Atlantic Fury (4 page)

The clearest impression of Braddock's impact on the operation is contained in the deposition made by Lieutenant Field, the Education Officer. This deposition, made at the Board of Inquiry, could have had considerable influence on the subsequent Court Martial. Not only was Field much older than the other officers, but his background and experience gave weight to his judgment. The first two paragraphs are the vital ones and I give them in full:

Major Braddock arrived at Joint Services Guided Weapons Establishment, Northton, on October 13. I think it is right to say that his appointment came as a shock to most of the officers, not least to Colonel Standing who had only been informed of it on the phone that morning. I say ‘shock' because that is how it seemed to officers accustomed to something in the nature of a winter hibernation in the Hebrides. Major Braddock was a driver. He had a very forceful personality. He was also a man of great nervous energy, great vitality. Whatever your findings, I would like to make it clear that I regard him as exactly the sort of man the operation needed at that time
.

I have some knowledge of the leadership necessary in an operation that is at the mercy of the elements, and from my own observations, and from what I heard from Captain Ferguson, who was a friend of my daughter's and often visited our croft of an evening, I may say that I already had certain very definite misgivings. Not until Major Braddock's arrival was there that thrust and pressuring of officers and men, that sense of being engaged with an enemy, that is the essential prelude to exceptional human endeavour. He made them feel they were involved in a battle. Most of the youngsters got a kick out of it; the older ones, particularly some of the officers, resented it. Later, of course, they did all that any men could do in circumstances that became virtually impossible
.

Before he left for London, Matthieson had had the foresight to arrange with RASC (Water Transport) for both LCTs to re-fuel, cancel all leave and stand by to sail at short notice. As a result, the position on Braddock's arrival was not unsatisfactory. One landing craft had completed its first trip and was on its way back to Laerg again; the other was just entering Leverburgh, a bare two hours behind schedule. And the weather was fine, cold and clear with a light northerly wind.

But as Field pointed out, the fine weather could not be expected to last indefinitely, nor could the men. The strains were already beginning to show; at Leverburgh where the quay was inadequate, on Laerg where the bolts securing huts and equipment were rusted solid and the men, after only two days, were tiring, moving in a sleepless daze from dismantling to loading and back to dismantling again. And whilst Braddock threw himself into the work of ensuring a faster rate of turn-round for the landing craft, Ed Lane flew into London and began checking for relatives of Albert George Piper, one-time Master-at-Arms on the
Duart Castle
.

Piper's name was the first on his list. The second was my brother's.

CHAPTER TWO

MY BROTHER, IAIN

(October 15)

It was two days later, just after ten on the morning of October 15, that my phone rang and a man's voice, rather soft, said, ‘Mr Ross? My name's Ed Lane. Are you by any chance related to a Sergeant Iain Alasdair Ross reported lost when the
Duart Castle
was torpedoed in February, 1944?'

‘He was my brother.'

‘He was?' The voice had a vaguely American accent. ‘Well, that's fine. Didn't expect to strike it that fast – you're only the fifth Ross I've telephoned. I'll be with you inside of an hour. Okay?' And he'd rung off, leaving me wondering what in the world it was all about.

I was working on another book jacket for Alec Robinson, but after that phone call I found it impossible to go back to it. I went into the little kitchenette and brewed myself some coffee. And after that I stood drinking it at the window, looking out across the rooftops, an endless vista of chimney pots and TV aerials with a distant glimpse of Tower Bridge. I was thinking of my brother, of how I'd loved him and hated him, of how there had been nobody else in my life who had made up for the loss I'd felt at his going. And yet at the time I'd been almost glad. It had seemed better that he should die like that – in the sea, a casualty of war.

I turned away from the grubby window, glanced at the jacket design lying on the table amongst a litter of paints and brushes, and then fell to pacing my studio, wondering what this fellow Lane wanted digging up the past that was dead these twenty years and more. Surely to God they weren't going to rake over the whole wretched business again. I could still remember the shock when the Military Police had come to interview me at the factory. Did I realise he'd deserted? Slinging questions at me until they'd discovered my father was dead and my mother alone and ill at Ardnamurchan. ‘We'll pick him up there then.' And my bursting into tears and shouting at them that whatever my brother had done it was justified and why the hell did they pick on him and not the officer. And that M.P. sergeant with the big ears and the broken nose – I could have drawn his face even now – snapping back at me in a, grating Glaswegian voice, ‘The officer was unconscious, laddie, with machine-gun bullets spraying him as he lay on the ground with a broken jaw. Aye and damn near twenty men dead who needn't have died. Justified? Christ, it was plain bluidy murrder.'

The jacket design stared at me, the lettering of the book title already pencilled in –
THE PEACE THAT FOLLOWED
. I had read it, thought it good, but now I dropped a rag over it, remembering the wartime passages, the sense of futility the writer had invoked. Sounds from the street drifted up to me, the bustle of London's East End. My studio was just an attic over a butcher's shop. It was all I could afford. Bed, table and easel took up most of the space, and the canvases stacked against the wall, all the work I'd done on Milos – there was hardly room to move. A cupboard in the corner held my clothes and above it was piled the camping equipment I'd bought from the proceeds of the only two pictures I'd sold –
Milos at Dawn Seen from a Caique
and
Greek Galley Under Water
. That was when I planned to paint on Laerg, before I'd been refused permission to go there.

I crossed to the window, thinking back over my life, back to the carefree days on Ardnamurchan and Iain in the glory of his youth fighting imaginary battles among the rocks below our croft, always in defence of Laerg with myself cast in the role of invader – a Viking, a pirate, a marauding trawlerman, anything that had recently captured his fancy. And in the evenings, sitting by the peat fire listening to the old man talking in that thick burr – tales of the Lovers' Stone, of cliff-crawling in search of puffins, of boat journeys to Fladday for the gannets which he called solan geese; wild tales of gales and ships being wrecked.

So long ago and yet so vivid, and Iain tall and handsome with his dark face, and his black hair blowing in the wind; a wild boy with a streak of melancholy and a temper that flared at a word. He could have done something with his life. I pushed up the window, leaning out to feel the warmth of the sun, thinking of my own life, stuck here in this dirty back street doing hack work for a living. I should be painting on Laerg, getting the lost world of my grandfather down on canvas. That would be something, a justification. Eleven years at sea, followed by the years learning to paint, and it all added up to this miserable little room and a few pounds in the bank.

A taxi drew up in the street below and a man got out. All I could see of him was his wide-brimmed hat and the pale sheen of his coat as he paid the driver. It crossed my mind that it was a good angle from which to paint a picture of a London street – but in the same instant I knew I wouldn't do it; nobody would buy it. He disappeared from sight and a few moments later I heard his footsteps labouring up the bare stairboards. I opened the door and ushered him in, a tubby, round-looking man with small eyes in a smooth face. His clothes were a businessman's clothes, but not English. The small eyes took in the cluttered studio, scanning the walls as though in search of something. ‘I guess you're an artist, Mr Ross. That right?'

‘I kid myself sometimes.'

But there was no answering smile. The small eyes stared at me, cold and humourless. ‘You got a picture of your brother?'

‘Just why are you here?' I asked him.

He took his hat off then and sat down on the bed, a little out of breath. ‘It's a long story.' Brown-stained fingers fumbled for his cigarettes. ‘Smoke?' I shook my head. He flipped one out of the pack and lit it. ‘It's about the
Duart Castle
. As I told you over the phone, my name's Lane, Ed Lane. I come from Vancouver. I'm over here on business – oil and gas; my company runs pipelines. I mention that just to show you I'm a man of some standing. The reason I've come to see you is a private one. I'm investigating something that concerns my wife's family. A matter of a Will. There's a lot of money involved.' He paused for breath, reached into the pocket of his light-coloured raincoat. ‘I've got some photographs here.' He had come up with an envelope. But instead of producing the pictures, he sat dragging at his cigarette and staring round the room. ‘An artist,' he breathed as though he'd just thought of something. ‘Do you do portraits?'

‘No.'

He frowned. ‘You mean you can't draw heads, faces, people's features?'

‘I don't paint portraits, that's all.'

He looked at the table then, twisting his head round and reaching for the rag I'd dropped over the jacket design. Behind the lettering I had already painted in the first of a series of heads representing humanity in fear. ‘There you are. That's the sort of thing.' The little button eyes stared at me as though I'd purposely misled him. ‘You remember your brother, do you? You haven't forgotten what he looked like?'

‘Of course not. But I don't see …'

‘You could draw me a portrait of him, couldn't you?'

‘I could.'

I think he saw I was getting annoyed, for he smiled and said, ‘Sure. You want to know what it's all about first.'

‘You mentioned some pictures,' I said.

He nodded. ‘Later,' he said. ‘Later. First, there are the press-cuttings.' He pulled some clippings from the envelope, selected one and handed it to me. ‘You saw that at the time, I expect.'

It was from the
Daily Telegraph
, dated 24th February, 1944, the news of the sinking of the
Duart Castle
and the arrival at Donegal, Northern Ireland, of two boatloads of survivors, together with the list of their names, thirty-five in all. Pinned to it was a cutting dated 2nd March giving the official account of the torpedoing and the names of those who were missing, presumed dead. Iain Alasdair Ross. There it was to bring back to me after all these years the sense of loss I'd felt at the time, the feeling of being alone in the world, all my family dead. ‘I read it in
The Scotsman
,' I said and passed it back to him.

‘Sure. It was in most of the papers.' He was riffling through the bunch of cuttings. ‘That all you read about the
Duart Castle
?'

‘That's all there was, as far as I know. Papers were small and a lot of ships were being sunk. They'd plenty of other news …'

‘Then you didn't see this?' He handed me another clipping. ‘It's from a Stornoway paper of March 14.'

‘Stornoway's in the Outer Hebrides,' I pointed out. ‘I'd hardly be likely to see a copy of that.'

‘Sure, it's way up north and this is a local story. No other paper seems to have printed it. You read it. Then I'll tell you why I'm interested in your brother.'

The cutting was headed: ‘
ORDEAL BY RAFT
– Terrible Story of Lone Survivor: On Tuesday evening Colin McTavish, seventy-two-year-old lobster fisherman of Tobson on Great Bernera, whilst rowing out in his boat to visit his pots, came upon a Carley float lodged amongst the rocks of Geodha Cool. The figures of two men lay on the raft, both apparently lifeless. The raft belonged to the
Duart Castle
, sunk by torpedoes some five hundred miles out in the North Atlantic on February 18th. They had, therefore, been adrift on the raft for twenty-two days. Colin McTavish took the bodies into his boat and rowed back to Tobson. There it was discovered that despite the long time at sea, one of the men was still alive. His name is George Henry Braddock, 2nd-Lieutenant Royal Artillery, aged twenty. The terrible story of his ordeal cannot be told yet for a Merciful God has wiped it from his mind. He has been transferred to the hospital at Stornoway suffering from exposure and loss of memory. But we all know what he must have suffered out there in the open sea exposed to bitter cold and severe storms with no protection but the tattered remnants of a sail and his only companion dying before his eyes. The dead man is Pte. André Leroux, a French-Canadian from Montreal. He has been buried at the old cemetery above the bay at Bosta. Colin McTavish's rescue of 2nd-Lieutenant Braddock brings the total of survivors of the
Duart Castle
to thirty-six and this doubtless writes
finis
to the tragic story of a ship that was transporting Canadian reinforcements to aid the fight for freedom.'

‘I didn't know about it,' I said. ‘But I don't see what that's got to do with my brother – or with me.'

‘Your brother was on that raft when the ship sank.'

‘Well, he's dead,' I said. ‘What difference does it make?'

He didn't say anything; simply handed me one of the photographs from the envelope. It showed a man in a light suit walking along a street – tall, black-haired, with a dark moustache and what looked like a scar running down the centre of his forehead. It wasn't a very clear picture, just a snapshot taken in very bright sunlight. He passed me another. The same man getting out of a car. ‘And here's one taken with a telephoto lens.' Head and shoulders this time, the face heavily shadowed by sunlight. ‘You don't recognise him?' He was watching me closely.