15. A Few Good Men
Home Fleet Naval Anchorage at HMS Proserpine
Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands
Tuesday
August 20, 1940
Thorne, Donelson, Kransky and Trumbull all stood at one of the piers of the anchorage early that morning as a warrant officer and a pair of privates loaded a large wooden crate was loaded onto a small motor launch. Eoin Kelly stood with them, waiting for the men to finish so he could be taken out to an RAF Sunderland floating out on the water a few hundred metres away.
“The flying boat will take you as far as Belfast,” Thorne advised as the boat crew secured the load in preparation to cast off. “From there, a truck will be waiting to take you wherever you need to go. Warrant Officer Standish will also accompany you as far as you require, and he’ll carry enough authorisation to get both of you through any checkpoint or roadblock.”
“You’ve me thanks, Mister Thorne,” Kelly replied with sincerity, shaking the man’s hand. Despite having developed a great deal of respect for the Australian, he still couldn’t bring himself to call him by his first name. “I can’t promise you answers I can’t give, but I do promise to put your case to the Council. What happens from there is up to them.”
“I understand,” Thorne replied, nodding, “and I appreciate what you are doing… and have done. You didn’t have to help us during the raid… not the way you did.”
“Well now… you know I just can’t help m’self… I have t’ be the centre of attention after all…” Neither the self-deprecating grin nor the matching tone was enough to convince them, but the group respected the man’s fall back upon humility. “Farewell to the rest o’ you fine gentlemen,” he continued as his eyes moved along the line of men. “Stay safe, and have a few drinks for me now ‘n’ then.” His gaze finally came to rest on Eileen Donelson’s face “Farewell t’ you too, missus… try not to think too harshly of me.”
“Thank you again for what you’ve done,” she said softly, the concession a difficult one to make.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” Kelly replied simply, deciding honesty was more important than false humility under the circumstances. “I appreciate your sayin’ so… that can’t have been easy.” He took a breath, then added: “Mister Thorne told me a little of what some of my people did to your father, and for what its worth, I’m sorry for that… it’s not the way I’d be fightin’ a war.” There was a substantial pause before she finally nodded in recognition of the sentiment, and he knew that was about as close as they’d probably ever come to common ground. Kelly would miss some of the crew there at the base, and he thought it a shame those people were technically his enemies.
“Take care, missus,” he said finally, tipping a finger to the brim of the flat cap he wore to match the ill-fitting brown suit he’d been given on arrival. In another moment he was aboard the launch and it was chugging slowly out to the Coastal Command aircraft with his escort. Thorne stared up at the sky above for a few moments before turning to walk away, thinking there might be rain on the way.
Hal Markowicz arrived back from London just after noon that day, his Avro Anson transport having taken him on a long and arduous detour to the west, at tree-top height most of the way to avoid Luftwaffe fighters that patrolled the skies of Southern England with impunity. Fighter command was all but shattered now as a coherent fighting force, and anti-aircraft gun crews had already learned the hard way that firing on enemy aircraft would almost invariably bring an attack down upon them in retaliation; the Luftwaffe was now basically given free reign during daylight hours as a result.
The Anson was light enough that it didn’t require a full-length runway (which had in any case been destroyed), and it instead touched down on an open stretch of flat grassland near the ruins of what was left of the concrete airstrip, close to the parked rows of newly-arrived Mustang fighters of 93- and 96Sqn. Thorne and Donelson were waiting to meet him as Markowicz stepped from the plane, dressed in a tailored grey suit he’d purchased while in London. Under one arm he carried a briefcase of soft leather that appeared to be quite full.
Hal had been working with the War Ministry to assist in streamlining production of new and improved weaponry, and the sight of his familiar form in the very unfamiliar cut of a 1940s three-piece suit and matching bowler hat somehow brought home to both Thorne and Eileen a sense of culture shock more than almost anything else they’d seen up to that point.
“Hard to get used to, is it not!” Markowicz admitted with a beaming smile, noting their strange looks as he drew near and correctly deducing the reason. “Tailor-made… and it feels wonderful to wear… but I shiver every time I look in a mirror. Most of my clothing was destroyed during one of the raids, and I was looking forward to getting back here and wearing a pair of jeans again…” He paused as he surveyed the distant, gutted ruins that had once been the Hindsight base. “It seems they are gone also. I heard what happened… to poor Nick and the others…”
“How’s the armaments industry going, Hal?” Thorne changed the still-painful subject instantly as they moved off together. “Whipped them into shape down there, yet?”
“Hah! You think I’m a miracle worker then?” The old man gave a hollow laugh, and Thorne thought perhaps his normally faint accent was perhaps a little stronger than it had once been. Markowicz turned toward Eileen and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Lady, we could use you and your memory down there… I tell you that!” He shrugged and reconsidered the statement somewhat. “But perhaps they wouldn’t listen to a woman any more than they listen to a ‘mad old Jew’, yes? The raids have made them scared and disorganised, and the ones in charge of the factories and the arsenals are suspicious of any new ideas.” He threw his hands and arms about as an ‘aid’ to his speech, and Thorne and Eileen were suddenly certain the accent and mannerisms were more pronounced. “They argue about this and that, and it takes twice as long to get anything done as it should, even with the letter of authorisation I carry signed by Churchill himself!”
“And the production levels…?” Eileen queried. She’d indeed wanted to go south with him, however the idea had been vetoed for a number of reasons. Her greatest asset — her eidetic memory — was also ultimately why she’d been forced to stay in the north: her loss to Hindsight, should she be killed or captured, would be irreplaceable. Over and above the thousands of plans and blueprints and other things of interest they carried in storage, her photographic mind also carried with it a vast wealth of information that they could ill afford to lose.
“The new anti-tank sights for the AA guns are all out and going well, and the 10-pounder guns seem to be working nicely in tanks and on towed carriages. There aren’t many of them yet, but there are enough, perhaps, to make their presence felt if used in the right areas. The main bottleneck has been in smallarms, as much because of disruption by raids as anything else. They have one division now, I think, armed with AKMs and RPKs, although they’re complaining about losing their precious Bren guns…”