Band of Brothers Read online

  866—Moncrieff—was matching the slight increase in speed, maintaining his distance astern. Stack had taken a glance back to check this. Ordering now, ‘All engines half ahead, 1500 revs. Course to the buoy, Ben?’

  ‘South twelve east’ll do it, sir.’

  ‘Steer that, Cox’n.’

  Power building, noise building, whitened sea broadening where it slid away into the dark. Motion increasing slightly as she met the swells… Ben watching 866 again—and remembering Moncrieff asking him when they’d been dispersing from the briefing, ‘So did you tell him yet?’

  Meaning, had he told Stack about Furneaux and Stack’s wife. Ben had glanced round to check that they were on their own, then shaken his head. ‘No, Monkey, I haven’t. Hardly the right time, is it.’

  ‘But you’re going to—huh?’

  ‘It’s not—easy, Monkey.’

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s that to do with anything? It’s a fact, and you and I owe it to Bob to damn well tell him. Christ’s sake, Ben, last night you swore—’

  ‘I know I did.’

  ‘Changed your mind, since?’

  ‘Not exactly… Talk about it when we get back, can we?’

  Moncrieff had been with him and Rosie at this hotel called Beauport Place last night. He’d recommended it, in fact, soon after Ben had arrived in Newhaven and asked him for advice as to where he might put her up for a night or two whenever she could get down. Its advantages as he’d cited them being that it was accessible from Newhaven but not so close as to be patronized by any others from this base, and that the woman who ran it was—‘you know, easy-going?’

  Meaning she didn’t ask to see marriage certificates.

  ‘How’d I get there?’

  ‘Well—couple of guys on the base have cars. Buy ’em a drink or two—and if they’re duty, or somethin’, aren’t using ’em themselves?’

  ‘You go on your bike, I suppose.’

  ‘Sure.’ He had a 350cc Royal Enfield which he’d picked up in Seaford for a song. Ben asked him, ‘Your girl rides pillion?’

  ‘Has to. Less she wants to walk.’

  Last night Monkey had been out there for the Saturday night dinner-dance, bringing the girl in question, a Canadian Army nurse, from some nearby military hospital. The south of England was teeming with Canadians, there were a lot just round this area and naturally enough Moncrieff tended to consort with them. He was a smallish, compactly-built man, with a reputation for using his fists when provoked. Dark, with a bullet head and eyes like brown stones—and an intense loyalty to Bob Stack, whom he credited with having taught him all he knew and helped him up the ladder to command.

  He’d shrugged. ‘I’m not letting it ride, Ben. You don’t tell him, I will. Damn it, we agreed, last night—’

  ‘I know. I know…’

  Glasses levelled astern, focused on the flair of bow-wave under 866’s stem, the gunboat itself almost invisible behind it, in the gathering darkness. Remembering Monkey last night half-rising from his chair in that instant reaction of hard-eyed shock, his growl of ‘Christ—see what I’m seeing?’

  Joan, with Furneaux steering her into the room where the dancing was. Ben’s first thought had been that Bob Stack must be there too, in the same party—in the bar, maybe… Whereas Monkey had been certain that he wasn’t, and within minutes this had turned out to be the truth.

  Ben hadn’t even wanted Monkey to be there. He’d very much sooner have been on his own with Rosie. But when the Canadian had announced that he was coming to the dance, bringing this girl whom he’d wanted Ben to meet, why not let’s make it a foursome—well, particularly as he’d introduced Ben to the Beauport, it would have been downright rude to have said no. Even knowing that Rosie’d be far from ecstatic when she heard about it.

  Making about twenty-one knots now; normal cruising speed, for the ‘D’s. Stack’s final decision had been that the whole force should stay together up to about two-thirds of the way over, at which point he’d detach the MTBs to push on ahead. It wouldn’t be a prolonged usage of high revs—which wasn’t ever to be recommended, or safe—and it would leave an adequate margin of time in which to cover the last ten miles inshore at low revs on silenced engines.

  Engine noise was a giveaway. Even ‘silenced’ you were audible at a mile or even more.

  ‘Course from the buoy, Ben?’

  ‘South forty west, sir.’

  They were looking for it now—for the C2A buoy. Three pairs of glasses sweeping to and fro across the bow. Stack in the starboard corner, Barclay in the other, and the signalman, ‘Dusty’ Miller, between Barclay and the coxswain. A fourth then, as Ben joined them… The pitching and rolling was regular, not all that uncomfortable. Speed helped, carrying her across the swell, and her length did too. The MTBs—‘short’ boats—naturally enough hammered around much more than these, in any kind of sea.

  ‘C2A fine to starboard, sir!’

  Barclay had spotted it. Stack checked it for himself, then grunted, ‘So let’s get ourselves to action stations.’ He had to be just about the most relaxed, easy-going skipper in the whole of Coastal Forces. Which was saying something. He got results, for all that—terrific results, as witness the ribbons on his chest, as well as the regard in which his crews held him—this one, and the bunch he’d had up at Felixstowe. His total rejection of all bullshit would at least partially account for that. Barclay’s thumb was on the alarm buzzer; not only sound, but lights would be flashing in the messdecks, flats and in the engine room. The second coxswain had gone lurching aft: a gunlayer, his action job was on the after six-pounder. It was routine at this stage to go to action stations and test-fire all the guns: and for Ben to return to his hutch—wheelhouse, so-called, although there was no wheel in it, only had been in some much earlier boats—log the moment of passing the buoy, noting the time and log-reading at this point of departure. He went down the few steps and through the blackout screens, set himself to checking the chronometer time, and the distance run, and the QH coordinates. Briefly switching on the echo-sounder then—to ensure that it did switch on, and made sense. You’d be on the ten-fathom line, near enough, passing that buoy. Check and double-check… Not that there was any great problem in knowing where you were at any given moment, now you had this ‘QH’, a navigational aid derived from what the RAF called ‘Gee’. At least, all SOs’ boats had it, others were being fitted with it as it became available. It was used with gridded charts and was accurate to within about a hundred yards.

  Except if your electrics went, of course. Which could happen—from being shot at, for instance.

  ‘Pilot.’ Voicepipe: he answered it, and Stack told him, ‘C2A’s abeam. Altering to south forty west.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ He had the time noted, and the log reading, and the known position served as a check on the QH being in its right mind. Like falling off a log, really. It was just that keeping right on top of it minute by minute made it even simpler, eliminated any uncertainties of the kind that tended otherwise to show up when other peripherals were going wrong. In any case, triple-checking had become a habit. Even though any halfwit could have handled this lot. In the 15th Flotilla, where the job had been to get into pinpoints on a rocky coast under the noses of German coastal defence positions and often in foul weather—well, that had called for some degree of skill.

  He’d switched off the echo-sounder. It was of no practical use at this speed anyway. Whereas on the Brittany coast, creeping in through those narrow channels, it had been one’s primary navigational tool. In fact—on reflection, thinking of what he’d told himself an hour or so earlier when Bob Stack had asked him, ‘No sour grapes?’—that line about being a good navigator and wanting nothing more—well, it wasn’t entirely true. Had been in those days, the clandestine operations on the Brittany coast, but it wasn’t now. Not really.

  ‘Course south forty west, sir.’

  The coxswain’s voice, audible via the bridge voicepipe. And Stack’s, then: ‘Test guns, Number On
e.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Barclay used the sound-powered telephone to pass that order to the gunners—to the power-operated six-pounders forward and aft, the two twin point-five mountings, power-operated turrets just forward of this charthouse, port and starboard, the twin 20-mm Oerlikons on the centreline abaft the bridge, and a pair of Vickers Gas-Operated .303" machine-guns in each of the forward corners of the bridge.

  You didn’t need two good ears to hear that lot. Wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it, either. Pressing his palm over the one that worked—while the whole boat shook from the percussions…

  Petering out already, though. Finished. In the ringing, comparative quiet, Stack ordered, ‘Secure the guns. Relax to cruising stations.’

  Cruising stations, also known as the second degree of readiness, would be the state of things until the unit was well out to sea; then the hands would be sent to action stations again and stay there. Fiddling with the QH again, Ben heard, over the engines’ steady thunder and the timber hull’s more or less rhythmic slamming across the swells, a distant popping and crackling which would be the other boats testing their guns. For those up top to see it there’d be firework-like displays of coloured tracer, back there astern: a lot of it from the other gunboats, rather less from the MTBs, whose armament consisted only of a twin Vickers GO each side—mounted on the torpedo tubes—a twin point-five powered turret abaft the bridge and a single hand-worked Oerlikon on the foredeck. Torpedoes were the MTBs’ main, offensive armament, and they’d have been brought to the ready—depth-settings adjusted to six feet, stop-valves opened, propeller clamps removed, safety-pins extracted from the ‘whiskers’ on their warheads’ pistols; and on the tubes, firing-stops lowered and impulse cartridges inserted.

  Ben pushed his dividers into their slot at the back of the table. Wondering whether Stack wasn’t cutting things a bit fine, as far as the interception was concerned, whether instead of holding the unit together he shouldn’t have been letting Furneaux push on ahead with the MTBs at higher speed right from the start. Present arrangements were fine if the target and her escorts could be counted on to follow the inshore convoy route: but what if some Kraut staff officer had suffered a rush of blood to his square head, elected to depart from standard practice and send the convoy straight across?

  At seventeen knots, they’d be rounding Barfleur in nearer three hours’ time than four. Three and a half, say—taking into account the fact that the Heilbronne hadn’t actually cleared the port at the time of the reconnaissance.

  All right, so there were the Hunt-class destroyers out of Devonport or Brixham, en route to act as long-stops somewhere between Alderney and Cap de la Hague. But that was hardly the point. Wouldn’t figure prominently in Bob Stack’s thinking either.

  Maybe you could be certain, about that convoy route. Being a stranger in these waters, Ben admitted to himself, not having seen any action yet with this flotilla, learning the ropes as one went along, more or less…

  So ask the bugger.

  He pulled himself back up into the bridge. Into the whip of the wind, roar of engines, dark figures all in ‘goonsuits’—one-piece oilskin overalls lined with kapok for warmth and buoyancy. ‘Skipper, sir—’

  ‘Hang on.’

  Stack was facing aft with his glasses at his eyes, and the signalman—Miller, identifiable by the fact that he was unusually short and wide—was back there aiming a blue-shaded Night Signalling Lantern into foam-flecked darkness. Flashing some message to 866. Barclay explained into Ben’s ear—the good one, picking that one probably just by luck—‘Cruising formation. Dogs port, Mikes starboard.’

  As had been presaged at the briefing. Dogs meaning the gunboats—Stack’s callsign was Topdog, Monkey was Dog Two and Ted Bland in 874 was Dog Three—and the MTBs were respectively Mike One, Two, Three and Four. Mike as in Furneaux.

  ‘Message passed, sir.’

  There’d be no acknowledgement. A light flashing forward, the direction in which a unit was travelling, might be seen by an enemy—if there was one lying in wait ahead. You had to assume that Monkey would have got it and read it and that as he shifted 866 out on to Stack’s port quarter and Bland brought 874 out on Monkey’s, Furneaux would make his own move up to starboard, the other three MTBs angling outward beyond him, increasing revs in order to close up and reducing again as they settled into the new formation—an arrowhead, this boat at its apex, MGBs in quarterline to port and MTBs to starboard.

  It was happening now. Monkey was on the move anyway, the white patch of his bow-wave sliding steadily from left to right as one looked astern.

  A bit of a fanatic, was old Monkey. Un-Canadian, in that way. Most of them—and they were quite numerous in Coastal Forces, one flotilla in the Mediterranean for instance had only Canadians as COs—mostly, they approached even Aussie standards of informality. Monkey was a hell of a nice guy—bags of guts, and great company ashore—at least, if no-one made him angry—but when he drew the line on some issue or other that was it, the line stayed drawn.

  Ben had a feeling that he—Monkey—would end up giving Stack the bad news. Then Stack would want to know why his own compatriot, Ben bloody Quarry, hadn’t told him.

  Better tell him, therefore. On return to harbour. Get it over with there and then, just bloody do it.

  ‘What did you want, Ben?’

  It made him jump. Then he’d caught on, got it in context… ‘I was dickering with the chartwork. Struck me—well, may be talking out of the back of my neck, sir, but—’

  ‘If you are, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Thing is, if our Krauts didn’t use the convoy route, sir—if they plugged straight over—’

  ‘We’d be fucked.’

  Chuckles out of the darkness. Ben agreed: ‘What I thought.’

  ‘Should’ve mentioned. One—out of Le Havre, bastards always use that route. Two—Fleet Air Arm Albacores from Manston’ll be doing another recce for us—not inshore, out in the middle, where you say.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face, Ben.’ Stack’s arm came up, pointing. ‘Here he comes.’

  Furneaux: a white mound of broken water and white streamers flying like pendants, sharply rising engine-noise as his boat came crashing up on the quarter at maybe thirty or thirty-five knots, size of the mound and volume of noise reducing then as he cut the power, settling into his new station. Identical flurries of foam were falling into place out on his quarter: Billy Chisholm’s 562, John Heddingly’s 564 and Mark Newbolt’s 563.

  Ben commented, ‘Neat enough.’

  ‘Mike’s a dab hand.’ Stack added, ‘Damn shame we’ve lost Rod King, but his shoes’ll fit Mike like they were made for him.’

  All the boats were in station. Like pressing a button, and it had all happened. The ‘band of brothers thing, Ben thought. That Nelsonian concept really came to life here, became in some ways the essence of it. He had his glasses up, seeing them like so many flickering white fires in the black surround. Out from Furneaux’s—two—three—and four—just visible, Newbolt, at the tail end because he was the most junior, in his first command.

  Lucky bugger. Nice guy, too. Tall—an inch or so taller than Ben, maybe—fresh-faced, fairish, with an open, friendly manner. A natural enthusiast. Fine cricketer, apparently, according to Barclay he’d been captain of cricket—and also fives champion—at whatever school he’d been at. But a quick eye and quick thinking were great assets in this game too. Ben had been one of several men who when they’d been dispersing to their boats had shaken the youngster’s hand and congratulated him, Newbolt mumbling for about the fourth time thanks but he’d sooner have had Rod King still around—and genuinely feeling this, you could see it, hear it and like him for it—even if you did still envy him.

  Envied the bloody lot of them, was the truth of it. Would have given an arm and a leg, metaphorically speaking, to have a command of his own. That was the truth: although he’d take care never to let a damn soul guess it.


  Except Rosie. There wasn’t anything he’d want to keep from Rosie.

  Well—hardly anything.

  Remembering from way back—really way back, as far as his relationship with her was concerned, right at the start, the first evening they’d spent together—the very beginning of that evening too, in the New Yorker, a drinking club in Park Lane, so it must have been over one of about the first two or three drinks they’d ever had together—she’d told him flatly, ‘There must have been a girl.’

  In his Paris days, immediately before the war, which he’d been telling her about. He’d gone there to learn about painting. To become a painter. And his answer to her in the New Yorker, refuting that allegation, had been, ‘Painting, is what there was.’

  ‘And a girl.’

  That tone of certainty. Even then, when she hadn’t known him from a kangaroo. It was the evening of the day he’d heard that he was getting back to sea, after about a year stuck behind a desk; and despite the fact it was also the day news came of the surrender of Singapore, he’d been in a mood to celebrate. While Rosie’s fighter-pilot husband had been shot down and killed about thirty-six hours earlier and she hadn’t much certainty about who she was, or where, or what she was going to do.

  What she was doing, even. Like getting drunk with a strange Australian, for instance.

  She’d asked him—about the girl in Paris, ignoring his earlier denial—‘Where is she now?’, and he’d let her have it her way, told her, ‘Don’t know. Felt she’d done enough slumming, decided to go home.’

  Something on those lines. It had been a lie by omission, but not technically a lie at all. What he had not seen fit to mention was that the girl’s name had been Heidi, that she’d been German and had a father back in Düsseldorf who was some kind of Nazi bigwig. This hadn’t meant anything to him at the time; she was a beauty, Rhinemaiden type, and she’d got a kick out of being painted with her clothes off. That was where it had started, and the reason she’d left Paris was that her family had recalled her. What had shamed him ever since was that he’d been really shattered, having thought that she mattered as much as anyone ever could.