To Risks Unknown
Authors: Douglas Reeman
CONTENTS
The year: 1943. Now there was to be no more retreat for Britain and her Allies. At last the war was to be carried into enemy territory.
And, from captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa, The Royal Navy's Special Force was to be the probe and the spearhead of the advance.
To this unorthodox war came the corvette H.M.S.
Thistle
and her commanding officer, John Crespin. Both were veterans, she from the Atlantic, he from the trauma of seeing his last command and her company brutally destroyed.
Soon they would be fighting amongst remote Adriatic islands, helping the partisans and guerrillas with whom they had little in common, except an overwhelming common hatred of the enemy who had attacked and destroyed their countries.
Ship and crew had to be welded into a single fighting unit. And it had to be done, not in training, but on active duty.
Douglas Reeman did convoy duty in the navy in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea. He has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty bestselling historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.
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.
S
ARACEN
PATH OF THE STORM
THE DEEP SILENCE
THE PRIDE AND THE ANGUISH
For Benbow
with love
When duty calls to risks unknown,
Where help must come from thee alone,
Protect her from the hidden rock,
From War's dread engines' fatal shock:
Naval Prayer Book
IN 1943 BRITAIN
and her Allies had reached a turning point. There was to be no more retreat, no more pride in mere survival, but an all-out effort to carry the war to the enemy's territory, to seek and destroy him on his own ground.
From captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa the men of the Navy's Special Force were to be the probes of each major attack. They were an odd collection and as varied as their ships in which they carried the war far beyond the enemy's defences. But theirs was a strange war where stealth and individual cunning took precedence over tradition, where almost overnight the amateurs had become the professionals.
The whole panorama of warâand especially of war at that timeâwas made up of individual episodes. No one can tell how much difference each made to the whole, or indeed if some were necessary at all. This is the story of one such episode of a ship and of the eighty men of her company.
REAR-ADMIRAL PERCIVAL OLDENSHAW
stood with his arms folded and stared pensively through his office window at the rambling expanse of Portsmouth Dockyard. It was a very grey day, and although it was well into May it could have been mid-winter. The sky was hidden by low, dark bellied clouds, and the roofs of dockyard sheds and the crowded steel hulls of moored warships shone dully in a steady and persistent drizzle.
The admiral was a small, nuggety man with a face like tooled leather. He was bald but for a few wisps of grey hair, and the bright rectangle of decorations on the left breast of his impeccable uniform showed that he had seen the best part of his service long before most of the ships below him had been built, and before their companies had been born. In fact, he had retired from the Navy soon after the First World War and was well past seventy, and but for his stubborn and dogged persistence, his constant visits to the Admiralty and letters to all and sundry, it was likely that he would still be fretting in retirement.
In his heart he knew well enough that their lordships had allowed him to take over his office more to keep him quiet than with any hope of adding much to the war effort. On the sign outside his door it stated, âFlag Officer-in-Charge, Special Operations.'
In 1940 when that sign had first appeared it had been something of a sad joke, and as months dragged into years it was all but forgotten. But the admiral was not a man prepared to rest behind a title or a desk. If his active service had ceased with the memories of Jutland and the Dardanelles, his mind and keen brain were as exact and as demanding as ever.
With Britain wilting under defeats and reverses on every front, and the Battle of the Atlantic rising to a peak of new savagery, he had set about making his small command into a real and important force. The country was on the defensive in those early days, and any raid on the enemy's coast, any sort of pinprick against his far-flung lines of communications, was needed desperately to maintain morale, to give the British public the belief that somehow, somewhere, they were hitting back.
Now it was 1943, and the admiral sensed that a turning point had been reached. It was more of a feeling than anything he could put into words, but it was there. The catastrophes of Dunkirk and Norway, of Greece and Singapore, were behind them. Defensive war was out. The time had come to hit back, and hit hard.
He swung round impulsively and stared at the room's two other occupants. Seated at a wide desk his Operations Officer, a fat, heavy-jowled commander, was leaning on one elbow and leafing idly through a file of incoming signals. The admiral suspected that Commander Hallum was still suffering from the effects of a heavy lunch at the naval barracks, and was merely going through the motions to cover up his discomfort.
At another desk a plain-faced Wren officer was studying a folio very intently, her eyes moving back and forth along each line, missing nothing, remembering even the smallest detail.
The admiral's eyes softened slightly. Second Officer Frost was like his right arm, he thought. She was always there, always ready to do what she could no matter how late or how long it took. He wished he could get rid of Hallum and replace him with another Wren like Miss Frost. It was not that the admiral saw himself as a ladies' man, but having Wrens around him made him feel both young and fatherly at the same time. Also, unlike Hallum, they had enthusiasm, and that was a quality which rated very high with the admiral.
He cleared his throat crisply and both pairs of eyes lifted towards him. âIt is now fourteen-thirty precisely. In half an hour I will go to the north-west corner of the dockyard.' He glanced briefly at Second Officer Frost. âHave I forgotten anything?'
She played with one corner of the folio on her desk. It was a new one, and on the cover was printed,
âH.M.S.
Thistle.
For Special Operations, Eastern Mediterranean'.
Then she looked up at the large coloured chart which covered one complete wall of the office. The Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to the Lebanon, every mile marked by battles lost and won, with names like Malta and Tobruk, Alamein and Crete, which needed nothing more to fire the imagination.
She said slowly, âH.M.S.
Thistle
is still in her basin, sir. The new guns are fitted now, and the radar people will be finishing their work tomorrow forenoon.'
Hallum said sourly, âIt's Sunday tomorrow.'
The admiral spared him a wintry glance. âI don't give a bugger if it's bloody Christmas! I want that ship ready for sea within three days!' He calmed himself and added, âPlease continue.'
The Wren officer nodded. She no longer blushed at the admiral's expressions. They were part of him. Like his medals, and his rudeness to unwilling staff officers. And his offhand kindness and humanity which he tried hard to conceal.
She said, âThe new commanding officer should be aboard now, sir. He came through the dockyard gates forty-five minutes ago.'
The admiral nodded, satisfied. He never asked where or how she got her information. But somehow she managed to keep him informed of everything, sometimes before the Commander-in-Chief, and usually with more detail.
He walked to the big chart and stared at it for several minutes. Then he said, âNinety per cent of the Navy's role in this war has been purely defensive. Protecting convoys and shipping routes. Defending the Army, and defending itself.' He reached up and touched the southern tip of Italy with one wizened hand. âWell, we know that in a matter of weeks we'll be changing all that. We've got 'em out of North Africa now. The next step is Sicily and then Italy, and on and up into the enemy's under-belly!' Without realizing it he had raised his voice. âAt the moment we've got all our people scattered over the ground. Combined Operations, Commando, the Special Boat Squadron, Long Range Desert Group, and all the rest. Too many, doing too varied tasks. We must have unity of effort, a fluidity of purpose.' He nodded, âAnd we
will
have it.'
Commander Hallum watched the admiral's narrow shoulders with weary resignation. It was quite obviously not going to be a quiet afternoon. The admiral was showing unusual excitement. For the past weeks signals had been flashing back and forth at an unprecedented rate. From the admiral to his senior officer in the Mediterranean. From Commander-in-Chief to Commander-in-Chief. From the sunshine of Alexandria to the grey bleakness of Liverpool, and back to the passageways of Admiralty in London. It was quite beyond Hallum, especially as the only outcome of all these signals and demands had at last arrived in Portsmouth in the shape of the small corvette
Thistle.
The
Thistle
was a Flower Class corvette, and from the moment her keel had tasted salt water at a Belfast shipyard in 1940 had been thrown into the Battle of the Atlantic as a convoy escort. She was in fact just another corvette. There were dozens of them. Small, hastily constructed ships built to an emergency programme, with little thought of comfort for the men who manned them.
Hallum had seen her enter Portsmouth harbour just two weeks earlier. She seemed so small as she passed down the lines of sleek destroyers and lordly cruisers, and from bow to stern carried the marks of hard use, the scars of the hardest battle of all. Her crude dazzle paint was stripped away by wind and sea, her chubby hull streaked with rust and marked by dents and scrapes, souvenirs from mooring in pitch darkness or going alongside a sinking merchantman to snatch a handful of survivors from the grip of death itself.
But the admiral had seemed as pleased as Punch. If the Admiralty had placed the
Rodney
or the
Howe
under his personal command he could not have shown more excitement. To the rest of the world the battered little
Thistle
might be just one more survivor from the Atlantic, but to Rear-Admiral Oldenshaw she was exactly what he wanted.
Hallum realized with a start that the admiral had moved back to the window. He said hastily, âWhat about her new captain, sir? From what I've read in the folio he seems a bit of a has-been.' There was no reply, so he hurried on, âHe's a regular officer, and yet all he's been offered is this clapped-out corvette.'