The White Guns (1989) (2 page)

'Stand to!'
Marriott raised his glasses and felt his heart pumping against his ribs.
Surely not now?
There had been talk of some German commanders refusing to give in, of those who had scuttled their vessels rather than surrender them to their old enemies.

It had even been reported that the island of Bornholm was being reinforced by troops fleeing the Russian advance, and that the German commander was preparing to defend the town from anyone who came near.

Fairfax lowered his glasses and gave a quick, tight grin.

'It's Captain (D), sir.'

A figure at the opposite corner of the bridge straightened his back.

Leading Signalman Silver, nicknamed
Long John,
needless to say, gave a grunt. 'Here they come, bags of swagger – showin' off as usual!'

The big destroyer tore down on the slow-moving group, a huge moustache foaming from her bow-wave, the spray a dirty yellow in the strange glare. Beyond her would be other destroyers and some cruisers, support craft, and landing ships packed with soldiers.

Marriott watched the impressive display, the glint of filtered sunlight on the destroyer's glass screen, and those further away as they swung in obedience to their leader.

A light stabbed across the water like a diamond-bright eye.

'Signal from Captain (D), sir.' Silver's lips moved soundlessly as he read it.
'Take care. No one is completely on your side!'

Marriott thought of all the brittle but witty signals he had seen and heard even in the face of death. What was wrong now? Nobody laughed. He stiffened as a loud boom echoed through the haze and spray and felt the explosion sigh against the hull as if it had touched a sandbar. They looked at each other and then Silver added, 'From Captain (D), sir.'

Marriott faced him. 'Well?'

Silver showed his teeth.
'Re my last signal. Delete "completely".'

'That's all we need!' Fairfax spoke with feeling.

But a few moments later they saw the ungainly salvage vessel signalling from astern.

Cuff was coming to rejoin them. The explosion must have been his.

Marriott thrust his hand into his oilskin's pocket and closed it around his pipe. Even that felt damp.

Perhaps they had all just been holding on and nothing else? And had no more to give?

'Signal, sir.' Silver was studying him impassively.
'Take station on me.'

'Very well. Bring her round to port, Swain.'

He turned to watch his men at their familiar stations, their white sweaters touched with grease from the guns, their eyes peering into the clouds and towards the hazy shoreline.

At Normandy it had been almost a frantic, last-ditch display. Best uniforms, cheers and madness even when the bombardment had engulfed the brave little ships. In the midst of it all, the blazing tanks as they were marked down within minutes of rumbling from the LSTs, the smoke and the roar of gunfire from the bombarding squadrons beyond the horizon; as men cursed and died, others had pressed forward; there was even that crazy soldier with the bagpipes. What would make a man act like that with death just yards away?

The men near him looked worn out, old before their time. Yet there were only six aboard who were over twenty-one. You would never have known. A grimy hand passed a signal flimsy up to the bridge from the W/T cabinet. Marriott read it carefully, then re-read it as his eyes blurred. He knew that the third-hand had joined them, as if he had guessed. Sub-Lieutenant John Lowes was eighteen years old, with this his first proper appointmerit. For him at least it had to be right. Marriott tried to picture the others he had known as if he could feel them too. Watching, waiting for him to make it worthwhile even though they could never share it. Now.

He said quietly, 'Pass the word. This is from the Admiralty. Official. All German armed forces have surrendered. The war is over.' He looked at the youthful Lowes. 'Put it in the log, Pilot. May the eighth 1945 is to be known as Victory in Europe Day.'

He stared blindly up at the gleaming ensign which curled above the bridge – ragged, holed, faded, but no less proud than those at Agincourt, Trafalgar even. But he saw only what he had lost.

Fairfax thrust out his hand, the coxswain too, while they studied each other like strangers.

Silver removed his cap and let the wet breeze ruffle his untidy hair. A Londoner from Dalston, he had been a tick-tack man at a greyhound stadium before the war. Perhaps not that much of a change, for him at least. But even he was at a loss, for once.

Silver said, 'I dunno what to say, sir.'.

Marriott turned away. 'Be on your guard. They could be wrong about some of the more dedicated ones...' But he was thinking of England, how it would be back there. The long years. Bombed, sometimes starved, but always defiant. Without the ordinary civilians' determination, their faith, the warships and bombers would have counted for nothing.

He heard himself say, 'We shall enter harbour as directed but remain at action stations.' He let his words sink in. 'Tell the engineroom about the signal, Number One.' It was always the same in these boats. The engineroom crew were the last to know anything, unless they received a direct hit.

He heard the mounting roar of Cuff's engines and saw the boat planing past the MLs and the salvage vessel, his familiar yellow scarf whipping above the screen like a pennant. The other colour was provided by a line of swastikas below the bridge on red and white painted shields, each one a kill. As he drew abeam, Cuff switched on his loud-hailer. It was strange, but you hardly noticed his Yorkshire accent at any other time.

'Drinks on me when we get in!' He waved his gloved fists in the air.
'God damn it! It's bloody well over!'

The MGB swung away to resume proper station on their quarter.

He at least was able to give way to his feelings. Some of his men were waving and cheering to one of the destroyers.

'I'm going to look at the chart, Number One. Take over, right?' Marriott stepped down into the chartroom with its familiar musty smell. Dry rot, wet rot; no hull was safe when they worked them so hard in all weathers.

He switched on the chart light and stared at the uneven coastline of the peninsula, Denmark and down into Schleswig-Holstein. Kiel.
Germany.
He spoke the last name aloud as if to convince himself.

He heard the two subbies chatting near the voicepipes. Fairfax bewailing the fact the war had ended before he had got his second stripe, and Lowes because the war had passed him by altogether.

What would become of them all?
Of me?

He searched his mind for the other faces, but they had gone now, their part played.

He thought suddenly of Cuff. As always, the survivor. The winner. And wondered why he had never really liked him.

Sub-Lieutenant Mike Fairfax flattened the creases on the ready-use chart and tried to prevent the instruments from rattling as the boat shuddered over some short crests. The atmosphere in the open bridge was as tense as he had known it in battle, and he knew he was only fiddling with the chart to hold his own nerves in check.

He heard Marriott say quietly, 'Dead slow. Keep clear of that wreckage, Swain.' He also heard Evans's noncommittal grunt. How well those two had worked together although, even in Fairfax's youthful opinion, Marriott and the swarthy petty officer were like chalk and cheese. Feet shifted on the deck and in gun mountings, fingers played warily with sights and ammunition. It was electric and yet it felt dead.
Numb.

Fairfax watched Marriott's even profile. Steady grey eyes, a sensitive mouth which had sometimes hardened as if to a command only when it had been required. Fairfax had come to recognise all the signs in his captain. The way his brown hair flapped from beneath the old cap with its tarnished badge, the tell-tale marks of grey in his sideburns. Wrong for a man of twenty-six, but Fairfax had seen it in others. Men like Marriott, young only in years, eyes lost in experiences he could only imagine.

Fairfax licked his lips and tasted grit on his teeth. It felt out of place at sea. He realised that what he had taken for sea-mist or perhaps inshore drizzle was in fact smoke; he could taste that too, so that his stomach rebelled at the stench of burning. A city, a port which had been crushed by war.

Silver called, 'Motor boat approachin' from starboard, sir!'

Fairfax raised his glasses and, from a corner of his eyes, saw the twin barrels of the paired Oerlikons train soundlessly on the small grey launch, then turn away disdainfully as if they and not the gunlayer had seen the huge White Ensign flapping from its stern.

He saw a bearded lieutenant-commander in battledress with a megaphone in one fist as he waved to signal his intentions to come alongside.

Marriott said in the same unemotional tone, 'Side-party, give him a hand. But we don't stop.'

The officer was hauled unceremoniously aboard and arrived on the bridge panting heavily.

The interwoven lace on his shoulder straps proclaimed him to be an RNR officer, most likely a pre-war first-mate in some shipping line or other. He had a thick, raw voice and had probably been shouting at various vessels since dawn.

He shook hands with Marriott and glanced swiftly around the bridge, his eyes red-rimmed with fatigue.

'I'm acting harbour-master.' He waved his hand over the screen. 'There aren't just wrecks in the harbour, there are bloody
layers
of 'em, so we must make sure you don't join 'em, eh?'

Fairfax saw Marriott give a tired grin. 'I'll do my best.'

Sub-Lieutenant Lowes touched Fairfax's arm so that he jumped, without knowing why.

Lowes was pointing across the port bow towards a tall, gaunt tower which stood above the drifting smoke like an abandoned lighthouse. It must have been well over two hundred feet tall.

'What's
that,
for God's sake?'

Fairfax stooped over the compass and took a quick fix while he steadied the azimuth ring against the jerking engines. He consulted the chart, then replied, 'The German Naval Memorial at Laboe.' He did not notice the admiration in Lowes's expression. Nor did he realise how confidently his assessment had come out. Just months ago he had been nervous, unsure still at taking a watch at night alone with his doubts and misgivings. Marriott had given him this confidence. The realisation came to him only then, and he thought bitterly,
What good will that do me now that it's all over?

A small escort destroyer, one of the hard-worked Hunt class, stood motionless inside the harbour approaches, surrounded by boiling froth from her screws as they thrashed the water first ahead, then astern. A salvage tug was already nudging around her quarter, and the RNR officer said testily, 'She's hit one of the wrecks.' He looked ahead again. 'These destroyer types. Always making a big show. He'll be lucky if he gets off without punching a few holes in his belly!'

Fairfax took his eyes from the grim-looking memorial and watched the great harbour opening up ahead, then moving out to embrace the slow-moving MGBs on either beam.

I
must remember every single thing on this day.
Fairfax was not sure if he said it to himself or spoke aloud. But none of the others would have heard anyway. Each man was transfixed, only hands and eyes moving out of practice and hard necessity. On Cuff's boat, which was the nearest, Fairfax saw the others acting in the same stricken fashion when earlier they had been yelling and cheering.

There was smoke everywhere, and the water was thick with oil, so that when Cuff's boat pushed through it the sea showed itself like a blue thread before vanishing again as the filth closed in astern. Drifting ashes, patches of smoke which stung the throat like acid, bobbing flotsam, upturned floats and boats – a place of the dead.