Prime Minister to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: We shall have to watch… Spanish reactions to preparations for ‘Torch’ which will become evident at Gibraltar… How much of these preparations would exceed the normal for a big Malta convoy?’
Captain Cruance, RNVR, was a tall man with white hair and a stoop, and he lived in a hole in a rock. That was how he’d describe him to Kate, Nick thought: some day, some place, when they’d be together and all this would be finished, would be in the early stages of being digested into history. The notion matched a feeling that history might well be in the making, here and now; and behind that was the puzzle of what his own part in it might be. Cruance stooping, as he shook his hand, as if he’d lived his whole life with the weight of the Rock bearing down on him; and he was as pale as if he’d just slid out of some crevice in it, would slither in again when his visitor left.
‘I’m delighted to meet you, at last, Everard. Heard a great deal about you, from a mutual friend.’
He didn’t have to ask the friend’s name. Cruance glanced at the young paymaster lieutenant who’d brought Nick to the tunnel. ‘Thank you, Hobday. I’ll give you a call when we’ve finished.’
‘Right, sir.’ Neither Hobday nor Cruance spoke or looked as if they belonged in the Navy. Cruance turned to Nick, as the door shut. ‘Please sit down, my dear fellow… I’d offer you coffee or something, but we’re not quite that well-organised, as yet.’
‘Just moved in?’
‘I’m what they rather quaintly refer to as the “advance party”.’ He sat down, facing Nick across a littered desk. ‘I have to see to it that it all does become organised by the time Sir Andrew Cunningham gets here—’
‘A B Cunningham?’
‘His very self.’ That quirky smile again. ‘Although my boss so far has been Admiral Wishart.’
Hobday had mentioned Wishart, in the car on the way to this subterranean headquarters. Harbinger had only just secured at the oiling berth when he’d arrived. There’d been a signal allotting berths to which Harbinger, Goshawk and Watchful were to move when they’d completed fuelling, and the one to Harbinger had added that orders would be arriving ‘by hand of officer’. The officer turned out to be a tubby, freckle-faced ‘paybob’, but he’d brought no orders, only a message.
‘Captain Cruance’s compliments, sir—’
‘Who’s Captain Cruance?’
‘Staff Officer (Operations), sir… He’d be grateful if you could find time to call in at his office, at your convenience. He has all the details there, and he’d like the opportunity to – well, discuss certain plans which involve you, sir.’
‘You say he’s Staff Officer (Operations). Whose staff?’
‘It’s – a very new set-up sir. I think he’d prefer to explain it to you himself.’
Mysterious, and distinctly irregular. Hobday had added, pointing towards the end of the jetty beyond the oiling installation, ‘I have transport here, sir, if you were free to come at once. Otherwise if you’d name a convenient time after you’ve shifted berth, I could come whenever—’
‘I’ll come now.’ Tony Graves could take her into the other basin: it would be good for him to get in some ship-handling practice. And the sooner one could find some answers to current questions, the better… He asked Hobday, who was driving the car himself despite the fact it had roundels painted on its doors and evidently belonged to the RAF, ‘Who did you say this Captain Cruance is SO(O) to?’
The paymaster had hesitated before he answered.
‘I was rather simplifying, sir, with that SO(O) answer. His immediate boss is actually Admiral Wishart.’
‘Rear Admiral Aubrey Wishart?’
A nod… ‘But it’s for Captain Cruance to explain, sir.’ He’d added diffidently, ‘If you don’t mind?’
If Aubrey Wishart – Nick had thought then, and continued thinking now as Cruance mentioned him – if Wishart was behind this, or involved, there had to be some sense in it. Wishart was a very old friend, about the oldest and best he had in the Navy. He’d been on Admiral Cunningham’s staff in the Eastern Mediterranean, when Nick had been commanding a destroyer flotilla there, and one had heard since that they’d moved him to some desk job in the Admiralty when Cunningham had transferred, six or seven months ago, to become the Royal Navy’s representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee in Washington.
He asked Cruance, ‘Is Admiral Wishart coming here?’
‘No.’ The white head wagged. ‘He’s holding the fort in London. But Admiral Cunningham will be on his way quite soon, and I’ve so much to do before he gets here that frankly it’s nightmarish. We’re sharing this tunnel with the RAF, which puts space at a premium – quite apart from its being so frightfully damp and airless. I hope I may be able to get some improvement made, somehow… But as well as ourselves and the Air Force, the offices on the other side of the tunnel are all reserved for Americans. Notably a General Dwight D Eisenhower.’
‘I don’t think I’ve heard of him.’
‘Well, the only ones any of us have heard of so far are in the Pacific area, aren’t they. But you’ll hear plenty of this chap, if things go right.’ He blinked, as the corollary struck him. ‘Or for that matter, if they go wrong!’
‘Combined Op, is it?’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘A Yank general isn’t coming for the fishing. And I was at Tail o’ the Bank in the Clyde a few days ago. Packed with all sorts of stuff – including LSTS. Also carriers.’
Cruance nodded. ‘The enemy’s noticed some of that, too.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ It would have been difficult for an alert enemy not to have discovered such a concentration of ships. But the only discernible expression on Cruance’s face was one of mild satisfaction. Nick asked him, ‘Doesn’t it worry anyone?’
‘If our guess is right – and it’s an informed guess – they’ll be divided in their opinions as to whether we’re mounting a very large Malta convoy or an assault on Dakar.’
‘Why should they think Dakar?’
‘Perhaps they’ve reason for it. They could have been fed some clues that point to it?’
‘I see.’
‘It’s rather my line of country, actually. I’m basically NID, Naval Intelligence, but my speciality is deception. Of course here and now I’m a Jack of all trades – including furniture removals, interior decoration—’
‘Where will the landing be?’
‘Ah… Well, Sir Nicholas, at risk of boring you by stating what must be self-evident, I must say that all this is Top Secret: indeed, it’s Hush Most Secret, in the newer vernacular. I’m sorry, but I’m obliged to make the point… And the only reason I’m about to impart a certain amount of this secret information is that you’re cast for a rather special role in the operation, and you’ll need to have the broad picture in mind. But it is very, very important that we maintain the strictest possible security. We’re going to considerable lengths to do so. For instance, only about three people now on the Rock know that ABC is coming here. He’s taking passage in a cruiser, from Plymouth, and the impression is being given that after a call here he’ll be continuing in her to the United States. It’s a much bigger and more important operation than you can yet have guessed, and I’m bound to emphasise that in the area of security nothing should be risked. For instance, and with all respect, I’d suggest that nobody in your ship, other than yourself, should know anything at all about it. You could be sunk, men picked up—’
‘If nobody else knew what to do, and I dropped dead of a heart-attack?’
‘We’ll just say prayers for your continuing robust health.’
‘I’d suggest that Goshawk’s captain, Lieutenant-Commander Audsley—’
‘You won’t have either Goshawk or Watchful with you on this job.’
Nick stared at him. Cruance explained, ‘You’d have taken Bruce with you, from here. I’m – very sorry about Bruce, by the way. I should have said so at the beginning… But the other two have a more humdrum task ahead of them, you see, as part of a screening force, and those are plans I can’t even dream of interfering with… You must know as well as anyone how short of destroyers we are – at the best of times, which this certainly is not, with demands soaking up everything we’ve got!’
‘Hence the disbanding of my group. Just as we were beginning to amount to something.’
Cruance caught the tone, and the feeling behind it.
‘I know… We heard, moreover, that you sank three U-boats during your last eastbound convoy. Most impressive. And an extremely regrettable necessity – I mean this temporary disbanding.’
‘Can we be sure it’s temporary?’
‘We can be sure that’s the intention… But incidentally, Admiral Wishart – and I understand Admiral Cunningham too – was surprised to hear you were back in small ships. You had a cruiser – Defiant – which you succeeded in extracting from the Java Sea débâcle?’
He nodded.
‘Admiral Wishart has been somewhat out of touch in recent months, deeply involved in planning some peripheral elements of this operation, and he was surprised because he’d been under the impression that you’d have remained a cruiser captain, after such an achievement – or even gone on to – higher things…’ Cruance had shot him a quick glance: assessing the results of that little hint. He wouldn’t have seen any reaction at all. Nick recognised – and dismissed immediately – the carrot that was being held out, and which in effect was meaningless, coming from this character… And in other respects he was baffled – some enormous landing operation in which he’d have some highly individual role, so individual that he’d be carrying it out – apparently – with a command consisting of just one destroyer?
Cruance said, after a few seconds’ finger-drumming on the desk, ‘I think the best way to approach this is to start by describing the broad essentials of the operation. Then when I come down to detail of your own sideshow, you’ll see it’s of very considerable importance.’
Nick thinking, Sideshow… Cruance getting to his feet. ‘I’ve a chart in the safe here. Excuse me…’
But he’d forgotten his keys. He came back for them, muttering self-critically. Then he was at the safe again, mumbling as he tried one key after another, ‘You’ll see the whole shooting-match at a glance, from this…’
He was more of an absent-minded professor than a naval officer. Nick asked him, ‘Do I gather this is something I take Harbinger to do on her own?’
‘Not – exactly…’ He’d hit on the right key, at last. ‘No. You’ll be sailing from here on your own, but you’ll be joining – taking command of – a large number of… er… others. But—’ he had a rolled chart in his hand, and he was swinging the heavy door shut – ‘let me give you the outline picture first.’
He sat down. Glanced round, at the closed door of the office: turned back to Nick, and spoke in a lower tone.
‘The code-name for the operation is “Torch”. It’s a joint British and American invasion of French North Africa. We’re going into Morocco and Algeria – not a raid, a full-scale invasion. The Commander-in-Chief is General Eisenhower, and the Allied Naval Commander is Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. There’ll be more than 70,000 assault troops storming Casablanca, Algiers and Oran. Then of course a lot more follow-up, after beachheads have been secured. You’ll appreciate the size of this task – the weight of manpower, equipment and supplies and the distances we have to bring them before they can be put down on those beaches?’
The problems would be staggering: the risks enormous. That much was obvious at a glance.
‘Oran and Casablanca, all American. Algiers is an invasion-point only on British insistence – the Yanks didn’t want to go in as far east as that. Algiers will be a joint Anglo-American assault, but it’ll be the British First Army pushing on through the bridgehead. Whereas the Casablanca landings – actually they’ll be at three places, north and south of Casablanca itself – are coming direct from the United States. All other convoys are from the UK. Now, let me show you…’
Unrolling the chart. Nick thinking how remarkable it was that an undertaking so huge in concept could be outlined to him in no more than a minute. The movement of 70,000 men across oceans and on to enemy-held coastlines. If the French did regard themselves as enemies… Cruance murmured, ‘I should have mentioned, in case it’s not obvious, that the object is to drive the Germans and Italians out of North Africa, thus opening the Mediterranean and also providing opportunities for the invasion of southern Europe. As far as North Africa is concerned, don’t forget we have an army poised at the Egyptian end as well, eh?’
The desert army now on the El Alamein line, he meant. Generals Alexander and Montgomery. Rommel’s drive on Egypt had stopped in late August, early September, when Montgomery had defeated him at the battle of Alam el Haifa, and since then the two sides had faced each other virtually on the Egyptian frontier. But – poised? If the Eighth Army had been reinforced and re-supplied to the extent that it could now be described as poised – ready to attack, roll westward across Libya as the ‘Torch’ invasion forces advanced eastward into Tunisia – you could see the point, all right!
‘As you’ll have gathered, the assaults are to be almost entirely American. The entire operation will be represented as American – although all the naval side of it inside the Mediterranean will be ours, and the Algiers invasion too. It’s considered, rightly or wrongly, that the French are less likely to oppose landings by Americans than by ourselves. Resentment lingering, supposedly, over Oran, Dakar, you know… But now…’ Cruance touched the chart with a long, bony finger. The red-ink routes here are the tracks of convoys and naval squadrons. Nearly all, as you see, from the UK and terminating, as I’ve shown them here, where they converge to pass in through the Straits of Gibraltar. But that southernmost one is Assault Convoy UGF 1, direct from US ports and covered by Task Force 34. It comprises thirty-eight ships in convoy, and fifty-six escorts, with a covering force that includes three battleships, five aircraft carriers, seven cruisers – all US Navy…’
Red-ink convoy tracks fanned out into the Atlantic from Britain and curved southward, forming a crescent of interlocking paths over a thousand miles of sea. The American force, UGF 1 and Task Force 34, had much farther to come, right from the US east coast. That track dipped southward to the latitude of the Canaries, then turned up to loop around Madeira for the last part of its approach to the Moroccan coast.
Cruance had given him time to absorb the general pattern of it. He began to lecture again now, pointing at individual red tracks.
‘Six British advance convoys, all prefixed KX. Whereas British assault convoys are either KMS or KMF – the S standing for slow, F for fast, as usual. Also, you’ll see that four of them have an “A” or an “O” in brackets after that prefix, indicating either Algiers or Oran as destination. So we have this convoy here, for instance, in all forty-seven ships and eighteen escorts, coming from the Clyde and Loch Ewe, sailing October twenty-second and due to pass through here on November fifth and sixth. Two dates, you see, because it’s in two sections, KMS(A)1 and KMS(0)1. Ditto with this fast lot – eleven and a half knots, actually – KMF(A)1 and KMF(0)1, sailing from the Clyde October twenty-sixth. In both cases the Algerian and Oran components separate west of Gibraltar and enter the Med as separate forces. Then here we have KMS2 and KMF2… See the system of it?’
He nodded. It was clear enough on paper. When you tried to imagine the reality of it, it was a hell of an operation.
‘This is only the first stage.’ Cruance pointed out, ‘There’ll be an enormous amount of follow-up convoys to bring in, and they’ll all need protecting. Just for the assault stage we’ve had to strip other convoy routes almost bare of escorts. It imposes great risks, of course, but there’s no option, you see.’
Nick thought the risks to convoys elsewhere might be fairly small. Every U-boat the enemy possessed would surely be deployed against these convoys. And the result could be devastating: with so many eggs packed into so few baskets and exposed to attack over such distances…
‘What about disruption by U-boats?’
‘Ah.’ Cruance nodded. ‘This has been a major anxiety. To an extent, it still is.’
He pointed at the red-ink tracks. ‘Apart from the fact they’ll do their utmost to make a meal of it, what about sighting reports? There are bound to be some – from U-boats and aircraft – with this volume of shipping on the move. So they’ll know we’re coming, and even if the French don’t fight wouldn’t the Germans have time to send troops west through Tunisia?’
‘Yes.’ Cruance nodded. ‘And it’s where you’ll be playing your part.’ He leant over the chart. ‘Possible interference by U-boats – and measures to avoid it… Well, to start with, we have a few red herrings laid out here and there – and some still to come – and I’m fairly confident we can keep the enemy confused about our intentions. So if this or that convoy or squadron did get reported by a U-boat or an aircraft, it wouldn’t tell them much. They’d connect it with what they already believe – Dakar or Malta, for instance… Second, the routing of these convoys has been planned carefully. The slow ones are all within reach of our own shore-based air patrols – which will be intensified – and the fast ones, routed right out here as far as twenty-six degrees west, will have air cover from carriers accompanying them. For convoy defence, incidentally, we’ve managed to rake up about a hundred escort vessels.’
He looked as if he thought he’d proved something. But – Nick thought – if enough U-boats were deployed, and pressed their attacks home determinedly, a hundred escorts spread across this amount of shipping wouldn’t cut much ice. There had to be some angle he’d missed. That, or some fairly staggering risks were being accepted.
Cruance told him, ‘There’s one convoy not marked here. Yours. We’ll put it on now – by sleight of hand, you may say.’ His voice changed, to an assumed Cockney accent. ‘The quickness of the ‘and deceives the eye. Now you sees it, now you don’t…’ He was unfolding a sheet of transparent paper: his narrow, long-fingered hands spread it on the chart, adjusting it so that its latitude and longitude co-ordinates fitted those on the chart. He added in his own natural voice, ‘Or rather, now you will.’
The red tracks were still visible through the transparent paper, but a new one, green instead of red, had been superimposed on them. It started south of the Canaries and slanted up west of Madeira, crossing all the red convoy routes where they converged towards Gibraltar.
‘What you’re looking at, Everard, is the route of convoy SL 320. Nearly forty ships assembling now at Freetown, Sierra Leone, for convoy to UK ports. By the time you get down there the assembly will be complete and they’ll be under starter’s orders. You’ll go there in your Harbinger and assume command of the convoy escort. You’ll sail from Freetown on October twenty-third, and follow this route precisely. No diversions will be allowed under any circumstances.’
The green track crossed ahead of all the advance assault convoys. So if there were U-boats waiting on the assault convoy routes or anywhere near them, SL 320 from Freetown would lure them away northward – leaving safe waters for the ‘Torch’ convoys.
While SL 320 would be slowly shredded.
‘My convoy’s to act as bait?’
In a macabre way, it wasn’t a bad idea. If the ends justified the means. And as this was a war not for gain but for survival, they would… Cruance protested mildly, ‘I believe I’d baulk at the word “bait”…’
‘Slow convoy, is it?’
‘Well—’
Cruance hesitated… Nick nodded, seeing all the answers. He’d have put money on it here and now – slow convoy, and weak escort… He said, watching Cruance, ‘I’m to bring a large, slow convoy right through a U-boat patrol line. Maybe more than one line? And they’ll flock to the easy pickings. I’ll have escorts who haven’t worked together before – right? Perhaps not many of them, either? And if I’m not allowed to divert, the U-boats should find it easy to stay with me – drawing blood all the way?’
Cruance said, into a silence and while Nick was taking another look at the chart and the green-ink route, ‘Bait, in normal usage of the term, implies that the material is expendable. That’s not the case here. You’ll be escort commander, and as usual your task will be to get the convoy through with as few losses as possible.’
‘What ships will I have in my escort force?’
‘I believe – some corvettes…’
‘How many?’
‘… and A/S trawlers… Numbers depend on the situation prevailing down there. Normally they have a substantial escort force, which might be drawn on, but with “Torch” in the offing…’
Trawlers. Through the middle of a U-boat pack, and no evasive action permitted. A weak escort would ensure that the U-boat commanders saw what a splendid chance they were being offered, and stayed with it. He had an analogy of it in his mind as he stared at Cruance – Cruance finding it difficult, evidently, to meet that stare – an image of ships like wounded swimmers leaving a trail of blood for the sharks to follow.
Taking Harbinger out of Gibraltar next morning, later exchanges with the white-haired RNVR captain still trickled through his memory. For instance, asked whether Aubrey Wishart had personally approved the scheme, Cruance had affirmed, ‘Of course he did… Are you wondering how the choice happened to fall on you?’
‘Obviously it was his decision. But why—’
‘To start with it was a question of who might be available, which escort groups were already committed to “Torch” as entities and which could be split up, and so on. How to get enough escorts together and still leave a modicum of protection elsewhere has been quite a problem on its own, you see.’
Anger came in waves. He’d spent the night half sleeping and half waking, his mind struggling with the problems that lay ahead. It was pointless to seek solutions of any definitive kind before he reached Freetown and knew what ships they’d be giving him, but his brain churned independently, ignoring his attempts to stop it.
Cruance had told him, ‘We produced a short-list, and as soon as Admiral Wishart saw your name on it he said “That’s the man I want!”’
Would he have, Nick wondered, if he’d realised Kate might be a passenger in that convoy?
Her image had been part of the incoherent, night-long battle. And he had to take control of it now, he knew, before it led to a thousand other nightmares. This thing was bad enough without inventing far worse angles to it… Meanwhile, snatches of his conversation with Cruance ran intermittently through his mind: for instance, asking him – in the context of Wishart having picked him for the job – ‘That snap decision was enough to break up my escort group?’
‘You could put it like that, I suppose—’
‘I’ll put it like this. That it was bloody silly, extremely wasteful and quite pointless. He could have taken anyone at all—’
‘Nobody wanted to see your group disbanded.’ Cruance making heavy weather of it. ‘But Admiral Wishart has a very high opinion of your abilities, and – well, obviously there’d be no point in disguising the fact that this is an undertaking which could well turn out to be exceptionally – er – demanding…’
It had been midday when he’d got back on board Harbinger at the berth to which Graves had shifted her – without scrapes or dents, it was a relief to find. Graves was at the gangway to meet him as he crossed it from the jetty. Nick told him, as the squeal of the bosun’s call died away, ‘We’ll be sailing at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. Special Sea Dutymen, and single up, oh-eight-forty-five. You can give leave to one watch.’
‘Are we escorting the cruisers again, sir?’
‘Only ourselves.’
‘Us and Goshawk and—’
‘Harbinger alone.’
He’d joined his officers in the wardroom for a drink before lunch. Mike Scarr had asked, ‘May I know where we’re going, sir?’
‘After we’ve shoved off, you may.’
‘I was just wondering about charts, sir.’
That old dodge. All eyes wide, all ears flapping. Nick asked the navigator, ‘Is your Med folio up to date?’
Scarr said yes, it was. Nick was aware of glances being exchanged, sharp interest in the prospect of heading east. He waited a few moments, and then asked, ‘And West African charts, down as far as the Cape?’
‘Well, yes, that’s—’
‘We’ll be all right, then.’ He winked at Graves. Men would be going ashore this evening, and Gib was said to be thick with spies. He could have sailed that night, in darkness, but a run ashore for half the ship’s company and a night’s rest for the others wouldn’t do them any harm.
All those huge ‘Torch’ convoys, of course, would be passing through these Straits during the hours of darkness.
Mr Timberlake took a glass of pink gin from the steward’s silver tray. He raised it towards Nick, who’d ordered it for him. ‘Your good ’ealth, sir.’
‘And yours, Guns.’ Timberlake was very partial to pink gin. Nick asked him, ‘How many heavies did they give us at Greenock?’
The new ‘heavy’ depth charges could be set to explode as deep as eight hundred feet. They were a counter to the deepdiving capability of the latest U-boats. Timberlake’s facial muscles twitched, betraying sharp anxiety: he said, ‘Didn’t ’ave any, sir. All we got is Mark VIIs. They’d been cleared out, they said – well, all them ships there… I did report this, sir.’
‘I remember now. But you were going to try here?’
‘More ‘n just tried, sir. I been down on my bloody knees!’
‘Well. Long as we’ve got all the Mark VIIs we can carry…’
Ian Mackenzie, the doctor, enquired, ‘Are we likely to be coming back here, sir?’
Nick looked at him. Mackenzie was a short, curly-headed man in his mid-twenties, and he came from Edinburgh.
‘Why d’you ask?’
‘Wardroom’s low on sherry, sir. I wouldn’t bother if we were coming back, but this is the place to get it, of course, so—’
‘Better stock up. While you’re at it, add two cases of Tio Pepe for my private account, would you?’
The Gibraltar Straits were well astern now, and Nick handed over the conning of the ship to Warrimer. Harbinger was already zigzagging, with mean course due west, revs for eighteen knots. Graves and Scarr were both in the bridge, thirsting for information – which they could have, now, to a limited extent… Thinking about the part he would not tell them, meanwhile – what it was going to be like to hold to those orders, a fixed, unvariable course no matter what losses were being inflicted: Nick glanced astern, deciding they’d come far enough to have ceased to be of interest to Nazi ship-watchers on the Spanish coast. He turned to Scarr.
‘Give me a course to pass two hundred miles west of Palma in the Canaries. That’ll be a run of a little more than two days. From west of Palma we’ll steer for Freetown, which will take another four.’
Six and a half days’ steaming altogether. Then one day in Freetown: a convoy conference and a meeting with the captains of whatever other escorts were allotted to him. The day after that would be the prescribed sailing day for SL 320.
The Tio Pepe was safely stowed in his private store now. Such a triviality to have bothered with in these circumstances, he’d thought when he was writing the cheque to Messrs Saccone and Speed last evening. Across the flat from his cabin the wardroom loudspeaker had been pumping out the familiar, slightly cloying strains of Your’s… Vera Lynn, the ‘Sweetheart of the Forces’, featuring as prominently as always in the programme called Forces’ Favourites: the messdecks would have been booming to it too… Graves asked him, ‘What happens after Freetown, sir?’
‘It’s as far as we go. We’ll be picking up a convoy there and taking it home with us.’
Scarr looked puzzled as he moved away, heading for his chartroom to lay off those courses. Graves murmured, ‘All that way on our own, just for that?’
Nick stared at him. Graves frowned. ‘Sorry, sir.’ He was embarrassed. ‘Only it seems so – well—’
‘I know how it seems.’
He’d asked Cruance yesterday, pressing a question that had gone unanswered earlier, ‘How many corvettes am I likely to get?’
‘Depends what’s available. There’s a Freetown-based escort force which at full strength is quite large, but – as I’ve said already, demands on available resources are exceptionally heavy. And incidentally, a fast homebound convoy from the Cape will have veered off westward – heading for Trinidad, actually – just ahead of you.’
‘Homebound from the Cape via Trinidad?’
Cruance had nodded. ‘Yours will be the last SL convoy northbound for quite a long time. We have to keep this area as uncongested as possible, to allow for a steady flow of follow-up convoys into the North African ports, so Cape shipping will be routed across and up through the American coastal system, then home across the North Atlantic. It’s a long way round, certainly, but once we have the Med open there won’t be nearly as much Cape traffic anyway.’
They had it all worked out, cut and dried. Nick commented, ‘You say when the Mediterranean’s open, not if. As if it’s a certainty.’
‘But it is! As long as “Torch” is a success – which with the help of your convoy it will be.’
‘Are you sure there’ll be any corvettes at all down there?’
Cruance had left his chair and begun to pace up and down. Stooping, with his hands clasped behind his back. Muttering, ‘Everard – now, listen… You seem to me to be over-dramatising this. You appear to assume you’ll suffer heavy losses. It isn’t necessarily so, however. Your function – I make this point with all deference to you as an experienced and accomplished seaman – will, as always, be to protect your ships, to ensure their – what’s the phrase – safe and timely arrival… Now, the possibility that you may attract the attentions of any U-boats who in twelve to fifteen days’ time may happen to be on your convoy’s route is obviously a real one. But for heaven’s sake, a large proportion of convoys today do still have escorts who haven’t trained together! And the long distance slow convoys do tend to have coal-burning trawlers among their escorts. It’s advantageous, isn’t it, from the point of view of their endurance, over those long hauls? But here’s another point I’d like to make. Every man who puts to sea in wartime knows the risks he’s running. Whatever kind of ship or convoy he’s in… What it amounts to, surely, is that while the routing and timing of convoy SL 320 may well contribute substantially to the success of “Torch”, the risks and chances will be the same that any other convoy runs!’
‘Were you a barrister, in civvy street?’
Cruance had stared at Nick in surprise. Then he smiled, and bowed. ‘My eloquence has betrayed me?’
‘No. Not your eloquence.’
By midnight on the second day out of Gibraltar, Madeira was fifty miles to starboard and Palma in the Canaries two hundred on the port bow. It seemed more likely that any U-boats in the area now would be on the far side of Madeira, in the four hundred mile gap between it and the Azores. But that was only a guess. Harbinger’s anti-submarine zigzag was being scrupulously maintained, RDF and HF/DF and asdics working twenty-four hours a day, and bridge lookouts were being harried to keep on their toes.
Nick had asked Cruance, ‘What happens to your Freetown convoy if my ship gets sunk before we get there?’
‘The convoy would sail with whatever escorts were available, under whichever CO might be the senior officer.’
‘You mean senior trawlerman.’
Cruance had ignored that. Rightly, in a way, since there were plenty of very good men in the escort trawlers. But they didn’t have the speed or the armament to do more than supplement the long-haul convoys. Not, Nick thought, that Cruance would know much about it: he was a desk man, he’d probably never even seen a trawler. He assured Nick, ‘You’ll get there, all right – there and back. Admiral Wishart has great faith in your powers of survival.’
It was pointless to argue. They’d been over the same ground half a dozen times already. He asked instead, ‘Do we happen to know who the commodore will be?’
‘A former Cunard master, name of Sandover. He’s settling himself into a ship called the Chauncy Maples.’
‘And how do I get him to accept that we can’t divert, when the heat’s turned on us?’
The point being that the care of any convoy was a responsibility shared, usually on give-and-take terms, between its commodore and the escort commander. Commodores were usually retired admirals, or retired senior Merchant Navy captains. Whatever their previous ranks had been, they were appointed as commodores RNR. They were responsible for the convoy’s internal discipline and organisation – for the ships keeping station and observing regulations such as not showing lights at night or making excessive smoke by day, and for manoeuvring, changing formation, emergency turns, and so on. The escort commander’s job was defence of the convoy against enemy attack; but a decision to change the route when there was some threat ahead would normally be a matter of agreement, often a request from the escort commander with which the commodore would comply.
Cruance nodded. ‘Good question. The answer is you’ll be taking the orders down there with you, and he’s being warned there are special circumstances applying on which you’ll have been briefed. It’s been intimated to him that he should accept your decisions, particularly on routing.’
At noon on day two out of Gibraltar, Palma was a hundred miles abeam to port. A noon sunsight provided a position-line to confirm it. Scarr told him, ‘We’ll be two hundred miles west of Palma at midnight, sir.’
It was what he’d anticipated. ‘And our course will then become – one-seven-five, roughly?’
‘One-seven-seven, sir.’
The route northward with the convoy from Freetown was already laid off on the chart. For Nick’s personal and private use Cruance had provided him with another tracing, a transparent overlay on which all the relevant ‘Torch’ movements were inked. It was the first system in reverse; while Cruance’s chart displayed the ‘Torch’ pattern and could have SL 320’s movements added to it, Harbinger’s chart showed only the convoy’s line of advance, and Nick could check on the whereabouts of other forces by applying this overlay, with its spreading fan of red-ink tracks annotated with convoy designations, dates and times.
Scarr asked him, ‘Is there something special about this lot we’re collecting, sir?’
Nick had his glasses up. Harbinger pitching to a glassy swell rolling up from the southwest. In these conditions you’d see a periscope a long way off.
‘Special?’
Everyone had the same sort of mental disquiet: a feeling of wasting time, being out of things… Harbinger began to roll as she swung to a new leg of the zigzag, pushing her stem across the lifting mounds of sea.
‘Well, sir, seems peculiar being sent such a long way just to bring some convoy back. I mean, why us… Will we get the group together again some time, sir?’
‘That’s the intention.’ He looked round at Graves, who was officer of the watch. ‘I’ll be in my sea cabin.’
Scarr’s question – ‘something special’ about the convoy – had put Kate in his mind again. It was a constant, losing battle to keep her out of it.
When Harbinger altered course at midnight she’d already passed the Canaries-Azores line. Daylight, when it came, flushed an ocean that was losing its greenish northern tinge, beginning to shade into the blue-black of its southern reaches.
In mid-forenoon Nick was smoking a pipe on the bridge when the HF/DF bell rang. Carlish, sharing the watch with Warrimer, went to the voice-pipe.
‘U-boat transmissions on bearing two-four-six, sir!’
‘Range?’ He looked round at Warrimer. ‘Make mean course one-four-seven. Get Gritten on that set.’ He knew it couldn’t be PO Gritten down there now, because Gritten would never have made a report like that without including a distance in it. Carlish had got one now, though: with an ear still close to the pipe he told Nick, ‘Range fifteen miles, sir.’
The alteration of thirty degrees to port was to give the U-boat as wide a berth as possible. At that range and on a bearing that had been almost on the beam to start with it wasn’t strictly necessary; but he hadn’t known the range, initially, and anyway there was no harm in playing safe. If there was one U-boat around, there could be more.
The bell rang again. Carlish reported, ‘Petty Officer Gritten’s taken over, sir. Bearing two-four-six, range sixteen.’
Nick moved to the voice-pipe, displacing Carlish.
‘Captain here. Sure of that range, Gritten?’
‘Yessir. Ground-wave, sixteen – well, say fifteen to seventeen. And – hold on a mo’, sir…’
Harbinger under helm again, making a zig to port. Binoculars examining the blue horizon, finding nothing. This leg of the zigzag would leave her steering almost directly away from the reported position of the German.
Gritten called, ‘Captain, sir – this one’s just surfaced. And that weren’t no sighting report. He’s still transmitting, sir.’
When the transmission ended, Gritten would sweep around and try to pick up any other submarine that might be answering. He’d know this one had just surfaced because he was a very experienced operator and could tell the difference between transmissions over wet aerials and dry ones; in this weather there was no other reason for aerials to be wet. His other conclusion, that the U-boat wasn’t passing a report of an enemy seen or heard, came from knowing that German enemy-report calls were always prefixed with a morse sequence called an E-bar.
Once PO Telegraphist Archie Gritten got himself turned to a U-boat’s transmissions, he could just about tell you its captain’s date of birth.
After half an hour the transmissions ceased. They’d grown fainter before they disappeared altogether, and Mike Scarr’s plot of ranges and bearings during those thirty minutes showed that the U-boat had been steering north at about fifteen knots. It wasn’t worth breaking radio silence to report it, especially as the Admiralty tracking room would probably have recorded every dot and dash.
‘Sub.’
Carlish jumped. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Petty Officer Gritten said he was getting those transmissions on ground-wave. Do you know what he meant by that?’
‘Ground-wave as distinct from sky-wave, sir.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Well, as confirmation that the U-boat had to be within about twenty miles of us, sir. Sky-wave transmissions are bounced off the ionosphere, so they could be coming from hundreds of miles away.’
He nodded. ‘Good.’
You couldn’t ever be sure, unless you checked. Youngsters tended to have gaps in their knowledge that could be hidden under a few technical phrases, and an introvert like Carlish might be embarrassed to admit ignorance, particularly if he’d disguised it in the first place. Then he’d remain ignorant, and perhaps one day make some daft mistake in consequence.
Nick told Warrimer, ‘Resume mean course one-seven-seven.’
Freetown, as Harbinger closed in towards it on the evening of the sixth day out of Gibraltar, was a mass of dark-green forest behind a crescent of bright-yellow beach. That beach was to the left of the entrance, the estuary of the Sierra Leone River. Two shabby-looking freighters were just in the process of entering harbour: the pair of trawlers shepherding them in looked as if they were suspended above the surface, a mirage-effect in the low-lying haze of heat. Clammy, mosquito-bearing heat, like foetid breath in your face as you steamed into it.
Graves murmured, beside him and with binoculars trained on those ships, ‘Couple of old rust-buckets…’
He was right, so far as those new arrivals were concerned. They’d have been brought up from one of the other West African ports, no doubt. But inside, out of sight from here, there’d be thirty or forty others, and among those there might be passenger ships, or anyway ships with cabin accommodation as well as cargo holds.
The signal station flashed a challenge, and Leading Signalman Wolstenholm passed Harbinger’s pendant numbers in reply. A longer message then came stuttering over: orders to fuel from the oiler Redgulf Star and then berth at Number Two buoy. A glance at the harbour plan showed they were being placed conveniently close to the naval landing-place.
‘Close up Special Sea Dutymen, sir?’
‘Yes, please. And tell Hawkey about the oiling.’
The Redgulf Star was at the far end of the anchorage, which was an estuary about two miles wide and seven long, its steamy expanse littered with moored ships. In there, twenty minutes later, with Harbinger forging smoothly through dead-flat, transparently-blue water, Nick was examining ship after ship and finding none in which Kate could possibly have embarked. ‘Old rust-buckets’ was a fair description. Many of their crewmen were on deck, escaping the heat below and draped limply along the ships’ rails to watch the destroyer threading her way up-river. The town – Freetown itself, and the waterfront where the naval headquarters was situated – lay to starboard, on the southern coast of the estuary and about three and a half miles from the entrance.
He took over from Scarr at the binnacle. Stooping to the voice-pipe: ‘Slow together.’ He was about to take her close under the stern of a freighter of about eight thousand tons: rust-streaked and battered like all the others, she was flying a tired-looking Red Ensign, and on her stern a fat man who appeared to be naked was playing an accordion.
‘Port five.’
From the wheelhouse the coxswain, CPO Elphick, acknowledged, ‘Port five, sir…’
Scarr muttered, with his glasses up, ‘That fellow’s starkers.’ Then he read out the ship’s name and registration, which was in faded lettering across her counter. ‘Chauncy Maples. Newcastle upon Tyne.’
Strains of Rule Britannia floated across the water from the naked man’s accordion. Nick informed Scarr and anyone else who might be interested, ‘Chauncy Maples is our commodore’s ship.’ He was suddenly quite light-headed with relief. From somewhere at the back of the bridge he heard Flarris, a bosun’s mate, suggest in a low growl, ‘Reckon that’s ’im – bloke with the squeeze-box?’ Laughter here and there – and Nick chuckled too, happy because the commodore would have picked the best accommodation that was available, and if the best was the Chauncy Maples he could have spared himself some sleepless nights. There’d have been no reason for her to have taken passage in any of these old crocks: they wouldn’t have any space for passengers anyway. Scarr reported, ‘I can see two Flower-class corvettes, sir. And so far I’ve counted nine trawlers… No, three Flowers, there’s one under way, over that side.’
He thought, Any advance on three?
Nine corvettes and three trawlers would be more like it. He was looking around: at the glossily green hillside above the town, greenery studded with smart-looking bungalows, residences of local bigwigs. The senior officials lived well here – or would have done if it hadn’t been for the heat and the rains. The rainy season had ended, obviously, but the land would have been heavily soaked throughout recent months, and the sun would now be steaming it out, maintaining the hothouse atmosphere until the next downpour… He stooped again, to order the wheel amidships. Sliding past yet another war and weather-worn veteran, he was thinking that he was going to have to fight for every ship he could get. And it might not be a battle he could win. If they had only three corvettes here, they’d hardly let him take all three away. And how could you possibly do the job with fewer?