t scare you. It did – anyone half normal. When it was really close and sustained it scared you rigid, and you knew better than to show it because – well, you didn’t. Which was infectious, no one did, you could say it ‘wasn’t done’. You made jokes, if you could. He felt sure Ormrod would have made jokes.
McLeod, who’d been on a visit to the heads, sat down at the table across from him and reached for his kye. ‘Not going to be easy getting ’em on board, sir.’
‘Them, we’ll manage. Not the canoes.’
‘Not going to try?’
‘No. One, bloody difficult if not impossible; two, time-wasting; and on that score the sooner we get off this coast the better.’ He thought of adding, ‘Besides which it’s our last patrol, remember?’ Didn’t, because everyone knew he didn’t believe in any of that stuff.
Coming up for 0300. In the bridge,he and Walburton concentrating on forward bearings, the smeary-dark vagueness of land from which at any moment one might –
Might?
They’d both seen it, fast blue pin-pricks from two miles away in the scrambled grey-and-whitishness of the shoreline; a commando would have scythed the seascape with his lamp, his horizontal mark or guide the wave-tops. Mike had called out ‘There we go!’, heard Walburton’s simultaneous reaction as a squawk of ‘Blue light-flashes – something or other’ and was surprised at the levelness of what had been his own tone, considering the importance of the moment. They’d had a shot at stirring things up about a minute and a half ago, the signalman pivoting his own blue-lensed lamp in a sweep of the surf-line, not exactly counting on the lads being there ahead of time and keeping their heads down until given some such encouragement, but hoping for it – and lo and behold, even if they’d taken their time about it … Mike telling Walburton to switch on again and hold it on that bearing – poor sod already doing so, hadn’t needed telling – and stopping both motors, putting the starboard one astern, to help her round then hold her more or less in situ; and now displacing Danvers at the voice-pipe, telling McLeod ‘Casing party stand by in the control room. Bare feet, Mae Wests and heaving lines. Cox’n stand by for casualties. Blankets, food, tea – in half an hour, twenty minutes.’
Guesswork – distance two sea-miles, canoes surely with nothing like the amount of weight they’d had in them three days ago. Most likely only the weight of the men themselves – and these were skilled swimmer-canoeists, incidentally with the wind behind them. And the double flash again now, Ormrod telling him Here we come – meaning they’d be carrying their canoes down over beach, rocks and surf into clearish water where they’d saddle-up and start paddling … Mike mentally acknowledging Quick as you like, and eight of you, please, preferably all in good shape. And to Danvers, loudly, ‘Stop starboard, slow ahead port, starboard ten’ and then ‘Midships’, and the course to steer … Once in the canoes and paddling the commandos had this light to steer on, so by holding her as she lay now, counting on the one motor being enough to hold her against the wind, and the lamp high enough to be visible at that distance – but not much further, and strictly on target, so as not to attract enemy attention from any wider area – this light twenty-five feet above sea-level reaching canoeists’ eyes at a height of about eighteen inches …
Anyway, and thank God, the canoes were in sight with the aid of binoculars after less than thirty minutes, and to the naked eye not all that much later. Paddles had to be going like hell – driving them as he’d now realised slightly across the wind: Ursa of course bow-on – her shoulder to it as it were, and her 600 tons by no means static. Jarvis, Hart, Leading Torpedoman Brooks and Torpedoman/wardroom flunkey Barnaby, in wet-weather gear and equipped with coiled hemp heaving-lines, crowded into the centre of the bridge between Mike and Danvers in the curve of its forepart and the lookouts abaft them – and no point their going down on the casing until the canoes were in reach of their lines or nearly so.
Three canoes. Two canoeists in each of them, all right, but –
Needing only three?
‘Sir –’Walburton at close range in his ear: ‘Only six blokes, sir!’
Jarvis then: ‘Christ – three canoes, Second, not four.’ Addressing Hart as ‘Second’, normal abbreviation of ‘Second Coxswain’. Hart responding with a growl of ‘Bloody hell …’
‘All right we go down, sir?’
‘Yes, go on.’
Barefooted, as the best way of staying on – of staying on board, in fact. More than enough men had drowned off casings in foul weather. The two front-running canoes weren’t far out of line-throwing range now, even against the wind. Walburton perched up in the bridge’s forefront with his Aldis, shifting its beam between the three wildly tossing boats, the beam’s silvery fallout also illuminating the scene as a whole – at this moment a line arcing blackly through it to fall just short of the nearest – and Mike yelling through a megaphone, ‘Leave the canoes adrift! Only yourselves! Not embarking canoes!’ One boat had already secured a line and was being hauled in, the second just this moment catching its own, bowman snatching a turn on a towing-cleat. First one though – might have been the leader, the one they’d missed with that first line – soaring bow-up almost to the vertical and turning on the swell, smashing down then beam-on and bomb-like against Ursa’s side, its crew spilling out or had spilled out but still mixed up with it, crabbing and floundering at the casing’s edge then actually – miraculously – on board, and moments later helping – Barnaby, it looked like – sending their own or another canoe’s wreckage on its way – over the port side, gone. Elsew
here, casing party and canoeists fighting their way aft – not by a long chalk easy … One in particular – canoeist – who’d collapsed on the casing after being hauled on board, but then by the look of it made this solo effort, then slumped again, been saved from washing on over by Brooks and another hand lifting him like a corpse. By no means anything like easy, with this much movement on her: for one man, would have been impossible, you’d have gone over with him. In fact surprising he hadn’t: that they hadn’t. Out of sight now anyway, close below the forefront of the bridge. The gun would be a useful staging-point – for a moment or two’s pause hanging on to it while grabbing a breath, and/or a wave crashed over, then a quick dash and scramble to the tower with its iron rail around it.
Six were as many as you were getting. Two absentees – casualties – out of eight. Could have been worse maybe – had been, on previous occasions – but –
Hadn’t seen or heard Ormrod yet. And – he’d been aware of this for a minute or two – one would have, surely.
‘Cor strike a fuckin’ light!’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Beg pardon – sir. Marine Block, I –’
‘Better get below, Block. Hatch there – see?’
‘– across my shoulders, right? Brooks – here …’ Voice of Jarvis, at the base of the tower or on the rungs, talking not about Block but that casualty. Others heaving into sight and sound – including Hart in his immensity looming amongst them, but this was –
‘Captain, sir?’
‘Yes, Sergeant –’
‘Colour-Sergeant Gant reporting with five men,sir. Major Ormrod’s dead. So’s Marine Denneker. Report later, sir, may I?’
‘Yes. Go on down. I’m bloody sorry, Sergeant.’ ‘Yessir.’ He’d saluted in the noisy dark, moved to help with the man or body Jarvis was getting in over the side of the bridge, might have a job manoeuvring down through the tower. All extremely lively. Mike hadn’t asked how it had gone at Comiso:would have asked Ormrod,but Gant’s ‘Report later’ would substitute for that. Meanwhile, for Christ’s sake, Ormrod dead. And one other. He told Danvers, ‘Start engines, half ahead together. Port twenty, steer – what was it, one-seven-five?’
Submariner (2008) Page 28