In the Line of Fire (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  SS WESTWARD BAY TORPEDOED AND THEN ATTACKED BY GUNFIRE WHILST IN EASTBOUND CONVOY. DAMAGE SERIOUS AND AM DRIFTING WITHOUT POWER ON MAIN ENGINES. AM CARRYING CARGO OF MILITARY VEHICLES F0R THE MERSEY. ALSO HAVE ON BOARD SURVIVORS FROM HMS ABERDARE SUNK DURING U-BOAT ATTACK.

  Seymour’s face showed shock. Aberdare was a sister ship one of their own escort group who had accompanied them out from Scapa and then left to rendezvous with the eastbound convoy only a matter of days before. ‘God, if only we could have a real smack at those bloody U-boats…!’

  Robens said suddenly, ‘Doctor, sir!’

  ‘What?’ Seymour stared.

  ‘She reports picking up survivors, sir. She could have Aberdare’s doctor.’

  Seymour smashed a fist into a palm. ‘By Christ, you’re right! Yeoman, make: “have you a doctor aboard and if so can you put him aboard me for urgent operation”.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The signal was made; the reply came quickly: SURGEON-LIEUTENANT FROM ABERDARE ABOARD BUT ALL BOATS SHOT AWAY. CAN YOU COLLECT.

  ‘Answer yes,’ Seymour said crisply. He bent to the voice-pipe. ‘Cox’n, call away the seaboat’s crew and lowerers of the watch — at the double!’ In fact they always doubled, but the addition of the words would put an extra urgency behind their movements.

  *

  The seaboat was slipped with considerable difficulty and danger in the rushing seas and high-blown waves and was almost taken and lifted on a surge of water back on to Carmarthen’s quarterdeck. Sheer luck and the roll of the ship the right way brought her clear again, and she plunged into the valley whence her crew could stare upwards at their ship until another surge of water lifted her high above. The men, bulky in their heavy cork lifejackets, held their breath as the whaler swooped down again, clear by some miracle of the limping destroyer. Cameron at one moment felt his oar strike fresh air and he almost flew backwards into his next astern; then it bit deep and he heaved as the whaler’s coxswain, Leading-Seaman Farrow, gave the orders to bring them on course for the merchantmen. Seymour had not slipped the seaboat until he had closed the Westward Bay enough to give them the shortest possible pull across, but it was still a desperately long one in the heavy Atlantic gale. The exertions almost cracked their muscles and their straining backs as the men pulled on the oars and thrust with their feet against the stretchers. Up and down, rise and plunge, then rise again, kept efficiently on course by Leading-Seaman Farrow, slowly closing the great wall-like side of the Westward Bay. A small party of men could be seen, wrapped in oilskins, waiting by the starboard after rail where a Jacob’s-ladder was coiled ready to be sent down. Despite the list, the climb down for the doctor would be a long one and held its hazards: a rope suspended in space, with a man on its end, could sway dangerously; but it was still much less of a hazard than sending him to scramble down the lifted port side.

  After what seemed an eternity the whaler came under the lee of the Westward Bay, which was lying dangerously across the seas, broached-to at their mercy. With the roaring wind cut off, there was easier work; here the crests had temporarily flattened and there was a reduced amount of blown spindrift to sting the eyes and to blind. Carefully Farrow tended the whaler in, holding her off the steel sides of the 10,000-tonner as the listed deck loomed above. When he was ready he cupped his hands and shouted up:

  ‘Right, send the officer down now!’

  A hand waved from the guard-rail in response and the Jacob’s-ladder with its wooden-stepped ropes was sent snaking down, to dangle and sway a few feet above the whaler. With no time lost the Surgeon-Lieutenant, wrapped in oil-skins and duffel-coat, a balaclava helmet beneath his sou’wester, was helped over the guard-rail and held until his reaching feet found the first step of the ladder. Then, taking a grip with his hands, a grip like very death, he started gingerly down, reaching, feeling, finding. Farrow stared up, eyes narrowed, assessing the moment when he should call for the ladder to be lowered with the doctor on its end, lowered so that the officer could be grappled safely into the whaler and not plunged to his death in the foaming sea that still lifted and dropped the boat as the Atlantic rose and fell against the merchant ship’s side plating. The slap and thunder of the restless water formed a backing of sound to the orchestral whine and roar of the wind: a combined sound of savage fury.

  ‘Lower four feet!’ Farrow yelled as the doctor reached the end of the ladder. ‘Hold tight, sir, and wait till we ‘as you safe!’

  The doctor looked down, his eyes wide. There was stark fear in his face as the whaler appeared to jump at him and then in the next instant fell away to show a great yawning pit of disturbed water far below his swaying body. Cameron reckoned he was going to cling to that rope ladder till he was forcibly snatched away from it: it was his lifeline, all that stood between him and drowning, however insubstantial it might feel.

  The boat rose again, swift and sharp. ‘Now!’ Farrow yelled, and two able-seamen made a concerted grab for the doctor. No good: Cameron’s guess had been spot on. The doctor didn’t let go and the down-drop of the seaboat brought the grasp of the seamen away from his body.

  ‘Stupid bastard,’ Farrow said, not too softly, then called out, ‘Next time, sir, and do try not to make a cock of it again.’

  The face, as once again the boat swooped up, was whiter than ever, but this time the doctor let go as he felt the hands grab for him. The result was disaster; a leg took one of the grabbing seamen hard in the face and he staggered back, still grasping the doctor, and lost his balance. He just stopped himself going over the side, but the doctor went over head first and vanished. At the same moment a sea took the boat and swung her in towards the ship, to be borne off at the last vital moment by the ready oars and boathooks. Farrow, swearing horribly into the eddying wind below the ship’s side, stared frantically around for the doctor. He said, ‘Bet the bugger can’t bloody swim!’

  Then Cameron spotted the white, frightened face, carried by now some twenty feet clear of the boat. It was pretty obvious the doctor was no swimmer. Not waiting for Farrow, Cameron dived in. As he did so, he heard Farrow yelling at him not to be a bloody fool. Taking the water, he swam strongly for the drowning man and, reaching him, seized him below the arms. By this time Farrow had the whaler turned and making out towards him and within minutes both rescuer and rescued were being heaved, gasping, over the gunwale into the bottom of the boat. Farrow was withering. ‘Bloody hero! Might have got drowned an’ left us short, then none of us might ‘ave got back alive!’

  ‘Sorry, Killick…’

  ‘Disobeyed orders, what’s more.’

  ‘I didn’t hear you,’ Cameron said with a grin.

  ‘Bloody Nelson.’

  *

  The trip back was made in safety and the whaler was hooked on to the falls; the lower deck was cleared for hoisting and the Surgeon-Lieutenant stepped shakily out to a comparatively safe deck. Seymour called down from the bridge. ‘Glad to have you aboard, Doc.’

  ‘I’ll be only too pleased to help out,’ the doctor called back, ‘But what’s up with your own MO?’

  ‘It’ll wait,’ Seymour said, then added, ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What about your lot?’

  The doctor, who was an RNVR named O’Connor, said, ‘Captain’s gone, so’s Number One and the Sub.’

  Seymour nodded, his face hard. He said in a controlled voice, ‘All right, Doctor. Get along to the sick-bay — an appendectomy awaits you. I propose hanging on to you afterwards, seeing as you’re part of the flotilla.’ He then left the rail and resumed his never-ending vigil at the after end of the compass platform. Aberdare being of their own group, he had known her officers well. Her Captain had been a close friend; her First Lieutenant had been coming up for a command of his own. The Sub had been RNVR, a solicitor in pre-war days, with the makings of a useful officer. The war was bloody awful.

  It became bloodier: suddenly, the engines stopped.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Wha
t the bloody hell are you up to, Chief?’ Seymour snapped down the engine-room voice pipe. Tempers, by now, were somewhat more than frayed.

  ‘I’m not up to anything,’ the Chief snapped back. ‘The bloody engines have stopped, that’s all.’

  ‘All! Jesus —’

  ‘It can’t be helped. You’ll not be unaware, I presume, that the shafts have been racing from time to time?’

  ‘Yes, I know!’

  ‘Well, then. That’s not done ‘em any good —’

  ‘So what’s gone wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Matthews said with exaggerated calm that Seymour found highly irritating. ‘I’ll be finding out just as soon as I can and then I’ll be seeing if I can put it right.’

  ‘It’s a damn fine time for you to stop engines without warning. There’s one of your own men —’

  ‘I know, I know. I didn’t stop engines, the sods stopped themselves. I’ll be as quick as I can and I can’t do more than that.’ Seymour heard the cover slam back below, and he gave the bridge end of the pipe a vicious slam in return. God help Leading-Stoker Crucible if the destroyer broached-to and came beam-on to some bloody great wave just as the doctor had started to make his incision. Seymour, scowling, sent a messenger from the wheelhouse to warn the doctor of what had happened and what might happen. Maybe he could take some kind of precaution, maybe he couldn’t; in this ruddy war, all life was at risk and uncertain in any case, but it would be bloody hard luck if Crucible should be killed, or at any rate not saved, because of the God-damn engines! This trip, Seymour had begun to yearn for the days of sail. With sail, he could probably have made better speed and would certainly have remained steadier, and if he’d had any canvas to speak of he would have had the Chief Boatswain’s Mate at making and rigging sail on the yards of the fore and mainmasts, but he hadn’t, only enough to provide shrouds for sea burial and too much of that had been used up already. Mental note if ever they returned to UK: stores indents to include canvas for shrouds.

  He stared aft towards the Westward Bay, as useless and as derelict as himself. The Westward Bay might carry some canvas — just might. There would be a need to replace the tarpaulins on the hatch covers, and the deck hatches of a 10,000-tonner would be nice and big. It was likely that the master of the Westward Bay had spared a thought for the use of sail to propel himself along, but it would take more than hatch tarpaulins to move a 10,000-tonner laden with military vehicles. Thinking of that cargo, so much wanted by the Armies in Britain and North Africa, so much wanted for the build-up that must surely come one day for the landing of an expeditionary force to retake France and Belgium, Seymour pondered the fact that he was now the Westward Bay’s sole armed escort and never mind that he had little ammunition beyond the torpedoes in his tubes amidships. It was his duty to stand by her, and God damn Lieutenant (E) Matthews and his failed engines. At the moment he was as helpless as he had been when the screws were lifted clear of the water. He might yet ask the Westward Bay for canvas.

  In the meantime, there was Leading-Stoker Crucible.

  *

  Below in the sick-bay, Robens was looking green. The operation was not a very spectacular one and not particularly messy, but the atmosphere was close and there was a strong smell of chloroform and the ship’s motion was diabolical. She was heaving and twisting, rising and falling, and making Surgeon-Lieutenant O’Connor’s task a difficult one, but he was coping well enough. Blood welled from the incision into the towelling placed by Robens around the site as indicated by the doctor; O’Connor probed around with a finger, then with his whole hand, drew something to the surface, and then used his scalpel again. Crucible’s remaining innards went back into place. O’Connor looked up as he dumped something like a piece of smoked salmon into a kidney dish.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said.

  ‘All done, sir?’ Robens was surprised.

  The doctor nodded. ‘Just the stitching to do yet.’

  ‘He’ll be all right?’

  ‘No reason why not. He’ll need nursing, that’s all.’

  ‘Me?’ Robens asked in some alarm.

  O’Connor smiled faintly. ‘I rather think not. Your other duties are more in your line, aren’t they? I’ll see to the nursing myself.’ He was busy making ready for the stitching. ‘I congratulate you on your diagnostic powers, young man. If you hadn’t been quick off the mark, he’d have died. I got to him only just about in time.’

  Robens, his services no longer required in the sick-bay, reported to the compass platform. Seymour asked, ‘Well? How is he?’

  ‘All right now, sir. He’ll pull through.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Seymour said, and meant it. One worry was past, though the others remained. So far there had been no further reports from the engine-room and Seymour was in a fever of impatience, having to force himself not to chivvy Matthews. Matthews knew his job and would report as soon as he had something to communicate. He was the sort who reacted badly to chasing. Seymour attempted the impossible task of trying to forget his engines, and stared across the heaving grey sea wastes towards the Westward Bay. The relative positions of the two ships were shifting as the waves buffeted them; the merchantman was now lying across the destroyer’s bows, distant some six cables, maybe a little more. Distances were hard to assess in such sea conditions…

  Seymour’s mind went to another worry: Lavington. That was a horrible business, and Seymour shrank from the thought of carrying a man across the seas to his certain death by hanging. Or almost certain; the state of Lavington’s mind might save him, as he’d thought earlier. He had to be mentally sick; and Seymour could feel pity for him. Life in a destroyer’s fo’c’sle would be hell for a sensitive man. Seymour, trained for the Navy at Dartmouth from the age of thirteen and a half, was no stranger to harshness and a tough routine. The Divisional Lieutenants and Chief Petty Officer Instructors at Dartmouth had never been easy to satisfy and the days had been physically hard. But Seymour, who had never in fact had to live in a destroyer’s fo’c’sle as an ordinary seaman, had to use his imagination to assess what Lavington had gone through, living cheek by jowl with companions not of his own choosing, men with whom he would have had nothing in common, men who were capable of a merciless hazing of someone of a different class. It was a test of character and Lavington hadn’t come through it…

  The engine-room voice-pipe whined. Seymour reached for it and jerked back the cover. ‘Captain here.’

  ‘Chief speaking,’ came Matthews’ aggrieved tones. ‘We won’t move for a while, if ever. I’m sorry, but there it is.’

  ‘What’s the trouble, Chief?’

  ‘Bearings running hot — both shafts seized up. There’s been a leak of oil from —’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Give me a chance,’ Matthews snapped. ‘I reckon there was a fracture when Number Four gun was taken out. I checked round afterwards, checked personally… I found nothing amiss, certainly, but I think the trouble probably started when that shell hit and it’s worsened.’

  ‘Yes, I see. How long before —’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Matthews said. He sounded bloody stubborn, Seymour thought with a flash of anger. ‘We’ll be working on it. I’ll let you know as soon as I can, but it’s going to take time, that’s for sure. We may yet be unable to do it at all, as I said.’ The metallic, disembodied voice stopped and Seymour heard the rattle as the cover was replaced below in the engine-room. He turned from the voice-pipe and looked gain towards the Westward Bay and thought once more about canvas; there was plenty of wind to drive them home if they could only rig sail. He was about to tell the Leading-Signalman to call up the merchantman when a messenger reported from the W/T office. A radio signal had been received from Rosyth, in Naval cypher. Seymour sent down for the Surgeon-Lieutenant, whose customary duty it was to decipher signals when not medically engaged.

  Half an hour later the plain-language version was in Seymour’s hands. Seymour read it with much relief: OCEAN-GOING RESCUE TUG
FORCEFUL HAS BEEN DESPATCHED TO OUR ASSISTANCE AND SHOULD REACH YOU BY 0600 HOURS 24TH.

  That was tomorrow’s dawn. Seymour, feeling a good deal happier, had the news piped around the ship. It brought joy mixed with many doubts. On the iron-deck Leading Seaman arrow said gloomily, ‘She’ll come if she finds us. It’s a bloody big if, an if as big as the bloody North Atlantic, almost. Eh? What about that?’ He indicated the Westward Bay. ‘One tug can’t tow two ships, right?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Cameron suggested, ‘another’s been sent to take her in. They won’t know in Rosyth that we’ve come together, they wouldn’t have included the Westward Bay in the signal to us.’

  Farrow lifted his sou’wester and scratched his head through his balaclava. ‘So quick you catch yourself coming back,’ he said with heavy sarcasm. ‘If they don’t know where the Westward Bay is, where do they send the flippin’ tug?’

  There was no answer to that; if indeed only the one tug turned up, a difficult situation could arise. Presumably the Westward Bay and her cargo were currently of more value to the war effort than a crippled destroyer. If that was the way the decision went, then all they could do aboard Carmarthen would be shrug their shoulders, wave goodbye, and continue wallowing around until another tug came out for them.

  *

  That evening a somewhat macabre routine event took place, as it would take place daily whenever the weather and the exigencies of the service permitted: prisoners in cells had to have their exercise period, and Lavington was brought out under escort to walk up and down the iron-deck’s leeward side. He stumbled rather than walked, looking grey and haggard, with haunted eyes that stared wildly but seemed to see nothing. The reactions of the ship’s company were mixed; most avoided looking at the pathetic rating but some stared with naked hostility and with a clear desire to hurt. But Lavington was oblivious, almost automaton-like. There was still blood on his duffel-coat, now dried brown, a grisly enough sight. Cameron, looking down from his station at Number Three gun, which still had a small reserve of ready-use ammunition in the racks, wondered just how alert the escort was expected to be. It would be a relief to everyone aboard, he fancied, if Lavington were to go over the side. But he made no move in that direction; he was clinging hard to the lifeline and keeping as far inboard as possible. The sea was his enemy, and even in his present condition he had no wish for a confrontation. Up and down he went, forlorn and lonely. Cameron looked away: the degradation hurt. He was glad when Lavington was put back in the engineers’ store, out of sight. So was Seymour, into whose vision Lavington had come continually as he kept his vigil on the compass platform. To Seymour, the whole thing was ghoulish, like curing a sick man so that he could live for the execution. Looking out towards the Westward Bay, another anxiety that had plagued him ever since the engines had stopped struck more forcibly: the two ships were a little closer. A little, not much, but if they went on closing a highly dangerous situation was going to arise. And neither of them, with their silent engines, would be able to do a thing about it.