H.M.S. Ulysses Part 47

A signalman entered, handed a note to Vallery. "From London, sir. Chief says there may be some reply."

"Thank you. I'll phone down."

The door opened and closed again. Vallery looked up at an empty handed Turner.

"Thanks for removing the guilty evidence so quickly," he smiled. Then he shook his head. "My eyes, they don't seem so good. Perhaps you would read the signal, Commander?"

"And perhaps you would like some decent medicine," Brooks boomed, "instead of that filthy muck of Turner's." He fished in his bag, produced a bottle of amber liquid. "With all the resources of modern medicine, well, practically all, anyway, at my disposal, I can find nothing to equal this."

"Have you told Nicholls?" Vallery was stretched out on the settee now, eyes closed, the shadow of a smile on his bloodless lips.

"Well, no," Brooks confessed. "But plenty of time. Have some?"

"Thanks. Let's have the good news, Turner."

"Good news!" The sudden deadly quiet of the Commander's voice fell chilly over the waiting men. "No, sir, it's not good news.

"'Rear-Admiral Vallery, Commanding 14 A.C.S., FR77.' "The voice was drained of all tone and expression. "'Tirpitz, escorting cruisers, destroyers, reported moving out Alta Fjord sunset. Intense activity Alta Fjord airfield. Fear sortie under air cover. All measures avoid useless sacrifice Merchant, Naval ships. D.N.O., London.'" With deliberate care Turner folded the paper, laid it on the table. "Isn't that just wonderful," he murmured. "Whatever next?"

Vallery was sitting bolt upright on the settee, blind to the blood trickling down crookedly from one corner of his mouth. His face was calm, unworried.

"I think I'll have that gla.s.s, now, Brooks, if you don't mind," he said quietly. The Tirpitz. The Tirpitz. He shook his head tiredly, like a man in a dream. The Tirpitz the name that no man mentioned without a far off echo of awe and fear, the name that had completely dominated North Atlantic naval strategy during the past two years. Moving out at last, an armoured Colossus, sister ship to that other t.i.tan that had destroyed the Hood with one single, savage blow, the Hood, the darling of the Royal Navy, the most powerful ship in the world, or so men had thought. What chance had their tiny c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l cruiser... Again he shook his head, angrily this time, forced himself to think of the present.

"Well, gentlemen, I suppose time bringeth all things, even the Tirpitz. It had to come some day. Just our ill luck the bait was too close, too tempting."

"My young colleague is going to be just delighted," Brooks said grimly.

"A real battleship at long, long last."

"Sunset," Turner mused. "Sunset. My G.o.d!" he said sharply, "even allowing for negotiating the fjord they'll be on us in four hours on this course!"

"Exactly," Vallery nodded. "And it's no good running north. They'd overtake us before we're within a hundred miles of them."

"Them? Our big boys up north?" Turner scoffed. "I hate to sound like a gramophone record, but you'll recall my earlier statement about them too -----, late as usual!" He paused, swore again. "I hope that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d Starr's satisfied at last!" he finished bitterly.

"Why all the gloom?" Vallery looked up quizzically, went on softly.

"We can still be back, safe and sound in Scapa in forty-eight hours. 'Avoid useless sacrifice Merchant, Naval ships,' he said. The Ulysses is probably the fastest ship in the world today. It's simple, gentlemen."

"No, no!" Brooks moaned. "Too much of an anti-climax. I couldn't stand it!"

"Do another PQ17?" [PQ17, a large mixed convoy it included over 30 British, American and Panamanian ships left Iceland for Russia under the escort of half a dozen destroyers and perhaps a dozen smaller craft, with a mixed Anglo-American cruiser and destroyer squadron in immediate support. A shadow covering force-again Anglo-American-comprising one aircraft carrier, two battleships, three cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers, lay to the north. As with FR77, they formed the spring of the trap that closed too late. The time was midsummer, 1942, a suicidal season for the attempt, for in June and July, in these high lat.i.tudes, there is no night. About longitude 20 east, the convoy was heavily attacked by U-boats and aircraft. On the same day as the attack began, 4th July, the covering cruiser squadron was radioed that the Tirpitz had just sailed from Alta Fjord.

(This was not the case: The Tirpitz did make a brief, abortive sortie on the afternoon of the 5th, but turned back the same evening: rumour had it that she had been damaged by torpedoes from a Russian submarine.) The support squadron and convoy escorts immediately withdrew to the west at high speed, leaving PQ17 to their fate, leaving them to scatter and make then, unescorted way to Russia as best they could. The feelings of the crews of the merchant ships at this save-their-own-skins desertion and betrayal by the Royal Navy can be readily imagined. Their fears, too, can be readily imagined, but even their darkest forebodings never conceived the dreadful reality: 23 merchant ships were sent to the bottom by U-boats and aircraft. The Tirpitz was not seen, never came anywhere near the convoy; but even the threat had driven the naval squadrons to flight.

The author does not know all the facts concerning PQ17, nor does he seek to interpret those he does know: still less does he seek to a.s.sign blame. Curiously enough, the only definite conclusion is that no blame can be attached to the commander of the squadron, Admiral Hamilton. He had no part of the decision to withdraw, the order came from the Admiralty, and was imperative. But one does not envy him.

It was a melancholy and bitter incident, all the more unpalatable in that it ran so directly counter to the traditions of a great Service; one wonders what Sir Philip Sydney would have thought, or, in more modern times, Kennedy of the Rawalpindi or Fegen of the Jervis Bay.

But there was no doubt what the Merchant Navy thought What they still think. From most of the few survivors, there can be no hope of forgiveness. They will, probably, always remember: the Royal Navy would desperately like to forget. It is difficult to blame either.]

Turner smiled, but the smile never touched his eyes. "The Royal Navy could never stand it: Captain, Rear-Admiral Vallery would never permit it; and speaking for myself and, I'm fairly certain, this bunch of cut-throat mutineers of ours, well, I don't think we'd ever sleep so sound o' nights again."

"Gad!" Brooks murmured. "The man's a poet!"

"You're right, Turner." Vallery drained his gla.s.s, lay back exhausted.

"We don't seem to have much option... What if we receive orders for a-ah-high-speed withdrawal?"

"You can't read," Turner said bluntly. "Remember, you just said your eyes are going back on you."

"'Souls that have toiled and wrought and fought With me,'" Vallery quoted softly. "Thank you, gentlemen. You make things very easy for me." He propped himself on an elbow, his mind made up. He smiled at Turner, and his face was almost boyish again.

"Inform all merchant ships, all escorts. Tell them to break north."

Turner stared at him.

"North? Did you say' north'?" But the Admiralty-----"

"North, I said," Vallery repeated quietly. "The Admiralty can do what they like about it. We've played along long enough. We've sprung the trap. What more can they want? This way there's a chance, an almost hopeless chance, perhaps, but a fighting chance. To go east is suicide."

He smiled again, almost dreamily. "The end is not all important," he said softly. "I don't think I'll have to answer for this. Not now, not ever."

Turner grinned at him, his face lit up. "North, you said."

"Inform C.-in-C.," Vallery went on. "Ask Pilot for an interception course. Tell the convoy we'll tag along behind, give 'em as much cover as we can, as long as we can... As long as we can. Let us not delude ourselves. 1,000 to 1 at the outside... Nothing else we can do, Commander?"

"Pray," Turner said succinctly.

"And sleep," Brooks added. "Why don't you have half an hour, sir?"

"Sleep!" Vallery seemed genuinely amused. "We'll have all the time in the world to sleep, just by and by."

"You have a point," Brooks conceded. "You are very possibly right."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

SAt.u.r.dAY EVENING II.

MESSAGES WERE pouring in to the bridge now, messages from the merchant ships, messages of dismayed unbelief asking for confirmation of the Tirpitz breakout: from the Stirling, replying that the superstructure fire was now under control and that the engine room watertight bulkheads were holding; and one from Orr of the Sirrus, saying that his ship was making water to the capacity of the pumps, he had been in heavy collision with the sinking merchantman, that they had taken off forty-four survivors, that the Sirrus had already done her share and couldn't she go home? The signal had arrived after the Sirrus's receipt of the bad news. Turner grinned to himself: no inducement on earth, he knew, could have persuaded Orr to leave now.

The messages kept pouring in, by visual signal or W.T. There was no point in maintaining radio silence to outwit enemy monitor positions;

the enemy knew Where they were to a mile. Nor was there any need to prohibit light signalling, not with the Stirling still burning furiously enough to illuminate the sea for a mile around. And so the messages kept on coming-messages of fear and dismay and anxiety. But, for Turner, the most disquieting message came neither by lamp nor by radio.

Fully quarter of an hour had elapsed since the end of the attack and the Ulysses was rearing and pitching through the head seas on her new course of 350, When the gate of the bridge crashed open and a panting, exhausted man stumbled on to the compa.s.s platform. Turner, back on the bridge again, peered closely at him in the red glare from the Stirling, recognised him as a stoker. His face was masked in sweat, the sweat already caking to ice in the intense cold. And in spite of that cold, he was hatless, coatless, clad only in a pair of thin dungarees. He was shivering violently, shivering from excitement and not because of the icy wind-he was oblivious to such things.