Sunset
Authors: Douglas Reeman
Contents
1941. To the residents and defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the war in Europe remains remote. Even the massive build-up of Japanese forces on the Chinese border cannot dent their carefree optimism.
Yet one man suspects the truth. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke, captain of HMS
Serpent
and a veteran of the cruel Atlantic, sees all too clearly the folly and incompetence of Hong Kong's colonial administration. To Brooke, attack by Japan seems inevitable.
But, in war, there will always be some who attempt the impossible, even in the face of death. This is the story of one ship and her company who refuse to accept the anguish of defeat and surrender to a merciless enemy . . .
Douglas Reeman Joined the Navy in 1941, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches. He did convoy duty in the Arctic and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats. As he says, âI am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring interest for people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal 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.'
Apart from the many novels he has written under his own name, he has also written more than twenty historical novels featuring Richard and Adam Bolitho, under the pseudonym of Alexander Kent.
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
The Deep Silence
Path of the Storm
The Pride and the Anguish
To Risks Unknown
The Greatest Enemy
Rendezvous â South Atlantic
Go In and Sink!
The Destroyers
Winged Escort
Surface with Daring
Strike from the Sea
A Ship Must Die
Torpedo Run
Badge of Glory
The First to Land
The Volunteers
The Iron Pirate
Against the Sea
(non-fiction)
In Danger's Hour
The White Guns
Killing Ground
The Horizon
A Dawn Like Thunder
Battlecruiser
Dust on the Sea
For Valour
The Glory Boys
Knife Edge
Twelve Seconds to Live
Douglas Reeman
For Kim â
orchids in the rain and so many memories,
with all my love.
We are all islands in a bitter sea.
Chinese Proverb
The author wishes to thank his friend Robert Cheung, and the Royal Navy at H.M.S.
Tamar
, Hong Kong, for their ready assistance.
Colours
The khaki staff car rolled to a halt, and after some hesitation the Royal Marine driver offered, âNo boat there yet, sir.'
âThat's all right, I'll send for one. Take my gear down to the hut on the jetty. Then you can go back to H.Q.'
The marine shrugged. He was used to the ways of regular naval officers; at least he thought he was. His passenger had spoken no more than a few words on this early morning drive from Kirkwall, but had looked directly ahead along the deserted road as if he was preparing for something.
Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke climbed from the big Humber car and stamped his feet on the stone paving. He was stiff, weary from the long journey from the south, and was surprised that he had been unable to sleep in the small, spartan cabin they had found for him in Kirkwall. It was early morning, and he saw some gulls bobbing on the undulating water. Even they were not ready to start their search around the many anchored warships for scraps flung over the side.
It was just that he could not bring himself to wait any longer, go through the business of having breakfast with other officers on transit whom he would not know and might never see again.
He shivered and watched the great expanse of gently moving water. Quiet, deceptively so for this place so well known to sailors in two world wars: Scapa Flow, a safe anchorage for big ships and the many other smaller vessels needed to protect their every move. The sky was colourless and only the sea's horizon, resting
between the islands of the Flow like the water in some huge dam, showed any life. Like an unending silver thread, he thought.
This was the first week of April, 1941. Southern England, which he had left three days ago, was already responding to the hope of spring, if nothing else. Here in Scapa only the weather changed. The islands that crouched around this protected place were bleak and weathered, and the sea's face could alter here within an hour, with currents that could make even the most experienced commander grit his teeth when his ship suddenly seemed to be under a greater control, and rain, sleet and murderous winds that chilled a man to the bone.
This was Scapa's rarer face. But to Brooke this was not just another day.
The marine clicked his heels and saluted. âAll done, sir.' He hesitated, still unsure. âIf you're certain, that is?'
Brooke nodded. âThank you, yes.' He turned as the man strode away and crashed the car's gears to show what he thought about it.
Esmond Brooke was twenty-nine years old, but felt ten years older. He examined his feelings again. It was easier without the watching eyes, the curiosity of the H.Q. staff who regarded newcomers as a link with all they had left behind. Scapa was a refuge and a retreat, while the war which had raged in other parts of the world for some eighteen months had seemed like another existence.
He looked at the water below Scapa Bay. Sheltered, yes, but the war had intruded even here. In the second month of hostilities a German submarine had risked everything to breach the booms and defences, and had torpedoed the battleship
Royal Oak
while she rested at her moorings, with the appalling loss of over eight hundred lives. Like many others, Brooke had been stunned in those early days by the apparent ease with which the attack had been executed. But that had been then, when the whole nation had still believed in the invincible might of the Royal Navy. Peace or war, it had seemed the one sure shield they could rely upon.
Brooke thought of the ship he had just left: H.M.S.
Murray
, one of the fleet's big flotilla leaders, built in the mid-thirties, a new ship when compared with all the veterans that had been flung
into the front line of war when the Germans had marched into Poland.
The
Murray
had been taken out of commission at Portsmouth while she underwent a complete and much needed overhaul, with new weapons to be fitted, and men who were trained to use them in what had become a very different sort of war. He had left behind, too, a different Portsmouth. Acres of bombed and blackened buildings, whale-like barrage balloons on the hills and beyond the city to snare any hit-and-run bombers, while in the dockyard men worked all hours to repair the damaged ships, turn them round and get them to sea again without delay.
Brooke's mouth lifted in a wry smile. When they were not on strike, he thought bitterly.
Murray
's people would be scattered to the demands of the fleet. To fight through the hard-pressed convoys which were somehow keeping Britain from starvation, to cover the troops as they fell back from one military disaster after another. Holland, France, Norway and now Greece and Crete; the list seemed endless.
Murray
had taken part in most of it. Brooke had been first lieutenant to the flotilla leader, the Captain (D), a four-ringed skipper of the old school, who had feared nothing but had been totally unprepared for what had been expected of him and his handful of destroyers.
Somewhere in the far distance Brooke heard a bugle call. From one of the battleships most likely, where the hands would be already turned-to, washing down decks, spit-and-polish, war or no war.
Then breakfast, Jack's favourite: bacon and eggs, except that after a year and a half of war spam had replaced bacon and the eggs came out of a tin. The thought made his stomach contract. He could barely recall when he had had a proper meal. No wonder the Royal Marine had given him such a strange glance. Another one going round the bend, he had probably thought.
And now he was here. The moment which had denied him sleep was a reality. He walked to the edge of the jetty and watched the water rising and falling against the weathered stone, as if some great sea creature was about to break surface.
He thought about his captain, the last handshake before
Brooke had quit the ship to make way for the dockyard maties and their murderous cutters and welders. It seemed unlikely that the captain, old for his rank, would face the fury of a full gale again. To a new training establishment, perhaps? One of the many which overnight had acquired war-paint, with a White Ensign to make the transformation official, and where, equally, schoolboys were transformed into temporary officers in three months, and clerks and fishmongers into gunners, torpedo men and stokers. Even in
Murray
there had been a couple of hostilities-only officers called â
Wavy Navy
' because of their stripes, and accepted with affection or otherwise as their efficiency dictated. Within another year there would be more reservists than regulars. Brooke bit his lip.
If we survive that long
.
He heard another car coming down the narrow road and knew that his isolation was over.
It was a small van, and an equally small Wren slid from behind the wheel and gave him a brief but searching glance.
Brooke wore a plain raincoat, and his cap was the same as that of any other naval officer below commander. She would not know who he was. He turned and looked back towards the town and saw a touch of pale sunshine light up the weather vane on the top of St Magnus's Cathedral steeple.
He was wrong. The girl saluted, something quite rare up here except for senior officers. The Wrens could be choosy. After all, there were some six hundred sailors to every one of them.
She said, âCommander Brooke, sir?' She looked concerned. âYou shouldn't have been kept waiting like this!' She sounded indignant for one so small and young. âI'll ring H.Q., sir.'
Brooke smiled. âIt's quite all right. I needed to think.' He guessed she was from naval headquarters. They seemed to know everything even before you did.
She nodded. âYou're
Serpent
's new commanding officer.'
He looked at the Flow again. âYes.'
She kicked a stone into the water. âI'm waiting for the NAAFI manager's boat.' In the pale light she might have blushed. âHe's trying to get me some stockings. Silk ones.'