Wreckers Must Breathe (23 page)

I picked up three grenades and followed him. I had dropped my rifle, but my revolver was still hanging round my neck by its lanyard. As we raced along the dock several men came running down the gallery. Two went past in the direction of No. 5 dock. But three more paused and came running to meet us. Fortunately they were ratings and therefore not armed. I fired, and though I had not aimed at any of them, they broke and ran. I was not accustomed to a revolver and I found the kick unexpectedly powerful.

Men had by now appeared in the entrance to the store-room. But they, too, were unarmed and drew back into the tunnel. We had almost reached the end of the dock now and I had drawn level with my miner. And at that moment I saw that one of the guards from No. 3 dock had appeared. But he held his rifle uncertainly, put out by our uniforms. ‘Get back!' I yelled in German. ‘Guard your own dock. It's mutiny.'

He did as I had ordered. But when we came to the gallery itself we found that he and two other guards were now standing across the gallery leading to No. 3 dock with their rifles at the ready. ‘Okay,' I said to my companions. ‘Out with the pins and let 'em have it.' I left him to look after the three guards whilst I took the gallery between our own and No. 5 dock. I could see men coming from other docks and out of the store-rooms farther along the gallery. I think we both tossed our grenades into the gallery at about the same time, for we were both running together with bullets singing past our ears and shrieking as they ricochetted off the walls.

Then came a terrific roar. And then another. The ground shook under our feet and a blast of hot air sent us both sprawling. My face hit the rocky surface of the dockside only half-protected by my upflung arm and I felt the blood warm in my nose. There was a horrible splitting noise as the rock began to crack. We clambered to our feet and staggered forward. And at the same moment there was a splitting and a rumbling behind us. I turned to see the whole roof of the gallery between our dock and No. 3 collapse. One moment I could see the white uniforms of the guards as they turned to run, and the next instant there was just a tumbled heap of rocks half-invisible in a cloud of dust.

My companion stumbled to his feet. There was a nasty cut across his left eye. The dust was beginning to clear now and I could see that the gallery leading to No. 3 dock was completely blocked. But I could not see what had happened to the right, between our own dock and No. 5, except that a whole lot of debris had spilled on to the floor of the gallery where it passed the end of our dock.

I ran back down the dock, a hand-grenade ready in my hand. The force of the explosion had broken most of the electric-light bulbs. But in the half-dark I was just able to see the white uniform of an officer, as he appeared up the tunnel from the store-room. The beam of a torch almost blinded me. ‘What's happened?' he asked, mistaking me for one of the base guards. Then I suppose he saw the grenade in my hand, for he said: ‘What are you up to?'

I had no alternative. I pulled the pin out, threw it into the tunnel in which he stood and ducked sideways. The bullet from his revolver sang past my head. A second later there was a flash and a great rumbling explosion. By one of those freak chances his torch remained alight and as it fell, it showed up for an instant the tunnel. The whole roof seemed to crumble. For an instant it actually hung suspended with small pieces of rock pouring from it. Then it came rumbling down and the whole scene went black.

I pulled the emergency torch that the guards always carried from my pocket and switched it on. The place was an absolute ruin. The whole of the end of the dock was just a pile of split and broken rock. Most of it was limestone, and it was then that I consciously realized why I had wanted the grenades. I had the limestone and there on the dock, behind me, was the oil storage tank and the smaller petrol tank. There was no chance of any one attacking us from this end for some time. I knew we had nothing to fear from the direction of No. 3 dock. Probably in all there were not more than twenty or thirty men working on docks 1, 2 and 3, including those in the munitions and fuel stores. They were trapped there, and the only means they had of rejoining the main body of the base was by swimming across the open ends of the docks. The danger would come from the direction of No. 5 dock. If only I had been able to block the ramp leading from the upper galleries! But I hadn't, and the whole personnel of the base would now be streaming into docks 5, 6 and 7. I listened. Between the intermittent sound of crumbling rock I could hear shouts and the murmur of voices coming from the open end of the dock. I clambered over the debris of rock and examined the fall between our own and No. 5 dock in the light of my torch. Where the gallery had been was solid rock from floor to ceiling. I reckoned that it would take them several hours to clear it sufficiently to attack us from this side, even using mobile drills to break down the large pieces of rock.

Having satisfied myself that we could not be taken in the rear, I scrambled back over the debris and rejoined the big miner. In an endeavour to wipe the blood from his eyes he had smeared his whole face with it. ‘Come on!' I said. ‘We've got to move the machine-gun up to the stern of the submarine.' My orders were entirely automatic. I had been over the whole thing so many times in my own mind that I knew exactly what to do. But I had lost all sense of reality. I had involuntarily slipped into the war mentality. When I had thrown the grenade at the stores officer he had been just a target, not a human being. It was the first time I had killed a man.

We ran back to the gangway and rejoined Davies and the other miner. They were both standing by the gun. Davies I told to remain with the gun. Briefly I explained the necessity of its being fired before we were overwhelmed. Then I and the big miner, whose name was Kevan, picked up the light machine-gun and carried it aft. The third miner, Trevors, followed with the magazines, a rifle and several grenades.

We rigged the gun up in the stern of the U-boat and stacked round it several cases of canned goods to act as a barricade. Then Trevors, who had been a machine-gunner in the last war, got down and fired a burst to make certain that the gun was in working order. It was. The clatter of it seemed to fill the cave. What is more, he hit his mark, which had been the top of the haulage gear buoy floating in the main cave. The bullets made a hollow sound as they struck the huge round cylinder and then ricochetted off to finish with a dull thwack against the sides of the cave.

As soon as I was certain that he could handle the gun satisfactorily, I took Kevan and ran back along the submarine to the conning tower. My aim was to get sufficient arms to ensure that we should be able to hold the end of the dock long enough for me to carry out my plan. It was the only chance—flimsy though it was—of our re-establishing contact with Logan and Maureen and of getting out of the base. There was no chance now of slipping out on the high tide and attempting to run the submarine through the undersea exit on her engines. As soon as we were out in the main cave we should be under the fire of the other submarines in the base and, before we had a chance to submerge, we should be sunk. True, that would probably achieve our object of blocking the undersea exit. But the plan I had in mind would achieve that and at the same time give us all a chance of escape.

Altogether we made four trips to the magazine of the submar-ine. The first thing we brought up was another light machine-gun, four magazines and some more hand-grenades. These we carried aft. Before going back for further arms, I made Trevors experiment with the changing of the magazines. It didn't take him long to find out how they worked and after seeing him fire a test burst from this gun, we returned to the submarine. Thereafter we brought up another light machine-gun, which we placed beside Davies at his post by the gun, four automatic rifles together with the necessary magazines and a further supply of grenades.

As we came up with the last load the soft chug-chug of the little diesel-engined tug could be heard. We raced aft, and at the same moment Trevors opened fire with his machine-gun. We had covered about half the distance when I saw a small dark object hurtle through the air. It dropped into the water just abaft the stern of U 21, and almost immediately a big column of water was thrown up and was followed by a muffled roar.

We flung ourselves down behind the packing cases and Kevan took over the spare machine-gun. I picked up an automatic rifle. The deck was very wet and Trevors was soaked. It was clear what they had tried to do. If they could cause a heavy fall of rock at the entrance to the dock they could trap us completely. Their difficulty was that they could not hit the entrance to the dock without exposing themselves to our fire. Nevertheless, the underwater explosion of the grenade they had thrown had apparently damaged the flood gates of the dock, for I could hear the water gurgling below us as it entered the dock. As far as I could tell the tide was about an hour beyond the high.

The engine of the tug sounded very close now. The boat was in fact just off the entrance to No. 5 dock and was only protected by the buttress of rock that separated the two docks. The tug's engines seemed suddenly to rev up. Trevors reached for a grenade. He had the pin out the instant the boat's nose showed beyond the buttress. I knelt on one knee and raised my automatic rifle, sighting it over the top of our protecting pile of packing cases. The boat, with its propeller threshing the water into a foam at its stern, seemed to shoot out from the cover of the buttress.

I sighted my rifle and pulled the trigger. It was like holding a pneumatic drill to one's shoulder as it pumped out a steady stream of bullets. I heard the clatter of Kevan's machine-gun at my side and sensed rather than saw Trevor's arm swing as he threw the grenade. The man at the wheel of the boat collapsed under our fire and another in the bows stopped dead in the act of throwing a grenade and crumpled up in the bottom of the boat. Almost immediately there was a terrific explosion and the boat seemed to split in half. It sank instantly, leaving a mass of wreckage, oil and three dead bodies floating on the surface of the water.

It was not a pleasant sight. Kevan said: ‘Good for you, Steve.' But Trevors shook his head. ‘Mine fell short,' he said. ‘It was one of you two shooting that fellow in the bows that done it. He had the pin out when you hit him and the grenade exploded right in the bottom of the boat.'

At that moment we came under machine-gun fire from dock No. 7. But the shooting was wild, the reason being that the last explosion had put the remaining lights in our dock out. Shortly afterwards, however, they rigged up a searchlight. We then moved farther back into the dock. It was the only thing to do. They might risk casualties, but we daren't. We built a second barricade of packing cases, this time in a complete semi-circle across the deck, for we were being worried by the ricochet of bullets from the side of the cave. The trouble was that because the seven docks branched off fan-shape from the main cave, it was possible for the Germans operating from No. 7 to cover the mouth of our own dock.

I called up Davies to the shelter of our new barricade and we held a council of war. Then I explained my plan. ‘It may work or it may not,' I said. ‘We'll just have to risk it. Unless any of you have any other ideas?' But none of them had. We were trapped and it was only a matter of time before we would be overwhelmed. We were four against at least six hundred, and if we surrendered we should be shot. ‘We can't hold this dock a minute if they float a submarine out before the tide falls,' I said. ‘One shot from a six-inch gun at the mouth of this dock will trap us if it doesn't kill us. If they miss the tide, however, we may be able to hold out for as long as ten hours.'

‘Whatever happens,' I went on, ‘we've got to block the entrance to this base.' I then told them of the plan to attack a squadron of British capital ships which it was known would be for a time insufficiently screened by destroyers. I said: ‘I suggest we proceed straight away with the demolition of the underwater entrance.'

To this they agreed. Even if they missed the tide I was afraid that under cover of fire from No. 7 dock they might try to block the entrance of our dock with grenades thrown from the collapsible rubber boats that the U-boats carried. I explained this and Trevors volunteered to go aft again and extinguish the light of the searchlight with machine-gun fire. But I said: ‘Wait until we've fired this gun.'

I LEFT DAVIES
to operate the gun and climbed up to the bridge of U 21. I switched on the U-boat's searchlight and swung it round, so that its brilliant beam was shining straight aft and illuminating the whole of the main cave. Towards the seaward end the roof sloped down until it disappeared below the level of the water, which showed black and oily in the bright light.

‘Is it sighted correctly?' I asked.

‘All correct,' replied Davies.

I braced myself against the rail of the bridge. ‘Fire!' I said.

I saw Davies pull the trigger lanyard. Instantly there was a terrific explosion. I was practically thrown off my feet and I heard the hull plates of the U-boat grate most horribly on the rock of the empty dock. Almost simultaneously there was a blinding flash in the roof of the main cave, just where it disappeared below the water, and an explosion that seemed, in that confined space, to numb my whole body. A great wind of hot air struck my face and, in the light of the searchlight, I saw the whole far end of the cave collapse in a deep rumbling roar.

As a sight it was terrific. I had not fully realized the explosive power of a six-inch shell. The dock in which the U 21 lay was at least a hundred and fifty yards from the spot where the shell struck. Yet I could feel the whole of the rock round me tremble and vibrate, and quite large pieces of rock fell from the roof of our dock, making a hollow sound as they struck the submarine's deck. At least thirty yards of the main cave had collapsed. Huge masses of rock fell into the water, and as they fell a great wave rose in the basin. I yelled out to the others to hold tight. I don't think they heard, but they saw it coming—a great wall of water that surged down the main cave and swept up into the dock. It must have been a good ten feet high, for it swept into the empty dock almost at deck height. The submarine reared up on it like a horse as it suddenly floated. I had fallen flat on the bridge of the conning tower, and as the submarine lifted, I heard the rail strike the roof just above my head and the searchlight went out. Then the bows jarred violently against the end of the dock.