by Alan Evans
Ward grinned at the memory and his eyes flicked over Boston’s rust-blistered length. No passengers here, first class or otherwise.
He stooped again over the pipe, “Meet her. Steer oh-seven-oh!”
“—course oh-seven-oh, sir.”
The little steward brought Ward his lunch, bully beef in a sandwich and coffee in a beer-stein. The coffee machine worked twenty-four hours a day and was the one advantage of these ex-U.S. destroyers. Ward bit into the sandwich hungrily. The coffee itself was excellent, by courtesy of Joe Krueger; the foreman of his boatyard sent him a parcel of American goodies every two weeks. Ward drank from the stein. A garishly painted pot with a handle and a lid, he had bought it from a pawnshop in a moment of inspiration and now his coffee stayed hot and free of sea spray.
He swallowed, “Port ten. Steer oh-five-oh.”
“Port ten, steer oh-five-oh…Ten of port wheel on, sir.”
Ward heard the yeoman tell his signaller, “Get the loud hailer and have the lamp ready.” They would be needed to herd the strays back into line.
“—course oh-five-oh, sir.”
Boston was foaming up the seaward side of the starboard column—and there was the William Henry, wandering all over the bloody place as usual. Ward said, “Make to William Henry: ‘Keep better station.’”
He chewed the sandwich and thought again of his cousin. Patrick’s mother said he had been changed when he returned from France. “He’s kinder to me, more thoughtful, quieter. But sometimes when he looks at other people he seems so…hard.”
That didn’t sound like an artist who was working on landscapes…
*
Patrick’s legs ached as they drove him up the last man-killing lift of the hill. The blue-brown and green sweep of it, patched with drifts of snow, was blurred by the sweat that ran, stinging, into his eyes. The rim of it was still distant against a high blue sky, clouds torn into white streamers on the wind. The Bergen rucksack dragged at his shoulders and the nine pounds of the Thompson submachine-gun weighed more like ninety.
He saw his platoon commander go down into the heather, a few yards ahead and to his right. Patrick followed suit, plunging down into the soaking bracken, then working up through it to the crest, moving on elbows and knees with his belly on the ground, the Thompson cradled in his forearms. The valley opened before him and he halted, huddled down below the crest, only his head showing in its rolled khaki comforter. He panted like a dog, looked behind him for the other eight men of his section, saw not one of them but knew they would be working up through the bracken on either side of him, with the other two sections of the platoon beyond.
He faced forward. This wasn’t a halt for a rest. They’d stopped because Madden’s lot needed time to play their game down in the valley. A different exercise, quite separate from his own platoon’s. Captain Peter Madden had a gang of around twenty that trained on their own. He was a nice guy and a tough nut.
Patrick craned his head and saw how the hill dropped to the valley bottom where a river ran, then lifted to a road on the opposite slope. An armoured car, carrying the insignia of the ‘enemy’, showed at the head of the valley and started to trundle down the road. In about half a minute, Patrick thought, when he changes down for that bend, they’ll hit him.
He reached down for the long commando knife and used its razor’s edge to cut away the long strip of khaki serge that some barbed-wire had torn from his trouser leg. He slid the knife back into its sheath on his thigh and reflected that it was a change from a palette knife, just as this whole caper was a far cry from sitting at a sun-shaded table on a Paris pavement. He’d written to his mother that he was doing a lot of work on landscapes and that was true enough because he painted still, but most of his work was done like this. Maybe he could write and illustrate a book: ‘Through the bracken on your belly with Bergen and Tommy-gun’.
It had its compensations. The hills of Ayr were spectacularly beautiful. He drew and painted them when he could. Their curves were subtle and sensuous. They did not, however, remind him of Sarah. Miss Benjamin’s curves were warm and moved. He went to her in Glasgow when he could, which was not often, but he managed to find time, among other things, to draw her.
“Not like this!”
“Just like that,” he told her. “Keep still.”
“You’ll get me arrested. Bloody artist. Are you really an artist?”
He had to admit he did not look the part. He was a soldier now and his hair was cut short. He had always been slender, though big-boned, but this last year or so he had grown muscle and it moved lumpily on back and shoulders. His hands, too, were broad and hardened, the pencil seeming fragile in such a grip. But when he showed her the sketch—“Hey! That’s—that’s marvellous! I…no…no, Patrick! What’re you doing? Patrick, please…Hell, I wanted to keep it!”
He’d torn up that first one and all the others. “They’re not right. When I get it right you can keep it. Come here.”
Sarah Benjamin. Christ! What a girl! And a husband commanding a desk in London. Sarah said he was being unfaithful to her—“and what are you laughing at? Patrick, you’re a bastard!” She meant that.
A voice called quietly from the bracken. “Any moment now, Corporal.”
“Right, sir,” Patrick answered. He had pulled Corporal a month ago, after the commando raid on the Norwegian port of Vaagso. There’d been talk of a decoration but only one man had seen him clear the house of Germans and that man had died. Now they were training in house to house fighting, and his platoon was on its way back from the abandoned village up on the moors through which they stalked and bombed their way.
There came the dull whuff! of an explosion, dirt and smoke lifted in front of the armoured car and it swerved aside, ran off the road and halted. Now Madden’s men rose out of the bracken, the khaki suddenly lifting from the dark green and brown carpet. Some ran straight to the armoured car with their weapons trained while others stayed at the side of the road, facing back the way the car had come or towards the end of the valley, on guard.
They were training with particular urgency and no one knew why except presumably the mysterious little admiral who often came to see them.
Now that the action down in the valley was over Patrick shoved up to his feet, following his officer’s lead, looked for his section and saw them coming after him. As he ran down the hill towards the road there was another car now, a khaki-painted Morris. Patrick’s attention was concentrated on where he placed his running feet; put a foot wrong on this ground and you went arse over tip. But he saw a small figure in a dark blue uniform get out of the Morris.
The river. Patrick ran into it, waded as it rose to his thighs then up around his chest. Half the platoon were swimming now; he was one of the tallest among them. They splashed ashore a hundred yards up the valley from Madden’s lot and the armoured car, climbed to the road and formed into a body while still on the move, three files with the officer at their head, the sergeant and the two corporals in rear. They doubled down the road, the water from the river-crossing dripping from them, their rubber-soled commando boots thudding on the concrete.
Patrick thought that he saw more water than did cousin Jack in the Navy. He was often sarcastic about Jack, but that was only because he was secretly in awe of him. Jack always knew what he wanted to do and did it. He had long been a remote figure, different, standing back and watching the rest of the family. Geoffrey had described how, in the summer of 1939 when Jack came home from Spain, his father had thrust the crown of Perseus at him and Jack had thrown it back. There’d been one hell of a barney, but Jack had walked out on his birthright and never looked back. Hard, our Jack. If you taunted him into stating his faith he would talk simply of tradition, loyalty and duty with that look in his eye that said he believed in them and if you didn’t like it you could go to hell.
These days Patrick believed in them too. The war had focused his mind and he had learned quickly. The Commandos had no use for the cynical, nor for
the carelessly reckless, because neither could marshal the inner discipline needed to accept the demands imposed upon them.
Patrick knew the men ahead depended on him, and he on them. He was a painter, an artist, but he was also a soldier.
*
Quartermain asked Captain Madden, “Well, Peter? How did it go? It looked good from where I was.”
Madden had joined the Durham Light Infantry in 1938 as a private, a Territorial weekend soldier. Now he wore the three cloth stars of a captain. His webbing equipment of belt and ammunition pouches was damp and smeared with mud where he had worked through the bracken, and he carried a Thompson submachine-gun.
“Pretty well, sir. We made a landing from the sea just after midnight and then a forced march until it started to get light. We carried out the final approach under cover, laid and wired the charge and went to ground.”
Quartermain nodded approval, then his eyes settled on the platoon coming up the road at the double.
Madden’s gaze shifted to the Morris and, disappointed, to the A.T.S. driver. When he and his men were training in Devon, Quartermain had often driven down from London in his Daimler, the pretty little Wren at its wheel. Now, up in Scotland, Madden did not see her so often. He shrugged and turned back to Quartermain. “Any news, sir? Of what we’re training for?”
“Not yet. When the time comes, if the time comes, I’ll tell you. You need to be ready for anything. You may go in by sea or by air, ambush a vehicle, blow up a house or capture a boat. Don’t be impatient, Peter. Action will come soon enough, even if it’s not this pet scheme of mine. That one could be this year, next year, some time, never.” He paused. “Or next week.”
The sodden platoon swung past him, breath steaming on the air, boots thudding on the road. They faced their front and only the corporal at the rear of the right-hand file turned to look at him. There was something familiar, Quartermain thought, about the tall, dark-browed figure.
He watched them go. Dusk was falling and a fine rain driving on the wind. He turned up the collar of his bridge coat. He had seen that look before, quite recently, but he couldn’t for the life of him think where.
5: E-boat Alley
None of those East Coast convoys was good that winter but some were worse than others.
In the two weeks following Ward’s visit to London Boston, with her sister ship Arundel, shuffled between Sheerness and Rosyth. They escorted a convoy north, spending two nights at sea then one in port before taking another convoy south. They saw no E-boats but during that time other escorts were in action and Dirty Bill was reported sighted on two occasions. On both of them the convoy she attacked lost a ship.
At Rosyth Boston played football against Arundel’s team and won 3-2. A leading stoker announced his engagement to a stunning girl in Edinburgh. Everybody wondered what she saw in him and made ribald suggestions. He had ‘sippers’ of the rum ration of the entire stokers’ mess-deck and that night another leading stoker had to stand his watch. On one convoy northward the coaster Mary Donaldson struck a mine and Boston towed her into Sunderland in a near-sinking condition with six dead aboard her. On the return run south, as the convoy entered the Thames estuary, Boston’s steering engine jammed, she swung sharply to port and tried to ram a ship in the starboard column. Only a rapid series of orders from Ward to the engineroom turned her, using main engines and screws. It had happened before and Ward knew it would happen again. But this was his ship and he lived with that little weakness as he did with all the others.
And, as Joe Krueger often said, if with more hope than confidence, “Well, she never lets you down when it really matters.”
Boston’s engineers set the steering right with sweat and swearing. That was on Friday, 6th February. They lay all night in Sheerness and sailed on the forenoon of Saturday with a northbound convoy.
And some were worse than others…
*
At midnight, off Great Yarmouth, Krueger came on to the bridge. “How does it look, sir?”
Ward, leaning with arms crossed on the bridge-screen and peering into the night said, “All behaving themselves. Good station-keeping, well closed-up and no stragglers. Hardly surprising really—they know what it’s like round here.”
“Sure.” This stretch of the East Coast convoy route, from south of Smith’s Knoll to the mouth of the Wash, was a favourite German hunting ground and known as ‘E-boat Alley’. Which was why Joe Krueger added, “I’ve taken a look around. They’re all on their toes.” He was talking now of Boston’s gunners and look-outs.
Ward nodded. “E-boats are supposed to be afraid of destroyers.” Because of their high speed and heavier armament. Boston had the armament but not the speed.
“Yeah?” Joe thought about it, then said, “They hide it pretty good.”
Ward grinned. Below him and forward of the bridge the four-inch gun was closed-up for action, its crew huddled behind the shield to gain protection from the cold and warmth from each other’s bodies. The sea was calm and that would suit E-boats. Boston still rolled but not much, and the gunners behind the shield only had the sea washing around their ankles occasionally. That was a mercy. The four-inch was known on the lower deck as the submarine gun because in heavy weather it was as much under water as above it.
That triggered a thought and Ward said, “We had a signal just before you came up, a weather forecast. It’s going to turn dirty before morning. Make sure everybody knows.” So that everything movable could be lashed down. “And rig the life-lines.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Krueger went away.
White water spilled back from the stem along either side of the bow, an edging to the black fo’c’sle. Beyond it were the two columns of ships, twenty-eight in all but most of them too far ahead for Ward to see. Arundel was up at the head of the convoy and a Fairmile motor-launch out on either wing, again unseen. They were good little boats but mainly there to rescue survivors if need be. They were no match for E-boats.
Ward could make out the nearer ships, the black bulk of each under its trailing smoke. The tanker Missouri Star was too far up the port column to be visible but he could see her with his mind’s eye. Long, low in the water and heavy with oil, she was the most valuable ship of the lot. But all were valuable because they carried the cargoes that an over-stretched railway system could not. One coaster would carry more than a dozen long freight trains.
The columns headed north at eight knots but Boston was making twelve because as tail-ender she swung from column to column, shepherding, coaxing ships back into station if they erred. It was a quiet night and Ward could hear the pinging of the Asdic from its compartment at the back of the bridge. The R.D.F. compartment was back there, too; Krueger, like all the Americans, called it radar. One of the sub-lieutenants was in there, peering over the operator’s shoulder at the cathode ray tube. The Warrant Gunner, Huw Phillips, ‘Phillips the Guns’, stood at the other end of the bridge by one of the two rangefinders. He wore the hood of his duffel coat pulled up over his head and his eyes glittered inside it like those of some mad Welsh monk.
Charlie Barnwell, the signal yeoman, rotund and red-faced, was out on the starboard wing with one of his signalmen, watching the ships ahead. Charlie held the signal-lamp ready. Then there were the lookouts on either wing and the bosun’s mate standing at the back.
Krueger returned to the bridge, took up a position a pace from Ward’s left shoulder and they stood in companionable silence. They had long since bridged the gap of two thousand miles and twenty years between their back-grounds. They were both seamen. They did not agree on everything but they got on very well.
After some minutes Ward pushed back from the screen and walked out to the starboard wing to stretch his long legs. He looked astern because that was often the way the E-boats came, from astern and seaward. The R.D.F. should pick them up but sometimes didn’t. Then—one second there was nothing and the next second all hell let loose. He told the lookout, “Keep your eyes skinned. We don’t want a dark
stranger bearing gifts.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Ward turned back across the bridge. Bearing gifts…he remembered Quartermain and the gift the testy little admiral had hoped for: help with CHARIOT. He wondered if they had made any progress in their search for information about the dock gates. Then he remembered Catherine who was in occupied France now. He walked on, out to the port wing. Catherine was in more danger than he was. At least he had his friends and his own people about him while she—
“Boat-bearing-red-six-oh!” The yell came from aft. It jerked Ward’s head round and he saw the gunner of the port side Oerlikon in black silhouette, arm outstretched and pointing, swinging the gun itself on to the bearing like another pointing finger. Ward traced the line of it out into the darkness, picked up the streak of white water that was bow-wave and wake, then the long, low, swift-sliding smudge of black that was the boat.
The port lookout was calling a bearing and the rating at the rangefinder chanted the ranges. Phillips passed them on to his guns: “—bearing red six-oh, one thousand—”
Ward was back at the voicepipe, stooping over it. “Full ahead both! Port ten!”
“Port ten…ten of port wheel on, sir. Full ahead both.” That was Leading-Seaman McCudden at the wheel. His skinny body would be hooked awkwardly over it like a question-mark but he was a good helmsman, second only to the coxswain.
Ward was certain that it was an E-boat out there to port. It was making thirty-odd knots, three times Boston’s speed, four times that of the convoy, and was running too flat in the water to be a British motor torpedo-boat or gunboat: they lifted their bows high, planing over the seas when at speed. He threw at Phillips, “Fire!”