“Oh, hell, yes,” Cole said. “The war effort. I guess I don’t have much of a choice in this, sir?”
Edland shook his head.
“In that case,” he said, “I’m in. Three boats.”
Edland nodded his acceptance.
“We’ve got to catch them coming back in,” Cole said. “Just before dawn. That means that we’ll need to lie along the coast.”
“Off Cap de la Hague,” Edland said. “There’s a cove just east of Auderville. High cliffs, no beach.”
“I wasn’t figuring on putting myself in their laps. I’d like a little more room to maneuver. Besides, I don’t know the coast that well.”
“I do,” Edland said.
Cole smiled in remembrance, but there was no warmth to it. “Yeah. Right,” he said. “Summers in France, wasn’t it, sir? Your dad’s place?”
“Grandfather’s. I used to play along those cliffs. You can’t see the cove unless you’re right on the edge. It’s a straight drop. Enough water for a PT boat. Or three if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I’ll need. They usually come out in twos or threes but we may get lucky enough to nab a tail-end Charlie. When?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Day after tomorrow,” Cole said. “I’ve got to get my boats serviced. I want to make sure that they’re in tip-top shape before I get that close to the Krauts. I’ll shove off at nineteen hundred. That okay with you, sir?” He didn’t leave time for an argument.
Edland said: “I’m coming along.”
“Oh, now wait a minute,” Cole said.
“I’ll be on board your boat, Cole, and that’s an order. Besides,” Edland said, “just think how much fun you’ll have ordering me around. That’s how it works, isn’t it? On board his own vessel the captain is supreme?”
“Look, I gave you what you wanted. We go out, get your boat, if we don’t get our asses shot off, and that’s that. Nobody said anything about supercargo on this little trip, and I sure as hell don’t want somebody along who’s going to be second-guessing everything I do. This isn’t a pleasure cruise, Commander.”
“I’m going. You can lead the mission or you can stay here and your exec can lead the mission, but I’m going. I know the coast and the E-boats. I’m going. You’re the captain. Once we get under way, I’ll follow your orders.”
Cole considered the situation. He didn’t have much of a choice. If Edland could requisition boats for a mission, then he had the clout to tag along. You can’t fight city hall, Cole had told his crews when they complained about having to carry out ridiculous orders. Gripe all you want to, but do as you’re ordered. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll take the boats out and you’re going. But, you’ll have to do exactly what I say, when I tell you. If you do anything that puts my boats and my men in jeopardy you and I will have a reckoning.”
“You know that you just threatened a superior officer, don’t you, Cole?”
“Sure do,” Cole said. “I hoped you noticed it as well.”
Chapter 7
Commander Dickie Moore sat quietly behind Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey and made detailed notes on the rather drawn-out meeting. Minutes of what was said, and by whom, and what was decided would be supplied, along with mountains of supporting documentation, through the traditional administrative mechanism. But Moore, even before being tasked by Ramsay, made notes of those subjects that concerned the actions required by the Royal Navy. “A condensed account, if you will, sir,” Moore said dryly, handing Sir Bertram his version of what had transpired in an earlier meeting.
Now, in the well of a former classroom surrounded by narrow benches rising in tiers, with a gallery supported by thick, black columns, packed with officers of all ranks, the discussion turned to the Channel. La Manche, Dickie recalled, “the sleeve” the French called it, a long narrow body of water that kept the Germans from invading England, had kept the French from invading England, and might, and everyone was most concerned with this point, might keep the Allies from invading France.
Narrowest at the Straits of Dover, it offered endless possibilities for defense and disaster, victory and catastrophe, or the continuation of the war for many more years if Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was as stout as most believed.
But the land wasn’t Dickie’s concern, or the Royal Navy’s purview except as it was to be observed from the water. It was the sea that held Dickie’s interest, although most sailors would snort derisively at the notion that this tiny strip of water had any sealike qualities. It fact, it had its own standards: wild currents, crosswinds, shoals and deeps, and the violent reputation enjoyed by shallow water when in the grips of a nor’easter. Add to this, on either side of it were hundreds of thousands of men poised to kill one another.
Dickie watched Admiral McNamar enter the well, surrounded by a bevy of staff officers, toting easels and maps, preparing to address the assembled multitude. He had stopped briefly to chat with Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, First Sea Lord, sitting just to the right of Churchill. Dickie liked McNamar. Like most Americans he was outgoing and good-natured but capable of getting “down to business” as an American staff officer informed Dickie. “Down to business,” Dickie had mused in delight after they had parted. “What a wonderful expression.”
McNamar’s booming voice, amplified by the microphone situated in the center of the well, broke into Dickie’s thoughts. The Royal Navy officer wrote quickly, his Waterford pen fairly dancing across the notebook in shorthand of his own creation, nearly indecipherable to anyone who attempted to read it.
More talk about the invasion fleet, and routes, and the need for ships, all ships but especially the LSTs — Landing Ship Tanks — a British idea but an American creation pounded out of steel throughout the inland ports of the United States. There were barely enough of those odd, boxlike, flat-bottomed craft that looked more like floating warehouses than ships. But they held promise for the invasion; loaded to the gunnels they could snub their high squat bows onto the French beaches, open their huge clamshell doors like great beasts come to feed, and spew out tanks, jeeps, trucks, men, cannon, and the thousands of tons of supplies necessary for the armies who would need to have replaced that which lay immobile beneath the guns of the German defenders. Logistics, young staff officers insisted, really wins wars. And England has become a giant commissariat of all that was required for victory.
But from here to there was water — the English Channel — and what Dickie knew as his pen glided across the page was that the invasion involved a vast, complex choreography of big ships, lesser ships, boats, and landing craft. It also involved schedules more intricate than those that ensured that trains arrive and depart in all of the terminals in all of the United Kingdom. Two thousand or more ships, each assigned a position that must be maintained at a certain place at a certain time, moving in several fleets in carefully plotted lanes that must be cleared of enemy mines, to arrive at designated points at the specified moment. An extraordinary ballet of destruction performed across a narrow stage. Any disruption of that complex array as it steamed slowly toward its objective would hamper the invasion — perhaps cripple it so that the invasion of France would be the greatest debacle of the war.
Dickie had, until the moment that he heard McNamar mention the problem, concentrated on capturing what was being said, his eyes following the jerky motions of the pen nib across the paper. That was until McNamar mentioned the problem.
“The problem is E-boats,” McNamar said. “Flotillas at Le Havre, Brest, Guernsey, and Cherbourg. A total of perhaps sixty boats distributed among those points, safely hidden from conventional bombing, in E-boat pens.” Except for the Channel Islands of course, no pens needed there. It was a delicate situation; the Channel Islands were British territory occupied by the Germans. The occupation forces were, on orders from Hitler, who still held the insane notion that Britain and Germany might come to terms, on their best behavior. Because of the real possibility that British bombs might kill British subjects, the islands, situated closer to France than to Britain, were off-limits to attack.