Battlecruiser (1997)
| Battlecruiser (1997) | |
| Reeman, Douglas | |
| (2003) | |
| Tags: | WWII/Naval/Fiction WWII/Naval/Fictionttt |
It's 1943, and the seas are haunted by Hitler's deadly U-boats and cruisers. After the mysterious death of the Reliant's last captain, Guy Sherbrooke is given command of the legendary battlecruiser. A symbol of everything the Royal Navy stands for, the battlecruiser boasts the speed of a destroyer and the firepower of a battleship.
Contents
18. ‘The Violence of the Enemy’
The Battlecruiser – in their time this class of ships was considered one of the great triumphs of the Royal Navy, as swift as a destroyer but packing a deadly firepower equal to any ship afloat. But the ships had one fatal flaw: their armour could be pierced by a single enemy shell. The Battle of Jutland exposed this Achilles’ heel, then further disasters followed in the next world war with the tragic sinkings of the
Hood
and
Repulse
.
1943 – Of all her class, HMS
Reliant
and one other have survived. Reliant has the reputation of a lucky ship but when Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins her he knows he could be her last captain. As Britain prepares to invade occupied Europe,
Reliant
will be thrown head first into the conflagration. All those who sail in her know that there can be no half measures: only death or glory awaits HMS
Reliant
.
DOUGLAS REEMAN joined the Navy in 1941. He did convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea, and later served in motor torpedo boats. As he says, ‘I am always asked to account for the perennial appeal of the sea story, and its enduring interest for people of so many nationalities and cultures. It would seem that the eternal and sometimes elusive triangle of man, ship and ocean, particularly under the stress of war, produces the best qualities of courage and compassion, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the conflict . . . The sea has no understandig of the righteous or unjust causes. It is the common enemy, respected by all who serve on it, ignored at their peril.’
Battlecruiser
is Douglas Reeman’s thirty-third novel under his own name; he has also written over twenty bestselling historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho, under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.
A Prayer for the Ship
High Water
Send a Gunboat
Dive in the Sun
The Hostile Shore
The Last Raider
With Blood and Iron
H.M.S. Saracen
The Deep Silence
Path of the Storm
The Pride and the Anguish
To Risks Unknown
The Greatest Enemy
Rendezvous – South Atlantic
Go In and Sink!
The Destroyers
Winged Escort
Surface with Daring
Strike from the Sea
A Ship Must Die
Torpedo Run
Badge of Glory
The First to Land
The Volunteers
The Iron Pirate
Against the Sea
(non-fiction)
In Danger’s Hour
The White Guns
Killing Ground
The Horizon
Sunset
A Dawn Like Thunder
Dust on the Sea
For Valour
Twelve Seconds to Live
The Glory Boys
Knife Edge
Douglas Reeman
For you, Kim, with love.
‘Save thou my rose; in it thou art my all.’
Escort the brave
Whose hearts, unsatisfied
With the kind stairs and tender hearths of love,
Are loyal to the cunning of the waves,
The sparse rule of the tide.
Fly over these,
Humble and brave, who sail
And trim the ships with very life. Their lives
Delineate the seas.
Patrol their deathless trail.
John Pudney
Flight Lieutenant, R.A.F.
1942
In peace or war, the launch of a great ship is like no other experience, and to have been a part of it, to have shared the creation from idea to blueprint, and then to follow it over the months to this moment, must be unique.
In peace or war, the launch of a great ship is like no other experience, and to have been a part of it, to have shared the creation from idea to blueprint, and then to follow it over the months to this moment, must be unique.
For the many men who helped to build this particular ship, it is a time for pride and satisfaction. Day by day, they have seen her grow and take shape until she dominates all around her, just as she has ruled their working lives. Unlike the days of unemployment and depression, when the completion of such a ship would represent loss of work until another order could be won and another keel laid down, this slipway will not be empty for very long.
And here on Clydebank, you can feel the excitement on every side. Even in neighbouring yards, men have stopped work to watch this great ship, bedecked with flags, built for war but as yet without weapons, her bridges and superstructure strangely bare and unfinished. But some will say that she already has a character of her own.
Sailors have always been prone to claim that different ships have different characters. Happy ships, where the line between wardroom and messdeck is flexible, ready to adapt, and others where the opposite is equally obvious. Men under punishment, with lists of defaulters as further proof of the discontent which can harm any ship. And those other, rogue ships, with their unexplained accidents and breakdowns, and the inevitable aftermath of recriminations from on high, usually leading to a court-martial.
But now there is a hush, as if some one has raised a signal. The figures on the platform, dwarfed by the towering grey stem that rises high above them, come to life. A small girl curtsies and presents a bouquet to the woman in white, an admiral’s wife, who is to perform the final honour. She is well supported by senior naval officers and dockyard officials, one of whom takes her hand and places it gently on the lever; another takes the bouquet from her. For a few moments she stares up at those great, graceful bows, the empty hawse pipes like eyes.
Below her, the band of the Royal Marines raise their instruments, waiting for the first stroke of the baton.
Her voice is strong, loud even, on the improvised speakers.
‘
I name this ship
. . .’
Her voice is completely drowned by the thunder of cheering, the crash of drums as the band breaks into
Rule, Britannia.
‘
God bless her
. . .’
There is one stark moment when some of the yard engineers glance at one another with alarm, until, with something like a sigh, the great ship begins to move, so slowly at first; and then, with the chain cables holding her under control in a rising cloud of rust, she touches the Clyde for the first time.
‘
And all who sail in her!
’
In war, a ship can fall victim to mine or torpedo, shellfire or dive-bomber, impartial killers without conscience or memory. Or they can live on, to end their days in some breaker’s yard, suffering the indignity and the contempt after years of loyal service. But this ship is a machine, a weapon, only as good or as bad as those who will command her. A ship has no soul, and can have no say in her own destiny. Or can she?
Back from the Dead
The journey from the railway station to the church in the one and only taxi seemed to pass within a minute. Huddled in a heavy coat and scarf, the driver occasionally glanced at the passenger reflected in the mirror, a stranger now in his naval uniform, but one who had grown up in this small Surrey town. Like all those other boys, like the driver’s own son, who was now driving a tank in the Western Desert.
For something to say, he called over his shoulder, ‘Might still make it, sir. They could have been delayed.’
Captain Guy Sherbrooke turned up the collar of his raincoat and said something vague in agreement. The weather was cold despite the bright, clear sky, but it was not that. He was used to it, or should be, he thought. He glanced at the passing houses, and a pub with some soldiers standing outside, waiting for the doors to open. It was unreal, coming back like this; he should have known that it would be. The raincoat felt stiff and unfamiliar, like the rest of his clothing, all new. Like the cap that lay on the seat beside him, its peak bearing gold oak leaves. A captain. The dream . . . that was all it had been, in those days.
He should not have come. He had been offered an excuse at Waterloo station. The train was delayed; there had been a derailment; local slow trains were held up to
make way for others more important. A familiar story. He had gone into the station buffet and had a cup of stale coffee. A drink, a proper drink, had been what he had really wanted.
He smiled unconsciously, a young man again. It would hardly do to arrive at a funeral smelling of gin. He turned to gaze at the great, green sprawl of Sandown Park racecourse, where his grandfather had taken him as a child to watch the jockeys urging their mounts around the last bend before the post. Only a memory now. This was the second day of January, 1943, another year of war. Sandown Park was no longer witness to the raucous bookmakers and jostling punters, the tipsters and the pickpockets. It was part of the army for the duration: stones painted white, sentries on the gates, lines of khaki stamping up and down in a cloud of dust, the home of a training battalion of the Welsh Guards.
He looked ahead and saw the familiar church spire; you could even see it from Kingston Hill on a fine day, they said. There had been some bombing around here, but not much, unlike the cities he had seen where hardly a building remained undamaged.
The taxi turned into the narrow road by the church, and stopped. The driver, who sported a moustache like the Old Bill character of the Great War, turned in his open seat and said, ‘We were all sorry to hear about your ship, sir . . . losing her like that. Tim Evans, the postman’s son, was on board.’
‘I know.’ Would it always be like this? ‘He was a nice lad.’
Was.
So many had died that day, in that bitter sea that robbed a man of his breath, his very will.
The driver watched him thoughtfully. A youthful, clean-cut face, with little to show of what he must have suffered.
But the steadiness of his eyes and the tightness of the jaw made a lie of it. The driver had been a sapper in that other war, in Flanders, no less a graveyard than this one on the other side of the old stone wall.
Sherbrooke knew what he was thinking, and was moved by it. Air raids, rationing . . . it was bad enough for the civilian populace without those hated telegrams.
We regret to inform you that your husband, father, son
. . . And yet this old taxi driver was always at the station, whenever he had managed to get away for a spot of leave.