by David Black
One’s dander, said a grinning Harry to himself, is definitely up!
And even as this thought formed, Harry brought himself up short; wondering to himself who it was doing all this talking inside his head. It didn’t sound like the chap in the tweed jacket and varsity scarf, who quite enjoyed spending hours in the library; whose idea of a wild time was having a sixth pint on a Friday night; and who liked looking at girls’ legs when they showed in a twirl at the Saturday dance. He had quite liked him. Now, apparently, he was being replaced by another Harry, who was looking forward to killing other people; with bloodlust in his eyes. He refused to think about what he’d done to Shirley; blanked her, utterly. But he couldn’t stop himself from thinking that this Harry didn’t seem very likable at all.
Chapter Twelve
‘If they’re grouped tight together, Sir, it could be a pretty brisk action and the fruit machine really could help,’ Harry said, his hand patting the top of a box of dials and knobs.
Syvret was leaning back against the chart table, and regarding Harry like he was some kind of tempting demon. ‘Its range read-outs are imperial, not metric,’ said Syvret.
But Harry was a man on a mission. ‘I’ll worry about speeds and ranges. What you need to know is when to fire, and for that, all you need is the right periscope angle. The fruit machine will give you a firing solution faster than working it out on a slide rule, especially if you’re moving from one target to another quickly. I know how to work this thing. Let me help.’
The fruit machine was a basic electro-mechanical angle solver and it had been fitted to Radegonde just as Harry had joined her. The Boffin Box, they called it; the latest addition of many items of Royal Navy kit, all of it now cordially loathed by her crew. None of it was up to Marine Nationale standard, they said, so how could they be expected to know how to use it. And they were buggered if they were going to learn. You’d have thought it had been foisted on them, but nothing could be further from the truth. The stuff had been fitted because the French Navy’s entire inventory of spares was now held by the Germans.
Harry pointed at the smaller dial on the device, with its little icon of Radegonde’s hull etched on it in Bakelite. ‘This is us. There’s a feed from the log plugged into the back giving our speed, and another from the gyro giving our heading. This other one is the target. You’re on the periscope. You call out to me the bearing to the target, drop your stadimeter on the target and call out the range – I can do a good metres to yards in my head – and then you use your trained nautical eye to estimate its speed, and call that. I then crank all that into the machine here and out comes the periscope angle. Once you’ve got that, you turn your periscope to that angle and just wait until Jerry putters across the little black line, then you shout, fire one!’
Syvret scratched his head, and looked to Le Breuil and Bassano, then back to Harry. ‘OK,’ he conceded. Then added, ‘If the U-boats are tight together. But if we come on them spread out over an area of sea we do it the old-fashioned way.’
To the west it was already night when Radegonde sighted her first U-boat. Syvret had hoped to get north of where he thought they’d be so he wouldn’t be silhouetted against a setting sun, but Jerry had thought of that too and, not wanting to be caught likewise by the convoy, was running at speed, nor’-nor’-east of Radegonde’s track. Two more U-boats quickly slid up the horizon beyond the first target.
‘Down periscope. Start a plot, M’sieur Bassano,’ said Syvret, and he called out the enemy’s heading. ‘They are working their way around to the head of the convoy. I mean to put us between them and it, and be waiting as they angle in to attack.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll go to Action Stations in half an hour. M’sieur Faujanet, inform Thierry that I have ordered that he and his men are to move to the aft mess and remain there until I order otherwise. And take Maître principal de Maligou with you. Tell him he is to growl a lot.’
There was a ripple of heads and shoulders around the control room, as officers and men suppressed their laughter. Oh, Captain Syvret, thought Harry, you know how to lead men into battle.
Radegonde remained on the surface, running flat out. Syvret was on the bridge with four lookouts instead of the usual two – one set, eyes peeled for Jerry coming from port, and the other for steering clear of the convoy, particularly its escorts, to starboard. In the control room, Poulenc was on the trim board, Bassano the plot and Le Breuil in the forward torpedo room. Faujanet was with the gun crew, under the forward hatch, waiting. Syvret didn’t want them up yet; he wanted to see how the fight was going to pan out, and didn’t want any more bodies up top than necessary in case he had to dive in a hurry. Harry sat at his fruit machine. Its log feed showed Radegonde’s speed as seventeen knots, and the gyro showed their heading at 100 degrees.
With their high superstructures and tall masts, the convoy would’ve been in sight from the bridges of the gathering wolf pack, even as darkness fell. And the wolf pack’s low silhouettes made them invisible to the convoy. Radegonde might be running closer to the U-boats, but she was a submarine too, and equally low in the water. Syvret was banking on the curve of the earth to keep her below the German night glasses now scanning the horizon; banking on how easy it is for a lookout to miss something he does not expect to see. And Jerry was not expecting to see Radegonde.
Now, with the night closed in, the only difference between the dark sky and darker ocean was in the subtlety of shading. Syvret and his lookouts had to strain to pick out even darker smudges against their backdrop. In the control room, and forward, beneath the gun hatch trunking, they were all bathed in red light, to preserve their night vision. No one spoke, in case they might miss the call of ‘enemy in sight’ because they were chatting. The only noise now was the thundering of the diesels. Harry felt the atmosphere in the control room: it was like being a raw recruit in the middle of a cavalry squadron at full charge, intoxicated by all the mad, blind, bursting confidence and elan. So overweening it kicked aside a doubt that had been nagging at him.
‘Control room!’ Syvret called down through the bridge mic. ‘How far have we run on this course?’
Bassano, without having to check his watch or chronometer on the chart table, called out the distance and time.
‘Reduce speed to 200 rpm. Come to zero-six-five,’ came Syvret’s curt, staticky command. Harry remembered thinking, What’s wrong? Three U-boats are out there. You saw them. Aren’t they where they’re supposed to be anymore?
The questions clamoured in his head as Harry felt the hull lean as the boat curved to port, and the noise of the diesels again became the only sound.
Then, suddenly, a shout. But it was not the shout the boat had been straining for; more like an intrusion from a parallel universe. Syvret’s voice was barking from out of the squawk box positioned over the chart table. And, so far, the Captain’s French was not so fast or jargon-filled that Harry couldn’t follow.
‘Surface contact on three-five-zero! She’s coming on fast’, and he paused. Must be using the stadimeter, thought Harry. And indeed then came another call, ‘Range 3,500 metres . . . It’s a U-boat!’
As good as 4,000 yards, decided Harry, and cranked it in.
‘From his bow wave, estimate speed at twelve knots plus.’
And Harry cranked that in too, thinking, You need to take your foot off the accelerator now, Skipper, you don’t want us crossing in front of him, instead of him crossing in front of us.
And, as if he’d been listening to Harry’s thoughts, Syvret called, ‘Five knots!’ And Harry physically felt Radegonde drag in the water. Then Syvret called down another range. The U-boat was closing fast. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry caught Bassano working his slide rule, then Syvret called again, ‘Estimate target’s course is one five five’, and Bassano nodded to himself, and began plotting its course. ‘No, zigzag,’ added Syvret with Harry thinking, Why would Jerry zigzag; he is closing on his target; he doesn’t know we’re here, he thinks he’s the hunter not the p
rey. ‘It’s going to be a track angle of one-zero-two degrees,’ added Syvret, with a degree of glee. A perfect set up. If all held good, Radegonde would be sitting at right angles to Jerry’s advancing course.
All that was needed now was for Harry to crank out a good periscope angle on his fruit machine; the firing solution. It was all about angles and speeds: the U-boat, and Radegonde closing it from starboard; the invisible line reaching out from the U-boat, down which it would travel, charging out of the night; the course Radegonde’s torpedo would take to cut that line; and the point on the U-boat’s progress where Syvret had to shout fire, so that the torpedo and the U-boat would arrive at the same place at the same time.
So far, Harry’s command of French had allowed him to follow the barked commands. So far, so good, but he started to feel a certain anxiety; events were moving, and the tactical picture changing, but as yet, not too fast. Nor had the navy jargon yet become too technical; nor too French navy. So far.
Then Syvret made another range call in metres. Harry translated it as 1,800 yards, and cranked it in. Enemy course still steady on one five five. And then another call, he translated that one as 1,200 yards. But that was too soon. The U-boat couldn’t have travelled 600 yards in that time. What was Syvret calling? Bassano, working over the chart, paused and ordered speed increased to eight knots. Was the 1,200 call the range Syvret wanted to fire at? Harry was losing the tactical picture, getting confused. He was also aware of Poulenc on the trim board, suddenly unusually active.
‘Periscope angle!’ It was an order from Syvret, not a question.
That was for Harry; but he was caught unawares, watching Poulenc and wondering what his last inputs were. Realising he didn’t have the time, he calculated from the inputs he had. This was not the moment to start interrogating the Captain about updates. ‘Periscope angle is red one six.’
Bassano repeated Harry’s call over his mic, but before he’d finished the call the air was rent by the diving klaxon – two guttural bellows, and the lookouts were tumbling down into the control room, and Syvret’s voice could be heard, not through the squawk box, but from the conning tower kiosk immediately above; loud staccato orders in French that Harry could not follow. He caught Syvret yelling, ‘One hundred metres!’ and assumed that was where they were heading down to. And from the decibels, he assumed the Captain meant fast. Very fast. Harry felt Radegonde’s hull begin to fall away. But only begin. She was definitely going down, but there was no angle developing on her. It was all far too sedate. He should have been hanging on to something by now.
The nagging doubt came back.
He couldn’t help it now, wondering if the Radegondes had ever done this before. A torpedo attack for real. Especially a surface torpedo attack. She was a minelaying boat, and for all the time he’d been aboard her, it had never entered his head to be so rude as to enquire whether they’d ever sunk anything with her torpedoes. But even if they hadn’t, surely they knew how to get their boat down in a hurry?
Syvret was yelling again, and Poulenc on the trim board was yelling back. Something about how he couldn’t get her bows down, how she was insisting on going down on an even keel, and no amount of increased revs and down angle on the planes was driving her off it. And that was when Harry realised what was wrong, and so did Syvret and Bassano: Thierry and his platoon jammed into the aft crew mess. Radegonde was stern heavy and wasn’t going to be rushed.
Harry was out of his seat and sprinting aft, swinging through the bulkhead doors like a macaque. He was already heading through the motor room, when his and the Electrical Petty Officer’s eyes met in understanding; the Petty Officer on the sound-powered telephone from the control room was being ordered to get everybody for’ard, now! Harry shot past him, as he started yelling at the motor room crew.
Harry, as he undogged the bulkhead door leading to the aft crew mess, could hear the pounding of feet, and feel them through the deckplates, as Radegonde’s crew charged off towards the bows. He pushed the door open, hitting an outraged Thierry a glancing blow. The Fusiliers Marins had been sulky when originally ordered aft into this confined space that smelled of matelots’ socks and other things; had been angry when they heard the bulkhead door’s dogs being secured on them and realised they were being locked in. And they had become increasingly alarmed as they first felt the boat slew, then slow, and then they had heard a klaxon blare for no apparent reason. Now they were being screamed at in bad French by that arrogant rosbif. It was all too much. French Fusiliers Marins would not be ordered about on a French boat by some jumped-up foreigner. Thierry drew himself up to argue.
Harry did not have time for this. Radegonde needed everybody in the bows, right now. She needed her nose down, and to be powering deep if she was going to get out of the road of whatever harm was undoubtedly coming her way. He needed to get Thierry’s attention, right now, and motivate him and his men to follow him forward. Right now! So he punched Thierry right on the end of his nose, turned and ran. Completely outraged now, the Fusiliers Marins pursued him without requiring any further persuasion.
Their weight made all the difference. Radegonde started going down. Fast.
Her bows, now too heavy to control, meant she was heading all the way down into the abyssal depths of the mid-Atlantic, driven onwards by her twin electric motors going flat out. Syvret ordered full astern, together; but to no avail.
It was the ever-poised and unflappable Poulenc on the trim board who saved them; who kept his head, and in a series of precise orders, none of which Harry understood, had blown the forward ballast tanks and the bow and aft planes to maximum rise; he’d ordered the crew – including the incensed Fusiliers Marins – aft again, at the run.
And at last Radegonde’s bows had come up and the boat was brought back into trim at a hull-creaking 212 metres. The sudden halt in their dive allowed Harry time to divert his thoughts away from blind fear, to trying to work out in his head the tactical picture; to try to understand exactly what had just happened. Then the sickening ricka-chicky-ricka-chicky! of high-speed screws above them began echoing through the boat. It was a U-boat, going flat out. At some point during Syvret’s attack, Jerry had turned towards them. The U-boat went over the top, and then there was a roar as the U-boat too, began diving.
Minutes later, after all the chaos had subsided, back in the control room . . . ‘Some damn, carrot-topped, carrot-chomping, bat-faced, box-swede, master-race, with his fucking hat on backwards must have seen us!’ ranted Syvret, to no one in particular, in his designed-to-be-irritating, matter-of-fact voice.
‘He means a U-boat lookout,’ Bassano helpfully translated sotto voce for Harry.
Everyone was still bathed in red, and the shadows cast by Syvret’s frown made him look demonic, while every other face looked condemned. One last look around and Syvret clambered back up into the conning tower kiosk, getting ready to put the periscope up again. ‘The U-boat turned towards us,’ they heard him continue. ‘Directly towards us. But look on the bright side. If we had fired our torpedoes, he would have combed them.’
Radegonde was on her way back up after three minutes of what seemed to Harry total confusion.
A constant call and counter call was now playing out between Syvret and the matelot on Radegonde’s hydrophones which allowed Harry to work out that Radegonde wasn’t running; she was still in the fight. There were obviously other propeller sounds out there in the water, and it looked like Syvret was deciding which one to go after. He would have a choice too; this close to their target the U-boat Skippers wouldn’t be chatting to each other, alerting each other. An eagle-eyed escort might notice a blinking Aldis lamp, but using their radio transmitters this close would deafen any radio operator listening out in the convoy.
But Harry was no longer trying to follow the action.
Silly Billy Harry, he told himself in a quiet fury. Trying to work that fruit machine had been a bad idea . . . submarine warfare moves too fast for you to stop and do translations in your head,
and then start fingering your way through your jargon crib to make sure you’ve understood the last order but three . . . you should’ve tried ordering a nice cup of coffee while you were at it.
Harry, when he’d untangled himself from where he’d been clinging on to stop himself from ending in a heap on the forward bulkhead, did not return to sit at his fruit machine. He went and squeezed himself between the aft control room bulkhead and the chart table; out of the way, with Bassano between him and any Fusilier Marins not yet completely terrified by what was happening around them, and still out for retribution for that punch. From where he was, if he looked up, he could see Syvret at the small attack periscope in the kiosk through the hatch above.
There was a lot of noise in the control room now: people shouting out the revs on the motors; the charge left on the battery; the angles of the diving planes; the boat’s heading; the bubble on the trim, to the point Harry couldn’t work out how Syvret could think, let alone tune out all the din that wasn’t relevant, but he seemed to be managing. The main conversation was still the one between Syvret and the hydrophone man about HE effects to port. Harry glanced at Bassano’s plot. Radegonde was at periscope depth twelve metres, on 100 degrees when Syvret called out for Radegonde’s speed. ‘Three knots,’ came the reply from the matelot on the engine room telegraph. There was more shouting: the hydrophone man called out, and then Bassano amended the plot. From what Harry could see and translate, it appeared they were on a converging course with another target advancing on 135 degrees. He didn’t catch the range, but the enemy was apparently doing twelve knots and Bassano was hurriedly working his slide rule. ‘Nine red!’ he called. Was that a periscope angle?