Torpedo Run (1981) (6 page)

It was not what he had imagined. Like most sailors, he had heard plenty of grim tales about the north Russian convoys, the intense cold, with ships capsizing under a terrible top-hamper of ice. Or of the summer months when the ice edge retreated and the convoys were made to plod further and further north around Bear Island, when there was no night to hide them from the bombers and the U-boats.

But here it was rugged and untroubled. A few villages and several army encampments. Camouflage nets to hide ranks of armoured troop-carriers and half-tracks. Only the soldiers looked alien, even hostile.

There were two in the front of the car, the driver hunched behind the wheel and an army major who never stopped smoking. They spoke no English, and Devane’s companion, a lieutenant named Kimber from Intelligence, had already explained, ‘Some do, but they don’t advertise it.’

Devane tried to estimate where the nearest Germans were. The Black Sea was about seven hundred miles from east to west, and maybe half that from north to south at its widest part. Almost as large as the western Mediterranean, he thought vaguely. The Germans had long ago occupied Rumania and Bulgaria, and were now firmly rooted on the Crimean peninsula as well. Where their naval forces operated to best advantage was a carefully guarded secret as far as the Russians were concerned.

The lieutenant leaned forward. ‘Look, sir!’ He pointed at a crumbling building which still managed to look majestic among a copse of trees.

‘Czar Nicolas II had it built. A halfway residence between the Caspian and Sochi.’

It looked deserted and at peace. It was hard to visualize the Eastern Front from this viewpoint, Devane thought. Millions already dead. Vast armies revealed in layers of mud and slush with the arrival of each summer.

The major twisted round suddenly and said something to Devane’s companion. Kimber replied in fluent Russian and just as tersely.

Then he said, ‘A few more minutes. Your flotilla is up ahead of us.’

Devane wanted to laugh. He was feeling the strain of the prolonged journey and it was beginning to tell on him. Days of jumping in and out of planes, quick handshakes, curious stares from RAF men, Americans, Free French, then the Russians. No wonder he felt light-headed. There was no sea for miles and miles, and yet this humourless lieutenant had assured him that his flotilla,
Parthian
, was just up ahead. Maybe they were all going round the bend.

A small scout car edged through the dust, a long-barrelled machine-gun swinging round to cover the car as it shivered to a halt.

Devane could see nothing but a few flat-roofed, almost Moorish-looking buildings, some trees and two armed sentries with their hands in their pockets.

More throaty exchanges, papers examined, quick searching glances at the passengers.

Devane said wearily, ‘Nice to feel welcome.’

His companion glanced at him. ‘Most of the troops around this area are resting from the Eastern Front, sir. They stayed alive by mistrusting everyone but themselves.’

Devane eyed him gravely. ‘That sounded like a rebuke.’

‘Sorry, sir. But it’s like Alice through the looking-glass out here. You work things out, then change them round completely. Then you can think like a Russian.’

Another camouflaged scout car rolled slowly down a slight incline and stopped beside them. It had only two occupants, a squarely built Russian naval officer with an impassive face, and Lieutenant-Commander Ralph Beresford.

They climbed down, and Beresford said cheerfully, ‘Glad you made it, John.’ He turned to his companion. ‘Allow me
to introduce you. This is Captain Nikolai Sorokin.’

The Russian stepped forward and thrust out his hand. Like the man, it was square, with strong, spatulate fingers.

‘Welcome.’ He smiled and displayed strong, powerful teeth.

Beresford added casually, ‘Captain Sorokin is in command of local flotillas. We shall be working closely together.’

There was the briefest hint of warning in his voice. Had Devane not worked with him before he might not have noticed it.

Beresford gestured to the scout car. ‘Come and meet your chaps.’ He shot the lieutenant from Intelligence a cool smile. ‘You take care of the gear, right?’

So like Beresford. Casually said, but his tone carried more steel than a rapier.

The Russian captain gunned the engine and the little car bounced round and up the incline. At the top of the rise he stopped again, then turned to watch Devane’s reactions.

It was like a giant travelling circus which had paused to set up camp for another show. Vans and armoured vehicles of every kind, with anti-aircraft guns, light and heavy, already manned and pointing at the evening sky.

Soldiers busied themselves on every side, and the air above the great laager of vehicles was smoky with cooking fires and mobile kitchens.

But Devane’s attention was riveted on the five MTBs. Out of the water, even a forty-four ton boat looked like a battleship. But here they were toys, incidental to the great motorized carriers which were taking them from one sea to the other.

Beresford nodded slowly. ‘I thought much the same when I saw them. But after the first confusion and misunderstandings we got them moving, and here we are. Each of those beauties has got sixty-four wheels, and the only real hazard so far was loading the boats without damaging them. When it comes to organization, we could learn a lot here.’

The Russian captain beamed. ‘
Da, da
!’

Beresford gave a brief shake of his head. Sorokin understood more than he had so far demonstrated.

Soldiers were already hauling great areas of camouflage netting over the canopied boats and their equipment, and Devane guessed that when they were finished the whole encampment would look like just another hump of land from the air.

A Lavochkin fighter with bright red stars on its tapered wings droned towards the encampment from the next fold of hills, and the AA guns moved to cover it, as if they were sniffing for an enemy.

Beresford said quietly, ‘We’ve got good air cover. Without it, things could get distinctly nasty.’ As the car moved forward again he added, ‘Cadged a lift in one of their light bombers two days ago. Did a quick recce over last year’s battlefield. I’ve seen nothing like it since the old pictures of the Somme. Even the shell craters were full of craters! Thank God I’m a blue-job.’

Devane automatically straightened his back, the pain in his spine from the constant bumping, even the earlier fatigue, forgotten. Was it merely automatic, or something he had come to accept? He had known what it was like to go out on a sortie in a boat which had only just been in battle. Men’s eyes ringed with fatigue and worse, and the boat still punctured with bullet holes from a last encounter. That was the testing moment. Now here was another.

Five MTBs, their crews and attendant care and maintenance staff had come all this way, knowing only a fraction of the truth, understanding even less of what was expected of them.

A strange country, made more awesome by its vast area. Even when you thought of Russia you pictured it more as a map than as earth and water.

He relaxed very slightly as several figures emerged from amongst the parked load – carriers. The sight of British sailors, especially out here, made all the difference.

He saw a lieutenant-commander in a stained boiler suit shading his eyes to watch the oncoming scout car. That was Buckhurst, their ‘plumber’, who had put together and patched up MTBs from Grimsby to Alexandria. He was a born fixer, and could make do with almost anything. He was
a godsend, provided you could put up with his constant moaning. A lieutenant in battledress appeared smoking a pipe, his bared head like a red mop. George Mackay, the Canadian. With him was Andy Twiss, the maniac who had once taken on five enemy armed trawlers single-handed, and had crawled back to Felixstowe, his boat like a pepper-pot.

It was like entering an encampment of olden days. Inside were the familiar faces, outside were the aliens, watchful and unemotional.

Devane slid down from the car and returned their salutes, shook a hand here and there, and found himself wondering how Richie could have abandoned them, no matter what his personal reasons might have been.

‘You’ve not changed, Red.’

Mackay grinned. ‘Hell, no, sir. Though much more of this an’ I reckon I’ll be about ready for the infantry!’

Buckhurst wiped his hand on his boiler suit before shaking Devane’s hand.

‘Russians!’ He shot Sorokin a murderous glance. ‘They care as much for these boats as they do for their bloody sanitation!’

Sorokin ambled across the churned-up ground, still smiling, but his eyes everywhere as he watched the sailors checking the lashings on their individual boats.

Devane studied him. A hard nut. His record in the Baltic had read like the path of a whirlwind.

Sorokin spoke to Beresford, who translated sparingly. ‘The commanding officers and ourselves will dine with the Russians tonight, John.’ He did not even blink as he added, ‘That will mean champagne and caviar until it comes out of your ears. Very passable too.’

Devane nodded. ‘Thank you.’

Beresford smiled. ‘You will get used to it. They have their extremes, and they can be as vast as their country. From immense hospitality to a cruelty which makes you want to vomit.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Take Sorokin for instance. He is entirely responsible for the safe delivery of our boats. And yet yesterday he found time to visit a rear-base hospital and give flowers and vodka to the wounded there. I’m told he
once needed information from a German prisoner. When the man did not or could not tell him he had him stripped naked, then had buckets of water thrown over him. The German died slowly and eventually froze solid while Sorokin watched. But then, the Germans murdered his wife, so how can we judge him?’

They both saluted as Sorokin drove sedately from the circle of camouflaged boats.

Devane sighed. Champagne and caviar. It was further from Chelsea than he had imagined.

For most of the following day the great caravan of vehicles and supporting armour moved ponderously westwards. If it made good six miles per hour, Beresford appeared satisfied, but there were also long delays while the lashings were rechecked on the boats or air cover was called up by some nervous patrol on the road ahead.

After that, as the reality of war drew remorselessly nearer, the procession moved only when it was dark. Sometimes at night they watched flashes lining the horizon and, although the fighting was many miles away, the clear, bright air made it appear close and threatening.

There were other signs too. Blackened and burnt-out villages, deserted farmsteads, to mark the Luftwaffe’s onslaught of the previous year. A few small graves, but mostly communal ones at the roadside, each with a fading red star above it.

The Russian air force had not been able to blanket the whole of the area. During one night a German bomber force had attacked a convoy of supply vehicles on the road, and most of them had been upended or set alight before fighters eventually arrived to drive the marauders away.

An anxious interpreter explained that the road was temporarily blocked for the great sixty-four-wheeled carriers. But Beresford was told not to worry. The necessary manpower was on its way.

Beresford appeared to accept each challenge philosophically. Like Devane’s first evening when they had dined with
the Russian officers in their temporary mess. An army colonel, his face flushed with champagne, had shouted something from the end of the table, his reddened eyes fixed on Devane. Beresford had drawled, ‘He says you are here merely as a gesture. In the Red Army they admire deeds, not gestures.’

Devane had sensed the sudden change of mood around the table, the grim watchfulness after the earlier chorus of toasts and counter-toasts. Then the Russian colonel had toppled backwards and collapsed, and his companions had leapt to their feet to cheer and clap their hands, the momentary hostility gone.

Beresford had said, ‘They can change like the wind. So be on your guard.’

Devane and Beresford were sitting on a little hillock apart from the rest of the flotilla when the promised manpower marched along the road. There were hundreds of them, all in step, their field-grey uniforms showing them to be prisoners of war.

Devane found himself on his feet as the long column of men marched towards the pile of upended and bombed vehicles. They were more like ghosts from a battlefield than soldiers. Thin, unshaven, their threadbare uniforms in tatters, they appeared more dead than alive.

Beresford did not stand up, but said warningly, ‘Easy, John. Some of this is for your benefit. They’re testing you. They’ve got fitter men in this column, they had no need to collect these Germans.’ He looked up, his eyes slitted against the sun. ‘Another lesson, eh?’

Someone called a halt and the field-grey column stood motionless while an NCO reported to some Russians in an escorting armoured car.

The nearest rank of men was just a few yards from Devane. The prisoners were all young, but they looked like old men. One was staring at the massive carriers and their covered loads, and then he seemed to realize that Devane was there. That he was not a Russian.

Devane met the soldier’s gaze. One of ‘them’, as his mother would have said. It was a good thing you did not always have to see your enemy face to face. He knew that if the
situation were reversed this column would be Russian, the treatment equally brutal. Too many deaths and too many atrocities by both sides had made certain of that.

Another order was yelled and the column wheeled towards a lorry to collect shovels and lifting jacks.

But just for the merest second the soldier and Devane looked at each other. Then the German gave what could have been a sigh or a shrug of helpless resignation before he marched away with the others. The moment was broken.

Beresford said irritably, ‘We’re heading for a safe place to launch the boats. Day after tomorrow if all goes well.’ Then he stood up, his mood changed to one of restless impatience. ‘After that,
Parthian
will move up to the Russian base at Tuapse. I’ll be glad to get things going.’