The fact that there were survivors gave a dramatic quality to the news and most of Britain had the story on their breakfast tables, front-paged under flaring headlines — a story of storm and disaster, of a colonel and his adjutant killed in the attempts to rescue men trapped on a gale-torn rock in the North Atlantic. And to add to the drama was the suggestion that the Army had something to hide. Editors’ instructions were to get at the truth.
Two reporters in search of a drink landed up at the hotel at Rodil. They got hold of Marjorie. She was in a highly emotional state and prepared to talk. If Standing had been alive, she might have blamed him on account of Mike Ferguson’s death. But Standing was dead, and because she was frightened for her father, she put the blame for everything on Major Braddock, and in attacking him. she revealed that he had been placed under arrest for ordering the LCT in to the beach. For those two reporters she was worth her weight in gold.
Other reporters, casing the Northton HQ and getting no change out of the Army personnel who had all been instructed to have no contact with the Press, transferred their attention to the Met. Office. They, too, struck gold.
Cliff was a story in himself and nothing would have stopped that little Welshman from talking. He gave it to them, blow by blow, as seen from the weather man’s point of view. One correspondent, reporting him from a tape-recorded interview, gave his words verbatim: ‘I tell you, the man must have been off his bloody nut, ordering a landing craft into the beach on a night like that. Oh yes, the wind was north then and they were under the lee of the island in Shelter Bay. But aground like that, she was at the mercy of the elements, you see, and when the wind swung into the south … ‘
There was more in the same vein and it all went south by wire and phone to the waiting presses in London. And by the following morning the public was convinced that the man responsible for this appalling loss of life was Major Braddock. They weren’t told that in so many words, but it was implied, and this before he had had a chance to defend himself, when he was, in fact, still on Laerg organising the rescue operations.
Once the survivors had been reported safe, the excitement of the story dwindled and news-hungry reporters, looking for a fresh angle, began delving into the relations between Braddock and his Commanding Officer. What had happened at that interview in Standing’s office in the early hours of the morning of October 22? Why had he placed Braddock under arrest? Cliff was interviewed on TV and radio. So was Marjorie. Laura Standing, too, and Fellowes. The evidence piled up and all this canned material was being rushed down to London whilst the tug was still battling its way through the aftermath of the gale.
We steamed into Leverburgh just after four-thirty in the afternoon. We had been hove-to twice for the M.O. to carry out minor operations. The rest of the time we had managed little more than seven knots. The tug’s internal accommodation was sufficient only for the serious casualties. The rest — men suffering from exposure and extreme exhaustion — had to be left out on the open deck. Anything over seven knots and the tug would have been shipping water in the heavy seas. As a result the voyage took almost fourteen hours and during all that time the men were exposed to wind and spray. One man died during the night and there were several showing symptoms of pneumonia by the time we docked.
The quay was packed as we came alongside, packed solid with men whose dress proclaimed them foreigners to the Hebrides. Army personnel in charge of the vehicles to take the survivors to Northton tried to hold them back, but as the tug’s side touched the quay they swarmed on board. They were all after one man. ‘Where’s Braddock? Which is Major Braddock? Where is he — in the Captain’s cabin?’
In fact, Iain had been sleeping in the scuppers on the port side. ‘I don’t think he’ll see anybody. He’s very tired.’
‘I can’t help that. He’s news.’ He told me the paper he represented and thrust a note into my hand. ‘Here’s a fiver. Just point him out to me, that’s all.’ And when I told him to go to hell, he tried to make it a tenner.
They found him in the end, of course. They brought him to bay like a pack of hounds in a corner under the bridge housing and he stood there, facing them, his battered face grey with fatigue, his voice hoarse with shouting above the wind. They were all round him, their notebooks out, firing questions. And all he said was, ‘No comment.’
He didn’t realise that this was his one opportunity to defend himself — that he’d never get another. He stuck to the letter of QRs and refused to make a statement, relying on his superiors to back him up. Relying, too, on the fact that without his efforts the survivors would never have been got off Sgeir Mhor alive. He didn’t know then that his superiors were going to throw him to the wolves, that he was to be the scapegoat. How could he? For the last thirty-six hours he’d been involved in physical action, body and mind devoted to one thing alone — getting those men off. He didn’t understand that these reporters couldn’t visualise the circumstances. He was dead tired and his own mind was incapable at that moment of making the leap from individual effort to the broader aspects of the affair. No comment! A statement will be issued in due course. His Army training overlaid whatever personal inclination he had. He behaved, in fact, with perfect correctness and in doing so he damned himself before that most violent and blind of all judges — the public.
I saw the faces of the reporters harden. Frustration developed into anger. One man, snapping his notebook shut, seemed to speak for the rest: ‘Okay, Major, have it your own way. But don’t blame us if the public forms its own opinion of your evacuation order.’
Other notebooks snapped. The circle broke up and Iain stood there, tight-lipped and with a baffled look on his face, as they suddenly abandoned him to move amongst the survivors in search of personal, human interest stories. There was no shortage of these. The struggle to get the landing craft off the beach, the fight to get her out of Shelter Bay and clear of the rocks of Sgeir Mhor in the teeth of the hurricane, the failure of the engines, the scene of utter confusion as she struck with the bridge deck concertinaed against the fortress mass of Sgeir Mhor; how for a short while the up-lifted stern section had acted as a sort of ramp, enabling those that were still alive to scramble ashore, the desperate hours of waiting through that ghastly night and the rising seas and the new storm breaking over them.
There was so much of human interest. In particular, there was Field. They got the story of his climb from Sergeant Wetherby and a bunch of them crowded round him. ‘Tell me, Mr Field — how did you feel? Were you scared?’ He tried to tell them about Braddock’s crossing of the gut between the Butt of Keava and Sgeir Mhor, but they weren’t interested in that now. Reporters in London, working on the background of the officers involved, had interviewed Field’s wife. As a result they knew who he was. ‘Could you give us your reactions please? … How did it feel climbing that sheer cliff face? … Was it as stiff as the climbs you faced in the Himalayas?’ Cameras clicked, the TV men closed in.
And all the time Captain Flint with a squad of men was trying to get the injured off the ship and into the waiting vehicles. ‘Get the hell out of it, you bloody bloodsucking bastards.’ His Cockney humour had deserted him. The essential warmth of his nature was revolted by this spectacle of news-hungry men milling around amongst injured and exhausted survivors, fighting to get to grips with their stories. I saw him take a camera out of one photographer’s hand and throw it over the side. The man had been trying to get a close-up of some poor devil with his face smashed in. ‘The next one of you ghouls that tries that I’ll ‘eave the beggar over the side, camera an’ all.’
I found Marjorie struggling to get near her father — shut out by the ring of men surrounding him. ‘Oh, thank God!’ she said when she saw me. ‘What happened? Why are they all crowding round him?’ The bloom was gone from her face, all the vitality knocked out of her. ‘I can’t get near him.’ The pupils of those strangely blue eyes were dilated and the words came in a panic rush, almost a sob.