See You at the Bar

by David Black

  He decided not to start issuing orders on whether he’d carry out a gun or torpedo attack until he took his next look. He wasn’t going to waste a torpedo on a tiddler, especially since there didn’t seem to be much air activity – just as the major had assured him. It was time. Up went the scope, and there was the target: an ancient coastal steamer, last century if she was a day. Three castles on her – the fo’c’sle, wheelhouse and stern, with a towering, rusty natural draught smokestack belching away. At least between eight hundred and a thousand tons – borderline for a torpedo, but alas, that didn’t matter right now as unfortunately, the old tub was disappearing between two of the smaller islands, Olipa and Jakljan, and heading into the inshore channel.

  Harry ordered, down ’scope and a turn to starboard. He hadn’t intended closing Gruz until later in the day and then he’d thought he would take a look in to see if there was anything worth attacking. But maybe if he could beat the steamer down the coast… he could bag her before she got there. To do that, however, he’d need to surface and crack on – in daylight, and in full view of the coast and not just two uninhabited rocks like he’d risked for the caique. There were farm buildings all over the shore here. He’d take another look in five minutes and decide.

  He stuck the ’scope up again.

  Directly on the bow, and just scraping his low horizon, two fully laden schooners – at least four to five hundred tons each – in full sail, one heading round past the islet of Grebeni at the entrance to Gruz harbour and the other coming out. Two prime gun targets. Easily baggable if he surfaced right now and chased. But when he angled up the ’scope for an all-round sky look, there it was, a problem.

  Buzzing up from the south-east, hugging the coast: a shagbat, and a weird-looking one at that; flash, more like a sports car than an anti-submarine aircraft.

  Scourge went to sixty feet, and Harry leaned against the chart table, wondering what to do next. Major Drobnjac had certainly been right about the coastal traffic. All that shipping, stuffed to the gunnels with Jerry material, puttering up and down with impunity. It was obvious now why the partisans wanted to hold onto the island, as the major had said, a base right across the enemy’s line of supply. Just like Malta was, and had been, critically, at a turning point in the war.

  ‘We don’t have gunboats like you,’ Major Drobnjac had said. ‘But we have fishing boats, and we have guns to mount on them. It will be a start. And if you really want to hurt the fascists like you say… you have gunboats. Torpedo boats. Tell them to come and join us. You’ve been to Vis. It’s a nice place to go to work.’

  The man had a point. Meanwhile, what was he going to do about that shagbat? It was hanging around too long. He took another look and even managed to identify it. A Caproni 124. A single-engined art-deco-designed seaplane, all sweeping contours and go-faster flourishes. A real between-the-wars job, out of date and, he assumed, dragged out of its museum and thrown into second-line defence. He couldn’t remember this plane from his plane-spotting magazines, so he had no idea what it carried when it came to bombs, and he was not inclined to do any on-the-job testing. He was going to have to let all three targets go.

  ‘Pass the word for Windass,’ he said. When the wardroom steward presented himself, wearing only a singlet between his cap and his skivvies so you could see all his armpit hair, Harry smiled his winning smile, ‘Ah, Windass. Lash me up a sarnie from that salami we liberated… and a mug of the coffee too… with condensed milk. There’s a good chap.’

  No point in going hungry while you were waiting.

  Harry let the day drag on, ambling about in the deeper water with barely steerage way on the motors. Then as dusk was drawing close, he crept into the inshore channel between Lopud and Koločep, and when the darkness fell, as it did with some rapidity, he surfaced, bows pointing up the channel, and waited to see what would come down it.

  Harry had long got out of the habit of always staying on the bridge at night and irritating the watch on duty, but tonight, he was making an exception.

  ‘Sir…!’ It was one of the rating lookouts at the back of the bridge. He was sniffing.

  ‘What is it Addison?’ said Harry, turning, catching something in the air… a faint…?

  ‘I can smell funnel exhaust, sir,’ said Addison. ‘Sure of it, sir.’

  That was what Harry could sniff too. That oily whiff. Faint, but definitely there.

  But where was it coming from? There was no engine thump they could hear above Scourge’s own diesels, burbling away mostly on charge as she crawled along. The other lookout was reporting nothing on the bow, and Addison couldn’t see anything aft either, nor could McCready who was on the bridge too as officer of the watch. No alert from the Asdic cubby, but then Biddle would be scanning ahead and wouldn’t be listening for anything coming out of Gruz. ‘Asdic, bridge,’ said Harry into the pipe. ‘Do a listen astern, Biddle.’

  Biddle’s voice came up the pipe a moment later. ‘HE. Green one seven zero, sir!’

  Harry hit the tit twice.

  Two blasts from the klaxon and the main vents opened.

  Scourge levelled out at periscope depth, continuing on her original heading. You always turned stern on, on making a night sighting on the surface; you never knew who was stalking you, so it let you open the range as you dived until you’d decided whether what was out there was a target or something to the get hell away from.

  But once down, Harry decided not to try and turn towards for a look-see. The channel was little more than a mile wide here and not conducive to any fancy manoeuvring. He’d let the target come up on them, and check her out as she passed.

  ‘What’ve you got, Biddle? Fast? Slow? Big? Not?’

  ‘…it’s a merchant ship, sir. Almost certainly. Not fast. Diesel engines. Probably only making five or six knots.’

  ‘Let me know as she’s coming up on our quarter, Biddle.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Harry didn’t like the idea of trying to get into a torpedo shot in these enclosed waters. The track angle and the range would be all wrong. If there was going to be an attack, it would be gun. ‘Hooper, you and your lot stand by,’ he said, barely raising his voice to call down the control room to the leading seaman gun-layer and his team crouching in the for’ard gangway. ‘If we’re going to engage, your target will be on the starboard beam. So, on your toes, boys.’

  Hooper beamed at him, his teeth taking on a stained porcelain sheen through the red light, on to preserve the night vision of anyone likely to be heading upstairs. ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Hooper.

  There was silence in the boat now. So quiet, Harry wondered whether he might be able to hear the splash of the sweat dripping from Windass’ armpits even there, in the control room. Then…

  ‘Target coming up on our starboard quarter now, sir.’ It was Biddle, in a very conversational tone.

  ‘Up periscope,’ said Harry, and as the handles cleared the deck plates, he let it come three feet and then crouched to stop it before turning back to the assembled faces. When he’d decided, a moment ago, he was going to do this, the name on his lips had been Harding’s. But he’d stopped himself. Instead, he looked at Farrar: ‘Number One. You do the honours, will you Even with the slice of moon we’ve got, you know how little light’ll be coming in,’ he said, tapping the slender attack ’scope’s tube, ‘with all the land shadow in a narrow channel like this… and my crap night vision.’

  Farrar stepped smartly forward, not showing the slightest surprise, and grabbed the handles, swivelling the ’scope to starboard.

  ‘Target bearing… that,’ he said, matter-of-fact.

  And the yeoman, who was doing his periscope assistant, called off, ‘Green five.’

  ‘Sir, she’s a ferry of some sort. Easily a thousand tons. Range, no more than seven hundred yards,’ then Farrar did a quick all-round look, ‘No other shipping in sight. Down ’scope,’ and he stood back.

  From behind him, Biddle’s voice echoed from the cubby, ‘No ot
her HE, on any bearing, sir. Target is proceeding alone.’

  ‘Surface, gun action!’ called Harry. ‘Gun crew close up. But at least wait until the tower’s clear, there…!’

  Hooper was already on the ladder, the hatch wheel half spun open even as the wrecker was still calling the depth as they went up. The two lookouts were already up into the conning tower, and Harry, before he knew it, already had his head almost up the second one’s bum.

  And then there was water spilling all over him, warm with a salty tang to it, and he was breathing night air and not bodies and diesel, and they were on the bridge, him and the two lookouts, and before he’d even grabbed the bridge front, Hooper had opened fire.

  BANG!

  Harry’s ears were ringing, even as he watched the shadow that was the target’s wheelhouse splinter apart.

  … and then BANG!

  Another one, right into the wheelhouse again. BANG! And another. BANG!

  Voices could be heard now, drifting across the water; incoherent shouts. Then suddenly, out of the voicepipe, was Biddle’s echoey voice, ‘Bridge, Asdic! Target is under helm!’

  Harry thinking, good call young man!

  Harry, was well aware that someone who didn’t know what they were doing might not have made that call, might have thought that since there were eyes on the bridge, they could see that the target was turning for themselves and that all he’d be doing would be wasting folks’ time stating the bleedin’ obvious – but not true! Not at night. In the dark, you could be looking right at a ship and easily miss the start of a turn, especially if the target was showing bugger all bow wave, like this one. And then it might be too late.

  ‘Hooper!’ called Harry over the bridge front, calm as a chap calling for a pint. ‘Target is under helm!’

  It was enough for Scourge’s gun layer. ‘Aye, aye, sir. Target under helm!’ All called over his shoulder as Harry watched him traverse his beloved little three-incher aft and after the merest pause, resume firing – this time, the rounds going into the enemy’s stern and her steering gear.

  When Harry looked back along the hull of the ferry, for that was what she was, he could see now there was a pronounced slew on her, and she was starting to heel over. She was turning away. And speeding up too, from the churn of froth from under her stern. Certainly, she was over enough for him to see the cant of her top deck and the sight unfolding there: shadow figures, pouring up from below like the denizens of a kicked nest – a seething mass of them in what was left of the pale wash of a dying moon.

  Soldiers. The ferry was carrying soldiers. And she was trying to beach herself on the opposite shore.

  Harry stiffened, but he didn’t blink. Wouldn’t let himself. He’d sunk a troopship before. As number one on Nicobar. On that beautiful morning in the Sicilian Channel. He didn’t want to see again that carpet of men, rising and falling on the long undulating swell, drowning.

  Hooper fired twice more in quick succession, this time, the rounds going into the hull on the waterline where the ferry’s engine room was. Then a flare went up. A pretty raggedy effort, going off at a queer angle, out and aft of the ferry. Harry, everybody, watched it slither into the black sky, its trajectory making it look like it was clawing its way up instead of soaring, until it reached its paltry zenith and ignited, illuminating more beach and rock than ship and surrounding sea. When Harry looked back, he could see men jumping off the ferry and into the water and a lifeboat dangling, skewed from its davits, someone having botched its launch in their panic.

  He realised Hooper had stopped firing. Of course he had. The Royal Navy didn’t fire on shipwrecked mariners. Then he did blink, except this time, he saw those fleeing Jerries on the cliffs back on Vis, running away, then stopping running away and throwing hand grenades down on the partisans’ landing party, on smiling little Cpl Hibbert.

  He was about to order Hooper to resume firing when there was a terrific crump! and a sudden rearing of the bow of the ferry. She’d run aground. The almost immediate lurch to the side told him her spinning propellers were still driving her hard onto the shore. Then the froth at her stern died; someone had killed the load to the shafts, and the huge dark mass of her just hung there, her bows stove in, up on the rocky beach. Already, he could see the exodus of men from the stricken hull was now really gathering pace.

  Harry bent to the bridge front, ‘Secure from firing. Clear the casing!’ Then he turned to the lookouts, ‘Down you go,’ and as they vanished into the hatch, he sounded the klaxon to dive the boat and followed them.

  While Scourge sedately motored up the channel at periscope depth, Harry ordered torpedo tubes one and four ready for firing, shallow depth, and then he propped himself against the chart table, wishing he was wearing trousers and not just his skivvies, so he could thrust his hands in the pockets.

  He was looking at Farrar, monitoring the dive board, watching the trim, then he turned to Harding, busy at his plot on the chart table.

  He’d almost asked Harding to take the periscope there, and not his number one.

  He’d been aware, for some time now, he was developing a certain favouritism for Harding. Yet Lt Nick Farrar, his number one, was a bloody good officer. He couldn’t fault him. But equally, there was a bit of the fuddy-duddy about the man. What age was he? Maybe twenty-six, maybe a bit older, yet, there was a staid air about him beyond his years. How he used to turn his nose up at strangers round the wardroom table, especially if they weren’t officers, or worse, if they were foreigners. Petty. And he could be precise to the point of pedantry. But Harry would be the first to agree you needed an organised, clear-headed professional to be a good first lieutenant, to hold a boat to its discipline and efficiency. And Farrar was all of those things. It was just that he longed for a spark from the man.

  As for Harding? He was just a hooligan at heart. An upper-class one, yes. But with bags of style. And Harry couldn’t help but like him. He also thought that one day, he would make a bloody good CO. Farrar? He didn’t know. Did he have that necessary flair in him?

  Regardless, he couldn’t allow himself to show even a whiff of favouritism. Otherwise, the whole boat would go to hell.

  And it would go to hell even faster if didn’t stop losing concentration like that, having these little reveries to himself inside his head while he was supposed to be trying to conduct submarine warfare in the enemy’s backyard.

  Like the one he’d been having since Vis that kept recurring, about why he’d let those Jerries go and then they’d killed Hibbert. Going round in circles, wondering what the rule was, the yardstick that told you how to stay on the right side of the line between fighting sailor and bloody murderer?

  Was he really going to debate in his head the state of his soul right now? While thirty feet down in a narrow channel off the enemy’s coast? Jesus!

  ‘Up periscope,’ he ordered. Then, not raising his head, he said, ‘Number One. Take another quick all-round look. Tell me if you think the channel’s wide enough now to do a one-eighty. I’m minded to go back and stick a torpedo into that ferry, just in case someone thinks it’s a good idea to try and float her off again.’

  By then, Harry was saying to himself, all those bloody soldiers will be off her and heading for the hills, and I won’t have to worry about blowing their arses off this time… the hills where they can get back to killing partisans like Major Drobnjac and maybe even radio operators like Willy Reynolds… where was that rule again? The yardstick that tells you what to do?

  *

  Another achingly azure sky, without a cloud. When Harry came up through the conning tower hatch, the heat washed over him like a caress. It would become more like being basted as the day wore on, but for now, it was perfect. He watched Hooper and his team take their time fitting the three-inch gun sight. No hurry right now, the schooner they had surfaced to engage was still on the other side of the headland off their port beam, tacking to clear it.

  Harry had heard tell all Jerry U-boat deck guns were fitted with
watertight sights as standard, so you didn’t have to keep shipping and unshipping them every time you dived. Scourge’s gun, however, had originally been designed and built to shoot down Zeppelins – in 1917. They hadn’t had the technology to waterproof gun sights back in 1917. So if you left its sight still attached when you dived, the outside ERA had to strip it down and dry it out before you could use it again.

  Scourge had inherited this one because rifled naval guns took notoriously long to build and any old ones left in stores were being parcelled out to new-builds.

  Harry had ordered the .303 mounting up too. This target looked like a good one: five hundred tons at least and heavy laden. And the fact that she was wafting along without a care in the world, or a friend to protect her, told him no one was looking for any enemy submarines this far back up the coast.

  Blowing a huge hole in the engine room of that ferry the other night and setting her on fire had stirred up quite a reaction along the coast around Gruz and Dubrovnik – nearly all of it Italian. A clutch of Italian Navy MAS boats had come out and had begun sweeping up the channel. Harry had decided prudence was in order and opted to get out of that narrow stretch pronto. Which had been just as well because as they exited, going like the clappers on the surface, a dark shape had come round the end of Mišnjak Island that had turned out to be one of those Jerry sub-hunters they called UJ-boats, UJ standing for Unterseeboot-jaeger, usually a local steam trawler, all gunned up and sprouting depth-charge racks. It had taken Scourge just under fourteen seconds to get down – one of their best times yet.

  They had hung about most of the next day, waiting for the hue and cry to die down, but it hadn’t. In fact, not long after first light, the art-deco Caproni had returned, and later, it had been joined by two lumbering Cant Z 501s who just wouldn’t go away, like they knew they were being deliberately annoying. And there had been no shipping traffic at all.