The White Guns (1989) (3 page)

The harbour-master cleared his throat and the starboard machine-gunner started with alarm.

'Use that pier yonder, Skipper. I can't let you inside the yard until we
know.'

Marriott turned and looked at his first lieutenant. It seemed like minutes, and Fairfax had the strange feeling that they had never been so close, nor would be again.

'Foc'sle party, Number One. Clear away the after guns and use as few hands as possible.' Again the sad smile. 'You'll feel a bit naked up front.' He touched the wet screen. 'Don't worry. If anything gets nasty, we shoot first and argue afterwards.'

He saw Marriott look away as something huge and solid seemed to rise from the seabed in one last act of revenge.

The big German cruiser
Admiral Hipper
had been rarely out of the headlines from the very start of things. She had served in most campaigns from the invasion of Norway to the attack on Russia, and later to cover that same army in retreat. . A familiar sight in Kiel, and her life had ended here. Like a shattered leviathan she lay half-submerged, smoke still pouring from her towering bridge and slewed gun-turrets. The RAF had put her out of action a month ago, and her masters had seen fit to scuttle her by exploding depth-charges deep in her hull. That had been about a week ago and she was still burning, her oil joining all the other thousands of gallons in the harbour like her own life blood.

The RNR officer pointed at another massive wreck, only her side showing above the drifting procession of flotsam. But her name was still clearly visible on one bow:
New York.

He said with something like respect, 'One of their old Hamburg-Amerika liners. Knew her well.' He stared at the shattered wreck and added bitterly, 'I hope they're all bloody satisfied!'

'Were you in a liner?' Marriott studied him gravely.

The man shook his head. 'No. I ran bananas.' He turned away to watch Fairfax and a handful of seamen hurry to the bows with ropes and fenders. 'At least it was a clean life.'

Marriott nodded, strangely moved by this man whose name he did not even know. The love and brotherhood of the sea was something else lost here.

'Slow astern.' He saw one seaman drop over the bows then reappear with the mooring rope. The first of their little band to set foot in Germany. The seaman must have realised it and was grinning up at his mates. That was Scouse Arkright, a real 'skate' who had been inside more naval D.Q.s than at sea until he had popped up in Coastal Forces. It had appealed to his independent spirit apparently.

The other MGBs were nudging their way to the out-thrust arm of the jetty. It was more like an empty ramp, Marriott thought, the rest had been blasted away in the bombing.

Cuff's boat was coming alongside in a cloud of high-octane vapour as her powerful screws thrashed astern before coming to rest.

These boats had been built originally to do service as both MGB and MTB. The bows of Cuff's command were scalloped like Marriott's 801 so that torpedo tubes could be fitted, but they never had been.

Marriott glanced now around the littered, broken harbour. Torpedoes were the last things they needed here.

The launch was panting fussily on the outboard side and the harbour-master thrust out his hand. 'Must be off. Long queue by now, I expect.'

Marriott thought of the bottle of brandy he had brought for this moment. The original one lay with the remains of his old command. In pieces like his men.

His eyes smarted and he wiped them with the back of his hand.

The ex-merchant navy man prompted gruffly, 'Rough, was it?'

Marriott stared back at the tall memorial. It seemed to be mocking them. It had survived for the dead when all around had been laid low. He could see part of the town now; the light must be stronger, but there were only ruins, undulating piles like dunes in a desert. Where were the people? Dead or still trapped and buried there, gasping out their lives beneath their workplaces and homes, in the smouldering fires because there was nothing with which to fight or extinguish them?

Marriott replied vaguely, 'Thought you might join us for a tot.'

But, when he looked again, the launch was shoving off and heading back into the smoke.

Fairfax clattered back into the bridge, as if he only felt safe here. He touched his cap. 'All secure, sir.'

Marriott saw Ginger Jackson, a torpedoman who also acted as a messman for officers, emerge through the hatch which led down to the wardroom and W/T office. He had a huge grin, but then he usually did.

'I fetched it, sir.'

Marriott took the bottle from the towel in which he had wrapped it for safety. There were only enamel mugs available; all the rest had been smashed in the vibration when they had charged into Denmark expecting some last resistance.

Below the bridge the few who were entitled would be sharing their hoarded tots of rum with those still too young to draw it.

But here, on this small bridge, Marriott's world, where it had all happened, this was their moment.

They all watched as the brandy slopped into the mugs.

The harbour, the stench of death and destruction, the scenes of horror yet to come, even the presence of the other boats nearby were all excluded. Marriott raised his mug and felt his grip tighten to prevent his fingers from shaking. Fairfax and the fawn-like Lowes. The black-eyed Evans, Long John Silver, and the others of this small team. Behind each man another seemed to stand like a shadow. Marriott felt that if he moved he would see them, that they would be as they had once been.

He said, 'I wanted to make a speech. To talk to you about victory and not what it cost us to get it.' He glanced up at the restless ensign as it jerked from the gaff. Like the RNR officer's banana ship, clean against the filth of battle.

'Instead, I'll just say
thank you.'
He studied their tired faces, their expressions of astonishment and disbelief. Perhaps the stilling of the great Packard engines made the realisation all the more poignant.

They downed their drinks and held out their mugs for a refill. Marriott felt the brandy stinging his throat, burning his stomach, and realised dully that he had not eaten since . . . He shook his head. He could not remember that either.

The Chief, Petty Officer Motor Mechanic Adair, popped through the hatch with a mug of something in his greasy fist.

'Cheers, everybody!' He gave his terrible grin before swallowing his neaters.

As a young mechanic he had been hurled against a piece of unyielding machinery in rough weather and had had all his front teeth knocked out. He never wore his dentures at sea in case he lost them or had them smashed in the roaring pit of his engineroom. At twenty-five, Adair was one of the
old men
of the flotilla.

Marriott shook his hand, saying nothing. Their eyes said it all.

Adair of all people would settle down better than any of them, he thought. He had set his sights on a small garage and tea-room, somewhere quiet in the West Country. Catch the day-trippers that way, he had said more than once.

Marriott had no doubt he would do just that.

'They're coming, sir!'

Marriott strode to the side and saw the men on the other MGBs returning to their weapons.

He watched as first the heads and shoulders, then the bodies of a great tide of shambling figures seemed to rise from the dockyard rubble and advance on the moored boats. No order or discipline, no formation, just a dull sense of purpose.

There were thousands of them. All in blue uniforms, some bandaged or limping, petty officers and seamen, like a silent army, their feet stirring up the dust and dead ashes as they moved closer.

The German navy, the invincible
Kriegsmarine.
It was beyond belief and imagination.

Despite being involved in so many close-actions Marriott was like most sailors; he had rarely seen the other side. Not as people, anyway. The flash of gunfire or an exploding mine, the eye-searing balls of tracer which would rise with such delicate precision before tearing down across the deck like hammers of hell; they were all commonplace enough. Then the corpses. Rolling as if asleep in stinking oil fuel, or torn apart like fresh meat in a butcher's shop. Even that was different.

As if to an unspoken signal, the tide of blue figures came to a halt, those at the rear moving up last until they were all standing shoulder to shoulder and yet, Marriott felt, completely isolated from each other.

One of the MGB gunlayers yelled,
'Ready,
sir!'

What was that? Madness, hate, the need for revenge after all that had happened to that man? A loved one killed, a home destroyed perhaps? It only needed a single spark to send every gun blazing into action. Marriott could feel the wildness in himself too.

Why not?
The words seemed to scream out in his mind.

The flotilla's senior officer, 'Spruce' Macnair, was delayed at Copenhagen with engine trouble. Marriott felt the chill at his spine like ice. Cuff was the next senior for this moment of history. He glanced across at his wind-reddened face. Perhaps that more than anything decided him. For just those seconds he had seen himself in Cuff's expression. A lust to kill. To keep on firing until there was nothing.

Marriott switched on his loud-hailer.
'Secure guns!'

He heard the click of cocking levers, the snap of magazine, and saw the way some of his own men looked at each other, almost sheepishly, as if they knew how close it had been.

Then he looked along the ranks of watching Germans.

After all this time.
So this is the enemy.

Silent, apathetic, without hope.

Fairfax whispered, 'They don't have any officers, sir.'

Marriott glanced at his pale features. What had he expected, he wondered? Then he touched his arm. 'Orders will eventually come from on high, Number One. Until that happens these Germans are our responsibility.' He looked past Fairfax and saw Cuff watching him, his face expressionless above his line of painted kills.

It was obvious that the Admiralty had expected to get their bigger warships into Kiel for a proper show of force. If a small Hunt class destroyer could come unstuck, her larger consorts would be in a very bad way if they tried it.

'Look,
sir!'

Marriot turned and saw a solitary figure moving from the centre of the silent crowd in the dockyard.

A petty officer by his appearance, and he was walking quite alone towards the jetty. It could have been rehearsed, but Marriott could tell from the way some of the others leaned forward to stare that it was not.

He said, 'I shall step ashore, Number One. Want to come?'

Silver gasped, 'Jesus, sir, you ain't even armed!'

Marriott shrugged. 'It would be rather poindess.' They all looked up, startled, as the outside machinery of war intruded and three Spitfires roared overhead, their wingtips almost touching.

The coxswain asked, 'Can I come too, sir?'

Marriott nodded. 'Yes. Let's meet the enemy.'

Lieutenant Commander Ian 'Spruce' Macnair, DSO, DSC and two bars, the depleted flotilla's senior officer, waited for his assembled subordinates to settle down, to find a place to stand or sit in the tiny wardroom.

There was nobody in Light Coastal Forces who did not know Macnair, either personally or by his considerable reputation. He was probably most people's idea of the best type of RNVR officer, who had attended peacetime drills and served regular periods of training with the fleet. He was one of the very few who had been the backbone of the hostilities-only navy who had come through it unscathed. He seemed to have a kind of inner knowledge of the men he trained and led, and his
brood,
as he called them, owed him much, if not their very lives. In peacetime he had been a lawyer in Edinburgh, but his list of decorations proved he was able to forget this existence, discard it like a barrister's wig for the duration.

He was respected and also held in deep affection by all those who were closest to him. The right words when a comrade was killed or lost at sea, a quiet warning when someone over-eager stepped out of line at the expense of the rest of his
brood.
Even his nickname, Spruce, was part of the man. It was his own word for keeping up appearances no matter how bad things had been.

Marriott, whose boat had been chosen for the meeting only because it was nearest to the sagging pier, said, 'All present, sir.'

He wondered about Macnair. Another one who had given all he had, held down his own fear or grief so that others would find comfort in his apparent strength. A lean, hawklike face, the hair patched with grey like frost, deeply lined around the eyes and jaw, he had just turned thirty, but looked old enough to be Fairfax's father. His boat had followed the rest to Kiel two hours after Marriott's strange meeting with the German petty officer.

Like their entrance to this stricken harbour, even now in a wardroom he knew as well as his own right hand, it had been unreal and dreamlike. He knew it was because he was worn out, tired and probably too famished to think properly. Hours on the bridge, watching for a last-minute hitch, sudden treachery or even ignorance that the war, which had been their lives, had ended.

He could see the unknown German now as he had halted in the flattened no-man's-land of crushed rubble. At the very last moment he had reached into his pocket, and had fumbled for something.

Marriott had felt his stomach twist, the brandy like fire. This one man was going to end the war in his own fashion. Nobody could help Marriott, the boats could not fire without cutting him down with Fairfax and Evans. Thoughts flashed through his mind. Silver protesting because he was going to meet the enemy unarmed, Cuff's bitter words on many previous occasions: 'The only good Kraut is a dead one!' He had even imagined Cuff's unspoken comment, what he would say after the German pulled a pistol from his jacket and ended it. 'I told him not to be such a bloody hero!' But when the petty officer's hand reappeared it was holding not a gun but a crumpled white handkerchief which he held in front of him like a talisman. A small, pitiful flag of surrender.

Marriott tried to shake himself out of it and prepare to listen to what their senior officer had to say. But instead he heard the German's clear but halting English. 'Herr Leutnant, will you
help
us,
bitte?'
If he had shouted one last obscenity or threat Marriott might have been ready. The simple request had moved him more than he dared to admit.

Lieutenant Commander Macnair cleared his throat while he looked at their set expressions. He was probably thinking that the four gunboats were all that he had left from his original strength. Was he looking for the lost faces too?

'Well, gentlemen, this is a moment we've all been waiting for.'

Cuff murmured, 'But not expecting, sir!'

Someone chuckled, but it was a hollow sound.

Macnair continued, 'I am being replaced. You'd better get used to the idea of managing on your own.'

There was a babble of protest and he smiled, the effort wiping aside the years and the strain.

'We have won a victory here, but in the Pacific the fight goes on. I have to work up some new boats and their crews, prepare them for that war, a different ocean, a far cry from the Channel or the North Sea.' He hurried on, 'Because of the terrible state of the harbour and communications here, you'll all have your work cut out helping to put things in order. It will mean
changes.'
He looked at their faces, feeling their resentment at something different from what they had known, about to take over and disrupt their lives even before the dust of victory had settled.

He gave a tired smile, one they had seen so often over the months. 'I don't like to insist, but you must try to spruce up a bit before your new commander comes to visit you.' He shook his head as Cuff made to speak. 'I know from long experience, Lieutenant Glazebrook, that I have left it a bit late to discuss with you the matter of
tact.
However, you must accept that our roles here have changed, so too have the methods which will be used to re-open this port, and join with the other services in co-operation with our allies to get things working again.'

Cuff muttered, 'I suppose we'll be giving the Krauts a pound or two out of the poor-box next!' He sounded angry.

Macnair looked past him at another lieutenant. 'James, your boat will be sailing with mine tomorrow morning. You'll get your orders presently.'

The others stared at the lieutenant. One or two slapped him on the shoulder, or pumped his hand.

'Jammy bastard, who do
you
know in Whitehall?'

But they were already missing him, another survivor, a call-sign on the R/T, a show of a towering bow-wave as his command had dashed in to cover their flanks in a pitched battle. Also, some of them were seeing their world shrinking even as they stood here. Coastal Forces were a bit like submariners, a navy within a navy, a family.

Macnair continued calmly, 'Cuff, you will take over as S.O.
but,
like most of the other miscellaneous craft here, you will accept your instructions from the new commander.'

Tommy Updike, Cuff's Number One, also a Yorkshireman and not by coincidence, gave a loud groan. 'What's happened to the Glory Boys, sir? Miscellaneous now, are we?'

Macnair said, 'Get into your Number Fives.'

They stared at each other. Battledress, or working-dress as the navy chose to call it, was their stock-in-trade. You stood your watches in it, usually with grey flannel trousers rather than scratchy regulation ones, you slept in it, and too often you died in it.

Number Fives were for that other navy, Divisions, eating ashore, walking the quarterdeck of some sedate cruiser or destroyer.

Macnair added quietly, 'This is a different ball-game, my friends. The Germans have to see you as the victors, not find cause to believe that it was the mistakes of their leaders which lost them the war.' His tone sharpened. 'So jump about. Spruce up, no matter what you may think, and I shall bring the new commander aboard at the end of the afternoon watch.'

Marriott saw him to the side and watched a squad of khaki-clad soldiers marching along the dockside.

Was it just this morning he had stood with Fairfax and Evans to confront that silent mass of German sailors? It seemed that the whole area had been swamped by British soldiers just moments later, while tanks had rattled and swayed over the rubble, guns swivelling with silent menace, their crests with the all-seeing eye showing them to be of the Guards Armoured Division. It was comforting to know they were on hand if there was still a suspicion of trouble.

They had had it ingrained into them before they had left England. Talk of
Werewolves,
as the youngsters of the Nazi Youth were called, going to ground to wait their chance to sabotage, to delay, and to kill. Even the Kiel Canal was said to be mined and booby-trapped, with the same lurking horrors here in the harbour.

He saw the squad stamp to a halt and come about with a slap and crack of rifles. Their uniforms were none too clean, their boots even worse, while their familiar helmets still carried the twigs and grass of camouflage. These were not the troops you often saw in the pubs and dance halls in Britain. These were the real army, who had marched all the way from Normandy, who had fought through every town and village, field and sewer, winkling out snipers and crack soldiers of the Waffen SS alike. Many must have fallen on the way, for many hundreds had first begun their long hike in El Alamein.

Young and fit, faces round and red in the weak sunshine, they were behaving as if they were on parade. Marriott had already noted the Tommy's ability to remain clean-shaven, no matter what. He had seen it at Tobruk and in Sicily, in the Messina Strait and at Anzio.

He heard the sergeant say loudly, 'I don't want no loungin' about, see? The Jerries'll be gawpin' at you lot, an' I don't need some snotty subaltern takin' the piss out of my lads because they don't know 'ow to behave,
see?'

Macnair said softly, 'That was what I was trying to say down below.' He looked at Marriott keenly. 'You and the others have got quite a task ahead of you. Some probably won't see the reason, others will only be thinking of getting back to Blighty. We won this war because we learned the hard way. We trained for it when, between the wars, the top brass became as stagnant as this bloody harbour.' He nodded to the two young seamen with belted pistols around their waists who guarded the outboard side. 'But they are totally untrained for peace – unready for it too. You'll have to watch them all the way.'

Marriott thought he knew Spruce Macnair well enough to ask, 'Are you really going home for the reason you gave, sir?'

The hawklike eyes settled on him, stripping him down as they had so often.

'You always were the quiet one, the thinker. I was so damn glad when –' He shrugged. 'Well, from all the odds, you should have bought it too.'

Bought it.
So easily said in their world.

Then he replied, 'No, as a matter of fact, it isn't. I saw the PMO.' He briefly touched his chest. 'Not too good apparently.' The eyes flashed again. 'If you breathe a word to the others, I'll bloody well come back to haunt you!'

Marriott watched him leave, his hand still at the salute after Macnair had vanished aboard his own MGB.

He wished he had not asked, and yet he was glad Macnair felt he could share it. Another victim, just as much as one taken by cannon shell or bomb.

He had always thought Macnair to be indestructible. They all had. His heart felt suddenly heavy and he was reluctant to go below and join the others. His lips moved in a small smile.
Get spruced up.

When he did go below they were already leaving to hunt for their uniforms, grumbling, voicing their uncertainties, glancing at the land where the sentries were now very much in evidence with their rifles and automatic weapons.

Cuff said, 'They look as if they're put there to keep
us
from going ashore, rather than protect us, eh?' His head swivelled round, his eyes searching. 'You were a bit sharp off the mark this morning! Made me look a bit of a prat in front of my chaps, I'd have thought.'

Marriott replied, 'I'm sorry about that. I wasn't thinking. Just had a feeling that someone was going to start firing.'

Cuff grinned, his good humour apparently restored. 'Wouldn't have seen me shed any tears!' He gave a loud laugh and Marriott could smell the gin in spite of the brandy he had used to toast their victory. It was rumoured that Cuff drank half a bottle of Plymouth gin every morning either before or instead of breakfast.

Marriott studied him again. A year older than himself, but he had certainly abused his health. He had once been a rugby player and had the height and the weight of a front-row forward. But he had gone to fat, so that his blue working-dress looked too tight for him, and his neck bulged over his collar. He sweated too, as he was now despite the cool breeze.

He said, 'Starting already, what did I tell you? The top brass and all the little desk-heroes can't wait to get out here and throw their weight about. God, it makes me puke!'