Authors: Antony Trew
Although the third-officer Wren appeared to be busy she was watching the man in the wicker chair, and he was aware of it. She thought, so this is him. Saturnine, high cheek-bones, dark hair. She’d liked his voice when he came in and announced himself. But so serious? No smile in the cold, withdrawn eyes, his manner quite impersonal as if he were talking to a machine? She’d heard a good deal about him. Who hadn’t? Thirty, lots of money … with cool, feminine, calculation she awarded that a high priority … a bachelor, unattached; there was plenty of gossip about him but none involving women. It was the other business.
But he didn’t look like that.
She remembered the stories she’d heard, looked at him again and tried to imagine him doing those things. Were they true? She watched the delicate hands, the long tapering fingers holding the
Naval
Review
, the well-proportioned head and aesthetic face. He’s like somebody I know, she thought and worried about that, trying to place him. Laurence Olivier! That was it! Rather harder, not so good-looking, but Laurence Olivier, nevertheless. I wonder if he’s noticed me, she thought. I’m not bad looking. The others all do. Is it an act? Concentrating on that magazine?
She said: “Lovely day, sir, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” He turned a page without looking up.
Loves himself, she thought, and realised he’d made it difficult for her to go on.
He put the magazine down. “I said, ‘is it?”’
“I heard you.”
“Well,
is
it
?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! What sort of game is this?”
“I’m curious, that’s all. Haven’t seen the day. Just come up from the ops. room. Been there since four this
morning
.”
Blast it! she thought. Now I’ve been rude. The buzzer sounded and she picked up the phone.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“He’ll see you now.” She smiled as she put the phone down, trying to make amends.
They went down a passage to a door labelled “Chief of Staff.” She knocked and led him in.
“Lieutenant-Commander Widmark, sir.”
The Commodore was tall, angular and red-bearded, with friendly eyes. “Thank you.” He waved her away. He was a new arrival on the station, and hadn’t in his five days in Cape Town yet met his visitor. He was surprised at what he saw. Somehow he’d not expected him to look like this; he should have been bigger, older, coarser. Not this slight young man of medium height looking at him with dark uncertain eyes.
Somewhere in the Commodore a conditioned reflex registered approval of the blue and white ribbon with its silver rosette, and through long habit one part of his mind signalled to another:
D.S.C.
and
bar.
Good
man.
He held out his hand and smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
As soon as he’d said it he was sorry, because the younger man flushed and looked away, and the Commodore felt his
embarrassment
as if it were his own.
“Sit down, Widmark.” He pushed a silver cigarette box towards him.
Widmark shook his head. “No thank you, sir.” Since he smoked heavily he didn’t really know why he’d refused. Probably to put the Commodore at some sort of disadvantage, but if so it didn’t succeed for that officer lit his cigarette with a flourish. “Sensible chap! Now tell me, Widmark, why’ve you come to see me?”
“About an operation, sir. Something I’ve been working on privately and unofficially with some brother officers.”
“What is it?”
“A proposal to take a German merchantman as prize.”
“There aren’t any at sea, Widmark. Only a few raiders and supply vessels and we’re hunting them hard.”
Widmark leant forward, his hands clasped together on the desk. “This one’s not at sea, sir. She’s in harbour.”
The Commodore leant back in his chair. “I’m not with you, I’m afraid. Which harbour?”
“Lourenço Marques, sir.”
“You don’t mean one of those German merchant ships which’ve been there since the show started?”
Widmark nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“My dear chap, we can’t stage a naval operation in a neutral port. Good heavens! We’d breach half a dozen Geneva Conventions. Lose the privileges of Portugal’s neutrality. Offend our oldest allies. The very thought would give Their Lordships the twitch.” He quickly amended that; one didn’t joke with subordinates about Their Lordships. “I mean the Admiralty just wouldn’t wear it, and quite right too.”
Widmark had expected this. Now he waited, timing his pause, the Commodore watching him, puzzled at his silence. At last he said: “The way we’ve got it planned it won’t do all those things, sir.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, it won’t be a British naval operation. At least not
officially
. It won’t be a naval operation at all. As far as the Portuguese are concerned it will be a German effort. A break out by a German freighter under orders from the German Admiralty to make a run for it. Like the
Uhenfels
’s bolt from Lourenço Marques in October ’39.”
“That was early on. We weren’t properly organised.” The Commodore was on the defensive.
Widmark’s dark eyes never wavered. This was what he’d
wanted. Now he’d press home his point. “Like the
Tannenfels
’s break out from Kismayu last year, sir.”
That registered. The Commodore looked at the ceiling and then out of the window. This young man was being difficult.
“That
was
a bad show. We should’ve got her. She’s one of their most successful raider supply vessels now. In fact she’s a first-class headache.” He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug of disapproval.
“I know, sir. And it can happen again. Naval Intelligence’s latest reports from Lourenço Marques mention rumours that the
Hagenfels
is standing by for a break out.”
The Commodore tapped his teeth with his fingers but Widmark was not to know that this was a sign of irritation. “We’re ready for that. She won’t get far.
If
they’re foolish enough to try.”
“Of course, sir. We’ll intercept, Jerry’ll scuttle, and seven or eight thousand tons of seventeen knot freighter which we badly need will go to the bottom. Under my plan we’ll
get
the
ship.
There won’t be any scuttle. But we’ll get a lot more than that.”
The Commodore sat back. This young man was being tiresome but he’d have to listen to his story. “Right! I’ll buy it. Go ahead!”
Carefully, precisely, pausing for effect at times, Widmark explained “Operation Break Out.” When he’d finished, the Commodore’s smile was somewhere between admiration and annoyance.
“It’s a clever scheme. If nothing went wrong it would be a winner. But in war there are too many imponderables, Widmark. It’s certain that something will go wrong. It always does. And when it did with this one, the fat’d be in the fire. The last thing we want is an infringement of Portuguese neutrality. We’ve got enough problems already. Why manufacture a teaser like this for the sake of one German freighter?”
Widmark realised that the interview was all but over. This
was the usual blank wall of officialdom. He began to withdraw behind a cloak of frustration and disappointment. “It’s much more than that,” but he said it without conviction and the knowledge that he was capitulating made him tired and dispirited. The plan
wouldn’t
go wrong. The detail had been too carefully worked out. It was bound to work. The Chief of Staff was hide-bound. It was this “play the game, you chaps” attitude which could lose the war. The other side didn’t bother about playing the game; technical infringements of somebody or other’s neutrality, Geneva Conventions, didn’t worry them. They did what they could get away with,
ruthlessly
and efficiently. You couldn’t win wars if you insisted on keeping to rules. There were no rules in this one. It was the tooth and claw of the jungle. You killed or were killed. It was as simple as that. The Commodore and those he represented didn’t seem to understand that.
“Is that all, sir?” He had become cold and remote, anxious now to be gone, to end this discussion which was leading nowhere.
The Commodore opened a drawer and shuffled some papers. His head came up and he looked blankly in Widmark’s direction.
“What’s that? H’m, yes. I’ll put it up to C.-in-C. He’s away in Freetown just now. Don’t think it has a hope of his approval, but we’ll try. With luck there’ll be a reply within twenty-four hours.”
Widmark was careful not to show surprise, and he didn’t smile; indeed he rarely did, but the bleak look left his eyes. “Thank you, sir. It’s very good of you.” He meant that.
He got up to go.
“One moment, Widmark. What’s the security like on this? These brother pirates of yours? Will they keep their mouths shut?”
“I can assure you,” said Widmark, cold and withdrawn again because he felt the remark was unnecessary, “that they will, sir.”
“Good. It wouldn’t help us if the Portuguese ever got to know.” He thought for a moment. “Have you discussed this with your boss—Director, S.A. Naval Forces?”
“No, sir. It’s outside his authority. I knew it would need C.-in-C.’s approval. No point in worrying the Director at this stage.”
“I see. One other thing. How many men would be necessary and who would lead the party?”
“Seven, sir. And I would.”
This time the Commodore’s smile was uncomplicated. “Never really had any doubt about that last part, but thought I better ask. C.-in-C. would want to know.”
There wasn’t a reply within twenty-four hours. It came two days later, chilly and unequivocal. The Commander-in-Chief rejected “Operation Break Out” and ordered that any record of the proposal be destroyed and the matter never again discussed. The signal bristled with displeasure, and so did the Commodore who felt that he’d been caught in the line of fire. All this he made clear to Widmark. He was to tell his brother officers, said the Commodore, that if they so much as uttered a whimper about “Operation Break Out” they’d be in trouble.
Widmark left in a misery of disappointment and frustration. As he went through the anteroom the third officer Wren thought she’d try again.
“Lovely day, isn’t it, sir?”
“I think it
stinks
!” he said.
As the door swung to behind him she made a face.
“Love yourself, don’t you?”
Back in his flat in Orangezicht, Widmark slammed doors, threw his uniform cap into the corner, and with rough, exaggerated gestures of annoyance changed into a
dressing-gown
.
His mind clouded by anger, he lay on the studio couch
looking through the open windows to the slopes reaching up to Lion’s Head: to the fresh green of the oaks, the blue-grey of the pines, tall and leaning to the north-west in old protest against the south-easter. Lower down the trees gave way to heath and the brown scars of quarries; below that the fringes of the Malay quarter, yellow ochres, burnt pinks and browns, the houses clustered about steep streets. High above, flanks of basalt rock gleamed in the sunlight, the primordial ramparts of Lion’s Head. Huge agglomerations of cloud, pluvial and forbidding, rolled in across the Cape Flats, their shadows preceding them, dark blankets spreading across the town, up the slopes of Signal Hill and beyond, reaching into the sea, turning its blues to metallic greys.
Widmark’s mind was a dark storm, the wind of frustration fanning seas of rebellion, and that reckless mood he knew so well, always feared but could never control, was taking charge. What right had the C.-in-C., three thousand miles away in Freetown, to scotch this plan so carefully thought out, so meticulously built up over the last two months? When the Commodore said, “I’ll put it up to C.-in-C.,” it seemed as if things were really on the move, that all the hard work was to be rewarded. Unless he’d felt there was something in the plan, that it had a reasonable chance of success, the Commodore would never have said that. So he
had
seen that it had more than a chance of success. Why then had it been turned down? Because it meant taking a chance? Not if it were just a naval chance: the Navy had always taken those. Was it the political chance? It had taken the C.-in-C. forty-eight hours to answer the signal. Why? Because it had been put to Downing Street, to the War Cabinet? The politicians? They’d turned it down! He became certain of that. And why? Because there was just the slightest chance that something might go wrong. That Portuguese neutrality might be infringed. So what! To blazes with Portuguese neutrality. Britain was at war. The whole bloody world was at war. Fighting for what? Not for any high-fangled ideals. Not for the freedom of Poland. Not
for “our way of life,” whatever that meant. Just for plain bloody survival, that was all. And they turned down a
first-class
operation and the offer of an eight thousand ton, seventeen knot freighter handed to them on a plate and more than that.
Much
more
!
The opportunity of hitting the Hun where he thought he was safe. Giving his morale the kick in the backside it so badly needed. That was the real thing. The main object of the exercise. If his ships weren’t safe in Lourenço Marques, then they weren’t safe in Rio, or Montevideo or Buenos Aires or in a dozen other neutral ports. So they’d have to make a run for it. Some might get through the blockade, but most wouldn’t. Even politicians ought to be able to see that.
Slowly Widmark’s thoughts changed and he got up and stood at the window looking out towards Robben Island. The clouds were building up, seven tenths now, and most of the sea was dark and forbidding. But it drew him. It was the element on which the best and worst moments of his life had been spent, and there was not a day on which he didn’t long for a ship again. But they’d put him on the staff. It was their idea of humour. We can’t prove anything against Widmark but we’ve got to teach him a lesson. He’s got to learn to play the game according to the rules. So what’ll we do with him? We’ll put him on the staff. In the Combined Operations Room at Cape Town. That’s pretty far from the struggle.
Let him sweat it out there, and when he sees signals coming in from ships that have been torpedoed, from hunting and escort groups that are groping for their attackers, and from cruisers that are playing hide-and-seek with surface raiders, it’ll remind him that he’s not there, and he’ll have to make do with watching pretty girls in uniform push coloured pins into a plot. That’s as near to the fight as he’ll get.