Killing Ground (6 page)

It had been four days since
Gladiator
had arrived at Reykjavik, and apart from moving alongside a fleet oiler to replenish the tanks, nothing much had happened.
Ganymede,
their sister-ship, had arrived to join them, delayed in Scotland only to collect and accompany two more corvettes. There were about twenty commanding officers and their navigators present, he thought, maybe more. It was to be that important.

Ganymede
's captain, Lieutenant-Commander “Spike” Colvin, nudged him with his elbow. “Some of our chaps look as if they've just left school!”

Howard nodded, but through and beneath the unmoving fog of pipe and cigarette smoke he saw a few of the more experienced faces, the interwoven gold lace of the RNR, like Treherne, and several regulars like himself and Colvin. The majority were Wavy Navy, hostilities only; the new blood.

Howard wondered how they would all stand up to another run to Murmansk. Fifteen hundred miles as the crow flies, but far longer with all the detours thrown in. One of the worst sea areas in the world, even without the enemy.

The door opened and the little procession trooped to the table while the assembled officers got to their feet with much scraping of chairs. Rear-Admiral Henry Giffard took his place in the centre, ranked on either hand by his team of “experts” and one naval commander whom Howard had already met. He was the captain of HMCS
Beothuck,
the big Tribal destroyer, who was to be the senior officer of the escort. A good choice it seemed, as he had done several of these trips before. He was a powerfully built man with impassive features. One who would have no
time for fools.

The rear-admiral was a complete contrast. Old for his rank, his chest brightened by a full rectangle of decorations most of which Howard did not recognise, he looked rather like a modern Pickwick. He was bald but for two white wings of hair, and he looked polished and scrubbed. When he put on a pair of small, gold-rimmed spectacles he
was
Pickwick.

He looked at them over the glasses and said dryly, “Gentlemen, you may smoke.” He glanced pointedly at the drifting pall and added, “If you must.”

Colvin grunted and immediately fished out a tin of duty-free cigarettes. Eventually everyone settled down and the navigating officers had their pads and pencils ready to hand.

The rear-admiral cleared his throat. “Before I hand you over to the Met officers and my operations commander I should like to put you all in the picture. I shall of course be attending the convoy conference to address the ships' masters, but there are certain things they need not be told, yet, anyway.” Again that slow search of their faces. “Our allies, the Russians, are having a very bad time of it. Too many retreats, terrible losses in men and materials, and more especially aircraft. The Luftwaffe dominates the whole front, and the Russians do not have the means to keep pace with the enemy.” He added with a certain irony, “It has rather a familiar ring about it, don't you think?”

Howard thought of the way Britain's fortunes had suffered. Even in North Africa where there had been so many victories, the newsreels full of Italian soldiers surrendering to the Eighth Army, the situation was critical. One man ruled the Western Desert: Rommel, with his famous Afrika Korps. He was heading even now for Egypt, beyond which lay Suez, India, total victory. And nothing but the battered and demoralised Eighth Army could prevent it.

He recalled his own harsh summary, which he had offered Ayres. But he was no different from all the others who had not experienced the odds of battle. They wanted to close their ears
or listen to Vera Lynn.

The admiral was saying, “This will be a fast convoy. Almost all the ships are new—each will be loaded with essential weapons and aircraft, and tanks.”

Howard saw the Canadian escort commander look down at the table and sigh. He would know better than most what the admiral was hinting at. Their destination, Murmansk, as bleak as it was dangerous, had only one really functional crane, and that was capable of lifting just eleven tons at a time; far less than a tank. It meant more time lost and fretting over delays while they offloaded them on to any available slipway or jetty, using a solitary lifting vessel.

It was never made any easier by the thinly disguised hostility and suspicion with which the Russians behaved. Even the anchorage was far too deep for the tired escorts, and their allies persistently refused to allow any of them into the relative security of the Russian naval base at Polynaroe.

The men who manned the ships were more than bitter about this treatment, after all the risks they had taken to get there. Even then they still had to reach home again along the same dangerous highway. The convoys were beyond Allied air cover for the worst part of the passage, and the Germans used their Norwegian bases to full and deadly advantage.

Rear-Admiral Giffard dabbed his mouth with his handkerchief and Colvin whispered, “Just had a bloody good lunch, I'll wager!”

Giffard removed his glasses and said, “Unfortunately I have to tell you that intelligence reports suggest that the Germans may attempt a surface attack by cruisers which are said to be lying at Tromsø. There is a ring of steel around the place and even the Norwegian underground has stayed silent. There will be a covering force from the Home Fleet, a match for any such cruisers.”

Howard waited. Why was he hesitating, drawing it out?

Giffard replaced his glasses as if to afford protection. “It is also rumoured that
Tirpitz
may make a sortie this time.”

If he had shouted some terrible obscenity the little admiral could not have had a greater effect.

Colvin said quietly, “Jesus Christ, that battlewaggon could swallow this convoy and never notice it.”

Around the room officers were glancing at one another, seeking out familiar faces, starkly aware, not of their numbers, but of their complete vulnerability.

Howard felt Treherne stiffen beside him. Remembering
Tirpitz's
giant sister-ship
Bismarck
which had escaped through these very same waters. Not before she had destroyed
Hood,
the darling of many a peacetime review and Britain's greatest warship, and sent a brand-new battleship,
Prince of Wales,
in full retreat from her great guns. The ill-fated
Prince of Wales
had shared
Hood
's fate at the hands of the Japanese just seven months later.

They had sunk the German giant eventually, but it had taken most of the Home Fleet to find and destroy her.

While
Tirpitz
remained in her Norwegian lair the battleships and cruisers of the Home Fleet were tied down at Scapa Flow, just in case she came out.

Would the German Navy risk such an important battle-group on one convoy? Even as he asked himself the question Howard knew the answer. They would want to destroy
any
convoy that might help the Russians recover when the ice and snow released their ruthless grip on the Eastern Front. When the thaw came to those hundreds of miles of contested ground, Hitler would order his armies to attempt that which Napoleon had failed to do.

With Russia beaten into submission and slavery, the enemy would double its efforts elsewhere. North Africa, and then—he thought of his father's little house in Hampshire, the pleasant garden from which you could see the old windmill on the top of Portsdown Hill on a clear summer's day. No amount of courage and sacrifice would stop them coming there too.

He realised that the RAF Met officer was droning on about wind and snow flurries, about the fact that the ice-edge was still holding firm, later than usual, so that the convoy would have
to sail closer to the German bases than had been hoped. Even around the approaches to the Kola Inlet and Murmansk there would be similar hazards although the port was selected in the first place because it was ice-free all the year round. It was also chosen because of the direct railway connection with Leningrad and the Baltic.

The Ops Officer was last, his hands in his reefer pockets, thumbs hooked over the sides.

He ended by saying, “The convoy will not disperse, gentlemen.” He looked at their intent faces. “It goes through. No matter what.”

To Howard as he turned up his coat collar and stepped over the dirty snow to find the Jeep that had carried him here, those final words sounded like a covenant, a perfect epitaph.

“F
ORENOON
watch closed up at defence stations, sir!”

Lieutenant Neil Finlay nodded and trained his glasses on the nearest merchantman again. “Very well.”

Finlay was a Scot and proud of the fact, and also of the knowledge that he was the first RNVR officer to be put in charge of gunnery in this hard-worked destroyer. Because his captain was a regular he was all the more determined to make no mistakes. If anyone else made any in the gunnery department, Finlay had left no doubts as to what he would do about it.

It had taken three days to marshal the convoy into their allotted positions and move out of Reykjavik, then north and into the Denmark Strait. Apart from a few minor collisions with drifting patches of ice they had managed without incident. Now, with the sea rising and falling in a deep swell, they were in open water: the Arctic Ocean. There were thirty merchant ships in the convoy, arranged in five columns, with the commodore's vessel, a fine-looking cargo liner named
Lord Martineau,
leading the centre column. To protect them on the long haul to North Russia were six destroyers, eight corvettes, two Asdic trawlers and a tug. In the centre of the convoy was a converted Dutch ferry named
Tromp II,
described in the orders as an anti-aircraft ship. She was manned by naval ratings and her deck appeared to be crammed with short-range weapons, pom-poms and Oerlikons, while right aft by her stylish bridge she mounted two twelve-pounders. Lieutenant Finlay moved his glasses towards the other odd-looking vessel at the rear of the centre column, one he had heard Ayres asking about as soon as the convoy had got underway.

Another converted merchantman, her upperworks had been cut away but for her bridge and spindly funnel, while the upper deck was dominated by a long catapult. A Hurricane fighter
stood all alone on the catapult, like some huge seabird which had landed there for a brief respite from its flight.

The first lieutenant's comment had been typically curt and scathing. “Fighter catapult ship. If the convoy is sighted by a German recce plane they fire off the catapult and our gallant pilot shoots the German down before he can home the U-Boats on to our position.”

Marrack had met Ayres's unspoken questions with, “After
that
he bales out, and we pick him up.”

Finlay smiled grimly. They were well north of the Arctic Circle. If the flier had to ditch he wouldn't last much longer than twelve seconds.

Tucker, the yeoman of signals, raised his telescope, his lips moving soundlessly. “Signal from commodore, sir.
Mersey Belle is losing way. Investigate.”

Howard stood up and gripped his chair while the signal lamp clattered an acknowledgement.

The ship in question was at the rear of the port column. She had already been told off by the escort commander for making too much smoke. Now what?

Howard shaded his eyes to study the great array of ships. Five columns of vital equipment, every hold packed with weapons, medical supplies and vehicles. Most of them carried deck cargo as well, crates and crates of aircraft destined to fill the critical gaps in Stalin's air force. The other five destroyers were out of sight, steaming in a widespread arrowhead formation ahead of the convoy. The corvettes were divided on either beam, their sturdy little silhouettes lifting and diving in the huge swell like lively whales.

Gladiator
was two miles astern of the convoy, “Tail-end Charlie,” ready to do anything required by the commodore, or go for any U-Boat which might try to catch up with the ships on the surface. It was unlikely in daylight, for no submarine could outpace the convoy submerged.

“Half ahead together.”

In the wheelhouse Treherne was checking something with his yeoman, which was why Finlay had relieved him for a few moments. Finlay had lost no time in summoning their other sublieutenant and Esmonde the midshipman to the bridge to press home the main points of his fire-control system.

As the revolutions mounted, Howard glanced at the trio of young officers below the compass platform. The two subbies, side by side but somehow totally apart, and Esmonde swaying jerkily with the uncompromising rolls and swoops, his features the colour of parchment.

“One-one-seven revs replied, sir!”

Howard raised his glasses again. The sky was very cloudy, with small patches of shark-blue here and there. No sign of snow as promised. No sign of anything for that matter. Even the far-off Admiralty had refrained from making signals. A covering force from the Home Fleet was somewhere to the northwest; there was supposed to be an escort carrier with it. Howard looked at the fighter catapult ship. At the moment that was all the air cover they could expect once they had reached the limit of shore-based aircraft to the northeast of Jan Mayen Island, that lonely outpost at the very extremes of the ice-edge.

It was too calm. Bad weather was the best ally so close to enemy airfields and the deep fjords where the big surface ships were said to be hiding. Maybe the Met officer would still be proved right. If not …

“Slow ahead.” Howard walked to the side of the bridge and switched on the loud-hailer.

“Mersey Belle!
Make more revs!
You're falling astern!”
He waited, tapping his leather sea-boot impatiently until two heads appeared on the freighter's high bridge. It was shining like glass, he thought. So, probably, was
Gladiator
as the freezing spray drifted over her. Marrack would have to get his people to work on the forecastle. A destroyer was not built to take a build-up of ice on the upper deck; too much top-hamper had been known to capsize an escort in heavy seas.