Deed of Glory (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  He went to the wheelhouse with Catherine while Joe Krueger dropped down into the engineroom. The engines started a moment later. Ward felt the powerful beat of them in the deck beneath his feet; Joe had come through. Madden and Beare cast off and Ward took her slowly astern and out into the stream, turned her and headed down river. The soldiers quickly took cover below, Madden crowding in with Catherine and Ward. Peter said, “Driscoll knows a bit about engines so he’s gone to see if Joe needs help and he can relieve him later.”

  Later? Madden’s voice came distantly; Ward’s ears still rang and he felt numb, acting only on instinct and trained reactions. As they slid past the Old Mole he thought they had a hell of a long way to go and Peter’s talk of later was a bit optimistic. Then he remembered the German ensign that flew over them, and that the E-boat with the death’s-head on the superstructure would be a familiar sight on this river. The destroyers anchored off the Old Entrance had not challenged. There was a chance.

  And Quartermain had wanted an E-boat as much as he wanted Dönitz…

  *

  When Engel awoke he was in a hospital bed, his head bandaged and Pianka sat on a chair a yard away, hands on knees. He was coated in dust, nails broken and fingers bloody, his square face anxious, watching Engel. Who thought back and said, his voice a croak, “You dug me out.” And when Pianka nodded, still anxious, Engel said, “You would.” Then: “Did you see them’?”

  “Who?”

  “The Tommies! The naval officer! The Guillard girl, you dummy!”

  “No need to shout!” Pianka was relieved. They were back to normal and this was the old Hauptmann Engel talking. “No, I didn’t. There was one hell of a bang that threw me and the medic across the road when we were still nowhere near the place. When we got to the warehouse there was—nobody, just a lot of blood and—bits.” He swallowed. “No ship. No dock-gate. We found you after about ten minutes and nobody else showed up for another ten.”

  Engel asked, “What about the Schnellboot?”

  “Ah! That I saw. It was out in the channel, Rudi Moller was taking it out to sea.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” Engel thought back. Rudi had been on the quay and no one there could have lived. “How long ago was this?”

  “Just before noon.” Pianka cocked an eye up at the clock on the wall, “Three, maybe four hours ago.”

  They would be at sea by now, clear away. Engel swore and Pianka asked, “What’s the matter now?”

  Engel told him and Pianka grumbled, “So? You could have been a dirty mark on the dockyard wall. You should count your blessings.”

  Engel lay silent and thought that wasn’t a bad idea. He was alive and Grünwald was dead. The Guillard girl had escaped but that meant he did not have to do anything about her, would not have to hand her over to Grünwald’s successor. Then there were the orders that had arrived all those weeks ago, on the morning of the day Grünwald came to the office and Engel proposed the trap baited with ‘Dönitz’. He had promised Grünwald all he wanted but with tongue in cheek because the orders in his pocket meant the transfer of himself and Pianka to Spain, to be attached to the Embassy there, at the end of the month. So that Grünwald would have had to begin his little empire-building all over again, with Engel’s successor.

  Engel rasped, “Count my blessings? Anybody else would get a sexy little nurse but I draw you. Get back to barracks and start packing my kit. In a day or two we’ll be on our way.”

  Pianka got up, grinning. “We can watch the British agents in Madrid and they can watch us.”

  Engel said, “Get me a drink. Never mind what the medics say, you fetch me a bottle, or I’ll have you sent back to Russia.” He relaxed against the pillows. The old bastard wouldn’t bring a full bottle but he would smuggle in a drink. In Spain there would be sun to soak the ache out of this damned leg, lights in the streets and girls. With any luck at all, he and Pianka would live out this bloody war.

  *

  The truck pulled off the road three kilometres outside of Nantes, drove down a muddy track and into a farmyard. Henri and Patrick, shapeless in dirty blue overalls, got down and the truck drove away. A woman came quickly out of the house, embraced Henri and they talked rapidly. Patrick understood every word. He looked around him curiously, but unafraid.

  Henri said, “There are clothes here for you. There will be papers and I have money. This is a way we have used before for airmen and it is safe.”

  Patrick nodded. He knew it would be all right. He was on his way.

  *

  Quartermain waited in the Headquarters that Ryder had set up in the house on the cliffs above Falmouth. At two in the morning of the twenty-ninth HQ Plymouth telephoned to say that Ryder and some survivors had returned. The raid had been a huge success, its main objective accomplished, but the launch Phoebe had been seen, blazing like a torch and sinking near the Old Mole under heavy fire.

  There was an air of celebration at the Headquarters but Quartermain did not stay. He went out to the Daimler and Leading Wren Jenny Melville drove him down through the darkened streets to his hotel in the town. When he climbed stiffly from the car he told her, “You won’t be needed again tonight, but you’d better come in and we’ll find you a cup of tea.”

  The girl asked, “Is there any news, sir?”

  Quartermain answered, “They aren’t coming back.” He went in and asked the night porter for tea.

  “There’s nobody in the kitchen, o’ course. sir, but I expect I can find something.”

  Jenny Melville said, “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

  She walked quickly past Quartermain, who asked the porter, “Will you fetch me a scotch, please? A large one.”

  Scotch was scarce and officially the hotel had none but the porter went to the hidden bottle.

  There was a fire in the hearth and Quartermain sank into a chair before it and stared into the flames. He felt old and tired, chilled to the bone. All gone. Catherine Guillard, John Ward, Peter Madden, Joe Krueger, and all the good men with them. He, Quartermain, had sent them. The porter brought him whisky in a thick glass and he sipped it neat, remembering them. The young ones had died and he was an old man.

  He sat there for a long time. Now and again the girl came quietly to the door behind him, watched him for a minute or two with her teeth in her lower lip, then went away.

  He was remembering Catherine Guillard saying, when she was still exhausted after the raid to bring back Peyraud, “I will return to France.” She had said it calmly, knowing the death that might well await her there. And Jack Ward at Harwich, unshaven and hollow-eyed, bitter at the escape of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Quartermain had asked him, “Ready to go again?” And Ward had answered, “Any time.”

  It was close to morning when Quartermain stood up and Jenny Melville came in from the kitchen. He said, “Find out the time of the first train to London, will you? I’ll go back alone and you can have a day’s rest then come on tomorrow with the car.” There was work for him to do; he was not finished yet. He would see this war through to its end, or his.

  The Leading Wren went to the reception desk and the telephone there. It rang as she reached it and she lifted it, answered, then held it out to Quartermain. “For you, sir. Headquarters.”

  He took the instrument, noticing that the girl was red-eyed as if she had been crying. “Quartermain…I see…Yes, thank you for telling me.”

  He went out quickly to the Daimler and Jenny Melville drove him down to the harbour where the motor-launches berthed. As they went he told her, “They’re coming in. I asked Ward for an E-boat so he captured me one…God knows how, but its wireless didn’t work so they couldn’t tell us. They’ve just met a destroyer on patrol outside and she sent a signal that she’s bringing them in.”

  A Fairmile waited for them at the jetty, slipped as soon as they were aboard and ran down river in the cold dawn. Quartermain stood at the side of the captain, a lieutenant R. N. V. R., the girl a pace or two behind. As they left the harbour an
d met the sea the Fairmile pitched to it. The girl put out a hand to hold on but stared ahead.

  There was a mist on the water and the E-boat came out of it quietly, slipping along slowly with only a ripple at her bow. The Fairmile slowed and started to turn. As the E-boat stole past, Quartermain made out the face of the American, Joe Krueger, at the helm in the little wheelhouse. Jack Ward stood on the bridge above, Catherine Guillard at his side. Quartermain could not believe it; her ‘pianist’ had reported her taken by the Gestapo. She wore a German naval greatcoat that hung around her in folds and her short fair hair was blowing in the wind. He thanked God that Ward had brought her, not Dönitz, out of France.

  Peter Madden was in the waist and he lifted a hand, grinning. Quartermain saw Jenny Melville waving back and crying openly now. He thought that he’d been slow, not to have seen that going on right under his nose.

  The escorting destroyer turned away to head out to sea. She was a flush-decked, narrow ship with four upright funnels, old, rust-streaked and hard-worked. She might have been Boston or Campbeltown.

  Quartermain saluted them all.

  Epilogue

  Lieutenant Wynn in M.T.B. 74 fired delayed action torpedoes at the lock gates of the Old Entrance and they exploded forty-eight hours after Campbeltown blew up, creating further chaos.

  *

  This book is not intended as a history of the St. Nazaire raid, though I have tried to set my story against the background of the time and stuck to the facts so far as I could. There was no Alain Peyraud; the staff of Combined Operations collected the essential information on the construction of the Normandie dock. Where I have named real people it was because they were integral to this story. It would take another book to describe all the individual feats of bravery that night. The men of CHARIOT won five VCs ‘before breakfast’.

  If you enjoyed reading Deed of Glory, you might be interested in Seek Out and Destroy, also by Alan Evans.

  Extract from Seek Out and Destroy by Alan Evans

  1. Seek Out and Destroy

  HM Light Cruiser Dauntless eased her battered frame through the night at a cautious ten knots. Her captain, Commander David Cochrane Smith, stood on her torn bridge and thought the November darkness was kind to her, hiding the ravages of her recent action, but she could wear her scars with pride because she had fought her fight and won.

  He was thirty years old, a middle-sized, lean man, seeming frail, but that was deceptive. His thin face was drawn with tiredness now, the pale blue eyes narrowed by continual strain. But that night Dauntless was bound for the dockyard at Alexandria, only hours away, and the survivors of her crew were looking forward to leave in Cairo. Smith shared this anticipation, and there was a girl in Cairo who would share his leave...

  The signal yeoman broke into Smith’s reverie: ‘Escort’s signalling, sir! Making the challenge to somebody ahead!’

  Smith saw the winking light off the starboard bow where a destroyer patrolled, a black shape under her smoke. A second cruised to port, the pair then shepherding Dauntless. Another light flickered in the darkness ahead and the yeoman read the signal: ‘It’s the destroyer Harrier, sir.’

  Harrier was expected. Only hours before Rear Admiral Braddock had sent a wireless signal that he was sailing from his shore command in Alexandria to meet Dauntless. That had surprised Smith: Braddock was a grim, taciturn near-seventy and not the man to come bustling out to offer congratulations. A growled ‘well done’ from Braddock counted as fulsome praise.

  Smith paced across the bridge, halted to watch Harrier appear out of the night, slender and swift. No plodding ten knots for her. She ripped towards Dauntless at better than twenty knots with her big bow-wave a silver flame in the darkness, tore past her to port then turned neatly, reducing speed, to slide into station off the starboard beam. Again the light winked from her bridge and the yeoman reported, ‘Admiral’s coming aboard, sir.’

  ‘Very good. Stop both.’ That last to the men at the engine room telegraphs. The destroyer’s motor-boat was already dropping down to the sea as the way came off Dauntless. Smith left the bridge to Ackroyd, the First Lieutenant, and went to meet Braddock as he came aboard, broadchested, his black beard streaked with grey. He saw the Admiral’s sweeping glance along the upper deck where the entire superstructure was twisted wreckage and not a gun survived, saw Braddock scowl. Dauntless had been a lovely ship and Braddock remembered her so. But then he turned on Smith and said abruptly, ‘I’ve got orders for you.’

  ‘Orders?’ Smith could not believe it. ‘Sir, with respect, Dauntless is in no condition —’

  ‘Not for Dauntless. For you. Ackroyd assumes command of this ship now. Tell somebody to pack your kit and he’s only got ten minutes. Where can we talk?’

  Smith wondered numbly if he had misheard or misunderstood. He was tired out — could his mind or his ears be playing tricks? Leave Dauntless in ten minutes? Why?

  Braddock grumbled, ‘Come on, man! We haven’t got all night. Is that Buckley?’

  It was Leading-Seaman Buckley, hovering discreetly close by, a big shadow in the gloom. Smith told him, ‘Pack my kit. All you can find. You’ve got ten minutes.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

  Smith turned to Braddock. ‘We can talk in the sea-cabin, sir.’

  It was at the back of the bridge, a small steel cubicle holding a desk, a chair and a bunk, Braddock hung up his cap, took the chair and Smith sat on the bunk. Braddock dug a fat envelope out of his pocket and tossed it on to the desk. ‘Your orders are in there, but I’ll tell you what they are. Admiral Winter commands the British cruiser squadron in the Adriatic. The operation’s his idea and he’s asked for you.’

  The Adriatic. Italy was Britain’s ally there and she faced the Austrians across the Adriatic, fought them in the Alps in the north. This was the beginning of November. Smith tried to remember what he knew of weather in the northern Adriatic. There would be snow in the mountains, of course, a cold wind, plenty of fog.

  Braddock said, ‘You probably know the Austrian fleet is not as strong as the Italian so since the start of the war they’ve followed a policy of maintaining a fleet-in-being, staying in their bases either at Trieste or at Pola, just across the northern Adriatic from Venice, knowing that that ties up the Italians who have to keep a similar fleet-in-being in Brindisi and Taranto in the south just in case the Austrians come out. Obviously the Italians can’t blockade Pola any more than we could mount a blockade of the German High Seas Fleet. Any attempt at that would leave the blockading ships wide open to attack by U-boats. So, stalemate. But now —’ He paused, then asked, ‘Have you heard of a Kapitan-zur-See Erwin Voss?’

  Heard of him? More than that, Smith had met the man. But what had Voss to do with him now?

  ‘He has the reputation of a daring and aggressive officer.’

  The admiral nodded his grizzled head. ‘The Germans have sent him to the Austrians as an “adviser”. Winter believes that’s eye-wash and Voss is there to instil dash and aggression into the Austrians, to set the Adriatic alight. We’ve had several attacks of jitters over the years when it looked like the German battlecruiser Goeben might break out of the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean, and that was just one battlecruiser. The Austrians have half a dozen battleships, three of them newish dreadnoughts. If they start rampaging up and down the Adriatic and that long Italian coastline, then the fat will be in the fire! The Italians should settle them but God knows what damage they might do first.’

  Smith could imagine it. A force of capital ships like that could sink whole convoys and be back in port before any pursuing battle squadron could come up with them.

  Braddock said grimly, ‘You take the point. The Austrians have a battlecruiser, too. Salzburg. She’s big, new and fast. Voss is aboard her and, Winter believes, effectively commanding her. He’s also convinced that Voss, in Salzburg, will give a lead in aggressive action.’

  Smith thought that sounded more than likely. Salzburg was a fine ship and Voss was a
fighter. But where was this leading?

  Braddock went on, ‘Catching Voss at sea will not be easy and beating him something else again. That’s where you come in.’ He paused a moment, then finished: ‘Your orders are to seek out and destroy Salzburg — in harbour.’

  Smith stared at him. ‘In harbour?’

  Braddock nodded. ‘Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. But something’s planned, I’m sure. Your orders come from Admiralty and you have an independent command. That was at Winter’s insistence, oddly enough.’ It was very unusual for a senior officer to insist on a junior being given an independent role in waters where he commanded. Braddock continued, ‘The operation is most secret and the senior officer, that’s Winter, of course, is instructed to give you all assistance possible in his judgment. In other words, whatever command you get will come from him. There’s a letter from Winter with the orders, promising his support. He doesn’t say how the job is to be done but I’m sure he has ideas. Any questions? Though I warn you, I’ve told you all I know.’

  There was one. ‘You said he asked for me, sir. Why?’

  Braddock shrugged heavy shoulders. ‘I’ve known Jack Winter for donkey’s years. We keep in touch. He knows my opinion of you.’

  Smith said incautiously, ‘I’ve heard one or two of your comments myself.’

  Braddock scowled. ‘That’s right. You’ll hear more of the same, if necessary. I told him about some of the scrapes you’ve got into and been damn lucky to get away with. At sea — and ashore.’

  He was talking about the women. There had been affairs: one of them scandalous, but that was in the past. Smith started angrily, ‘Sir!’ But he stopped there, Braddock’s eye on him. Few men argued with Rear Admiral Braddock.