It took us all morning in the teeth of the gale with five of the tug’s crew and the Doc and the men who had survived the helicopter crash. Baulks of timber had to be brought up, heavy hawsers, block and tackle, and everything rigged by trial and error. Just after midday we managed to get food and clothing across to them. But it wasn’t until almost 2 p.m. that we got the first man over the gut and safe on to Keava. And after that it was slow, back-breaking work, for many of them were stretcher cases, who, when they reached Keava, had to be carried down the slopes and along the beach to the camp. There was no vehicle, no means of transporting them other than by hand.
We took altogether twenty-three men off Sgeir Mhor, five of them unconscious, and several badly injured. All were suffering from exposure, their skin a leprous white from constant immersion in salt water. Wentworth was the last to come across, a different man now, burned up by the twenty-four hours he’d been in command. Stratton was dead — with the Cox’n he’d been getting the men out of the mess deck when the whole bridge structure had been crushed like a biscuit tin; and Pinney, who’d thought Laerg the best posting he’d had. Four men had died during the night, including the young steward, Perkins, whose rib-cage had been stove in by the slam of the water-tight doors. Field said there was no sign of the landing craft, only bits and pieces of metal scattered among the rocks.
The wind went round that night into the north-west and the tug came close inshore. By midnight everybody had been embarked. Everybody except my brother. It was the Doc who discovered he wasn’t on board. He’d had a list made and a roll called, for the confusion on the tug was indescribable — thirty-five extra men, many of them casualties.
‘Where’s Major Braddock?’ I heard the question passed along the deck. ‘Anybody seen Major Braddock?’ Voices calling in the darkness of the decks. And then the Skipper giving orders. Sergeant Wetherby piling into the boat again, the outboard motor bursting into life. I jumped in beside him and we shot away from the tug’s side, slapping through the shallows over the low tide sand bar.
The outboard died as the bows grated and the boat came to a sudden halt. We scrambled out into a foot or more of water and ploughed over the sands to the beach. Wetherby thought he might have gone to check the remains of the transport that lay, battered and derelict, among the rocks behind the loading beach. He was an MT sergeant. Whilst he went towards the dim shape of the bulldozer, now standing high and dry on the sands, I hurried to the camp. Every now and then the wind brought me the sound of his voice calling: “Major Braddock! Major Braddock!’
The lights were out in the camp now, the generator still. I stumbled about in the darkness, calling. At first I called his Army name, but then, because it didn’t seem to matter here alone, I called: ‘Iain! Iain — where are you?’ I reached the hut and, fumbling in the dark, found the torch I’d used. The place was empty; the radio still there and all the mess and litter of its temporary use as a casualty clearing station. I went outside then, probing and calling.
I’d never have found him without the torch. He was standing in the lee of the cookhouse, quite still, his back turned towards me as though afraid his face might catch the light. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ I demanded. ‘Why didn’t you answer?’
He stared at me, but didn’t say anything for a moment. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth and his face was deathly pale. ‘Are you ill?’ I asked.
He moved then, came close to me and reached for my arm. ‘Donald.’ His voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper against the blatter of the wind. ‘Go back. Go back to the ship. You haven’t seen me. Understand?’ The urgency of his request was almost as startling as the request itself. He jerked at my arm. ‘Go — back.’ Behind the hoarseness of his voice, I caught the tremor of his mood, something deep that he couldn’t control. ‘As you love me, Donald, go back.’
‘But why? What’s wrong? Is it Lane?’ I asked. ‘Has he been worrying you?’
‘He’s been on to me — twice from the mainland. But it isn’t that.’ His grip tightened on my arm. ‘Leave me now, will you.’
‘But why?’
‘Damn you, Donald! Can’t you do what I ask?’ And then, his voice more controlled: ‘Something I have to do. We left in a hurry — the tide and a change of wind. No time … and Leroux half dead, too weak to do anything. It was either that or be trapped.’ His voice had died to a whisper.
‘You mean you were here?’ I asked. ‘After the Duart Castle____’
‘Try to understand, can’t you? Just leave me here and no questions.’
I hesitated. The torch on his face showed his mouth tight-set, his eyes urgent. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want….’
But I was too late. As I switched off the torch and turned to go, a voice spoke out of the darkness behind me: ‘You’ve found him then?’ It was Sergeant Wetherby. His jacketed figure loomed bulky from the direction of the generator. And to Iain, he said, ‘Major Braddock, sir. The tug’s all ready to go — everybody on board. Only yourself, sir. They’re waiting for you.’
I heard Iain’s muttered curse. And then in a flat voice: ‘Very good, Sergeant. Sorry if I held things up — just a last check round.’ He came with us then. There was nothing else he could do for he couldn’t hope to persuade the sergeant to let him stay. And so we embarked and at 01.15 hours on the morning of October 24, the tug steamed out of Shelter Bay with the last remnant of the Army Detachment.
The evacuation was complete at a cost of fifty-three lives, the loss of one landing craft, a helicopter and a great deal of equipment.
PART III
CHAPTER ONE
(October 24-February 28)
Press reaction to the news of the disaster was immediate. The first scattered fragments had begun coming through within hours of our landing craft being wrecked. Radio and TV put it out in their newscasts as it filtered through and during the day the story moved from the Stop Press of the evening papers to the front page. The main body of the Press, however, had almost twelve hours in which to build the story up; and because it involved the out-islands, ships, the sea, the weather, they knew the impact it would have on the public. All that day telephones rang continuously in the press offices of the three Services and in the Meteorological Office in Kingsway. The Admiralty and the Air Ministry were helpful; the Army less so for they were inhibited by the knowledge that a commanding officer had ordered the arrest of his second-in-command. In an attempt to avoid this becoming known to the Press, they clamped down on all comment, closed the military line to Northton to all but official calls and confined their press releases to the facts of the situation. The effect was to make the Press suspicious.
An enterprising reporter on the local Stornoway paper got hold of Fellowes. His story of the flight to Laerg and Mike Ferguson’s death was scooped by a popular daily. A Reuter’s man, who had flown north from Glasgow that morning, reached Northton in time to get the news of Standing’s death and watch the tug leave from Leverburgh quay. His despatches went out on the Reuter teleprint service to all newspaper offices.
By that night the full extent of the disaster was known, the presses of the national dailies were rolling out the story and reporters and photographers were hurrying north. So many took the night train to Glasgow that BEA, who had cancelled the morning’s flight to Stornoway, had second thoughts. The newspaper men had a rough flight, but by midday they were piling into Northton and Leverburgh. Others, mainly photographers with specially chartered planes, stood by at Stornoway from dawn onwards to take pictures of Laerg. Fellowes found his plane in great demand.