Lars did blush now and stumbled over saying, “Doctor Ferg—Myrna—I—there is absolutely no apology necessary. None at all. You are perfectly entitled to your beliefs, and to express them.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And I think if you can argue your case so clearly when it comes to John’s estate taxes, we are going to be in very good hands.”
“I agree, Myrna,” said the marquis, “but he’s going to start that tomorrow. Dinner first. Let’s go along, shall we? I think Cook has a treat for us.” He rose.
O’Reilly’s stomach rumbled as he rose, offered Kitty his arm, and followed.
From behind he heard Myrna. “Now. Fingal has told me that you are an authority on orchids, Lars. You must tell me all about them.”
44
Come Not Between the Dragon and His Wrath
Eight a.m. March 28 1941 At sea, somewhere near Crete. The cruiser HMS Orion has reported contact with the Italian fleet to the north.
Fingal put down his pen and sat back in his chair. This tiny cabin on the main deck was now a familiar place again, and keeping a record of the war was once again a routine. He knew there was every prospect of a naval battle today, and it would be a battle between two full fleets, with their flagships—Cunningham’s Warspite and Admiral Iachino’s Vittorio Veneto—fully engaged. Fingal hoped he would be able to master the anticipatory fear he now was feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. He’d lived through battles before; he would again. He looked at the picture of Deirdre by his bed, glad she was far away and had no idea what might be about to happen.
The first moves had been made yesterday when intelligence reported an Italian fleet at sea commanded by Iachino on the brand-new, thirty-knot battleship.
Admiral A. B. Cunningham, A.B.C. to his men, had gone ashore in Alex, ostensibly to play golf and stay overnight, a fact that would be duly noted by the Japanese consul. Since the signing of the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan last September, it had become an open secret that the man provided intelligence about ship movements to his country’s European allies. Based on his report, the Italians would assume the British ships would be staying in harbour, because Cunningham always accompanied Warspite when she sailed.
But Cunningham, true to his name, had slipped back on board after dark, and the battleship had led the fleet from Alexandria last night, March 27th, in the late hours. The plan was a good one, but on her way out the great ship had sucked mud into her condensers. Fleet Engineer Officer Captain B. J. H. Wilkinson and his engine room artificers and stokers had worked frantically four decks below where Fingal sat to make the repairs. But all last night and until noon today, she still could manage only twenty knots. The two other battleships, HMS Valiant and HMS Barham, and the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, and their escorting vessels all had to conform to Warspite’s slower pace. Yet speed was of the essence if an interception with the Italians was to be made.
Today, March 28th, four six-inch gun cruisers—three British and one Australian—commanded by Admiral Pridham-Wippell, along with their destroyers, had sailed from Greek waters and were south of Crete near the island of Gavdos. Here they had sighted the Italian vanguard to the north.
Admiral Iachino’s eight-inch gun cruisers outgunned the British ships, so the Empire cruiser flotilla immediately notified Cunningham and steamed south, hoping to draw the Italians down on the approaching British battleships where, glory be, the repairs had now been effected and Warspite could manage twenty-four knots again. The Italians followed Pridham-Wippell and shelled him at long range but scored no hits.
Cunningham’s big ships were still ninety miles away.
It would be several hours before the Italians would be in range of Warspite’s batteries, but her medical department was at readiness. Richard Wilcoxson had everything set up in the two medical distribution stations so his staff would be ready when action stations were sounded. But for the moment, he was releasing members of his teams in four-hour shifts so they could eat and sleep.
Fingal was not due back for another two hours and had come to his cabin from breakfast in the mess to change his shirt and note the night and day’s developments so far in his diary. He was resolved to do his best to keep track of what transpired. He had started the diary so he could tell Deirdre about his doings while they had been apart. Since he’d left Warspite last year he’d made no more entries except for a few notes about the journey home on the troopship. As long as he and Deirdre had been together, there was no need to keep a record. Now they were apart, starting the diary again seemed to bring her closer. He pictured them, snug in the upstairs lounge of the house in Ballybucklebo, a peat fire in the grate. He sighed. He was so far from her, far from the pastoral peace of Fareham and the New Forest, far from the Northern Ireland village he had called home before the war. In hours his ship might be embroiled in a fight to the finish with her fifteen-inch rifles roaring and the enemy blazing back. Fingal O’Reilly was well and truly back at war.
He flipped back to the entries he’d made since his return to Alexandria, and to those he had filled in since the beginning of the year.
Jan 1. British attack Italians in Libya as Operation Compass proceeds to drive them out of Egypt.
Jan 2. Warspite shells Libyan port of Bardia. Hit by bomb on anchor. Little real damage.
Rest of Jan. Warspite shells Libyan ports and escorting convoys. Greeks beat Italians in land actions in Greece and Albania.
Feb 5. Italians defeated by British at Beda Fomm on Gulf of Sirte. Twenty thousand Italians surrender while I am in the Blenheim flying over Africa.
Feb 6. Scary engine fire on Blenheim on way from Takoradi.
Feb 7. I rejoin Warspite and old friends.
Feb 14. Afrika Korps under Rommel arrives in Africa.
Feb 22. Seven-a-side rugby football team from Warspite (including me) beaten by more than sixty to nil by New Zealanders (we stopped count). Kiwis all ex-internationals.
That entry would make her laugh, he thought.
March 5. British troops sent from Africa to Greece in support of Greeks fighting the invading Italians.
March 22. Leading Seaman Alf Henson, gunnery course completed, rejoins Warspite after a long sea passage from Liverpool. He has been promoted to gun captain of the number-four gun of the starboard six-inch battery.
March 25. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia now part of Axis.
March 26. Italian one-man explosive motorboats attack and cripple HMS York in Suda Bay (Crete). Our only eight-inch cruiser. I have to admire the courage of the boats’ crews and even if they are the enemy, I am relieved that all six survived.
Another Tannoy announcement seeped through the door of his cabin. “The Italian cruisers have reversed course to the north and are en route to rejoin their battleship. They are possibly heading for home. Admiral Pridham-Wippell’s cruiser group is shadowing. We are continuing in pursuit.”
So perhaps there wouldn’t be a fight after all. He’d not be sorry. “What next?” Fingal wondered aloud. He knew the Tannoy would keep him posted, and he still had free time. He opened a desk drawer, took out the photo album Deirdre had given him at Christmas, admired the wedding photos, the rose now dry and forlorn, then took out a letter, written on the day she’d got home to Belfast in January. The missive had made its weary way round Cape Horn and finally been delivered two days ago.
Darling Fingal,
How sweet of you to write a letter so it would be waiting for me when I got back to the nurses’ home.
By now she should have the ones he’d posted in Takoradi too.
I was feeling lonely and reading your lines comforted me. I shouldn’t tell you, but I had a wee weep, but I soon cheered up. Your words telling me how much you love me warmed me. And before I say any more, dearest, I love you too …
He skipped over her white lies about her journey from Southampton not being too bad—wartime travel was almost always an ordeal—her cheerful gossip about a phone call to Ma, her remarks on the weath
er, her room, and the awful food in the nurses’ home.
I’m going to unpack now and have a nice hot bath before I get an early night. Good thing there’s lots of water in Northern Ireland and no rationing. I’ll pop into bed and think of our bed in Alverstoke and of being held in the strong arms of the gentlest man in the world. I’ll look at his photo on my bedside table and make my snow scene into a blizzard—it’s there to remind me of our lovely first Christmas. And I’ll think of how you loved me and I loved you and I’ll fall asleep and dream of our love and will the days to pass until we can be together again.
Please take care. I love you so much, darling,
Deirdre
He wondered why he’d bothered to look at it again. After so many readings he knew the words by heart.
* * *
Fingal, happily smoking his Christmas pipe with its silver lid, felt the wind on his face, the pitch and roll of the deck underfoot. He had to strain to hear the Tannoy’s message over the thundering of the screws and the roar of the turbines. “Seventeen hundred hours. After several air strikes from land-based Blenheim bombers and Formidable’s air attack group, the Italian ships are retreating at reduced speed. Vittorio Veneto has been hit by a torpedo from an Albacore. One Albacore was lost. Our cruiser division is following and maintaining contact.”
He noticed that the tompions had been removed from the muzzles of the guns of X and Y turrets. They and their fellows in A and B were ready for their deadly business. Above everything, the ship’s thick funnel smoke and that of her consorts streamed astern, vandals’ dirty smears on an otherwise perfect azure sky.
“Pity we have to slow down to recover one of our reconnaissance planes,” said Richard, as he kept Fingal company on the starboard side of the quarterdeck. “I’m sure A.B.C. hopes to get in among the Eyeties, and he won’t be too pleased, but this is going to be something to watch. It’s never been done before with our ship still steaming ahead. We usually heave to.” A seaplane recovery crane stuck out from abaft the funnel trunking, not far ahead of where they stood watching. Its pickup hook dangled freely.
On the starboard bow, a single Walrus, one of the battleship’s spotters, was taxiing at a parallel course on the calm water ahead. It and Warspite’s other observation plane had been catapulted off earlier in the day. This one had just returned.
Warspite’s bows cleaved the sea.
“Are they seriously going to try hooking onto the recovery ring on the aircraft and hoist it inboard while we’re under way?” Fingal asked.
“They are. And they’d better get it right the first time,” Richard said. “Scuttlebutt has it that Admiral Cunningham’s fit to be tied about having to reduce speed to eighteen knots. You know we catapulted two spotters earlier. They can’t land on aircraft carriers, but they can land on land or sea. They were both supposed to fly to Crete, but for some reason this one has come back. We might need to launch it again, so it’s got to be recovered. I reckon the pilot’ll take a right chewing out.”
Warspite’s condenser repair this morning meant the ship was now up to her full twenty-four knots. Since then, she, Valiant, Barham, and their escorts had strained to catch up with the Vittorio Veneto. The torpedo had done its job and the Italian battlewagon had only been able to make fifteen knots, half her regular speed. But that success had cost the lives of the plane’s three-man crew. Nothing would persuade Fingal that Horace’s famous Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was a truth. It is lovely and honourable to die for your country? Rubbish. And as far as he knew, the Roman poet had not died in battle himself.
Fingal stared down at the amphibious plane’s telegraphist/air gunner, a petty officer named Pacey. The man was balancing precariously above his cockpit. “Rather him than me. I had enough of open-water acrobatics in a breeches buoy trying to get on to Touareg last year.”
Richard smiled and nodded. Warspite had overtaken the little aircraft, and in moments her bow wave would toss it around like a cork. The Walrus’s pilot altered course to starboard so his floats were stern to the waves, which passed under without capsizing the small plane. Moments later, the Walrus’s aircrewman succeeded in hooking on to the crane.
Fingal, who hadn’t realised he was holding his breath, exhaled and yelled, “Bloody well done.”
The plane, swinging like a pendulum, was winched on board and respotted on its catapult. Soon it would be refuelled and ready to launch again.
Richard was applauding as the notes of the turbines and propellers bellowed their renewed challenges, the deck beneath Fingal’s feet jerked forward, and the great battlewagon raced up to her top speed. The pursuit was still on.
* * *
The Tannoy squawked to life. “Twenty-two twentyhours. All sick bay personnel report to your action stations. All sick bay personnel…” Bloody hell. Fingal had just got to his cabin after four hours on watch. He’d been looking forward to a few hours of sleep after a restless shift sitting in the medical distribution station twiddling his thumbs, cracking feeble jokes with the SBAs, rechecking that everything was set up correctly, munching on corned beef sandwiches and sipping weak cocoa, listening to the Tannoy, chatting with Richard, and trying to follow the events as they unfolded.
He closed his cabin door and started heading back the way he’d just come: toward the bow along the main deck, up a level for a short walk along the upper deck, then down two levels to the middle deck. Much had happened in the outside world in the past few hours and he’d seen none of it.
Warspite had successfully relaunched the Walrus, and the spotter had reported that Vittorio Veneto and several eight-inch cruisers were forty-five miles ahead, making fifteen knots to the northwest. Cunningham, based on the plane’s intelligence, had ordered another aerial attack to try to slow the Italians down more.
“Bloody good thing they recovered the spotter and could find out where they were,” Fingal had said. “We might still catch up.” The excitement of the chase was getting into his blood.
At 7:25 P.M., a cruiser believed to be the Pola had been hit and was reported as being dead in the water.
Richard’s smile had been grim as they’d listened to the Tannoy announcement. “I don’t give much for her chances once our big boys catch up with her.”
And now Fingal was on his way back to the for’ard medical distribution station. Things were going to start hotting up.
As he went down one companionway, the tinny voice continued to narrate. “Twenty-two twenty-three hours. Orion’s radar has picked up a single ship six miles from her own position. Our position is ten miles west of Crete, ten miles southwest of Greece’s Cape Matapan. Our radar has detected two large cruisers and a smaller one crossing our bow. Range thirty-eight hundred yards.”
Where the hell had they come from? Fingal wondered. Had Admiral Iachino detached cruisers or destroyers to aid the stricken Pola? The Italian must have been unaware he was being pursued. British intelligence knew the Italian ships had no radar. So now a detachment of the Italian fleet and Cunningham’s ships were almost on top of each other.
A full-fledged battle was no longer just a possibility, it was a reality. And things were going to get hectic. He knew he’d be safe four decks down—once he got there. He’d be crossing open deck in a few minutes. At least after his time in Haslar he no longer doubted his anaesthetic skills, and there were sure to be casualties. Lots of casualties, the poor divils.
He was aware of the ship heeling to starboard. The admiral must be turning his line of battle so the great ships’ port broadsides were presented to the enemy. Whatever Italian vessels were out there in the pitch-black night would be facing the combined firepower of twenty-four fifteen-inch rifles, each shell weighing a ton, and Lord alone knew how many six-inchers would be firing. Henson would be disappointed. His gun, on the starboard side, might not see any action.
Fingal had seen Warspite’s great guns in action in daytime. What would they look like at night? There was only one way to find out. A quick detour before
he reported to his post would satisfy his curiosity. He ran up the nearest companionway to the forecastle deck and found he was standing behind the shield of one of the antiaircraft guns. Its crew all wore steel helmets and asbestos antiflash gear. “Hello, Doc. Come to see the fun?” said one of the gun’s crew, a man for whom Fingal had lanced a boil two weeks ago.
“Hello, Michelson. What’s going on here?” Fingal shuddered with the sudden cold. The night wind of their passage was bitter and he had no duffle coat. He huddled in behind the gun shield.
Searchlight beams erupted from one, then several more British destroyers. Across the water he could see three warships, two large, one smaller, lit up like actors at centre stage. The enemy was steering a parallel but reciprocal course.
“Our officer reckons the Eyetie admiral doesn’t know our lot’s out here. Poor buggers don’t have any radar. He’s sent those ships to help out that one that’s dead in the water. On our side we’re in line astern and Warspite’s leading Valiant and Barham. Furious’s been told to bugger off and not risk getting shot at.” He pointed out to sea at the enemy ships. “Over there, the silly sods have all their guns trained fore and aft. It’s point-blank for our guns. We’ve got ’em with their pants down this time. It’s going to get noisy, sir. We fire broadsides in night actions. Fleet Gunnery Officer Barnard’ll give the order to shoot once the big guns are on target.”
Movement caught Fingal’s eye and he looked ahead. The rifles on A and B turrets were swinging outboard. Death riding smoothly on the well-oiled mechanisms. Fingal could hear voices coming from inside a gunhouse saying, “Ready.” Michelson gave Fingal a playful salute, said, “Any minute now, sir,” and clapped his gauntleted hands over his ears.
Fingal knew he should leave, but the scene was mesmerizing. The huge guns, the men in their antiflash gear, the night lit up by myriad blazing searchlights.