Alexander Fullerton: Surface!

He had fired the charge and was about to abandon the junk when he heard the Captain shouting something, pointing at the bow of the junk. Sub hurried for’ard, looking around: a small, ginger kitten ran towards him, mewing. He scooped it up, ran aft and swung himself down to the submarine.

A minute later, Seahound was speeding away into the deep water: then the vents dropped open, the spray plumed up and she dived to periscope depth. Someone was likely to resent the intrusion and the damage, and if she stayed in these waters there would very likely be some trouble: the Captain turned her north, up towards the gap in the minefields. This would be the fourth time that she had passed through them: when you’ve done it once, it’s easy.

Every ship and submarine on the Station had a secret chart, now, with a track marked on it, the track through the minefield that Seahound found.

Sometimes, when you lay on your bunk and there was nothing very much to think about, it was pleasant to think about going home. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long, now: it was not, thought the Captain, that he felt any great urge to be back in England, it was the actual journey home that he looked forward to. A sort of holiday cruise, visits to places on the way: Aden, Port Said, perhaps Alexandria: Malta and Gibraltar. Yes, it’d be a lot of fun.

Strange, he thought, that he should like a place like Aden: hot and sandy, nothing much to do except swim and drink, yet the place had a certain atmosphere that made a short visit attractive. Port Said: a dance at the Eastern Exchange, just for the hell of it. Alexandria: the Auberge Bleu, slumming at the Monseigneur. He wondered if Louise still lived in Alexandria and if she still had the fat and aged Egyptian for a husband.

Malta: the centre of many submariners’ memories. It was in Malta that he had struck that policeman, it was the Malta flotilla that had sunk over a million tons of Rommel’s supplies: the memories swam together, the wild days ashore and the wilder weeks at sea.

Gibraltar: the flat on Scud Hill. The night they rolled up the carpet and launched it out of the window so that it fell on a policeman who was standing in the road protesting against the noise. Another carpet had been their ticket to a free evening in the best hotel: the Captain had been a Sub, then. He and two others had taken the carpet and carried it out of the hotel foyer. Then they telephoned the Manager, told him that they had recognised his new red carpet, the pride of his heart, that they had taken it by force from two men who had it on a cart and were trying to sell it. The Manager had been most grateful, had given them a dinner on the house, and after the dinner and cigars they had walked out of the hotel carrying a champagne bucket.

The Captain wondered whether that champagne bucket was still among the other trophies in the flat on Scud Hill. He couldn’t do that sort of thing nowadays, of course, not even if he wanted to: but it would be good to see the old places again, recognise the barmen’s faces, a final night or two with Louise before he settled down to marriage and life-long fidelity.

The Captain fell asleep, while Seahound ’s motors drove her gently up the Straits, towards the mines.

Two days later, the Depot Ship in Trincomali was in a state of wild excitement. It was one little point in a vast area of elation, victory. The Japanese High Command had signalled its unconditional surrender. The yellow horde that had blazed a path of murder and brutality across the East, at first almost unopposed, had been beaten to its knees. An atom bomb had given them the excuse to admit defeat, to save something from the wreckage by kneeling to an adversary whose own ideas of human and military conduct they had scorned when the power was in their animal hands.

In the Staff Office, during the afternoon, the Staff Officer, Operations, drafted signals ordering all submarines on patrol to return forthwith, reporting their positions and estimated times-of-arrival at Trincomali. Seahound was the only submarine in the Malacca Straits, and in the signal to her was included the information that on her way back up the Straits she would meet surface forces which were at that moment on their way into the Straits, on their way to accept the surrender of Singapore.

The submarines would be dived all day, knowing nothing of the surrender which had come so suddenly, and the signals would reach them that night, when they surfaced for the night patrol.

The Staff Officer, Operations, leant back in his chair and shut his eyes. In his mind he heard a speech, a speech that told of defeat. He had been a passenger in a troopship rounding the Cape, bound for Suez: it was early in 1942. One evening they were all assembled in the dark, blacked-out recreation space, to hear a special broadcast from London. In grave, simple words the Prime Minister told them of the fall of Singapore. The Staff Officer, Operations, remembered the shock that the news had given them, but he remembered also the hard determination to win in spite of this and any other loss, a determination with which the strength and personal courage of the speaker had inspired them.

Now, the ships were going back. It had taken a long time, but they were going back.

“Have you passed the last signals yet?”

It was half-past nine in the evening, and he was speaking over the telephone from the Staff Office.

“All but one, sir. We haven’t got hold of Seahound yet.”

“Keep on trying until you do. Then ring through to me here.”

“Aye aye, sir,”

He leant forward over the desk, his head on his hands. Staff Officers are hard-worked people at times like this. Odd, Seahound not answering: she should have surfaced, by now. Still, there were many possible reasons for the delay. He fell asleep at his desk, his forehead resting on his clasped hands. He was more tired than he knew: in that position he slept soundly, undisturbed for over an hour, while below in the wardroom and on the messdecks a thousand men sang songs and faced with a fantastic faith the Peace that lay ahead.

Suddenly a noise outside, the crack of a rocket exploding over the harbour as someone started a private celebration of the victory, woke him. He looked at his watch: eleven o’clock! Perhaps he had failed to hear the telephone, perhaps they had forgotten his orders. He picked up the receiver and rang through to the Communications Office.

“That signal got through to Seahound ?”

“No, sir.”

“Keep on trying. All night, if necessary.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Frowning, assuming that expression of annoyance to hide the fear inside him, the Staff Officer, Operations, hurried down to report to Captain Meadows.

In the Wireless Office, a telegraphist sat at his bench, tapping out Seahound ’s call-sign again and again. From time to time another man took over, gravely, realising the import, tapping out the dots and dashes, visualising the little wireless cabinet in the submarine, seeing clearly the face of his friend at the other side of the ocean. Behind the operators, a Chief Petty Officer Telegraphist paced up and down, a cigarette stuck on his lower lip and a frown on his lined face. He was thinking all the time, “Should ‘a got her, by now.”

After midnight, the Commanding Officer of His Majesty’s Submarine Slayer stepped over the gangway on to the Depot Ship’s quarterdeck. He and some others had decided to do their celebrating ashore, had caught a boat and called on the Wren Officers’ Mess with some bottles concealed in rolled bathing-towels. It had been a quiet evening: they sat on the veranda with the Wrens, and talked, remembered old times and tried to believe that it was all really over. For so many years they had thought about this day, and now it had come so suddenly that it seemed unreal.