‘Ask him whether it’s a Mayday call.’
‘No, sir. Definitely not Mayday. And he was calling us.’
Stratton knew better than to disturb his radio operator in the middle of receiving a message. We waited whilst the ship pounded and lurched and the outline of Laerg took clearer and more definite shape on the radar screen.
At last the operator came in. ‘Special weather report for you.’ He steadied himself and then placed a pencilled message on the chart table. It was from Cliff Morgan. The message read: GM3CMX to L8610. Advise weather conditions may deteriorate during night. Trawlers SE of Iceland report wind easterly now, force 9. At 0530 it was westerly their area. Suspect local disturbance. If interpretation correct could reach your area early hours tomorrow morning. This communication is unofficial. Good luck, Morgan. And God help you he might have added. A local disturbance on top of this lot…. Stratton was staring down at the message, cracking the knuckles of his right hand. ‘How the hell can he have contacted trawlers southeast of Iceland?’
‘Morgan’s a “ham” operator,’ Sparks said.
‘Oh yes, of course. You’ve mentioned him before.’ He straightened up. ‘Get on to Coastal Command. Check it with them.’ He had to shout to make himself heard above the thunder of a breaking sea. The ship lurched, sprawling us against the chart table. There was a noise like a load of bricks coming aboard and then the roar of a cataract as water poured into the tank deck. ‘A local disturbance. What the hell does he think this is?’ Stratton glanced at his watch and then at the radar. The nearest point of Laerg was just touching the 10-mile circle. ‘Two hours to go.’ And after that he didn’t say anything.
Cliff Morgan’s latest contact with the trawlers had been made at 15.37 hours. He took the information straight to Colonel Standing with the suggestion that L8610 be ordered to return to the shelter of the Hebrides until the weather pattern became clearer. This Standing refused to do. He had a landing craft in difficulties and an injured man to consider. Two factors were uppermost in his mind. The Navy tug, now in The Minch and headed for the Sound of Harris, had been forced to reduce speed. A message on his desk stated that it would be another twenty-four hours at least before she reached Laerg. The other factor was the position of our own ship L8610. We were in H/ F radio contact with the Movements Office at Base at two-hourly intervals and the 3 o’clock report had given our position as just over 20 miles from Laerg.
Cliff says he tried to get Standing to pass on the information. ‘I warned the bloody man,’ was the way he put it later. ‘I warned him that if he didn’t pass it on he’d be responsible if anything happened.’ But Standing was undoubtedly feeling the weight of his responsibility for what had already happened. His attitude, rightly or wrongly, was that unofficial contacts such as this would only confuse Stratton. In fact, he was probably quite determined to do nothing to discourage L8610 from reaching Laerg. ‘I told him,’ Cliff said. ‘You are taking a terrible responsibility upon yourself. You are concealing vital information from a man who has every right to it.’ The fact is that Cliff lost his temper. He walked out of Standing’s office and went straight to Major Braddock. My brother took the same line as Standing, though his reasons for doing so were entirely different. He wanted L8610 available in Shelter Bay to evacuate personnel. At least, that is my interpretation based on his subsequent actions. He was determined to get the Army out of the island before the whole operation ground to a halt for lack of ships.
Having failed with both Standing and Braddock, Cliff decided to send the message himself. His broadcasting installation had an output of 200 watts, giving him a range of VH/F Voice of anything up to 1,000 miles according to conditions. As a result his message was picked up by another trawler, the Viking Fisher, then about 60 miles due south of Iceland. Her first contact with him, reporting a drop of 2 millibars in the barometric pressure in that locality, was made at 17.16.
Meantime, the Meteorological Office had begun to appreciate that the pattern developing in northern waters of the British Isles was becoming complicated by local troughs. The shipping forecast at 17.58 hours, however, did not reflect this. The gale warnings were all for northerly winds and the phrase ‘polar air stream’ was used for the first time.
‘So much for Morgan’s forecast,’ Stratton said, returning the clip of forecasts to their hook above the chart table. ‘Maybe there’ll be something about it on the midnight forecast. But a polar air stream …’ He shook his head. ‘If I’d known that at one-forty, I’d have turned back. Still, that means northerlies — we’ll be all right when we reach Learg.’ And he leaned his elbows on the chart table, his eyes fixed on the radar screen as though willing the blur of light that represented Laerg to hasten its slow, reluctant progress to the central dot.
As daylight began to fade a rim of orange colour appeared low down along the western horizon, a lurid glow that emphasised the grey darkness of the clouds scurrying low overhead. I thought I caught a glimpse of Learg then, a fleeting impression of black piles of rock thrust up out of the sea; then it was gone, the orange light that had momentarily revealed its silhouette snuffed out like a candle flame. Dusk descended on us, a creeping gloom that gradually hid the violence of that cold, tempestuous sea. And after that we had only the radar to guide us.
At 18.57 we passed close south of Fladday, the isolated island to the east of Laerg. The two stacs of Hoe and Rudha showed up clear on the radar screen. Ahead and slightly to starboard was the whole mass of Laerg itself. For the next quarter of an hour the sea was very bad, the waves broken and confused, the crests topping on to our starboard bow and the tank deck swilling water. The dim light from our masthead showed it cascading over the sides, torrents of water that continued to pour in almost without a break. The whole for’ard part of the ship seemed half submerged. And then, as we came under the lee of Malesgair, the eastern headland of Laerg, it became quieter, the wave crests smaller — still white beyond the steel sides, but not breaking inboard any more. The pumps sucked the tank deck dry and suddenly one could stand without clinging on to the chart table.
We had arrived. We were coming into Shelter Bay, and ahead of us were lights — the camp, the floodlights on the landing beach, and Four-four-Double-o lying there like a stranded whale. Low cloud hung like a blanket over Tarsaval and all the island heights, but below the cloud the bulk of Laerg showed dimly as a darker, more solid mass.
The home of my forebears, and to see it first at night, in a gale, coming in from the sea after a bad crossing…. I thought that this was how it should be, and I stood there, gazing out of the porthole, fixing it in my mind, a picture that somehow I must get on to canvas — a grim, frightening, beautiful picture. In that howling night, with the wind coming down off Tarsaval and flattening the sea in sizzling, spray-torn patches, I felt strangely at peace. All my life, it seemed, had been leading up to this moment.
And then suddenly my seaman’s instinct came alive and I was conscious that Stratton didn’t intend to anchor. He had reduced speed, but the ship was going in, headed straight for the other landing craft. Wentworth was in the wheelhouse now. The Cox’n, too. And men were running out along the side decks, heading for the fo’c’stle platform. I caught the tail-end of Stratton’s orders: ‘… heaving the lead and give the soundings in flashes on your torch. At two fathoms I’ll go astern. Get the line across her then. Okay, Number One? Cox’n, you’ll let go the kedge anchor when I give the word. And pay out on the hawser fast. I don’t want to drag. Understand? We’re almost at the top of the tide. We haven’t much time.’