by Alan Evans
That night he met with the watch ashore in the back room of a pub. They tried to drink it dry and Ward sat at the ancient piano and hammered out everything from ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ to ‘We’ll Meet Again’, with many dubious stanzas in between.
When they were alongside or went ashore Ward demanded a first-class turn-out and strict adherence to dress regulations. God help the man—or officer—with shoes that did not shine or a wrinkled jacket or jumper. At sea it was different. There only practicality counted. When the sun was bright Joe Krueger wore a baseball cap and in bad weather a fur hat with flaps over his ears.
Ward looked at it and said, “Good God!”
Joe eyed Ward’s brilliant orange oilskins, and said nothing. He knew the reason: so any man on deck could see his captain on the bridge. For dry weather Ward had a jacket and a duffel coat dyed the same colour and for the same reason.
They went to Liverpool on convoy duty and worked out of there for a month then were sent back to Sheerness and the Channel. In November 1941 Ark Royal was finally sunk, after several false German claims. Less than two weeks later the battleship Barham followed her. In December Italian frogmen sank Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, though both were in the harbour of Alexandria and would be salvaged—in time.
And in December the Japanese bombed and torpedoed Prince of Wales and Repulse and attacked Pearl Harbour. Ward went to Krueger’s cabin and found Joe sitting on his bunk staring at a group photograph of officers aboard U.S.S. Buchanan in 1920. They wore tunics buttoned tight up to the neck and small caps set square on their heads. Joe looked very young in the photograph. He looked old now. Ward said, “I’m sorry, Joe.”
Krueger muttered, “I knew some of the guys in those ships at Pearl, fellers who had stayed on in the navy and made captain or better.”
“Are you going back?”
Joe thought about it, then shook his head. “It’s the same war and I’m already fighting it. I’ll stay with the ship.”
From then on, mostly in quiet moments on the bridge or over a game of chess as Boston lay in port Ward learned rather more about his first officer. In the winter of 1920 Joe had left the U.S. Navy and a promising career because his wife had contracted polio. “I went to work ashore,” he said, “on account of that way I could spend a lot more time with her. It was tough getting going at the start but we stuck it and somehow managed to ride out the Depression.” He paused. Ward did not ask but Joe said, “She died in the summer of 1940. So I came over here. Thought about it and it seemed like a good idea.”
Ward agreed with him: his coming had been a very good idea.
The ship, Boston, had been given to Ward to ‘learn on’. He learned about the ship and her crew and they learned about him. Boston did not change but her reputation did: it became one for sound, efficient, hard work; she could be relied on. The ship herself still broke down frequently, was old and awkward and needed continual nursing, but every man aboard from Ward to the youngest seaman was devoted to her and determined to make her work. That, and the hardship of just living aboard, bound them.
Hardship? She was flush decked with hardly any flare so in bad weather the sea came inboard and flooded the mess-decks knee deep. Fresh water, on the other hand, was always short because the condensers could not cope. The galley oil-stoves were drip fed and could not be used in bad weather so the men ate cold bully beef for days on end. Even when the stoves worked the food still had to be carried forward along the upper deck from the galley amidships and so was cold anyway…
The list was endless.
Yet she became a happy ship. They were one family. In that bad winter they celebrated three marriages and no less than eleven christenings. They celebrated Christmas and Ward and his officers toured the mess-decks. Ward and Krueger possessed the caution of experience but some of the young sub-lieutenants accepted too much of the navy rum pressed on them and were obliged to retire early. The rum was issued neat because water was in short supply.
Also they mourned three dead. On a bitterly cold day, Thursday, 22nd January 1942, Ward brought the body of the third of their dead and the shell-pocked Boston into Sheerness.
Now Rear-Admiral Quartermain waited for him.
*
Boston, back from convoy duty, lay alongside the quay, her engines stilled, her bridge, wheelhouse and chartroom pocked with holes from cannon shells and splinters. A party aft were rigging the gangway but already the bosun’s mates were piping for liberty-men to fall in. They were gathering in the waist in their number-one suits, collars washed and re-washed to achieve the pale, pale blue of the veteran seaman—whether the wearer was forty or eighteen years old. They waited to be inspected by the officer of the watch and given their leave chits and railway warrants.
For one watch there were two days’ leave, forty-eight hours. Ward also was going on leave. As commanding officer he had the right to go, but he did not always take advantage of it. More than once he had sent off Bailey, the warrant engineer, instead, because he was a middle-aged reservist with a large family, and because he had a hell of a life with Boston’s old engines, at sea or in harbour. But since this time she was in for work on her steering, Bailey would have to stay for that and Ward was going on leave.
A wireless was playing, Joe Loss and his band, singing coming from the galley amidships. Ward caught Krueger’s eye. Like any close family, officers and crew knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Krueger would have a quiet word with a few of the liberty-men before they went ashore, regarding their condition when they returned. They would listen, those few. They might still stagger as they came aboard but they would not be late nor carried back insensible by the shore patrol. Everybody knew Joe Krueger was nobody’s fool, but fair, and it was due in large part to him that Boston was a happy ship. He was first lieutenant and, with Adams the coxswain, he saw to the day-to-day running of the ship. Always ready to ‘bawl a man out’—his expression—when necessary, he was equally ready to listen sympathetically to a tale of bad luck. And then to do something about it, calling on Ward if need be.
There were buses waiting on the quay to take the liberty-men to the station and their trains. Ward and Krueger had arranged that. There was also an ambulance, summoned by a radio signal, as Boston had closed Sheerness, to take a wounded man to hospital. Now, instead, it would take away a dead man. Boston had no doctor. Gulley, the sick berth rating, had fought for the man’s life, but in vain. He had died half an hour before they berthed.
The bosun’s pipes sounded the ‘still’ and all on deck stood to attention, Ward at the salute, as the body was taken ashore. Then the pipes shrilled again and once more the deck swirled with activity. Ward relaxed and rubbed at the black stubble on his chin. He had been on the bridge without a break for twenty-four hours. He told Krueger, “She’s all yours for a couple of days. I’ll sleep aboard tonight and give you my address in London before I leave tomorrow.”
Krueger was running his eye along the lines of liberty-men, inspecting them, picking out faces. Now he nodded approval and turned. “O.K. sir.”
“Just don’t forget she’s mine.” It was an old joke.
Joe made the ritual reply, “I saw her first.” He had, by two hours. Now he said, “Not sticking my neck out, sir, but have you got anything fixed in London?”
Ward shook his head, “Just a bed, maybe a show, a beer or two.” There had been several girls since the one at Aunt Abigail’s party, brief attachments that were severed as the war moved him—or ended in flaming rows. He realised now that he was probably to blame for most of those but he hadn’t thought so at the time. If there was no girl at the moment, that was due to lack of opportunity. ‘It’s not the women what kills you, it’s the chasing after them.’ He grinned at the old saw. Only now he didn’t even get the chance to do the chasing.
He could not go to Aunt Abigail’s house in Chelsea because it was a bombed ruin and she was living and working at a hospital in the Midlands. She had written not long ago saying her painter
son Patrick, now in the Army, was somewhere in Scotland and doing a lot of work on landscapes—
Joe Krueger broke into Ward’s thoughts: “Oh-oh! We have company!”
The yeoman and one of his signalmen were working on the bridge but paused now to peer as a silver-grey Daimler rolled slowly along the quay below and halted by the gangway. A Wren was at the wheel and she got out quickly, opened the rear door and stood at the salute. Ward thought, “Good figure, nice legs—a popsy.”
The signalman muttered, “Cor! Look at that!”
And brought a growl from the yeoman: “Never you mind. Keep your eyes inboard and get them flags stowed proper.”
Joe Krueger said, “Oh, boy! An admiral!”
A rear-admiral, the broad and narrow gold rings on his sleeve making an impressive flash of yellow as he climbed from the car and settled the cap with its gold-crusted peak on his grey head. He said something to the girl and she smiled.
Ward slid down the ladder to the deck and strode aft as the admiral made for the gangway, walking briskly and very straight in the back, a briefcase in one hand. Ward was waiting for him as he stepped aboard to the piping of the bosun’s mates manning the side. Ward returned his salute and the admiral said, “Quartermain. You’re Ward.”
“Yes, sir.” Ward searched his memory. He had seen this man somewhere—
Quartermain supplied the answer: “Saw you in June 1940. You were in Saracen when I came aboard at Plymouth. You hadn’t shaved then, either. Now, where can we talk privately?”
“My cabin, sir.”
Ward led the way forward past the rigid line of liberty-men. He knew what they were thinking: that the sudden arrival of a flag officer could mean a change of orders—and a drastic change in their plans. Quartermain knew it, too, and without breaking step he rasped, “You can stop worrying! I haven’t come to cancel your run ashore!”
He halted outside Ward’s cabin and ran his eyes over the damage to the bridge and wheelhouse. “Um! More work for the dockyard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What action?”
“We ran into Dirty Bill last night—”
Quartermain’s head jerked around: “Who?”
“Dirty Bill—an E-boat. Apparently he has a damned great skull-and-crossbones painted on his bridge. We didn’t see it but a coaster in the starboard column did.”
“Get him?”
“No. The coaster was in the way. He gave us one quick burst that did this lot, then ran like mad. We’ll get him though, if he stays as busy as he’s been the last few weeks.” That last was not boast or threat but said with flat determination.
“Um!” Quartermain said, “We really want an E-boat captured, not sunk. We’d like to take it apart and find out how it ticks.”
Ward thought there was damn-all chance of that and he’d happily settle for Dirty Bill at the bottom of the North Sea. He did not say so.
E-boats were nearly forty yards long, carried two 21-inch torpedo-tubes and a pair of 20mm cannon. Their three big diesel engines could push them along at better than forty knots and they were claiming a lot of ships.
His cabin was right under the bridge and held a bunk and a settee, both secured to the bulkhead, a desk and an armchair. Boston had just come in from sea so the armchair was still lashed to the settee. Ward slept on the settee in bad weather because he was often thrown out of his bunk. The armchair kept him wedged in place. Now he cast the chair loose and set it on the deck for the admiral. Quartermain sank into it and tossed his cap on to the desk. He was a dried-out little jockey of a man with a sharp-featured, brown, leathery face, silver hair neatly brushed and grey eyes.
“I’m from Combined Operations. Whatever I say, you’ll keep under your hat.”
“Yes, sir.” Ward sat on the settee, scratched his stubble. Quartermain took a folder from his briefcase and flipped it open. “This scheme you dreamed up for an—”
“—for an attack on St. Nazaire, sir?”
Quartermain’s brows lifted, “You expected this?”
“Only when you said you were from Combined Ops. I’ve put up a few ideas but they were mostly on escort work. St. Nazaire was the only one that would interest Combined Ops; I’ve always thought it would be a job for them.”
“Why did you pick St. Nazaire?”
“When I was there in 1940 I thought the dock should be put out of action.”
Quartermain sniffed, “You took your time about saying so.”
Ward, nettled, answered, “I was a junior lieutenant and I assumed my seniors would have that kind of thing taped. Also I was pretty busy, first on convoy—”
Quartermain broke in testily, “Yes, I know all that! And don’t get snotty with me, sir! Now—what finally started you working out this lot?” He banged the folder on his knee.
Ward wondered, should he apologise? But Quartermain was waiting, sharp-eyed and impatient. To hell with it. He said, “Bismarck. When we sank her she was headed for St. Nazaire because that was the only dock outside Germany that could take her and repair her damage. Now there’s Tirpitz. I hear she’s commissioned and gone to Norway. She could be there because, after that commando raid on Vaagso a few weeks back, Hitler thinks we might be planning to invade Norway. Or she might intend to go raiding, attacking the convoys, slipping out into the Atlantic as Bismarck did. But if so, then she’d have a hell of a job getting back for repairs with the Home Fleet in the way, so before she starts the Germans will want to be sure of a dock outside Germany and that means St. Nazaire.” He paused, then added, “We don’t want her raiding, sir.”
Quartermain said grimly, “We agree on that, anyway. So?”
“So close St. Nazaire. It took me a long time to work out how to do it because the only special knowledge I had was what I remembered of the place from one afternoon. I had to dig for the rest and I started off thinking of using a submarine. I wasted a lot of time on that before I decided on an attack by fast, small craft through the undefended shallows, carrying assault troops and demolition engineers.”
Quartermain grumbled, “We thought of a submarine, too. No go.” He leafed quickly through the folder, then closed it. “Quite a scheme. Imaginative, well-thought-out. A good idea…” His voice trailed away and his thin fingers tapped the folder.
Ward thought, “They’re going to do it!” He said, “Thank you, sir. It’s kind of you to say so.”
Quartermain continued as if Ward had not spoken: “—but we’ve got a better one.”
Ward’s elation drained away. “Oh!” Then he asked, “Are you sure, sir?”
Quartermain glared at him, “Sure? Of course I’m sure! So is Mountbatten! D’ye want to argue with him?”
“No, sir, only—”
“Only—what?”
“I’d like to know about this plan that’s considered better than mine. Can I be told, sir?”
“No.”
Ward had expected that. He still had not finished: “I’d like to volunteer for it, sir.”
“Why?”
“It was my idea and I’m not keen on sending somebody else to do the dirty work.”
Quartermain snorted, “Rubbish! It’s not your idea. And besides, this war isn’t being run to satisfy any officer’s craving for action. Anyway, we’ve picked our men.” That was not in fact strictly true but Quartermain had other ideas for Ward: “Still, I might want you for another raid. Are you game?”
“Yes, sir.” No hesitation. “What would it be?”
“None of your business. I’ll tell you when you need to know—and that may not be for a long time.”
“Will I lose Boston, sir?” That would hurt.
“No.”
Ward was relieved, but wondered what this prickly little man intended for him.
Quartermain thought that the reports he’d had of Ward spoke of him, among other things, as abrasive. Fair comment. He shelved that, turned back to the main purpose of his visit and said, “One of the major faults in your plan is the lack of information
on the construction of the dock gates.”
“Sir?”
“You say large charges should be laid to blow them up but it seems you don’t know much about explosives.”
“No, sir.”
“Neither do I, but we have people who do. Those gates are a hell of a size, ten times the height of a man and thirty-five feet thick, so to blow them up the charges have to be the right weight and in the right places. There’ll only be one chance, no question of going back and lighting the blue paper again, therefore knowledge of the construction of the dock gates is vital—but we don’t have it. We’re trying to build up a picture from the information we do have but it isn’t very good.” Quartermain took a breath, then asked, “Do you have details of the construction of the dock gates?”
Ward shook his head, “I only saw them that one time in 1940.”
Quartermain hid his disappointment and said only, “Um!” Ward had been a pretty forlorn hope, anyway. And the word from St. Nazaire was that the information would not come from there: the French who had worked the dock gates had been deported to Germany and German engineers did the job now. Geneviève had said so and she was one of his best agents.
Ward waited, listening to the sounds of the ship around him, cheerful voices on the upper deck; they were going on leave. The wireless was still playing, distantly, but Joe Loss had finished and that sounded like a Fats Waller record. Ward was a fan but Fats’ countryman, Joe Krueger, had a collection of records in his cabin ranging from Beethoven to Rachmaninov and including some of Ward’s mother playing Chopin. Joe had been awed when he learned one of his idols was the mother of his young captain.
Finally Ward said, “I don’t mean to point out the obvious, sir, but there isn’t much time. This has to be a winter operation. St. Nazaire is six miles from the sea so you need a long winter night for time to approach under cover of darkness and get out again before it’s light. We’re nearly into February already, and the nights will be too short after the end of March.”