An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War (43 page)

“Burial party, on hats. Dismiss,” the CPO in charge of the detail ordered, and that was that. Typical naval efficiency, a drill for every conceivable occasion.

Touareg
had for the duration of the ceremony flown her ensigns at half-mast but had made no effort to heave to or deviate from her course. There was a good reason.

At breakfast one of the destroyer's officers had informed Fingal that the British fleet was southwest of Greece and that the enemy fleet was about 150 miles away, fifty miles from the toe of Italy. It was Admiral Cunningham's intention to place his ships between the Italians and their base at Taranto in Italy's heel to force a battle.

When Fingal arrived on the bridge at noon, there had been a flurry of signalling between
Warspite
and the rest of the fleet. Flags soared up halliards; Aldis lamps clacked and flashed. Radio silence was the order of the day.
Touareg
was one of five destroyers attached to the flagship's close escort and was steaming off the battleship's starboard beam about four cables, or two-fifths of a mile, away.

“This,” said Captain Huston-Phelps, reading a message he'd been handed by the signals yeoman, “promises to be interesting, Doctor. I'm glad you've taken up my invitation of last night. You're welcome to stay on the bridge unless we have more casualties for you to attend to. We're within ninety miles of the enemy now and they are heading this way.” Before Fingal could answer, the skipper said to the first lieutenant, “Course two seven oh. Speed twenty knots, number one. Conform to
Warspite
's movements.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The ship's first lieutenant repeated his instructions to ensure there had been no misunderstanding, then passed the necessary orders to the cox'n who stood at the ship's wheel, eyes fixed on the compass and said, “Course two seven oh degrees, sir. Wheel's amidships. Steady as she goes.”

They were not yet at action stations, but once they were, the cox'n would go to the armoured steering position below the bridge.

“Very good.” The first lieutenant focussed his field glasses and stared ahead.

Ninety miles? Fingal was no navigator, but that seemed pretty close. It might not be long before the fleets were in sight of each other and, he swallowed, in range too. From this vantage point he'd be able to see the battle. How had he thought of it after witnessing the gunnery practice? The grappling of the fleets? He'd wondered then, as he wondered now, how he'd feel. He was certainly still a bit rocky after being dangled like a puppet on a string over a roiling ocean, performing surgery on a moving deck, and burying the husband of a woman he'd almost slept with.

Fingal looked up to a sky dappled with high thin clouds and for the moment enemy bomber free. The twenty-knot wind of their passage ruffled his hair where it stuck out from under a steel helmet. All the other bridge personnel wore similar protection. “Thank you, sir. I'd be four decks down on
Warspite.
I'd have no idea what was going on.”

“Four decks down behind God knows how many tons of armour,” the captain said. “Destroyers are different.” He grinned. “Nowhere much to hide really.”

As poor Chris Simpkins had discovered.

“You're probably as safe here as anywhere if the only ships firing are battleships at long range. The Eyeties will be too busy trying to hit our battlewagons to bother with shrimps like us—unless we are trying to torpedo them, then they'll give us everything they've got.”

There was some comfort in that. In Fingal's mind, there'd not be much left of a 1,850-ton ship like
Touareg
if she were to suffer a direct hit from a battleship's main armament.

“I'll have to chase you if we are going into close action, but until then, you will have time on your hands, so you may as well watch the action if you wish.” He handed Fingal a spare set of binoculars. “Here, you'll see better with these.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I think you'll find it illuminating. A flying boat out of Malta has identified most of the enemy fleet. There's a pair of
Cavour
-class battleships each with ten twelve-inch guns. They're capable of twenty-eight knots. One's the fleet flagship,
Giulio Cesare,
with Admiral Riccardi on board. The other's
Conte di Cavour.
They've both undergone recent extensive refits and will be tough nuts to crack. They also have sixteen eight- and six-inch gun cruisers, and more than thirty destroyers. I'm afraid we're outnumbered, and outgunned in the cruiser department, and
Malaya
and
Royal Sovereign
aren't very fast. We may leave them both behind if we end up trying to catch the Eyeties.”

Fingal whistled.
Warspite
would have to take on their battlewagons unsupported by any other heavily gunned ships. Not good odds.

“Look,” said Huston-Phelps, and pointed astern. “
Eagle
's coming head to wind.”

Fingal put the glasses to his eyes, focussed, and watched as the ponderous aircraft carrier and her escort, including the battered
Gloucester,
swung onto a northwesterly course to give the aircraft the best lift under their wings. Looking to Fingal like little moths, the flimsy “stringbags” took off, formed into V-shaped groups of three, and droned away, each carrying a Mark XII torpedo that they hoped might hit an enemy warship and at least slow her down if it failed to sink her. Their main targets would be the Italian battlewagons.

“You have to admire the Fleet Air Arm laddies,” Huston-Phelps said. “You'd not get me up in one of those Swordfish biplanes on a flat-calm day, never mind being shot at too.”

Fingal lowered his glasses. “Nor me,” he said.

“Flagship's signalling, sir,” the yeoman of signals said, and began to read the flickering morse. “Seventh Cruiser Flotilla proceed at best speed.”

“That's thirty knots,” Captain Huston-Phelps said. “Vice Admiral Tovey's cruisers are going to get among the enemy before us.”

Fingal looked through his glasses as the four sleek vessels already ahead of the rest of the fleet began to put on speed. He wondered how their six-inch guns would fare against the Italian cruisers with their eight-inch armaments. And yet airman and sailor alike, facing horrid odds, seemed to go about their business as if it was simply a routine day. Were they inured to fear, too young to be afraid, heroes who were heroes because, although terrified, they carried on nevertheless? He shook his head. He couldn't speak for them, but he was scared. And he wasn't afraid to admit it, at least to himself. Last night, just as he had after Narvik, he'd seen what bomb fragments could do to metal and to flesh. Fragments. What effect a twelve-inch shell would have he'd try not to imagine. His smile was grim. If nothing else, it would be over quickly for many.

The signals yeoman said, “To
Warspite
's five escorting destroyers, make revolutions for twenty-four knots and maintain screening positions on
Warspite.
”

“Very good. Acknowledge.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The skipper bent to a voice pipe, which presumably communicated with the engine room. “Engine room, bridge. Engine room, bridge.” He paused, listening to the chief engineer's acknowledgement before saying, “Revolutions for twenty-four knots please, Chiefy.”

Fingal heard the jangling of the engine room telegraphs. At times such as these the engineering chief petty officer, Chiefy, would be on the engine control platform. Fingal felt the deck move under his feet as the ship gathered speed. Astern she now was throwing up a high rooster tail of wake. The wind on his cheeks freshened and the funnel smoke streaming astern thickened.

“Tallyho,” said the captain. “Our admiral is a pretty aggressive man. He's sending his light forces on ahead to try to slow down the enemy, pushing the hell out of
Warspite.
Look at her go.
Malay
and
Royal Sovereign
will be left behind.”

Fingal watched his ship, picturing his friend Tom Laverty busy at his chart table keeping the plot up to date. For the time being her great rifles were trained fore and aft, but as soon as they were in range they would start swinging, elevating, blasting.

Her funnel smoke belched thick, her bow wave creamed away from her sides, flung spray over the forepeak, and the wake boiled above her stern. Even here, four cables away, he could hear the roar of the turbines, the crackling of her battle ensigns streaming out from the fore and main tops.

“ABC's pushing on so he can support the cruisers as soon as possible,” the captain said, “but that'll leave the other battlewagons lagging behind. Once we get in range, we'll have ten ships and only one that outguns the Eyeties—
Warspite
. And they'll have, if I've done my sums correctly, thirty-three ships.” He grinned. “Real death-or-glory stuff.”

“Motto of the Seventeen, Twenty-first Lancers,” Fingal said. He was still picturing what a battleship's guns might do to
Touareg,
but he also found himself being infected by the captain's excited enthusiasm.

“I think,” said Huston-Phelps, keeping his voice flat, his expression deadpan, “ABC's plan is to surround the enemy.” He chuckled.

And Fingal, whether from genuine amusement or simple release of tension, laughed until the combined twenty-four-knot wind and his laughter brought tears to his eyes.

*   *   *

By three o'clock,
Eagle
had flown off a second unsuccessful air strike. Not a torpedo had hit, but all the planes had eventually returned safely to land on the carrier's flight deck, much to Fingal's relief.

“It's been nearly three hours since ABC sent the cruisers in pursuit,” the captain was saying. “Visibility is about fifteen miles. The cruisers are ten miles ahead of us and the rest of the fleet ten miles behind.”

Fingal glanced astern and had no difficulty making out the bulk of the two battleships. The carrier was off to the east of
Warspite
. Ten miles ahead, the four fast British ships were easy to make out.

“Aha,” said the captain, “
Neptune,
one of the cruisers, has just signalled, ‘Enemy battle fleet in sight.'” He grinned. “The last time that signal was made in the Med, Nelson was in command.”

Moments later, a Swordfish biplane was catapulted off
Warspite
's deck and headed in the direction of the enemy.

“The plane will spot the fall of
Warspite
's shells when she opens up and radio back corrections,” the captain said. “We'll listen in.” He gave instructions for a repeater speaker to be switched on on the bridge. “It'll be in Morse code, but our yeoman will give us a running commentary.”

The cruisers had opened fire, and even at this distance Fingal could hear the sounds of gunfire and see the flashes from the British cruisers' guns and beyond them the flickering of guns being fired by the enemy forces. Waterspouts, white and discoloured by the shells' explosives, towered above the distant ships. Fingal was sure it must be only a matter of time before one or more of the outnumbered British cruisers were hit, but he'd not seen any telltale towering gouts of flame from any of their hulls. He recalled a phrase his father had once used and had attributed to a Prussian, von Clauzewitz, “The fog of war.” Certainly up ahead, as funnel smoke and the cordite fumes of many guns hung low over the water, it was difficult to be sure exactly what was happening.

“Amazing,” the captain said. “Admiral Tovey's handling his force like a destroyer flotilla commander, dashing here and there, unsighting the enemy gunners and—”

Fingal was deafened.
Warspite
had let go a salvo from A turret, immediately followed by one from B. He ducked instinctively. The last time he'd seen her fire her great guns he'd been watching from directly above. Now he had a different perspective on the sheets of flames pouring from each muzzle and the dense mahogany-coloured smoke. The cruiser sailors would be heartened by the arrival of
Warspite
's one-ton shells among the enemy. It must be, Fingal thought, like the intervention of a big brother in a playground squabble between rival kiddies' gangs—but a potentially lethal intervention.

Shortly after, Fingal became aware that his view of the enemy squadrons was becoming even more obscured. “What's going on, sir?”

“It seems our Italian friends don't want to play anymore. They're laying a smokescreen and turning away, and … hang on.”

“Signal from Flagship, sir. Time three thirty,” the signals yeoman said. “
Warspite
and destroyers will steam in a circle to permit
Malaya
to catch up.”

The skipper gave the necessary helm orders, and
Touareg
heeled into a turn to starboard and completed a 360-degree manoeuver before steering northwest again with
Malaya
in company.
Royal Sovereign
was still lagging behind.

“Here comes trouble,” Captain Huston-Phelps said, and ahead, appearing from the man-made fog bank, Fingal could begin to make out the ghostly shapes of two huge Italian ships. The leading ship carried five of her great guns in two turrets on the foredeck. The three in the lower turret spoke.

“We're almost on parallel courses,” the captain said, “so both sides will soon start firing broadsides, but
Warspite
will range with salvoes.”

“I watched her doing that on a gunnery exercise,” Fingal said. “Each gun of a pair fires, then they correct the range.” He didn't get a chance to say any more because with a roar like that of an approaching train, three Italian shells arrived and their deafening explosion and waterspouts bracketed
Warspite
.