The explosions followed each other rapidly, one after the other, ripping the bridge into fragments, throwing the debris high into the air to crash back into the maelstrom created by the careering boats.
Inside of two minutes the attack was over and the four boats were lunging back down the fjord, flashing by open-mouthed the German gunners of Number One emplacement and onwards towards the distant safety of the open sea.
Grant strained to see his watch in the dim light from the compass. The fjord was forty-six miles long… That meant a little over an hour, if they could maintain their top speed. They still had enough time and fuel to get back to base before enemy aircraft could begin their search; but that was only if they could manage to get by the other enemy gun emplacements. Grant suffered a moment of doubt; that was a very big if. On the way in, he had counted three batteries, anyone of which was quite capable of blowing the four tiny boats to hell and back.
* * *
Grant looked astern, he could just see all his charges in place, Hogg’s boat brought up the rear. They were in line ahead, their, by now, standard formation.
His wasn’t the best German, Maurice, ‘Eddy’s’ new middy, was streets ahead. He turned to him now, “That knocked ten bells out of the bastards Middy.”
“Is it always like this, sir,” Maurice yelled.
“Like what?” yelled back Grant.
“So bloody terrifying, sir.”
Grant smiled reassuringly, “Only most of the time, the rest of the time …well, it’s a damn sight worse.”
“You all seem to cope with it pretty well, sir.”
“We learnt the secret from Able Seaman Wilson.”
“Really, sir?”
“ ‘If you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined’. That about sums it up, don’t you think.”
“Some joke, if you don’t mind me saying, sir.”
“Exactly… Some bloody joke.”
* * *
The German artillery were ready, communications along the length of the fjord were good; more than enough to convey the acute embarrassment and anger felt by the men manning the emplacements. They found it hard to believe that they had actually cheered the enemy past their guns. There was to be no more of that, the Britishers would pay, must die.
Powerful one hundred and fifty centimetre searchlights probed the narrow fjord, illuminating it as if it was day. Itchy fingers hovered over trigger guards. Mein Gott, they were ready for the Britishers this time. This time it would be a different story. They would not pass…they could not be allowed to pass; it was a matter of the honour.
* * *
It was the lookout, Wilson, who sighted the second German anti-aircraft battery first. The loom of its searchlights glowed forebodingly above the mountains that obscured a bend in the fjord. Grant immediately cut the engines, the boats, astern, followed suite as the distance between them shortened alarmingly. The boats danced in their own wakes ,as Grant called for the marines and the handling party for the rubber dinghy.
* * *
Bushel and his men had luck on their side, even so, it had taken them an hour, an hour they could ill afford if they were to reach base before first light. Using the adjustable spanners in the dark and the numbing cold had been easy. One slip with the spanner would have been enough to alert the whole emplacement.
* * *
At the emplacement, so recently visited by the marines, the German gunners crouched beside their eight-eights. Leutnant Klaus Westlich paced backwards and forwards regularly checking his watch, fiercely determined that the enemy would pay a price for their earlier audacity. But where were they? If they had crept along the fjord at a snail’s pace they would have been here by now. He switched on his torch and shone its bright beam over the guns in his charge. Everything was in place. He was completely unaware that they were a certain item of kit short.
Abruptly from upstream an air raid siren moaned its ominous warning.
“Action aircraft!” yelled Westlich.
The gunners worked furiously at the crank handles. The muzzles of the eighty-eights trained quickly skyward and they waited.
“Get those search-lights out! They’ll be following the fjord, using the glistening water like a pointing finger indicating their undoubted target, the new bridge. No need to telegraph the exact position of the guns.
The fjord plunged into darkness.
* * *
“What do you want me to do with the Kraut air raid siren, sir?” asked O’Neill. It’s taking up a lot of room down in the wheelhouse. It’s a bit cramped down there at the best of times.”
“Dump it overboard?” suggested Maurice.
“Good Lord no,” called Grant, “Not after all the trouble the ‘Royals’ had stealing the bloody thing, besides it might come in useful again, you never know…Stow it below for now.”
“Aye, Aye, sir,” said O’Neill.
* * *
The schedule for the raid had been tight now, as a consequence of the marines ‘run ashore’, they had some time to make up. The delay, however unavoidable, meant they would have to spend an extra hour of daylight exposed to the attentions of the Luftwaffe.
The four tiny craft sped north as fast as they could. The swell heaving its way south was against them, not much by Norwegian sea standards, but enough to slow them down to thirty knots and more than enough to make sure they would not make it in time. So first light found them closed up at action stations and still fifty miles short of the base.
The aircraft came in from the south-east, three Messerschmitt 109s peeling off one after the other, line ahead, swooping in from the heavens like avenging angels.
The flotilla was also in line ahead, the young skippers avidly watching the blue and white of Grant’s ‘execute’ pennant as it snapped urgently in the slipstream. Grant, for his part watched the attacking aircraft.
“Execute,” bringing his raised arm down to his side. The pennant was whipped down from the masthead into the waiting arms of the signalman. Instantly, the boats put their helms hard over. Odd numbered boats cut to starboard, even to port. The resulting fan tail of fleeing patrol boats provided no easy target. The manoeuvre, first carried out on the carpet in the comfort of Barr’s front room in Suffolk, brought all the flotilla’s guns to bear at the same time. The fighters flew straight into a vicious spray put up by the fourteen machine guns and the two Flak 28’s of the flotilla. Miraculously, at two hundred knots, the aircraft screamed past unharmed. Turning to starboard, bombs still in their racks, they climbed rapidly into the grey dawn.
Their long turn completed they swooped back in from the east. The boats had reformed heading north and presented a broadside target moving at thirty knots left to right.
The ‘execute’ pennant flew high at ‘Eddy’s’ masthead once more. The boats held their fire and their course, guns trained fore and aft. The flag flashed to the deck, this time all the boats swerved to starboard, leaning hard over as they did so, their for’ard guns were brought onto the target by the turn and they opened fire immediately. A withering screen of tracer arced up towards the approaching aircraft. The boats, now stern on, presented very small targets for the aircraft. The aircraft tore in, fifty feet above the waves. Hogg’s boat took fire, heavy rounds of tracer punching holes in the wooden deck. The Messerschmitts screaming in over their racing targets flew straight into the fire of the little flotilla’s stern guns. The lead plane was hit in the tail, immediately oily black smoke poured from it, its port wing dipped and touched the sea, the plane skipped and somersaulted on its wingtips, water spinning from it at a tangent like sparks from a Catherine Wheel until, shattered, it disappeared from sight completely in a welter of spray. The two remaining planes turned sharply and came in from astern.
This time, when the pennant fluttered to the deck, the boats turned, hard aport, twenty degrees, again bringing all guns to bear firing over their port quarters. The enemy planes had time to alter
course away from the withering fire only to find the boats turning fast in the opposite direction, their guns swinging madly round to give another full broadside. The tail end aircraft visibly staggered out of line and leaving a writhing trail of smoke, both pilots clawed their aircraft round in a tight turn and made off to the south-east. The boats turned, as one, back onto their northerly course and reduced speed as Hogg’s men fought to bring a small fo’c’s’le fire under control.
* * *
It had grown colder, the sun had passed behind the high cliff face throwing the destroyer and her small consorts into its deep blue shadow. The four patrol boats nestled against the destroyer’s side like suckling pigs at a sow’s belly. The sheltered water, glass-calm, reflected the sheer sides of the fjord doubling their height. Here there were no convenient overhangs, the camouflage nets were hung straight out from the cliff. A wire strung between the ‘Nishga’s’ two masts held them clear of the deck and superstructure.
Below decks ‘Up Spirits’ had been piped and the sailors waited in crowded mess decks for their rum to arrive. The seamen’s mess deck was even more packed than usual, for in addition to the destroyer’s own complement, they were catering for the seamen from two of the four patrol boats.
O’Neill was in a foul mood. Fresh from Captain’s defaulters, he sat silently at the mess table. Usually, as the senior rating he would have been up top, drawing the rum ration for the mess and licking his lips at the thoughts of all the ‘sippers’ that would come his way when he dished it up. He was still finding it hard to come to terms with the severity of the punishment the skipper had metered out to him. It was nothing short of barbaric, so it was, flogging round the fleet would have been kinder. He could see the skipper now standing behind his desk…
Barr was saying, ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what these continuous appearances at my table are doing to your chances of promotion.’
Well, fair enough, he couldn’t give a damn about promotion anyway, but then a surprised looking skipper had added, ‘It’s not a matter to smile about, O’Neill.’
It had been his turn to be surprised. Surely to God wasn’t that up to me, he’d thought.
Barr referred to his notes saying, ‘Perhaps, bearing in mind your previous record, I should have said the chances of re-promotion. I see here that you have held the position of Petty Officer once before.”
Now you would have thought that someone of the skipper’s undoubted abilities and education would get things like that right. ‘No sir, that’s not correct’ he’d replied, staring straight ahead.
Barr had looked bewildered, ‘What do you mean? Here it states clearly that you held the grade of Petty Officer on your last ship.’
He had nodded his agreement, relieved that the Ship’s Office had something right, “That’s correct, sir.”
‘Arh, that’s right enough as well…’
The skipper had looked even more confused, ‘So are you now saying the record is correct.’
‘Yes and no, sir.’
‘What do you mean, yes and no, O’Neill? It’s either correct or it’s not.’
Now he’d never heard the skipper raise his voice before except maybe in the teeth of a gale. He’d hurried to explain, ‘Well, sir, it’s like this, you see,’ he’d shown, as he remembered, a good deal more patience than the man himself, ‘I’m sure you’d agree that records aren’t of much use unless they’re a true record. If your records say that I was a Petty Officer once, then they’re wrong.’ He’d paused there while his chest swelled with pride. ‘I’ve been a Petty Officer three times in all.’ There had been a long silence while he’d stood ramrod straight and why, to God, shouldn’t he have been proud. After all it didn’t it take a special type of man to get promoted three times.
Standing there, at attention, staring over the skipper’s shoulder, he could see the Coxswain, his face was screwed up in a rare expression for a disciplined man such as himself. If it had been anyone else, at all, he would have sworn the coxswain was trying not to laugh.
The skipper looked down at his papers, leaning over the tall table, arms straight like a vicar giving a Sunday sermon from his pulpit. He feared that he must have angered him for he could see the skipper’s shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. Here it comes, he thought, it’s back down to able seaman for me…
Without looking up, the skipper had slowly shook his head. ‘O’Neill, O’Neill,’ he’d said, a catch in his voice, ‘With a mind like yours, if you’d stayed off the drink, you would have outranked me by now and then, who knows, I might have been standing where you are and you where I am.’
‘If that was the case, sir… then, sir,’ he’d hastened to say, ‘I’d be after letting you off with a caution,’ it had been said with all sincerity and with true Celtic generosity.
It was then that O’Neill realised he’d gone too far. The skipper’s head had gone down and his shoulder’s had begun to shake again. When he raised his head, apart from the tears in his eyes, he seemed to have regained control for he said, ‘Well thank you, O’Neill, but I am not inclined to be that lenient.’
So he had misjudged the man, he had not regained his composure at all, he must have still been angry for it was then that he’d uttered those terrible and damming words. Sure, they still rang in his mind like the death knell at his own funeral.
‘One week’s stoppage of rum’. The tears welled up now, as he relived that horrible moment. Sure the English for all their education and fancy ways could be a cruel race when they wanted to be.
* * *
The stand in rum bosun, Leading Seaman Thompson, clattered down the metal ladder, rum fanny in hand.
Leading Seaman Reginald Thompson was part of the new draft of ‘hostilities only’ ratings, brought in to replace the regulars drafted off to man the patrol boats. Besides being an H.O. Thompson had one other built in disadvantage. He was in the accelerated promotion scheme and was on his way to becoming an officer ‘through the hawse pipe’, as the lower deck called it.
Now O’Neill hated all officers as a matter of course, but what he thought of officers promoted from the lower deck he could not have put into words, a terrible thing for an Irishman as he would have been the first to acknowledge. It only made matters worse that Thompson had gained his, it had to be said considerable, knowledge of seamanship sailing daddy’s yacht in the waters off Cowes. Taken all in all these factors were not calculated to gain respect from the fiery Irishman and had earned him the nickname of ‘Regatta Reg’. Now, to cap it all, he, as the next senior rating, was dishing out the rum. O’Neill now hated the younger man with an intensity he usually reserved for those of the Catholic persuasion.
For his part Thompson looked on O’Neill as an uncouth Irishman who should never have been put in charge of men, especially when those men were better educated than the stormy O’Neill. In the mess deck jargon they had long since ‘parted brass rags’ and it was the opinion of the ship’s company that there could only be one outcome.
* * *
Thompson had difficulty making his way through the crowded mess and stumbled over one man’s outstretched feet. There was nothing more calculated to upset the volatile O’Neill.
“Watch that rum ‘Regatta’ you clumsy bastard. You spill one drop and I’ll have your guts for a signal halyard!”
“Look O’Neill. Mind your tongue on my mess deck. There’s not enough room down here to swing a cat you should have brought your chaps down later.”
“Well, dish the stuff up and we’ll get out of your way with pleasure, now won’t we lads.” O’Neill turned, for support to his mates, “Sure he makes you as welcome as a dose of clap to a couple of newlyweds.”
“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you I am the Leading Hand of this mess. If you don’t moderate your language I’ll have you off the mess deck altogether. You are under stoppage as I understand it, you shouldn’t be at the rum table at all.”
This inflamed O’Neill even
more, for it was the truth. Under stoppage the only rum he would get for the next week was what he could cadge as ‘sippers’ off his mates. He rose up from the mess bench, “Put down that rum fanny I’ll not have it said I spilt the rum.”
Thompson turned round to face the Irishman, “Am I to understand that this is in the nature of a challenge?”
“I know you’re not been in this man’s Navy more than a dog watch, but I would have thought you would have been in long enough to know that.”
“If you want a ‘grudge fight’ you’ll have to go through the proper channels.”
“Well, ain’t you the lower deck lawyer, It’s a hurry I’m in, it’s tot time and I’ve no time for all that shite…now put ‘em up.”
“Look. I don’t want to hurt you O’Neill, I feel it my duty to inform you I was an Oxford Blue and I am quite capable of defending myself should it be necessary.”
Now O’Neill had no idea what an Oxford Blue was and if the truth be known he cared less, “Oh it is necessary.” He turned to his mates, “Don’t worry lads, this won’t take long, I’ll not be keeping you from your rum for long.”
“I have no reason to fight you.”
“Now, is that the truth… try this for size,” said the big Irishman, swinging a pile-driving right that would have floored a horse.
To the surprise of the mess deck this ‘horse’ ducked neatly under the swing and stabbed out with his left, a short sharp blow that drew blood from the Irishman’s top lip.
O’Neill stood there wiping the blood away with one huge fist, staring at Thompson in disbelief that quickly turned to amusement when he saw that Thompson had taken up a classic Queensbury Rules stance. A lopsided smile creased O’Neill’s face as the two began to move around in the circle that had cleared around them.