Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘All gun crews at action stations before sunset. I remember a thick white strip of moonlight rippling across the sea to the horizon and I could sense the enemy close by. Fear. Then at a little after eight o’clock it began. There was suddenly a small bright yellow light on the starboard side of the convoy. We weren’t sure what it was at first and we were under Admiralty orders to maintain wireless silence for as long as possible. Cave tried to signal the other escorts with an Aldis lamp but there was no reply. Then one of the merchant ships hoisted a red lantern and…’

‘A red lantern?’ asked Mary.

‘Torpedoed. And a few minutes later, there was an enormous explosion in the heart of the convoy: a tanker some two miles from us, a blazing mass of white flame, smoke rising in a huge column hundreds of feet into the sky. Then, on the far side of the convoy, another burst of flame and then another and another.

‘As we approached the tanker, we could hear thump, thump, thump against the sides of the ship as if a giant sea creature was trying to batter a hole in our hull. Cave shouted, “Go and see what that is, Number One.” The ship slowed and I made my way down to the fo’c’sle. The sea was heaving with timber, heavy wooden pit props. Then one of the crew shouted, ‘Over there, sir, look’, and there was a collection of little red lights dancing on the water, tossed towards us by the swell. We must have passed within a couple of hundred yards of them. I couldn’t see their faces but I could hear them: ‘Help, help, please God help…’

Lindsay reached over to the bedside table and lit another cigarette, smoke curling to the ceiling. Mary felt suddenly tense and cold and conscious that it was late, the still time between two and three o’clock when the night is at its darkest. In the silence she wrapped the sheet more tightly about herself. Lindsay did not look at her, but after a couple of minutes he began to speak again, quickly, harshly: ‘But I can’t blame Cave for leaving them, the convoy was under attack. We threw Carley rafts and promises, “We’ll be back.” But we didn’t go back. And then we were closing on the tanker. The sea was calmer about her, heavy with a sticky blanket of oil, and in places it was on fire. The ship was burning from stem to stern, the bridge just a twisted shell. We weren’t that close but I could feel the heat and hear the whoosh and roar of the flames, and the smoke was a billowing, choking black mountain even against the night sky. The convoy scattered. The Commodore must have despaired of the escorts and with good reason, never mind the enemy; we hadn’t even managed to make contact with each other. Honestly, it was a shambles, really a total shambles.

‘I’d returned to the bridge to find Cave in an impotent rage, cursing the other escorts and his own crew. It was a little after eleven, and I remember thinking, “Oh God another four or five hours of this.” Of course, we know now it was one of Dönitz’s first pack attacks and there were four, perhaps five, U-boats chasing in and out of the convoy. They were all there, the U-boothelden — Otto Kretschmer, Prien, Mohr…’

‘Mohr?’ said Mary with surprise. ‘Mohr attacked the convoy? When did you find out?’

But Lindsay ignored her question: ‘We zigzagged to and fro for more than an hour, firing round after round of star shell over the sea in the hope of catching sight of a U-boat but we didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything. The Asdic detector was useless, just an empty echo…’

‘They were on the surface,’ said Mary.

‘And it was quite obvious to me that we were wasting our time. By now we’d fallen five or six miles behind the convoy. I drew this to Cave’s attention and he exploded. I was forgetting my place, he said, I was questioning his judgement, thirty years’ experience he said. The U-boats were forgotten, I was now the enemy. It was a very unpleasant scene. My God, he’d more important things to worry about than me, but it was panic, he’d lost control. We weren’t “lucky Culloden ” any more. Then there was a terrific flash on the port bow, followed by another column of fire and smoke and that put an end to his diatribe. It was obvious even to Cave that we were searching in the wrong place. We went chasing over to the burning tanker, the men still at their stations, cold, tired, frightened. As we approached, we could see by the light of the flames another ship close by, a large freighter with her deck and cargo lights burning. She was listing heavily to port. We put scramble nets over our sides with a couple of burly ratings at the bottom to help survivors aboard but we didn’t find any one — just empty life jackets. I remember a small explosion somewhere deep inside the freighter, a sound like breaking glass; it blew the hatches off and there was a shower of wet ash from the funnel. The sea was in the engine room. The lifeboats were out there somewhere but Cave was anxious to rejoin what was left of the convoy. It was almost three o’clock and the sea was rough and getting rougher. By then we felt helpless and rather ashamed. Cave had a face like thunder. He used to glare at you from under dark bushy eyebrows. I remember glancing about the bridge that night and everyone was concentrating hard on the horizon, desperate not to catch his eye. For a moment I was barely able to contain myself, I had this mad, mad urge to laugh out loud.

‘We overhauled the main body of the convoy and the other escorts just before dawn. The Commodore’s ship was among them but he had no more idea than we did how many ships had been lost in the night. One of the other destroyers had picked up two hundred survivors, some of them in bad shape, and Cave gave her permission to leave us and make best speed to Londonderry. He sent the other escorts to round up stragglers and we were left with the rump. I shouldn’t think our presence was very reassuring.

‘The men were allowed to stand down from action stations, stand down before they fell down, weary and demoralised. I managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep too. Some stragglers joined us during the day but the glass was falling, sea state eight and worsening and we were soon struggling to keep our little convoy together. I don’t think Cave took any rest, he was running on adrenalin, a little unhinged.

‘Then at about eight o’clock that evening we did pick up a firm contact. Ping, ping, ping: imagine, Asdic contact at last,’ “Echo bearing one-sixty.” I remember the operator bouncing with excitement. He lost contact in the wake of a merchant ship but just for a few seconds. Bugger the convoy, Cave was determined to hunt and sink his U-boat.’

Lindsay sighed and reached down to stroke Mary’s hair: ‘By then the wind was almost storm force and we were ploughing into a head sea. The ship dragged her old bones to the top of a wave then raced down into the trough, before struggling to rise again. After ten minutes of this sort of pounding the submarine disappeared. We were disappointed, of course. A chance to redeem ourselves had slipped away. I remember Cave bullying the Asdic operators with threats and imprecations. The sub-lieutenant, Parker, felt sorry for them, he was a sensitive chap — more “university horsemeat” — and he said very tentatively: “Perhaps the submarine has surfaced, sir?” Of course it had, it was taking advantage of darkness and the weather to make its getaway. But Cave was furious again, furious. Was Parker trying to undermine his authority? Did anyone else want to pass an opinion? And he gave orders for another Asdic sweep. The temperature on the bridge dropped an uncomfortable couple of degrees but Cave didn’t care because he found a strange comfort in bullying his officers.

‘Imagine our situation. We’d left the convoy again, God knows if it was safe, we were trying to echo-find a submarine that was almost certainly on the surface and we were travelling at barely six knots on an almost straight course. The U-boat was out there somewhere in the darkness. We were asking for trouble. I remember glancing across at Parker and he caught my eye and nodded, or rather twitched, meaningfully at Cave. And I thought, “Oh God, he wants me to say something.” Reasonable you might think — I was the first lieutenant. “What’s the point?” I asked myself. My opinion would be neither sought nor welcomed, far from it, and so to my eternal shame I kept quiet. In fact I managed to shake my head a little at Parker and he rolled his eyes upwards, no doubt in complete exasperation. And so it happened.