by David Black
There was a shout; a lookout pointed and orders flew about the bridge and were acknowledged. Harry didn’t even try to follow, but he felt Radegonde slow, and saw a rating and one of the lookouts manhandle a small searchlight out of the conning tower hatch and on to a gimble on the bridge wing. A couple of big Hotchkiss machine guns with their gunners and ammunition then appeared, and suddenly the big conning tower was crowded.
Harry slipped to the back behind the periscope stands. If he leaned outboard, he could just make out the crew on the casing for’ard. The heavy fawn material of their duffels made everyone slightly easier to see. They were working at the 75mm gun, taking out the tompion, preparing it to fire. With her mine racks now empty, Radegonde was obviously preparing at last to indulge in the vandalisme Syvret had been so looking forward to.
This would be Harry’s first proper action aboard Radegonde. He was curious rather than frightened. He had no idea where Radegonde was pointed, or of their target’s course; and even though what night vision he had was returning, he could make out nothing in the immaculate, cloud-banked darkness. Not a star twinkled, and even the submarine’s wake, as it swirled down its huge saddle tanks, could barely raise itself to iridescence. Muffled orders came from the bridge front, and suddenly there was a stab of light, and, caught in its cone, was the shape of a small, coastal trading steamer. Where Harry came from, they called them coasters.
Someone had spotted the ship’s blank shadow, eyes sharp enough to train the searchlight directly on a target no more than a dark shape against a darker coastline. She was big, but not that big, just as Syvret had predicted, maybe 600 tons – 800 at the very most. She was not more than half a mile away. Down in the water, so heavy laden, her high fo’c’sle pointed diagonally towards Radegonde.
Well, well, well, Captain Syvret, didn’t you handle that fine and dandy? said Harry to himself.
There was a bright flash at the corner of Harry’s eye, and then in an instant . . .
BOOOM!
Radegonde’s 75mm gun had been fired. Harry peered into the night, and there, a half-ship’s length in front of the coaster, a plume of water punched up like an inverted golf tee. The coaster’s bow wave immediately began to lose its white froth – she was most definitely slowing. The shot across her bows had done its job.
In the spectral glare of the searchlight, Harry could see an angular steel superstructure perched midships, with a flimsy wooden wheelhouse. Then, what appeared to be a huge figure emerged from it. The coaster’s Skipper.
‘Good evening, Captain!’ It was Syvret bellowing in French through a speaking trumpet. ‘The French Navy would like to pay you a visit, Captain!’
Silence. Then out of it, in heavily accented English, came a strident bellow from the figure, now leaning over the coaster’s bridge wing.
‘We do not understand you!’
Syvret’s head turned inboard and began to scout among the heaps of duffel around him. ‘Mr Gilmour!’
Harry stepped briskly to his side.
‘Ah ha!’ Syvret grinned over his muffler. ‘Tell him in English who you are and who we are . . .’
‘Me?’ asked Harry, surprised. Syvret spoke the best English he’d ever heard from a foreigner.
‘Yes, you,’ said Syvret, irritation in his voice at being challenged on his own bridge. Then he grinned his dangerous grin. ‘You English always sound more official. And if they don’t like getting stopped, it’ll be you English they’ll blame. So go on, quick now.’
‘Captain of foreign merchant ship!’ called Harry through the trumpet. ‘I am the Royal Navy Liaison Officer aboard this Free French submarine. Our Captain has instructed me to ask you to heave-to and receive a boarding party!’
Four of them sat round Radegonde’s wardroom table in red light, out of courtesy to the Norwegian Skipper and his Mate’s night vision. Both Norwegians had very large tumblers of brandy in front of them. Also out of courtesy, so did Harry and Captain Syvret. The Norwegians gulped, however, while Harry and Syvret sipped.
The Norwegian coaster was called Tryggve, her Skipper had said, through a beard bigger than a bear’s backside. They were en route from Trondheim to Oslo with general cargo – barrels of salt fish, hides and pelts, that sort of stuff. No war material or Jerry gear; and no Jerries on board either. Facts that had just been confirmed by Aldis lamp from Radegonde’s boarding party, who were still on board the Tryggve, and had just been whispered into Syvret’s ear by Bassano, who had promptly slipped away again back to the bridge.
Syvret smiled. ‘So, if I sink you, Captain, it will do nothing to blunt the Third Reich’s war effort,’ he said, in English, ‘and leave a lot of Norwegians out of pocket, out of work, and out of pickled herring.’
The Norwegian Skipper grunted. His mate, a cadaverous, grey creature who sat hunched, with his head poking out of a black roll-neck sweater and pea jacket, took another gulp of brandy.
‘I won’t sink you then, Captain,’ said Syvret, ‘if you promise not to tell anyone.’
There was a pause, as if both Norwegians were considering whether they were being made sport of, then . . . then it was like an electric charge had been passed through the two men. Their faces opened up; smiles, laughter, toasts, handshakes exchanged, and solemn promises made. When the rumpus died, Syvret, still smiling, gripping the Norwegian Skipper’s fist in both of his hands, said, almost as an afterthought, ‘There is however, one more thing you could do for me . . .’
Two nights later they were back. Not quite in the same spot, but two miles further up the coast, inshore, tucked into a shallow bay where the deep water let them hug the rocky outcrops and blend with their shadows; her diesels shut down, silent. It was pitch black and cloudless, with a brisk breeze from the south-east; it couldn’t have been better. The sound of the expected freighter would be wafted up to them from miles away. And there she was, burbling under the sound of the wind.
Once every week, she ran up from the big German military depot at Stavanger, coast-hugging to all the main German garrisons with everything from mail to condoms; small arms ammunition, replacement socks, treats and essentials. A Norwegian ship, Norwegian-crewed, nearly 2,000 tons, but with at least half a dozen Jerries on her, and two 20mm gun mounts.
‘And you can get a message to them?’ Syvret had been keen to establish that fact with the two Norwegians from the coaster while he still had them in Radegonde’s wardroom. ‘The crew? I wouldn’t want to be going and blowing them up too, if I didn’t have to.’
The Norwegian Skipper’s beard had rippled with the emphasis of his reply. The Mate was nodding too, but his attention had been more on the little barrel of brandy Syvret had donated to their ‘welfare fund’ that his Skipper was clutching too precariously for his liking. Timings and signals were exchanged, and then the two Norwegian sailors had slipped back into Radegonde’s inflatable for the trip back to their ship.
And now here they were, waiting for their quarry; and here it was, to within half an hour of the Norwegian Skipper’s prediction. That was Jerry for you: everything really did run on time.
It was to be another surface attack; a gun action, no torpedoes despite the depth of water being entirely suitable for a submerged attack, which would have been considerably less risky given that the target was apparently mounting a couple of 20mm canons. The guns weren’t big, but they were quick-firing, and, well-handled, could easily put holes in Radegonde’s pressure hull. And holes in the pressure hull meant she would be unable to dive; and being unable to dive would mean her inevitable destruction.
Harry had learned his lesson about questioning the Frenchman’s tactics and kept his mouth shut and his face blank. But Syvret already knew what he was thinking. Syvret knew everything.
‘We in the French Navy will always try to avoid killing the sailors of our Allies if it can be helped,’ Syvret observed to no one in particular, with Harry not two paces from him. He did not mention Mers el-Kebir. He didn’t have to. Now that they had all gone over t
he details of his plan for the last time, Syvret stood on the bridge, his night glasses stuck to his face, staring into the darkness.
Orders were barked, preventing Harry from brooding upon the Captain’s comment. Radegonde’s diesels grumbled to life and he felt the boat begin to move under him. Out there in the dark, someone had seen the shadow of the freighter pass their lair, and now they were creeping after it. Down on the casing, the gun crew had loaded the .75 and were waiting for the order. Radegonde gathered way, nosing out into the fairway between their bay and the islands. And as their nose swung past a stretch of open sea, Harry saw it: the ragged silhouette of a big ship against the lighter line of a faint horizon, and the vague hint of a phosphorescent propeller wake.
The minutes crept by. Harry moved back to his usual position by the stands, unsure why he’d been allowed on the bridge for the attack. Syvret was there, with two lookouts and two men to man the big Hotchkiss machine guns. Too many bodies to get down the hatch in the event of having to dive quickly, thought Harry.
They crossed the freighter’s wake and were now to seaward of her. Then Syvret called the order, and Le Breuil with the gun crew echoed it.
There was a BOOM! from Radegonde’s .75. And another swiftly after, but no gouts of flame and light. The projectiles are using flashless powder, Harry thought. He leaned outboard to see the gun barrel, still at a very low angle, being reloaded, then traversing left, away from the shore and on to the silhouette of the freighter. As the questions formed in his head – Where are the hits? The fall of shot? – one, then two dazzling blooms of light appeared low over the far head of the bay, illuminating the rocky bluffs close below in a fierce sodium glow, and throwing into sharp, jagged silhouette the freighter close off their starboard bow. In the final frames before his night vision was obliterated, Harry was conscious of the rest of the bridge crew, heads down, shielding their eyes from the sudden chemical glare. Radegonde had fired two star shells on a low trajectory to fall fast and burn on the land; and draw every eye on the freighter to their light.
Harry, blinded by the flash, did not see what Syvret saw through his night glasses: the flurry of bodies dashing out of the freighter’s bridge wing and down the companionways leading from the midships superstructure, and how they appeared to merge with another ragged charge of bodies coming up out of the ship, rabbling together on the well-deck where the cargo hatches were. Other figures remained on the bridge, different in what looked like big, light-coloured bustiers and coal-scuttle helmets – they were Jerries in life jackets; you couldn’t hear them, but from their gestures, they were obviously yelling, and not happy. The same with the crew around a 20mm gun mount on the stern castle; leaning and peering, first towards the burning lights on shore and then for’ard at the riot on deck.
Harry heard Syvret give the order to open fire; no jargon was going to disguise that.
The starboard-mounted 13.2mm Hotchkiss opened up at a rate of 450 rounds per minute, every sixth round sent a red tracer into the freighter’s flimsy wooden wheelhouse. Even Harry could see the red arcs reaching out across the water, and the wheelhouse splintering into satisfying shards that spun and tumbled and bounced off the funnel, ventilators and rails, before splashing into the water in little ploppy gouts all around a hull that was most definitely slowing down. What had once been the radio aerials came snaking down in coils, and then the flow of fire halted.
There was another BOOM!, and when Harry looked towards the freighter’s stern, he was in time to see an explosion; not huge, but a nasty little splay of smoke skittering out, all red inside. The freighter’s stern Samson post teetered, then toppled aft, dragging with it the derrick. They fell, straddling the aft 20mm gun mount, its crew, arms waving, trying to shield themselves, only to get tangled in falling rigging. They fumbled only for a few short seconds before the second round from the .75 exploded in the stern castle beneath them, and they and the gun went pirouetting most artistically up into the night and out over the side to vanish in a series of splashes.
Radegonde was turning so that she was now bow on to the freighter, at an almost perfect T to her, so that her port Hotchkiss mount could now bear. But before the gunner could open up, the freighter’s fo’c’sle began to sparkle, and the air above Radegonde’s bridge began to fill with sickening zipping sounds like tearing linen. A pause, then several things happened in very quick succession, so that it would be hard to line them up in order when all the din finally stopped.
The freighter’s fo’c’sle began sparkling again and Radegonde’s jumping wire, the one that ran from her bow to her periscope stands, parted; three jolts hit the conning tower beneath their feet, and in them were definitely two explosions; smoke began to curl up either side of Harry, and somewhere in all that pandemonium, the port side Hotchkiss opened up, sending its little red spits in a lazy arc to cause sparks to splatter all over the freighter’s fo’c’sle where the Jerry 20mm had been.
‘Anyone hurt?’ yelled Syvret. The right number of ‘OK’s came back at him. And then there was silence. It lasted a few short moments, then from across the water came shouting and Harry looked up to see the Norwegian crew lining the freighter’s for’ard well deck, waving and cheering furiously in the now stuttering reflections from the two star shells.
‘Mr Gilmour!’ shouted Syvret, leaning back to look for Harry. ‘Time for you to do the talking again, Mr Gilmour!’
Harry, in his finest Royal Navy bellow, ordered the Norwegian crew off the freighter, pronto. He didn’t ask if there were any Jerries left among them, and the crew didn’t offer to enlighten him; nor did he congratulate them on following instructions and getting off the bridge and out of the engine room the minute the star shells went up. He didn’t know who might be listening. Then Radegonde manoeuvred to lie off the freighter, and Le Breuil and his crew began firing high explosive shells from the .75 into her hull on the waterline, right where the engine room was.
Steam began jetting out of the top of the tall, natural draught funnel with a terrible screech, and as the big engine space filled up with water, the freighter began to list towards them, further, then further still, and then all in a rush she capsized and started going down by the stern until her bow was vertical in the air and she plunged from view in a welter of bubbles and oil and was gone. Beyond the frothing water, the freighter’s whaler could just be seen, filled with men and towing a big carley raft with a dozen or so more perched on it, heading for the shore. Some of them could still be seen waving. Harry guessed they were all Norwegians. There would have been no German survivors, he was pretty certain of that.
Chapter Five
The topic for the following night’s dinner discussion turned out to be communism, and how a communist state could possibly justify aligning itself with a fascist one. It was a very glum meal, even before the subject was lit upon, seeing that all that was on offer were cold sandwiches with sardines and singe – a highly dubious French version of tinned meat. Of the three 20mm cannon shells that had punctured Radegonde’s conning tower compartment, one had exited out the other side and the other two had exploded, wrecking the Captain’s little attack periscope, the minelaying console and the bloody galley! The sacred domain of their saintly chef was now mangled metal! The Jerry bastards! The fact that the damage itself had very serious consequences for the boat’s stability seemed to matter a lot less than the outrageous atrocity committed against their dining arrangements. Harry could have almost found it funny, if his life hadn’t been at risk.
The only good news out of the action was that the conning tower lower lid had not been breached. However, a leaking conning tower . . . a conning tower full of water. You could forget your centre of balance or trying to maintain any kind of trim. If Radegonde dived, it would be like trying to balance your way across Niagara Falls on a tightrope . . . while carrying a hod of bricks above your head . . . on the end of a long pole.
A team of what Harry would’ve called Stokers, armed with collision mats and wooden battens,
went up into the conning tower as Radegonde sped away from the scene of the attack. The holes themselves had not been huge; no bigger than dinner service saucers. The mats had been used to mask the holes, and the battens to create a monkey puzzle frame, each hammered home against the other to hold the mats in place. Meanwhile, the Captain had ordered both diesel throttles opened wide and laid on a ninety-degree track from the coast to get as far away as possible before daybreak.
By the time the Radegonde did dive, the lower conning tower hatch had been sealed and high-pressure air fed in to help reduce the rate of the leaks; but leaks there were, so a jury pump had been rigged and kept running, and once dived they’d stayed shallow to keep the pressure off. They could hear the pump running as they sat round the wardroom table. And if they could hear it, so would Jerry if he turned up anywhere near them now.
‘There are no communist states,’ said Captain Syvret with all the authority that command could bestow upon him, as he nursed his glass of red wine.
His officers barked outrage. ‘The Soviet Union is not a communist state?’ said Le Breuil.
‘No,’ said Syvret. ‘It is a country with a Communist Party in control, trying to create a communist state. They haven’t achieved it yet. Don’t take my word for it. Read the texts from their annual congresses. It’s what all that Lenin “two steps forward, one step back” gibberish is all about. Although if you had been reading the later texts, you’d have realised Comrade Stalin has gone very quiet about “achieving communism” lately.’
‘Is that how he manages to square his deal with the Nazis?’ the so far silent Bassano asked. Bassano, the oldest of Radegonde’s three watch-keeping officers; the taciturn, watchful Bassano from Marseille, who, Harry noticed, never quite seemed to get on with the other two. Bassano, of the dark complexion, slick-smooth, swept-back hair and the flat stare, who never rose to the odd sarcastic dig of the others, nor responded to any comradely gesture.