Convoy of Fear Read online

  CONVOY OF FEAR

  PHILIP MCCUTCHAN

  © Philip McCutchan 2015

  First published in 1990 by St Martin’s Griffin.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  ONE

  It was the time of dark now: full dark in the Grand Harbour as Kemp and his staff left the Wolf Rock in the motor-boat for HM destroyer Probity. An unusually dark night for Malta; cloud had come, brought by a wind from the Levant in the Eastern Mediterranean, an unpleasant, damp wind. Kemp turned in the sternsheets of the motor-boat to wave back at Captain Champney in the Wolf Rock, Commodore’s ship from home waters until now; and at Jake Horncape in the Langstone Harbour that had just about scraped in to Malta with her so desperately needed cargo of foodstuffs for the garrison under siege.

  Two crippled ships; and the main body of the eastbound convoy yet to be taken through to Alexandria and then the passage of the Suez Canal for Trincomalee.

  ‘A hell of a long way,’ Kemp said suddenly.

  ‘Sir?’ This was Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan of the RCNVR, the Commodore’s assistant. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Trinco, Finnegan. Where else?’

  Finnegan grinned in the darkness. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘That’s all right, Finnegan. I was just thinking aloud, that’s all. All those casualties … and so far yet to go.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Casualties there had certainly been, to ships as well as men. One troop transport sunk, plus four armaments carriers, plus a destroyer of the escort. A cruiser disabled but fighting on. One WRNS officer killed by the bomb that had lodged aboard the Wolf Rock, another taken to Bighi Hospital in Malta with a broken back and a leg clumsily amputated by the Wolf Rock’s doctor, himself now dead. To date, not a happy convoy. As the motor-boat came alongside the destroyer that would carry the Commodore’s staff out to sea to overtake the convoy for Kemp to hoist his broad pennant aboard the troopship Orlando, Finnegan looked along the decks. The WRNS draft for Trincomalee had been sent across a little earlier, and First Officer Jean Forrest was talking to the destroyer’s first lieutenant. The latter, Finnegan saw, was wearing a bloodstained bandage around his head in place of his cap.

  Commodore Kemp, as he scrambled aboard Probity, was saluted by the first lieutenant.

  ‘Captain’s apologies, sir. He’s on the bridge.’

  ‘I’d expect him to be — I don’t ask for ceremony, Number One. Are we clearing away at once?’

  ‘Yes, sir, just as soon as your party’s aboard.’

  As Petty Officer Ramm, in the rear and chivvying his guns’ crews, came aboard, Kemp heard the ring of the engine-room telegraphs and felt the vibration from aft as the screws began turning. Probity, already headed for the exit from the Grand Harbour, went ahead fast. Not a moment too soon: the air raid sirens were starting. As the destroyer, her engines up to full power now, went past the arms of the breakwater, the dive-bombers were heard from the direction of Sicily and soon after this the ack-ack was pumping upwards from the Malta garrison.

  Finnegan’s thoughts turned to Third Officer Susan Pawle, helpless in Bighi hospital. The Germans had little respect for the Red Cross.

  ii

  Probity wasted no time: she went ahead at her maximum speed, hastening to rejoin the escort and deliver the Commodore to his new ship. She was untroubled by the dive-bombers, whose current target was Malta itself.

  Petty Officer Ramm looked back as Malta began to vanish astern, and sucked his teeth a little as he reflected on what had been so near and yet so far: Strada Stretta, The Gut as it was known to generations of naval men, the thoroughfare where every other place was a bar — the Royal Oak Bar, the Royal Sovereign, the Victory, the Valiant, the Ramillies — and in between were brothels. The shore-going tastes of the British Navy had kept Malta very nicely in business, kept her afloat since Nelson’s day, and Ramm had had cash burning a hole in his pocket.

  But there was always another day, or would be if he came through this lot. That day wasn’t likely to come at Alex: there, the transports would break off for troop delivery to Montgomery’s build-up of an army to be thrown against Rommel and the Afrika Corps, so far victorious in the desert war. What remained of the convoy would head on east with a reduced escort, and once again the Commodore and his staff would transfer, this time to one of the armaments carriers bound through to Trincomalee in Ceylon. Ramm’s time would come there, in Trinco. Kemp would surely be given a while in Trinco before returning to the UK with another convoy. You had to relax some time or other.

  Ramm stayed on deck, watching out ahead for the convoy. He was joined after a while by Yeoman of Signals Lambert, also of the Commodore’s staff.

  ‘All right, Yeo?’

  ‘S’pose so.’

  Ramm looked sideways. ‘What’s that mean, eh?’

  ‘No bloody mail,’ Lambert said.

  ‘In Malta? Didn’t expect any, did you? We were the first ship to get in out of the UK since —’

  ‘Yes, I know. I didn’t really expect. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Hope springs eternal. Hope, otherwise known as a bloody miracle.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  Ramm understood; mail from home was the lifeblood of the matlow overseas, and in wartime it wasn’t delivered by air. Ramm and Lambert had nattered during the course of the convoy, and Ramm knew that the yeoman was worried about his old woman — there’d been some sort of contretemps about a french letter found in Lambert’s pocket the night before his last leave was up, and they’d parted on uneasy terms, Lambert’s explanation having not stood up to scrutiny. He’d been dead anxious ever since the convoy had left the Clyde: he hadn’t wanted to fall out over a misapprehension. He’d found it hard to convince his missus that all prudent seamen carried precautions, just in case, even if they never made use of them. As for Ramm, he had his own problems and preferred not to get any mail from Pompey just in case it held a bomb. The barmaid from the Golden Fleece could be a bomb as lethal to his home life as anything Hitler could drop.

  Lambert said suddenly, ‘Arse-end Charlie, see ’im?’

  Ramm stared ahead. They were starting to approach the convoy. The big, bluff counter of a straggler was just about visible through the darkness and the overcast brought by the Levanter. On her port quarter one of the escorting destroyers was acting as sheepdog. Probity went ahead, closed the rear end of the columns, weaving dangerously through the escorts. Ramm went about his business, mustering his gunnery rates for the transfer to the Orlando, which would be a tricky manoeuvre carried out with both ships under way, though at reduced speed. Fifteen minutes later, with the Commodore’s staff standing by on the destroyer’s fo’c’sle, Probity’s captain made up towards the great, camouflaged side of the liner, like a cliff face rearing above, his engines moving at slow and his bows nudging towards the ladder that had been lowered from the starboard gunport door, the place that in peacetime had been the first-class passenger entry up the gangway from the dockside at Tilbury.

  iii

  With Finnegan behind him, clutching sheaves of paper in a buff-coloured cardboard folder, John Mason Kemp was taken up a number of ladders and stairways into the deck officers’ accommodation and up further to the bridge. Orlando had been a liner of the Orient Steam Navigation Company on the same run to Australia as Kemp’s own peacetime compa
ny, the Mediterranean-Australia Line. Kemp, now Commodore RNR, and Robert Bracewell, Master of the Orlando, had met often in Sydney where both companies had turned their ships round for home, Bracewell being then staff captain in the Otranto.

  Captain Bracewell welcomed Kemp with a salute. ‘Welcome aboard, Commodore.’ He grinned. ‘I’m honoured — but at the same time I hope you’ll not make me into a prime target!’

  ‘No more than you are already, Captain. The enemy’s not impressed by the added attractions of the Commodore, I fancy.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re right. Bad luck about the Wolf Rock.’

  ‘Just one of many. The losses —’

  ‘Yes, I know. They’ve been really bad this run. I had many old friends aboard the Orduna.’

  ‘Of course. I’m deeply sorry.’

  Bracewell gave him a shrewd but covert look. Kemp looked a lot older than when last they met in Sydney, older in fact than he’d looked at the convoy conference on the Clyde. He was taking things hard. Bracewell said, ‘Yes, well, don’t ever blame yourself. It wasn’t any fault of yours, Commodore.’ He changed the subject, asking briskly if Kemp had any special orders.

  Kemp answered as he’d answered Captain Champney aboard the Wolf Rock: ‘Your ship, Captain. I’m a virtual passenger. But I’d appreciate the freedom of your bridge —’

  ‘Of course —’

  ‘The same for my assistant.’ Kemp introduced Finnegan. ‘RCNVR — American by nationality. Entered Canada and fixed himself a war job before the Americans came in.’

  Bracewell said, ‘Good show,’ and shook hands with Finnegan.

  ‘Likewise for my yeoman and his two signalmen working in watches. Then there’s my gunnery PO — Petty Officer Ramm. You’ll have your own DEMS ratings, of course, to man your armament. I hope they’ll not think of Ramm as an intruder.’

  ‘They’ll make him welcome enough, Commodore.’ Bracewell paused. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ There was a twinkle in his eye. ‘The WRNS draft?’

  ‘Yes. A damn nuisance in a ship crammed with troops. But First Officer Forrest is a good hand, has them well under control, and we’ve got rid of a problem in Malta, a pregnant Wren rating,’ Kemp said in reference to Wren Smith discovered to be pregnant on passage without having first taken the precaution of a wedding ring. East of Suez where passions at sea ran high, a promiscuous Wren Smith would have been a menace … Kemp left it and made an enquiry about the OC Troops.

  Bracewell said, ‘The brigadier’s playing bridge. He asked to be excused coming up to meet you.’

  ‘I see.’ Kemp raised his eyebrows but went on, ‘Well — never mind. It’s not immediately important. Where am I to be accommodated, Captain?’

  ‘My spare cabin. I’ll send someone down with you —’

  ‘Don’t bother!’ Kemp grinned. ‘I know the geography of your Orient ships, Bracewell.’ The Orient Line and the Mediterranean-Australia Line had always had their vessels built by Vickers-Armstrong at the Barrow-in-Furness yard, and mostly they had been laid down to the same pattern of construction. Kemp took his leave of the Captain and with Finnegan went below to the Master’s spare cabin, a comfortable apartment with two square ports, now with deadlights obscuring them, looking out over the fore part of the ship from immediately below the bridge. After taking delivery of the file of documents, Kemp dismissed his assistant.

  ‘Off you go, Finnegan. Have a word with Miss Forrest, make sure the WRNS draft is settled in, will you?’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Finnegan tore off his American-style salute, capless, something that irritated Kemp normally but tonight he was too weary to react. The last few days were catching up with him and he needed a good long sleep. In the morning he would go through his written report for the Admiralty which, on landing at Alexandria, would be put aboard the first ship for the United Kingdom. Before pulling off his outer clothing Kemp reflected on the OC Troops: Brigadier Pumphrey-Hatton, commanding the infantry brigade embarked aboard the Orlando, was said to be a difficult character. The Flag Officer in Charge at Greenock on the Clyde had sketched him verbally for Kemp’s benefit after the sailing conference. A short, spare man, late of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry in which regiment you had to be short and spare to endure its 140 to the minute marching step. So far, so good; but there was more to Pumphrey-Hatton than that. He was irascible, pompous, self-opinionated and a snob. Kemp, whilst disdaining ceremony in general terms, felt his nose slightly disjointed that the OC Troops would not interrupt a bridge session in order to welcome the Convoy Commodore aboard.

  iv

  ‘All right, Miss Forrest?’

  Jean Forrest sighed; she, like Kemp, was tired. ‘Yes, I think so. The girls have been comfortably accommodated … so far as the exigencies of war permit, that is. Two ten-berth cabins.’

  ‘Well away from the troops?’ Finnegan asked.

  ‘Yes. But not all that far from your ratings.’ Jean Forrest frowned. ‘I wish your Petty Officer Ramm had been left in Malta.’

  ‘No reason to do that, ma’am —’

  ‘No, I know. It was just a wish. That man’s a lecher, and currently a frustrated one.’

  ‘There’ll be nightwatchmen, I guess. I’ve seen one lurking. If you like, I’ll have a word with whoever runs the nightwatch-men’s duty roster. Chief Steward, I guess.’

  ‘No, don’t do that, Mr Finnegan.’ She laid a hand on the sub-lieutenant’s sleeve. ‘I don’t want to make too much of it, and you could tread on the toes of the ship’s officers, the Staff Captain probably, and that wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Just as you say, ma’am. But give me the tip if you’re worried and I’ll have a word with the Commodore.’

  v

  Petty Officer Ramm had made his number with the PO in charge of the DEMS ratings, the men who manned the troopship’s four 6-inch guns and the various close-range weapons. Petty Officer Perryman had the non-substantive rate of gunner’s mate, the same as Ramm. Perryman, however, had qualified in his rate at the Chatham gunnery school which in Ramm’s opinion couldn’t hold a birthday-cake candle to Whale Island at Pompey, which had been Ramm’s spiritual home. Maybe Chatham was the reason why Perryman hadn’t been drafted to a warship of the fleet instead of a troop transport carrying obsolete guns that would likely enough blow up when fired; but Ramm wouldn’t go too far along those lines, with his own job in mind. You didn’t denigrate your own cloth. Perryman’s presence in a capacity below his proper rate was no doubt due to personal decrepitude: Perryman looked well over 50 and at his last gasp, sallow faced, shaky hands, belched a lot which he said was due to indigestion.

  ‘All them alarms. Disturbs proper meals, like, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Can’t say as I’ve noticed.’

  PO Perryman belched again. ‘Pardon,’ he said.

  ‘Granted. When I was at Whale Island,’ Ramm began, determined to make an important point early on, ‘the parade gunner’s mate, ’e ’ad indigestion. Or thought ’e did. Turned out to be ulcers.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Oo was ’e?’

  ‘Poulter.’

  ‘Cor! I knew Poulter. I was gunner’s mate aboard the old Benbow when bloody Poulter was an OD and cack-’anded with it.’ Perryman paused, scratched his head and released a cloud of dandruff onto his jacket. ‘Course, they always was a cack-’anded lot at Whaley, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  Ramm, reflecting that Perryman had just given a fair clue as to his age, kept his mouth shut. Chatham ratings were a scaly bunch to anyone from Pompey or Devonport, so bug-ridden that they were known as Chatty Chats, but it wouldn’t do to say so. Being older, Perryman was his senior, a disturbing thought in itself which meant that he would have to step down if Perryman pushed it, and he’d seemed like doing so. Maybe he, Ramm, could sort it out with the Commodore; if he couldn’t, he’d have to surrender his party to PO Perryman for so long as they remained in the ship, but that would be only as far as Alex
. Till then, he would have to suffer. Disengaging himself from Perryman, who’d looked set for a long yarn about peacetime commissions, PO Ramm went out into the alleyway and all but bumped into a squat figure moving along like one of Monty’s tanks. This was Rose Hardisty, Petty Officer Wren and now, since the two third officers were no longer with them, Miss Forrest’s right-hand man, or woman if you didn’t look too close. Ramm gave a snigger at his own thoughts.

  ‘You should watch where you’re going, PO Ramm.’ Miss Hardisty dusted down her uniform.

  Old bag, Ramm thought. He said, ‘Sorry. You was in the way, that’s what.’ He added, ‘Going to bed the girls down, are you?’

  ‘Check their accommodation, yes.’

  Ramm sniggered again. ‘And check what else, eh?’

  ‘I don’t like insinuations, PO Ramm. Kindly don’t make them about my girls.’ Miss Hardisty strode away along the corridor, past the cabin doorways to either side. Ramm followed along behind, with no precise idea where he was going; he was totally unfamiliar with the lay-out of great liners with all their decks and corridors and cross-corridors and staircases and ladders, lounges, smoking rooms, bars and restaurants. Ahead of him he saw Miss Hardisty stop and bang on one of the cabin doors. She went inside; Ramm followed on and lingered by the door. This must be the wrennery, he assumed. As he lingered a large figure appeared from a cross-passage, a tall man, ramrod straight, white haired, wearing a dark blue tunic fastened at the neck.

  This man halted in front of Ramm. Going up and down on the balls of his feet — like a copper Ramm thought — he said, ‘Out of bounds, PO. No male personnel allowed. Right?’

  Ramm asked in a surly tone, ‘And who might you be, may I ask?’

  ‘Yes, you may ask. Allow me to introduce myself. Name of Parkinson. Nightwatchman.’

  Ramm blustered. ‘Don’t reckon I go much on being spoken to by a nightwatchman.’

  ‘Late Colour Sergeant, Royal Marines. Eastney Barracks. Any complaints about me, address them to the Staff Captain.’ Ex-Colour Sergeant Parkinson moved on, hands behind his back. He could almost have been carrying a pace-stick beneath the left arm. Ramm made himself scarce, muttering to himself as he went. Parkinson, moving in the opposite direction, was fixing Ramm’s face in his mind. Nasty-looking little bugger, he was thinking, had bed eyes and a hungry aspect. Parkinson took his duties seriously. What the ship’s officers got up to was their own business and men would be men; the female peacetime passengers could mostly look after themselves if they wanted to. Often enough they didn’t, and that, too, was their own business. But the young girls who composed the WRNS were different in Parkinson’s eyes. Obeying their country’s call, they were modest and maidenly, young ladies mostly, and they had to be protected when far from home, like little chicks torn from the mother hen. Parkinson felt himself to be personally responsible to the Master and the Convoy Commodore that they were not interfered with or insulted. The Royal Marines had never shirked their duty yet.