‘That isn’t exactly good news,’ Michaels said, watching the commander disappear around a corner.
‘It’s bloody bad news, in my opinion,’ Rochester said.
That seemed like a fair summary of the situation to Dawson. He hadn’t much enjoyed the trip up the coast of Holland in the MTB, and he guessed that bobbing about in the North Sea in something even smaller would empty the contents of his stomach in record time. And the commander’s idea that they should just head off into the waves hoping to get picked up by a passing ship sounded like madness.
But he doubted if he’d have very much choice in the matter.
‘Right,’ Michaels said. ‘If that’s the situation, all we can do is try and make the best of it. Barber and I know our way around small boats, so we’ll go and see what we can find in the harbour. Gordon, you’re in charge until we get back. Once the explosives arrive, get the men making up the charges with dynamite and gun cotton as Dawson has suggested. If we’re not back by the time you’ve finished doing that, start putting them into position, but obviously don’t fire them until we’ve sorted something out. This needs to be a coordinated effort.’
About a quarter of an hour after Michaels and Barber had walked away to start their search, the chief petty officer returned, a canvas haversack slung over his shoulder, and accompanied by two men each carrying a biggish wooden box.
‘Dynamite,’ he said, without elaboration, as the two sailors lowered the boxes to the ground with almost comically exaggerated care. ‘And detonators.’ He placed the haversack beside them.
‘How old is that stuff?’ Dawson asked, pointing at the two boxes.
‘No idea,’ the chief petty officer said. ‘Not my part of ship. We was just told to go to this warehouse place near the harbour a couple of weeks ago and pick up half a dozen of these wooden boxes and stuff to make it go bang. This is the two we’ve got left,’ he added, tapping his left boot against the side of one of the boxes.
‘Don’t do that,’ Dawson snapped, instinctively taking a step back. Not that doing so would have done any good if the explosive had detonated.
He moved forward and bent down beside the boxes to examine them.
‘Oh shit,’ he muttered.
‘What is it?’ Rochester asked.
‘Some bloody idiot has nailed down the lid.’
‘And that’s bad because they obviously had to hammer the nails into the wood and that might have made the dynamite explode? Is that what you mean?’
Dawson shook his head.
‘No. When it’s newly manufactured dynamite is incredibly stable. You can hit it with a hammer – almost – and nothing much will happen. You need a blasting cap to cook it off. The problem is that dynamite is mostly made of nitroglycerine, which is a really powerful explosive but also really sensitive. You can detonate nitroglycerine by almost any kind of shock, like giving it a kick.’ He glanced at the chief petty officer as he said this. ‘To sort of tone it down, the nitroglycerine is mixed with absorbents like powdered clay and a stabilizer, usually sodium carbonate, and that combination is called dynamite. The biggest danger is what happens to the explosive when you leave it alone.’
He slipped his bayonet from its scabbard, slid the tip of the blade under the lid of the box and levered it upwards. He lifted one side of the lid a couple of inches, then repeated the operation on the other side of the box. By alternating in this way, he managed to free the lid completely within just a few seconds.
‘Whoever did it used about 3-inch nails,’ he said, ‘which are far too long.’
He placed the lid to one side and then looked down at the sticks of dynamite that the box contained.
‘They don’t look too bad,’ he muttered, then lifted a couple of them off the top of the pile. Each stick – a dull red-coloured cardboard tube – was about 8 inches long and just over an inch in diameter.
Immediately, his expression changed.
‘These are damp,’ he said, placing them very carefully on the ground beside the box.
‘Damp?’ Rochester asked. ‘You mean there’s condensation on them? Or water’s got into the box?’
‘Nothing as simple as that. Or as harmless. The dampness is caused by weeping, by nitroglycerine seeping out of the dynamite, and the more weeping you get, the more unstable the explosive becomes. In extreme cases, you can even get crystals of nitroglycerine forming on the outside of the sticks, and when you see that, the best advice is to walk away very, very quickly and very, very quietly.’ He looked down into the open box in front of him. ‘Some of the nitroglycerine has pooled at the bottom of the box, but not too much, and I can’t see any crystals.’
He glanced up at Rochester and noticed that all the KFRE soldiers had moved a short distance away from him.
‘That won’t do you any good,’ Dawson said. ‘If this lot goes off now, it’ll flatten everything within about a 100-yard radius. Taking a few steps back isn’t going to help you at all.’
‘What can you do about that weeping, then?’ Rochester asked. Dawson noticed that the officer hadn’t moved backwards like everyone else.
‘Normally, you turn the boxes of dynamite on a regular basis, and that does help. The other thing you do is don’t nail the lids down so that you can see exactly what state the sticks are in without subjecting the box to any knocks. More importantly, the shelf life of dynamite is usually no more than about a year. That’s why I asked how old this was.’
‘So is that stuff safe to use? Or do we just get the chief here to take it away and do something else?’
‘No bloody chance of that,’ the chief petty officer said, backing away rapidly. ‘That’s your dynamite now so this is your problem. We’re out of here.’
‘We can use it,’ Dawson said, watching as the CPO and his two men walked quickly away down the road. ‘As long as we’re careful. That means that when you’re putting it in position you have to make sure it doesn’t get knocked by anything, just in case. In fact, it might be worth getting some paper or cardboard, or maybe cloth, that we can wrap around the charges to protect them.’
‘And is there enough of it there? To do the demolition, I mean?’
‘I think so, yes. These are what’s known as 60 per cent dynamite, and the other box probably has the same grade of explosive. That’s the weight strength, and all that means is that 60 per cent of each of these sticks is nitroglycerine. And that’s the most powerful kind of dynamite that you can normally get, 40 per cent dynamite is much more common. So I reckon there’s plenty of explosive power here to do the job.’
For almost the next hour, Dawson examined and carefully dried each of the sticks of dynamite to reduce the chance of an accidental detonation. Then he checked the contents of the haversack, before he showed the KFRE soldiers how to make up the demolition charges they’d need to destroy the harbour facilities. And he got one of the men to find some material – a couple of old sheets – to wrap around each of the charges to protect them from accidental damage when they were positioned.
Once the charges were all prepared, he opened the haversack and took out a couple of slim cardboard boxes and what looked like a coil of wire.
‘There are two ways of firing these charges,’ he said. ‘You can either put them in position, and then send a man you don’t like very much along with a hammer to hit the dynamite when you want it to go off – with the explosive in this state, that would probably work, but it’s messy, generates a lot of paperwork and you need plenty of hammers– the other way is to use one of these things.’
He held up a slim, pencil-like object.
‘This is a pyrotechnic blasting cap. We used these all the time in the mines where I used to work because they’re simple and reliable. And these,’ he added, again reaching into the haversack, ‘are the cone pliers you need to make up the fuses.’
He showed Rochester a pair of pliers about 8 inches long, obviously designed to crimp or squeeze objects, but only to a certain point. There were two openings in the jaws, one much larger than the other, and both serrated for a better grip. Impressed into the steel of the jaws were the name ‘Shelley’ and the distinctive ‘WD’ War Department logo, the letters separated by the usual upward-pointing arrow head.
That symbol dated back to the fourteenth century, and was normally known as the ‘king’s mark’, having been introduced by the English king, Edward III, to denote property that he owned. Later it was adopted by the British government as a kind of general indication of ownership.
‘The blasting cap is what actually fires the explosive, and that’s triggered by the pyrotechnic fuse, this kind of wire stuff. Inside this is a core of black powder. When you light the end of it, it’s designed to burn at a standard rate, usually about sixty seconds per foot, so you have time to light it and then get well out of the way before the charge goes off. Luckily, there’s plenty of fuse here, because we’re going to need quite long lengths of it to do some of the demo, especially when we sink the block ships.’
Dawson measured out the lengths of the fuse that he had calculated they would need for each of the demolition operations, cutting it into the appropriate sections with the blade of his bayonet. Then he picked up one of the blasting caps, slid the end of a length of the pyrotechnic fuse into it, picked up the pliers and crimped the base of the blasting cap around the fuse, using the smaller opening in the jaws of the cone pliers to compress the thin metal.
‘The first thing to remember is that you never do this close to the explosive, just in case the blasting cap detonates. The second thing to remember is to always use cone pliers or some other suitable kind of tool when you crimp the ends of the blasting cap. I met a guy once, a so-called explosives expert, who never used pliers. He reckoned he could do a better job, and faster, by using his teeth. The last time I saw him he was in hospital with most of his lower jaw missing because a cap had fired when he was crimping it.’
‘That’s the kind of mistake you only ever make once,’ Rochester said.
‘That’s true of most mistakes that people make when they’re working with explosives. It’s a kind of natural selection. That’s what another mining engineer told me. Do it badly wrong just the once and you’re dead.’
It only took Dawson a few minutes to attach the cut lengths of pyrotechnic fuse to the blasting caps. Then he put the prepared fuses into the haversack, and placed it on the ground some distance away from the tubes of dynamite that had been lashed together to make up the demolition charges.
‘We insert the blasting caps at the last possible moment,’ he said. ‘Just before we position the charges.’
Michaels and Barber returned a few minutes later, with the news that they had managed to commandeer a launch to get everybody out of IJmuiden.
‘It’s not very big,’ Michaels admitted, ‘but we can all fit on board. It’s got a compass, but that’s it as far as navigation instruments are concerned. It doesn’t even have any charts, but for the distance we have to go that probably doesn’t matter. After all, if you sail a boat out of any port in Holland and just keep going west, sooner or later you’ll end up on the British coast. And what it hasn’t got is a radio, so I’m going to go and see Commander Slater-Jones and see if he has access to a set. With a bit of luck, once we get out into the open sea he can try and whistle up some kind of Royal Navy ship so we can hitch a ride on that. That’s what I hope we can do anyway.’
Michaels inspected the charges that the KFRE men had prepared, and then Dawson and the three officers together checked that the fuses were the right length for the burn time they would need for each of the targets.
‘Right, lads,’ Michaels said. ‘We can get these in position right now, and I’ll just tell the commander that we’re ready to start.’
Getting the senior naval officer’s approval took less than five minutes, and then the men dispersed around the harbour, each small group heading for their designated target, one man carrying the charge, with another holding the prepared pyrotechnic fuse.
Michaels had been very specific in terms of the sequence of demolitions, insisting that the block ships would be the last targets to be hit, but he had not been concerned about the order in which the cranes and lock gates were blown. As it happened, the first of the lock gates was the closest target, and Dawson accompanied Captain Rochester and two of his men as they made their way towards it.
Because the hinge on the lock gate was some distance below the harbour wall that provided access, Dawson had prepared longer lengths of pyrotechnic fuse than he would normally have done. This was simply because the charge would have to be lowered on a rope into position several feet down, and obviously the fuse had to be ignited after that had been completed. Also, the extra length provided a greater margin of safety, and that was never a bad thing.
He watched critically as the KFRE soldier first lowered the charge over the side of the harbour wall and into the narrow gap between it and the steel lock gate, roughly measuring the distance. The man hauled up the charge again, took the blasting cap and inserted it carefully into the central stick of dynamite. Then he lowered the charge once more, hand over hand, while making sure that the pyrotechnic fuse did not pull out, or get tangled with the rope. Once the charge was in the correct position, he handed the end of the fuse to Dawson while he tied off the rope around a bollard.
‘Everything OK with this, Corp?’ the man asked.
Dawson nodded.
‘Looks good to me.’
Rochester glanced back until he spotted Captain Michaels, and waved to get his attention. Once he’d done so, he pointed at the lock gate, where the charge was now in the correct position.
Michaels looked around him, making sure that firing the charge would not be dangerous to any of his men or any of the other people in the harbour, then raised his hand to give a thumbs up signal.
‘We’re ready,’ Rochester said. ‘Fire it.’
The KFRE soldier lit a match and touched it to the end of the pyrotechnic fuse cord. Immediately, the fuse burst into life, a bright orange flame starting to burn at the end of it; a flame that began making its way steadily down the length of the fuse.
‘Fire in the hole!’ Dawson shouted, and repeated this twice more as they walked quickly away from the lock gate towards a safe area along the harbour wall. The expression obviously meant nothing to any of the Dutch workers, but they were all well clear of the site where the explosion was about to take place.
‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Rochester asked.
‘Fire in the hole? It’s an old mining term, sir. It’s been around for years. It means that an explosion is imminent. I think it refers to the way we blast out coal seams. You drill a hole into the rock, maybe 3 feet deep, something like that, then prepare a stick of dynamite with a fuse and slide it into the hole, with the end of the fuse outside. Once the fuse is alight, the flame of the burning black powder disappears into the hole, and when it does that there’s no way of reaching it or putting it out. So the fire really is in the hole.’
Just over six minutes later, they heard a loud and echoing explosion. As they watched, the lock gate, clearly still shaking and vibrating from the blast, toppled slowly sideways before hitting the water with a tremendous splash.
‘I think that’s buggered it good and proper,’ Rochester said. ‘Good work, Dawson.
For the next hour, IJmuiden harbour resounded with the noise of a succession of explosions, some larger than others, depending upon the target and its location. The destruction of the harbour cranes was perhaps the most spectacular, because they had needed to prepare multiple charges, formed from both gun cotton and dynamite, to ensure the simultaneous severing of different parts of the steel structure on one side of each crane.
The first one was destroyed shortly after the lock gate collapsed, the three simultaneous explosions of the cutting charges significantly louder than the first demolition, because not only had more explosive been used, but the detonation was in the open air, not trapped between a stone wall and a massive steel gate. For a few seconds after the charges blew, nothing seemed to happen. And then, extraordinarily slowly, the whole massive structure of the crane toppled sideways into the harbour. The base of it remained attached to the mount, the steel beams warped and twisted, and Dawson knew that the Germans would have to cut away the distorted metal and then recover the whole crane from the harbour – a major undertaking – otherwise that part of it would be completely unusable because of the huge underwater obstruction. Again, an excellent result from the point of view of the British troops.
The least impressive explosions were those on the two block ships, because the charges had been placed deep inside the hulls of the vessels and well below the waterlines. In each case, the noise was little more than a muffled thud, accompanied by two sudden sprays of water, one from each side of the target ship, a spray that vanished almost immediately. After that, nothing else appeared to happen to either vessel, but in fact both ships were steadily sinking to form a pair of massive blockades that would be immovable without the expenditure of enormous time and effort. And that, of course, was precisely the idea.
‘Now can we go home?’ Lieutenant Barber asked somewhat plaintively when they all assembled beside the harbour and stared at the second block ship, the faint echoes of the last explosion dying away as the vessel very slowly began to settle lower in the water.
‘I bloody well hope so,’ Michaels replied. ‘But before we go I should just check in once again with Commander Slater-Jones and try and sort out a radio. Hopefully he hasn’t got any other little jobs he’d like us to give him a hand with. The rest of you go off with Lieutenant Barber and wait near the launch for me to get back.’
Barber led the way along the southern wall of IJmuiden harbour towards the entrance and the open expanse of the North Sea beyond.
Dawson experienced an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu when he looked down from the harbour wall into the launch that Michaels and Barber had procured for them to make their escape from Holland. Significantly smaller even than the MTB in which he had arrived, it looked to him like an oversized rowing boat, the kind of craft that half a dozen friends might hire for a pleasant afternoon motoring up and down a river. It was, at least in Dawson’s opinion, clearly far too small to accommodate the entire KFRE group, and far too small and far too open to handle the waves of the North Sea.
There were no seats on which they could wait for the officer in charge to return, but there was a low and broad wall a few yards away, and Barber instructed them to sit on that until Michaels reappeared.
This he did a few minutes later, walking up to the group of tired and apprehensive men with a grim expression on his face.
‘I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that the commander is delighted with what we’ve managed to do in the harbour, but he has asked us to wait here rather than leave straight away.’ Michaels paused and looked at the men under his command, all of whom were staring at him with a kind of fixed and almost hostile intensity. ‘And he has got a good reason for asking that.