Kleber's Convoy (6 page)

‘Forebridge – captain, sir,' the first-lieutenant's call from the voice-pipe above Redman's pillow awakened him from brief sleep.

‘What is it, Number One?'

‘
Bluebird
has an A/S contact.'

‘Right. I'm coming up.' He rolled off the bunk, steadied himself against the movement of the ship, frowning through red light at the ice on the inside of the porthole. Wedging himself against the wash-basin, he picked up night-glasses and mittens and pulled the anorak hood over his head. As he made for the bridge he was thinking not of
Bluebird
's A/S contact but of the lump of ice. It was an old enemy. Despite attempts by the dockyard, the rubber seal round the
porthole
still remained defective and a jet of icy air came through when the wind blew. In the Arctic the moist air froze and
within a short time an ice lump formed on the inside of the porthole. At a certain stage, caught between the warmer temperature of the sea-cabin and the freezing air outside, the lump stabilised and effectively sealed the leak. For this reason Redman had instructed Cupido to leave it alone.

A lump of ice so close to his body was a physical and psychological irritant, but it was better than a jet of icy air. For these reasons the ice lump had over the last two convoys become the subject of a love-hate relationship.

Redman, eyes not yet accustomed to the dark, got to the bridge by feel and instinct. Once there he made for the PPL The first-lieutenant, standing next to it, anticipated his
question
. ‘
Chaffinch
is investigating with
Bluebird
, sir.'

‘Who's on the TBS?'

A voice in the darkness said, ‘Me, sir. Burrows.' It was the yeoman of signals.

‘Close to one thousand yards,
Chaffinch
.' Ginger Mountsey's voice sounded on the bridge-speaker.

‘Will do. Bearing two-eight-eight, thirteen hundred yards, came the disembodied reply.

Redman said, ‘They'll never hold an A/S contact in this weather.'

‘No, sir,' agreed the first-lieutenant.

They waited in semi-darkness seeing nothing but the glowing and fading pips of light on the PPI, listening to the brief exchanges between the ships two and three miles away to starboard. It was early morning and the luminous dial of Redman's watch showed the time to be almost half past four. Wind and sea had moderated and the motion of the ship had become less violent in the two hours since he'd last been on the bridge. The sky was overcast but the ceiling had lifted and there were breaks in the clouds ahead. It was no longer snowing.

‘Weather's improved, Number One.'

‘It has, sir. Not for long, I imagine.'

‘
Fidelix
should be flying off aircraft in this half-light.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Ginger Mountsey's voice came in again. ‘Target classified non-sub. Resume station
Chaffinch
. Sorry to have troubled you. Over and out.'

‘Not at all,' replied
Chaffinch
. ‘The pleasure was ours.'

Redman said, ‘I'd like a fiver for every shoal of fish that's
murdered my sleep.'

‘Bad luck, sir.' The first-lieutenant was as cheerful as always. ‘Probably won't happen again for some time.'

Redman grunted, depends what you mean by ‘some time', he thought. He stood silent, his mind empty,
watching
the Aurora Borealis, its curtain-like drapes in constant movement, opening and closing, one colour succeeding
another
, filling the northern sky with radiant movement.

‘Beautiful, isn't it?'

‘Sir?' The first-lieutenant was at the PPI watching
Bluebird
and
Chaffinch
get back into station.

‘The northern lights. Aurora Borealis to you.'

‘Oh, yes, sir. Marvellous to see them again, isn't it? Always bucks one up.'

Redman decided once more that the first-lieutenant, though extremely capable, was still adolescent. An enthusiastic
schoolboy
. For him the war was a game, romantic and exciting. The first-lieutenant, on the other hand, was thinking that he didn't much like the wheeze in the captain's throat and wondering what caused it. In his view the captain took life too seriously. Of course he was tired and had a lot of responsibility, but good humour helped. The first-lieutenant always made a determined effort to be cheerful when he spoke to him, though often he didn't feel as cheerful as he sounded.

Redman said, ‘Yeoman. No need for you to stay up here. Get your head down while you can.'

‘Aye, aye, sir. Thank you, sir.' The yeoman took off the TBS headset, hung it up, spoke to the signalman-of-
the-watch
, and left the bridge.

Redman had a high opinion of the yeoman. If any man in the ship was indispensable it was Burrows. He knew the signal manual backwards, not only the purport of the signals but the manœuvres associated with their execution. If a forming or disposing signal were received the yeoman knew precisely the action required on
Vengeful
's bridge. With
considered
tact he would convey this to the officer-of-the-watch, or even to the captain.

‘I think that'll mean altering to port and increasing to twenty knots, won't it, sir?' he'd say, putting the facts he knew in the form of a question, inferring that he was seeking not giving information.

Burrows was important to Redman for quite another reason. The captain thought he saw in Burrows his last yeoman, Patterson. It was as if the dead man had been
reincarnated
. They were so much alike in looks and character. Dark friendly eyes, calm and collected, men who could always be depended upon. Redman was conscious of a debt to Patterson which he could never repay, and for this he tried to make amends in his relations with Burrows.

When he got back on to his bunk and closed his eyes he knew he would not sleep. His mind was now too full of
Patterson
. What had long since become an obsession had been triggered off by the yeoman's ‘thank you, sir.' It was an unnecessary remark. If anything a little un-Servicelike, but it was in Burrows's nature to express gratitude for the
consideration
the captain showed him.

Redman took a deep breath, turned on his side and the pictures began to form. ‘Thank you, sir' had been Patterson's last words before he died.

That night, two years earlier, Redman had been in his sea-cabin, somewhere between sleep and consciousness, when the explosion came. The torpedo had struck the frigate beneath the bridge, wrecking among other things the bridge superstructure and the sea-cabin. It was a winter's night with headwind and sea, some five hundred miles west of Rockall. The ship sank quickly, before any alarm signal could be given. Redman had heard and felt the violence of the
explosion
but he must have lost consciousness almost
immediately
for the next thing he knew he was in the water. It was a night of intense darkness and his one instinct had been to get away from the sinking frigate before the depth-charge pattern in the stern, set shallow and primed ready for dropping, exploded. He was vaguely conscious of other men in the water, and at times, from the tops of seas, he could see the dim flicker of red survivor lights. They seemed far away, but he decided to make for them. First he found the mouthpiece of his Mae West and blew into it until the life-saving belt was inflated. It was then, when he tried to swim, that he found he could not use his legs. Why, he did not know, but he was conscious of numbing pain when he tried.

Though he could see nothing he could taste and smell the
oil fuel in the water and wondered if, when the
depth-charges
exploded, the oil would burn. But no explosion came and he knew then that the gunner (T) and depth-charge party must have withdrawn the primers immediately after the
torpedo
struck. The oil fuel had flattened the wave crests, leaving only the swell. He was slimy with fuel and knew he must get away from it. But he couldn't move. He came over the top of a sea, slid down the slope and something in the water bumped into him. It was a wooden grating from the frigate's compass platform. He grabbed it and found he could get his head and shoulders clear of the water with its aid. This increased his chances of survival. He didn't rate them high because he was not wearing a survivor's light and he was weak. The damage to his legs, or perhaps his spine, was sapping his strength. A voice called somewhere in the darkness, upwind, not far away.

‘Captain here,' Redman shouted back against the wind. ‘Who's that?'

‘Patterson, sir.' The broken voice was weak.

‘You all right, yeoman?' Redman knew he couldn't be, but the question had to be asked.

‘Can't move, sir …' There was a gurgling sound. ‘Can't keep … head … out water.' More sound, spitting and retching. ‘You … all right … sir?'

Again Redman tried to use his legs, this time to paddle in Patterson's direction. But they wouldn't respond and the pain was considerable. ‘My legs have gone, yeoman. Can't move.' It was a laboured sentence because the wind, the oily sea splashing over him, and his weakness made
communication
difficult. He wondered if he could hold the grating with one hand and paddle towards the yeoman with the other. ‘I've a grating here, yeoman,' he called. ‘I'll try to reach you.' It took a long time to say that and much effort. Some of it had to be repeated because the yeoman didn't answer and Redman needed to hear his voice again to check direction. The yeoman, like Redman, had no survivor's light. He sounded as if he were fifty yards away.

‘Can't you answer, yeoman?' he shouted. ‘For God's sake man, try. I don't know where you are.' That, too, took a lot of saying.

There was a longish pause. After it Patterson's voice came
downwind, hoarser, weaker, more broken. ‘Thank you … sir.'

Redman spat out a mouthful of sea and oil, inhaled deeply, changed his grip on the grating and pushed it round so that it was facing in Patterson's direction. He struck out with his free hand, paddling in icy water which he could feel but not see. But it was a hopeless floundering, a
meaningless
thrashing of the sea, and he could not tell in the darkness if he was making headway. His calls to Patterson were no longer answered.

Quite suddenly Redman gave up. He didn't know for how long he'd tried or how hard he'd tried, but he
remembered
deciding he'd made an effort and could do no more. Afterwards, as the obsession grew, he believed he could have done more, shown greater resolution. His legs had been weak, not his arms and shoulders.

Afterwards, lying in hospital through drab timeless days, and in the months that followed, the conviction grew that he'd given in too easily. He might have saved Patterson. He did not think he'd tried really hard. Perhaps he'd not wanted to reach the yeoman for fear the grating could not support them both. He remembered thinking about that at the time. Had it influenced him? How much was real, how much fantasy? He didn't know. He compared his feeble efforts with those of Hans on the glacier above Crans-sur-Sierre. Hans, a stranger, had struggled for hours in a blizzard, alone, just as Redman had been alone after the sinking. But Hans had refused to give up and in the end he'd succeeded. That was why Redman was alive.

To him those last words of Patterson's were a reproach: ‘Thank you-sir.' Thank you for what?

Redman turned over and re-wedged himself between bunk-board and bulkhead.

He felt wretched and miserable and prayed that sleep would come to deaden his thoughts.

It was the best part of an hour before the first-lieutenant's voice woke him once more from fitful sleep.

‘Forebridge – captain, sir.'

‘What is it, Number One?'

‘
Fidelix
reports bandits one, bearing two-three-oh, thirty
miles, fifteen hundred feet. She's turning into wind now to fly off aircraft to intercept.'

‘Sound the alarm. I'm coming up.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

As Redman made for the bridge the alarm bells sounded a series of shorts and longs and sleepy men stumbled and groped through the darkness to their anti-aircraft stations. The first lieutenant standing at the bridge screen was
silhouetted
against the distant glow of the northern lights. Redman moved up alongside him. Not long afterwards the yeoman arrived, then Pownall. The midshipman-of-the-watch, Bowrie, was standing by the radar phone.

Redman said, ‘Our two-nine-one on to that aircraft yet, Number Qne?' The 291 radar was used for the detection and tracking of aircraft.

‘Not yet, sir. Just outside maximum range, I think.'

‘Jerry'll be shadowing by radar. Not likely to close the range while he can keep contact.' Redman cleared his throat. ‘Better weather was bound to attract our chums. Expect Jerry's using the cloud base for cover.'

Pownall's voice came out of the darkness. He was passing instructions to the pilot. The buzzer from the radar nut sounded. The midshipman reported that 291 radar had picked up the enemy aircraft. He passed the bearing, range and height to gun positions. The TBS bridge-speaker crackled with voice messages between
Fidelix
, her attendant destroyers, the senior officers of the escort groups, and the commodore of the convoy.

‘
Fidelix
reports two Wildcat fighters and four Avengers airborne, sir,' said the yeoman.

Redman said, ‘Good,' and looked astern into the black sky knowing he would see nothing, but imagining them there.

The Wildcats would be climbing to intercept the shadower while the Avengers carried out anti-submarine patrols over thousands of square miles around the convoy. Since the convoy had been sighted, it was vital to put down surfaced U-boats anywhere in the vicinity. The Avengers would search in the dark with airborne radar, ready to attack with
depth-charges
and rockets. Surfaced U-boats would be listening for radar transmissions with search-receivers, so it would be a cat-and-dog hunt in the icy darkness of an Arctic winter.