Epilogue

‘I have the greatest admiration for the forthright sheer guts of you and your personnel.’

—Vice-Admiral Lockwood to Captain Fell, 19 August 1945

Nobby Clarke struggled in the thick, armpit-deep white mud beneath the silty waters off Lamma Island, Hong Kong.1 It was like trying to work half-buried in setting concrete. Clarke was soon breathing hard as he struggled to manoeuvre the heavy hydraulic cutters into position before making a cut on whatever was snagging the grapnel. At this rate, Clarke would soon be at the limit of his breathable air, and walking the fine line between consciousness and oxygen narcosis. Nearby, Pat Westmacott crouched inside the XE-5, his eyes clamped to the night periscope, watching and waiting for Clarke to return safely to the submarine. Westmacott’s mission plan had gone to hell in a handbasket. He was seriously behind schedule. It was now 1 August 1945 and the crew of the XE-5 had been on the operation for nearly 40 hours. It had taken Westmacott four-and-a-half hours of dragging from first light on 1 August before the submarine finally snagged something and Nobby Clarke had been sent out to investigate.2 Each man was at the limit of his endurance and patience since arriving too late on 31 July. Westmacott knew that if things didn’t start going his way soon he would have to scrub the mission. He also knew that the other three XE-craft must have completed their missions long before, and if they had survived would be already attached to their mother submarines and on their way back to HMS Bonaventure and safety.

*

Indeed, by and large all was well with the other three boats. The XE-3 had successfully rendezvoused with HMS Stygian an hour after the charges beneath the Takao had gone off. Jack Smart and the XE-1 couldn’t find HMS Spark on 31 July. Instead, the crew was forced to spend the day on the seabed until darkness fell. They were eventually located on the evening of 1 August, exhausted but cheerful.

Max Shean’s XE-4 had met HMS Spearhead at midnight on 1 August. After a quick conference with Commander Youngman, Shean was informed that only Japanese flying boats were present in Saigon harbour. Shean offered to go back and deal with them. He mooted the idea of using divers’ knives to puncture the floats on the aircraft. This was not considered worth the risk, and the XE-4 began her journey back to Brunei Bay.3

Operation Sabre had been virtually a textbook mission and Shean was very pleased to hear that the Japanese reaction to his severing of the cables was an immediate blizzard of enemy wireless traffic, which was promptly deciphered by the Americans.4

*

But for Pat Westmacott and the crew of the XE-5 the mission continued. While he was still able, Westmacott determined that he would continue with the mission. To return empty-handed would be almost too much to bear, for all of them. They had been through too much to simply give up. The cable was the last remaining line of communication between Singapore and Japan.5 It was a measure of their determination and dedication that no man aboard the XE-5 made any complaint about the mission, which was rapidly assuming the form of a test of endurance such as none of them had ever experienced or even contemplated before.

Nobby Clarke batted another huge jellyfish away from his visor as he struggled, a great Portuguese man-o’-war stinging him across the hand as he did so. He was in agony, constantly harassed by jellyfish and virtually immobile in the thick mud. He could barely see anything and instead groped his way along the snag with one hand, then attempted to manoeuvre the heavy cutters into position to make the cut. Clarke depressed the hydraulic cutter’s trigger and a sickening blast of intense pain lanced up his arm. He screamed into the DSEA mouthpiece, dropping the cutters as a dark red cloud pumped into the water all around him. Clarke raised his left hand up towards his visor in horror. His thumb was nearly cut through.6 In the gloomy and muddy conditions he had cut the snag just where his hand was holding it. He was lucky not to have sliced his entire thumb off. Panicking, Clarke struggled back towards the XE-5, holding his wounded hand close to his chest as blood continued to cloud in the water all around him. Somehow, he made it back to the Wet & Dry Compartment and pumped out the water. Westmacott had the little door open in an instant. The other crewmen initially recoiled in horror at Clarke’s injury, as blood dripped onto the submarine’s deck from his mangled hand, before they all joined in the effort to stem the bleeding and get the wound taken care of. Clarke lay motionless on the deck looking as pale as a corpse, moaning in pain until Westmacott managed to get some morphine into him.

Westmacott now faced a further dilemma. Although the working conditions outside of the boat were atrocious, his submarine’s grapnel, vital for locating the Japanese telephone cable, was still snagged. With one diver out of action and in need of proper medical attention, Westmacott turned to his second diver, Sub-Lieutenant Jarvis.

‘Dennis, go out and cut the grapnel free and stow it and the cutters,’ ordered Westmacott. Jarvis didn’t hesitate. He was already suited up, and, fitting his DSEA, he was soon flooding the W&D. Within a few minutes Jarvis had managed to free the grapnel and Westmacott could decide on a course of action.

Once Jarvis had returned, Westmacott addressed the crew. ‘Clarke needs a vet,’ he said, using the accustomed parlance for a medic. ‘We’ll rendezvous with the Selene as planned and offload him. Then we’ll return to this area and complete the mission.’ Westmacott wasn’t asking for opinions, and the other crewmen knew that to return once they had taken care of Clarke was expected. They still had a job to do, even with one man down. It meant that the remaining diver, Jarvis, would have to work twice as hard.

The badly injured Nobby Clarke was transferred to HMS Selene where he received emergency medical treatment,7 and Pat Westmacott and the XE-5 were back on station off Lamma Island by the early hours of 2 August.

The XE-5 resumed her search for the Hong Kong to Singapore telephone cable. Jarvis worked alone, repeatedly going outside the submarine to deal with snags and, eventually, after seventeen runs over the supposed cable location, a difficult cut into what was believed to be the target. But because of the atrocious conditions off Lamma Island, with the exhausted Jarvis forced like Clarke to work in armpit-deep white mud in near zero visibility, Jarvis was unable to report to Westmacott that he had successfully severed the cable. He believed that he had managed to damage it, but was unable to say that he had put it out of action for sure. At midday on 3 August 1945 Pat Westmacott, in view of the fact that Jarvis was completely worn out and sending him out any more was tantamount to a death sentence, reluctantly called off the operation. By now there was only about two hours of oxygen left inside of the XE-5 after three days deeply submerged and Westmacott needed to take his submarine further out to sea and surface somewhere less crowded with junks and patrol boats. With a heavy heart and a feeling of deep frustration, Westmacott set a course back towards HMS Selene and home. In total, Westmacott and his crew had spent 84 hours on station under the noses of the Japanese, which was an incredible achievement in itself.8

*

Over the next few days the heroes returned home. First back was XE-4, arriving alongside HMS Bonaventure in Brunei Bay on 3 August. Tich Fraser and XE-3 arrived on 5 August, followed by Smart’s XE-1 the following day. Pat Westmacott and XE-5 were last back, arriving alongside the depot ship HMS Maidstone in Subic Bay on 6 August.

The same day that the subdued crew of the XE-5 stepped aboard the Maidstone a silver Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay appeared in the skies above the city of Hiroshima.

Nine days later, on the morning of 15 August 1945, Captain Fell received the following signal from headquarters: ‘Cease hostilities against Japan.’9 It was all over.

‘The relief that there would be no more missions, no more war, no more parting from Melba and our child completely overwhelmed every other feeling,’ wrote Tich Fraser. ‘Suddenly life itself was friendly and jubilant; and the sun shone for all of us, for we had survived.’10

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During the first weeks of the great peace, while recovering in Australia, Tich Fraser and Mick Magennis learned that they would both receive Britain’s supreme award for gallantry, the Victoria Cross.