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Chapter 14
H.M.S.
Nottingham
, the Denmark Strait
 
Captain Morris Prader, DSO, took the cup of steaming tea in an enameled iron cup from Yeoman Uhl and wrapped both hands around it, grateful that, despite the open windows, they were at least within the closed compass platform of the cruiser. Had he captained a destroyer, he would have no protection.
Still, it was crowded on the platform with the officers and ratings of the Watch, including dour Lieutenant Trunburrow, his number one. They were sandwiched in among the steering mechanism, dozens of dials, gauges, the voice tube station, and the engine enunciator that jutted out over the red-and-gray-checkerboard linoleum block floor. The only compromise to the starkness of the platform were the two, high-backed chairs that sat to either side, away from the polished brass compass stand. The stand itself blossomed from the deck and bloomed gracefully into a white enameled dish that held the compass. The officer of the Watch could control the entire operation of the ship from the compass platform. And even when Prader made his appearance on the platform, and to the consternation of junior officers he was there at the most inopportune times, he let the officer of the Watch control the ship. All the officer need do was to recite the ever-changing manrta: “Wind, force two, southwest to northwest,” or whatever direction the wind happened to be blowing, “Barometer 30.10 to 30.20, unchanging. Visibility nine.” And the course and speed. Prader might dictate change in course or speed, fine-tuning the movement of his ship, or simply reminding his officers that he was in firm control of all that transpired on the vessel. He'd read an essay from that Polish chap who gave up the sea to write—nothing to Prader's liking because it was all that philosophical and moral nonsense—but the one piece that he'd managed to wade through was “The Captain”: “To each man who commands comes a severity of life that denies him everything except duty. For his crew, the passengers, for the ship on whose deck he strides, he bears responsibility. He can no more relinquish this duty, than a mortal man can live without the heart that beats within his breast.” He could never remember that chap's name. Never mind, it wasn't important.
Instead, Prader would stroll, cup of tea in hand.
He'd stroll out to the bridge wings and look over the 40-mm Twin Bofors MKV mountings and if the gunners were there tending to their guns, he would chat them up. There they would stand, stiff and nervous as hell: ordnance artificers and ordinary seamen alike wondering:
Christ! When is this bloody old fool going to move on?
He would, when it suited him.
Prader might show up in sick bay, looking over the eight beds all neatly made up, and speak briefly with the acting surgeon lieutenant, a very dedicated and serious chap. He might wander through the radar and fire-direction rooms and make his way aft, deep within the ship to the stoker's mess, and from there through a 450-pound steel hatch activated by counterbalances to the transmitting station and number-two low-power room. In low-power room number two, surrounded by scores of switches, breakers, rheostats, and banks of hundreds of fuses that all hummed in expectation of action, he talked quietly with an electrical artificer and his assistant. They spoke the same language, a complicated, technical tongue that might as well have been heathen Chinese to the other ratings and seamen on board
Nottingham
. But this was Prader's world—he was proficient in all things technical. He could read the sea well enough and he could certainly captain a ship because he enjoyed learning and he had learned these things in the classroom or on the ocean. But what excited him was the electronic and mechanical things that made the ship come to life—not alive, but fulfilling its expectation to operate.
Nottingham
, to Prader, was a vast complex machine, a wondrous example of man's talents and ingenuity. He marveled at it, and took pride in its unexcelled ability to perform, and when
Nottingham
and her sister ship,
Harrogate
, were ordered up to the Denmark Strait, he was absolutely confident that she would do everything that she was designed to do.
Everything that she was designed to do.
In the end—and this was the point on which the lives of the officers and men of
Nottingham
depended—she was designed to fight. That was a fact about which there was no dispute. Her four Admiralty three-drum boilers and four steam-powered Parsons single-reduction-geared turbines driving four shafts at eighty thousand shaft horsepower, so that she could close with the enemy at thirty knots and bring her twelve 8-inch guns to bear—that was a certainty. The uncertainty lay not with the crew, or their vessel, or its capabilities—it lay with her captain. Would he be willing to sacrifice the machine that he cared so much for; would he take it where it would be horribly mutilated or destroyed; or would he, for whatever reason, Exhibit Reluctance?
Captain Prader, DSO, was chatting with an officer and eight ratings manning the two huge electronic computing tables occupying half the deck space in the transmitting room, twenty feet below the waterline. The room was aft of B Magazine and forward of A Boiler, uncomfortably pinned between fuel tanks—when he heard the announcement over the Tannoy System.
“Do you hear there? Do you hear there? Captain Prader to the compass platform, please.”
It was strange because the yeoman's human voice was converted to electronic signals and transmitted over miles of wires to come out of a speaker box mounted on the wall. The journey was mostly by machine and yet the message sent a chill down Prader's spine because he could read, machine or not, wires and speaker boxes aside, that something extraordinary was happening.
Cole had called Rebecca and offered to come over and help her clean up after the raid. She would be at work, she had said, but the front door would be unlocked. He surveyed the disheveled condition of the house after he arrived and couldn't decide where to start. It was apparent she'd managed to pick up a few things after the raid, but for the most part the place was a wreck.
Rebecca came in several hours later. She looked worn out and Cole fixed her a drink.
“The tram was out most of the way and the buses were packed,” she explained as they sat on the couch.
“You should have told me. I would have picked you up.”
“I didn't know when I left,” she replied, cradling the glass in her hands. “It was especially bad today. Jerry's bombed the docks again. Fixing the poor souls up in the infirmary or an operating room is bad enough, but at least you can control things there. Believe it or not, it's a sort of haven. But the corridors, they must lead straight to hell. That's where we put the patients when there is no room in the wards. Blood everywhere, torn bodies, people screaming. One man stopped me, holding a little boy in his arms. He said, ‘Miss? Miss? Can you see to Tommy? He's been hurt in the bombing. What shall I do?'” She took a drink and Cole could see her hands tremble. “The child's leg was gone, Jordan. There wasn't a drop of blood left in that pale little body. I can't help them, can I? Not after all the life's drained from them or there's whole pieces missing. After a while I simply get numb. But I have to, don't I?”
“It's a way to survive.”
“It's not such a bad way to handle things, is it? Simply turn your emotions off. If not, I'd go mad, more so than I am now. I don't want to remember what I've seen—I don't want those chalky white faces or shattered bodies in my dreams. I'm damaged enough, Jordan. Even before I got into this bloody business, I was damaged. I thought, ‘Here is something I can do. Here is a way to be me.' Just my cursed luck a war breaks out. Now life is a constant, endless carousel of death.” She smiled weakly and he could see the unfathomable pain behind the mask. “So you see,” she added, “if I can keep at least one part of my life from falling to pieces . . .” She was talking about her marriage, of course, and Cole had a sinking feeling that she was going to tell him that they couldn't see each other anymore.
He watched her make a drink, the silence between them saying so much more than any words could. She sat down and after taking a healthy swig fixed Cole with red-rimmed eyes.
“Doesn't ever seem to end, does it?”
He knew that she was grieving for herself as well as for those that she fought to save. He listened.
“I've something to tell you.”
He watched her struggle with the words, his insides churning. He wanted to stop her from saying whatever she was going to say because he was afraid. His world was crumbling and he felt like a child again, lost, betrayed, abandoned.
“Greg'll be coming home soon. Perhaps a month.”
Jordan sat back in the couch, trying to fight the panic that welled up in him.
“That's what the army tells me. Thirty days. They sent me a cable at work.” She took a drink. “He's been burned. That happens to a lot of chaps in the tank corps. He wrote me a letter when he first got there. He was afraid of being ‘lit up.' That's what he called it. ‘I shan't like to be in
Rebecca
if she's lit up,' he said.”
She took another drink, finished it off, and made herself another. “Well, I suppose he was in
Rebecca
, when it happened. He named it after me. Ironic, don't you think?” She pulled a letter from her purse and slowly opened it. Cole watched without saying a word.
She looked at Cole and said offhandedly: “It's from Greg. It came just after the cable.” She opened it tenderly, took a drink, and read. “‘It won't do any good to be cheery because there is nothing to be cheery about. Colin and Angie are dead.'” She looked up. “Those were his chums,” she said and continued reading. “‘I wish I were. The butchers took my leg and they won't give me a mirror, so I suppose I'm burned as black as a nigger. It's all too funny, isn't it—I was such a handsome fellow on the arm of the most beautiful woman in London. Now I'll be on your arm so that you can help me walk. I cry a lot, as much for myself as the other chaps. You get close enough with your fellows in a tank so that when you hear their screams, as they are burned alive, it does something to you. I was lucky, I suppose. I got blown right out of the top hatch when the shell hit. I must have looked like a Guy Fawkes rocket. All fire and smoke. I don't know what happened. Honestly.'”
She took a drink and turned the letter over. “‘We've got to come to terms with some things, Becky. I'm not the man that left—I almost said that I'm not the man you loved, but I'm not sure that was ever the case. Maybe . . .'” She stopped reading, stuffed the letter in the pocket of her jacket, and finished off her drink.
Cole got up, fixed himself another drink, and stood nursing it.
“You're not going, are you?” Rebecca said.
“I don't know what to do,” Cole said. “I know what I
want
to do, but for once in my life, maybe, I'm trying to figure out what the right thing to do is.”
“You don't give yourself much credit, do you?”
Cole shrugged.
Rebecca stood and moved close to him. “I may never see you again,” she said.
“You could leave your husband,” Cole said, bitterly.
“Don't let's argue.”
“Sure. Okay. I'm pissed off at this whole goddamned deal. I don't want to lose you but it looks like I'm going to. That makes me angry. Not at you. I couldn't be angry with you if you smacked me in the head with a whiskey bottle.”
Rebecca laughed and then Cole did, too.
“I shan't do that,” she said, pressing the palm of her hand against his cheek. “I don't know what to do either,” she said.
“Yes, you do,” Cole said, setting the glass on the mantel. He gathered her to him and kissed her tenderly. She threw her arms around him and returned the kisses, each of them lost in the pleasure.
Chapter 15
H.M.S.
Nottingham
, Denmark Strait
 
“We've picked up something on radar approximately twenty miles, three points off the port quarter, running roughly southeast,” Trunburrow said without a trace of emotion. “Size is indeterminate but they appear to be moving at a considerable rate of speed.”
“‘They?'” Prader said.
“Radar says two, possibly three targets, but it's difficult to tell. Speed twenty-five to thirty knots. We were lucky enough to pick them up that far away.”
The RDF 281 radar was temperamental and prone to detect ghosts, but to Prader it was a marvel of engineering. Eyes that see where no eyes before them could see—find an object in fog or rain; find a thing before it can be seen. Marvelous. Absolutely marvelous.
“Masthead report?”
“Nothing, sir.” The lookout in the fore masthead high above the
Nottingham
's deck might have been able to spot a wisp of smoke with his powerful binoculars if it were not for occasional snow squalls or patches of fog—the vagaries of weather in the Strait.
“Well, do we know anything for certain, Number One?” Prader said peevishly.
“ 'Fraid not, sir. Except they aren't ours.”
“We can't be certain of that, Number One. This won't be the first time that the right hand hasn't told the left what it's doing. Let the Flow know what we have. Where is
Harrogate
?”
“Eighty-five miles to the southeast, sir.”
Nottingham
's companion had experienced engine difficulties and had been instructed to return to Scapa Flow. Her replacement had not yet been dispatched.
“Very well. Yeoman? Have W.T. send to
Harrogate
: ‘Two, possibly three unidentified targets, twenty miles southwest of my position. Stand by.' That's all.” Prader turned to Trunburrow. “Action stations, Number One. Better to be safe than sorry.” He leaned over the voice tube to the wheel room, located below the waterline deep in the bowels of the ship. “Helmsman? Stand by to make a forty-five-degree course alteration, south-southwest.”
“Standing by, sir,” the helmsman said.
Prader positioned himself over the compass and nodded for Trunburrow to relay the orders to the helmsman. Number One suppressed his irritation at Prader. He was the captain, yes, but he had a way of issuing commands that made a fellow feel as if he were found wanting in every respect.
“Port twenty,” Prader ordered.
“Port twenty, aye-aye, sir.” Trunburrow relayed the command into the voice tube.
The helmsman repeated it and announced: “Wheel twenty of port.”
The harsh sound of a bugle over the Tannoy System called the ship's crew to action stations.
Prader studied the compass needle edge slowly to complete the course alteration, ignoring the turmoil around him. “Rudder amidships. Steady.”
“Rudder amidships, aye-aye, sir.”
“Number One, send to
Harrogate
that we're going over to investigate. Tell them to remain at their station should this be some sort of Jerry trick to draw us off. Have Sparks contact Scapa Flow. Give them the coordinates and the details. Ask them if
Tirpitz
has come out and see if they can scare up a few aircraft to keep track of these blighters.”
“Yes, sir,” Trunburrow said.
“Well, Number One,” Prader said, pleased with himself. “We'll tag along with this ghost ship, keeping track of her and keeping well out her range until this whole matter is resolved. Where she moves, we move, so it's simply a matter of keeping our eyes open and our wits about us. Eh, Number One?”
“Of course, sir,” Trunburrow said. The arrogance of the man was appalling and Trunburrow thought, but barely acknowledged, that once, just once, he'd like to see Prader truly shocked.
 
 
D.K.M.
Sea Lion
 
“FuMO's picked up a target to the northeast,” Erster Offizier, I.O., Freganttenkapitan Kadow said to Mahlberg. “Hydrophone confirms it. ‘Steam turbine, high speed. Most likely a heavy cruiser.'” The
Kapitan
turned easily in his leather- covered elevated chair on the bridge of
Sea Lion
, throwing his arm over its back.
“So?” he said with a smile. “How far out?”
“Twenty-five kilometers.”
“Our British friends, no doubt.”
The bridge telephone rang and Wachoffizer Melms answered it. He listened briefly, acknowledged the message, and reported to Mahlberg.
“B-dienst reports Morse code message to Scapa from targets.”
Mahlberg nodded. “They're sounding the alarm. They don't know who we are or what we are, but they know that we shouldn't be here. Let us sound our own alarm. Kriegsmarschzustand one, Kadow.”
Kadow saluted. Battle stations, Code 1. Now they might have a chance to find out what
Sea Lion
could really do. Of course it would not be a fair fight because overflights of Scapa Flow reported the presence of one aircraft carrier, three battleships, six light cruisers, four destroyers, two submarines, and a number of other vessels. Group North had been quite clear on this; the capital ships of the British Home Fleet were still in Scapa Flow. What
Sea Lion
found in the Denmark Straits was one vessel—a cruiser probably, meant to patrol the narrow passage between the ice pack and the vast minefields and sound the alarm. She had done her duty. Now the question was, would Kapitan Mahlberg take
Sea Lion
past the insolent ship and on to her assigned target or would he alter course long enough to destroy them?
To Kadow, the choice was simple: obey orders. Their objective was clearly defined and their instructions unambiguous. Everything else was a distraction. But he was not the
Kapitan
.
Kapitan zur See Mahlberg was considering the same options: test his mighty ship in battle against a lesser opponent—but nevertheless a test under combat conditions—or continue on to his ultimate target. He could do both, he reasoned, because his ship was fast and his crew well trained. He could do both because the
Prince of Wales
would be denied the opportunity to dash across the North Atlantic, the
Nord See
: he laughed to himself; the
Mord See
—Murder Sea.
Prince of Wales
would encounter a cordon of Admiral Doenitz's U-boats, strung from the ice pack at the base of Greenland down into the Atlantic. Beaters to drive
Prince of Wales
south, prolonging her voyage so that
Sea Lion
could come up astern of the British vessel and prolong her voyage indefinitely.
“Message from FuMO, Kapitan,” Kadow said. “The enemy continues to shadow us. No change in course.”
“I suppose he thinks that we will oblige him by allowing him to tag along. Very well,” Mahlberg said. He turned to First Artillery Officer Frey, who stood expectantly at his shoulder. “Frey, I'll give you thirty minutes to destroy that British ship. She'd better be a smoking heap when we break off action or I'll send you back to Wit in a cutter. Understood?”
“Yes, sir, but I won't need thirty minutes.”
“Don't be arrogant, Frey,” Mahlberg cautioned. “Just sink the bastard.” He turned to Kadow. “Execute zigzag pattern, Piper.”
For an instant Kadow looked at Mahlberg in confusion. A zigzag pattern? In this narrow strait? There probably wasn't an English submarine for five hundred miles. But Kadow quickly recovered himself and passed on the orders to Matrosenhauptgefreiter Rechberg. Thank God that the best quartermaster aboard
Sea Lion
was at his station—Kadow would not want anyone else at the helm. He noticed Mahlberg watching him, smiling.
“Perplexing, yes?” the
Kapitan zur See
said.
“A bit, Kapitan, but I know that you have good reason for every order that you give.”
“Yes, Kadow,” Mahlberg said. “That is why I wear the piston rings,” he added, using the slang for the gold braid encircling his cuffs.
 
 
H.M.S.
Nottingham
 
Trunburrow relayed the reports to Captain Prader as the parts of the ship prepared themselves for action. It was more than duty to confirm that A Turret or X Turret was ready. Or that the medical officer had taken over the wardroom and turned it into a makeshift hospital because the sick bay was much too small and exposed—it was a primal chant, each report elevating the blood's heat as the men readied themselves emotionally, and physically, for combat.
Trunburrow would not have thought of that or accepted the idea if it were proposed by anyone aboard or off the ship. He was without humor, artistic creativity, or any quality except the ability to focus on the task at hand with an intensity that, had it been examined by the medical officer driving his assistants—poultice mixers, the crew called them, to ready the wardroom—the M.O. might have shown real concern.
But the intensity was not examined by the M.O. or considered by the captain, who thought it merely a sign of dedication, and rightly so—that's what made a good number one. The captain, whose own dedication extended only as far as the machinery and workings of his vessel were concerned, misread that quality of his number one.
Trunburrow was a coward and the intensity was his own desperate attempt to muzzle the fear that churned within him.
The W.T. telephone on the bridge rang. Trunburrow answered it.
“Bridge, Trunburrow.” He listened carefully, his eyebrows creeping together in concern. “Right.” He hung up the receiver. “Radar reports, sir,” he said as Prader glanced over his shoulder. “Targets have undertaken a zigzag pattern.” He was pleased to see that Prader was as surprised as he was when he got the news.
“Out here? Do they know something that we don't know?” Prader walked to the port side of the bridge in thought. “Have W.T. contact the Flow. Find out if we have any submarines out here. I shall be very unhappy if I'm sunk by one of our own blokes. Alert the mastheads. We'll match the pattern as well. Navs? How close are we off the ice pack now?”
Nottingham
's navigator, a chubby man with thinning hair, said, “Ten miles or a bit less, sir. Perhaps we should move off a mile or two.”
“And put ourselves closer to that secret ship? I'd rather not, Navs. We'll speed up and cross his bow when he comes into the starboard tack of his pattern.”
Trunburrow looked at Prader. Now it was Number One's turn to be surprised. “Cross his bow, sir?”
“Oh, don't be such an old woman about it, Number One. We'll get ahead and swing around to his port side. We've got him on radar, haven't we? Better than the best set of eyes in the masthead. At least fog doesn't stop radar.”
 
 
D.K.M.
Sea Lion
 
“B” Turret, Bruno, was Herbert Statz's domain. Kuhn's death was never far from Gun Commander Statz's thoughts, but when the alarm bugle sounded and he and his gun crews donned flash hoods and gauntlets and the garish white antiflash paint that protected their faces from the intense heat of the powder flash, every thought ceased.
He positioned himself at the after turret hatch under the turret mantle and counted noses as the crew for Number One Gun disappeared into Bruno. Then he followed them and behind him he could hear the men who filled the control compartment: the telephone operator, ranger officer, sight-setter, rate officer, gun layer, gun trainer, local director sighter, and the officer of the quarters, who coordinated all of their efforts.
Statz was at home in the compartment of Number One Gun, the thick outside bulkhead protecting him from shell fire, the longitudinal flashtight bulkhead on the other side of the gun offering at least a little protection if Number Two Gun exploded. Beneath the deck on which he stood were the upper and lower shell rooms, the upper and lower powder rooms, and all of the hoppers, machinery, hoists, roller conveyors, cylinders, shields, and tanks, as well as two hundred men responsible for turning the twelve-hundred-ton turret or training the one-hundred-ton guns.
They were out of sight and Statz did not care about them unless they failed to give him shells or powder.
Statz glanced up at the gun director seated in his narrow perch, a vast array of dials and switches in front of him. It was strangely silent in the cramped quarters of Number One Gun. There was almost no room for the men who served the gun, who fed her and cleaned her, and kept her in action. That was as it should be—she was the most important occupant of the room.
Suddenly a load bell sounded, shattering the silence.
“Prepare to load!” Statz shouted as the gun elevated to five degrees off the horizontal for loading. He activated the gas ejector, clearing the gun tube of any debris, and opened the breech. He inspected the bore and depressed the bore-clear switch. In the shell powder rooms, and high above him in the fire director's station, other sailors would know that Number One Gun of Bruno was ready to receive her first meal. As the signal went out he checked the mushroom stem hole and inserted the primer that would actually activate the powder. He signaled the spanning tray operator by quickly throwing a finger in his direction.
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