Sink and Destroy

by Edward Kay

  I made a face at him to shut up, but Ken, being Ken, just kept going.

  “We don’t have any guns in Canada, so they installed a telephone pole in our turret to make it look like we’re not defenceless. And they put Bill here in charge of it.”

  The girls grinned at each other. Aileen looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Well, that must be quite a responsibility, keeping your telephone pole safe from Herr Hitler’s navy.”

  I felt my face turning red. “Yeah … it, um, keeps me busy,” I managed to say.

  Just when I was beginning to feel like a fool, she rescued me. “Oh well, if you managed to make it all the way over here from Canada with nothing to defend yourself except a telephone pole, then you must have some luck for sure.”

  I liked Aileen already. She seemed different than the girls back in Iroquois, confident and outgoing. There was something mischievous and lively about her, and it made me want to get to know her better.

  The line began to move and the four of us entered the theatre and sat down together on the soft, padded seats. After spending two weeks on the hard benches and my cold, wet hammock in the Wildrose, it was like being in a palace.

  When the movie was over and the lights came back on, we stood up together and headed out through the lobby. When we stepped onto the street I was surprised at how dark it was. There were still people moving through the streets, but they were like ghostly shadows. I stopped in my tracks. I could hardly see a thing, let alone where I was stepping, because all the streetlights were off, and every curtain in every window was drawn closed.

  “Wow,” I said, “I’ve heard about blackouts in the newsreels, but I didn’t realize they were this …” I searched for the word.

  “Black?” joked Aileen. “We try not to make it too easy for the Luftwaffe to find us.”

  “How do you find your way around?” I asked.

  “Oh, you get used to it. They tell us that if we eat enough carrots, we’ll be able to see in the dark just like a cat.”

  “I didn’t realize Scottish cats ate carrots,” I replied. “At least I haven’t seen any doing it so far.”

  “Well, stick around, Billy O’Connell. If the rationing gets any worse, you just might. First it was bacon, butter and sugar,” she said. “But now it’s almost everything. Meat, eggs, milk, biscuits. You can’t get bananas or lemons at all anymore, and oranges hardly ever, even when you’re sick.”

  But neither she nor I wanted to spend the night talking about not having enough to eat, or how bad things were. There was plenty of misery to go around on the Wildrose, and here in Glasgow I just wanted to have some fun.

  We found a café, and except for the blackout curtains in the windows, I thought how similar it was to our diner back home in Iroquois. It even had the same model of Wurlitzer jukebox, and a Coca-Cola sign on the wall.

  But it wasn’t long after we sat down that I discovered there were some big differences too. When the waiter came over to take our order, I asked for a cheeseburger.

  “Sorry, son, we haven’t any meat,” he replied. “Not with the rationing as it is.”

  Aileen recommended the fish and chips instead. It was delicious. The fish was so fresh, it reminded me of home. Afterward we had rhubarb pie, which in spite of the rationing was one treat they were still able to enjoy, since the rhubarb was grown there.

  After dinner Ken and I walked Aileen and Heather home through the darkened streets. Finally we arrived at a corner where the girls said they had to split up. They lived only about three blocks from each other, so Ken and I agreed to meet back at the intersection in ten minutes. Then Aileen and I continued to her place. We walked down a long, narrow street that had two-storey brick row houses running down each side of it. After another block she stopped in front of one of them.

  “Well, here we are, Billy O’Connell. Thank you for a pleasant evening.”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “You have no idea how nice a change this was from the last two weeks.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that it was more enjoyable than sloshing around out there in the ocean with nothing but Ken and a telephone pole for company.”

  I laughed. “That’s for sure!” Then I said, “Can I call you if I’m back this way?”

  She hesitated a moment. “No, you can’t. Sorry,” she said, looking serious. I felt suddenly awkward. Was she telling me she didn’t want to see me again? Then I saw a hint of a crooked grin. “Because we don’t have a telephone. We’re not like you wealthy Canadians, driving around in your Cadillacs and ringing people up willy-nilly.”

  I laughed again.

  She turned and pointed to her house number. “Thirty-seven Bell Lane, speaking of phones. Just like Alexander Graham Bell, the fellow who invented them.”

  “That will be easy to remember,” I replied. “Bell is one of the most famous Canadians ever.”

  “He wasn’t a Canadian, I’ll have you know. He was a Scot,” said Aileen.

  “Can’t he be both?” I asked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have to think on that one. Ask me next time I see you. When you’re ready to get in touch, there’s our ultra-modern communication device.” She pointed toward the door knocker. “Now I’ve got to get my beauty rest so I can look good down at the ammunition factory.”

  I started to lean in to kiss her when she pulled back slightly and held out her hand.

  “Good night, you wild Canadian.”

  Recovering, I reached out and took her hand. She squeezed mine gently. It was more than a handshake. She began to stroke my fingers. I pulled her close to me. I felt her warm breath on my neck. We stood like that in the doorway for a long moment. Then her gentle grasp lightened as she began to let go, and I knew it was time to say goodbye. She opened the front door and stepped into the darkened hallway.

  “Safe travels!” she whispered.

  “Take care,” I said.

  I smiled and waved as she closed the door. Then I carefully retraced my steps through the dark until I nearly bumped into Ken waiting on the corner.

  “Did you kiss her?” he asked.

  “None of your business,” I replied.

  “You didn’t kiss her,” he concluded, grinning.

  “How do you know I didn’t?” I asked.

  “If you had,” he replied, “you wouldn’t say it was none of my business.”

  “Okay, so what about you, Mister Romance Expert?” I shot back. “Did you kiss Heather?”

  “None of your business,” he said.

  We laughed, then walked off gingerly into the murky Glasgow night.

  Eventually, after banging into numerous lampposts and newspaper boxes in the pitch black, we found a Salvation Army, which had clean, inexpensive beds and cheap meals for sailors, soldiers and airmen. We were given our bunks, and I enjoyed the luxury of not having to sleep fully clothed, tossed about in a wet hammock. I fell into a deep, deep sleep.

  Chapter Five

  Mid-April–mid-June 1941

  When we returned to Greenock the next morning, I was expecting to join the rest of my crewmates from the Wildrose on a Royal Canadian Navy warship heading back to Halifax. But I discovered instead that I’d been assigned to take specialist gunnery training here on the base in Scotland. We knew the Royal Navy thought the standards of the RCN were inadequate, but evidently a British officer had seen the scores from the Halifax gunnery course and decided that Ken and I had potential. That meant for the next two months we would be based in Greenock, attending a training school. In truth, I was glad to get away from Halifax. In just two days ashore in Scotland, I’d had more pleasant interaction with civilians than in the entire time I’d spent in Halifax. And from what I’d seen, this base was far better equipped than we were, so it would be a chance to use top-notch gear instead of hand-me-downs from the last war. Besides that, staying behind in Scotland meant that I might have a chance to see Aileen again.

  The gunnery school was far more sophisticated than anything the Canadian N
avy possessed. We got to use a shore-based indoor gun deck designed to simulate shipboard conditions, to give each student the maximum amount of practice time. It was rigged hydraulically to pitch up and down, just like a real ship. That way we could practise compensating for the motion of the waves. It was uncanny how realistic the movement was. We drilled for hours and hours in that room, and with time, got quicker and more accurate, despite the unpredictability of the movement beneath our feet.

  They kept us busy with live-firing exercises too, in the open ocean northwest of Scotland. Our instructors taught us things that we couldn’t have learned ashore, like how to compensate not just for the rolling of the ship, but also for the wind and for atmospheric pressure, both of which can throw even a big shell off course by the time it has travelled a few miles. On our live-fire exercises a tugboat would approach, towing a wooden target. When it got within range, we would be given the order to fire. With the constant drilling and instruction from our Royal Navy teachers, we got to the point where we were consistently accurate. After a few weeks, even in rough waters, we usually only had to fire one shell to get the range of our target, then could hit it on most of the subsequent shots.

  Finally one evening when the tug came into view, we judged the distance so correctly, compensated for the wind, waves and pressure so accurately that we hit the target on our first shot, blowing it into splinters. Our lieutenant, a Royal Navy man with a thick Liverpool accent, gazed at the remains of the target through his binoculars, then looked at us. “Not bad,” he said. “We just might make something of you colonials yet. Carry on.”

  We were thrilled. Despite his aloofness, we knew we’d impressed the pants off him.

  I was also tested for suitability as a specialist anti-aircraft gunner. I was led into a darkened room and handed a BB gun. Then small model airplanes appeared randomly out of the dark at the end of a mechanical arm. I had only an instant to identify each and decide if it was German or Allied and whether to fire at it or not. I’d lose points if I didn’t hit the German planes, and I’d fail the test if I shot at our own planes.

  I had memorized the aircraft identification charts in advance, but the decisions were split second and it was hard to prepare. A model of a German Heinkel 111 bomber swung across the ceiling out of the gloom. I led it with my gun the same way I used to lead ducks when Dad and I were out hunting. I squeezed the trigger. A red light blinked on to indicate a hit.

  Next came a Lockheed Hudson bomber, a type that often flew escort cover for our ships partway into the Atlantic. I held my fire.

  Then a big four-engine bomber zoomed across the ceiling. In the dim light it had a passing resemblance to our own Boeing Flying Fortress. I hesitated a moment, then caught the unmistakable silhouette of the gunner’s gondola that hung beneath it. It was a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 200. I squeezed the trigger and managed to get two shots in.

  Two more planes flew past, a Catalina patrol plane and a Sunderland flying boat. I held my fire. At last a twin-engine bomber swooped in out of the dark. Like the larger Focke-Wulf, it had a gondola for a gunner under the nose. A German Junkers Ju 88 bomber. I got a clean shot in on one of its two engines.

  The instructor entered and announced that the test was over. He led me out of the room. When I emerged I discovered that quite few of the guys had washed out for shooting at the Allied planes.

  Ken was waiting for his turn. He wanted to be an anti-aircraft gunner too, but I knew he hadn’t studied the aircraft charts the way I had. He looked at me with a “Help!” expression. The instructor had taken the next candidate in, so I leaned over and whispered, “Heinkel, Hudson, Fw 200, Catalina, Sunderland, Ju 88.” He nodded without answering.

  Later that day we discovered we’d both passed the test.

  Ken cheered, then slapped me on the shoulder and leaned in close.

  “Thanks, O’Connell,” he said. “I’d never have recognized those planes if you hadn’t told me the order they were in.”

  I’d saved him before the test, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook now. “You’re welcome,” I replied. “But you’ve got to study those charts till you know them inside out. If you shoot down one of our guys by mistake, it’s on my head now because I got you in.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I promise I’ll bone up on the identification charts. At least, if you pull your head out of them long enough to let the rest of us guys take a look.”

  A couple of days later we were sent to a Royal Navy air gunnery school, where we practised with the familiar old .303 Lewis gun. It was no better suited to anti-aircraft service than when I’d first begun training, but at least the British gave us a chance to try it out under more realistic conditions. At sea, a specially armoured airplane would tow a target at the end of a long steel cable. We would try to get as many strikes in on the target as we could before it was hauled away. Later our instructors would count the number of holes in the target and compare it to the amount of ammunition we’d fired to see how accurate we were.

  I also was trained on the Oerlikon 20-millimetre cannon, a new weapon just coming into service. It was far superior to the Lewis gun. It fired automatically like a machine gun, but the shells were ten times heavier than the bullets in the Lewis, and exploded on impact. They gave us massive striking power compared to a machine gun and had twice the range. They could be used when planes were so close that the big guns couldn’t track them accurately. With an Oerlikon, we could punch a hole right through a sub’s conning tower. I liked the Oerlikon. Soon I was proficient with it and could blast a tug target to smithereens. It felt good to use a weapon with some real punch. I knew that after this there would no more telephone-pole guns for me.

  That was a good thing, because out in the North Atlantic, things were really heating up. On Sunday, May 25, we learned that the Bismarck, one of the Nazis’ newest and largest battleships, had been intercepted attempting to break out into the Atlantic to sink Allied merchant ships. In the confrontation it had sunk the British battlecruiser HMS Hood with what the Admiralty called a “lucky hit,” taking more than 1400 sailors to their graves. The news of such a tremendous loss was shocking and a huge blow to Allied morale. The British were determined not to let this go unanswered, and were even more determined not to let the Bismarck get near the Allied shipping lanes. Two days later, a combination of British ships and aircraft sank the Bismarck, which went down with a loss of over 2000 German sailors.

  I was itching to try out my newly honed gunnery skills on the enemy, but that hadn’t happened yet. There may have been epic battles unfolding out in the Atlantic, and Liverpool and Belfast had been bombed heavily that month by the Luftwaffe, but for me, the skies and seas were maddeningly empty of Nazis. The German Navy and Air Force were beginning to seem almost imaginary, more like a bogeyman under the bed than a real danger.

  On one training mission a twin-engine plane came over the horizon heading in our general direction.

  “That’s odd. The target tug isn’t due here for another eleven minutes,” said a petty officer.

  “There’s a convoy heading west from Ireland now. Could be one of the escort bombers making a rendezvous,” said a sub-lieutenant.

  The plane made an abrupt change of course, darted into a cloud bank, and we lost visual contact with it. I thought it was suspicious behaviour for a friendly aircraft to suddenly change direction and hide itself like that, so I kept my eye on the clouds. Having noted the plane’s speed, I tried to estimate where it might reappear. The officers didn’t seem too concerned and went about their business. But I continued to mentally picture where it would be in the cloud bank. About forty-five seconds later I spotted the same plane emerging from the clouds, one nautical mile ahead, in a shallow dive toward us. It looked to be travelling at over 200 miles an hour, and at that speed, could close the distance in under twenty seconds. There was little time to think it over.

  “It’s a friendly. Looks like a Blenheim,” I heard someone say.

  Its angle
of approach didn’t seem very friendly to me. The nose-on orientation made it impossible to see any wing markings and tell if it was German or British.

  I squinted to make out the glassed-in nose and cockpit and the radial engines. The Blenheim had those features, but this plane also had a gondola under the nose for a gunner. I knew my identification charts. This was no Blenheim.

  I released the safety on the Oerlikon and began to track it, aiming not at it, but slightly below and ahead, to match its rate of descent.

  In my peripheral vision, I noticed the petty officer raising his binoculars to take a closer look. A moment later he shouted, “Damn, it’s a Junkers 88!”

  I didn’t hesitate. I squeezed the trigger. A stream of red tracers erupted out of my gun toward the German bomber. The first few shells passed beneath the plane. By this time its nose gunner was firing at us with a machine gun. His bullets whizzed past me and made a metallic clatter like hail as they ricocheted off our funnel. He was trying to force us to take cover and keep us away from our own weapons so the plane could press home its attack and drop its bombs on us.

  “Not today, you don’t,” I muttered. I wasn’t going to let this gunner scatter me or the other crew. I fired a burst and saw yellow flashes as my shells slammed into the gunner’s position and exploded. Bits of glass and metal flew off the plane. Its machine-gun fire abruptly stopped.

  But the bomber kept on coming straight at me. I adjusted my aim, fired again. Now yellow flashes burst on the leading edges of the wings as several of my shells scored direct hits. A few more shots like that, and I’d blast this bird right out of the sky.

  The pilot must have known too, because he immediately took evasive action, turning hard to starboard. As the plane banked I saw the Swastika on its tail and the black Iron Crosses on the underside of its wings.

  The German pilot was good. He manoeuvred his plane so violently, skidding and yawing, I thought he would tear the wings right off it. It was almost impossible to track his course now, it had become so unpredictable. But I continued to lay down a curtain of fire and managed to score one more solid hit. A big chunk of sheet metal flew off his tail rudder where my parting shot had slammed into it. Good, I thought. He’ll be so busy just trying to keep his plane in the air that he won’t be able to attack any other Allied ships.