by David Black
‘Mr Grainger has a compound fracture of his left shoulder blade,’ said Bell through gritted teeth, ‘as well as the head gash. His noise was caused by us having to shove the bone back in place, but mostly because Mr Grainger refused a morphine jag. There’s almost definitely a severe concussion as well.’
‘What state are we in?’ said Grainger to Harry. He wasn’t talking about his own shoulder, nor his head. Harry looked back at Bell; he understood now, the glowering. It couldn’t have been easy for him and the poor rating, dragged in to help. Hard work, trying to reset a shoulder blade that’s sticking out through your patient’s back; trying to push and shove it back into place, knowing you are inflicting agony; and the patient is flat refusing a pain-killing blast of morphine that will shut him up and let you concentrate on what you have to do, without the distraction of his cries in your ear. Harry noticed for the first time the blood and gore soaked into Bell’s grubby white pullover. When he looked at the Leading Torpedoman, his was covered in blood too.
‘Everything is under control,’ Harry said to Grainger.
Grainger went to give a nod of his head and Harry thought he was going to pass out. ‘Right,’ he managed to say eventually, his other cheek still pressed into the banquette cover, ‘this is what we have to do.’
Splat! Splat! Another two handfuls of sodden signal flags landed on the control room deck plates. The tower had been drained at last, and the Chief and two ratings were up there inspecting the damage. That was when they’d discovered why, when the tower had filled with water, they couldn’t drain it.
The water that had come jetting into the tower had hit their little signal locker – a tiny lattice box, tacked to the tower’s steel side, that held the boat’s collection of signal flags; kept for tradition mostly. It wasn’t often a submarine had call to hoist flags to communicate anything. But the water had blasted the locker full on, and flushed out every single flag in it, and washed them into the tower’s drain holes, blocking and choking every one of them. That was why the tower wouldn’t drain. Harry ordered them stowed somewhere where they couldn’t do any more damage. Bloody things!
It was dark on the surface now, and already close to midnight.
It had been three hours ago when Crabtree had brought his device from the engine room. It looked like a model of some medieval siege engine, or an actual-size torture instrument. They had fitted it under the tower hatch, and prised it up until the water came out in a solid blade into the elephant’s trunk, sluicing it into the space made by a lifted deck plate, and on into the bilges – the pumps there going full belt to get it overboard, burning amps and more amps doing it. The battery was going to need another hefty charge, so it was time they went up.
Grainger had passed out again, so Harry didn’t consult him. They’d already had their conversation, and he knew the plan. He sent Umbrage to Diving Stations, bow into the oncoming seas, and up they went. It was when Harry got on to the bridge, the two lookouts following him, that he began to feel a little more confident. The wind had all but dropped and the seas were definitely abating. And he was away from Grainger. The First Lieutenant might be out for the count at the moment, but he was still propped up in the wardroom and swaddled in blankets, because no jacket would go over that shoulder; his cap stuck on his head, because he’d ordered it. Grainger continued to refuse morphine because he said he’d need his head clear if the Eyeties showed up, but no one looking at him believed he would be in any state to launch an attack.
Umbrage, her CO lost and her First Lieutenant incapacitated, should have been heading back to Malta. But Grainger had been adamant. ‘We can’t leave a hole in the line,’ he’d told Harry. And with a fistful of painkiller pills in him to take the edge off his pain, he’d explained it all: everything Shrimp had told him and Rais, and Rais had said must be kept from the crew.
An Italian squadron was coming their way, probably tonight.
If they left a gap in the patrol line, the Italian warships might slip through and get in among the Force F ships hunting Rommel’s supply convoy. Nor could they warn Shrimp to plug the gap. If they surfaced and radioed in what had happened to them, their transmissions would be picked up. The Italians might not know what they were saying because it would be coded, but it would be confirmation that a patrol line was out there, and they would be coming on alerted, the element of surprise lost. They had to stay on the line. And stay quiet. Grainger would command. That was why he was refusing morphine, to keep his head clear, and Harry would be his eyes.
Once on the bridge, Harry had his sextant passed up; through the rat-tails of high scudding cloud he shot Saturn and then Mars rising. Then he got Wykham up to take the watch, and he dropped down to the chart table to work out where they were. They were way east of their billet. He began to plot a course back to where they should be, and worked out how long it would take to get back there. Bugger. He was hoping he would have both diesels pumping in charge right now, hove to, marking time, not having to sprint to get back on the line. So many things going through his head.
‘Mr Gilmour to the bridge!’ It was Wykham. What now? Harry shot back up the ladder, and there, fine on the bow, and low on the dark horizon, a fireworks display was going on.
Harry raised his night glasses. There were individual searchlights, and tracer in the air, and there, like a fleeting shadow, the silhouette of an aircraft, then out to the right, another. Distinctive, kite-like shapes: biplanes. Darting in and out like mayflies, above the indistinct bulk of a number of ships, he couldn’t tell how many from the confusion of shapes, but they were spread across a good thirty degrees of horizon.
‘It’s the Hal Far Swordfish,’ said Harry. ‘They’re attacking . . . it must be the Italian squadron.’ Harry bent to the bridge voice-pipe. ‘Stop, together,’ he said. And he waited while the thump of their diesels died, and suddenly the distant rumble of anti-aircraft fire came drifting to them over the water. Then he said, ‘ASDIC. Any HE?’
Back came a voice out of the pipe: ‘Multiple high-speed HE, red five to green-two-zero. But they’re a long way off, Sir.’
Umbrage’s own racket ceased, had let Tuke pick up what other sounds were in the water.
Harry bent to the voice-pipe again and ordered the diesels back online, thinking to himself, That’s handy, we can really start cramming in the amps while we’re hove to. Then he said, ‘Mr Wykham, you have her up here. Keep an eye on that lot and tell me if anything changes’, and then he was gone, sliding down the conning tower ladder. When he hit the deck plates, he tapped the control room messenger as he went by: ‘Tell Mr Bell, tubes one, two, three and four. Prepare for firing.’ Two steps later, and he was squeezing in beside Tuke in the ASDIC cubby. ‘Right, Tuke, what have you got?’
‘Multiple, Sir. Coming on fast. I’m counting three heavy, and definitely five, maybe six smaller. All high-speed turns, Sir. Easy pushing thirty knots. Smaller ones almost certainly destroyers. The heavy screws, I’d say they were cruisers, Sir. Coming right down our throats, Sir.’
Bloody Norah. Harry stepped out into the control room, and he and Big Jonners’ eyes met. Everybody had heard everything, of course; the crew at their stations, waiting. Harry, wondering, What in God’s name do they expect me to do? Then he saw the look in Big Jonners’ eyes and it made his throat tight, and the hairs stand up on his neck. Harry recognised it right away, and knew it: it must’ve been seen on the decks of every British man-o’-war for the past three hundred years, that look a Royal Navy fighting sailor gets, when he knows he is about to engage the enemy more closely.
‘We’re starting the attack, Mr Roscorla,’ said Harry. Of course we are, said the set of Big Jonners’ jaw.
Harry lifted the sound-powered phone. ‘Mr Crabtree, what’s the state of the charge?’ Everyone else in the control room saw by Harry’s thin smile that he’d liked the answer. He reached for the engine room telegraph and rang for full ahead, together, then he hit the night alarm for Diving Stations, and said, ‘Mr Parry-Jones, trim us right
down on number four main ballast tank, decks awash.’
Umbrage closed up for action, and Harry stood behind the Coxswain in his seat at the helm, and told him, ‘Make your course three-zero-zero, Mr Libby.’
Mr Gilmour in charge now, and wasn’t it all a different game from Lieutenant Rais? Harry all ‘Mr-this’, and ‘Please-that’. Okay, so everybody knew what Harry was up to. Saw through it. But then, at least everybody was clear now on what they were supposed to be doing, with orders coming fast but clear, and no having to second-guess. He might be just a one-ring, Wavy Navy wonder boy, with a jawline yet to frighten a razor blade, but here he was taking them into action, and you had to hand it to the lad – he wasn’t fluffing it.
Harry took the two steps for’ard to the wardroom. They could still see his bum sticking out into the passage.
‘Kit . . . Kit . . . It’s Harry, Kit,’ Harry said, leaning to speak into Grainger’s ear. He could see the First Lieutenant was awake now, but his eyes were glazed. Harry didn’t know if it were the concussion, or the constant pain. With a sickening feeling, he knew he was wasting his time before he spoke. ‘We are in contact with the Italian surface units, Kit. What do you want me to do?’
‘Attack,’ wheezed Grainger. ‘We must get into position to attack. I am coming to the control room . . .’ And Grainger suddenly rose to his full height, physically brushing Harry back on to his haunches, so that as Harry looked up at him, he saw Grainger’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and his jaws practically dislocate as they opened to let out a scream so loud, that it felt like a needle go through Harry’s ears. And then Grainger fell, like a tree, so that the other side of his wounded head bounced off the passage wall. Harry, up in a moment, pulled Grainger straight in the passage and shoved him into the recovery position.
‘Messenger!’
The young rating was there in an instant.
‘Go for’ard and get Mr Bell’s assistant scab-lifter here, and tell him he’s to administer a morphine shot to Mr Grainger. And tell him that is an order. Understand?’
The rating nodded furiously, before remembering to say, ‘Aye aye, Sir.’ Harry slapped his arm and sent him off with a ‘Good man!’
He was alone now. No referring to the Number One. He stepped back into the control room and flipped open the voice-pipe and asked Wykham, what the enemy was doing now.
Harry, standing in the control room, thinking: This is one of those moments you will remember for the rest of your life, and then thinking: However long that might be. Right now he wouldn’t be taking odds on it. He pressed his eyes shut, and told himself: Get your head into the box, and think it through. The enemy’s there, and you’re here.
Wykham told him the fireworks had finished. No more searchlights, no more tracer. The Swordfish must have dropped their torpedoes and turned for home. And no, Wykham said, he’d seen no sign their Fleet Air Arm chums had scored any hits. All he could see was the seemingly solid body of shadow now, thundering onward, heading to pass off their port bow. Just glimmers in the dark.
‘ASDIC?’ said Harry.
‘Still multiple high-speed HE, Sir,’ said Tuke, ‘bearing red-two-five. Confirm nine targets. Three heavy, six light, Sir. And they are still sticking to it. No zigzag yet . . . I’m picking up a lot of echo sounder now, Sir. They’re pinging, Sir. Blasting the water ahead of them.’
They’re looking for subs, Harry thought to himself, looking for the likes of me.
The control room seemed awfully tight now, all pressed in, in its red light and all the sharp unnatural shadows it threw. And Harry thinking, You’re it now. In command. Wanting to go and grab Big Jonners and shake him and plead, What do I do? All that history, coming all the way down to him, right here, as he stood on these deck plates, aboard this stinky steel pipe called HMS Umbrage, on a faraway foreign sea.
‘Tuke. Call me back your last three bearings on the target!’
Tuke obliged and Harry scribbled them down on the plot; marked them up and drew a line for each. And as he did, he found himself reciting the Royal Navy prayer, just how he’d recited it with all those other spotty hopefuls, all that time ago, stood on the wooden decking over the swimming pool in that Hove leisure centre the Admiralty had taken over, and renamed HMS King Alfred . . . ‘O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rulest the raging of the sea . . . Be pleased to receive into thy Almighty and most gracious protection, the persons of us thy servants, and the Fleet in which we serve . . .’
All the Drakes and the Raleighs and the Nelsons; and now it’s your turn, Harry. ‘. . . the Fleet in which we serve . . .’ Oh well, there was no one else here to get this done. So he’d better bloody well get on with it.
He worked it out: the target’s mean course was 117 degrees. He stepped over and dialled 117 into the fruit machine. Now he needed a range. He called ‘Up periscope!’ Although they were still surfaced, he wanted to see the enemy himself. As the periscope came out of its well, he reached down to drop the handles and look. There was a Leading Seaman that Grainger liked to use when he was on the periscope – a tall, skinny lad, nimble, who could dance around with him without falling over his own feet and lean far in enough to read the bezel. His name was Low, and his diving station had been in the control room since.
‘Low, behind me, please,’ said Harry. ‘When I call “That!”, read off the bearing and range, please.’
Not that the lad needed telling, he’d done it so often. But Harry was being all very formal now: direct orders, so that everybody knew what they were supposed to do, none of that second-guessing lark any more. Which was all right with the crew. Harry, their Vasco, might still be just a lad, but he was doing all right, so far. ‘Aye aye, Sir!’ said Low.
But it was too bloody dark. He could see nothing. Damn and blast! He stepped to the voice-pipe, telling himself to be calm about it. ‘Mr Wykham. What can you see now?’
Wykham’s voice echoed back: ‘Bugger all, Harry!’ Mr Wykham hadn’t got used to the fact his old messmate was now his CO. ‘But I can hear the buggers! Bearing red-three-zero to red-two-five!’
This was no good. Harry knew he was going to attack submerged. But he needed to get closer in before he dived her. Because he needed a better look at the targets. And since the targets were advancing at over twenty-seven knots, he was going to have to make a decision in a hurry.
Harry left the periscope where it was.
He needed to begin issuing orders now, telling everyone in the control room what he intended to do. He ordered Umbrage under helm, turning her in towards the enemy’s track, and then he told the control room crew: it was going to be a submerged attack, but they weren’t diving yet. And then he shot up the ladder on to the bridge.
Night glasses to his face. Fuck his fucking night vision! What could Wykham see now? Still bugger all. But Harry could hear the Italian ships now as well, even above their own diesel thump.
He was achieving nothing up here. ‘Clear the bridge!’ The two lookouts shot down the hatch as he hit the klaxon twice to dive the boat.
Harry followed, securing both clips on the upper lid as he went, and slid down on to the deck plates. Wykham was already by the fruit machine, hadn’t needed telling. Good lad.
‘Maintain sixty feet!’ said Harry, then he turned and took another quick look at the plot and then moved to stand behind Libby. ‘Cox’n, steer two-seven-zero for four minutes, call it, and then turn us on to zero-four-zero,’ he said. It was all starting to shape up in his head.
‘Aye aye, Sir.’
But Harry had already gone, back to squeeze himself in beside Tuke again.
‘What can you see, Tuke?’
Not ‘hear’, Tuke notes, with a little grin to himself, but ‘see’. Well, well. Mr Gilmour actually understood how it worked. And he wanted to share. Share the picture all the noises were painting inside Tuke’s head.
Tuke decides he doesn’t mind this officer getting inside his head. Seeing as he isn’t that bad a lad, for
an officer.
‘The three heavies. They’re line astern, but a bit ragged. As though they’re more concerned about running for it, than keeping station.’
‘Of course they are, Tuke,’ says Harry, grinning at Tuke now. ‘The WAFUs’ – Jack’s slang for anyone Fleet Air Arm – ‘The WAFUs in their Stringbags have just scared the shite out of them. And we like that, don’t we?’
‘Sir?’ says Tuke, scowling.
‘If they’re running for it, Tuke, they’re going to be more interested in putting distance between them and the last attack, than in fannying about zigzagging.’
‘Of course they are, Sir,’ says Tuke, the penny dropping, and him grinning now, back at Harry. ‘The other targets, Sir,’ Tuke continues, all serious again now. ‘They’re destroyers, Sir. For sure. Four of them are running ahead in a screen. The other two are back, on either beam of the heavies. But the bearings are changing fast, Sir, as I’m talking . . . Moving to starboard.’
‘I know,’ says Harry, nodding, biting his lip, ‘we’re crossing their track. Now what’s all this about their ASDIC kit not being able to ping below a thermocline?’
‘Sir. That is correct, Sir,’ says Tuke. ‘I don’t know the exact science, Sir. Just that it’s something to do with the temperature difference. The pings bounce off, or get absorbed or something. It’s a phenomenon. The Commander S1 on Medway knows all about it, he’s always going on about it to the First Flotilla lads.’
‘Phenomenon,’ says Harry with a smile, and gives him a punch on the arm. ‘Even the slightest wobble on their bearing, yell. I want to know the instant if they change their minds about zigzagging.’
Harry has lost count of the minutes since the air attack lifted. He curses himself. The range must be closing fast now. He has to get inside that destroyer screen, before he can even think about setting up his attack on the cruisers.
‘Good man,’ says Harry eventually, slapping Tuke’s shoulder and heading back to the control room. ‘Carry on.’