The Bermuda was ordered in to Algiers a little later, I think to provide AA and radar support until these had been landed. The big concrete jetties and wharves of the modern harbour contrasted with a picturesque backdrop of cascading Moorish houses giving way in turn to larger blocks behind, reminiscent of Oran but on a larger scale. As things turned out we were only there for a short time but it was not without incident, especially for me.
As the ship approached an apparently deserted jetty, sand-coloured and shimmering in the African sun, it was not known how friendly the natives would be. In the event no-one appeared and I was slipped in a whaler with a berthing party, to land ahead and secure our hawsers to the bollards ashore. A heaving line thrown from the fo’c’s’le was missed by the berthing party and fell back. The next was caught and the perspiring seamen ran away with it, dragging the big 6-inch manilla headrope to which it was attached, through the water from the approaching bow. The end appeared like a brown serpent out of the oily scum and reared slowly up to a bollard on the quay as the men strained. It caught on the lip of the quay. Hands reached down but could not get a purchase. A swell began to take the ship’s bow out.
Supplementing my own exhortations, a frustrated bellow from the First Lieutenant on the fo’c’s’le rubbed it in that seconds were now worth a guinea a time. Encouraging the men with all the eloquence I possessed, I became vaguely conscious of a similar commotion going on further down the jetty. Half my mind continued to query who on earth it might be; we certainly had not landed a second party. The head rope capitulated with a rush and leapt up to embrace the bollard, depositing half a dozen men in a blasphemous heap. I turned to look down the quay.
A very tall British Army officer and four soldiers in full battle kit had nearly got a wire on abreast the stern. ‘Heave! Heave! Heave!’ came the cry and then the peculiar Naval terminology: ‘One, two, six—Now!’ On went the wire.
The officer straightened up and rubbed his hands on his thighs as I advanced. He pushed back his tin hat and grinned at my look of amazement. It was Whitting, who had been a Midshipman in the Nelson and with me in the Air Defence Position when the bomber had attacked the Ark Royal. Of course he came aboard and told me how he had worked the oracle (he always wished he had joined the Army) and obtained a transfer to the Royal Artillery. The story has a sad ending as I heard not long afterwards that he had been killed, possibly in an early engagement with the Germans from Tunisia who were not slow to react to Torch.
Next stop was Bone, 300 miles to the east of Algiers. It fell to an assault from the sea the next day and thence we were ordered to support the small force concerned, securing alongside a mole. The Bermuda had two days’ uncomfortable sojourn in this inhospitable harbour, roasted by the hot sun and nearly by man-made combustion as well. The Luftwaffe had begun to make up for lost time and was attacking targets both ashore and afloat without respite. Being only 250 miles from Sicily and 150 from Sardinia, it was not surprising that we at Bone were bombed continuously while alongside. Without the ability to manoeuvre this was unpleasant.
During one attack someone indicated a Ju 88 dive bomber right over us that appeared to have escaped attention. At the same moment the sun flashed on its wings as it tipped over and came down. The Captain was walking about on the quarterdeck. As I watched from the top of my turret a large black bomb separated in leisurely fashion from the aircraft which then pulled out and away. Feeling instinctively for the edge of the little hatch and easing my legs through, I satisfied myself that the bomb was in fact coming straight for us and then yelled to the Captain to take cover. He dived under the overhang of ‘Y’ turret and I retired into my own, closing the hatch. After 15 seconds nothing had happened. Only our 4-inch and close range weapons continued in a cacophony of constant noise. I waited another five seconds and then climbed up again. All was well. Below, the Captain crawled out and dusted his trousers. He looked up at me with a look that would have frozen an iceberg but I was busy scanning the horizon … The bomb was either a dud or it had overshot and landed in the water the other side of the mole.
The nights were fine with a bright moon which brought intensification of the attacks. Our tormentors could see us fairly easily but we could seldom see them. Guns was equal to this, however. He gave every gun in the ship a special position of elevation and training so that virtually no area of the sky was left uncovered. At the words ‘blind barrage’ they opened up and continued to fire at the highest possible rate until he pressed the cease-fire gong. The result was most impressive, probably not least when seen from the air, as twelve 6-inch, eight 4-inch (firing every three seconds) and a dozen pom-poms and machine-guns started up. The 4-inch and 6-inch kept up a continuous pattern of bursts above the ship, towards which tracer from the lighter guns ascended in a fan of animated light. Expenditure of ammunition being heavy, the ‘Bona blind barrage’ was not unleashed unthinkingly, but it was good for morale in frustrating circumstances and we certainly never got hit.
Guns went about in a sort of ecstacy during this entertainment.
Not so happy at first was the PMO, who, as Wardroom wine caterer, suffered acute exasperation because there was plenty of wine ashore but no bottles. However, every empty he could find was pressed into service and we eventually left well replenished.
By this time many German and some Italian submarines had been concentrated on both sides of the Straits of Gibrahar and were having considerable success among all the targets coming and going (including the unfortunate escort carrier Avenger which blew up with almost total loss). But with all the Torch troops ashore and no sign of the Italian Navy, it must have been decided that the original Force H was again sufficient in the western Mediterranean, because the ships on loan from the Home Fleet, including Bermuda, now started regretfully back for their northern mists.
The ship’s North African foray had been a success. Hazardous experiences shared and suitably dealt with always knit a ship’s company together better than months of less active occupation and, although our actions had been minor and brief, all in Bermuda now had their tails well up. In particular the Captain’s handling of the dangerous torpedo attacks were very telling.
There was a pause at Gibraltar and I went for a leg-stretch to the new airfield. What a lot had happened since the days of Pierrot and Rocambole (among other things Madagascar had just fallen to the Marine General Sir Robert Sturges, my original patron.) It seldom pays to revisit places of happy memory; there was not one familiar object among the huts and piles of stores, only the rook-like birds still circled from the crevices high above. But my eyes were on the distant Spanish hills. The dust rising in the foreground seemed to come from a multicoloured group of men and horses as they pounded into the last turn and the sudden roar that went up came from a thousand frenzied throats…
We were back at Scapa by the end of November. Paravanes (PVs) were often streamed when the water was sufficiently shallow for mines, usually leaving or approaching the Flow. One such occasion was memorable. I was in charge on the fo’c’s’le and we were recovering PVs, torpedo-like obejcts that, towed on wires from the bow, steered outwards each side. (If this arrowhead configuration fouled a mine the latter’s mooring wire would slide out to be severed by cutters on the PV; the mine would rise to the surface and be sunk by rifle fire.) Recovery necessitated raising the towing point to within about 15 feet of the deck for a man to lean over the side and fish for the wire with a hook dangling on another wire. This could be tricky as the hook would revolve and was seldom pointing the right way at the crucial moment. I had a most experienced leading hand on the job, but there was a lot of motion on the ship and he was having no luck. After several attempts the PCO (Principal Control Officer, a Lieutenant Commander in operational control) on the bridge shouted out to hurry up. Moments later there was no success and another shout. I ignored it as chivvying only had a bad effect and there was nothing to be done but contain oneself in patience while the unfortunate man did his best. When there was a third an
d louder exhortation from the bridge I lost my temper— not a thing I am prone to. I turned and yelled ‘Why not come down here and bloody well do it yourself!’
There were gasps of admiration (or possibly anticipation!) from the men around, but the words were hardly out of my mouth before I realised what I had said. Leaning over the side a minute later I felt a tap on my back and the PCO, having accepted my invitation, said ‘Go to your cabin—you are under arrest!’
There followed an unpleasant hour or so, awaiting my fate. Eventually the Captain’s messenger arrived with a bit of folded paper. It said ‘Lieutenant Brooke resume your duties’ and I never heard another word about it. Later I apologised to the ‘two and a half concerned and formed the impression that someone had endorsed the sentiment, though not of course the substance, of my remark.
Flight deck incidents.
Too high and too fast.
Through the barrier.
Tragedy only days before the end of the war. Lieutenant (A) Anderson ran out of fuel only yards from the ship.
Author, on left, helps fit a strop before towing a damaged Corsair away.
‘Just a horrible line’ (see page 252).
Formidableseen from a destroyer shortly after the first kamikaze.
Seen from Indomitable after the second hit.
As already discovered in the Nelson, Douglas and Prince of Wales, life ashore at Scapa was not noted for its night spots. For the first 24 hours after a spell at sea one was glad to relax off duty; thereafter, though there was the odd film or live show in a capital ship and personally I was lucky with fencing or drawing, boredom inevitably set in. In these conditions various excesses and pranks all helped to keep one sane. Two or three stick in my mind.
It was a rare guest-night, meaning boiled shirts, the Marine band and a special menu. I was Officer of the Day; in the bad weather prevailing this usually meant eschewing the festivities to await morosely in one’s cabin a call to deal with some emergency, but there was a second anchor down and I had taken a chance. ‘Some hope’ said Sam Hesselgrave with mock malice.
The padre’s opening grace was hardly done when I became aware of a glistening oilskinned presence behind my chair. It was the Bo’s’n’s Mate. ‘The Officer of the Watch says the wind’s veering, Sir, and would you weigh the second anchor? There’s power on the capstan, the cable party’s been warned’ and, with a glance at my bow tie, ‘It’s blowin’ a gale.’ Torps said acidly ‘Counted your chickens!’ but I ignored him and retired with a scowl.
A few minutes later, a pale cone of torchlight took in a pair of boots and a few dripping links of the cable as it grumbled home with interminable slowness. I stood with shoulders hunched against the rain except when sudden gusts made me grab at the rail or put a steadying hand on the steel deck. Rivulets of rusty water chased the slope of the fo’c’s’le. Nobody spoke. Now and again came a clank from far below as a coil subsided in the cable locker. There was a brief tussle when the cable quivered, giving inch by inch, and then sagging surrender, accompanied by a curious ‘flop’; the anchor was aweigh. I moved my torch. A yellow starfish lay on its back, small suckers contracting and expanding. The toe of a seaboot made towards it. ‘Wait’, I said, and to everyone’s surprise bent down and put the starfish in my pocket. The men glanced at me curiously and left it at that.
Dinner had reached the savoury stage when I sat down again.
‘Special for you, Sir.’
Sam viewed the oddity set before him with mixed feelings, of which distrust was uppermost. Some joke or a galley masterpiece? Mounted on a piece of toast, it presented a not unpleasant coppery top that might well have been owed to culinary art. Conversation had died and all eyes were upon him; for better or worse he made his decision. At the touch of a fork in the middle of its spineless back the starfish gave a convulsive heave and twined one feeler round the implement. Torps recoiled and what he said was fortunately drowned in a roar of laughter.
The gale increased during the night with attendant complications, and I did not peel off my sodden uniform until 02:00. Saluting the end of a rotten day with a long sigh, I put my hands on the pipe running along the deckhead and with practised ease swung up and into my bunk. Stretching luxuriously into its welcoming depths, I suddenly withdrew my legs and leapt out with a cry. A cold, clammy something had writhed at my touch. Throwing off the bedclothes, I was nearly sick, for still reposing on a piece of toast, but in a spreading pool of its own creation, sat the starfish.
For many days the ship was at sea which meant an accumulation of mail on return. Everyone was to be seen calling names, cursing their lot, or threading their way triumphantly out of the throng. The Chief Engineer had four letters, though two were bills; the Bo’s’n a package from his wife, and the Marine subaltern retired to a corner with three blue envelopes and a pink face. Torps attacked his parcel with undisguised enthusiasm. What could she have sent him? Interest was universal. Two coverings of brown and three of tissue paper were unfolded in silence except for the breathing of spectators. A layer of felt was revealed and everyone craned forward. It was lifted to produce sudden anxiety for the PMO, who thought Torps was going to have a stroke, for there at the bottom of the box, looking very depressed, was the starfish.
But Sam had the last laugh. I entered the Wardroom to see him confiding in a grinning group and to catch ‘… his cabin, he’ll never find it and it’s going to smell awful!’ They dispersed guiltily and the doubts started there. Every time I went into my cabin I sniffed; the habit grew and I began to sniff everywhere. It was a low blow to have retrieved the brown paper from Torp’s wastepaper basket to use again, but he was getting his own back. With the technicians at his disposal he could have done anything with wooden panels, deck covering … or had he done nothing? I never knew.
Another incident concerned Dickie Griffiths, the ‘Major’ of Marines, and Reg Harper-Smith, a young Paymaster Lieutenant. They would do a turn on guest nights which was invariably demanded as soon as the feats of physical prowess had begun to pall. It was of no profound wit, but a firm favourite due to the undoubted talent with which they carried it off. Portrayed were two exiles in ‘white man’s grave’ surroundings. One of them would describe his downfall, which turned out to have been caused by the other. The heart of the performance was that every so often a handclap would summon a well versed steward with a double gin. This, in reality only water, was lowered in one gulp, the actors becoming more and more ‘inebriated’ in the most hilarious fashion.
On the occasion in question, however, someone went ‘back stage’ and to the terror of the steward, substituted the real thing, neat, for the water which was ready ranged in a dozen glasses. It was expensive, but worth it.
The scene began. The first handclap heralded the first glass. When both had recovered from the ensuing spasms there was just the hint of a pause, as they realised what was in store. One cocked an eyebrow at the other, signalling ‘Does the show go on?’ To their credit, at least most agreed so, it did; handclap after handclap, gin after gin. The consternation of the steward was pitiful to see as he bore in salver after lethal salver, but among the audience there was only one who realised that the antics which were keeping us speechless with laughter were only too genuine—until both passed out.
The ‘Major’ was all right, but poor Harper-Smith became quite ill, with, presumably, alcoholic poisoning. It was ten years before I found myself again with Dickie Griffiths, and owned up to being the perpetrator of their predicament.
Another of the redoubtable Major’s party tricks was eating glass. He would take a tumbler in his teeth, bite off a largish section and chew it with no apparent ill effects. I saw this done by someone else later— with no possibility of fraud—and am still astonished by it.
‘No 1’ (The First Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander R.P.S. Grant) also had a trick which was equally popular though unfortunately he only did it once. The object was to jerk the table cloth out from under a mass of cutlery, china and glass, w
ithout disturbing same. He gripped the cloth, took an almighty heave and projected the whole lot into a corner of the Wardroom with a sound like our shells bursting on Fort d’Estrée!
All that could be said for Christmas 1942 at Scapa was that it was better than its Malayan predecessor. The last day of the old year saw us make a rush departure from the Flow in company with the C-in-C in KG V and the latter’s new sister Howe, Admiral Tovey had just received reports of a highly successful action in defence of the eastbound Russian convoy JW51A but was hurrying to provide heavy support should the German ships return to the attack.
Two or three major warships could annihilate a number of merchant vessels in minutes, yet to keep an adequate defending force at sea on the offchance was to risk it running out of fuel when most wanted. With the progress of the slow convoys predictable to the enemy once sighted by his aircraft or U-boats, Admiral Tovey’s was no easy task. The Tirpitz had stepped into the massive seaboots of her dead twin Bismarck and resuscitated the latter’s power to threaten; so much so that in July an erroneous belief that the Tirpitz was at sea had caused the First Sea Lord to scatter convoy PQ17, with the result that 23 out of 36 ships were lost to U-boats or aircraft attacks. Success or failure was a finely balanced matter indeed. I think it was to underline this before our first proper convoy operation that the cruiser Admiral came on board from his flagship Kent, when we returned to Scapa after cruising uneventfully a thousand miles to the north. He was Rear-Admiral Turtle’ Hamilton, my first Captain in the Prince of Wales. Standing on the quarterdeck capstan—he was very small—to promise ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ he was sure there would be a repetition of the last attack. Certainly everything pointed to it when we sailed on about January 20 to cover convoy JW52 to Russia.
Alarm Starboard!: A Remarkable True Story of the War at Sea Page 28