Sailing time was set for 1700, two hours earlier than it would normally have been, to allow for an expected deterioration of the weather. Destination L’Abervrac’h again: the dinghies were to be at Guenioc by 2359 G.M.T./14, i.e, midnight tonight, Wednesday 14th July. Bastille Day: more importantly, the last night of the present moonless period.
Dinghies plural because they’d embarked a second one to allow for the number of escapers. This had been decided when the anticipated number had been twelve: now it was seventeen. Vidor’s signal that he had the airmen ready for pickup had reached Baker Street yesterday evening, and Hughes had had his orders by scrambled telephone within the hour. M.G.B. 600 had been on stand-by – refuelled, watered and provisioned – since her arrival here in Falmouth on Monday afternoon.
Ben had shaved his beard off, as he’d promised Rosie he would. Not that she’d have given a damn whether he did or didn’t… More usefully, he’d also cleaned off his charts: the ones in most frequent use were getting dog-eared and discoloured, but they’d survive another trip or two. In his plot now – early afternoon, alongside the Coastlines wharf, the flotilla’s usual berth – he was doing his homework, checking in the Nautical Almanac and filling several pages of his brown-covered navigator’s notebook with data on tides, tidal streams, depths, and rocks’ heights above water hour by hour from midnight to 0400.
Weather prospects weren’t good. The return trip from L’Abervrac’h on Monday hadn’t been more than average-rough, and there was only a light wind at this moment; but according to the forecasters the worst was yet to come. The gale was still out there in the Atlantic, only hadn’t moved east as fast as they’d expected; Monday’s blow had been just a curtain-raiser.
Last night in the Bay Hotel, where he and Don Shepherd had gone with Hughes for a quiet pint – leaving Ball on board as duty officer – Ben had suggested that he should take charge of the second dinghy.
‘Obvious bloke for it, aren’t I? I mean, damn-all to do once we’ve dropped the hook. Eh, skipper?’
Hughes had agreed. ‘You did some at Praa, didn’t you?’
Praa Sands, in Cornwall, was where they all practised beaching dinghies through heavy surf – turning dinghies onto their beam ends often enough too, before getting the hang of it.
‘Give him something to do, won’t it.’ Shepherd nodded through a haze of smoke. ‘Especially with no girls on board this trip. Find time very heavy on his hands.’
They’d have no passengers, or cargo. Last night another of the flotilla – M.G.B. 318, an older boat, ‘C’ class – had landed some agents at the Grac’h Zu pinpoint, thirty miles east of L’Abervrac’h, and for the time being there were no more in the queue.
‘Ready for sea, sir.’
In her bridge, P.O. Motor Mechanic Harvey, who pre-war had been part of a motor-racing team, touched his cap to the solicitor from Ross-on-Wye. All four engines were running, warming through, had been doing so for the last fifteen or twenty minutes.
Don Shepherd climbed into the bridge. ‘All hands on board, sir, duty men closed up. Take off the backspring?’
‘Yes, please.’ Hughes returned the salute. ‘Let go aft, while you’re at it.’
With the midday news broadcast Vidor’s code-phrase had gone out: Le père de Gilles est assez vieux. He’d hear it again this evening; he and Léon would then begin moving their seventeen airmen over the sands to Tariec.
Shepherd reported, ‘All gone aft, sir’; Hughes moved the port outer telegraph to slow ahead. ‘Starboard ten, cox’n.’ Turning her stern out into the stream by pivoting her on the forespring, a hemp rope running from her stem to the jetty abreast her stern.
‘Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.’
Hughes moved that telegraph to stop, then both outers to show astern. ‘Midships. Let go for’ard.’
Backing off the quay: with only the shoreside berthing party who’d let go the ropes and wires to see them leave. Ben checked the time: 1702. Not bad… Mental reservation then: if the weather doesn’t fall totally to pieces… On the upper deck the hands were falling in, fore and aft, Ball up on the bow and Leading Seaman Mollison, the second coxswain, with the party on the stern. Hughes had crossed to the starboard side to see the fore-breast and spring flop away. He glanced round: ‘Stop both outers.’
‘Stop both outers, sir…’
The stern-way came off her almost immediately, in the run of the ebbing tide. Hughes said, ‘Slow ahead outers. Port fifteen.’
P.O. Ambrose flung the brass wheel around…
‘Fifteen of port wheel on, sir!’
‘Outers slow ahead.’
Gathering way, then, and swinging her bow towards the exit. Four destroyers lay at anchor out there, some trawlers and M.F.V.s this side of them. A barrage balloon was being wound down very slowly, slanting away from the wind. Blue sky, wisps of fast-moving white cloud, flecks of white on the sea out there in the channel. Ben was thinking about seeing it in a frame, how it might turn out if he had canvas here, and paints: he knew exactly how he’d want it to turn out.
He went down to his plot. After she’d cleared the bar – on all four engines by that time – they’d go to action stations and test-fire the guns, then at cruising speed relax to what was known as the second degree of readiness, with only the Oerlikons and the point-fives manned, for anti-aircraft defence. He’d be piloting her then through a departure point four miles south of the Lizard – the D3 buoy – on to a course-made-good of south five degrees east for L’Abervrac’h.
Jotting down figures on the edge of the chart… At a cruising speed of twenty-two knots the trip would take five hours, so ordinarily you’d have sailed at 1900. Allowing for foul weather and having to reduce speed – even to half-speed, possibly, say halfway over – you’d need all of the extra two hours. Two and a half or even three, he thought, might have been a better bet, but the skipper had reckoned this was playing it safe enough.
As the roar and clatter of the guns petered out, he was wondering where Rosie was at this minute. On the last trip she’d told him that although she’d been warned about it she’d almost jumped out of her skin when they’d all let fly.
What she’d really been scared of, though, had been whatever lay ahead of her in France. There’d been moments when he’d seen and heard the tension in her. The most fundamental kind of bravery, he thought: to be frightened half to death and still go ahead.
She was bloody marvellous, that girl. Truly and absolutely bloody marvellous.
Extremely secretive, though. He still didn’t know her name, or where her people lived in England. When they’d been talking – here, in this plot – and she’d side-stepped all such questions, he’d told himself that it didn’t matter, because he knew how to get in touch with her now – through the S.O.E. office in Baker Street. But he’d realized since that he wouldn’t know who to ask for, or what name to put on a letter. And you could bet they wouldn’t hand out any information unless they were sure you already had it.
Birds of a feather, you might say.
The only name he could put on the envelope would be ROSIE. And even if it got to her, she might well decide to maintain the wall of secrecy he’d first run into eighteen months ago.
In the Wellington, near Hyde Park Corner, at a fairly early stage in the evening. Might have been at the New Yorker, in fact… Anyway, he’d given her his own story, about this terrific break he’d had – getting back to sea – and about the time he’d spent in Paris pretending to be an artist, all that – and then it had been her turn to expound on whatever these troubles were that needed drowning: other than S.O.E. having turned her down, which he’d known about already. She’d been reluctant to tell him any more, even at that stage: she’d been worried that she might become maudlin and weep all over him. He’d urged her, ‘But you’re welcome to. Any time… come on, we had a deal, remember? Gets worse, anyway, if you bottle it up – well-known fact, Rosie… Please, let’s hear it?’
So she’d told him about her husband having been shot down and killed only a day or two before this, and her need to escape, make a new life; and that since she was a fluent French-speaker – bilingual, she was as French as she was English – she’d had this thought of joining S.O.E. for some time, only hadn’t done anything about it because her husband hadn’t wanted her to. Which was understandable enough, Ben had thought, who would? But with the shock of her husband’s death, in a mood of desperation she’d come to Baker Street to offer them her services and had been told – in so many words – that she wasn’t the sort of recruit they wanted.
‘Doesn’t make sense, Rosie.’
‘Wasn’t only Johnny not wanting me to. I felt he needed me there when he wasn’t flying. I mean it was obvious, he really did.’
‘Yeah, well—’
‘You think that’s normal? I mean, like he’d need a mother?’
‘Oh, surely—’
‘Surely, yes. Girls, all over. All over him – or vice versa. I was only the one he had pegged down, the one who – well, ironed his shirts too… Listen, it would’ve been all right if he’d stayed alive, would’ve come all right – God knows how, but – given the chance, I mean, a year or two—’
‘You’d have made it come right.’ He nodded. ‘Sure you would. I’m sorry, Rosie. Damn sorry.’
‘He was still a bastard…’
And she was a very mixed-up sheila, he’d realized. Or perhaps more accurately, a sheila in a very mixed-up state. Maybe the bloke in Baker Street wasn’t such an idiot after all.
And should have stuck to that decision, he thought now – with the gunboat banging along at twenty-two knots, slamming across a low swell with a slight chop on it and the white spray sheeting, brilliant in the sunlight – she might have settled for some job where she could have used her French and not had her neck on the block every minute of every day and night.
If she’d have accepted such a job, of course, which quite likely she would not have.
After she’d talked about her husband for half an hour or so, embarrassing herself by shedding a few tears now and then – well, it might have been the result of his own conscious efforts but anyway the tone of it all had changed and they’d found they were having a party again, instead of a wake. He’d asked her – in the Gay Nineties, he thought this must have been – ‘What’s the rest of the story, Rosie?’
‘Isn’t any rest. Told you all that matters.’
‘Well, where’s your home, for instance?’
Shaking her head, metronome-like. Already fairly squiffed. But so had he been: although there and then he hadn’t been giving much thought to that aspect of it. She’d told him – flatly, as if this finished it – ‘I’m here, ’s all.’
‘But when you’re home – family—’
‘Home’s where the heart is, didn’t they tell you?’
‘So where is it?’
A shrug… ‘God knows.’
‘Well.’ Nodding. ‘Glad someone does.’
‘Does what?’
‘Ask no questions, eh?’
‘And be told no lies. I swear – no lie shall pass my lips.’
‘Some lips, Rosie…’
The repeat of the broadcast about Giles’s father’s antiquity came after the overseas news broadcast. Vera Lynn’s now familiar rendition of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ had been interrupted for it, the signalman remarking to Ben as he passed through the plot on his way below, ‘I could tell her what we’ll meet again. Dinner and tea, that’s what.’ It was blowing up, and the boat was making hard work of it, down to twelve knots by this stage.
Might turn out all right – just – if it didn’t get any worse. Touch wood … You did need to be in there, at anchor and with the dinghies inshore, right on the dot. Two dinghy trips, in bad weather – cavorting in like corks, then struggling out against wind and sea with a load of passengers to slow you down…
Three hours’ work, he thought. Not less.
She was already rolling and pitching like something in a fairground. As much roll as pitch, and heavy jarring impacts as she drove through it, testing her hull-strength ten times a minute, with the green seas lifting to be smashed and sent flying back – solid, some of it bursting like truckloads of bricks against the forefront of the superstructure – this plot – and sheeting over and into the bridge, a fair proportion of it dropping green on the watchkeepers’ heads and some of the rest swamping over the sill and down the ladderway so that the plot’s deck was also running wet. The skipper and Don Shepherd would be wet through up there, despite their goon-suits. So would the lookouts – who’d also man the Vickers G.O. machine guns in any sudden emergency. In these sea conditions and fading light it would be sudden all right, any enemy you ran into would be at point-blank range.
He was glad they didn’t have Rosie on board this time. It was a factor he’d thought about before, on previous bad-weather crossings with agents to land: that they’d have enough to contend with even landing in good physical condition, let alone weak and empty, exhausted by hours of sickness.
Wouldn’t have wanted that for Rosie.
Didn’t want her anywhere near this business. Certainly not right in the heart of it, as she was. Compared to what she was doing, he thought, he might have been a bus driver… Glancing round as someone lurched up beside him, grabbing for support against a particularly savage roll. Nick Ball… ‘Some summer, this!’ He was dressed for the bridge, goon-suited, had paused for a look at the chart – clinging to the edge of the table, Ben making room for him, the gunboat at that moment hard over to port, bow-down and shuddering, foam sluicing over… ‘Would you believe it – July, God’s sake?’
‘Not dinghy weather, is it?’
‘Oh, we’ll be all right, don’t worry about that…’ This was the expert reassuring the novice… ‘Where’re we at now?’
‘Here. Give or take fifty miles. By the way,’ – he reached for his notebook – ‘we’ll be on a rising tide – see, couple of hours after low water – our friends’ll have made tracks – huh?’
To get back to shore over the sand before the tide covered it. The Frenchmen would put their party of airmen on Guenioc, and nip back while the going was good.
Ball was at the ladder, clinging to it: her bow was up and she was surging forward… He yelled agreement: ‘Beating the tide, and before it’s a full gale.’
Hughes called down, ‘Plot!’
At the voicepipe: ‘Plot, sir.’
‘I’m reducing to revs for ten knots, pilot.’
Christ…
He’d adjusted the course to south twelve west, to counter the tidal flow and wind from the same direction. He was navigating by dead reckoning based on a QH position half an hour earlier; the QH had chucked its hand in since that last gasp of usefulness, disliking the rough treatment it had been getting, and he was watching the echo-sounder now, hoping that it would soon tell him they were crossing the Libenter bank: if this didn’t happen within a matter of minutes he’d know he’d brought her too far west and could be running into trouble. He’d thought that from the bridge they’d have picked up the loom of the searchlight from Ile Vierge some time ago, but they hadn’t – which could lead to the same conclusion. On the other hand visibility was next to nothing, Ile Vierge was – should have been – nearly four miles away, and it was conceivable that the searchlight might not have been in operation.
Running on only the outers now, silenced and making about eight knots. Engines not only silenced by the Dumbflows but partially drowned out by the noise of the weather and the gunboat’s violent motion. Vomit-stink: which didn’t help much, tended to create a vicious circle. He hadn’t succumbed, so far. Don’t bloody think about it.
Fourteen fathoms under her.
They were going to be an hour late at the R/V. At least an hour. Hour and a half, maybe.
Five fathoms, suddenly. It could mean he’d boobed, was driving her into God only knew what…
Breathe again. Back in eleven fathoms – and there was a small shallow patch just to the north of the Libenter. So now – watching the sounder, praying that it wouldn’t pack up too… It had been known to, in conditions of this kind. Twice, in fact, both times at crucial stages in an approach.
Six fathoms: another abrupt shallowing. And – astonishingly enough – just about perfect!
Sheer luck. Not that anyone need know it. Correction, though: it wasn’t all luck: more like a combination of dead reckoning plus instinct and experience – and an absence of outright bad luck. Still, a hell of a relief… And another memory of Rosie, how he’d muttered despairingly to her that night in fog-bound London, Oh, fine navigator I’ll make!
Not that one would have done any better now, in those circumstances. Fog so thick you couldn’t see a yard – which of course was what had kept the Luftwaffe away that night.
Ten fathoms. The course couldn’t have been much better. Should have sailed at least an hour earlier, though. His own suggestion of an extra half-hour wouldn’t have helped all that much. He leant to the voicepipe: ‘Bridge!’
Skipper’s voice: ‘Yes, pilot?’
‘Sixteen hundred yards to Petite Fourche, sir. Should see it fine to port.’
‘The buoy, perhaps. Probably not the rock – all broken water.’ Ben heard him yelling to Shepherd to look out for either. And of course it didn’t matter about the rock as long as the buoy was still on station.
Sounding now – sixteen fathoms. It matched the figures on the chart, near enough. The bow soaring – and falling away to port before Ambrose up there jammed on the rudder to bring her back.
‘Plot!’
Back at the voicepipe: ‘Plot…’
‘Petite Fourche buoy fine to port, half a mile.’
‘Right on, sir.’ No surprise in it, though. Since that sudden shallowing he’d known pretty well for certain where they were. ‘When it’s abeam, alter to due south.’
That would still allow for the tidal flow. But you’d need to stay clear of shallow patches from here on, patches she’d float over with room to spare in a reasonably calm sea but which tonight mightn’t be far under her keel when she was in the troughs.
Corkscrewing, meanwhile. Weather on the bow, Atlantic swell running in on the quarter.
‘Plot – Petite Fourche abeam. Coming to due south.’
‘Grande Fourche next, sir. Fine to port again – if visible.’
Rock, not buoy: in fact rocks, plural. He thought they’d be visible – like shellspouts, seas shattering themselves against them and pluming up stark-white against the blackness. Grande Fourche, and then the Brisante. When the Brisante was abeam they should have Guenioc in sight, and to the south of it – in the usual anchorage or perhaps a bit closer in – there might be some small degree of shelter.
At the first attempt the anchor didn’t hold. They had to haul in a few fathoms of the grass line while Hughes brought her in a bit closer to the island to try again, and by the time it was holding they’d drifted back southeastward by about half a cable.
The problem was the weed. There was a lot of it about and you had to drop the hook where the sand was bare or nearly so; in pitch darkness it was a matter of trial and error. Ben was on the bridge while this was going on, in a goon suit and Mae West – as the dinghy’s crews were; Ball, who’d gone aft to see to the preparations for launching, came back for’ard.
‘Bad news, sir. Second dinghy’s compass is U/S.’
‘Oh, Jesus…’
It was Ben’s responsibility, technically; a compass came under the heading of navigational stores, and he was navigating officer. He’d left it to Ball simply because he hadn’t thought beyond the fact that Ball was boat officer, and the compass would have been supplied to them with the second dinghy. They were ex-R.A.F. compasses, portable and luminous: and this wasn’t, Ball told them – wasn’t luminous. Or had lost its luminosity. Was therefore useless. (You couldn’t possibly use a torch – even if you’d had a spare hand for one – on account of the German lookout posts on shore. You didn’t even show a burning cigarette-end.)
He told Ball, ‘I’ll follow you – stem to stern, if possible.’ To Hughes, then: ‘All we can do, sir. We’ll get cracking, soon as—’
‘Anchor seems to be holding, sir.’
Shepherd, returning to the bridge. Seeming to be holding was about as good as you’d get, with no visible shore features on which to take bearings and check for any drag.
‘I’ll give you a lee, starboard side.’ Hughes added, ‘You’re aware of the time factor, uh?’
His way of saying, Don’t waste any.
The dinghies had to get away pretty well together, so they could stay in sight of each other. Shepherd came aft to supervise the launching – eight sailors, four to each boat, manhandling them over the rail in the pitch darkness and down to the sea with as little crashing against the gunboat’s side as could be managed.
Two Jacob’s ladders had been rigged – Mollison’s work – so the crews could embark simultaneously. Ben’s oarsmen were Abercrombie, a New Zealand farmer’s son and Davidson, a Londoner.
‘Over you go.’
Down into a cockleshell that was trying to smash itself against the side ten times a minute: the sea’s rise and fall was six or eight feet. Oars, and Ben’s scull for steering, were to be passed down once they were embarked. Hughes meanwhile had the starboard outer running slow astern to hold his ship beam-on to wind and sea and give the boats a lee. The effect wasn’t all that noticeable, but no doubt they’d have been worse off without it.
Course to the beach would be about north five east. The island had been visible from the bridge, through glasses, as a black hump extending over about fifteen or twenty degrees, but you couldn’t see it from the deck and certainly wouldn’t from the dinghy. You’d be relying totally on Ball’s compass and on keeping him in sight.
Davidson called, ‘Ready, sir!’
He climbed over. ‘See you, Don.’
He thought he’d heard ‘Sincerely hope so’, but the wind had whipped it away. Down the ladder then, transferring into the dinghy as it came to the top of its vertical movement, hopping directly into the sternsheets at the centreline as it started down again, the sea sucking away from the M.G.B.’s side, seething white: from his seat in the stern he was craning his head back to look up for a sight of the oars being passed down: as they were now… ‘OK, sir?’
His scull and the crewmen had their oars. A yell from the other boat as it swung broadside-on, Ball already on his way.
‘Shove off, for’ard!’
Bloody lunacy. But necessary, of course. And no time for saying prayers – even if anyone would have listened to them. Which wasn’t very likely… ‘Give way together!’
His own scull wasn’t for steering yet, he was using its loom to fend off. Then, clear of the M.G.B.’s side, he slid it out over the stern and into the slot in the transom: the two sailors in unison putting their weight on their own oars, driving the little boat curving up a wall of sea to crash bow-down into an abyss beyond it. Ball’s dinghy was visible only when they were both well up: it was imperative therefore to stay close, or you’d lose him.
‘All right, you blokes?’
Too bad if they weren’t… Heavy spray was bursting over but the boat wasn’t shipping much. Incredibly… The built-in buoyancy, of course, and the skill of designers Messrs Smyth and Nicholson. Rolling wasn’t the word for it, though; flinging herself from one beam to another every couple of seconds wasn’t bloody rolling. Scull in steeply and most of his weight on it, forcing the stern around as she’d sheered off course – he was on to the need for it very quickly, the need to keep Ball in sight. In a surround of black water streaked with white his view of Ball’s dinghy as this one shot upwards again was of some blacker object, shapeless but recognizable – just – with the white of the oars’ emergence showing up only through their regularity. There was comfort in the recognition, after each short period of anxiety when you didn’t have a hope of seeing anything at all: and acute awareness that if he lost Ball he’d be lost. Having no mark to steer by, nothing except darkness, no way at all of knowing which way into it you were pointing.
‘Doing fine, you blokes!’
Lashing spray flung it back at him. Knees jammed against the boat’s sides, the scull’s loom under his left arm with the right hand grasping it, left hand available some of the time for holding on and the dinghy doing its best to make that impossible, throw him out. He was glad in one way that he didn’t have a compass, which he’d have had to be gripping between his knees. Tall order – next to impossible, lacking Ball’s experience – jolting, explosive crash as she hit the bottom of a trough, sea frothing up to about gunwale height, oars’ blades dipping and driving her slanting up the next one – lacking Ball’s expertise, which up to now perhaps one hadn’t fully appreciated…
Searching the darkness ahead – in panic for a moment – his eye caught the glimmer of a light just briefly, out to starboard… Probably a false impression: ignoring it anyway, needing to find the other dinghy… All right, so you had the weather on the port side, this blow straight out of the Atlantic, but regrettably it wouldn’t be enough to steer by, not within say thirty degrees… Christ, where—
There. Slightly to starboard. He put his weight on the scull to edge her round: roller-coastering, and juddering from the impact, but the two oarsmen working with the steadiness of machines.
There was a light there. Ship, or on shore. Shore, he guessed. Farmhouse window – or one of the German lookout posts?
If it was fixed, and stayed there, it would be a mark to steer by. Not with any accuracy, but as a rough guide: by keeping it at that angle to the boat’s fore-and-aft line you’d know you were going in more or less the right direction. If it was fixed, though, and stayed switched on, and visible. Couldn’t watch it – Ball’s dinghy was what you had to watch – or rather look for… Now – lifting again, bow up almost vertically then tilting over while the boat was carried rushing on the crest, on an even keel for a change and travelling at what felt like enormous speed, and the other boat suddenly in easy sight against a background that showed it up: surf-line, beachline…
‘Nearly there, lads!’
Ball had explained: with the seas racing up on the beach not at right angles to the coastline but slantwise, the tactic should be to approach the nearer end of it and then swing the boat’s stern to the weather at just the right moment to ride in on a roller which you’d have selected. Because if you went straight in with the sea on your beam or quarter when you got into the surf you’d be rolled over: a lesson learnt by trial and error in those frolics on Praa Sands… The light was still shining: one quick search in that direction, justified by – well, anxiety… Eyes back to the other dinghy then: clear to see, travelling from left to right: Ball had made his turn, was being swept into the thunderous chaos of the surf.
So here we go…
Turning her, as she lifted. Digging the blade in, leaning on it hard, forcing her round as a big one came rushing…
‘Oars!’
Meaning, stop rowing. They had done – oars across their knees, the men both stooped forward… Balancing act, too, swaying against the motion of the boat, but the work was all Ben’s now, holding her stern-to, while the wave carrying her into the beach flowed on under, melting into the boil of surf.
‘Boat your oars!’
Otherwise they’d be smashed…
Scraping of sand under her bow: then she was out of contact with it again, lifted and driving in. A heavy jolt, then, impact under the keel, her forefoot – on sand quite solidly, but still driven…
‘Hi, there, Navy!’
Dark figures wading to them through the surf, yelling over the noise of it and waving. Another American voice: ‘Are we glad to see you guys!’
‘Hey – not Krauts, are you?’
‘Sorry we’re late.’ Davidson and Abercrombie were out of the boat, one each side, joining the airmen who were hauling it up. Ben got out too. An English voice yelled ‘Cripes – we going in this?’
‘Safer than you’d think, cobber… Senior officer here?’
‘Guess that’s me.’ Yank: tall, about Ben’s own build. ‘Charles Hansen – major, U.S. Air Force.’
‘Ben Quarry, lieutenant.’ Ball had come to join them, trailed by the group who’d met his boat and hauled it up. Ben told the major, ‘This is Nick Ball, sub-lieutenant. He’s the fellow that counts, small-boat genius… Major, are there still seventeen of you?’
‘Yeah. Half in each boat, eh? Oh – here’s your senior British officer – Tom Bristol, squadron leader.’ Ben shook hands with him ‘Should get a move on, if you’re ready. Two trips: first one I’ll take four and the sub here’ll take five; we’ll be back in about an hour and take four each. OK?’
‘Whatever you say. Australian – right?’
‘Couldn’t miss it, could you?’ Thinking about that light, narrowing his eyes into the darkness, looking for it. It should have been visible from here – if it was still shining and in the same place…
It was. So that was fine. The major was telling the crowd of men around him, ‘Nine of you, this time. Five in that boat, four in this. I’ll wait with the next crowd. Get to it, fellers.’
The light was still there, its apparent flickering due probably to the distance and the conditions between here and there. Bearing near enough due east. Struggling back on this first return trip – the rowers having a much harder time of it, fighting out with the weather broad on the bow and Ben’s scull needing all his strength right from the start to hold her on course, and four Americans crouched on the dinghy’s bottom-boards – he had the light somewhere near abeam ail the way. It had to be a couple of miles away, and the distance from shore to ship was only about 250 yards; the bearing couldn’t have changed by more than a degree or two between shore and ship.
His first sight of the gunboat came after he’d seen Ball alter course sharply into the wind to run up alongside. Hughes had been ready for them, had her lying across the wind again to make the transfer of passengers easier. He’d have been counting off the minutes, Ben guessed. They’d left the island just after 0200, and it was now 0250. Twenty minutes – roughly – ship to shore, and forty-five shore to ship: they had a barely adequate hour now in which to get back to the beach, embark the rest and bring them out – and from Hughes’ angle to have them on board, boats out of the water and anchor out of the sand by 0400.
It wasn’t a stipulated deadline, but no-one could fail to be unaware that even with this heavy overcast, any later than that you’d be looking for the first flush of dawn.
As would the Germans in their coastal defence positions.
Ben’s Yanks were directed to the ladder, and hauled on board. Abercrombie was then relieved by A.B. Bright, a Gosport man, and Davidson by ‘Tommo’ Farr from Port Talbot. Real name Jimmy, nicknamed after the great Tommy Farr who a lot of people thought should have been given the decision at his world heavyweight championship fight with Joe Louis in ’37.
Ball pushed off, Ben followed, as before. Anxiety over the time element was ameliorated by the comfort of having the light still there. If he should happen to lose sight of Ball he’d have at least some idea of a course to steer. He’d thought about using the wind direction for the same purpose, but it wouldn’t have helped much, particularly as it seemed to be backing and veering from one minute to another between southwest and northwest: how it felt, anyway – which was what counted.
In the sea, as much as on it.
Same routine then at the island: Ball into the surf-line first, then Ben well clear of him, and airmen wading into the surf to meet them. They’d separated themselves into two teams and were ready to embark; the dinghies had only to be turned round, to battle their way out again.
Time: three-nineteen. Ben’s passengers were the American major, the R.A.F. squadron leader and two sergeant-pilots. Two each side of the boat, steadying it and ready to push off and jump in. Ben told them, pointing in Ball’s direction, ‘Let him away first. He has the compass.’
‘You don’t?’
Shouting, over the thunderous booming of the surf… ‘Borrowed boat, this one. Came with a duff compass.’ To his crew then: ‘Oars forward!’
They couldn’t start rowing until the passengers were inboard: taking the dinghy out a few yards first, foam boiling up thigh-deep. Ben yelled, ‘All right, get in!’ A wail like a seagull’s shriek, to his own ears and above the surrounding din: and they were in, the dinghy beginning to swing away – with the danger of being rolled over – but OK then as the oarsmen put their weight into it. Ben looking for Ball’s boat…
There. Thank God…
Scull in, ruddering her round to get on to Ball’s port quarter. Easier than following directly astern, with the rowers’ heads and shoulders blocking one’s view some of the time. He’d realized this on the last trip out to the ship and had felt stupid for not having caught on to it before.
The light was still there, with its fast, infinitesimal flicker. Then as the dinghy plunged into a trough, nothing in sight at all, only the stroke oar’s regular lunging to and fro and the white flashes of broken water, a wave’s white-fringed crest overhanging, threatening… Rolling hard to port as he steered her round to climb it: telling himself, Be alongside just after four. Won’t have been bad going, for an amateur…
Riding high again then: but he couldn’t see Ball’s boat. Down in a trough of its own, he supposed. Then, watching for its reappearance, he realized suddenly that the wind was well abaft the beam, quickly wrenched the scull’s blade outward to haul her round ten or twenty degrees to starboard: the fact occurring to him that if you let that happen too often, or steered ten degrees off course for say one minute, Ball would by then be a long way out of sight: also that in terms of steering by the wind direction as one felt it, twenty or even thirty degrees this way or that was as good as you could hope for.
Find that light…
Smell of vomit in the wind. The last lot had been sick, too.
There. Close to the beam – where it belonged. So – OK. Now find Ball.
Not immediately, you wouldn’t. Falling bow-down again, black water lifting like a wall ahead. Just hang on, no panic…
Because of the existence of that light, no panic.
Shooting up again: the dinghy practically standing on her transom – and trying to pay off as the wind hit her bow. He’d checked that: and the oarsmen were performing miracles. No pauses, no mis-strokes: in these conditions… Still couldn’t damn well see Ball, though. How long since he last saw him? Much too long – that was for sure… Sweep-oar well out to starboard again, his weight on it… Bloody hell, though, the law of swings and roundabouts had to apply here, surely, at least some of the time you’d have to be well up simultaneously – see each other?
If you were in visibility range at all…
Check on the light again.
Couldn’t find it…
Had to be there. Less than a minute ago it had been in sight, on the beam. Even if – well, if you were say forty degrees off course – which theoretically was – well, Christ’s sake…
No light anywhere. Switched off, or covered? He’d searched all round – an acknowledgement in itself of having little idea which way he had the dinghy pointed.
But he hadn’t. Hadn’t a bloody notion…