The Broken Sword

by R. Mingo Sweeney

  61

  The drawing room on Connaught Avenue had a touch of Noel Coward on that evening of the last month of 1942. Halifax was buried in snow, and some feeble Christmas lights were bravely twinkling in a few frozen and ice-patterned windows. Banks of snow were piled on the sidewalks, between which yellow tramcars defiantly clanged their way, emitting blue sparks from the trolley wires overhead and passing like lighted galleons in the night. The Haligonian scene could have been duplicated in Glasgow or Archangel or Oslo, like a dreary overexposed black-and-white photograph.

  The wheels of the black staff car spun and the chains clanked, but the driver managed to get the car parked out front. Patrick then climbed over the snowbank and up the shovelled walk to his old house. A steward in a white jacket opened the door, and the captain’s wife offered her hand. Patrick surrendered his greatcoat carefully, adjusted the aiguillettes, and patted his hair before the hall mirror. A winding staircase led upstairs, and the dining room to his left was still candlelit, and indicated the inevitable ruins of a good dinner. Mrs. Bayard smiled bravely, like the survivor of a great ordeal.

  “I am sure that you know your way around,” she said, glancing at the golden aiguillettes. “Our guests are in here.” She gestured and then twitched nervously as the steward dropped a cup in the kitchen.

  Mrs. Bayard led the way through open double glass-paned doors into the drawing room. Patrick’s heart stopped for a moment when he saw the three gold-braided figures sitting under standing lamps and looking at him. It was worse than the Naval Board, and they had looked like a pricey firing squad.

  “Sub-lieutenant MacQueen,” said Mrs. Bayard with a soft smile. She touched his sleeve reassuringly, and he felt an urge to kiss her. She wore a long, lilac-coloured dress.

  “MacQueen, you remember Admiral Drax?” said the captain. The admiral extended his hand, and Patrick could feel the long bones and the fingertips pressing against the back of his hand for a moment.

  “…And Admiral Manesty,” continued the captain. Patrick diverted his eyes from the bristling brows of Admiral Drax and shook the other hand. This gentleman was more rosy, with a slight glint of amusement at the awkward young aide. Then Patrick shook the captain’s hand as a formality. None of these officers had stirred from his seat, and this little scene was momentous only to the sub-lieutenant. The others had more important things on their minds.

  “Your father and mother are well, I hear?” asked Admiral Drax. He drained a glass of port and struggled to rise out of the low stuffed chair. Patrick resisted the impulse to assist him.

  “Thank you, sir,” he answered. “They are quite well.”

  “We must be going,” said Admiral Drax, straightening his back with his right hand. His cuff bore the single broad stripe of a commodore now, topped by the star-shaped executive loop of the Royal Naval Reserve. The farewells were clipped and British as the steward and the captain assisted them into their greatcoats. MacQueen ushered them into the back of the car and then climbed in beside the driver. The veranda of the house was lighted, and the captain waved through the frosty night from the top of the steps. Patrick delivered the two admirals to the lobby of the Nova Scotian Hotel, where he was asked to report again at eight A.M. He saluted, and the two old men stepped into an elevator. He was still standing there when the doors closed. Admiral Manesty still seemed amused.

  There was no possible way that Patrick MacQueen could immediately absorb what happened in the following few days, and even the most professional Gestapo agent could never have gotten him to tell the truth. He shadowed the two high-ranking friends everywhere, and they seemed to be tireless. They had different assignments, of course, which only complicated matters, but it all related to the one overriding concern: the Battle of the Atlantic. Admiral Drax’s convoy was assembling in Bedford Basin, but his years of experience in the North Atlantic and the West Indies was wisely being plumbed by the Canadians, who were planning a training base in Bermuda. Admiral Manesty’s intelligence operations extended down the eastern seaboard, across the ocean, and up to the Arctic. They were both in transit, and they were being squeezed for every drop before they vanished. It was all surprisingly unofficial, yet hectic, and with certain unavoidable formalities. Without his decorative aiguillette, Patrick MacQueen would have been impotent. But with that on his shoulder, he could commandeer virtually anything. At this hectic pace, he needed every ounce of help that he could muster—and even with that he frequently had to improvise. Everything seemed to conspire against him, including the weather. It snowed, and the streets were a congested mess. The admirals changed plans mid-stream, the drivers were short-tempered, and one doorman threatened to have him arrested. Even the first night’s experience was unique—the two admirals seemed to require no sleep, but dozed in the staff car or nodded during intervals. They had a level thirst for pink gins and ate at erratic hours.

  The entire panorama of the battle was spilt out before MacQueen, but he couldn’t spare it a glance. He was constantly shuffling files, or making telephone calls, or searching for transport. He heard no voices in the forest here, and the couple with whom he stayed were in a state of perpetual alarm at his extraordinary hours.

  Patrick MacQueen’s social life had always been a disaster, but now it was totally wrecked. He had some prosperous relatives in the city with whom he occasionally dined, but he now forgot his obligations, probably to their relief. His hardest struggle was to appear calm at the right moments, which might be when merely opening a door. He finally put Admiral Manesty and his small staff on a train and arranged for the best harbour craft to take Admiral Drax to his ship in Bedford Basin.

  They boarded the harbour craft from the icy dockyard late in the evening. Snow drifted relentlessly down in large, careless flakes, and the admiral turned up the collar of his greatcoat. A rating in a duffle coat and sea boots reached across and steadied him as he stepped onto the slippery deck, followed by Patrick MacQueen. The lines were cast off and the helmsman revved the motor as the heavy wooden boat swung out from the jetty and disappeared into the curtain of snow. MacQueen opened the door, and the admiral stepped into the wheelhouse.

  “It’s a rotten night, sir,” said the helmsman. He swung the wheel and they circled astern of a bank of bedraggled minesweepers with angled gear poking up into the storm like broken crosses. These helmsmen could have operated blindfolded, but the ferry chugged between Halifax and Dartmouth, and there were many other moving hazards in the harbour. The admiral sat slowly on a padded bench and MacQueen stood with his back to the door, looking out into the storm. The instrument lights in the wheelhouse were dim, and the searchlight useless on a night like this. They slowly proceeded through the Narrows. In Bedford Basin, there were one hundred ships preparing to hoist their anchors and follow one another to their fate. The admiral’s ship was not under his command; he was the commodore of the convoy. He was housed in the old captain’s cabin behind the bridge—and there he would stay for the voyage. Everyone obeyed his orders, the latest of which were sealed in an attaché case under MacQueen’s arm. In an emergency, such as an attack by a U-boat wolf pack, he would attempt to coordinate with the senior officer of the escorts, who was aboard a destroyer.

  The cargo of this ship was lethal, but that did not bother the admiral. He had sailed with many lethal cargoes and he figured it was better than dying in bed. His head nodded in the warm wheelhouse, whose windows were a sheet of white.

  They passed some freighters that loomed out of the storm. Another harbour craft narrowly avoided them, and MacQueen recognized the huddled figures of a boarding party. They passed and vanished like a shadow. The helmsman checked his squared chart, touched the wheel a bit to starboard, and threw the gear into neutral before slowly reversing the engines. As if by magic, the tall, riveted side of a ship appeared alongside them, broken by a rope ladder dangling to the surface of the water. A hooded rating grappled for this with a boathook from the bow as the helmsman eased the motor. MacQueen touched the admiral
lightly on the shoulder. “It’s your ship, sir,” he said.

  Sub-lieutenant MacQueen preceded the admiral up the ladder then reached back to help him. He was having a struggle, but with a moment’s rest, his head came over the rail and he was aboard. One of his signalmen greeted him with a salute then scrambled over the side to get his gear. It wasn’t much, and it was passed hand to hand up the ladder and onto the snow-covered deck. Sounds of sailors at a winch on the fo’c’sle penetrated the dark winter night, along with the rumble and call of the ship’s horns and the clanking of cables. Everything was being battened down and fired up to get this massive collection under way. Snow-covered Sherman tanks were chained to the decks; beneath their feet were supplies for a small army. Patrick accompanied the admiral to his quarters, with its snug berth and dimly lit chart table. A signalman brought two mugs of tea.

  “Thank you, MacQueen,” said the admiral, “and give my respects to your parents, who I am sure my wife has joined.” Lady Drax had been a particular favourite of Patrick’s mother.

  Patrick etched the profile of this craggy old warrior in his mind at that moment. He traced the hawk nose and the thin lips and the deep crevices in the cheeks and marked them in acid on his memory. The thought of leaving this man and going home to a comfortable bed was almost more than he could bear.

  “I wish that I could go with you, sir,” said Patrick, like a boy being left behind by his parents at school.

  The admiral smiled for a moment, glanced at this young colonial, and thought briefly that the empire might have a future after all. “I understand,” he said, “but we each have a job to do. I will say goodbye now, as there is much that I have to do.”

  They shook hands and MacQueen left. He climbed down from the bridge on icy steps in the dark, found his way to the railing, and climbed down the ladder to the harbour craft.

  “Cast off,” he said to the helmsman.

  The line was cast off and they swept past the giant anchor slowly rising from the bottom of the basin. The air resounded with dull sounds of action as this fleet of merchantmen stirred and the great propellers started to thrash the black water. The wind had risen, and snow whipped in sheets around the wheelhouse. Patrick MacQueen had never felt more forlorn. How many more tricks would he have to perform before the captain released him? The admiral was sailing once more out of his life as though he didn’t exist, and he felt like a bride left waiting at the church.

  “He seems like a good sort, for a commodore,” said the helmsman. He had seen them all.

  62

  The hardships of war in Halifax should not be exaggerated, and to many of its citizens, the war was merely an inconvenience. The chasm between them and the stunned, seasick, and lonely sailors looking for some solace was unbridgeable and eventually ended in anarchy. In the meantime, the battered survivors from yet another convoy battle, caked with ice and wallowing high out of the water, came straggling over the grey horizon for refuge. The Boarding Service met them outside the gate vessels, rode into harbour filling out intelligence forms, and then jumped right back onto the harbour craft to head out and meet another ship.

  Each one of these freighters or tankers or munitions ships was a world of its own. On one Swedish ship, Patrick found the captain in a steaming bathtub, with a bottle of schnapps half-finished on a board over his knees. He had been singing, and he told Patrick that he had gone to school with the son of a Swedish noblewoman who had married Captain Hermann Göering. The German aviator took the boys for rides in an open touring car and showed them his bullet wounds. Patrick wrote this story down on damp paper, over a glass of schnapps in the steaming bathroom, while using the toilet for a seat. The water sloshed in the bathtub and the Swede looked like a boiled whale. His ship had sailed in a German convoy through the Baltic before launching into the North Sea and eventually crossing the Atlantic to Halifax.

  The mountains of ice that covered both the escorts and the merchant ships were a vast hazard in these northern seas, and required constant chipping and hosing and prying to prevent the light ships of returning convoys from “turning turtle”. The troopships still sailed—and Patrick was almost carried overboard while executing one of Captain Bayard’s little tricks, delivering a last-minute change of orders. When he leapt off of the ship’s side onto the top of the harbour craft’s wheelhouse, he skidded on the ice and two sailors caught him as he was heading for the deep. The soldiers lining the ship’s railing were disappointed, but they cheered anyway. Not far away from that spot, high on a hill, lay the low silhouette of Fort Sandwich, where Patrick had sat and watched the first troopships leave over four years ago.

  At higher levels, the brass hats were reorganizing everything, and the Halifax admiral emerged as commander-in-chief Canadian Northwest Atlantic. It was the only theatre of war commanded by a Canadian, and it stretched from Iceland to the Azores, and over to include Bermuda. The Mid-Ocean Escort Groups were organized into “C” Groups for the Canadians and “B” Groups for the British, with the “A” Groups for the Americans, mostly withdrawn. The British and Canadian groups were somewhat intermingled, and they came under the commander-in-chief Western Approaches when they passed the mid-ocean mark. The escort bases were in St. John’s and Londonderry, Ireland. The Triangle Run escorts delivered the convoys to the mid-ocean escorts, who took them across.

  The Americans were late in organizing the convoy system, and their whole eastern seaboard was ablaze with burning tankers. In mid-ocean, the U-boat wolf packs concentrated in the air gap, where land-based assistance couldn’t reach. Some called it the “Black Pit”. Small aircraft carriers were being produced to try and close this. The U-boats got bloody noses in the spring of 1943, and most of them were withdrawn until a new strategy could be devised. It was an expensive victory. In Halifax, the new commander-in-chief was Rear Admiral L. W. Murray from Nova Scotia. Patrick thought that he would never get to sea.

  But then the captain released him. It is axiomatic in the services that if you do a good job you will be stuck continuing to do it, but this was a break. The lieutenant commander was indignant, but Patrick raced to the officer’s appointments office, where he was received by another lieutenant commander. An enormous diagram filled one wall, and on this was located the place of every officer under the admiral’s command.

  “Let me see now,” said the lieutenant commander, in an important voice that was quite justified. “Every new sub-lieutenant in the navy is clamouring to go to sea, but you have some seniority. I could squeeze you onto a destroyer—one of the four-stackers—on the Triangle run, but I think you’d have to berth in the wardroom. Their facilities are terrible.”

  Patrick sat in anguish.

  “Here we are,” said the lieutenant commander. “How about this one? Just out of refit and working-up in Pictou—a Flower-class corvette. She’s an old veteran and has seen lots of action.”

  “Where is she heading, sir?” asked Patrick, holding his breath.

  “Next stop St. John’s, and then over to Derry, I guess,” replied the lieutenant commander. “She needs a gunnery officer.”

  “That’s me,” said Patrick. “I think guns are beautiful—er—sir.” The remark slipped out. He momentarily recalled his talk with Sergeant Cyples an eternity ago in the West Nova Scotia Regiment.

  “Really?” asked the lieutenant commander skeptically. “Then you’re our boy. Here’s your chit. I’ll set the wheels moving. Take two days’ leave and get the hell up to Pictou. The duty harbour craft leaves the wharf at noon, so you will report to the captain of HMCS Fleur-de-Lis at thirteen-hundred hours on…what is today?”

  “Friday, sir.”

  “Yes, so you will be there on Monday. Good luck.”

  They shook hands, and Patrick felt as though he were casting off his lines. He would be away from the overwhelming frustrations of headquarters and Halifax and off to the serious business of defending the empire. He thought the name of the ship was great.

  He was embarrassed by the farewel
ls, and he hated himself for the joy he felt at seeing the last of all these fine and dedicated people. His landlord was delighted to see him go and planned to turn his room into a nursery for their awaited child. The boarding parties presented him with a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and the lieutenant commander gave him a signed book of his own poetry. The pleased captain shot him a conspiratorial wink, and then everyone forgot about him.

  Sub-lieutenant Patrick MacQueen boarded the crowded train in the CNR station beside the Nova Scotian Hotel where he had delivered the admirals. In three hours he would be in Truro, where his mother would meet the train. Their property in Bermuda had been sold, and she was now living with her parents at Rosemere. Caesar was there too, of course, snorting and kicking the walls, as usual.

  63

  Truro was a railway town and proudly called itself the “Hub of Nova Scotia”. The great Victorian brownstone station grandly proclaimed this status to everyone passing through, and there was no other way to go. There were a dozen parallel tracks in front of the station and a wide metal canopy over the concrete platform. Railroading was a way of life here, complete with its own sounds and symbols and unique courtesy. Even in wartime, when everything was strained to the limit, the railroaders were polite.

  Mrs. Eva MacQueen stood on the platform in a pale blue suit to await her son’s arrival. She had one hand on the top of her head, to keep the wide hat from blowing off, and she was speaking to the children who gathered around her wherever she went. It was a mysterious magnetism that she did not always appreciate, but she never turned any of them away.