Douglas Reeman - In Danger's Hour

He thought about his brief meeting with Surgeon Lieutenant Sean Cusack RNVR. He had not been what he had been expecting. If small ships were fortunate enough or otherwise, to carry a doctor, they were usually little more than medical students with stripes on their sleeves. He pictured Cusack as he had sat opposite him that afternoon in the other chair. In his thirties, with dark, almost swarthy features and the brightest pair of twinkling blue eyes he had ever seen.

He had said in reply to Ransome’s question, ‘I got fed up with the R.N.H., and one damned barracks after another. I am in the navy, so why not a ship, I asked myself?’ He had chuckled at Ransome’s surprise. ‘It’s the Irish in me, I suppose.’ Then he had said with equal candour, ‘There’ll be a lot of stress in a job like this one, eh?’

He had sat back in the chair, his head on one side like a watchful bird. It had made Ransome feel defensive, unguarded.

He had replied, ‘I suppose that’s true. You tend to think death is the only enemy, that you can cope with all else, like a sort of god. When you discover you can’t, it leaves you raw. Vulnerable.’

‘Like the boy Tinker I’ve been hearing about.’ The blue eyes had barely blinked. ‘Perhaps I could have helped. I have some experience in that field.’

Ransome had made some excuse and the new doctor had departed.

He reached down to the cupboard and took out one of Mon-crieff’s bottles of Scotch. He poured a full measure and added a dash of soda. The first today. What would Cusack have made of that, he wondered?

The ship felt quiet and still, with only occasionally footsteps on deck, and the creak of rope fenders between the hull and Ranger alongside.

A full flotilla, with more new faces, different characters to know and understand.

They might be working with the fleet, taking part in an invasion which must not fail. If it did, all the sacrifices which had left a bloody trail from Dunkirk to Singapore, Norway to Crete, would be wasted. There would be no second chance. If they put a foot back into Europe, no matter where, it must advance. Otherwise it would not be a question of a retreat, or a strategic withdrawal as the war correspondents optimistically described them. It would mean an inevitable defeat. He thought of his parents as he had seen them on this last leave. No, it must not fail.

There was a tap at the door and the doctor looked in at him, his eyes everywhere as he took in the piles of papers and files which filled the desk and part of the deck too.

‘And there’s me been enjoying meself with my new comrades, sir!’

‘What is it, Doc? Your cabin not to your liking?’

Cusack stepped into the light. ‘I’m such a fool. I completely forgot in all the excitement of joining the ship today!’ He held out a letter. ‘This was given in my care at the gates, to hand to you. To be sure, you’d have got it faster if they’d entrusted it to a blind man!’

He watched as Ransome took the letter and examined it without recognition.

Cusack said, ‘A woman’s hand, I’ll wager, sir.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll be off to finish unpacking and to put my strange S.B.A. straight on a few facts of life.’

Ransome looked at the handwriting. It was addressed correctly, c/o G.P.O. London, but the writer had upgraded his rank to Commander. Somebody’s wife or mother trying to dodge the rules and red tape, he decided.

He said, Thanks, Doc. One thing before you go.’

The doctor’s eyes fell hopefully on the Scotch but Ransome asked, ‘Are you from the north or the south of Ireland?’

Cusack pretended to be offended. ‘No true Irishman comes from the North , sir!’ He withdrew quickly.

Things might be very different with him around.

Ransome glanced at the bulkhead clock. An early night, a drink in Ranger, or a walk along the wall to clear his thoughts.

Orders would be arriving tomorrow.

He looked at the unopened letter and noticed it was postmarked Plymouth.

Something made him reach for his knife and he slit it open.

First he turned the neatly written letter over and then he felt a chill run down his spine. It was signed, Sincerely, Eve Warwick.

The ship, his worries, everything seemed to fade as he read it, very slowly and carefully. He should have known, although he had never seen her handwriting before; ought to have guessed, even though he had never trusted too much in fate.

Sentences stood out from each page as if lit from beneath. / have thought about you since we last met. Worried about you more than I could tell anyone. I went to see your funny boat. Imagined us sitting there in the sun, and you answering all my daft questions. 1 saw your brother Tony —

Ransome raised his glass to his lips but it was empty.

I wanted to know what you were doing, how you wereRansome reread it a third time. He could see her smile, her sadness too. Hear her voice in the writing.

Once or twice he glanced up at the drawing on the bulkhead. She was in Plymouth where her father was now a canon. He stared at the date. It had taken several days to reach here.

He sat bolt upright in the chair, recalled how the train had been held up by another raid on Plymouth.

They were used to them down there. Like Coventry and London, Portsmouth and Liverpool.

But he could not push the anxiety from his thoughts. Now he knew what it felt like to worry about someone who was as much under fire as any serviceman.

He examined his feelings, and was surprised but grateful that he no longer felt foolish because of his – he hesitated over the word. Love – how could that be?

Eventually, the question still unanswered and the letter lying open in the lamplight, Ransome took time to fill a pipe of tobacco.

It had been a full day after all.

The three weeks which followed the minesweepers’ departure from Chatham were the busiest and probably the most maddening Ransome could remember.

The ships steamed west through the Channel, dodging a sudden and concentrated bombardment from the Cap Gris Nez guns and arriving eventually in Falmouth. There they joined up with the rest of the flotilla, the first time they had all been together for months.

Apart from the newcomers, the Dutch minesweeper Willem-stad and the very useful additional heavy trawler Senja from the Free Norwegian navy, the other ships were quite familiar. But in the time they had been apart, transfers, promotion, even death in a few cases, meant different faces and minds to contend with.

Commander Hugh Moncrieff, true to his fearsome reputation, kept his brood hard at it during every hour of daylight, and quite often during the night watches. They steamed around Land’s End and into the Bristol Channel where Moncrieff threw every exercise and manoeuvre in the book at them, and many which he had apparently dreamed up on the spot. He was in his element. He even cajoled the C-in-C Western Approaches to lend him a submarine on one occasion to break through the flotilla’s defences in the role of a U-boat.

With half of their number still sweeping, the rest of them had carried out repeated attacks on the submarine until she eventually surfaced to make the signal, ‘ You’ve given me a headache. I’m not playing with you any more!’

Each ship’s company must have cursed Moncrieff until his ears had burned, but Ransome had felt the old pride coming back, the feeling perhaps that the minesweepers were no longer the drudges of the fleet.

It must have been even more difficult for the two foreign captains, he thought. Both the Norwegian and the Dutchman were skilled and experienced, but had been used more for local escort work than chalking up kills in the minefields.