Killing Ground (14 page)

But for the damage caused by the explosion Kleiber knew he would have had another attempt to find the convoy. And
H-38.

Boots grated on the casing and he saw the seamen gathering up the mooring wires, kicking them free of ice.

Kleiber glanced around the narrowing anchorage. They could not stop here. It would be back to Kiel again to put matters right. By the time they eventually reached their French base it would be summer. They said there was fresh butter, wine and good food a-plenty in France. Women too probably, to get his men into more trouble.

He thought of his home in Hamburg. They would all ask, “Home again? When do you leave?” Maybe it was like that in all navies.

He thought of the thunder and crack of depth-charges. He had grown to accept them, although he had heard that the enemy were acquiring better anti-submarine weapons.

But time was running out for the British. They did not have enough escorts, and could not provide air cover for the convoys where it was most needed. Whereas Germany was building more submarines, faster and bigger than ever before. It was a race which could only have one ending. The Americans could not offer much help; they were too enmeshed in the Pacific, fighting the Japanese and seeing the enemy drawing closer and closer to a homeland which had never known the destruction of war.

The Russians were falling back and the convoys to Murmansk must soon stop. Even the British, desperate, with their backs to the wall, would have to admit defeat there, just as their army was being defeated in the Western Desert. He paused in his private evaluation and passed a few brief orders down to the control room. The first heaving line snaked through the thinning snow and soon had a wire eye bent on to it.

Kleiber saw the caps and greatcoats of senior officers waiting to come aboard. To hear his part of the game they played at HQ with their flags and coloured counters.

The diesels puffed out choking fumes and shuddered into silence.

Kleiber straightened his oil-stained cap and climbed down to the casing-deck.

“Besatzung stillgestanden!”

He saluted his men on the fore-casing, and only then did he turn to meet the visitors.

Respect had to be earned from these men. It did not come only with the white cap.

Lieutenant-Commander David Howard switched off the remaining light in his day cabin and felt his way to one of the scuttles. It took physical effort to unscrew the deadlight and then open the scuttle; weeks and weeks of being tightly secured had seen to that.

He held his face to the air and took several long, deep breaths. It was all so unreal, like the day cabin, or part of a nightmare,
the strangle-grip which almost stopped his breathing when the alarm bells screamed out in the night, or when Howard had awakened in his bridge chair, the sky bright from some burning merchantman.

The only light here was a fine edge of deep gold around a solitary cloud, and soon that would be gone as night gave an even denser darkness to the Firth of Clyde.

After the bitter days and nights on the upper bridge the air here felt almost balmy. He strained his eyes as if to see the sprawling town of Greenock beyond the dockyard, but it was sealed-off as tightly as any cupboard. Here and there a boat chugged through the darkness, showing itself occasionally with a bow-wave, or some shaded light as it approached a mooring buoy. After so many weeks of endless duty,
Gladiator
had been sent back to Britain in this, the middle of June.

But not before she had completed another convoy to Murmansk and several hazardous anti-submarine sweeps to clear the way for a second, homeward bound.

He still thought of that convoy which had been the first for many of his company, when they had been attacked by aircraft. There had been one final victim before the ships were taken into the port for unloading. The freighter
Empire Viceroy
which had been under tow with her stern high out of the water had gone down quite suddenly within sight of land. So the losses had risen to twelve, nearly half the total number when you considered that the fighter catapult vessel, and the converted anti-aircraft ship
Tromp II
had been counted amongst the thirty to be escorted from Iceland. It was ironic that none of the escorts had lost a man.

Reluctantly, Howard sealed the scuttle again and switched on all the lights. Even this place felt different, he thought. Damp, unlived-in; that was nothing new, but he could sense another change in the whole ship, as if there was surprise and not just relief at being here.

When he had opened the scuttle he had heard music blaring out from the messdecks and W/T office, the buzz of voices
through the bulkhead where Marrack would soon assemble the officers and Howard would be invited to join them in what was theoretically their own, private mess.

He stared at the desk, the neat piles of papers and requests he had spent most of the day scrutinising and signing so that Ireland, the petty officer writer, could parcel them up to be collected by the guard-boat.

Breakages, losses, reports on machinery and supplies, ammunition and fuel. He had to deal with it, stand in a queue with all the other commanding officers.

He glanced at the cupboard where he kept his personal stock of brandy but decided against it. Not yet anyway.

He crossed to the mirror inside his sleeping cabin and touched his face with his fingers. The first real shave he had had for weeks.

He thought suddenly of his ship's company, and smiled. They would care little for the neat piles of forms and documents. First priority was mail from home. Second, leave.

He watched his eyes as he smiled. Like a stranger. The lines around his mouth, the deep shadows beneath his eyes seemed to smooth out. He was twenty-seven. He had been feeling as old as time. Howard looked at the neat bed which Vallance or a messman would turn down for him. Another rare harbour ritual.

Would it work this time? He stared around with sudden anxiety. His quarters, usually so spacious, seemed to have shrunk so that he felt restrained. He knew it was because of the convoys, where his quarters had been the sea and the sky with only catnaps in his hutch of a sea cabin to confine him.

He winced as he touched his face again—his freshly shaved skin felt raw and tender. Perhaps Treherne and some of the others had the right idea in growing beards. He thought of young Ayres. They said he did not shave at all yet.

A few familiar faces would be gone when
Gladiator
was committed to her next task. New ones to know and trust, or to have them trust him.

There was a tap at the door and Marrack stepped over the coaming, his cap beneath his elbow. He looked fresh and sleek; “polished” might describe him best, Howard thought. He had come through it all very well, and had shown little concern for the hatred he had roused by his constant efforts to keep everyone on top line.

Marrack glanced past him at the cabin, like a detective looking for clues. “All ready, sir.” He gave a brief smile. “Bar's open.”

With a start Howard realised it was another rarity to see all his wardroom together at once. The place was welcoming and comfortable, with the foul-weather covers removed from the red leather chairs and club fender. All the usual wardroom clutter, pictures of the King and Queen on either side of the ship's crest, a rack of revolvers behind a locked glass door, an empty letter-rack, and beyond the barely swaying curtain which divided it from the dining section, the table, properly laid out, instead of the mugs and slopping dishes which had been common enough in the Arctic. Those officers who had been seated got to their feet, and Howard nodded to them. Another sea-change, he thought. Gilt buttons and ties, instead of filthy sweaters and scuffed boots.

A ship at rest.

Petty Officer Vallance held out a glass to him on a tray. It was filled almost to the top and he guessed it was a Horse's Neck.

Treherne spoke as he raised his own glass. “The first one—remember, sir?”

Howard drank slowly, although he did not recall what Treherne meant.

“Relax, gentlemen.” He perched on the club fender as Vallance and a messman refilled glasses and made notes at the little bar counter to make certain no officer conveniently forgot his mess account.

Howard said, “I'll tell you what's happening—what
I
know, that is.”

That brought a few grins, except from old Arthur Pym the Gunner (T). In the deckhead lights his bald pate shone like a
marker buoy, and his tight-lipped mouth was set in the usual sour disapproval. He looked ancient, and beside Ayres he could have been a grandfather.

Howard continued, “The Asdic and radar boffins are coming aboard as soon as we move alongside tomorrow forenoon, then there's a boiler-clean.” He glanced at the Chief, unrecognisable without his white boiler-suit and grease-smudged cap. “So be ready for the signal.”

It was a miracle how Evan Price and his engine-room crew had kept the shafts spinning in all seas under every kind of pressure. This morning, when they had made fast to a buoy, Price had come to the bridge to stare at the land, drinking it in.

When Howard tried to thank him for his efforts Price had shrugged and had offered his lop-sided grin, something originally caused by a loose wrench when he had first gone to sea, and said, “I must be mad, sir. My dad was a miner, see? I worked to
better
myself, no down the pit for me, I said!”

Together they had watched the gulls swooping over the masts, sharing their momentary freedom. Then Price had said, “Look at me now—I spend more time creeping about in the darkness than my Dad ever did!”

Howard saw Vallance taking his empty glass away to refill it. He had barely noticed drinking it.
The old wardroom devil.

“We've got a list for the dockyard maties to lose themselves in for about …” He felt them tense and added, “Three weeks. So there'll be leave for the port watch and the first part of starboard watch. Number One and the cox'n are already working on it.” He met their various gazes. “We had the usual signals from Welfare, I'm afraid. Two homes bombed—one, Stoker Marshall, lost his whole family. Such cases get preference, of course.”

He looked at the crest; it enabled him to turn away from their eyes. What a bloody awful thing to happen. One of Evan Price's men. A stoker who had been aboard for over a year. To go through hell, half-expecting death to come bursting into the racing machinery, then to get back and be told about his family.

And for what?
He remembered the smouldering anger of the Canadian escort commander who had come aboard in Murmansk. The commodore had died of wounds shortly after making his last signal and
Beothuck's
captain had assumed overall charge. He had been ashore to discuss berthing and fuelling for the escorts, and the Russians had barely been interested. When he had told them something of the losses, the sacrifice in men and ships, one had merely commented, “Then, Captain, you should send more ships!”

The Russians had refused to allow them into their base at Polynaroe, but Howard had been expecting that. Worse, they had not permitted the landing of some of the badly wounded and disabled survivors.

And it was still going on, exactly as they had left it. One convoy, which had been reduced to three-and-a-half knots by a gale-force head-wind, had been attacked by aircraft and destroyers from Norway because some of the escorts had been running out of fuel and were detached to head for the Faeroes to top up their bunkers. A third of that convoy had been scattered and sunk.

You should send more ships.

He tore his mind from the shrieking bombs and the stricken freighters lurching out of line, sinking or on fire.

“This is confidential. After taking on new equipment and some replacements for our company, we shall join a newly formed escort group for a working-up period, yet to be decided. Questions?”

Finlay asked, “Back to the Atlantic after that, sir?” So casually put, like a man asking about the cricket score.

Howard smiled. Finlay, perhaps more than anyone, had actually thrived on their discomfort in the Arctic. It was the first time his department had been able to fire on and actually hit a U-Boat, and the overall gunnery against aircraft had been faultless. He was losing his gunner's mate, who was going for warrant rank ashore, and one of his ordnance mechanics too.

He replied, “I believe that may be so.” In minutes it would be all over the ship. A spot of leave, then back to the bloody Atlantic.
Sugar and poison. He shook his head as Vallance made to refill his glass. Then he said quietly, “I don't have to drum it into you,” his glance fell on the pink-faced midshipman, “any of you, after what you have just seen and done. If anyone asks you what you're doing, tell them simply this: you are achieving impossibilities because each and every one of you has become a veteran,
just by being there!”

Marrack said, “Thank you, sir. I can speak for the wardroom as a whole, I think.”

Treherne grinned through his beard. “You will anyway, Number One!”

Marrack frowned slightly. A witness had distracted his brief. “We all appreciate what you have done, sir.” There was a murmur of approval, even from old Pym. “We've lost a lot of good ships, but we saved quite a lot too. For myself, I'm proud to be a part of it.”

Nobody laughed at Marrack's remark, and for him it had been an outburst, Howard thought. The tall lieutenant meant every word of it.

Howard moved through them to the door where Petty Officer White, the Buffer, was waiting to do Rounds.

Howard hesitated, then turned away from his own quarters and ran lightly up the ladder to the lobby where Leading Seaman Bishop was leaning over the quartermaster's desk.

Howard could feel Bishop staring after him as he stepped out on to the deck, the breeze of the firth greeting him like an old friend. Had he been thinking that it was hopeless, wasted—marking time while awaiting the inevitable? The thought seemed to shake him bodily. All the parades and the training in peacetime, regattas and girls in low-cut dresses at wardroom parties in the Med. He had since been made to re-learn
everything,
no less completely than men like Marrack and Bizley. What he had been taught in those far-off days had proved utterly useless. Was that how his father's war had been, why Mister Mills had lost control of his feelings on that and probably other Armistice Days?