by David Black
The thought of it made Harry grimace in sympathy – poor Katty, she wasn’t the sort of girl who liked communal living. War is hell, he thought to himself.
‘Captain Verney wants to risk it,’ said Carey, snapping Harry back from his reverie, which he shouldn’t have been indulging in on the bridge, on the surface, less than quarter of a mile off the enemy coast. ‘So what do you think, Harry?’ Carey asked.
The question was mostly courtesy. Lieutenant Malcolm Carey was Nicobar’s commanding officer, and whatever happened on board, or whatever operation it embarked on, was his decision. He might ask for advice, might even take it, but as far as what action they took, as far as their Lordships of the Admiralty were concerned, that was the CO’s responsibility, and he alone would answer for it. And anyway, even before Harry had thought what his answer might be, he knew the decision had already been taken: he could tell from that affected relaxed pose his CO liked to strike, when he was about to get up to mischief.
‘I think we should get that bloody great rubber thing up first,’ said Harry, ‘and get an air line on it, before we start wrestling with the folbots.’
Harry could see the glimmer of Carey’s toothy grin in the dark. ‘I think we’re on, Olly,’ Carey said to the pongo. ‘Down you go and get your boys squared away.’ Harry went down on to the casing to make sure the impending mayhem wouldn’t get too out of control. He had put the Nicobars through a couple of dry runs on the way up here, but this would be the first time with the full kit and caboodle, troops and all. Still, he had Johnny Napier on traffic duty below, at the for’ard hatch, and Yeo, ably assisted by Bob Mundell in the control room, just in case the battleship Vittorio Vento came over the horizon to interrupt play. The Cox’n, Bill Sutter, would be first one up out of the for’ard hatch – there to assist Harry, and on hand to do any actual hitting of people if they didn’t do as they were told, and quickly.
Here we go again, Harry: into action against the King’s enemies, up and at ’em, one more time.
It was cold and slippery down on the casing. He could feel the slight up and down as Nicobar, her bow to the shore in order to present the minimum of silhouette, rode hove to. They were so close in now, Carey wasn’t even charging batteries any more in case their diesel thump could be heard on the beach. There was only the sound of lapping waves, and the distant murmur of surf. Until the noise of precision steel being manipulated interrupted the peace, and the hatch lid sprang up before him and he could see the dim red light glowing up. The noise of people shifting equipment below seemed really loud out on the casing.
There wasn’t a star in the sky, nor a light from the black smudge of the shoreline: just a thin effervescence in the distance of surf. The waves didn’t seem too high any more, not from here anyway, but then here was quite a distance away.
Bill Sutter was up beside him in a flash, followed by a junior rating, Harry couldn’t see who – one of the young ABs probably, picked for his brute strength. And then the gnarled, knobbly shape of some black thing appeared, being shoved from below amid a great deal of grunting. All three of them on the casing got a grip of its slimy cold slipperiness, and began to heave too, Harry digging his grip into one of the folds of it. Another heave, and lots more grunting, and then some young voice below saying, ‘Sir! You sound like yer havin’ sex, Sir!’ And Johnny Napier replying, ‘You’ll be having sex with the toe of my boot in a minute, ya cheeky wee bastard!’ And Bill Sutter, hissing low, through his suppressed laughter, ‘Quiet below there!’ And Harry grinning back at him, and then the thing was up and on the deck. A rubber dinghy, that they now had to inflate.
Harry took the air line from an unseen hand below, as Bill and the AB spread out the flattened dinghy, lumpy shadows moving in the dark. Then it was just a matter of attaching the line to the air valves on each inflatable section, and blasting in low-pressure air from Nicobar’s tanks. Harry left the Cox’n and the AB to finish the job, and waved up two pongoes, both Sergeants with Royal Engineers and Commando flashes on their shoulders. With them came the first two folbots, and Harry guided them aft to either side of the deck gun. The men, just shapes in the dark, their faces blackened, and knitted caps down over their ears, went immediately to work. The folbots were ingenious contraptions made of canvas on a collapsible wooden frame – based on the design of the Eskimo kayak, Captain Verney had told Harry in the wardroom on the way here. The two Sergeants had probably practised themselves silly assembling the things blindfolded, because they certainly knew what they were doing, assembling them in the dark. Harry left them to it, and went to check on the dinghy.
‘How’re we doing, Mr Sutter?’ he said, but he could see they were almost there. Two more folbots were being passed up behind them. When Harry looked up, he was aware of the dim shape of Carey leaning over the bridge, silent, just watching; and he felt a sneaky little pang of pride. The CO, not uttering a word, just letting him get on with it: trusting him to do it right, and not endanger the boat or the mission. Because this was a bloody tricky little caper they were up to here, on a narrow, slippery submarine casing, in the pitch dark, with a lot of bodies working and moving about, right underneath the noses of the enemy. And with a lot more heavy gear still to come up, and a lot more bodies too – pongo bodies – and here was Harry, making it all look easy, and knowing it.
They were working to a plan: Harry’s plan. He knew they’d need one if people weren’t going to start knocking each other overboard, and kicking kit after them as they got in each other’s way. Which had been why Harry had made them listen to his plan, despite all the eye-rolling. The old Harry would never have dreamed he might take pride in such intellectually undemanding, lumpen lifting and laying, but he had to admit, it felt good.
There was something else that felt good too: something he’d learned, that had happened after that planning group he’d convened hours before, around the wardroom table.
It had been mid-afternoon, while Nicobar moved slowly below, creeping at periscope depth towards the coast at barely two knots, able to do so because the choppy sea above meant any shagbat stupid enough to be flying in this weather would have no chance of seeing them at any depth.
Harry had sat everybody down to a lunch of one of Empney’s steak and kidney puddings, stuffed with tinned stew, and served up with tinned carrots, followed by stewed apples and creamed rice. It turned out to be one of the inexpert AB’s better efforts. And Carey told him so, much to the lad’s obvious delight – so much so that his sticky-out ears positively glowed pink.
Crammed around the wardroom table and into the passageway to hear Harry’s plan had been Carey in his usual spot on the corner of the banquette, Johnny Napier, and next to him, the pongo in charge, one Captain Oliver Verney of the Irish Guards, who also wore the dull red eagle, anchor and Thompson gun flash of the Commandos on his shoulder. On an upended carton of tinned peaches had been perched the pongo’s deputy and ‘blower-up in chief’, Lieutenant Colin Cotterell of the Royal Engineers, also the proud sporter of a Combined Operations flash.
They had eaten quickly and in silence, all huddled under the two little deckhead lights that were still glowing sickly white, and casting cosy little conspiratorial shadows. When they’d finished, Empney had cleared the table and brought them their steaming mugs of Ky, because it was going to be very cold up there tonight.
Harry began. In dreary detail. Who would be allowed on deck, and the order they’d come up in; the order the gear would come up and who would stow it in the inflatable; and then . . . and that was when Verney had interrupted. Some carping about how difficult it was going to be with all the gear on deck, to lower the folbots into the water, and for the men to get in them, because the canoes could be tricky little buggers to handle. And then how were they going to secure the inflatable alongside and be able to pass aboard all the crap they had to take ashore, because Harry had seen it all, hadn’t he? They had a lot of crap.
Harry had had to force himself to be patient. He hadn’t exactly t
aken to Captain Verney since he’d come aboard, clambering up off the pontoon like he owned the boat. He was a tall, spare, wiry individual, in a crisp battledress with his three pips of dull cloth on each epaulette, and an immaculate peaked cap, with the metal starburst-with-a-shamrock-in-the-middle Irish Guards’ cap badge, dull and ancient-looking, on its brow.
Not that Harry’d had that much to do with Verney since then – just enough to form the opinion that he was a regulation-issue, upper-class twit; and to delegate all responsibility for looking after him and his band of cutthroats to Napier, the hotel manager obviously well versed in dealing with tiresome guests.
So it was only after the meeting had broken up, that Harry found himself talking to the young Guards’ officer, and that had been when he’d told him his story.
‘You know, you’re the person who’s responsible for me being here,’ Verney had said.
‘Not me, mate,’ Harry had blithely replied. ‘I don’t decide who goes on these jaunts . . .’
‘No, I don’t mean here on this ship, in this . . .’
‘Boat,’ said Harry, who wasn’t normally so pedantic. ‘We call them boats.’
But Verney had just smiled and nodded, before continuing. ‘In the war is what I meant. Here, in uniform, fighting the war. You don’t know me, but I know you. I’ve seen you before. In action. Or, rather, after being in action. You as good as slapped my face. Accused me.’
Harry had looked at him, much as one might look at a mad man. Verney laughed, ‘Oh, we’ve never actually met. I merely observed you from afar.’
‘Is this a joke?’ asked Harry, wondering whether he was being mocked, if this bloke had realised what Harry thought about him and was having some sport by way of revenge.
‘No,’ said Verney, ‘I’m thanking you for saving me from being ashamed of myself.’
Harry’s rising anger must have shown.
‘Shetland,’ said Verney quickly. ‘Autumn 1940. Your submarine had just come in, looking worse than someone who’d just gone ten rounds with Joe Louis. Lots of wet and fog and wounded sailors being laid out on a stone jetty. I was there. In a Crombie coat and a Homburg hat that made me look like my Uncle Percy, and even more like my liege lord, the Permanent Secretary. Who was there also. And so were you.’
‘Trebuchet,’ said Harry, remembering. ‘We’d been up . . . to the Arctic.’ Remembering also he was never to talk about what had happened up there, in the Arctic. ‘I remember a couple of civvies there in the crowd. Among all the brass.’
‘Me in my Homburg, and you in that watch cap that looked as if it had just gone ten rounds with Joe Louis too,’ said Verney, grinning now. ‘And I’ll never forget that pullover you had on that looked like it had been used for elephant tug-o’-war and was the colour of a fifty-year-old face flannel. And the sewn-together jacket so as it would fit over your wound dressing. Oh, and the wellies with the tops turned over. I don’t normally make a point of remembering what other chaps are wearing, but you were such a . . . devil for style, that day!’
Harry, grinning too, and shaking his head, said, ‘I’m not sure what your point is.’
Verney’s expression calmed down. ‘You kneeled down to put a cigarette in a wounded sailor’s mouth, because he was all bandaged up and couldn’t do it himself,’ he said. ‘And that was how you reminded me there was a war on. That all this wasn’t just some theatrical extravaganza to be enjoyed from the privileged seats, and maybe reap a bit of career kudos in the passing. A war that you, you little upstart,’ he added, without the trace of a sneer, ‘and your wounded crewman were fighting, while I was carrying some mandarin’s pencil case. Made a chap think twice, Lieutenant Gilmour. So here I am. What a coincidence. And I cannot tell you how proud I am to be serving alongside you. I almost feel sorry for the Eyeties.’
‘Well, I think that calls for a cup of tea,’ said Harry, left wondering about all the things you do, when you don’t know you’re doing them.
All the folbots and the inflatable were up on the casing now. The two Sergeants, and Bill and the AB were grabbing the boxes packed with Explosive 808, that looked like blocks of green putty and smelled like almonds, and were now being passed up; stowing them in the inflatable where it sat still on the casing. Then came the det. cord and the augers and entrenching tools, followed by the collapsed steel frame, the little petrol motor and the Bergen packs, the Bren guns and spare ammunition and flares, as well as the infrared signalling device. And when the folbots were all assembled and the inflatable packed and its two paddles put aboard, Harry stepped gingerly around it all and climbed back up on to the bridge.
‘All set, Sir,’ he told Carey. ‘When you say go, we’re ready.’
Carey leaned over the conning tower hatch and called down, ‘Pass the word for Captain Verney.’
Verney was up in a flash. Harry couldn’t read his expression – his face was all blacked up too, and his knitted cap pulled down tight. The bandolier of ammo around one shoulder and a big, black Browning 9mm automatic in a shoulder holster slung the other way across his chest made him look like some Barbary pirate. Verney studied the casing below, and his little task force arrayed upon it, then he turned back and grinned, now looking like some desperado Al Jolson.
‘Top hole, dear boy!’ he said to Harry. ‘So we’re ready for the off then?’
‘Down, Fido,’ said Carey. ‘Let us just go over the pick-up procedures one more time.’
No one lived along this particular tiny stretch of coast. They perhaps had a good two to three miles of deserted beach and hinterland either way, before you hit people. But behind them, it was a busy sea, and going close inshore was a very dangerous pastime for a submarine. Certainly Shrimp had never been entirely happy that his boats should be used on such perilous enterprises. Nonetheless, here they were, but only on the understanding that the submarine’s CO had the last word on whether the operation went ahead or not.
His orders might be to get the landing team ashore, but on no account was he to proceed if it involved any undue risk to the boat. And the same applied when it came time to take the landing team off. People who knew nothing about clandestine sub ops would tell you that how a Skipper managed the risk came down to a matter of fine judgement. It didn’t. If a team, particularly if it’d been successful in blowing up whatever it’d been sent to blow up, arrived back at a rendezvous with the enemy hot on their trail, the skies full of shagbats and MAS-boats and destroyers to the left of you, and the right, then you left the landing team and ran for it. Brutal truth number one about these ops was, Commandos were expendable, submarines were not.
And this operation was a particularly complicated one, with lots that could go wrong. But whoever dreamed it up, must have believed it was worth the candle.
Nicobar had been careful on the way in, had made no attempt to sink any targets on her way around the north coast of Sicily, despite the odd juicy merchantman spotted on the horizon. No point in alerting the Eyeties to the presence of another sub in their waters. Then she had pottered up and down the coast for a day, looking for any excessive or unusual naval or air activity. Nothing. Nor, when she turned her periscope on the coast, did she see any military activity either: no sudden appearance of new coastal batteries or beach patrols. Just the steady movement of trains, up and down the line, a dozen or more every day. Big long fat, war materiel-laden trains.
So the plan was that these eight men would go ashore on the first night, opposite a particularly remote and vulnerable section of the line, and set up in the low scrubby hills. They’d lie low over the two tunnel entrances, a soldier out on picket either end, watching. When night two fell, they’d begin work drilling a series of holes into the clay soil above the tunnel entrances, using the little petrol motor to power the augers.
Lieutenant Cotterell would then stuff the holes with the shaped Explosive 808 aimed to blast diagonally into either side of the arch tops and cause the keystones to fail and the tunnel entrances to collapse. They wouldn’t fire
the charges, however, until a train was passing through – one coming from the north, preferably – and even then they’d wait until the train had re-entered the tunnel, blowing it when the locomotive was at least a score or more yards in beyond the southern entrance. What a mess it would create. All they needed was for no curious Eyetie to turn up, via air, land or sea and stumble on their little civil engineering project, and for the soil to be just as soft and clayey as the geology books said it should be; and for no excessive reinforcement of the tunnel structure to have been undertaken at any time since it was built, and for the petrol motor and the drill bits to work, and the det. cord to work, and the 808 to go off as it was supposed to.
After that they’d drop everything and make a mad dash to the folbots they would have left concealed on the beach. A quick paddle out to Nicobar waiting five hundred yards offshore, and Bob’s your uncle – they’d all be sitting down for a celebratory tot in a little over twenty-four hours. What could possibly go wrong?
‘Right then,’ said Carey. ‘Off you go, and we’ll see you tomorrow night.’
‘Tally-ho, and all that!’ said Verney, and he was down the hatch and gone. Carey looked at Harry and arched his eyebrows. Neither man spoke, because they couldn’t think of anything to say. When Harry looked back down on to the casing, the two Sergeants who had come up to assemble the folbots, were already sitting in theirs, where they rested on the casing. Suddenly the next two pongoes appeared, and were guided by Bill Sutter, one into a folbot, and the other on to the inflatable, and the same for the next two. Then came Verney and his oppo. The plan was that the four folbots would tow the inflatable, and the two pongoes in it would use their paddles to help, and to steer the bloody great, cumbersome lump all the way to the shore. On the way back, the two in the inflatable would leave it behind and pile into the spare places on two of the folbots.
As for getting the whole lot actually into the water, Harry had a plan for that too, and it began when he saw Bill and the AB clear the casing and the for’ard hatch shut. Bill’s voice came up the voice-pipe announcing it was secure, and Harry leaned over to the voice-pipe and called down, ‘Begin cycling main vents.’ He was going to take her down to decks awash.