Sub-lieutenant Patrick MacQueen reported for duty and the captain received him, which was only a matter of etiquette. His large desk was angled in a corner, flanked by huge windows overlooking the harbour and out to the distant Atlantic Ocean. It was a panorama that Patrick knew quite well, and it could be freely seen by any spy from the top of Citadel Hill, the historic fort that dominates Halifax.
The captain watched as the slim young man, with his cap correctly under one arm and his left hand gloved, clicked his heels.
“Welcome aboard, young MacQueen,” said the captain, rising and extending his hand. “I know your parents—how are they?”
This instantaneous coming together of worlds was quite familiar to old West Indian hands and it brought a shaft of joy to Patrick’s heart. He searched his memory for this senior officer’s identity and quietly cursed himself for having neglected to inquire. “They are quite well, sir,” he replied hesitantly.
The captain knew the dilemma and smiled. “I served on the Queen,” he said. “You were with us in ‘thirty-nine, as I recall. I had a drink with your father at the Yacht Club just before he left Bermuda—due to a death in the family, I think? Please, stand easy and take that chair.”
Patrick sat down, erectly and correctly. His mind was torn from the surrounding preparations for war and refocused on the memory of his little sister running naked down a sandy beach. He shook his head, and the captain came back into view. “My little sister,” he said. “That would have been nineteen thirty-eight, sir.”
“Yes, I recall it now,” said the captain. “I am sorry, but it’s all sad history now. We have a job to do here and we must get on with it. Do you know anything of our operation?”
“No, sir,” admitted Patrick. “I don’t recall it as a subject at Naval College. I should have learned more at Sydney but I expected an appointment to go to sea.”
The captain slowly shook his head and smiled with tolerance. “You’ll get further here,” he said. “There are more important things than watery graves. Confidentially, I have a problem. If you can solve it I will get you to sea.”
Patrick made a brief scan of his past, but he couldn’t imagine how this imposing officer could have a problem that he might solve. He waited silently and felt a creeping gnaw of suspicion that he was being painted into a corner.
“We have an adjunct here,” continued the captain, “called the Naval Boarding Service. They are all good men and they do good work inspecting the merchant ships for sabotage, defusing trouble, and making intelligence reports. But they are untidy, and the admiral has complained to me personally. Their boss is an old merchantman himself who writes poetry. They are a salty bunch, but I want you to get in there and smarten them up. Can you do that?”
“I was in the army for a while, sir,” replied Patrick, rather pleased with the prospect of putting that experience to some use. “I will certainly give it a try.”
“Glad to hear it. This little chat is confidential,” said the captain. He rose and walked around the corner of the desk. “No one should suspect our little agreement, and you will have your choice of ships when the time comes. Just leave that to me.”
Patrick rose, and the captain opened the door. “Miss Stevenson,” he called. “This is Sub-lieutenant MacQueen, an old friend from Bermuda days. He will be serving with the Boarding Service—would you take him in hand and introduce him about?”
The main office was large, with six desks aligned along the walls. Smaller offices led off this at right angles; across the corridor was the office of the Naval Boarding Service. It was hardly impressive and used just by the officers. The boarding parties had their quarters near an old sail loft in the dockyard. Patrick was introduced around the offices; the place had a remarkably international and cosmopolitan air. The French baron looked like the film star Paul Henreid, and the Dutchman was an affable burgher from The Hague. One of the English officers had steady eyes and the look of raw intellect; others were scholarly or reserved, but they were all friendly. The ladies were busy but obviously handpicked, and there was the sense of high priority about these surroundings. They were the lubricants between the pride of the navy and the stubbornness of the merchant marine. Without them, the whole show would seize up…and they were quietly aware of it. They were redundant in peacetime, but Patrick hardly remembered those days.
The Naval Boarding Service had been tacked onto this apparatus to provide on-the-spot and mobile customer service. They travelled by harbour craft in groups of six men and an officer, visiting the ships anchored in Bedford Basin or greeting them at the harbour’s entrance. They climbed up and down rope ladders, inspected cargoes, and broke up fights. They distributed aid packages and fur vest coats, and got the latest news of U-boat tactics. They were butted by goats on Greek tramp steamers and threatened by Lascar stokers. The new American Liberty ships were a revelation in comfortable seagoing travel, but they all took their chances with the vast ocean and the enemy below. The ratings were armed with Smith and Wesson .45 revolvers and carried miniature searchlights. Their bell-bottom trousers were tucked into short web leggings, and they wore hooded duffle coats against the cold of the coming winter. No one would get a medal for this work, but it had to be done—and everyone in Halifax remembered when a munitions ship blew up in 1917 and demolished half the city. Some of these ships carried a cargo of phosgene gas, which would be even more deadly, and they all carried high explosives of one kind or another.
Bedford Basin could accommodate over one hundred ships. They sailed one at a time through the Narrows and below the Wellington Barracks—now named the Nelson Barracks—past the dockyard, and then through the anti-submarine net. They sailed forth between Fort Sandwich and past McNabs Island to assemble in convoy and head across the Atlantic. The convoys attracted U-boats like a magnet, and their protection versus aggressive counteraction were the classic horns of a dilemma. It was never really solved. There were no dreamers among the men who manned these ships, and their captains were a salty, hard-bitten bunch of professional seamen. Their opinion of the navy, with its high-handed ways, was not very great, and they obeyed orders with a grim resignation. The troopships sailed fast and alone, giants of the sea that dwarfed everything in sight.
The dockyard where the boarding parties had their quarters in the old sail loft was officially HMCS Stadacona. The leading seaman in charge was an old rumrunner from Lunenburg, and he still walked with a swaying gait. Most of them had been to sea, either in the navy or the merchant marine, and they were quite content with this relatively comfortable berth on the beach. The overall boss was a proselytizing lieutenant commander who belonged to the Oxford Group. His executive officer was a Norwegian with a temporary rank of lieutenant in the RCNVR. Under them were two more lieutenants, three sub-lieutenants (including Patrick MacQueen), and approximately thirty ratings. They started work in the morning and, bar emergencies, went home at night. They lived in scattered rented rooms in the over-packed city, and only a few had wives. A good percentage of them were maritimers, but they came from across the country.
They were unpromising as an elite.
60
Patrick MacQueen found himself a room near the east coast Naval College HMCS Kings. It was on the campus of Dalhousie University and impressive enough, with stone ionic pillars and a parade square out front; but it wasn’t a patch on the castle at Royal Roads. His new quarters were in a relatively modern little house, which was owned by a recently married couple who had converted the basement into a bedroom. He was lucky to get it, but he made them nervous by his very presence, and they were obsessively tidy. He had no guests, and he never once stepped into their little drawing room, where they seemed to spend every evening in front of a small fireplace. He would quietly go down the narrow stairway to the small bedroom and then they would stir and go to bed above him. They tolerated him merely for the rent.
In the early mornings, Patrick would board a crowded tramcar that clanged its way down Spring Garden Road and along
Barrington Street. He got off just above the headquarters building, and walked downhill through a guarded side gate, had breakfast in a busy officer’s tearoom, and then went up to the office. The window looked down on the gate and up the hill. Like clockwork, the admiral would then descend the hill on foot for his daily constitutional, inevitably astounding sailors with his gold-braided cap and gold-topped cane. They would jump into the snowbanks and freeze at the salute as his one-man parade passed by. He had a ruddy, cheerful face and was weighted by many pressing problems, not the least of which was the German admiral at Brest, who had been poring over charts for hours.
Patrick often walked to Admiralty House for luncheon when things were slack. There were white table clothes and silver trophies, a billiard room, and a bar. Sub-lieutenants were usually relegated to a gun room, but here they were free to mingle with their betters, as long as they didn’t become a nuisance. One of the more colourful denizens of both these buildings was Commander Prentice, RCN, an Englishman who always wore a rimless monocle. One day, Patrick almost blundered into him in the hall between his office and the NCSO. The commander was stalking along the corridor and carrying a sword to preside at a court martial. Patrick was carrying an inkwell, to have it refilled. For a few brief seconds he thought that he was going to be eaten alive.
The actual captain of the dockyard had his offices in a square brick building situated near the main gate. It had angling stone steps; below was the parade square and the reviewing stand under the White Ensign, common to the navies of the old empire. The gunnery school was near this, and that is where the spit-and-polish existed, and where parades were held. Destroyers and corvettes and Bangor minesweepers were sometimes banked three deep at the jetties along the waterfront. They were the escorts of the Triangle Run from New York to St. John’s, in addition to serving other assorted purposes, like sweeping the harbour approaches of mines or, conversely, laying minefields. Some of the destroyers were old four-stackers donated by the US Navy in return for naval bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and elsewhere. Not having a navy of its own, it is uncertain what Newfoundland got out of the deal.
In the midst of all this, Sub-lieutenant Patrick MacQueen tried to assess Captain Bayard’s problem. He took some trips with the crews on the harbour craft, which had wheelhouses, engine housing, and an open deck in the stern made of grey-painted wood. They climbed the ladders and performed their duties with a casual and high-spirited attitude, but they were sloppy and ill kempt. Every sailor received a monthly allowance to keep himself rigged-out properly at inexpensive naval stores, but MacQueen assumed these fellows also must have been building private bank accounts. He also detected that this job had certain perks. Delivering all those packages of fur coats and other goodies generated goodwill, and that is a language common to all sailors, merchant navy or otherwise. An innocent but interesting little trade seemed to have developed, and they all smoked American cigarettes.
MacQueen could not understand why the captain of the dockyard lived in spit-and-polish splendour, yet the admiral of the entire show had one commissionaire at the entrance. The body of men was here to put a touch of pomp on the cake, and now Patrick felt that he had the lever to inspire them. In their present shape, any sergeant major could expire on the spot and none of the other officers would choose to notice it. MacQueen had a private chat with the leading seaman. The upshot of this was that the perks would be overlooked, but they had to parade every morning under the admiral’s window to be inspected by the duty officer.
MacQueen put them through a few trial runs before exposing them to the entire headquarters staff. The leading seaman never conquered the necessary gait, but his version was picturesque and added a salty touch. Patrick ordered tins of Blanco and boot polish, and checked each man meticulously. He had been subjected to that so much himself that he knew every trick in the book: whether boots had been polished or just wiped; the length of hair; the tilt of the cap; and where the thumbs rested alongside the trousers. The brass was shined and the gaiters Blancoed, and the men straightened their shoulders and began to admire themselves. They marched crisply to the harbour craft and became the favourites of official photographers and the press. They fell in smartly on the merchant ships, saluted the ensigns and quarterdecks, and still brought the goodies.
MacQueen felt rather sad when the admiral summoned them while the Norwegian was duty officer. However, anything can be done if one doesn’t care who gets the credit—only the captain knew, and he couldn’t reveal it and subvert the lieutenant commander.
A short time later MacQueen thought that he had seen a ghost. The old admiral from his boyhood days in Bermuda walked out the door of the captain’s office. Shortly after, a buzzer buzzed from the same room and MacQueen tapped lightly on his door.
“Come in,” said the captain. “Ah, MacQueen! Did you see that officer who just left my office?”
“Why yes, sir,” answered Patrick. “Wasn’t that Admiral Drax?”
The captain smiled broadly and beamed. “Before you go running off to be a hero, I am entertaining two admirals at my house tonight—or should I say it’s your old house. Get a staff car and pick them up at nine—do you remember the address?”
“It’s on Connaught Avenue, sir,” answered Patrick. He was beginning to lose track of things and had to concentrate.
“Right!” said the captain. “Go right down to the admiral’s secretary and borrow a set of aiguillettes to hang from your shoulder. I want to show our guests that we can do things properly here. Use my name and try to get a decent car. You’ll be with them for a couple of days—just be helpful and don’t tell jokes. Incidentally, I told the admiral, who is now a convoy commodore, that you are with us. He remembered you as a small boy. The other admiral is doing an intelligence survey, so his conversation may be hush-hush. Understand?”
“Of course, sir, I am honoured,” replied Patrick.
“Tit for tat,” laughed the captain. “Now get dressed up and don’t disgrace me…which I know you won’t.”
Patrick hurried down the corridor to the admiral’s wing of the headquarters building. The quantity of gold braid on various uniform sleeves seemed to increase as he approached, and his own single wavy stripe seemed to diminish. He was entitled to be there, however, and he was not an unfamiliar figure, as he was usually seen hurrying back and forth to the harbour craft or inspecting his modest troop in front of everyone. The admiral’s secretary was a three-ring commander, who smiled at this impudent request. However, he knew that the naval control officer always had a reason for doing things, so he draped the aiguillettes around Patrick’s left shoulder. This uniform was not equipped for them, so it took a bit of stitch work. He was presented with the case and warned not to get them hooked in car doors or young lady’s jewellery.
Aiguillettes were originally the tethering rope for a lord’s horse. The squire to the lord had to be very careful about tethering his master’s most precious possession, so he would loop the tether over one shoulder—and that became his badge of office. In the navy, these officers are known as flag lieutenants, or universally as aides-de-camp. The reasons that they are selected vary, but, as they are junior and intimate, the selection is often on the basis of a family connection. A little pre-knowledge can avoid many disasters, both official and social. They are regarded as members of the household, but familiarity is unwelcome and discretion must be absolute. The aide-de-camp smooths the path, removes obstacles, and finalizes arrangements; he must be presentable and, preferably, modest. Ideally, he would be unambitious, but that is asking too much of any young officer. Patrick’s feudal nature cheered.
Admiral Drax, now recalled as commodore, had three hyphens in his name; his brother was an Irish peer. When Patrick had first seen him, his flagship was the cruiser HMS Norfolk, and he had seemed to young Patrick to be a virtual lord of the ocean seas. Here he was now, back again, fighting the grimy battle of the convoys. He was noble, rich, and cultured with everything at home. As his duty, he had c
hosen the cold, windswept Atlantic at an age when most men think only of their infirmities. So Patrick’s admiration was not misplaced, and one’s choice of boyhood heroes is of paramount importance. The particular figures etched in Patrick’s mind were three distinct visions: a drawing of Sir Galahad standing in armour beside his horse’s head, which was the endpaper of a series of leather-bound books in his father’s library; from a history book, a painting by Sir Charles Petrie titled “The Vigil”, of a knight holding a sword in front of an altar and wearing a brocade mantle; and the sight of Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Earle-Drax standing on the deck of HMS Norfolk as he waited to greet Patrick’s parents. The sun had glittered off the shining brass, and the bosun’s mate piped them aboard. These are hardly the images of a firebrand warrior; they are perhaps romantic, but they point the way towards duty. Surely a man’s offer of his life is not diminished by noble motives, no matter how romantic?
Patrick undertook his new assignment with a certain élan, although he remained unfulfilled in his heart. The thought that his old regiment had not yet gone into action calmed this vague feeling of guilt. But the lads who were flying Hurricanes—Patrick’s first choice—had seen definitive action and paid the price. One of his first cousins was buried in Devon, having crashed into the earth. Rommel had taken a beating at the Second Battle of El Alamein, and the British and Americans had landed in Morocco and Algiers against sporadic resistance from Vichy France. Japan had conquered Burma, the Axis powers seemed stretched to the limit, and the Battle of Stalingrad was raging to its appalling climax. The Murmansk convoys had been recommenced after the disaster of convoy PQ-17, when many ships carrying badly needed supplies were destroyed. This included twenty-two freighters, one rescue ship, and the fleet oiler. Down with them went 3,350 motor vehicles, 430 tanks, 210 bomber aircraft, and 99,316 tonnes of general cargo. Such losses would have constituted a very large land battle indeed, to say nothing of the men that perished in those icy seas. The Royal Canadian Navy was committed to many convoy battles, including ON-115 and ON-127 in the mid-Atlantic. The crucial phase was dawning when the balance might tilt, and no one thought much about ideology.
The Broken Sword Page 26