She found that H.M.S. Mastodon was a stone frigate. It was Exbury Hall, about three miles up the Beaulieu River from the Solent. The river runs in to the New Forest through country that is wholly rural. For the first three miles it is a fair-sized tidal river capable of accommodating landing craft up to two hundred feet in length if they don’t object to going on the mud now and then, but after Bucklers Hard it becomes very shallow at low water. At the entrance there are leading marks in from the Solent, and a row of disused coastguard cottages, and Lepe House, a timbered mansion overlooking the entrance to the river. From Lepe the river runs up westwards for a mile in a long reach between sea marshes, and then turns northwards inland till it comes to woods on either side that shroud fine houses of the wealthy. One of these was H.M.S. Mastodon, and it came as a surprise to Janet Prentice and May Spikins when the truck deposited them there in June 1943.
They reported to the Duty Officer and were handed over to a Wren petty officer who took them to their quarters in a hut that was built on a tennis lawn. That evening the two girls wandered round with mixed feelings, bemoaning the fate that had landed them into a place where there was nothing operational going on and which was ten miles from the nearest movie. At the same time, they were forced to realise that the Navy had sent them to one of the most lovely country houses in England. It was a stone-built, fairly modern country house in the grand style, with a flagstaff flying a white ensign on the lawn in front of it. All afternoon the two girls wandered up and down woodland paths between thickets of rhododendrons in bloom, each with a label, with water piped underneath each woodland path projecting in stopcocks here and there for watering the specimens. They found streams and pools, with ferns and water lilies carefully preserved and tended. They found a rock garden half as large as Trafalgar Square that was a mass of bloom; they found cedars and smooth, grassy lawns. They found long ranges of greenhouses, and they learned with awe that the staff of gardeners had been reduced from fifty to a mere eighteen old men. And finally, wandering entranced through the carefully tended woods, they found the Beaulieu River running up between the trees, still tidal. The path ended at a private pier with a hut and a small dwelling house at the shore end. They walked out to the end of the pier and stood looking up and down the broad river at the running water. It was a quiet, sunny evening, very beautiful. Doves were calling in the woods, and seagulls drifted by upon the tide. A naval motor cutter manned by two Wrens in jerseys and bell-bottomed trousers surged up the river from some errand and landed two R.N.V.R. officers at the pier.
“It’s not a bit like the Fleet Air Arm,” said Janet thoughtfully. “But it really is a lovely place.”
“All right if you never want to see a movie,” said May Spikins practically. “And what about the ships? I thought we’d come to service Oerlikons, but I haven’t seen a sign of one here.”
They soon discovered that there were only one or two L.C.T.s in the river though more were expected before long; the Admiralty had been ahead of the game in providing Wrens to look after the guns. The Ordnance Officer was busy with the erection of a new hut down by the pier which was to serve as their workshop. He was an earnest, competent young R.N.V.R. officer who had been wounded in the raid upon Dieppe a year before; he had a petty officer that he could use on the construction of the workshop, but the two Wrens were frankly an embarrassment to him at that time, and he told them so. “Look, you girls,” he said. “I haven’t got a job for you, and I shan’t have for the next six weeks. I’ve fixed things to attach you to the boat’s crews for the time being, so that you can go about with them and learn the river and the layout of the moorings so that if you hear that a ship’s down at No. 16 buoy you’ll know where to find her. That’s a good mike for you, but you’ll have plenty to do later on. If you give any trouble I shall send you back to store and indent for two more when the work comes along. If you don’t behave yourselves you’ll lose a darn good job.”
The next months were a sheer joy to Janet. She had hardly realised it, but her eighteen months with the Fleet Air Arm at Ford had been hard work; she was more tired than she knew. Here in this lovely place upon the Beaulieu River there was no war, and at first practically no work; if she had chosen to do so she could have spent most of that summer sitting in the sun in the rose garden reading poetry. Instead, she followed her directions and attached herself to Leading Wren Viola Dawson in the naval cutter, with Sheila Cox and Doris Smith, and spent most of each day with them. When a new tank landing craft or L.C.S. came in and moored in the river Viola Dawson would take the cutter alongside and put Janet on board, and leave her there for a couple of hours. She would report to the petty officer of the ship or to the No. 1 and ask if there were any gun defects or ordnance stores deficiencies. There usually were, and she would spend an hour with one or two ratings dismantling the Oerlikon or recharging the drums, her hands in a wet slough of coopers’ grease. She had a mechanical sense, and rust upon a gun was a physical hurt to her. “Just look at that!” she would say severely to an abashed rating. “If I find it like that again I’ll bring the Ordnance Officer to see your Captain. No, I’m not kidding. I will. I’ve never seen a gun in such a bloody muck in all my life.” To the young Captain of the ship she would say, “I see you’ve only got stowage for two drums in the R.U. lockers, sir—all the other Mark 4s seem to have stowage for six. I’ll report on that for you to Mr. Parkes. I think we might be able to find you four more drums, but the stowage is a dockyard job. Oh, and I’ve been over the port gun with Jones—it’s getting a bit rusty.” Invariably she would stay for a cup of tea either in the wardroom with the officers or in the mess deck with the men. Then the cutter would come alongside for her and she would get back to the pier and tell her officer that L.C.T. 2306 was short of four drums and the stowage for them, and worry around the naval system till she found somebody who would do something about it.
Throughout the autumn and the winter activity increased in the Beaulieu area, and with it came mysteries. Lepe House, the mansion at the entrance to the river, was taken over by the Navy and became full of very secretive naval officers; it became known that this was part of a mysterious naval entity called Force J. Near Lepe House and at the very mouth of the river a construction gang began work in full strength to make a hard, sloping concrete platform running down into the water where the flat-bottomed landing craft could beach to refuel and let their ramps down to embark the vehicles or tanks. This place was about two miles from Mastodon. A mile or so along the coast a country house was occupied by a secret naval party who did strange things with tugs and wires and winches, and with what looked like a gigantic reel of cotton floating in the sea; this was “Pluto,” Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which was to lay pipes from England to France to carry petrol to supply the armies which were due to land in Normandy. On a bare beach nearby a thousand navvies were camped making huge concrete structures known as “Phoenix,” one of many such sites all along the coast. It was not till after the invasion that it became known that these were a part of the artificial harbour “Mulberry” on the north coast of France.
Inland it was the same. Every wood was littered with dumps of shells and ammunition in little corrugated iron shelters, thousands and thousands of them spaced at regular intervals. There were radar stations upon Beaulieu Common and Bofors guns at Bucklers Hard; there was radio everywhere, the slim antennae pointing up from hedges, from haystacks, and from trucks. Over the whole countryside as winter merged into spring there was continuously the roar of aircraft, symbol of modern military power.
About the middle of March Janet was waiting on the pier one morning for a boat to take her down the river to an L.C.S. for a routine visit. Sheila Cox and Doris Smith were there with her, but Viola Dawson, the coxswain, was still up at the office at Mastodon getting her instructions for the day’s work. The girls sat in a row on the edge of the pier dangling their legs over the water, talking about Cary Grant and next week’s dance.
Viola Dawson came running down the pa
th through to the pier, most unusually; the girls got to their feet in surprise. The coxswain panted, “We’re taking the L.C.P.—there’s been an accident and it’s a beaching job. Get her started up quick. We’ve got to pick a party up at Needs Oar Point.”
They were away at full speed down the river in a couple of minutes, Janet with them to be dropped on her L.C.S. as they passed. As they went Viola, seated at the wheel and recovering her breath, told them what she knew. While she had been in the office several small radio transmitters in the area had burst into life, and in half a minute everyone concerned was in action. There had been an accident to a tank upon a beach near Newtown in the Isle of Wight, and the tank was under water. Some of the crew were trapped in it, and probably drowned. The party that they were to pick up at Needs Oar Point was some sort of a salvage crew of Royal Marines.
There were points of mystery about this story. Doris Smith asked, “How did a tank get under water?”
“I don’t know.”
Sheila asked, “What sort of a salvage party is it? There’s nothing down at Needs Oar Point, is there?”
“I don’t know that either. The orders were to get down there as quick as possible and embark this party, and take orders from them.”
Needs Oar Point marks a bend in the Beaulieu River a mile from the entrance, a windy, barren place of flat pastures and sea marshes. When they got there they saw a naval truck at the end of a track leading to the river and three young marines waiting for them, a captain and two sergeants. Their arms were full of strange equipment, waterproof suits and queer packs holding metal cylinders. The landing was difficult; Viola ran the sloping prow of the L.C.P. gingerly up over the sea marsh and the young men scrambled muddily on board over the bow. She backed off with some difficulty. The officer said, “You know where to go?”
“No, sir.”
“You know Newtown? Well, half a mile east of the entrance. Open all the taps you’ve got. If we’re quick enough there’s just a chance we might get some of them out.” He swung round to his sergeants. “Get that walkie-talkie going and let’s know the form.”
Viola said, “Can I go alongside the L.C.S. to drop this Wren, sir? She’s Ordnance. She’s got a job to do on board it.”
“No, go flat out for Newtown. Drop her on your way back.” He went aft past the canopy to his men in the stern behind the engine. Presently he took the walkie-talkie from the sergeants and began talking and listening in turn. The two sergeants started to undress. The officer diverted his attention for a moment. “You girls, keep your eyes forward,” he said.
When after a quarter of an hour they looked aft again the two sergeants were standing dressed in tight-fitting light rubber suits with rubber helmets tight around their faces, with goggles pushed up on their foreheads. Janet had heard incautious talk about frogmen but she had never seen one before, and she had no idea that there were any in her district. The officer came forward to the wheel, where Viola was steering. “This is the form, coxswain,” he said. “An L.C.T. was landing a Sherman tank upon the beach. You know how they do it? The ship goes in and grounds with the bow in about four feet of water and lets down her ramp; the tank goes down the ramp and wades through the water to the beach. Well, there’s a hole in the beach or something, and the tank went right under. They say its turret is just awash. Everyone got out of it except the driver, and he’s in it still. They’ve been trying to tow the tank out with another tank, but it’s in gear and they can’t shift it. They’ve been trying to get down inside to get the driver out, but his body is across the gear lever and caught up in some way. He’s in there still.”
Viola asked, “When did this happen, sir?”
“Ten-fifty.”
She glanced at her wrist watch; it was then eleven twenty-five, and they were still about two miles off, though behind her the engine was roaring at full throttle and they were doing about fifteen knots. “He’ll be dead, won’t he?”
“Not necessarily. Now look, I want you to do this. The tide will be running to the westward. Go to the tank and land these two chaps on its turret. Approach it from the lee side, that’s from the west, and go right up to it. Make fast to the turret if you can, but if there’s nothing you can get a rope on to, hold your position with the turret just under your bow. Got that clear?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
He went aft to his men. Janet came to Viola. “What do you want me to do?”
The coxswain said, “Give the Marines a hand if they want it. I’ll need Sheila and Doris for the boat.”
They were close now to the shore. The L.C.T., relieved of the weight of the tank, had floated off the beach and backed away, and was now lying a little way out anchored by the stern. Half way between the ship and the sand they saw a small disturbance in the surface of the water which was the turret of the tank awash, its thin wireless aerial sticking up on high. There was another tank standing on the beach, and a number of soldiers, some in battledress and some stripped naked and wet. Viola turned the L.C.P. and went straight for the tank, and throttled back, and felt her way to it gently in the last few yards with the turret on her port hand till the open hatch was right beside her wheel and the bow of the L.C.P. had grounded on the gun barrel; she held the craft there with a little engine. It was a delicate and skilful bit of seamanship.
The two frogmen were over the side in an instant, masks and goggles covering their faces and air bottles on their chests. One of them wormed his way down through the hatch, twisting his body to right and left to clear the apparatus on his chest and helped by his comrade, who stayed waist-deep upon the flooded tank peering down into the turret. Presently he reached right down, head under water, and then the overalled body of the corporal driver appeared, pulled by the man on top and pushed up from below by the man inside the tank under the water. The marine captain in his battledress got over the side on to the tank, and working waist-deep in the water with the top frogman manœuvred the body of the driver to the L.C.P. Janet and Sheila Cox took him as the men passed him up to them and pulled him up on to the flat foredeck of the landing craft, and Janet rolled him over on to his face and began the motions she had learned at school for artificial respiration. He was a young man with a small moustache, in overalls, his face blueish white in colour, dead cold to the touch.
The three marines climbed on board again, helped by the other girls. The one who had gone down inside the tank said, “I put her in neutral, sir.” He seemed to Janet to speak with a slight accent, possibly cockney, but she paid little attention to that at the time.
They stood dripping on the side deck holding on to the canopy rail, watching Janet as she worked rhythmically on the body. One of them said presently, “Dead, isn’t he?”
She looked up. “I think he must be. Does anybody know how to do this? Am I doing it right?”
The officer said, “I think so. Go on as you’re doing. Coxswain, take us in to the beach and we’ll get him ashore.”
Viola Dawson said, “I may not be able to get off again if I go in there, sir. The tide’s falling pretty fast.” She meant that if she stayed on the sand more than a minute or two the L.C.P. would be stranded and must wait for the next tide to float her off again.
“Go on in,” he said. “I’ll make that right for you. They’ve got transport there, and there’s just a chance a doctor may be able to do something for this chap.”
They went in, and the landing craft grounded some distance from the water’s edge. An army lieutenant in battledress waded out to them and they pulled him in over the bow. Janet said, “Somebody else take a turn at this. I’m not doing any good.”
The lieutenant hesitated and then knelt down and took over the attempt at artificial respiration; a couple more men climbed up over the bow. Janet got up, only anxious to get away from the dead man she had been handling. She went aft to the stern, where she came upon the two marine sergeants naked to the waist, scrambling awkwardly out of their rubber suits.
She said, “Oh, sorry.” And th
en she said, “Have either of you got a cigarette?” She was very glad to be free of the chill deadness of the body on the foredeck, and to be with live young men.
One of the sergeants, the fair-haired boy with the slight accent, said, “I’ve got some here.” He turned over his clothes and searched the pockets of his battledress, and passed up a packet and a box of matches to her as she sat upon the canopy.
She took them from him. “Thanks awfully. Go ahead—I won’t look.” She lit a cigarette from the packet with fingers that trembled a little, and blew a long cloud, and relaxed.
From the stern below her, where the men were dressing, the fair-haired young man said, “Dead, isn’t he?”
“I should think so,” she replied, without looking down at the speaker. “There wasn’t a sign of anything.”
The young man said, “Well, he was under water the best part of fifty minutes. There’s no future in that.”
She sat in the warm sun smoking, looking out over the blue sea of the Solent; on the flat bow of the L.C.P. men in khaki were still labouring over the body of the driver. It was a warm day for March with all the promise of summer, the sort of day when the beach should have been associated with bathers, and small boats, and children making sand castles and paddling, instead of with waterlogged Sherman tanks, soaked uniforms, and dead men. An L.S.T., the first that she had seen, came in by the Needles passage and made its way up towards Southampton; she watched it with interest as it passed. A flight of Spitfires passed overhead on their way to France. Three M.L.s in line ahead went by, and a couple of motor minesweepers.
The fair-haired sergeant stood up by her in shirt and trousers and helped himself to one of his own cigarettes. He seemed to her a clean, good-looking boy—which, of course, Bill was. He glanced towards the bow. “Not doing any good, are they?”
“I don’t think so.” She hesitated, and looked down at him. “Was I doing it right? I’ve never had to do it in earnest before.”