‘God,’ Grog murmured, ‘look at her list, Hob.’
Hob had said nothing. Furious was down by the bows and listing heavily to port.
‘When we get down, we could slip over the side,’ Hob said. ‘I’ll try to hold her until they’ve got the lashings on.’
The HCO was ordering them on to spot 8.
‘She’s a sitting duck,’ Grog said. ‘It only needs the Backfires to come back.’
‘Another regiment,’ Hob said. He was nudging her gently towards the round down when Grog shouted:
‘Fighters, Hob! Over to the left, low.’
Hob dared not take his eyes off the line.
‘They’re Norwegian,’ Grog cried. ‘The Scowegians are here!’
‘Good news,’ Hob said softly as the flight deck came up towards him, canted at a hideous angle. ‘They’ll be from Sola, near Stavanger. The old lady’ll be all right after all.’
But his words sounded false. They all knew the chances were bleak. ETA Oslo was 2300 tonight a long way yet. The convoy (or what was left of it) was just below the horizon, depending for its only defence on the crippled carrier and her remaining escort. A long, long day lay ahead before they could safely pass through the gate of the controlled minefield off the Skaw.
A thousand yards to go … he could see the handlers crouching in the nets waiting to spring out as the cab touched … bloody lucky she wasn’t rolling.
Then he saw the yawning gash clipping the perimeter of spot 8, from which belched spurts of dirty, yellow-tinged smoke.
Chapter 24
The captain of HMS Furious stood alone on the signal bridge above his wheelhouse. He had slept for three hours after passing Farsund, the first sighting of Norway for which they had craved for so long. Was it really only a week since he had taken the carrier out of Mount’s Bay? A lifetime had been crammed into these seven days.
A shave followed by high tea with Druce in his bridge cabin, and Trevellion felt more like himself, in spite of the wound in his right leg. They’d taken him down to the sick bay, but he had come round almost at once, during the precarious descent down the ladders. He had a deep gash, mercifully missing the artery, and poor old John Bellairs now seemed disappointed at not being able to stay on the bridge as second-in-command.
And here was his ship, seven miles from the ‘gate’ into the controlled minefield between Denmark and Norway which had sealed the Baltic, with the exception, perhaps, of a limited number of intrepid enemy submarines: the pleasant signal from the Commander Allied Forces Baltic Approaches was good to get. Furious had been saved from further air attacks by the Norwegian Air Force fighters from Sola: they had given him precious time to get his ship under way again. It had been an emotional moment, too, watching the Norwegian frigates from Haakonsvern steaming at full speed to the westward to help bring in the convoy during this last and potentially hazardous phase. Lurking submarines and predatory aircraft always hung about the nodal points.
The port authorities in Oslo were ready for the convoy. Intensive night mining from enemy aircraft had been suspected (the major north European ports had all suffered intensely): and the swept-channel had yielded over 280 enemy mines of the most intricate sort. The last sweep into the Oslo approaches had been completed less than an hour ago, though, with these most modern beasts, a ‘negative’ sweep was no recipe for immunity.
There they were … and Trevellion squinted towards the pale sun which hung over the western horizon to where the convoy, the commodore proudly in the van, was approaching in single file from below, the horizon. Trevellion nodded to the officer of the watch who was out in the wings on the deck below: ‘Clear lower deck. Bring her round to the reciprocal.’
Cleaning into number eights would do the troops a lot of good, after these appalling days. Watching the merchantmen steam past would remind them all that, if our lot had been unpleasant, those brave men in their defenceless ships had endured much worse. Morale had not been helped by the stench of death ‘tween decks. Many bodies could not be extricated from the tangled steel where the missiles had gouged out the ship’s guts. The ship would need dockyard assistance before the appalling remains could finally be removed. All the remedial measures the PMO and the commander had tried could not disguise the smell of putrefaction; near the flats and passageways, canvas screens had helped to hide the worst of the horrendous evidence of death.
The carrier was swinging now, settling to her homeward course for the Straits of Dover and for Plymouth; he would keep her at twelve knots until past the convoy.
He watched the first of his ship’s company trickling through the screen doors to take up their positions on the edge of the flight deck.
The evening was hazy — more fog in the offing? He could see the lowlying foreshore, a grey-green line on the northern horizon. He had glimpsed, just after Farsun, the smudge of white-capped mountains far away, to the east of Stavanger. It was futile to remind himself that, eight hundred miles to the north, the invader was still ensconced and had yet to be thrown out: when would Britain begin to realize that victory in this frightful struggle was synonymous with survival? The Russians had but to move one kilometre westwards on the central plain and the nuclear exchange would flare.
Survival? The fact that Old Fury had continued to shield the convoy and to remain afloat herself was a miracle and due largely to Trevellion’s splendid MEO, a massive, taciturn Welshman. By his leadership, the chief had inspired his damage control teams to efforts which they themselves had never believed possible: by all logical calculations Furious should have sunk, but they had saved her.
The carrier, during the last attack in the early hours this morning, had been hit by seven missiles, two being ‘plungers’ with near-vertical trajectories.
Eventually the DC parties had succeeded in smothering the fires, and then they dealt with the two holes on her port bow, the largest, fifty feet before the bridge, a huge hole just above the waterline. An oil tank had been contaminated and she had taken on a bad list.
The chief had compensated and brought her back to an even keel but it had been a near thing. The compartments were evacuated and the DC parties had rigged up jury collision mats. By keeping the pumps going, the chief had things under control. The chopper pilots had insisted on maintaining their limited screen right up to the minefield … already, Little F was preparing the next sortie, though there was little room for them now that the after end of the flight deck had become a park for Illustrious’ Sea Harriers.
Geoffrey Manning, the rear-admiral flying his flag in the ASW cruiser had been an old friend. He had gone down with the rest of them when the Backfires blasted her with everything they had … when her four remaining Sea Harriers returned to find their deck gone, Furious’ fighter controller had brought them in one by one to the after spot on the old carrier’s deck. The handlers had never moved so fast. Trevellion had never felt more proud of his ship’s company.
What a moving sight was the commodore’s ship! Bunting was flying from her starboard yardarm — and Pascoe could see the officer who had held this precious convoy together. Tall and bowed, saluting in the wings as his ship slid past the carrier, the older man waved when he heard the cheers from Old Fury’s company.
They cheered him, again and again, the echoes rebounding as the two ships passed each other at less than two cables. Rusty the length of her, a corner of the bridge gone, her house flag fluttering proudly, the fly in tatters from the gales, she proudly led her six survivors towards the ‘gate’ through the controlled minefield.