Free Back to Battle by Max Hennessy Page A

moving slowly right!’
    ‘Starboard twenty!’
    As the speed dropped, the Asdic’s note came more clearly. Ping-ping-ping-pong.
    ‘Good God, we’re almost on top of him!’ Kelly snapped. ‘Full ahead both. Depth charge crews stand by – fire pattern. All guns prepare to engage to starboard.’
    ‘Target drawing away right.’
    As the amatol-packed canisters exploded, the sea was split apart with an effervescent roar. Hundreds of tons of foam-white water rose slowly, hung motionless against the sky, then dematerialised into spray to fall back to the surface in a scum of dirty froth. As it settled, the Asdic operator called out.
    ‘Lost contact, sir!’
    Even as his voice died, however, the yeoman of signals came in again. ‘Wrestler’s signalling, sir. “In contact.’’’
    ‘Good for Wrestler!’
    The excitement was intense, everybody holding his breath. Wrestler was coming round like an express train now, the waves lifting over her bridge in a vast cloud of spray, and they saw the depth charges arc outwards from her stern and drop into her wake. A few moments later, the sea domed, lifted in a colossal mushroom and disintegrated in spray drifting over the foamy circle where the explosive had disturbed it.
    ‘Contact, sir! Moving left!’
    Somewhere below them, the submarine was trying to squirm to safety, and, weaving in at right angles to complete the lethal pattern, Feudal dropped her own charges, and they saw the sea erupt once more.
    ‘Contact lost, sir.’
    But Wrestler was hurtling past at full speed, bunting fluttering at the yardarm.
    ‘Wrestler still in contact, sir.’
    As Feudal swung, Wrestler lay over on her beam ends and they saw the depth charges go again.
    ‘U-boat surfacing, sir! – port bow!’ The yell came from the bridge look-out, wild and excited, and as the sea settled, from the blur of spray a black shape like a pointing hand rose at a steep angle to the surface, exposing sixty feet of the U-boat’s bows, with the jumping wire and the dark holes of the torpedo tubes and a belly streaked with rust and weed. All round it the sea boiled with the escaping air.
    Immediately, X-gun fired and the first shot struck at water level as the lifting steel tube steadied. Then the pom-pom crew got going and, enveloped in smoke and spray, the great helpless metal whale lurched, lifted higher, paused, as though suspended from the sky, then began to slide slowly back. As it went, there was a heavy underwater explosion and it vanished in a swirling whirlpool of water.
    This time, as the sea resumed its place, they saw it was black with oil and in it things were floating – bits of wood, clothing, a life jacket. Wrestler stopped, her bow dipping as her speed dropped, and lay surrounded by wreckage, her crew crowding the rails busy with buckets and grappling hooks.
    ‘Wrestler reports a body, sir. They have it on board.’
    As they surged past on the side away from the debris, the two ships looked like wooden horses on a fairground roundabout, moving up and down, one against the other, as they lifted to the waves, two old grey horses with sides that were streaked with rust and caked with salt. Men on both ships were cheering each other and waving congratulations and Latimer was on the bridge of Wrestler as they went past, yelling into the loudhailer.
    ‘We now have two bodies!’
    As they drew ahead, Kelly waved. ‘Make “Well done,”’ he said to the yeoman of signals. Though the submarine would be credited to the group, it was undoubtedly Wrestler’s victory.
    The lamp clattered and it was without surprise that Kelly heard the yeoman sing out.
    ‘Wrestler replying. “I have done service to the state. Othello.”’ Trust Latimer to come up with something clever, Kelly thought. ‘Make “Resume station and confine signals to facts.”’
    That ought to shut him up, he thought with a grim smile.
    There was no point in squashing enthusiasm but, given a chance, Latimer would be sending