Strike from the Sea (1978)
| Strike from the Sea (1978) | |
| Reeman, Douglas | |
| (2012) | |
| Tags: | WWII/Navel/Fiction WWII/Navel/Fictionttt |
INDO-CHINA 1941 Cruising somewhere off Saigon is the world's largest and most dangerous submarine - the French Soufrière. A rich prize for the enemy, the British navy must capture her for themselves before she is used against them. For Commander Robert Ainslie, it represents the greatest challenge of his career. He must take the foreign submarine and use her against the enemy in the defence of Singapore...
Contents
About the Author
Douglas Reeman joined the Navy in 1941. He did convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats. As he says, ‘I am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring appeal for people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal and sometimes elusive triangle of man, ship and ocean, particularly under the stress of war, produces the best qualities of courage and compassion, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the conflict . . . The sea has no understanding of righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy, respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’
Reeman has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty best-selling historical novels, featuring Richard Bolitho and his nephew Adam Bolitho, under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.
Also by Douglas Reeman
A Prayer for the Ship
High Water
Send a Gunboat
Dive in the Sun
The Hostile Shore
The Last Raider
With Blood and Iron
H.M.S. Saracen
Path of the Storm
The Deep Silence
The Pride and the Anguish
To Risks Unknown
The Greatest Enemy
Rendezvous – South Atlantic
Go In and Sink
The Destroyers
Winged Escort
Surface with Daring
A Ship Must Die
Torpedo Run
Badge of Glory
The First to Land
The Volunteers
The Iron Pirate
In Danger’s Hour
The White Guns
Killing Ground
The Horizon
Sunset
A Dawn Like Thunder
Battlecruiser
Dust on the Sea
For Valour
Strike from
the Sea
Douglas Reeman
To my friend Myron J. Smith Jr.
who gave me the idea
1
Away from It All
COMMANDER ROBERT AINSLIE
sat very still in a cane-backed chair and surveyed the waiting-room without enthusiasm. It was painted white and almost completely bare but for a couple of chairs and a portrait of the King on the opposite wall. An onlooker, had there been one, would have imagined Ainslie to be listening, or crouching on the chair ready to leap up. In fact, he was trying to keep his spine away from the chair back, for despite the revolving fans above his head the room was stuffy and humid, and any sort of contact increased the discomfort and made his shirt cling to his skin like a damp rag.
He looked at the shuttered window through which the harsh sunlight sliced across the room with silver bars. It seemed incredible that people could breathe out there, let alone use so much energy.
Booted feet stamped lustily across some sort of square, and he heard a Royal Marine sergeant’s voice from a great distance away, controlling the marching men, manoeuvring them like a ring-master at a circus.
‘At the
halt,
on the
right,
f . . o . . r . . m
squad
!’
The sudden silence was almost worse.
Ainslie tried not to look at his watch, knowing it would only rouse his anger again. He could feel the weariness closing in on him and had to fight it back like something physical: Hold on a bit longer until he had ‘settled in’, as someone had remarked upon his arrival.
It was hard to compare this place with Britain, he thought. November 1941 and the London he had left four days back had been a far cry from the naval base on Singapore Island. Four days of flying in various aircraft, watching the changing scenery at each touch-down, meeting the mixed bunch of passengers on their way to join service units, to replace dead or wounded, to set up headquarters, and all the countless other missions of a nation at war.
As he had climbed stiffly from the aircraft on Singapore Island five hours ago he had sensed the difference immediately. Ainslie was thirty years old, and a professional naval officer to his fingertips. He had visited Singapore several times during his career and that made it all the more surprising, for apart from a lot more uniforms wandering about the airport, or thronging the streets through which he had been whisked in a staff car, nothing appeared to have altered.
He thought again of Britain, and London in particular. Nightly air raids, rationing, blackout, and the grim knowledge that only the English Channel stood between liberty and the might of the German Army. Every ally had fallen to the seemingly invincible Axis war machine, and London’s streets were as full of those uniforms as Britain’s and her Commonwealth’s. Dutch and Danish, Norwegian and Free French, Belgian and Polish, Czechs and all the rest. They helped to remind everyone of the Germans’ successes almost as much as the sad defiance of their old allies.
Only in the air above Britain and along the North African shores where the newly formed Eighth Army had somehow managed to hold the German advances had there been actual victories. The Battle of the Atlantic, which had mounted to an increasing ferocity with each bloody convoy, had long outpaced the margin of winning or losing. It had become a matter of survival. Daily the toll of ships lost to torpedo and bomb rose higher, and the Navy’s demands for more and more men increased accordingly. Officers were given commands normally offered to men of greater experience and service, trained ratings were spread thinly over the growing mass of recruits and volunteers to share their skills as best they could.
Robert Ainslie had been a submariner for almost half of his service and had left his last command, the
Tigress,
just three months earlier after an unbroken commission in the embattled Mediterranean.
Three months with the underground world of intelligence in the Admiralty’s bomb-proof bunkers or visiting the submarine base at Gosport where he had done his original underwater training. And now, after all that, and the arduous flight from England, Ainslie had been sitting in this waiting-room like a new boy at school.
He could tell from the way he had been greeted by the base
staff that they knew something of his work, if not his actual mission, which was supposed to be top secret – if anything could be kept secret when more than two people knew about it.
Ainslie had tried to think that they felt out of things here in Singapore. The island, like the Malayan peninsula to the north, was untouched by war, and apparently clung rigidly to an almost colonial existence.
But he was beginning to think differently. They actually resented him because he reminded them of that ‘other war’. He touched his reefer jacket with his fingers, the small effort making the sweat trickle down his armpit. He was still wearing the blue uniform he had donned in London. It was to be hoped his tropical gear had arrived safely, he thought wearily. His fingers moved along the ribbons on the left breast. Distinguished Service Cross and Bar. He had got used to them, and at home decorations were commonplace. But out here he was different, or so it appeared. An odd man out.
A door opened and a small, wiry man in a very crumpled grey suit came in and sat down in the other chair.
Ainslie watched him, recalling their first meeting, and how his affection for the little man had grown. He looked like a badly paid schoolteacher, or a clerk from a City office. In fact, he was Commander Gregory Critchley of naval intelligence.
Critchley took out a cigarette and lit it unhurriedly. He glanced round for an ashtray and, finding none, threw the match on the brightly polished floor.
‘Inhospitable bastards!’ He smiled at Ainslie, dropping his tired lines like another skin. ‘Not long now. I’ve spoken to someone.’ He chuckled. ‘I think we are about to be received.’
Ainslie stood up carefully and walked to the window. The marines were drilling again, and he remembered hearing there was to be a big parade in the city in a few weeks’ time. A Christmas celebration apparently.
It made him suddenly angry. He thought of the crowded air-raid shelters in London, a pub with its windows blasted out, a double-decker bus on its side amongst the rubble. Tired, brave, often pathetic people. How long would they hold out if they knew about this sort of red tape? he wondered.
Critchley watched him through his cigarette smoke, reading his thoughts. He had come to like Ainslie very much. He even
looked
the part. Tall, with a clean-cut, youthful face, fair hair and bright blue eyes, he had an air of confidence about him which Critchley now knew to be deceptive. Despite the medals, the stories of Ainslie’s considerable courage and ability, he knew him to be very critical of himself, and conscious of the men who from choice or compulsion were made to follow him.
Ainslie asked, ‘Don’t they
want
to win the bloody war? What’s the matter with everyone?’
‘Self-preservation, old son. They think they’re doing their job merely by standing firm in this “invincible fortress”, as they call it.’
Ainslie turned back to the window again. ‘All the ships lost, all those men killed. You’d have thought they would have learned something, surely?’
Critchley stood up, his head cocked to the sound of footsteps. ‘Keep your Scottish temper under its lid, Bob. They’ll come round. I’ll do the explaining, and you impress them with your splendid calm!’ He dug him in the ribs. ‘They are in our Navy, you know!’
Ainslie picked up his new cap with its bright peak of oak leaves. ‘I was beginning to wonder!’
A poker-faced flag-lieutenant ushered them into a large office where the chief of staff was standing beside his desk waiting to greet them. Ainslie had the impression he had arranged himself for their entrance. He was a full captain, and his white uniform, like his desk,-was as neat as a pin.
Critchley announced, ‘This is Captain Armytage.’ He glanced calmly at the senior officer. ‘The commodore is away at Keppel Harbour, and the admiral’s apparently up country on an inspection.’
Ainslie caught his tone, the merest hint of sarcasm.
But the chief of staff shook their hands and offered them chairs.
He said, ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. You know how it is. Lot to do just now.’
Critchley asked mildly, ‘The war, sir?’
‘Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. There’s the regatta coming off, too. All part and parcel of morale, what?’
He picked up a manilla folder and put it in the our tray. Then he said, ‘All a bit of a mystery. Your mission, that is. The admiral takes the view that Whitehall is getting too much steam
up when they ought to be putting their minds to better things.
Ainslie said, ‘Does he?’
Critchley said quickly, ‘I think Commander Ainslie could put you in the picture better than I, sir. He is, after all, a professional at this kind of thing.’
The captain’s brows came together in a frown. ‘I
know
why you’re here. I’m not a fool.’ He calmed himself with an effort and looked at Ainslie. ‘Tell me about it then.’