Go In and Sink! (6 page)

The submarine’s mood had certainly changed. It no longer felt like a floating schoolroom. It was filled with stores, ammunition, fuel and, above all, men. As he sat at his bulkhead desk he could hear the constant movement all around him. Feet on the casing above, the scrape of mooring wires and the clatter of metal from another session of gun drill. More bodies moved back and forth past his closed door, and in the wardroom nearby he heard the steward rattling crockery in readiness for lunch.

He found himself thinking about his officers. Apart from himself and Gerrard, there were four of them. A mixed bunch, and still hard to see as a team.

Lieutenant Adrian Devereaux, the navigator, would be a key member of their little community, yet he seemed vaguely out of place, and Marshall suspected it was largely his fault. Handsome and well-bred, with the easy drawling tone of one who could be slightly contemptuous of those around him.

Lieutenant Victor Frenzel, the engineer officer, was a complete opposite. He had served in submarines since before the war and had worked his way to commissioned rank by the hardest route, and had first served as a lowly junior stoker. But despite his beginnings in life and his frequent use of crude language when getting the engineering staff to accept his set standards, he possessed real charm. He had dark curly hair, a broad grin, and seemed totally unimpressed by the job he had been given.

The other two were temporary officers. Lieutenant
Colin
Buck, the torpedo officer, had been a garage manager and secondhand car dealer. Sharp-featured, cold-eyed, he would be a difficult man to know. Unless he wanted you to, Marshall thought. The wardroom’s junior member was Sub-Lieutenant David Warwick. As gunnery officer, and the one picked to deal with German translations, he had the outward innocence of a child. Fresh-faced and with almost delicate features, it was difficult to picture him as a man of action. Yet from his documents Marshall knew that after leaving university to enter the Navy, Warwick had passed his submarine and gunnery courses at the top of the list. So there had to be more to him than was instantly recognisable.

The rest of the company were equally mixed. Some were old hands, like Starkie, the coxswain, or Murray, the Chief E.R.A. Others were straight out of the training school with the captured U-boat as their first-ever operational submarine. Perhaps they were better off. Only when they were sent to other boats would they find trouble. They would have to re-learn their basic training all over again.

Marshall had seen very little of Browning since the day he had met his company aboard the depot ship. The captain had been kept busy with his own preparations, but there were other reasons for his staying away.

Marshall blamed himself for what might show later as a rift between them. But as the U-boat was now his responsibility he had to begin in his own way. He had sensed that Browning was going to make some sort of speech to mark the occasion. In the depot ship’s recreation space Marshall had watched the assembled officers and ratings, seeing them studying him while Browning introduced him as their new commander. Had the speech
been
made to civilians, or spoken over the radio to those not involved in actual warfare it would have had the desired effect. It was rousing and patriotic, but at the same time seemed totally out of date and remote from their surroundings. Browning had spoken of loyalty and keenness, when Marshall knew such things were taken for granted. They had to be. When U-192 finally slipped her moorings there would be fifty souls crammed within her toughened hull. Men who would
need
to rely on each other, have to know what to do if they became separated by accident or by the hideous necessity of slamming a watertight door to save the boat from destruction, but at the same time sealing a best friend in a steel tomb.

He had been thinking along those lines when he had realised that Browning had turned to face him, that the whole of the assembled men were looking towards him. Waiting.

He had let his glance move slowly along the uneven ranks, had heard his own voice like a stranger’s.

‘Some of you already know me. I have met you in other boats at other times. Most of you are as new to me as you are to the Service. I am only sorry we have not the time to alter that state of affairs before we begin our work.’ He had turned slightly so as not to see the hurt on Browning’s face. ‘There are just a few things I want to make clear. This is
not
some sort of game, nor is it an heroic escapade to boost morale. We are here to learn about this boat. To use it as a weapon and destroy part of our common enemy. We can trust nobody outside the hull. Ours may be one of the loneliest tasks ever undertaken at sea. It will certainly be one of the most dangerous.’ He had seen some of the older hands nodding grimly, the startled exchanges between the newer men. ‘Forget the fact
that
you volunteered or were
hand-picked
, such terms mean nothing once we are away from here. What you can do as a team, what you can endure when you have passed the margins of endurance are what count.’ He had paused to watch the effect of his words. Too blunt? Too brutal? It was hard to tell. ‘If we are successful, we will have done well. Very well. But again you will be unable to show your pride openly, for if we are to extend and exploit our worth then so must we hold our secrecy. Otherwise we and not the enemy will be the hunted.’ He had lowered his voice slightly, suddenly aware of the tension in his own limbs. Was it that he was trying to regain something in himself? ‘You will have one prize, however. One which you will be able to share amongst yourselves. The knowledge that you, and you alone, have taken the war amongst the enemy. On his own ground, by his own code. I will expect much from you, just as you will rightly expect the same from me.’ He had felt drained. ‘That is all. We will go to general drills at 1400.’

There was a tap at the door. It was Lieutenant Devereaux, his face devoid of expression as he announced, ‘Captain Browning is approaching, sir.’ He held out a signal pad. ‘From the S.D.O. Lieutenant Gerrard has landed at the field. A car has been sent for him.’

‘Thank you, Pilot.’ Marshall stretched his arms and stood up. Browning was coming to make peace. Or otherwise ‘Your department all buttoned up?’

Devereaux shrugged elegantly. ‘Quite, sir.’

Marshall smiled. The navigator was giving nothing away yet.

Together they climbed to the bridge and met Browning as he heaved himself over the rim of the conning-tower.

He looked at Devereaux. ‘Are you O.O.D.?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Go aboard
Guernsey
and clear all your people off. I want ’em mustered and accounted for within the hour, right?’

Devereaux opened his mouth and then shut it again.

As he hurried down the ladder Browning murmured, ‘Pompous prig. Still, he has a good record.’

Once in Marshall’s small cabin he shut the door and said, ‘Sailing orders.’ He shook his head gravely. ‘I
know
what you’re about to say, and I agree. But something happened. I’ve had a signal from A.C.H.Q. in Iceland. They have confirmed that one of this boat’s original crew has escaped from the temporary prison camp. He may be dead, frozen stiff somewhere. He could be hiding out or searching for a neutral ship to carry him off the island. But we have to assume that he might be able to contact some unfriendly bastard and blow our secret to the winds.’

‘I see, sir.’

Marshall walked to his cupboard and took out a bottle and two glasses. It was pointless to mention that Gerrard would arrive shortly with no knowledge of the boat in which he was first lieutenant. That they had not even done a dive together, and many other factors brought about by this unexpected flaw in the plan. Browning would have thought of them all.

Browning watched as he poured out two full glasses of Scotch. Then he said, ‘Sorry we got off badly when I made that stupid speech.’ He sighed. ‘I was very much like you at your age. But time puts a rosy glow in things. Takes the pain out of bravery.’

Marshall held out a glass. ‘I’m the one to apologise.’ He forced a grin. ‘Anyway, you said we’d have to rub off the rough edges as we went along!’

Browning swallowed the whisky and added fervently, ‘By God, I wish you were taking me with you!’

‘So do I.’ Marshall was surprised to find that he meant it.

Browning sank down into a chair and stared moodily around the cabin. ‘Makes you wonder about the chaps who’ve sat here, doesn’t it?’

Feet clattered on the casing and he said abruptly, ‘You can slip at 1630. It’ll be all but dark then. I’ve laid on the armed-yacht
Lima
to guide you out. She’ll stand by for your test dive.’ He sounded tired. ‘After that, you’ll be on your own. My people have prepared a complete up-to-date intelligence pack. Everything we know, and a lot we’re only guessing,’ He looked steadily into Marshall’s eyes. ‘But it’s your affair, your rules.’

‘Thank you.’

Marshall poured two fresh glasses. In his mind’s eye he could see the men filing into the hull, checks being made, nicknames emerging to wipe away the first reserve and uncertainty. They were getting the feel of their new situation. Only their captain had yet to prove himself.

There was a tap at the door and Lieutenant Frenzel poked his head inside the cabin.

‘We were wondering if you would join us in the wardroom before we get busy, sir?’ He grinned at Browning ‘And you, of course, sir.’

Marshall nodded. It was beginning. ‘Thanks, Chief. That would be fine.’

Suprisingly, Browning stood up and said, ‘Sorry. Lot to do. But I’ll watch you leave, and I wish you all the luck in the world.’

Frenzel nodded. ‘I’ll pass it on, sir.’ He looked at Marshall. ‘In about ten minutes then?’ He vanished.

As the door closed Browning said harshly, ‘I couldn’t sit there drinking with him as if nothing had happened.’ He thrust one hand into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled signal. ‘Came just now. Frenzel’s wife and kid were killed in an air raid last night. If I told him it could do no good, and might put the whole mission in jeopardy.’ He reached for his cap. ‘But I couldn’t sit there acting like a clown, knowing all the time …’

Marshall watched his despair. ‘He’ll understand. It
is
the only way.’

They shook hands gravely, and Browning said, ‘When you get back. I’ll tell him then. My responsibility.’

They walked out into the passageway and towards the brighly lit control room. Apart from the duty stokers it was deserted, and Marshall knew that, like himself, Browning was seeing it as it would be in a few more hours. The nerve centre. The place which would draw together all the fibres and the strength of the boat to one man. The captain.

He followed Browning up to the bridge and watched him until he had disappeared aboard the depot ship.

It was like the cutting of a wire, he thought. It was all his now.

He looked down at the wet casing where the sentry stamped his feet noisily to keep warm, and beyond the raked bows towards the end of the loch. It was hard to find any pattern in what they were doing. Bill had died even as his wife planned to deceive him and leave him for another. A woman and her child lay buried in the rubble of their home while their man poured drinks in the wardroom for his captain, ignorant of this necessary deception. And in Iceland an anonymous German had triggered off yet another chain of events, one which
would
send all of them to sea and an unknown challenge.

Strangely, Marshall found that he was no longer afraid of what lay ahead. Perhaps after all it was the land which had created his apprehension, and like the boat which stirred uneasily beneath his feet, he was glad to go, no matter what awaited him elsewhere.

AFTER ALL THE
tension and the brittle tempers brought about by last minute checks and frantic preparations, the actual moment of getting under way was almost a relief. The weather, perverse as ever, had worsened, and a stiff wind lashed the waters of the loch into a confusion of short, vicious whitecaps. It seemed as if every available man aboard the depot ship was lining the rails to see them off, and close by, her rakish hull rocking uncomfortably in the wind, the armed-yacht
Lima
lay hove-to to guide them clear of the anchorage and out to the open sea.

Marshall stood high on the steel gratings in the forepart of the bridge, craning over the screen to watch the second coxswain, Petty Officer Cain, as he pushed his wire-handling parties into their various positions of readiness. Known as the Casing King, he was a good petty officer, and Marshall knew he was too experienced to let anything slip past him. Beneath his leather sea-boots he could feel the grating trembling and thudding to the powerful diesels and pictured Frenzel at his control panel, his eyes on the dials and his men nearby.

Marshall was wearing an oilskin over several layers of clothing and had a thick towel around his neck. Even so, he was cold and could not stop his body from shaking. Nerves. He shouted, ‘Stand by!’ Below him a lookout repeated his warning into the voicepipe, and he heard a brief squeak above his head. Probably Gerrard taking a
glance
through the periscope. Getting his bearings. He had looked very tired when he had reported back from his short leave. He never had been much of a talker but was always a good man to be with. Reliable.

A seaman yelled, ‘Three minutes to go, sir!’

‘Very well.’

There had been no time at all to ask him about things at home. Just ‘How’s Valerie?’ ‘Fine.’ Or, ‘What did she say about your leaving so soon?’ Reply, ‘Not a lot.’ Poor old Bob, she must have given him a rough time.

He turned slightly to watch as Sub-Lieutenant Warwick strode from beneath the conning-tower to speak with the Casing King. Against the thickset P.O. and the shining black shapes of the other seamen he looked even frailer than usual.

A few figures were on the little H-boat’s casing alongside, waiting to let go. One shouted, ‘Good luck, mate!’ Another, ‘Get some sea-time in!’

Despite the familiar shouts, encouraging or derisive in their normality, Marshall could feel the strangeness all around him. Pointing away towards the tossing white-caps he saw the U-boat’s forecastle like a long black arrowhead, the jumping-wire making a thin line across the skudding clouds and darkening sky.