Most Secret (34 page)

This was the Admiralty in war-time, and here we were gossiping like a couple of fish-wives. I thought of that for a moment, and relaxed. “What she like?” I asked.

“Her name’s Junie,” he said. “She comes from a place called East Naples, in Arkansas. Beautiful, but dumb. She went to Hollywood for a screen test, and got stuck there. She was a waitress in a caféteria in San Diego when he met her.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About four years before the war. They got married, so to speak, and went to live in Oakland, as nice a suburban couple as you’d wish to see. That was when he had that shore job with the line of nitrate ships.”

“The Manning Stevens Line,” I said. “He had that for four years. Was he still living with her when the war broke out?”

“Yes. But for the war he’d still have been with Junie and the Manning Stevens Line, snug as a bug in a rug.”

“I thought of the long, difficult trip he had made in the tug before the mast, to join up; of the eighteen weary months that he had served in North and South Atlantic. “It’s a rotten war,” I said.

He took me up. “It’s very hard on a couple like that,” said Boden. “After four years of quiet, settled life, the first he’d ever had. And with people of that sort, it’s such an undertaking for them to write letters. It’s not like you and me. He hates writing, and Junie doesn’t know what to do with a pen and ink when she gets them, so he says. And if they do write, they can’t think of anything to say.…”

I stared at him thoughtfully. “If they can’t keep together, they’re sunk,” I said at last.

“That’s right. He made a pass at that young woman at Torquay, but then he dropped her. He’s a pretty lonely man.”

I glanced across the table at the white-faced, red-haired lad before me. “You think a good deal of him, don’t you?”

He said: “He’s a fine chap, sir. He’s nice to work under, and he’s a splendid seaman. I hate like hell to see a chap like that have such bad luck.”

We turned back to the work.

Simon came up to London at the week-end, and Boden went back with Colvin to the ship at Dartmouth. Simon was looking well enough, but for his hand; he carried it in a sling, heavily bandaged, and came with me to the conference with Coastal Forces. There was no great difficulty about the M.G.B.s. Two of them would be available at the end of the month, both armed with Oerlikons and depth charges and capable of about forty knots in calm water. If the position of the fishing fleet could be found out for them beforehand there did not seem to be much difficulty about their job. All they had to do was to slink in behind the fleet upon their silent engines, make a noise like a couple of battleships, and beat it for home. From their point of view it was a very simple exercise.

Provisionally we fixed it for the last day of the month, October. There was a waning moon which rose at about 23.00 then; that meant that there would be a little light but not too much. We wanted good weather for this trip in order that the boats could find the rendezvous with
Geneviève
. We did not
want to leave it later than that if it could be helped, because of the moon and because we wanted to get guns ashore before the fervour in Douarnenez had died away. At the same time, it seemed to me important that Simon should go on the trip for political reasons and for his fluent French; that gave another seventeen or eighteen days in which his hand could heal. It was a short time, but it was just possible he might be fit by then. Simon himself, of course, was adamant that he was fit to go.

I went to Dartmouth for a day after that meeting.
Geneviève
was off the slip, but still in the hands of the shipyard; they had repaired the damage to the bow and the wheel-house, and a couple of engine-room artificers were working on the flame-thrower under the direction of a chap from Honiton. The engine repair was the longest job; it was impossible to get spare parts and they were having to be made. The estimated date for completion was the twenty-second, so if that date were maintained the show might still take place on the thirty-first.

Simon, in the meantime, had found out from the Breton lads in his crew the circumstances that governed the position of the fishing fleet in the Iroise. He spread out the chart before me in the ward-room in the little villa at Dittisham. “On the flood-tide it is easy,” he said. “The fish, the little sardines, they come northwards with the tide up from the Bay of Biscay. The tide sweeps them up the Bade d’Audierne,” he showed me with his finger on the chart, “until they come to the Chaussée de Sein. Then the tide sweeps through the Raz de Sein between the Chaussée and the land—very, very quick.”

“I know,” I said. “It runs up to six knots through there. And the fish go with it?”

He nodded. “The tide carries the fish through the Raz into the Iroise. Always, at the first of the flood, the fishing fleet will lie in the Iroise at the entrance to the Raz, stemming the tide with their bows to the south, drifting their nets to take the fish as they come northwards on the tide. That is the way we found them on that first night of all.”

“The tide was on the flood then, was it?”

“Yes. Our Breton lads knew where the fleet would be the whole of the time. But they did not know then just exactly what we wanted, and we did not think to ask them.”

“What’s the tide doing on the thirty-first?” I asked.

He pulled over the nautical almanack and turned the pages. “It is good for us upon that night.” He showed me the entry. “Raz de Sein—the flood-tide makes towards the north at 21.40,
Greenwich time. That is 22.40 of our time.”

From Dartmouth I went to Plymouth about the motor-gunboats. I went first to the Commander-in-Chief’s office and spent ten minutes with him, telling him what we wanted to do. Then I spent half an hour with his Chief of Staff, bending over the chart. It did not seem to be difficult. Zero, we decided, should be about the time of moonrise—say 23.00. That was when the motor-gunboats would begin to do their stuff. It would take them an hour to get into position on their silent engines at low speed, and five hours from Plymouth under average weather conditions. That meant that they should leave at 17.00, sunset time, which seemed reasonable enough. They would have daylight for their departure. They would be back off Plymouth at 04.30 or soon after; if the wind were in the west they might anchor in Cawsand till the port opened at dawn. We could arrange a tender for them there, in case of casualties. One of the mine-sweeping trawlers could do that.

We wrote a draft of an operation order there and then, that I could talk over with V.A.C.O. “This thing will have to have a name,” the Chief of Staff said. His eyes roved around the room. There was an iron bedstead in his office, the bed made up with sheets and blankets; evidently it was his habit to sleep there upon occasion. “Operation Blanket,” he said. “It’s got to happen in the blanket of the dark.” So Operation Blanket it became.

The M.G.B.s were in the Cattewater. I went down to see them with a young lieutenant-commander of the R.N.V.R., more for interest than anything else. Boats numbered 261 and 268 were detailed for the job; the officer commanding 268 was senior, and we went on board her. He was a lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. called Sanderson. He was twenty-two years old, and before the war had been at Cambridge studying to become a schoolmaster. He was a very tough-looking young man with hard eyes and a prominent jaw, dressed in a very dirty uniform. The officers of
Geneviéve
looked like a pack of Sissies beside that chap. His Number One was a sub of twenty with a great red beard. I never saw such a pair of pirates in my life.

Their ship was one of the new Vosper-boats, and she was very interesting. I spent an hour on board her, wishing that I’d had the chance of a command like her when I was young. She was good fun, that boat; well armed, comparatively seaworthy, and very fast. I thought a lot of her.

I went back to London, and two days later I went down to
V.A.C.O. about Operation Blanket. It was shaping quite well; indeed, it seemed to be a fairly simple little job, without great risk to anybody. McNeil was gathering his Tommy-guns and ammunition together, two lorry-loads of them. Their weight would put the
Geneviève
ten inches lower in the water and therefore slow her down a bit, but that didn’t seem to matter very much. Repairs were up to time and she came off the slip to schedule. Finally, Simon’s hand was getting on quite well.

Simon came up to London a few days after that, and I met McNeil with him for a discussion of the message to Douarnenez. There was an agent over there, I learned, who was to pass the message through: a man at Quimper who supplied the fish-packers with tinned steel sheets. In some way that I did not understand a message would reach him.

We settled to design the message. “Charles Simon says,” it ran at last, “the English will send seventy sub-machine-guns with three thousand rounds for each. On the night of October 31st/November 1st gunfire will begin about 23.00. Fishing vessels should put out their lights and scatter. Seven vessels should rendezvous without lights in the Anse des Blancs Sablons three miles north of Cap de la Chèvre. Charles Simon will be there to meet them in a Douarnenez sardine-boat painted black and will give to each vessel ten guns and ammunition. Confirm that on that night the fleet will fish north of the Raz de Sein. Ends.”

Two days later a reply came. “Charles Simon’s message received and understood. Seven boats will meet him as arranged. The fleet will fish north of Raz de Sein from 22.00 to 04.00 weather permitting. Ends.”

I went down to Plymouth on the twenty-ninth with McNeil; Simon met us there, and we had a conference in the Chief of Staff’s office about Operation Blanket. The commanding officer of M.G.B. 268 was there, Sanderson, whom I had met before, and with him was a quiet young man called Peters, who was in command of 261. In an hour we had settled the detail of the operation.
Geneviève
would sail direct from Dartmouth as before; her officers preferred the longer journey rather than the inconvenience of making their last arrangements in a strange port. That meant that she must leave in the forenoon of the 31st. We arranged to confirm the operation by telephone that morning, in view of the weather at the time.

There was no more to be done. I went back to Dartmouth with McNeil, and we went on to Dittisham. There was a lorry
down there at the hard unloading Tommy-guns in their boxes into the boat to be ferried to the ship. It would have been easier to bring her up against a quay, of course, but Simon and Colvin had preferred the secrecy of Dittisham.

I went on board
Geneviève
and made a semi-official inspection of her. She was in good shape; the damage had been well repaired and they had taken her to sea one day to test the flame-thrower. Colvin said she was as good as she had ever been.

So they went.

*     *     *     *     *

We got them away at about 11.00 on the morning of the 31st, deep-loaded with their Tommy-guns and ammunition and a full tank for the flame-thrower. I was at Dittisham to see them off; McNeil could not get down, nor was there any need for him to be there.

The weather was quite good, with high cloud and occasional bursts of sunshine. The forecast was for fine weather and moderate cloud off Ushant during the night, with only a slight chance of rain. That suited us quite well. It would make it easy for the fishing-boats to find the rendezvous; if the forecast had been for thick weather we should have been obliged to postpone.

I stood down on the hard with the shore party and watched them go. They slipped their mooring and went down between the wooded hills by Mill Creek till they were lost to sight. Then I turned away; the Wren was going to drive me back to Newton Abbot in the truck.

She was beside me. “Wish them luck,” I said a little heavily.

She said: “Do you think I’m not?”

I glanced down at her, smiling in what I meant to be a reassuring way. “They’ll be all right,” I said. “It’s not as if they were going out to look for trouble this time.” She knew well enough what they had gone to do.

She did not answer that. I glanced at her again. She seemed to have got much older in the last few weeks, much more mature. I saw for the first time that she was wearing an engagement ring, turquoise and diamonds, very little stones; a ring that a lieutenant who had nothing but his pay might give his girl.

I said: “I see that I’ve got to congratulate you, Miss Wright. Is that, by any chance, for any of our chaps?”

She raised her hand and looked at it. “It’s for Lieutenant
Rhodes,” she said. “You must have known. It’s horribly conspicuous. I suppose the new look goes away after a time.”

She wasn’t at all excited over it; she wasn’t even smiling. That seemed to me rather dreadful and unnatural.

“I’m terribly glad,” I said as warmly as I could. “I hope that you’ll be very, very happy.”

“That’s awfully sweet of you,” she said. “I’m sure I hope so, too.”

The shore party had dissipated; we were momentarily alone by the waterside. I did not want to go away and leave her in that frame of mind. “You mustn’t feel like that,” I said. “You get a double lot of troubles when you get engaged, but you get the hell of a lot more fun.” It wasn’t quite what I had wanted to say, but it was the best that I could manage impromptu.

She glanced up at me. “I suppose you had it in peace-time,” she said unexpectedly.

I did not understand her

“Getting engaged, I mean,” she said. “It must have been lovely to get engaged in peace-time, when you had time to give to it. I suppose some day there’ll be a world again where people can live quietly, and fall in love, and get married, and have fun. Where you can keep a rabbit or a dog—or a husband, and not have to stand by and see them killed. Where you can think of other things than burning oil, and rain, and darkness, and black bitter hate.”

I stood there thoughtful, looking out over the river. I was thinking that the Women’s Royal Naval Service has its complications and its limitations. If
Geneviève
went on upon this work, Leading Wren Wright would have to be transferred to other duty.