The Broken Sword

by R. Mingo Sweeney

  Nonetheless, the time finally came for them to leave the splendid isolation of the castle. A few of them had quietly vanished to other services—or anonymity—while the rest eagerly awaited the news of their posting. It would be virtually impossible to track the varied careers enshrined in that instant of time. Meanwhile, they assembled before the castle for the last time and had their photograph taken. They stood in tiers, one above the other, squinting into the sun against the massive backdrop of their granite castle. It was late in April, 1942.

  Anyone who thought that the German army had shot its bolt the previous year was in for a rude surprise as their spring campaign unfolded in Russia. Rommel was now a field marshal and preparing for the First Battle of El Alamein. The Philippines, Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies were overrun by Japan, and the Mid-Ocean Escort Force was established to fight the Battle of the Atlantic. Frankly, the Canadian navy was in sorry shape, irritated by blustering Americans and condescending Englishmen, as well as relentless U-boats. On the icy north Atlantic, the unsung heroes were the seamen of the merchant marine who wallowed like frozen ducks on the storm-tossed seas. They didn’t even have the chance of hitting back.

  Patrick MacQueen received his appointment to Sydney, Nova Scotia, with stoicism. Six of the class were assigned to the dockyard there, in whose harbour the slow convoys assembled. No one suspected that the war was about to erupt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The rest of the class were scattered to sea and shore appointments stretching from Great Britain to Esquimalt. It was a matter of inching up the ladder towards the seagoing navy, but to Patrick, there was nothing magic about the sea. He would have his horse shipped to Sydney for company, and he might explore Cape Breton through the summer. He interrupted the train journey to Nova Scotia to join his brother for two days’ leave in Montreal. John was now a lieutenant in the West Nova Scotia Regiment and undergoing yet another training course. His wife was in Charlottetown.

  The brothers bought forty ounces of rye whisky, took a room at the Mount Royal Hotel, went to a nightclub, and wrangled over two whores. Relationships between brothers never escape the nursery, and they parted vaguely dissatisfied with one another. No one fulfills another’s image, which is what we really love.

  Patrick then spent a day at his grandfather’s estate near Truro. He went to the stables to greet his friend Caesar. His relationship to him had been almost as difficult as that with his brother.

  Caesar was a black stallion who had never forgiven Patrick for having him gelded. At least he was predictable and never pretended to be a loving brother. The horse hated Patrick, but he knew on which side his bread was buttered. Caesar didn’t like anyone much, actually, and he frothed even in the stall. He had style, however, and Patrick forgave many bruises for that quality. Caesar put on a good show and was a suitable mount for a feudal-minded young man. He removed the blanket and stroked Caesar’s neck. The horse whinnied and rolled his eye. He knew that voice, and upon hearing it knew that some adventure was in store. They understood one another quite dispassionately, and each told the other that he was alive. It was a form of contract, and each knew the limits.

  “That’s a crazy horse,” said Patrick’s grandfather. “In the pasture, he never seems to stop, tossing his head and galloping about. He will probably kick the freight car apart.”

  Patrick smiled and patted the shiny rump as he left the stall. The old man seems to have shrunk, he thought sadly. Of all his relatives, this grandfather occupied a special place in his heart. He was an honest man with an open face and endearing little vanities. As a boy he had lost one thumb: he had wrapped his reins around it when the horse he was riding had bolted. That had terminated any military ambitions. His nephew, a family colonel, was the one who had visited Patrick in military hospital. This quiet and mild man was hard and demanding to his hired hands, but his wife ruled the household and he had learned to accept that status quo. This division of labour had ensured a long and relatively fruitful marriage; they had three surviving daughters, including Patrick’s mother. One of Patrick’s aunts lived in Truro and the other lived quite luxuriously in an apartment at Central Park South in Manhattan. The latter had been the child bride of a war hero who died in the influenza epidemic of 1919. She had carved out her own career in public relations, but never forgot her roots.

  Patrick had always taken all of this for granted, and he never questioned their obligation to love him. That is the blind side of most family attitudes, and one is uncomprehendingly hurt when that cozy arrangement is fractured, even by death. The demand to consider oneself lovable is really a bad joke, but many people never think of themselves beyond being a sack of warm flesh to coddle. That has become one of the Rights of Man.

  Naturally, Patrick did not speculate on these matters; they were part of the nature of things. Any alternative would crack the glass badly. Through him were reflected the outer images of the war and the clash of arms—and, inwardly, a more private sphere of family where everything was assumed. No one escapes this position unless rendered by catastrophe. That is the touch that elevates it into something worthwhile; but our individual reading of the stars is fraught with peril. It is better to gather our cloaks about us and get back to business.

  Patrick slept in the big bed that he had used as a student. The bed had four posts, with an armorial crest on the headboard. Patrick’s feudal ideas had fertile ground here. The elm trees were budding outside the windows, through which he could see the long stretches of marshland at the very tip of the Bay of Fundy. All of this land had once been the Acadian Seigneury of Cobequid, and the dykes they had built still held back the tidal bore that rushed up to the Salmon River. The name of the estate was Rosemere, or “red arm of the sea”. The house stood on a hill, with a columned front veranda and towering red barns behind. It had high ceilings and big rooms, with maid’s quarters and extensions for the hired help, the dairy, and garage. In the centre of the circular driveway stood a windmill that looked like the Eiffel Tower. It was the centre of a small universe.

  Within the house, his grandmother was an autocrat. She was an erect lady with snow-white hair and a deceptive, dimpled smile. This lady was strong-willed, meticulous, and family-proud. Her ambition had held her family of daughters together; their husbands were mere adjuncts to her. She was civil but upright, and she never relented in her demands for self-improvement. Her formidable nature had mellowed a bit with age and a slight bewilderment at the changing times. She would have been happiest sitting in a scene from the pages of Lorna Doone, bossing around big John Ridd, but she made the best of what she had at hand. She would have out-faced Carver Doone on any dark night.

  They drove Patrick to the railway station in their long, black Buick. He kissed them both and then mounted the train in his black greatcoat. The train shuddered, and the conductor shouted “All ab-o-o-o-ard” and then climbed the metal steps holding a bright yellow stoop. Patrick placed his coat and cap on a plush green seat and walked to the smoking room. In it, the benches were leather. A row of shiny basins filled one wall, topped by a large mirror. There were brass spittoons on the floor, and the room smelled of tobacco and Brasso and polishing wax.

  “Home on leave?” asked the conductor, accepting his ticket and placing it in a little nickel puncher that was slung around his neck. A bell rang with a ting! when he pressed the lever. Those little bells had been ringing all his life, but he had never noticed it before.

  “Headed to the dockyard in Sydney,” answered Patrick.

  “All of our fine young men,” said the conductor, sepulchrally shaking his head and clucking like a hen. He adjusted his kepi-like cap and sighed. “I was too young for the first one, and now I’m too old,” he said, as though he had missed a picnic. “Anyway, I got a family,” he added unnecessarily, and then backed out of the door.

  Patrick had already noticed the widespread phenomenon that everyone who hadn’t been in uniform apologized for it. Mentally, he broke the world into two parts: the merchants and the soldi
ers. Occasionally merchants put on uniforms, or soldiers got into the marketplace, but the basic worldviews were diametrically opposite. Commercial empires never command the respect that military empires achieve. There is something funny about an imperial travelling salesman, but no one scoffs at a centurion. He wondered if that was why he respected the British more than the Americans. Every British governor is a military man, he reflected. The king is rarely out of uniform. He didn’t even think of the priests.

  At the dockyard in Sydney, Patrick was presented with his weapon—a telephone. It was an instrument that he had always hated, but an officer had to be at the end of this one twenty-four hours a day. Along with his five classmates, he was under the naval control service officer. They controlled all of the traffic in and out of the port, including the examination vessel and the gate vessels on the anti-submarine boom and net. They sailed the convoys and brought ships into the harbour; they coordinated with the army forts at the harbour entrance; and they reported directly to CXO, or the chief examination officer. An army liaison officer was with them, and occasionally they went out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the examination vessels, or on duty to one of the forts. As it transpired, this pre-electronic command centre was on the edge of the naval version of the front line. The U-boats would soon burst into the gulf and sink ships right up to Quebec City.

  58

  On 11 May 1942, two ships were torpedoed just off the coast of Gaspé; the war had come to Canada. These were the days of happy hunting for the U-boats, and they ranged down the eastern seaboard to Brazil, across the Atlantic to Sierra Leone, and up to the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea. The German navy had become a vast establishment, stretching from northern Norway to the Pyrenees, and they could read charts and detect choke points as well as anyone else. The Battle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was hardly the most important battle of the war, but to the participants it was vivid, and to the survivors it was important enough.

  The main problem for Canada was the defence of such a large area with very limited resources; the odds were in favour of the attacker. To increase their own odds, a weather station was established in Labrador. During this time, over thirty ships were sunk, including the Port aux Basques ferry that Patrick MacQueen had given permission to sail at midnight. The first scarlet blood of the war was seen in Canada as groups of the burned and blasted casualties were fished out of the waters or washed up on the rocks. The politicians in Ottawa were trying to cope with the disaster of Hong Kong, the Conscription crisis was looming, and now the war was on their doorstep. The US Navy was pulling its ships out of northern waters, and the Royal Canadian Navy was strained to the breaking point.

  That summer in Cape Breton was sunny and warm, and the echoes of war seemed remote in the forests. Patrick MacQueen boarded with a retired railwayman and his wife on the outskirts of Sydney. Nearby, an old castle was being restored by someone named MacDonald—it was rumoured to have been shipped from Scotland stone by stone. One of Patrick’s classmates had an English sports car, which irritated Patrick rather irrationally; otherwise he was happy and carefree and refused to think of his past and the implications that it involved.

  He had found someone to look after his horse—and Caesar arrived, as predicted, in a splintered railcar. Patrick had riding boots that his aunt had sent him from New York, and a pair of whipcord breeches. His grandfather had neglected to send a saddle, but his new groom located a western-style rig that was very comfortable. His hours at the dockyard were twelve on and twenty-four off, which left plenty of time to indulge his tastes. He discovered a young Irish nymph exercising her pony in the glades, and they became good friends.

  Caesar developed a taste for Coca-Cola, which Patrick would pour down his throat through the side of his mouth, past the curb chain and bit. Caesar would snort and froth and dance around on the road like a friendly black demon, which pleased his master mightily. He took off his shirt as soon as they were out of town. His suntan returned.

  After riding he would shower, dress in his uniform, and walk to the dockyard to assume his duties. He would walk past the Isle Royale Hotel, along a tree-lined street, down a small gravelled hill, and past the saluting sentry at the gate. This led along an asphalt area, to long sheds facing the harbour, where Fairmiles or minesweepers would be berthed. There was a tall crane and the inevitable soaring seagulls. He also passed the administration building of HMCS Protector, the name of the naval base in Sydney. The White Ensign stirred on the flagpole, and within the building, an ex-Royal Navy four-ring captain reigned supreme. Patrick’s immediate boss was a two-ring RCNVR lieutenant who should have been a schoolmaster. There were stenographers, and secretaries, and pay officers, and engineers dedicated to keeping warships at sea and convoys moving.

  The city of Sydney itself was dominated by the steel mills. These were an essential industry in wartime and they operated twenty-four hours under billows of smoke in the day and with flashing fires at night. The raw ore was shipped from Belle Isle in Newfoundland, and recently two ore carriers had been sunk in one day. It was said that the SS Baccaleugh was still tied to the jetty when the torpedo struck her.

  There were always two officers manning the bank of telephones and updating the logbooks. It was very active when convoys were assembled and sailing, or when survivors were brought in. The forts had searchlights; with radio silence, they were often the first to detect anything unusual at the harbour’s mouth. There was some patrolling by air, but Sydney never recaptured the strategic importance of the old fortress of Louisburg, which had protected the empire of Louis XIV. Halifax and St. John’s, Newfoundland, were the major players in the game now—and Newfoundland was another country. The small French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon had been captured by the Free French during the previous winter; the forces had been accompanied by the submarine Surcouf, which had then vanished forever.

  Time passed almost casually. The officer’s wardroom would be filled with merchant navy captains and commodores of convoys, then it would suddenly be empty except for the local staff. Small naval ships would berth alongside for quick repairs or a minor refit, and the sailors would drink beer in town while this was taking place. Then they would slip back to sea, their signal lights blinking from the bridge and their sirens whooping forlornly. Members of the Royal Canadian Coast Artillery stood constant guard beside their long howitzers in concrete emplacements, and they scanned the horizon with binoculars. The city itself had an oddly defiant spirit that always seemed to scorn frills and to forecast a rainy day tomorrow.

  The blast furnaces of the steel mills were a constant backdrop to everything, and the whole world operated on eight-hour shifts. Patrick rode Caesar through the Indian reserve and threw coins to the children, which displeased the chief; he was ordered to stop or take his horse elsewhere. In retribution, the children removed a plank from the bridge, and Patrick was tossed into the water.

  His Irish riding companion always met him in the forest. She was just beginning to blossom, and she rode an energetic fat pony. They would play hide-and-seek among the trees or canter across the meadows together. She was always flushed and as unpredictable as a sparrow, and Patrick had to keep reminding himself of her youth. She was careless about that and wore tight jeans, so his service in Cape Breton ended just in time. She drove a grocery delivery cart to get the money to feed her pony, and she had built the lean-to stable herself.

  The groom was interested in harness racing and he worked at the steel mill. One afternoon Patrick arrived unexpectedly, and this man had dressed Caesar in harness and was schooling him with a long whip on a lead line. Caesar did not seem to mind, but Patrick felt vaguely insulted for them both. The groom was ecstatic about Caesar’s possibilities as a racehorse, but Patrick flatly forbade any further training along those lines. Racing Caesar for money was something that he refused to even discuss.

  In the autumn, sub-lieutenant MacQueen was appointed to something called the Naval Control Service Office in Halifax. Caesar entere
d a wooden freight car once again and was safely tethered, and Patrick left Cape Breton for the far less agreeable and crowded city of Halifax.

  The Battle of the Atlantic was entering its most severe trial yet, and the war had come home to Halifax long ago.

  59

  Captain Lester M. Bayard, OBE, RCNR, was the Naval Control Service Officer under the commanding officer Atlantic Coast in Halifax. He was a bemused, good-natured man who had seen service in the first war and had been staff captain of the Queen of Bermuda in the thirties; she was a luxury liner the British had requisitioned for war duties. He occupied a large corner office in the main headquarters building, in a wing diametrically across from the admiral himself. He had the important job of organizing the merchant ships into convoys and getting them to sea. When one considers that these included every conceivable type of ship, of just about every nationality, the importance of his work becomes evident. He wore the interlocking stripes of the RCNR on his cuffs, and five ribbons on his left shoulder. He carried all of this lightly, and he had enormous reserves of patience. His hair was dark brown, greying at the temples, and he had a boyish twinkle in his eyes.

  Captain Bayard commanded a large and variegated staff. There was a baron from the Free French Navy, and a Danish lieutenant, and a Dutch lieutenant commander. There were the inevitable scattering of Englishmen and some Canadians too. His secretaries and stenographers were multilingual. Amid all this, he quietly radiated a great air of authority. This was where the fighting navy interlocked with the merchant marine; traditionally, there was no love lost between them. Diplomatic skills were essential to keep the notoriously independent skippers in line. This organization worked on a level basis with Naval Intelligence and had to be counted in on virtually every decision made up and down the ladder relating to convoys, which were the Royal Canadian Navy’s raison d’être. Supplies had to get through in enormous quantities.