From ‘The U-boat War in the Atlantic’ – official German account: In spite of the sighting reports by radio from the U-boats, convoy… coming from the south, maintained its course and… passed through the centre of the patrol line.
‘Red two-oh, sir, beam-on!’
CPO Bearcroft had sighted the Burbridge. They’d been searching for her, and had had her on the 271 screen for some time, but it was pitch dark under low cloud and although the wind was still only force four it was out of the northwest, right in their eyes and with spray in it. Altogether a lousy night, with a shadower astern of the convoy piping up from time to time, plus this errant passenger ship who’d failed to make the rendezvous yesterday at noon, failed again at dusk after yet another engine breakdown. They hadn’t received her signal until after she’d missed the first one; her master obviously wouldn’t have wanted to break radio silence unnecessarily and advertise his ship’s position, but it had caused headaches. A ship on her own in the Atlantic could easily disappear without trace; when she hadn’t shown up for the third rendezvous Nick had left the convoy and come out to get her.
Every hour counted now. By midnight you’d be counting out the minutes. He told Bearcroft, ‘Call her up, say, “Please follow me. What is your best speed?”’
Then he’d know what course to steer, to rejoin as fast as possible. He was anxious to get back, for the obvious reasons but also because at midnight SL 320 would be in position A, where mean course would be altered to 042 degrees, a northeasterly slant to take it between the Canaries and the Azores.
They’d relaxed from dusk action stations an hour ago, and Chubb had the watch. Nick, with his glasses focused on the Burbridge’s dark profile, was telling him to turn on to a converging course, closing in obliquely on the passenger ship’s bow. His object was to take Harbinger up fairly close to her, and let them see her at close quarters so they’d know what they were following. The Burbridge was lucky to be afloat, to have come this far alone and unscathed. Yesterday there’d been calls for help from another straggler – a tanker, according to the register – who’d been attacked several times, fought off the first one with her gun – that had been a U-boat on the surface – then suffered only minor damage from one torpedo hit some hours later, and finally been hit again and sunk, or had been sinking, early this afternoon. She’d been too far away for there to have been any chance of helping, but she’d been in this general area of the Atlantic, and apparently three different U-boats had each had a crack at her: while this Burbridge had come through completely untouched. This far.
An answering stab of light sparked, then died again, from that substantial-looking superstructure. She looked bigger, he thought, than her registered 9800 tons. From behind him in Harbinger’s jolting, swaying bridge a blue-shaded Aldis lamp had begun to clack out that message, with a flash for each word from the Burbridge as her signalman took it in.
‘Come five degrees to port. One-three-oh revs.’
The name of the ship who’d been under attack had been Anglo-Maersk, 7705 gross registered tons. Not that one had needed proof of the presence of U-boats in the area. SL 320 still had at least one shadower – or had had, up till dusk this evening.
‘Message passed, sir.’
‘Very good.’
‘Course three-five-five, sir.’
Wind and sea were on the bow now, Harbinger performing her corkscrew dance, spray sheeting over and away to starboard while she closed in towards the Burbridge – whose crew and passengers might well be heaving sighs of relief, in ignorance of the fact they’d be joining a convoy which must by this time have become a focus of interest at U-boat headquarters. SL 320 would have been on Admiral Dönitz’s plot for several days now: from the morning when he’d taken Harbinger tearing southward in the hope of catching that U-boat on the surface, perhaps even with a chance of stopping him before his transmissions were picked up at Kernéval. Fat hope: the transmissions had been acknowledged – not by FO U-boats, Gritten had said, but by some other U-boat a long way north, who’d have passed it on – and had then ceased, and there’d been no submarine on the surface when they got down there. An asdic sweep had produced nothing either, and new sorties in recent days had also drawn a blank.
There was a hope now, though, if he could get this Burbridge back and tucked into the convoy quickly enough. It was a slim chance, admittedly, and only of throwing the shadower off the scent for a while, giving the convoy another day’s grace, perhaps, before the sharks gathered in strength. The hope rested on this course alteration that was due to be made at midnight, a swing sixty-two degrees to starboard; if while the convoy wheeled he could keep the shadower away – dived and busy saving its own skin – there might be a chance of fooling it, winning a breathing-space before the next one picked them up.
But obviously he had to get the Burbridge into the convoy first.
Flashing, now…
He read it for himself: Will follow you at 9 1/2 knots. Deeply grateful for this assistance.
‘Number One, tell Scarr nine and a half knots. I want the course to rejoin and how long it’ll take.’
Warrimer went quickly to the plot voice-pipe, long arms reaching spiderlike to drag his lanky frame up the slope of bridge. Then she was teetering on a ridge and he was folded against the bridge’s side, clutching the voice-pipe for an anchor as she swung over, whacking into a trough, sea flying up and over… Nick told Chubb, ‘Come down to one-one-oh revs!’
It would take them slowly past the big merchantman, slanting across his bow to take station a few hundred yards ahead. Holding the carrot of deliverance visibly in front of the donkey’s nose. A spurious deliverance though it might be. You certainly couldn’t envy passengers in the situation they’d be in: helpless, aware of how vulnerable their ship was, that a torpedo might strike at any time, day or night. They’d have slept fully dressed and wearing lifebelts and with any valuables in their pockets… He heard Warrimer taking Scarr’s answer through the voice-pipe: ‘Course to steer three-five-three, for two and a quarter hours.’
‘Chief Yeoman: make to the Burbridge, “Course three-five-three. Expect to join convoy at—”’ he checked his watch’s green-glowing dial – “‘twenty-three ten”.’
So if all went well he’d have her there fifty minutes before the convoy reached position A and altered course. Not much margin…
This was close enough to the Burbridge. He checked his ship’s head and the lie of the other ship, and told Chubb, ‘Come three degrees to starboard.’ Glasses up again: he could make out figures along her rails. Dark shadows, and no chink of light anywhere, but – hands waving?
One white cloth or handkerchief…
Chubb reported, ‘Course is three-five-eight, sir.’
‘Very good.’
Overhauling the passenger ship very slowly while the Aldis clacked, passing that signal, and the light’s bluish radiance flickered spasmodically across the bridge. You had to take care not to look round at it, or you’d lose your night vision for a while; but the destroyer’s racy profile and that occasional faint illumination over her swaying bridge would be easily visible to the people looking down at her across sea swelling and tumbling between them like rapids. Nick heard the morse symbols AR, the end-of-message group, and read the Burbridge’s K acknowledging. Then as the clicking stopped, he heard cheering.
Warrimer moved up near him. ‘Sounds like they’re glad to see us, sir.’ The two ships were as close as they’d come, at this stage. Warrimer added, putting his glasses up again, ‘Why, quite a few of ’em are women!’
There was no reason to be surprised at it. Passengers, whether civilian or uniformed, did come in two sexes. Harbinger was drawing ahead, and she was well enough clear to steer the course ordained by Scarr; Nick told Chubb, ‘Bring her to three-five-three.’
At ten forty-five they had the convoy on a steady bearing on the bow, the nearer corner of ships and the trawler Opal painted clearly on the RDF screen. In twenty-five minutes he had to have the Burbridge in her billet. She was on Harbinger’s port quarter now, at two cables’ distance. It seemed they’d be cutting it very fine.
‘Signalman.’
Wolstenholm came slithering from the starboard for’ard corner as the ship rolled to port…
‘Take this down. To Burbridge from Harbinger.’
Wolstenholm ducked under the canvas hood of the bridge chart table, where he could use a light. Nick dictated, “‘Convoy is in eight columns of five ships, columns one thousand yards abeam, ships in column two cables apart. Course is three-three-five, no zigzag until daylight, speed six point seven five knots. You are allocated vacant billet number three-four. I will lead you between numbers two-five and three-five. Course will be altered at midnight to oh-four-two by signal from the commodore who is in MV Chauncy Maples number three-one. We are being shadowed and attack by U-boats must be expected soon. Time of Origin – whatever…” Read that back, now.’
He thought, when the lamp was clicking again, calling up, that the last sentence of the message might make them feel less like cheering. But it was necessary to warn them, and in any case they’d soon have the comfort of being surrounded by other ships.
Ten minutes later he had Opal in his glasses. He’d been searching for her, knowing her bearing already from RDF, and now there was more work for the signalman. He called him over and pointed out the trawler.
‘Call him up, and make, “Pass to commodore, from Harbinger: am leading Burbridge into her station from astern. Have informed her master of your scheduled alteration.”’
The HF/DF bell rang: he told the signalman quickly, ‘Go on, send it.’ Warrimer shouted from the huff duff voice-pipe, ‘U-boat transmitting on one-five-oh, nine miles, sir!’
Still astern of the convoy, but closer. In a shadowing position and possibly doing no more than shadowing; but with its high surface speed – compared to the convoy’s – it would only take it an hour to catch up, if that was its intention.
Warrimer passed another piece of information from Gritten: ‘It’s calling some other U-boat, sir, and getting no answer.’
He saw an answering flash out there – from Opal.
He couldn’t do a damn thing about that U-boat while he still had the Burbridge on his hands: she had to be put into safe storage… And as she had only two and a half to three knots margin over convoy speed, it was going to take a little while still. Leaving the German out there on his own, meanwhile, calling to its friends, passing them details about the convoy. He might even be telling them, The rear of this outfit is wide open. There wasn’t anything he could do about that either: the two corvettes had to be in the van, and the trawlers didn’t have the speed, or RDF…
HD/DF bell again, and Warrimer’s answer of ‘Bridge!’ Wolstenholm was still rattling out that signal, drawing splintery glints of acknowledgement from the trawler. Opal wasn’t taking it in very fast.
‘U-boat on bearing three-three-nine, range seventeen, in contact with the one astern, sir!’
Damn…
‘Number One – put the messenger on that voice-pipe. You see to it the plot’s getting these ranges and bearings.’
He had it visually charted, though, in his mind. Ranges and bearings when plotted down there by Scarr and his assistants would eventually provide enemy speeds and courses; but meanwhile he was picturing it for himself and reckoning that this one ahead, now seventeen miles on the convoy’s port bow, must be roughly seven miles the other side of position A, where the convoy would be changing its course. But the German wouldn’t be sitting still: and if it was closing now, it would be attacking well before the turn was ordered. But then again, it could be maintaining its distance, keeping pace while it waited for others to join it.
Time would tell. The snag was that time was rather short.
‘Number One. That contact on three-three-nine – ask Scarr for its range and bearing from Paeony.’
Because Paeony would be the striker to be used against it – and before the convoy turned. The one and only major course alteration SL 320 was to be allowed… He decided he’d send Guyatt out now: in the hope he’d be able to keep that one at a long arm’s length.
‘Message passed to Opal, sir!’
Plunging on, convoy shapes growing, clarifying. Opal was visible to the naked eye now, mostly because of the froth of white around her. Warrimer reported, ‘Contact range and bearing from Paeony is twelve miles on three-two-eight, sir!’
At last… ‘Chief – TBS to Paeony – “Investigate surface contact bearing three-two-eight twelve miles from you”.’
It would take Guyatt half an hour to get close enough to that one to do anything useful about it.
Neither of the corvettes had HF/DF. But at least Astilbe’s radar was functioning now. Harbinger’s RDF mechanic, who’d been transferred to her by boat three days ago, had fixed it. Nick had left him there, to make sure of it.
Paeony had answered, and Bearcroft was passing that order to her. Nick checked the time: six minutes past eleven…
‘Now call Fox, Chief. Captain to captain.’ He had his glasses on the convoy’s tail-end ships. It was time to edge over and pass close under the sterns of the William Law and the Harvest Moon before turning up between the columns.
‘Bring her ten degrees to starboard, Sub.’
The Burbridge’s master would see the bend in his wake, and follow.
‘Commander Graves on TBS for you, sir.’
He went over and took the mike. ‘Tony, here’s the picture. I’m about to lead the Burbridge into her billet in column three. Then I’m going to investigate a huffduff contact last heard of nine miles astern. As you’ll have heard, Paeony’s on to the one ahead of us. When we’re in position A we may both be able to keep ’em busy while the convoy turns. So you’ll be on your own… All right?’
Graves’s voice crackled, Roger, sir. Out.
The Burbridge had followed Harbinger’s adjustment of course to starboard. Passing astern of the William Law at this moment… ‘Come five degrees to port.’
HF/DF bell: the messenger, Wragge, was answering it… ‘U-boat transmitting on one-three-nine, seven miles, sir!’
So the bearing had drawn left and the range had shortened: which meant the shadower was moving up on the convoy’s starboard quarter and talking to one of its colleagues while it did so. If it had been sensible it might have kept its mouth shut: Scarr would be able to produce a course and speed now, from two well-separated fixes and if the German held on as he was an interception wouldn’t be difficult – even if he did not appear soon on the 271 screen.
‘Course three-five-eight, sir.’
Harbinger thrashed through the wake of the Harvest Moon. Nick was fidgeting with impatience to get out after that U-boat which, if it was making its full surface speed of seventeen knots, could be in a position to attack in roughly – the figures sorted themselves in his mind as he turned to see where Wolstenholm had got to – in say thirty minutes; which would be the worst possible time, as the convoy would be on the point of making its turn then. You needed to hit him well before that…
‘Signalman, make to the Burbridge, “I have to leave you now. Please take station ahead of the Timaru, rear ship in column three”.’
From this angle the Timaru was a black end-on shape underlined in white. He heard the Aldis lamp begin its calling-up routine, rapidly repeated letter As: impatience growing, thinking, Come on, come on, wake up… Then the plot/RDF voice-pipe was calling, and Warrimer was there to answer it: ‘Two-seven-one contact bearing one-three-oh, five and a half miles, looks like a U-boat!’
‘Tell them it is.’
What the hell else it could be, short of the Flying Dutchman, who might not register on RDF…
The Burbridge had answered – thank God. His message was stuttering out to her. He called to Chubb, ‘Starboard wheel to one-one-oh. Three hundred revolutions.’ The picture in his mind, each feature in it moving in relation to all the others, was of the convoy steering northwest and only forty minutes short of position A, Paeony forging out on its port bow to meet one threat, Astilbe shifting towards the centre to cover as much as possible of that wide front, and his own ship now turning east – just south of east – to intercept the threat from astern. It might well be the German who’d been shadowing them for several days – if it had now had permission or orders to attack: if that was so one might assume the shadowing job was done and the pack had gathered.
Harbinger heeling to the turn, gathering speed, turbine and other noise rising as the revs increased. Warrimer asked, close beside him, ‘Close the hands up, sir?’
‘Yes!’ He thumbed the alarm button: annoyed at having had to be reminded they weren’t already at action stations. Getting old – or stale…
‘Three hundred revs on, sir, course one-one-oh!’
He left the high seat, took over at the binnacle. Relief at no longer being nursemaid to the Burbridge was diluted by sober recognition that the battle for convoy SL 320 was about to start: it was likely to be a long, exhausting one… Looking round the bridge he saw Chubb busy at the depth charge telephone, Warrimer talking over the line to his guns’ crews. Carlish, having seen that Nick was conning the ship himself, went to look after communications with the plot and the 271.
‘U-boat bears one-three-one, five miles, sir!’
‘I want a course to intercept.’ He called down to the wheelhouse, ‘Three-forty revolutions.’
‘Three-forty revolutions, sir…’
That was the coxswain, CPO Elphick, on the wheel now. Harbinger at full stretch, hurling herself across and through the combers. It was dry in the bridge now though, because the wind was almost right astern. Warrimer’s voice was pitched high over the mix of noise: ‘Four-inch and point-fives closed up, sir!’ Chubb followed suit: ‘Depth charge crew closed up, sir!’
‘Course one-one-oh, sir.’
What was needed now was news from Scarr. From the U-boat’s course and speed he’d work out – should have, by now – a course to intercept it. But a TBS call was coming in: Eagle, this is Gannet: U-boat has dived one mile ahead of me. Attacking!
‘Target bears one-two-eight, four point one miles. Plot suggests course to intercept one-one-four degrees, sir.’
‘Steer one-one-four, cox’n.’
She was fairly flying now. But there were no orders to pass to Guyatt: if he had a U-boat diving only two thousand yards ahead of him, he might have a chance…
‘Enemy course now three-three-nine, speed sixteen, bearing one-two-one range three point four!’
Six thousand four hundred yards…
‘Load A gun with starshell, the others with SAP.’
Warrimer intoning into the telephone, ‘A gun with starshell, B and X with SAP, load, load, load! Target will be right ahead, U-boat on surface, set range oh-six-oh!’
And then the one thing you dreaded… A deep, hard crash, from way back on the quarter, the convoy’s starboard wing. The sound had all its usual, sickening implications. No flash, only the sound of the torpedo striking, exploding. Then – ten or fifteen seconds later, a second one. Fleetingly in the back of Nick’s mind there was recognition that there were more than two attackers; also that Gleam, the trawler on that side, and perhaps also the Leona, the rescue ship with the red-headed, argumentative skipper, would look after the victims. Although Gleam’s priority would be to counterattack first – if he had any idea where the torpedoes had come from…
‘Target’s dived, sir!’
Meaning it had vanished from the 271 screen. ‘Last range and bearing?’ He told Chubb, ‘Shallow pattern, stand by.’ He wasn’t going to start hunting this one with asdics; by the time he got there and then slowed Harbinger enough for the set to be operable the German could be a mile away in any direction he chose. So – one wild swipe…
‘Diving position now bears one-one-six, three thousand four hundred yards, sir!’
‘Steer one-one-six.’ He straightened from the voice-pipe: that distant rumble was from depth charges – Paeony’s… ‘Sub – I want to know when we’ve run three thousand yards.’
Blind chance, but some rough method in it. Three thousand yards was one and a half nautical miles: at that point he’d order port helm, count on the turning-circle carrying her to the U-boat’s track, and steady on 340 degrees, the course it had been steering until it dived and might (or might not) still be steering now. He’d run up what he’d assume to be its continuing track, and drop one full pattern.
Then search. For long enough to keep the bastard down while the convoy made its turn. Which he guessed would be in just minutes now.
He’d ordered shallow settings on the charges, but second thoughts prevailed now… ‘Set charges to one-five-oh feet, Sub!’ Fifty metres, that would be in the German reckoning. His gamble was that the U-boat’s captain would want to go deep enough to hide but might be hoping to surface again and press home his attack when this danger had passed, so would not – probably – have gone very deep. Chubb had passed the new order aft to Mr Timberlake, who would undoubtedly be turning the air blue with curses while his team worked fast to change the settings on the pistols. You did it with a special spanner, but in the dark and on a bouncing, canting deck it wasn’t all that easy.
‘One thousand five hundred yards, sir!’
Three-quarters of a mile…
Astern, light sparked, grew, flooded its whiteness across the seascape. You didn’t have to blind yourself by looking to see what it was. Snow-flake, the merchant ship’s equivalent of starshell, an illuminatory rocket they fired to light up attacking enemies. And if there was another U-boat that close to the convoy, the turn to starboard wasn’t going to help, because the damn thing would be there to see it and report it. There was a call on TBS, at the same time as Carlish passed on a warning from Scarr that there were one thousand yards to go: this was Astilbe, Tony Graves reporting he had an RDF contact six thousand yards ahead – attacking…
‘Five hundred yards!’
One quarter of a mile. At thirty knots, they’d cover it in thirty seconds. No great accuracy was involved in this: in fact it was so hit-or-miss that an apparent error like turning too soon or too late might happen to be lucky; and if anything came of it other than keeping the U-boat down and preoccupied – which was the main object – it would be pure luck. He put his face down near the voice-pipe: the plot, echoed by Carlish, called ‘Now, sir!’ and he told Elphick, ‘Port fifteen.’ As the wheel came on Harbinger leant hard to starboard, pitching and slamming through the turn as her rudder hauled her round, lying on her ear and slicing the sea into sheets of flying white: and the commodore’s siren wailed like a distant banshee – so SL 320 was in position A, altering course to north-east, the herd of ships swinging their stems to point at the gap between the Canaries and the Azores… ‘Midships!’
Those two torpedo hits had been widely enough separated in time to have been hits on two different ships. First blood, anyway, and much too soon… ‘Meet her!’
‘Meet her, sir…’
Elphick, down in the wheelhouse, would be spinning his wheel to put on reverse rudder and check the swing. Nick told him as the rate of turn slowed, ‘Steer three-four-oh.’ At this speed it was just a hope that Harbinger could be over the top of the U-boat and depth charges floating down around it before its captain caught on to what was happening and dodged away.
‘Course three-four-oh, sir!’
Hammering into the sea, meeting it more or less head-on now: ‘Stand by!’ He glanced round, saw the white of Chubb’s face turned towards him, Chubb crouched against the depth charge panel with one hand grasping the telephone and the other on the firing buzzer. Back aft, Timberlake’s men in their streaming oilskins would be waiting to send the first high-explosive cannisters splashing down from the stern chutes. And now was as good a time as any: he shouted, ‘Fire!’ Then, turning to look ahead again, saw a lick of flame from where the convoy would still be making its wheel to starboard. A very small spurt of yellow fire and then a glow that brightened, blossomed; the sound came afterwards, muffled by distance but clearly another torpedo crashing home.
One of the oilers?
The blaze astonished Looff. He’d thought when the flames first gushed out of her, My God, I’ve hit a tanker! But he hadn’t: it was the freighter he’d aimed at, a snap shot with two torpedoes when suddenly and surprisingly he’d found the easy target in his master sight perfectly set up and at ideal range; he’d loosed off two fish and struck this blazing gold with one!
He guessed the other would have missed astern. U 702 swinging fast now, under maximum wheel. ‘Full ahead both engines!’
The convoy had altered course, he realised: that was how the target had suddenly presented itself to him as it had. Not just an emergency alteration with all ships turning simultaneously, but a wheel, a real change of course with the convoy’s formation maintained by inner ships slowing down, outer ones increasing by a knot or so… But that freighter must have had some highly inflammable cargo in her. She was alone, stopped, burning from end to end, and U 702 was turning her tail to the inferno, skidding out of the dangerous light of it… ‘Steady as you go!’
Trimmed down low, lancing through the waves, as low as a surf-board and about as wet. Diesels pounding: the air-intake was only a few feet behind him, virtually under the lookouts’ feet, and the roar of it was loud at this full speed. Sea was coming over green, half a ton a minute. And those were depth charges, somewhere far astern of the convoy, he thought. Werner Knappe getting it in the neck? He shouted, ‘Ship’s head?’
Oelricher told him, ‘Zero-zero-seven, sir!’
To all intents and purposes, north. So the convoy’s wheel must have been to about northeast. It would make sense, too: he’d check it later on the chart, but he guessed it would be normal enough for a convoy on this route. In fact he might have anticipated it: should have…
There was an escort of some kind, he saw, moving in close to the burning ship. Small, its profile etched black against the flames. It looked like a tug… Nosing in there… He wiped the front lenses of his glasses, put them up again quickly. Trawler? If that was what they were trying to guard this convoy with… ‘Reduce to half speed!’
He’d bring her round to starboard in a minute, to a course parallel to the convoy, out on its bow. For the moment his main concern was to get clear of that burning ship, which was lighting up a square mile or more of sea. An escort destroyer in the wrong place now would have U 702 silhouetted against her own kill: and there could be one out there, too, if the ship he’d run into earlier had turned back. They certainly weren’t all trawlers. He called over his shoulder, ‘Keep your eyes peeled, you lookouts!’
There were only two of them. He’d have four on the bridge in normal routine, but when you might have to dive in a hurry that was too much of a crowd. Four men in all – himself, those two, and Oelricher – were more than enough. He’d brought the quartermaster – and Franz Walther his chief engineer too – with him from U 122 to this new command.
‘Come to zero-four-zero!’
Oelricher passed the order down into the tower. Heusinger was there, as well as the helmsman and two others. Willi Heusinger’s job as first lieutenant was to operate the torpedo-fitting calculator, the machine that told you about such things as deflection, aim-off, based on the courses, ranges and speeds you fed into it. He also triggered the firing of the torpedoes from there. It had been very smartly and quickly done, this shot at the target that was now ablaze: and right after a distinctly nerve-jarring encounter with that escort out in the deep field. It had materialised out of nowhere, belting straight at them: Looff had crashdived and made use of his boat’s deep-diving capability, taking her right down fast and steeply to two hundred metres while depth charges were pooping off right up near the surface. He’d kept the batteries grouped-up and pushed on at full speed for a while – hearing more charges burst astern, and laughing at them – the sort of thing a crew of youngsters, brittly nervous, admired and responded to with enthusiasm… Then he’d brought her up again, at slow speed and with great caution, while the escort was still hunting them three or four miles away.
Looff felt good again. His old self. Only exhaustion had led him to confuse that drained, hopeless mood with loss of nerve. And he’d recovered quickly from the deep shock and despondency at being deprived of his Berlin leave. Trudi’s admirably stoic reaction had helped a lot: Trudi was a lot more than just a pretty face and a sensational body, she was her father’s daughter too!
‘Escort vessel red one-zero, sir!’
Oelricher’s sharp eyes and strident voice… Looff swung like a gun-fighter – except it was binoculars he was aiming. Focusing – on a corvette in profile, white turmoil around her hull making her easy to see. She was travelling from left to right at about twelve knots.
‘Port twenty!’
The corvette hadn’t spotted them: and he was turning stern-on to it, to reduce the chances… Turning the long way round, actually, because this suited his plans and also because he guessed the corvette would be heading for the convoy’s van. If this was the one who’d charged him earlier on, and had since been wasting a lot of depth charges, it would almost certainly have come from the front of the convoy and would therefore be returning to that station now, with a longer distance to cover because of the change of course. Alternatively it might be the ship he’d heard hunting Drachen Three earlier on. Drachen Three – U 208, Gustaf Becker – hadn’t put in an attack yet, so far as Looff had heard.
‘Midships.’
Depth charges. A long way off. You felt them, more than heard them. The helmsman span his wheel, down in the tower. Looff asked Oelricher, ‘Where is it now?’
‘Just about astern, sir.’
‘Steady as you go!’
According to the shadowing Drachen Four’s reports – that was Knappe in U 580 – the convoy consisted of about forty ships with six escorts. Knappe had been riding herd on the convoy for several days, having found it and stuck with it since before Looff and U 702 had got down here. But there’d been nothing about trawlers. Tomorrow when they all compared notes it should be possible to make a more accurate assessment. Meanwhile two of the convoy had been accounted for: he’d heard two hits some time ago – they’d been on the convoy’s starboard side, so that must have been Drachen Two, Hans Köning’s U 54 – and now he’d polished off this incendiary. It was a start, anyway.
‘That Brit’s out of sight, sir.’
‘Good. Port twenty.’
‘Port twenty, sir!’
‘I’ll take her round in a circle, settle on about northeast and close in again. Give tubes three and four a chance, maybe.’
The flames in the southwest had been extinguished, and he guessed his target had sunk. U 702 might have been alone now in an empty sea. Darkness and wind and the sting of salt water, rumbling growl of diesels and the hoarse sucking of the intakes… Wondering what had happened to Becker and Knappe, and whether they’d realise the convoy had altered course. During these night rough-and-tumbles you couldn’t keep track of everything: you had a certain picture in your brain and you could touch it up with a certain amount of guesswork, but things rarely went just as they’d been planned and boats that hadn’t shown up in the sectors allotted to them could be just about anywhere until torpedo hits or depthcharging provided clues. He’d have them all concentrated and organised again tomorrow, and there’d be some others joining too. Four were on their way. The original intention had been for them all to be here before U 702 arrived, but there’d been some hitch connected with the redeployment of one whole group into the Mediterranean. Anyway, with eight boats altogether and escorts few and far between, there’d be easy pickings to come.
The thing was, undoubtedly, to play it by the book – Flag Officer U-boats’ book. Use the pack as a pack, go for the hammer blow. At this stage, before he had them all together, reconnaissance was more important than sinking a ship here or there; as leader, it was one’s primary task now to organise and concert the action. While naturally, if opportunities like the last one did present themselves one would take advantage of them.
‘Convoy’s in sight to starboard, sir!’
‘Ship’s head?’
‘Zero four five, sir…’
‘Steer zero-five-zero. Open three and four bowcaps. Revs for five knots.’
He was reducing speed in order to make less wash, show less bow-wave, and keep peace with the slow-moving convoy. Sliding quietly and very nearly invisibly along, gradually closing the range while taking the opportunity to make a detailed inspection. Sweeping round with his binoculars now as his boat edged in closer, converging by a few degrees on the enemy’s course, he could see no escorts at all.
None. It was quite extraordinary.
‘Seems it’s open day here!’
Oelricher grunted. He was searching too. The masts and upperworks of the nearer column of merchantmen growing taller and clearer as distance slowly lessened. U 702 was trimmed down so low she’d get almost alongside those ships before they’d see her: and with her tanks already half-full of water she could crash-dive like a ton of bricks if she needed to… The quartermaster suggested, ‘Might be the little widger that was standing by that ship we hit, when it was burning, should’ve been this side?’
‘Right. And when the cat’s away…’ Looff chuckled. ‘Even if it’s only a little, toothless one!’
But – one trawler, to guard the whole flank of a convoy this size?
‘Three and four bowcaps open, sir!’
It felt like being in a zoo with a game-rifle. The whole bag of tricks was in his lap! It made him feel slightly drunk – such fantastic luck! And there was a lot more of it than his immediate situation… He asked Oelricher, ‘Did you ever hear of anyone destroying an entire convoy?’
‘Not yet sir.’ The quartermaster grinned. ‘But there’s always a first time… Big fellow in there, sir. Two wide funnels on heavy-looking upperworks: looks like a liner, passenger ship!’
‘I don’t see—’
‘Just abaft our beam – there’s a vacant space in this line, no ship astern of the one abeam now?’
‘Check.’
‘But in the next column there is. And if you look past that one’s stern – at what must be column three?’
‘Ah. Yes…’
It would be a tricky shot from here. And there were so many easy ones. There was also a week or so in hand, and four boats joining the pack tomorrow.
‘I’ll take this near one.’ He thought, just one torpedo. Why waste more, when a blind halfwit couldn’t miss, and when you were going to need all the torpedoes you had? To knock a target down with a single fish was also rather stylish, and would look well in the patrol report… ‘Target speed six knots, range nine hundred metres. Stand by number three tube. I’ll fire from ninety degrees on his port bow, and his course is – zero-four-zero. Starboard five!’
Oelricher set the night-sight, as she began to swing towards the firing course. In the tower, Heusinger had worked out the director angle, aim-off: he called up to her skipper, giving him the course to steer, and at the same time removed the safety clip from the trigger of number three tube. Oelricher was reporting he had the sight set when both men heard the soft whoosh of a rocket, then another, and a snowflake burst: the entire surroundings were suddenly as bright as day. Looff shouted, ‘Increase to ten degrees of wheel!’ In order to come on aim and fire more quickly: but then he saw his target beginning to swing, turn towards him, the freighter’s length shortening, bow-wave lifting against the steel walls of her massive stem. She’d seen him, fired those snowflakes, turned to ram…
‘Hard a-starboard, full ahead both, shut bowcaps!’
Running: but what the hell else? You couldn’t hit a ship bow-on; and lit up like this he wasn’t in command of the situation any more, he was vulnerable, with a vision printed on his imagination as U 702 swung away – picking up speed, diesel and intake noise rising, roaring: the vision was of that towering black stem looming over, shutting out the sky as it bore down on him, explosively destructive as it hit, ploughed in, crushing and ripping through steel…
It was all right. She’d outrun that old hooker, easily…
Another whoosh, another light flooding from the sky… ‘Midships!’
‘Midships, sir. Wheel’s—’
‘Destroyer starboard! Green one-zero-zero, bow on!’
He had it in his glasses. Corvette, not destroyer. But close. A gun on its foc’sl fired: a yellow flash, and a noise like ripping canvas as the shell passed overhead. Looff wrenched himself out of the paralysis of shock – screamed at the lookouts, ‘Down!’ He’d shoved Oelricher towards the hatch. Then: ‘Dive, dive!’ Where the hell that thing had come from: out of the convoy? It had just fired again. They were piling into the hatch before he realised he’d blundered. The corvette was too close, there wasn’t going to be time…
Trolley stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. It was so dark that Jack almost walked into him. The road – or rather lane – curved and dipped just ahead, and there were lights glimmering through trees down in the hollow.
At 2 am? In this rural wasteland? Two previous nights’ observation along the way had suggested that bedtime in these parts was about 8pm.
‘Village,’ Trolley muttered, ‘We’d better skirt round it. What d’you think – left or right?’
This was the third night’s walking, after some nerve-punishing but in fact uneventful train journeys: first to Munich, and then to Ulm, where they’d changed for Tuttlingen, which was only about twenty miles from the Swiss frontier. Three nights was what they’d reckoned on, after they’d decided – with good reason – to hoof it over this last section. The plan was to walk by night and hole-up by day, living frugally off the remains of their food and keeping away from people or habitation; and this third night should bring them close enough to the border to make some sort of reconnaissance of it, either in daylight tomorrow or after dark. Depending on how it looked, they’d cross either tomorrow night or the one after.
By which time, they realised now, they’d be starving. Frugality was one thing: having bugger-all to eat was another.
The other two had taken a train from Tuttlingen to Singen, which was bang on the frontier, but the odds were ten to one that by this time they’d be wishing they hadn’t. Jack thanked his own and Trolley’s caution, that earlier decision to travel in two separate pairs. The reason they’d advanced for this was that four scruffy-looking characters in one bunch would have been more noticeable, more alarming or suspicious to the eyes of respectable citizens or officials. This was a valid point, too, but there was another – that Morrison and Cockrace, who seemed to regard the whole thing as a lark, might well become a liability.
Which, as things had turned out, had been putting it mildly.
The moon had gone down an hour ago, and except for those lights down in the dip it was as black as pitch. Jack said, having thought about it, ‘I think this time we should keep to the road. Just sneak through quietly. Otherwise it’ll be daylight before we’re near the frontier. That’d mean another night, and we’d have to get food somehow.’
‘What if the border guards have been alerted?’
It seemed a non-sequitur. The guards would be alert anyway. Unfortunately… ‘Oh, you mean if they’ve caught the others?’
‘I mean border villages would have been warned too.’ He nodded downhill. ‘This one included. Could account for lights burning.’
They were both tired as well as hungry – and knew it, made allowances for it when they got on each others’ nerves. The next step but one always looked as if it would be easy, but when you got to that point you found the snags, unexpected problems. The really colossal hurdle, of course, was going to be the frontier: back in the camp, planning this break, reaching the frontier had been the main worry.
‘The place we do have to avoid is Singen. The odds are that those two are in the bag by now, probably have been for days. The Bosch know there were four of us, and it was Singen they were heading to, so that’s where they’d expect us to turn up. Sense?’
Trolley seemed dubious. Or slow-witted… ‘Could be. But I don’t see what—’
‘This lane takes us wide of Singen: that’s one thing we know. So I say if we keep to it – not in daylight, obviously – we’ll be OK, with a bit of luck. But if we make a detour now and can’t get back to it – we could be blundering right into Singen before we know it!’
‘Should have followed the railway line.’
‘Straight through Singen?’
‘Oh, damn it…’
Trolley sat down on the grass. Jack suggested, ‘If you’re certain you could hit this lane again the other side – then let’s detour. But personally, having seen how they loop around – and we might get on a different one…’
‘We stick to it.’ Trolley got up. Then: ‘Hey, the lights’ve gone out!’
‘Well, that settles it.’ Jack stared down into the hollow: and there wasn’t a glimmer now. ‘They’ve run out of booze, all hands pissed, turning in.’
‘Let’s take a shufti.’
In file, quiet-footed on the verge. Trolley had the hedge on his left for guidance.
Until the railway-station incident at Tuttlingen, the whole thing had been quite easy, except for the strain on nerves. Every uniformed official had seemed a potential danger, but in fact their papers hadn’t once been asked for, and the forged rail tickets – Escape Committee again – had been accepted without a second glance. From the camp gate they’d marched past the dental surgery, round behind a row of houses and off down a side-road to a wood, where they’d buried the uniforms and the rifle. Leaves showering down would quickly have covered all traces. Then they set off in their separate parties and by divergent routes to the railway junction, from where a slow train left in mid-forenoon for Munich; in the camp they’d been tutored on train routines, and one of the tips was to travel only on slow ones, where papers were rarely inspected. The documents they were carrying might not have stood up to close scrutiny.
It was still nerve-racking. Every time a German so much as glanced at them; or when some solid-looking frau left a carriage you’d imagine she was off to fetch a guard… Jack tried to convince himself that it was less dangerous that it felt: two men travelling by rail in wartime England dressed as he and Trolley were, would never have been stopped and questioned, so long as they had tickets. They’d simply have been ignored – in the good old British manner.
On the other hand, four prisoners had escaped. Wouldn’t they be broadcasting appeals to look out for them?
In Munich they dozed in a cinema until it was about to shut, then walked about the streets until the early hours when the train for Ulm was due to drag itself away. Slowly, like the first one. Cockup and Barmy were there on the platform: they looked as if they might have passed the time in some bar, and Jack and Trolley kept well away from them. It was about eighty miles westward, via a place called Augsburg; then from Ulm to Tuttlingen was southwest and slightly less far. They both catnapped, and looked surly when any fellow-traveller seemed disposed to chat. If the alarm had been raised this far afield, Jack hoped, nobody could have guessed these two unshaven, slovenly-looking creatures could be British officers. Touch wood…
The intention had been to take one more train journey, a short hop from Tuttlingen to Singen. The main object had been to get to the Swiss border as fast as possible, and the Escape Committee had agreed that the Germans probably wouldn’t anticipate such rapid movement. They’d be expecting men on the run to be making slow progress across country, keeping out of sight and probably heading for the frontier farther east, nearer the camp. Another advantage of using trains was that if they’d been able to go straight through as planned, their food would have lasted out well enough.
It was Cockup Cockrace who put the kibosh on it, on the platform at Tuttlingen.
He might have acquired a bottle of Schnapps or something, in Munich. Not that Cockup needed liquor to make him behave like a clown. He and Morrison were standing together on the platform, well away from anyone else; hunched against a cold wind, but talking and laughing, Cockup’s bray – it had been famous even in his own regiment, apparently – rising now and then to a pitch that made Jack and Trolley cringe. It also made some German heads turn – including those of a group of Luftwaffe a short way down the platform. Jack and Trolley turned to stroll further away, but Trolley, glancing back, froze like Lot’s wife.
‘Oh, no…’
Cockup was doing the Lambeth Walk. Dragging Barmy by an arm, trying to force him to do it with him. Barmy protesting, pulling back, and – worse – glancing worriedly over his shoulder at the watching Germans. At this point there was an ear-splitting shriek as the train arrived: it was steaming in as Cockup finished his dance, the traditional shout of ‘Oy!’ almost drowned by the chuffing and clattering and leaking steam, and the platform filling suddenly with people who’d been sheltering inside the station building. Cockup was roaring with laughter, helpless with delight at his own lunacy. Jack thought he’d probably been relishing the prospect of the story becoming legendary back home and in the Greenjackets’ mess – how Cockup Cockrace, on the run, had danced the Lambeth Walk on a German railway platform. This would be Cockup’s dream of immortality. But Barmy was yanking him along, making for the nearest carriage door as the train came to a stop: three of that Luftwaffe group had detached themselves from the others, were shouldering their way through the throng, obviously making for the same carriage.
Trolley muttered, ‘He’s round the bend. I’d say they’ve had it.’
‘So’ve we, if we get on that train.’
Wild horses wouldn’t have got him on to it. And with further consideration they’d decided to forget railways altogether. It might have been for the best, anyway; Singen was really too close to the border, there’d surely be identity checks on passengers. In the long run, Cockup might have done them a favour.
Ahead of Jack now, Trolley stopped. The road still curved and ran downhill into that dark hollow.
‘Smell it?’
Cooking. Meat frying or grilling. Steak and onions? Pork? Delicious, mouth-watering… But at two in the morning – or it might be nearer three now – hard to explain.
‘Not for us, Frank.’
‘Wot, no fatted calves’ heads?’
‘Try not to sniff. If we don’t press on, we’ll have another foodless day and night.’
‘OK…’
Moving on down the hill, passing occasional farmsteads or cottages set well apart. At the bottom there was a tight cluster of dwellings, set around one larger building. The only light – Trolley’s hand rose to point at it, but he didn’t stop – was a thin streak of yellow between curtains in an upper window. Then a narrow, rutted lane led away to the left, with a smell of manure and animals in it: the entrance to a farmyard, probably. Trolley had paused: Jack murmured, ‘Keep going, Frank.’
‘Roger…’
Cobbles under their feet now. And a black-and-white building leaning out over the lane so pronouncedly that only the willpower of centuries could have been holding it at such an angle. The smell of food was stronger here. They walked on – more slowly, finding it less easy to be quiet on cobbles. Around the side of the black-and-white building – the corner, as it happened, where the bend in the road was sharpest – was a wide opening: a yard, also cobbled…
The darker objects in it were tables and benches. Old, heavy timber. Feeling the edge of one gingerly, careful of splinters. Then goggling – at plates and mugs on the table. They weren’t all empty, either!
It was impossible not to stop. Nobody on earth could have been that strong-minded. Jack found a beer-mug that was half full: and the plates had bones and other debris on them. He had that mug in his hand, could hear Trolley gulping, and he was reaching with the other hand for a chop-bone that had a lot of meat on it when his elbow hit another – empty – mug. It span off the table, smashed loudly on the cobbles.
He’d gasped: and they were both still, listening, poised to run – But hoping anyone who’d heard it might assume it had been a cat. Leaving food lying around like this: didn’t they have rationing here? He was beginning to think they’d get away with it, there hadn’t been a sound. His hand moved again, and he’d just grasped that bone when the lights came on – all around the little yard, blinding… A voice bawled in German, and the last three words Jack recognised, having heard them before somewhere or other: ‘—oder Ich schiese!’
Meaning, ‘or I’ll shoot!’
Four other men – in front and to the left – two quite old, two middle-aged, and the fifth, the one doing the yelling, young but crippled, leaning sideways on a twisted leg. They all had sporting guns trained on Jack and Trolley, the one in the doorway had been issuing further threats, and Trolley had his hands up.
‘Better give up, Jack. Chap says if we’re good boys they’ll give us a meal while we’re waiting for the transport, but if we’re bad they’ll shoot us.’
In the past hour there’d been HF/DF transmissions from U-boats both ahead and astern of the convoy. Two of them Gritten had identified as operators he’d heard last evening, but there was one stranger… Harbinger was out ahead of the convoy, pushing northeastward at twelve knots, taking the starboard bow position with Paeony roughly on her port beam and the re-formed convoy nearly three miles astern. Astilbe had dropped back to the rear to oil; Harbinger had already done so, and it would be Paeony’s turn next.
He’d shifted Stella, Broad’s trawler, from the front of the convoy to the rear. In daylight Harbinger would be spending a lot of time up front here, or chasing shadowers.
Wind NW force four: sea moderate, visibility good. The promised bad weather seemed to be a long time coming.
Chubb told Mr Timberlake, at the binnacle, ‘We’re almost there. Skipper’ll say when to cut revs.’ He dropped his voice to a low murmur. ‘A touch short-tempered. Overdue for a crashing of the swede, I’d say.’
Variation of ‘getting the head down’, sleeping… the gunner’s only answer was to glance across the bridge at his skipper’s back, then at Chubb again. Expressionless gaze out of red-rimmed eyes in the stubbled, long-nosed face. ‘All right. I’ve got ‘er. Go and get your fat ‘ead down.’
‘Brekker first.’ Chubb grinned, and smacked his lips. ‘If you left any, you old shite-hawk!’
‘Eff off, Aussie.’ Anywhere near the skipper, Timberlake’s language tended to be restrained. He bent his scrawny body to the voice-pipe. ‘Port ten.’
Independent, irregular zigzag was called for, while getting her up into the station vacated by Astilbe. You simply ordered the wheel this way or that, from time to time. It would be much more confusing to a U-boat that was drawing a bead on you than a regular zigzag would be, one that could be timed with a stopwatch and its turns anticipated.
From where he stood, Timberlake had only a three-quarter rear view of the captain, who was on his high seat with his glasses at his eyes; hunched, uncommunicative… Down below over a snatched breakfast, Matt Warrimer had made some similar observation to Chubb’s – that the skipper ought to be getting some kip now, before the next lot of trouble started. The sods might hold off till dusk, but on the other hand they might not, and right now they were doing a lot of talking. Harbinger and her captain had done three hours’ hard work since dawn, on top of a sleepless night; now there was nothing to be done for a while – at least until both corvettes had finished oiling – but he seemed rooted to that chair.
Timberlake took the wheel off, steadied her on due north. He hoped the skipper was going to remember to tell him when to reduce speed. Something about the way the old man was hunched suggested he might bite your head off if you interrupted his thoughts unnecessarily.
There’d been a lull in the action after about 2 am, and in fact nothing more of any significance had happened, except the odd contact and a few depth charges dropped here and there; but they’d remained closed-up at action stations until after dawn. Timberlake had had a couple of hours’ rest between then and breakfast and taking over this watch, and during that time the convoy had been re-organised into seven columns instead of eight. Harbinger had been tearing round like a sheepdog, pausing here and there for the skipper to have loud-hailer conversations – with the William Law’s master, for instance, congratulating him on the way he’d turned out of his column and put the fear of God into an attacking U-boat: he’d asked the Law’s skipper, ‘Want a job in the screen? We’re a bit thin on the ground, you know…’ He’d been full of praise for Kyle, captain of the Opal, then mildly critical in a discussion over TBS with Guyatt of Paeony. Two ships had been sunk during the night: the Sally Joy, number eight-four, who’d been hit by two fish early on, and the Dragoman, whose highly incendiary cargo of chemicals had ignited and burnt her down to the waterline in less than half an hour. She’d loaded the stuff in Port Elizabeth, was all Matt Warrimer knew about it. Three-quarters of the Sally Joy’s crew had been picked up by the trawler Gleam and the rescue ship Leona, but only seven crewmen and one junior engineer had survived from the Dragoman. They owed their lives to the Opal, who’d pushed in so close that her own paintwork had blistered and some of her crew were suffering from burns. Most of the freighter’s boats had been incinerated on their davits, and the survivors had all been in the one boat that reached the water, its timber already smouldering. Kyle had since transferred them to the Malibar, whose master had been advised by Harbinger’s doctor on how to treat their burns.
‘Starboard ten.’
‘Starboard ten, sir…’
‘Guns.’ The skipper spoke without lowering his binoculars. He’d have heard the watch changing over, but he hadn’t once looked round. ‘Come down to revs for nine knots. And make the zigzag more frequent and erratic.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Don’t hog the whole watch, either. I want Carlish to get his hand in.’
‘Midships.’ The gunner glanced round. ‘Take her now, Sub, if you want.’
The convoy had started with four vacant billets. One had been taken last night by the Burbridge, but with two ships lost there’d been five holes in the pattern, which had also become somewhat straggly, by dawn. So one column had been done away with. The skipper had ranged up alongside the commodore’s Chauncy Maples to discuss the reorganisation, then plugged up and down moving ships like pieces on a chessboard.
The Burbridge should really have had red crosses on her sides. Warrimer had been on the bridge when the skipper and commodore had been chatting, and Sandover had told him that the passengers were mostly convalescents or wheelchair patients being repatriated from a military recuperation centre near Durban. The commodore’s reason for mentioning it had been that the Burbridge’s master had offered to take on board any wounded survivors in need of medical care; he had a doctor and a team of nurses looking after those convalescents.
Harbinger’s firing on the U-boat astern of the convoy hadn’t achieved anything, except that no subsequent attack had developed from that quarter, so it might have been scared off. And Paeony had come near to being rammed by the William Law when the freighter had charged out at the U-boat. Paeony had been going after it at the same time, rushing down close to number one column. Guyatt had picked up the U-boat on his 271 when he’d been returning to station after losing the contact he’d been chasing out on the bow; he’d spotted the U-boat in the glare of the William Law’s snowflakes, and altered course to ram. He’d been so close that his four-inch gun had time to get off only two shots as he tore in: he’d passed right over the top, he’d said, couldn’t have missed by more than a foot or two, but the German had crash-dived remarkably fast. The skipper had told Guyatt he shouldn’t have tried to ram. With so few escorts, and the fact that ramming invariably damaged the rammer as well as her victim, it was now forbidden. Guyatt should have held off and used his gun to better effect than he had: and if he’d been as close as all that, why on earth hadn’t his shallow-set depth charges been effective?
Astilbe had depth charged a U-boat that had dived in front of her, too. Graves had said his asdics had lost contact almost as soon as he’d picked it up, after the disturbance of the explosions had faded; he suspected it might have been one of the deep-diving boats. He did have some ‘heavies’ in Astilbe, but there’d been no chance to use them. He’d made two other contacts during the night, but with no end result. So – summing it up – with only three or four U-boats at them, they’d lost two ships and nothing to show for it.
Hardly surprising, Mr Timberlake thought, that there was a slight air of grumpiness up here.
‘Signals, sir?’
CPO Bearcroft was at the skipper’s elbow, with the log for his perusal.
‘Anything of interest?’
He’d taken the log, and was leafing through the night’s messages.
‘Not really, sir. We got a BBC news, though – more ’eavy fighting in the desert. Aussies made a big advance, it said.’
‘Good for them.’ He handed the log back. ‘Thank you, Chief.’
The news bulletins still weren’t revealing much, though. So little, in fact, that he wasn’t feeling as optimistic as some of the announcers sounded. If the Eighth Army didn’t break through soon they’d run out of steam, and then it might be Rommel’s turn. Glancing round as the HF/DF bell rang, Nick saw Timberlake with his beak in the pipe: listening, and scowling… Then he looked up, and met his captain’s stare. ‘U-boats transmitting on oh-two-seven, oh-four-eight and oh-six-one, sir, ranges nineteen, sixteen and eighteen miles.’
‘Ask him if they’re the same ones he heard earlier.’
Apparently two of them were not. One, Gritten said, had been around yesterday, but two were newcomers, probably just arrived and getting their orders and the convoy details.
Convalescents embarked at Durban. Would their nurses have embarked there too?
He heard Carlish order ‘Starboard fifteen!’ There was no reason to imagine one of the nurses might have reached Durban from Australia; there was every reason not even to consider the possibility.
‘More of ’em with us now, sir, I’m told.’
Warrimer, at his elbow. Nick looked round at him.
‘Now you’re here, Number One, I’ll take an hour’s rest in my sea-cabin.’
‘Good idea, sir. Why not make it several—’
‘Paeony—’ the skipper pointed, as he cut Warrimer short – ‘Paeony is to oil as soon as Astilbe finishes. I want a shake when she’s done it. Alternatively wake me if there’s any contact within twelve miles.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Carlish ordered, ‘Midships!’
Mr Timberlake watched the skipper slide off his high seat, hang his binoculars over the back of it by their strap, and turn aft to leave the bridge. Nick Everard was a thickset, hard-looking man, with dark hair greying at the temples. The scar he’d collected in some fracas out East was camouflaged by an embryo beard. He’d stopped, and he was looking quizzically at the gunner.
‘All right, Guns?’
Timberlake nodded. ‘Top line sir.’
‘Plenty of depth bombs in hand?’
The red-rimmed eyes blinked. No smile: Mr Timberlake knew when his leg was being pulled. ‘Dare say they’ll last out, sir.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ A gesture of one hand – northeastward, where the U-boats were chattering to each other. ‘I’d say we’re going to need all we’ve got.’