Telephone conversation between Marshalls Goering and Kesselring, quoted in the diary of Marshal Cavallero, Chief of the Italian General Staff:
Kesselring: ‘Herr Reichsmarschall – supposing a convoy attempts a landing in Africa—’
Goering: ‘To my mind a landing will be attempted in Corsica, in Sardinia, or at Derna or Tripoli.’
Kesselring: ‘It is more probable at a North African port.’
Goering: ‘Yes, but not a French one.’
Outside her bedroom window, the rain drummed down. It had started before dawn this morning and there’d been no break in it. It drove slanting across the front of the house, rattling noisily on the shutters which she’d hooked slightly open. It had got warmer, with the rain.
Jack had always enjoyed matinees. With Fiona especially: weekend afternoons in her flat in Eaton Square. Destination – ultimate but also soonest possible – of Lieutenant Jack Everard, DSC, Royal Navy… He wondered – as he did quite often, when he had so much time on his hands – how much of his fascination with Fiona had been due to her being Nick’s girl.
Probably quite a lot, initially. But only initially. Since then, he’d swallowed the hook.
‘Heidi?’
She smiled in her half-sleep. Or it could be that she was really asleep and dreaming, reacting to the sound of her own name in his voice. Her dark-skinned face lost ten years, became small-girlish in this total relaxation. Nobody seeing her would have thought she could be the mother of a child of Otto’s age.
Jack still knew nothing at all about her – except that her name was Heidi. But he did know this was Saturday 7 November, and also that the child wouldn’t be home before tomorrow evening. Otto was going straight from school to spend the night elsewhere – at some schoolfriend’s house, he guessed. This morning Heidi had seen him off as usual; the morning routine had been unchanged, up to that stage, but as soon as her son was out of sight she’d been in a tearing hurry with the hens, just about throwing the food at them, and she’d run back into the house, more than walked. Moments later he’d heard her rushing upstairs and she’d burst in, gabbling happily and incomprehensibly, still talking at him while they kissed and he tried to ease her down on the mattress with him: she’d resisted it, and brought him down here instead. To a proper bed, with sheets and blankets, pillows…
She’d brought lunch to the bed on a tray. Scrambled eggs and sausage, black bread spread with mutton-fat dripping, and apple tart. A feast. Naked, and in this half-light, she’d seemed really rather beautiful. She’d taken the plates away afterwards and washed up, then returned to bed and it had been as if they hadn’t seen each other for a week.
His guess was it had been a long time for her, man-less for some reason, and for some other (or the same) reason estranged from the locals. Not from all of them, because she went somewhere with that basket of eggs, on weekdays. But estranged or frightened or under threat, vulnerable in some way. She hadn’t referred to her man again, so far as he knew. The only questions you could get anywhere with were those that could be put in simple combinations of word and gesture – ‘You – Heidi? Me, Jack…’ And the calendar was useful; for instance, she’d told him about the child’s weekend arrangements by indicating his height – holding a hand flat at that level and saying ‘Otto… Otto?’ Then pointing the way he’d gone, down to the lane, and to the calendar again, pointing it out – today, Saturday 7 November, to Sunday 8, and towards the end of Sunday Otto walking back in again.
In fact he didn’t want to question her, about her background. This was only a staging-post en route to the Swiss border, just as the border would be a stage on his way to Fiona. It was Fiona he thought about in bed, not Heidi.
The wireless was good for BBC programmes, if one could put up with a varying amount of static. He’d tuned in to an overseas programme of news earlier on, and heard that the Eighth Army was well past Mersa in its westward pursuit of Rommel; also that the German Sixth Army under von Paulus was still bogged down in front of Stalingrad. Heidi had begun to look scared while he’d been listening to it, and the bulletin hadn’t finished when she’d reached over, throwing herself on top of him and switching it to German music. He hadn’t minded: he’d heard enough and he’d been cheered by it even to the extent of suffering Wagner. She’d been genuinely scared, though: she’d gone to the window and peered out into the rain-sodden yard, as if she really imagined someone out there might have heard the booming English voice. Jack had teased her, made jokes about chickens with long ears, and hers being German-speaking hens, so what the hell… She’d spat a lot of German at him urgently, angrily: she meant it, she genuinely did feel some danger threatening them. Or threatening her. He’d been up on his elbows on the pillows, enjoying the picture she made standing there naked in the gloom with the sound of the rain drumming behind the shutters and the awful music droning: he’d drawn a finger slowly across his throat and told her ‘Rommel kaput! Deutsche kaput!’ Then thought immediately, as she still stared at him angrily out of those slanting eyes, a gleam of them in the dark face, that he might actually have hurt her. This could be an exclusively personal affair with her, and he had no evidence – other than her attitude to himself, which wasn’t proof of anything at all – to suggest she might not be a German patriot. A situation like this one could arise, he guessed, in England: a lonely, unhappy young woman, and a German on the run? Particularly a very good-looking, charming German? It wouldn’t need to relate to patriotism or politics; in this area a female could be as detached, self-sufficient and solitary as a cat. And as unreasoning… The way she’d been looking at him at that moment – more feline than anything other than a real cat could be. The eyes, and the walk as she’d moved back towards him, and – closer – the gleam of her small, white teeth: at risk of being clawed he’d opened the bedclothes to let her in.
Wind force two, sky cloudy, visibility good. Seven merchantmen in convoy, and six escorts now to guard them.
During the afternoon watch two friendly aircraft had been sighted, and in the first dog the destroyers had arrived from astern. The survivors they’d picked up, mostly from the Orangeman’s boats, were immediately transferred to the Burbridge and the Dongola, who made a lee for the ships’ boats to work in. With the sea as low as it was now you had to allow for the possibility of U-boats attacking in daylight, dived, periscope attacks, and he’d disposed his escorts to counter this. The two destroyers were four thousand yards ahead, with a corvette on each flank at half that distance, and Stella between the destroyers and the convoy’s van. Harbinger wandered as she pleased, constantly on the move. At dusk action stations he’d send the destroyers farther ahead, move the corvettes to the convoy’s bows, put Stella astern and retain his own roving commission. Up to now there’d been no reports of any transmitting, not since noon when Gritten had picked up a lot of chatter astern, fifteen to twenty miles south. It had lasted only a few minutes: the explanation he’d have liked to have believed in might have been a redeployment of the U-boats – that they’d been leaving, departing southward.
It was possible, but unsafe to count on. The only course for SL 320’s escort to take was to continue to act as if the U-boats were still present in force. As they well might be. Or some might, if others had been withdrawn.
This afternoon he’d been through the convoy, and close past the Burbridge, with the quarterdeck name-boards rigged. They were varnished boards with the ship’s name in large, highly-polished brass letters; they secured to permanent fittings on each side of the after super-structure, but they were for show, not for use at sea. He’d been giving her a chance to see the name Harbinger – because a passenger might not necessarily have known it. He’d been half expecting a signal, then, a light to start winking from the Burbridge. It hadn’t, and he’d thought, Well, that’s that, she can’t be…
Now, three hours later and about to drive up through the columns again, it struck him that nothing had been proved for certain. She might have been resting in her cabin, or doing a stint of nursing duty. Even if she’d been embarked only as a passenger, a lot of injured survivors from other ships had been put into the Burbridge and they’d have been glad of extra hands, particularly skilled ones like Kate’s.
He wanted to know now. The ostrich was ready to pull its head out of the sand. Ostrich feeling safe: anyway, less desperate, for those passengers.
The St Eliza, third ship in the three-ship central column, was coming up to starboard. The Mount Trembling was farther ahead to port, and the Burbridge was next ahead of the Eliza.
He looked round at Carlish.
‘Straight up the middle, Sub. Just watch out for the zigzag.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Carlish looked pleased. This was the first time he’d been allowed to take her through the convoy on his own.
‘Signalman.’ Nick beckoned to McCurtin, signalman of the watch. ‘By light to the Burbridge… “Do you have any passenger on board by name of Everard?”’
McCurtin repeated it: he looked interested as he reached for the Aldis. A few other heads turned too. The St Eliza was abeam to starboard now. McCurtin sighted the Aldis out over the bow, and began the calling-up procedure; the Burbridge’s bridge staff must have been watching the destroyer approach, because the answering flash came immediately. McCurtin rattled off the question: there was a pause, and then the signal Wait, please.
Harbinger and the passenger ship were abeam when the convoy began turning to a port leg of the zigzag. Nick saw it coming, but said nothing, leaving it to Carlish. At that moment HF/DF called, and McCurtin was right beside that voice-pipe. He stooped with the Aldis lamp in one hand and answered, ‘Bridge?’ Without hearing the operator’s words Nick could tell from the intonation it wasn’t Gritten on watch down there. Carlish was putting on ten degrees of port wheel… The signalman reported, ‘U-boat transmissions on oh-two-seven, nineteen miles, sir!’
‘Very good.’
For the moment, it wasn’t U-boats he was primarily thinking of.
The light from the Burbridge began to call. All ships halfway through their turn. Nick read the first word of the answer to his enquiry: Yes…
He had to look away then – under the impression Carlish was holding the wheel on for longer than he should have. But in fact it was all right – or would be. He’d need to bring her back a few degrees to starboard in a minute, and in the process he’d have learnt something – in the best way there was to learn it… By this time the flashing light was on their quarter; looking back at it, he read the words, who wants to know.
And that had been the end of the message – without an interrogative sign, they’d just signed-off. McCurtin flashed a K, acknowledging.
‘Reply from the Burbridge, sir – Yes. Lance Corporal Horace Everard, RAF Regiment. He asks who wants to know.’
Behind him, Carlish called down, ‘Steady!’
‘Steady, sir – three-five-eight…’
‘Steer oh-oh-three degrees.’
Nick told McCurtin, ‘Make to him, “Sorry, wrong Everard.”’
The Dongola was on the starboard quarter now, and the Sweetcastle was abeam to port: and nineteen miles ahead those U-boat transmissions would have been just about right on the convoy’s mean course.
Heidi had produced a supper of vegetable soup which they’d eaten with hunks of black bread, dipping the bread into the hot liquid to soak it up. She’d had soup all over her chin. Then she’d gone outside, to the garden privy, and when she’d come back into the kitchen, leaning against the door to shut it, shut out the rain and darkness, Jack had been waiting there, needing to make the same trip himself and wanting to borrow her coat. It was a man’s coat anyway, grey and heavy and with moth-holes in it, he guessed a private soldier’s originally and at that quite possibly from the previous war. Catching her against the back door, unable to communicate his intention and therefore just starting to open it and pull it off her otherwise nude body, he realised she’d got the wrong idea of what he wanted; she was giggling and trying to keep the coat closed around her. He had to go along with this misunderstanding for a while, since otherwise he might have hurt her feelings… Then it wasn’t a difficult act at all, because getting the heavy garment open and then easing it off her shoulders he found himself inclined the way she’d thought he was to start with. And thanks to the stove it was warm in the kitchen, much warmer than the bedroom. But finally he did have to go out – in the coat and holding a tin tray over his head as an umbrella – aware that Their Lordships of the Board of Admiralty might not have considered his bizarre appearance quite becoming to an officer and a gentleman. Except – wasn’t there a paragraph in King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions to the effect that an officer should dress in accordance with the sport in which he was engaged? It would be an interesting line of argument… He returned to find Heidi very nervous, scared by his having been outside the house: she’d bolted the door quickly, in a kind of panic again as if her garden was likely to be full of enemies. He wondered again about her obvious insecurity, the impression she gave of living precariously in a foreign and potentially hostile environment.
The only time she seemed really to relax was in bed. And between the intervals of love-making she had an enormous capacity for sleep. Perhaps on her own she slept badly, lay awake in fear of whatever troubled her so much, and found security now in a stranger’s arms. He, of course, had had more than enough of sleeping in recent days. But it was easy to work up theories about her, and irritating that one would never know the truth. Not that he cared: it was curiosity, not any real sense of concern.
He’d decided he’d take off on Monday. He lay on his back now, hearing the rain first ease off and then stop, so that he was listening to a desultory dripping from trees and eaves – with her face on his shoulder, her breath fanning his ear, an arm and a leg across him; she was as softly and warmly relaxed as a sprawling puppy. But Monday – the day after the Sunday which would be dawning soon – after she left the house to go wherever she did go every weekday, he’d sneak off, hide himself somewhere near the bicycle until dark, then pedal south to find the frontier. The ankle was a lot better, and he still had all Sunday and Sunday night to rest it. To go suddenly, without goodbyes, would be far the easiest way. He’d tell her – using the calendar again – one more week. It would seem like a long time, and it might well seem long enough – her nervousness, fear of discovery, might even incline her to see him on his way before that.
A continuing tattoo of the rain’s aftermath: soft drumming in the darkness, the wind’s murmur in the trees. Her breathing was light and even in his ear: that, and the interminable dripping.
Drip, drip, drip…
No. It was ‘break’, not ‘drip’. Sea, not rain.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
Thoughts, for instance, of Fiona. Who’d be amused, when he described this interlude. Or disbelieving… He’d make her laugh, anyway… It would have been pretty frightful if Fiona had married Nick – as she’d fully intended. She’d been Nick’s mistress for several years, on and off. Jack wondered how Nick, even married to his Australian, would react to the announcement of Fiona’s marriage to his young half-brother. And where Nick might be now. Paul, one knew about – Paul would be in his submarine in the Malta flotilla, where survival chances were said to be about fifty: fifty – had been at the beginning of the year, anyway. And if Paul should happen to get his come-uppance then he, Jack, would be in line for the Everard baronetcy if anything similar happened to Nick. It was a thought one had entertained for quite a while now. A new element, however, was Nick’s marriage to the Australian, because if they started a family any son would take precedence over a half-brother.
They’d better keep Nick at sea. And the Australian in Australia!
The shutter had moved.
Or – he thought it had.
He was straining his eyes towards the indistinct, slightly lighter rectangle that was the window. He could still hear that sound in his head, behind the continuing drip, drip, drip. Not exactly a creak, more a sound of sliding…
He moved sideways out of Heidi’s embrace, and off the bed. She’d sighed, rolled the other way. He went to the window, seeing the shutters’ slats like bars against a sky turning starry now. The cold breeze made him shiver as he felt for the rod with a hook on it which had held the shutters in this half-open position. But he couldn’t find it. Then his hand pushed against one shutter, and it swung back. The hook – he found it now, hanging loose – had been disengaged.
For a minute, it had him worried. Then he realised – she most likely hadn’t fixed it properly. So the wind had moved the shutters and dislodged it. The movement of the shutter would have been the sound he’d heard.
He hooked it firmly, this time, and went back to bed. Cold, glad of the bed’s warmth and hers. He put his arms round her, and she turned back, snuggling against him. Kissing, then, while she was still more asleep than awake and he was still listening, for sounds other than the wind and the noise of the rain as it began again. She murmured sleepily with her mouth against his, while he assured himself that there couldn’t possibly have been anyone out there.
‘Three minutes to go, sir!’
Hugo Wykeham called it up the helmsman’s voice-pipe. Ruck, who had Paul Everard in the bridge with him, answered, ‘Depth under us now?’
‘Still one hundred fathoms, sir.’
He’d just checked it. The hundred-fathom line at this point was six and three quarter miles from land. McClure, Ultra’s navigator, had just left the chart and gone to the ladder, was scuttling up it to the bridge where he’d stay and watch shore bearings – Cape Matifu to the east, Cape Caxine in the west, and some leading marks ashore as well. The bight of land inshore of them was Algiers Bay: Ultra was in position and on time, on the spot she’d been detailed to occupy while serving as a navigational beacon. She was slightly nearer the coast than the other submarines who were performing the same task in other sectors – Unrivalled was to the east of her, on the other side of Matifu, P 48 was off the town of Algiers itself, and Shakespear was lying as marker off the western sector beaches.
Two minutes to zero hour.
McClure was at the gyro repeater, constantly watching the shore bearings. The diesels were growling through muffled exhausts, one charging the battery and the other driving one screw at low revs, holding the submarine in position by stemming the westerly set. If you made even a small mistake on this kind of job you’d be sending assault troops ashore in the wrong place; navigational accuracy equated to men’s lives and the success of the invasion. Ruck and Paul both had their glasses up, sweeping all round but concentrating mostly on the seaward sector. A minute to go… Farther out to sea, at 6 pm – four and a half hours ago – convoy KMF(A)1, which had been at sea since leaving the Clyde on 26 October, had split into separate detachments for the various landing beaches in this sector, and one part of the landing force should be appearing here at any moment.
‘Blue lamp on, Sub.’
Paul dropped his binoculars on their strap, and raised the lamp. He aimed it out to sea and pressed the trigger.
Ruck asked McClure, ‘Bearings all right?’
‘Spot on, sir.’
Quiet voices in the quiet, apparently empty night. But you knew it was far from empty. And this would be happening simultaneously at Oran, two hundred miles west. At Oran the beacon submarines were P 54 and Ursula.
‘Twenty-two thirty-five, sir!’
Wykeham, from below… and the LSIS – Landing Ships Infantry – were now five minutes late. It didn’t augur well – after so long a passage, so much preparation in the surrounding areas. Paul thought of the Count – who’d most likely be dead by this time – and of the Germans and Italians who’d be on the alert for invasions of Sicily and Sardinia, who’d have had reports today of very large convoys steaming east into the Mediterranean all through the daylight hours. They would not have known that under cover of darkness all the convoys had turned south. But they’d know the convoys had been covered by battleships and aircraft carriers as well as squadrons of cruisers and flotillas of destroyers, and a host of smaller support ships.
‘Ah. Better late than bloody never.’
Ruck’s tone was of relief, but not excitement. What had been expected was now happening, ten minutes late. The landing ships would stop at this point, lower their swarms of assault craft which would then form up and head in to the beach, returning to the LSIS for follow-up waves of troops. The ships would have moved in closer, by that time, to speed up the flow. A primary target from this sector would be the Maison Blanche airfield, only a few miles inland from the landing place.
McClure warned Ruck, ‘We’re getting too far east, sir. If we could stop for about a minute, the set would—’
‘Stop port!’
You could see the oncoming ships now. A silent, purposefully approaching column growing powerfully out of the night, spearhead of an army which, astonishingly, had been brought in secrecy across two thousand miles of sea and would be ashore before light came.
It was now Sunday 8 November, and for as much as was left of SL 320 it had been a quiet night, so far. Wesley had put down a U-boat six miles ahead of the convoy about an hour after dusk, and kept it in asdic contact for long enough to drop several patterns on it. Nick had been thinking of sending one of the others to join in, but he’d decided to wait in case it might turn out to be a concerted attack from other directions as well – as indeed it did, when torpedoes were fired at the convoy from somewhere ahead to starboard. Two tracks were seen, one passing close down the starboard side of the Sukow Trader and the other streaking right under Astilbe. Graves had said it was seen too late for any evasive action to have been effective: all he’d done was hold his breath.
Then Paeony had had a contact, about two hours after midnight, but she’d lost it while Nick had been on his way over to help. And that was all. By this convoy’s standards, a very quiet night indeed.
Having those two destroyers would make a difference, of course. You could often relate the aggressiveness of U-boats directly to the weakness of a convoy’s defence. As Cruance, among others, had well known.
Convoy speed was four knots. The Burbridge could have done better, but the Lossiemouth’s master had said he might not be able to maintain even this speed for long. His pumps were holding their own, but only just, against the extensive flooding in his foreport. Harbinger’s condenser leak was no worse, thank God.
Mike Scarr had the watch. Nick was relaxing, but not sleeping, in his deck chair. It was a rare and unexpected blessing to spend a night at only the second degree of readiness, guns’ crews and depth charge crew actually sleeping. Not that Mr Timberlake’s teams could have won any battles to speak of, when they had only four Mark VIIs left. Fortunately this might not matter, since it did look as if the main battle might have ended. Obviously a large part of the U-boat force had been withdrawn – possibly into the Mediterranean, if the enemy had seen the ‘Torch’ convoys streaming east from Gibraltar all day – and they must have…
He had a pipe going. He smoked slowly, enjoying the quiet passage of the hours and the comparative quiet in his own mind – which he could have established right from the start, if he’d had the courage… Thinking about her – where she was and how soon he’d have her with him: thinking also about what he knew must be going on now, this very minute, on and off the Algerian and Moroccan beaches. And whether Paul might be involved – he probably would be… Then Kate again – in London, perhaps, already there, trying to find out where he was?
Looff had taken U 702 deep, after firing a salvo of three torpedoes from which there’d been no result at all. He attributed it to malfunction, failure of the warheads’ pistols being the most likely. His hydrophone operator had heard the fish running, and on course, and then – nothing. Nothing except a destroyer coming straight at him at about thirty knots: and an insolent remark from Franz Walther, some comment muttered into his beard…
He’d fired from long range, certainly – because of those destroyers, and the corvettes a short way back on their quarters. He could have pressed in closer, to make sure of it, but he’d been on a firing track and he’d suddenly realised he could just as well loose off now – and be sure of getting his fish away. On a decision like this you couldn’t hesitate: you either did it, or you didn’t, and if he’d held on one of those bastards might have got in his way.
He didn’t know what had happened to Waldo Speyer – formerly Drachen Twelve – either. There’d been a lot of depth-charging from that side, so obviously he’d been getting it in the neck. Their attacks had been reasonably well synchronised – not that it made all that much difference, with only two attackers in place of ten… Since firing that salvo he’d been busy with his own immediate problems, too busy to take Walther up on that muttered comment: Looff had let it go, and now he wished he hadn’t; but it was too late, the engineer would have denied it, played the innocent… Anyway, the obvious thing had been to get those tubes reloaded as quickly as possible, and also to regain bearing. He’d stayed deep until he was able to surface on the convoy’s quarter, well out: he’d stayed well out, too, out of the escorts’ RDF range while steering a parallel course at high speed, getting himself back up into position for a new attack. He was dived now, deep again, nicely distanced ahead but with the propeller noise of the escorting destroyers loud and clear in the hydrophones, while up for’ard the torpedo-men hauled U 702’s last three reload fish into her tubes. The convoy was only crawling, probably because some ships in it had been crippled in earlier attacks, and it was easy to stay ahead of it, even at a speed that took very little juice out of the batteries.
Having missed with that salvo, another attack did have to be made. Unfortunately he’d have to use the search periscope; daylight was coming very soon, and the attack ‘scope was out of action. The damage had been done when that shell had bounced off, when he’d been diving her just after the collision. Walther had had his artificers up there working on it, on the surface yesterday forenoon at the same time as they’d buried Oelricher. The engineer had reported finally that effective repairs were impossible. So the attack would have to be conducted from down below in the control room, using the air and sea search periscope. Which was not so good.
The leak in the engine room hadn’t amounted to anything. The air-intake valve: they’d fixed it in a couple of minutes. Walther very pleased with himself at that time, for some reason. He’d acted in those few minutes as if he’d been taking over the command! Looff’s memory of the precise sequence of events was hazy, but he did remember Walther throwing his weight about, giving orders to all and sundry. There was nothing to pin him down to now: another incident that had been let slip by default…
The two destroyers had arrived to join the escort this afternoon, so there were now six escorts to seven merchantmen. This meant stiffish opposition, and Looff had of course drawn attention to it, in one of his reports to Kernéval. It was a very significant change, coinciding as it had with the withdrawal – yesterday, Saturday – of most of the Drachen group. The group had in effect been disbanded. Ziegner – who’d been comparatively well off for fuel and torpedoes – had been sent into the Mediterranean, and the rest had been ordered south, back into the Azores air gap where they were to rendezvous with ‘milch cows’, supply U-boats, for replenishments. Looff and Speyer had been told to remain with this convoy and ‘complete its destruction’.
It was an order that couldn’t possibly be carried out. Particularly if Speyer had been lost now, or damaged. Even if he showed up again, it couldn’t have been achieved even in terms of the number of torpedoes they had left. And with the odds changed so drastically, it virtually amounted to being told to commit suicide.
Punishment for failure?
Hardly… He bit his lip, thinking about it. This was a new, extremely valuable ship, with a crew of highly trained, irreplaceable men and a commander whose name had been blazoned in the national headlines. FO U-boats might be under pressure, but he couldn’t have gone completely mad.
Except there wasn’t always that much logic… Certainly not if the carpet-eater was frothing at the mouth. Admirals and generals ran for cover, then!
In any case, there was nothing to be ashamed of. Looff had personally sunk five merchantmen and one armed trawler, adding in his own estimate 30,000 tons to his bag. He’d have done better if on more than one occasion he hadn’t had rotten luck, an escort right on top of him by sheer chance at just the crucial moment: it was all on record, in the ship’s log and also in his personal notes, for inclusion later in the patrol report. But when you considered it from this point of view it was obvious that FO U-boats’ order wasn’t either a punishment or a reproof: Max Looff had commanded a group that had sunk thirty out of thirty-seven ships in one convoy – plus one of its escorts – and you didn’t reprove a man for that, you gave him a hero’s welcome!
Dawn wasn’t far away. Maybe forty minutes…
Willi Heusinger asked him, in that ingratiating tone of his, ‘Will you make a dived attack, sir? With the search periscope?’
Looff turned his head slowly, and stared at him. Letting him see his contempt. He had no intention of keeping Heusinger with him, after this trip. His lips twitched – some involuntary spasm which he controlled with difficulty – as he formed the words to answer cuttingly, ‘Since it will now be daylight, and since my engineer has found himself unable to repair the attack periscope, I have very little option, have I… Instead of wasting time with stupid questions, go for’ard and find what’s making them so slow!’
Heusinger looked as if he’d hit him in the face. He muttered, ‘Aye aye, sir…’
Walther asked Looff in a murmur as he turned to enter the wardroom, ‘All right, sir? I mean – you’re feeling OK, are you?’
‘Are you a doctor now?’ Anger flared: anger he’d suppressed for hours. Glaring at his engineer… ‘What the hell are you suggesting?’
‘I – beg the captain’s pardon…’ Staring, as if he thought his captain might be sick, or crazy. Oil on his face, crumbs in his scraggy beard, gazing at his commanding officer like some laboratory worker studying a microbe… Looff suddenly saw clear through the bastard: ‘You think you saved the ship – is that it?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand at all!’
‘D’you imagine I’d hesitate to deal with you, Walther? Because you’ve served with me for a long time d’you think you can get away with impertinence?’
‘Sir, if I’ve said or done anything—’
‘One more sample of your insubordination, Walther, and Leutnant Hopper will take over your job! D’you understand that?’
‘Why, yes, sir – but – but…’
He’d got him stammering, got him off-balance. That was good. He leant closer – eyes blazing, expression triumphant – ‘I’m Max Looff – remember?’
‘Guns’ crews closed up, sir, circuits tested.’
He nodded to Warrimer.
‘Depth charge crew closed up, sir.’ Chubb went back to the telephone, to swap early-morning insults with Mr Timberlake. Early morning of Sunday, 8 November.
It would already be light, Nick realised, over the Algerian beaches. There was an hour’s time-lag, near enough, between here and Algiers. Light would have come to the Moroccan coast perhaps twenty minutes ago. Daylight like a curtain rising on a completely new stage in the war.
Please God. A turning of the tide. From Africa, into southern Europe. And the Mediterranean open…
‘Wesley and Vicious have both acknowledged, sir.’
‘Thank you, Chief.’
He’d just told them to drop back, closing the defensive screen around the convoy. Its front was a width of only twelve hundred yards now, and with Harbinger moving up into the centre, those two falling back to take station on each side of her and the two corvettes as wing-ships to the resulting broad-arrow formation, any U-boat would have a very tight screen to get through.
Stella was on the move across the convoy’s stern. At such slow speed a dived attack from the quarter or the rear was not impossible. If there were any U-boats in attendance now, they could run round these tortoises like hares. But in fact, since the attacks last night, which hadn’t amounted to anything, there’d been no sight or sound of any enemy.
The rising flush of dawn colour was too pale to be called orange, or even tangerine. Gold might be the best way to describe it. A widening, brightening, fire-like glow under roofing cloud.
Asdics pinging, 271 aerial steadily revolving; half a dozen pairs of binoculars carefully examining the surroundings. Wind was down to force one, but it was from the north and very cold. Harbinger’s motion was rhythmic, leisurely, as she rocked over the long, low swell.
The new day’s brightness had spread half round the horizon when TBS crackled into life…
Eagle – Gannet – periscope in sight – attacking!
‘Port twenty. Three-eight-oh revolutions. All quarters alert!’
He’d decided – any contact that was obtained, he’d go for with two or even three ships. He had the resources now and he didn’t believe there’d be more than one or two U-boats to contend with. Certainly once the news of the invasion was out, there’d be no U-boats left hanging around a piddling little convoy such as this one had become.
Harbinger was heeling to the turn, and speeding.
‘Twenty of port wheel on, sir!’
‘Steer three-one-oh.’ He straightened, ‘TBS to Gannet, Chief, “I am joining you.”’
Chubb murmured, ‘With my four depth charges.’ But that message would also warn the others that they had to share the convoy’s frontal defence between them, in Harbinger’s absence from the centre.
Depth charges exploded, out on the bow. Paeony had enough Mark VIIs left for a couple of full patterns. If they both ran out and still held the contact he’d turn it over to the newly-arrived destroyers. Astern, the Dongola’s siren was ordering emergency turn to starboard. Harbinger stretching herself across the swell, taking it head-on while she was turning, but paying-off again now, leaving the rising light of day back on her quarter. Guyatt should have been regaining contact now, as the disturbance from his charges faded.
TBS… Eagle – Gannet … Unable to regain contact, as yet. Could be the deepdive merchant. Out.
‘Course three-one-oh, sir!’
‘Chief – call Fox, tell him, “Join me. We may have use for your heavies.”’ He leant down to the voice-pipe: ‘Two hundred revolutions.’ He was slowing her to give the asdics a chance: and guessing that the U-boat would have turned away to something like a northerly course – away from trouble, but in a direction that might allow him to get in an attack later.
‘Steer three-two-oh.’
He looked round, saw Chubb leaning into the asdic cabinet, communing with Leading Seaman Garment, TBS was calling again as soon as Bearcroft signed-off after his call to Astilbe. It was Gannet, reporting, Contact regained, confirmed sub contact bearing three-two-four range fifteen hundred yards!
Joy in that tone… And an amplifying report now, Target steering north speed six knots…
‘Tell him, “Hold the contact at present range. Do not, repeat do not, try to attack.”’
Just about full daylight now. Against the brightest part of it Astilbe had the golden glow behind her as she came ploughing across the convoy’s van. All the merchantmen were swinging away to starboard.
Nick had time to talk to Guyatt now, over the radio-telephone. ‘Have you ever taken part in a creeping attack, or exercised it?’
Guyatt obviously didn’t know what he was talking about: he said he didn’t think he had… The creeping attack was one of the anti-submarine ploys devised by the famous Captain Johnnie Walker, most successful and best-known of all the escort-group commanders. Tony Graves knew all about it, anyway – and Astilbe had some ‘heavies’, deep-firing depth charges on board, too. Nick told Guyatt, ‘I’ll try to take over your contact, and then direct Astilbe on to it. Graves knows this technique.’
Ten minutes later, Harbinger’s asdics found the U-boat, guided to it by Paeony. Garment reported, ‘Confirmed sub contact, range fourteen hundred, right ahead, closing!’
‘One-two-oh revolutions.’ He told Bearcroft, ‘To Gannet, “Many thanks. Resume station.”’ Astilbe was waiting a few cables’ lengths on Harbinger’s quarter. The convoy was drawing away eastward, almost into the rising sun. He saw Paeony turning, and her bow-wave rising as Guyatt increased speed.
‘Range twelve hundred yards, sir!’
That was all right. He’d already cut Harbinger’s revs, to give about six knots, same speed as the target. Ideally he wanted one thousand yards between them – that was the Walker prescription. The object was to stay out at this distance, simply hold the contact at arm’s length. You could hear the asdic impulses bouncing back loud and clear: it was unmistakably a submarine down there. Like having a big fish on your line, and deep. You had to play it exactly right, or lose it.
‘Eleven hundred yards, sir, still right ahead!’
He ducked to the pipe. ‘One hundred revolutions.’ Then – ‘TBS to Astilbe, “Target is right ahead of me on course three-six-oh, range one thousand yards, speed six or just under six. Start your approach now.”’
Graves would have switched off his asdics. He’d be as quiet as he could, just paddling up towards the target while Nick stayed clear and directed him. The German would be listening to Harbinger’s pings bouncing off his hull; he wouldn’t be enjoying it, but he wouldn’t see any menace in it either. He’d be feeling cosy, unreachable, down there. The quiet approach of a second hunter from right astern would be masked from his hydrophones by his own propeller noise.
Astilbe slid by, very slowly overhauling, and passing within a stone’s throw. A stock figure in the front of her bridge came briefly to the side and saluted, was already disappearing as Nick gave him a wave. He said, still watching the corvette pass – on a converging course, coming in to put herself immediately ahead of Harbinger – ‘Navigating officer on the bridge, with the distance meter.’ Scarr came up at a rush; Nick told him, ‘Creeping attack. I’ll want ranges on Astilbe.’ He accepted the TBS microphone from Bearcroft.
‘Fox – Eagle – Captain to captain only now. Nothing except emergencies from anyone else, please. Are you there, Tony?’
Yes, sir. All set.
‘How many heavies?’
Only twenty-six, sir, I’m afraid.
‘Use them all in one solid stream, starting at the order “fire”.’
Aye aye, sir.
Mike Scarr moved up behind him. He’d set the Stuart Distance Meter to the masthead height of a Flower-class corvette: if he didn’t have the figure in his head he’d have looked it up. The distance meter was a little hand-held rangefinder: you put it to your eye and turned a milled knob; you saw two images of the ship ahead, and adjusted until one’s masthead was at the waterline of the other. Then you read off the range from the distance-scale. It was used mostly when flotillas and squadrons were steaming in formation, for maintaining distances apart.
‘Bearing has drawn one degree right, sir. Oh-oh-one.’
That came from Garment, on asdics. Pings were singing out, reverberating loud and sharp, echoes coming back exceptionally clearly. Asdic conditions were, conveniently for once, very good today. Nick said into the microphone, ‘Target bears oh-oh-one from me. Probably just bad steering, I don’t think he’s altering. Come two degrees to starboard.’ He was sighting on Astilbe with the gyro bearing-ring; when she was back on the same bearing as the target he’d correct again as necessary. Scarr told him, ‘Range now a hundred and seventy-five yards, sir.’
Chubb pulled his head out of the asdic cabinet. ‘Target speed five point three knots, sir.’
‘Fox – speed by rev count is five point three. You could come down a little.’
Aye aye, sir.
Except for a slight buzz in the speaker, Tony Graves might have been standing here beside him. As he had so often. He’d be reducing speed by up to half a knot now. The slower the better. If you tried to rush it, you’d muff it.
‘A hundred and eighty yards, sir.’
Chubb called, ‘Target bearing is three-six-oh, sir!’
Squinting over the bearing-ring, crouching to put his eye to it, he saw Astilbe right in line. He said into the mike, ‘Fox – resume course three-six-oh.’
‘Asdic range one thousand yards, sir!’
Scarr said, ‘A hundred and eighty-five, sir.’
Softly, softly…
You could visualise the Germans down there – quiet and comfortable, probably guessing this British escort was only aiming to keep them down and out of the way while the convoy passed. As the merchantmen were only making four knots, the U-boat captain would anticipate no difficulty in overhauling it again when this nuisance ended.
‘Time now?’
Warrimer told him, ‘Just on oh-seven-double-oh, sir.’
‘Range one-ninety yards, sir…’
Here is the first news for today, Sunday, the eighth of November, and this is Stuart Hibberd reading it.
United States troops have landed at several points in French North Africa.
General Montgomery has issued an Order of the Day to the Eighth Army calling on them for a supreme effort to remove the Germans from Italian North Africa.
Home-based bombers of the Royal Air Force were over Italy again last night.
In the Far East, Allied Forces – including troops recently flown from Australia – now control all of New Guinea except for the coastal area near Buna.
In Russia, the Germans are still barred on all sectors.
Stuart Hibberd paused, then read on…
Shortly after two o’clock this morning the news came in that United States troops had landed on the Atlantic and Mediterranean shores of French North Africa. The first announcement was in what was headed Communiqué Number One issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Expeditionary Force. It said: ‘United States Army, Navy and Air Forces started landing operations during the hours of darkness this morning at numerous points on the shores of French North Africa. The operation was made necessary by the increasing Axis menace to this territory. Steps have been taken to give the French people, by radio and leaflets, early information of the landings. These combined operations of United States Forces were supported by units of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Lieutenant-General Dwight D Eisenhower of the United States is Commander-in-Chief of the Allied force…
In Harbinger’s wireless office, a telegraphist was scrawling it down in longhand. The ship was at action stations, so the bulletin was not being broadcast over her loudspeakers.
Paul Everard heard it, though, in Ultra. She was heading northeastward on the surface; a dived passage would have been dangerous, on account of the heavy concentration of Royal Navy ships close off-shore, and as the RAF and Fleet Air Arm had complete command of the air over all the Mediterranean beachhead areas there was no overhead threat anticipated – except from the RAF, which was a danger submariners were well used to.
Ultra’s crew were all listening to the broadcast. They knew already, from plain-language signals intercepted, that at 6.40am the Maison Blanche airfield had been captured by American troops. They did not know, yet, that at about this moment the other airfield, near Blida, was being taken by Fleet Air Arm fighters from the Victorious whose pilots would hold it until commandos arrived. But from other signals they’d learnt that only a few miles away HM Destroyers Broke and Malcolm, attempting to penetrate Algiers harbour to prevent the scuttling of French warships, had run into fierce opposition. Malcolm, semi-wrecked, had been forced to withdraw, and Broke, who’d charged the boom and smashed her way in and landed her assault troops at about 0530, was now under heavy artillery fire.
Jack Everard heard the broadcast in bed – sliding an arm round Heidi to calm her and keep her quiet while he listened. She had the jitters again: that nonsensical fear of the English voice being overheard…
Next, a message from the United States and British Governments addressed to the people of France itself: The landing of the American Expeditionary Force in French North Africa is the first step towards the liberation of France. The object of the present operation is to destroy the German and Italian forces in North Africa. Our forces arrive in French North Africa as friends. The day when the German and Italian threat no longer weighs on French territories, they will leave. The sovereignty of France over French territories remains unaffected. We enter today into the offensive phase of the War of Liberation. This is the beginning…
Outside, rain deluged. The wireless had to be turned well up in volume to be audible over the incessant drumming. It wasn’t all that loud, but there was a lot of static in it and Heidi was panicking – it was silly, and beginning to annoy him: he wanted to hear this news, and she was acting like a restless, fractious child.
Here is the rest of the news:
An overnight despatch from Godfrey Talbot in Cairo says that as the men of the Eighth Army proceed with the job of capturing and killing Germans, they have received another Order of the Day from their commander, General Montgomery, stressing afresh that the battle just won is only the beginning of their task. ‘There is much to be done yet,’ General Montgomery told them, ‘and it will call for a supreme effort and great hardship on the part of every officer and man.’ The message goes on, ‘Forward, then, to our task of removing the Germans from North Africa. The Germans began this trouble, and they must now take the consequences. They asked for it, and they’ll…
Heidi’s scream was ear-splitting…
Then he heard it too – the back door slamming back: a pounding of heavy boots on the kitchen’s board floor… He was half off the bed when Heidi’s door burst open: throwing himself across it, towards the intruders, while she went the other way… He saw a black uniform, a long pale face under a peaked cap, and a Luger pistol in a gloved hand. Another, different uniform behind that one – civil police he thought, and then saw the boy – the policeman’s hand grasping Otto’s shoulder. It was a confused, kaleidoscopic impression, a montage of stills and movement and faces in the crowded doorway. The mouth under the peaked cap was open, shouting in German over the noise of the wireless and Heidi’s screaming which was now continuous, like some alarm signal that couldn’t be shut off, drowning the loud British tones still emerging blandly from that fretwork facia. The Luger lifted, aimed: its three successive crashes stopped the screaming, left the newscaster droning on, a foreigner in the corner talking blithely to himself. Heidi’s mouth was open but no sound was coming out of it. She was crouched, naked, frozen in shock, terror, shame, hiding from bullets and from her son’s frank stare. The Englishman was dead. He’d fallen and rolled sideways and was on his back with blood gathering all over him, dead eyes open to the ceiling. The announcer’s voice continued:
…communiqué from Australia reports that Allied forces now control all of New Guinea except the Buna-Gona area on the north coast. Strong forces of American ground troops have been transported by air from Australia during the past month… Near Oivi, on the trail from Buna to Kokoda, Australian forces are keeping up constant pressure and carrying out local encircling movements to dislodge the defence.
Finally, here is one item of home news. The Ministry of Food announces that owing to reduced supplies of liquid milk available it’s been found necessary to restrict allowances to catering establishments which haven’t priority claims to one third of the quantity they’re receiving now. Catering sections and canteens—
The Luger had tilted, fired twice. The English voice cut off in flying splinters of three-ply and a tinkle of the valves’ thin glass. Heidi was on her knees, face wet and slack, staring at Otto across the tumbled bedclothes. The man with the gun holstered it on his way to the dressing-table. He picked up the empty frame, looked at it as if it amused him, glanced at the girl with the same wry expression as he put it down again – flat, on its face.
Astilbe wallowed, half a mile ahead. Mike Scarr read figures from the distance meter, ‘Nine-seven-five yards, sir.’
‘Asdic range one thousand, sir!’
Dead on track. Target course still north. Astilbe had seventy-five yards still to gain: she’d have to get to a point fifty yards ahead of her target in order to allow for the time it would take for the charges to sink to target depth.
Nick was stooped at the binnacle, sighting on her with the bearing-ring, microphone in his other hand…
‘Thousand yards, sir.’
‘Asdic range still one thousand, sir!’
Binoculars levelled: breaths almost held… He’d got the revs exactly right, matching the U-boat’s speed. He thumbed the switch again and told Graves, ‘Twenty-five yards to go. Stand by.’
Standing by, sir…
This was the crisis point. If the U-boat heard Astilbe passing over it might turn and speed away from the deathtrap. But with any luck the Germans’ ears would be filled by Harbinger’s remorselessly pinging asdics.
Way off on the quarter, SL 320’s remnants pitched northeastward across the long Atlantic swell. The Dongola’s siren had bleated again, about twenty minutes ago, turning them back to port. The two destroyers, and Paeony with them now, were across the convoy’s van, Stella doggedly plugging to and fro astern.
‘About ten yards to go, sir.’
Scarr’s hands were shaking. He put the range-finder back to his eye. Nick said into the radio-telephone, ‘Ten yards to go.’
‘Asdic range one thousand!’
Seconds ticking out. Down there in the black water the Germans would still be thinking they were safe. Slightly irritated by now, perhaps…
Scarr said sharply, ‘Thousand and fifty!’
‘Fire!’
He straightened, lifting his binoculars in time to see the first ‘heavy’ splash down from Astilbe’s stern. A second followed it, and a third. Then the throwers: from each quarter a drum-like projectile lobbing out. Another splash under that broad counter, and number seven dropped from the chute just as the pair from the throwers hit the water simultaneously on each side.
Then the first explosion. It felt as if Harbinger had hit a sandbank. Warrimer muttered, ‘Glad I’m not down there.’ Explosions continued, breaking the ocean apart, the throwers firing again and charges still rolling from the chute. Astilbe’s stern wasn’t visible all the time as the sea behind her swelled up in round-topped swirling geysers, mounds that lifted, turning white as they broke like boiling milk and the noise rolled on like deep sub-surface drumbeats, Harbinger’s steel hull shuddering…
Graves’s voice came over TBS, Twenty-six heavies fired, sir.
The last of them were still exploding, concussing.
‘Starboard ten.’ He was turning her so all her guns would bear – if that thing came up, now. Warrimer warning the guns’ crews, ‘Stand by. Set range oh-one-oh. Fire when your sights come on.’
The surface was settling, the pattern of the swells beginning to reassert itself. Astilbe swinging to port: Graves turning her so her guns would bear.
‘Midships.’
Chubb muttered, with his glasses on the place where at any moment the thing might show itself, ‘Come on, duckies, don’t be shy…’ A lot of binoculars were focused on the smoothing surface: breaths probably were being held. Gunners’ fingers on their triggers.
Spirits faltering, as nothing happened. Thrum of ships’ engines at slow revs, sea slapping against steel and swirling by.
‘Deep explosion, sir!’
Leading Seaman Garment’s face, framed in earphones, had a delighted grin on it as he rose from the little cabinet. ‘Sir—’
Eagle – Fox – we got him, sir. I heard it myself – explosion, long way down, deepest I ever heard.
The charges must have sent the German down, out of control, to a depth where sea pressure had crushed him. Like an egg in a closing fist. And that had been the blooding of skipper Graves.
Nick thumbed the switch. ‘Well done, Tony. I’ll circle you while you wait and see what comes up. Out…’
There was time, and lack of pressure from any other quarter, to hang around for evidence to take home: woodwork, clothing, even papers that might be of interest to Intelligence. If there were any bodies, for instance, blown out of that crushed hull, there could be papers in their pockets. From such a depth there’d be no live ones.
Congratulations came by TBS from the others. Including from Paeony. Nick pointed out to Guyatt that he had a share in the kill. He moved away from the binnacle: ‘Take over here, pilot. Keep her circling.’
‘Oil on the surface, sir, port side!’
TBS from Astilbe, I’m passing through oil, sir. Floating up thick, all over the place. Out…
‘Body on the surface red four-oh, sir!’
Bodies came up in pockets of air or from the buoyancy of air trapped in their clothes. They sank after they’d become waterlogged, rose again later when the gas in them expanded.
Astilbe was stopping, lowering her whaler.
‘Captain, sir?’
He looked round. A lot of stuff was appearing on the surface… But this was Goodacre, CPO Telegraphist, with a sheaf of signal-pad in his hand.
‘BBC news bulletin, sir. If you’ve a moment? Thought you’d want to know – Yanks’ve landed in French North Africa!’
‘Have they, indeed.’ A glance showed him what a thick wad of transcript Goodacre had brought up. He raised his glasses again. ‘Read me the main points, Chief, will you?’ He was focusing on something white: it was an officer’s cap, and only the captains of U-boats were allowed to wear white ones. It wouldn’t stay white for long, if the boat didn’t get to it quickly… A souvenir for Mrs Graves, perhaps, to hang in the hallway of her little house in Liverpool? For Graves to show his children, years hence and after he’d gone back to making cornflakes? Goodacre was reading, ‘United States Army, Navy and Air Forces started landing operations during the hours of darkness this morning at numerous points on the shores of French North Africa… These combined operations of the United States Forces were supported by units of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force…’
He paused, turning pages, picking what to read next. Nick seeing the whaler’s grey clinker strakes – and Astilbe’s side too – already foul with oil. He called to Scarr, ‘Keep us clear of that muck, pilot!’ Goodacre had begun again, but through it Nick heard Jack’s voice in his ear, as sharp and clear as if he’d been standing in the bridge beside him, Jack complaining, You should have told me… He thought – startled, even glancing round at empty air as if he might have been there – Christ, I must be nearer the edge than I knew! He shook his head – to clear it, and astonished at himself: he was dirty, unshaven, tired, he knew all that, but since yesterday when things had got easier he hadn’t been conscious of it, whereas two days ago he’d felt like a walking corpse. In any case there’d be time for sleep now – fortunately… Goodacre telling him after another pause, ‘There’s a lot of guff ’ere from President Roosevelt to the frogs, and from this General Eisenhower—’ he’d pronounced it Aysen’ower – ‘an’ from the government, and – well…’ Nick still appalled: hallucinations, for God’s sake! In any case it had never been his secret: it had been and still was Sarah’s, Jack’s mother’s, and it would have killed her for Jack to know it… They were dragging a body over the whaler’s transom, holding it there while they turned out its pockets. There were only three others floating that he could see, so the job shouldn’t take much longer… Then with the convoy on its way again, there would be a chance to catch up on sleep, get somewhere near sane again; it should be easy from here on, because any U-boats would surely have been redeployed by now against the forces massed off the beachheads. SL 320’s surviving fragment would still need nursing, but you could reckon to get it home, all right. Partial and untimely arrival: and nothing at all to do with the armies pouring ashore at Algiers, Oran and Casablanca. Just a very small convoy crawling home, on the turning of the tide.