“Thank you, Raoul. Please have him shown in.”
Thomas Edmund Dewey, Governor of New York, strode in, with the two NY senators, James M. Mead and Robert F. Wagner, close on his flanks.
Truman shook hands with the three men and motioned them towards seating.
“So, my apologies for the delay. How may I help you, gentlemen?
Dewey took the lead.
“That’s simple, Mister President. You can either fight the goddamned war with every weapon God has given you, saving the lives of countless American boys along the way, or you can resign and let someone with the cojones take the lead. Which’ll it be?”
Within fifteen seconds, members of the Secret Service charged into the room, expecting to find a huge mob out of hand, such was the violence of the short conversation.
Truman and the three politicians did not part on good terms.
Crisp had been asleep since just after nine pm, the blissful experience of not having to make decisions and not having to worry about the day-to-day business of commanding a parachute infantry regiment, had brought the deepest sleep he had experienced since two nights before the jump into the blackness over Pomerania.
Unusually for the two and a half thousand men shoehorned aboard, sleep took precedence over craps, poker, or simply horsing about, as almost every man, glider infantryman or paratrooper, used the opportunity to store valuable sleep away.
The gentle tenors of the waves lapping at the hull, and the rhythmic sound of the throbbing Westinghouse turbine, brought kind dreams to each and every man, as the USS Kingsbury’s single screw carried them further away from the war.
Four miles ahead, a number of technical problems plagued the commander of HMS Jason, a Halcyon-class minesweeper, as his equipment again failed him.
Acting Lieutenant Commander Harry Layland Dudley Hoare chased his crew in all directions, but they simply could not restore full operation. One of the kites had decided to dive to the bottom, and the winch that could recover it had simply given up the ghost.
Hoare radioed the Commodore, but the man railed against anything that could mean delay, and simply told the minesweeper officer to ‘sort it out’.
The Commodore, anxious to preserve his sailing schedule, ignored Hoare’s recommendation to transfer some north side work to one of the other minesweepers, and decided to press on regardless, citing the complete absence of any mines on the journey to Swinemünde and, thus far, on the return.
Which meant that L3 ‘Frunzenets’, sunk on 10th December 1945, would reach out from her watery grave and claim yet another Allied vessel.
Colonel Marion Crisp was lifted from his bunk and deposited with perfect precision on the bunk on the other side of the cabin, much to the displeasure of the occupant.
Griffin Field moaned in pain and clutched at his stomach, where Crisp’s hard buttocks had announced his soft landing.
Marion Crisp rolled off the injured man and immediately realised that he simply continued to roll across the floor of the cabin, heading back the six feet to the bunk from which he had been thrown.
His hands pushed out, stopping him from clattering into the metal supports.
“C’mon, Griff, move your ass… the ship’s listing.”
He grabbed at the winded Field and virtually dragged him to the door.
It refused to open.
Field, recovering slowly, lent his shoulder to the effort.
The door shifted a little, not enough to permit them to leave, but sufficient for the smoke to enter the cabin.
“Again!”
Crisp threw himself against the unyielding metal and bounced off.
“Again!”
The two men hit it together and the movement encouraged them.
Another three blows brought enough of a gap for Crisp to call a halt.
“Let’s go… you first, Griff.”
The Acting Lieutenant Colonel squirmed through, closely followed by Crisp.
The smoke was denser now, and moved thickly through their throats and lungs, bringing about racking coughs.
“Fresh air… this way… follow me…”
Crisp grabbed Field’s hand and followed the memory image in his head, and found the stairs up immediately.
As the pair climbed towards the next level, a tannoy announcement cut across the growing sounds of men under duress.
Whilst many of the words were somewhat distorted by some sort of damage issue, the message was absolutely clear.
“Attention all hands! Attention all hands! Abandon ship. Abandon ship!”
The two officers emerged into the darkest of nights, now transformed by the severe fire that was claiming the ship around them.
“We’ve got to organise our boys… calm them down and do this orderly… get some control…”
Field nodded and plunged towards a group of his own soldiers massing at the ship’s side.
The Kingsbury shuddered and lurched a few feet further over, enough to send men flying off their feet and hurtling into others, creating more struggling forms.
Searchlights from other vessels also lit up the scene, and help create the surreal sight of soldiers and sailors illuminated in dancing shades of diamond white and orange.
An explosion opened up the deck in front of Crisp, and he was picked up and thrown into dark sky.
His unconscious form dropped into the cool waters, surrounded by men desperate to stay afloat… desperate to survive.
At 0006, before a single rescue ship could get close enough, USS Kingsbury APA-177, rolled over into the Baltic, nine minutes to the second after she had hit ‘Frunzenets’’ mine.
Sir Fabian John Callard-Smith, VC holder, MP for Wroughton, and retired Coldstream Guards Colonel, read the report in silence, seeing familiar names in every paragraph, some alive and soon to be honoured, others lost to the insatiable machine of war.
Across the small table sat his friend and confidante, the Right Honourable Percy Aston Hollander MC and bar, formerly a major in the Irish Guards, who was reading the same document, an insider’s report that recorded the efforts and exertions of the Guards units of His Majesty’s army.
“Good Lord… Bunty’s gone west. Poor Janette… we must go and visit as soon as possible… poor old Bunty.”
Percy Hollander shook his head at the news that another of the old school had lost his life in the new war.
Whilst he hadn’t served with Jacob ‘Bunty’ Hargreaves, he knew of the man by reputation, one often enhanced by anecdotes from Callard-Smith, who had shared a bunker with him for many months on the Western Front in 1917-18.
“All through the last lot, only to die in some crabby corner of Bocheland… damn and blast… damn and blast…”
“Wasn’t he divisional staff, John?”
Callard-Smith nodded and offered up an explanation immediately.
“Never one to sit at the back though. Never. Bound to have been up at the front. Looks like he was with the Coldstreams up the sharp end when he copped it… lots of Coldstreams got the chop on the same day… 28th July… around Parchim… not just Coldstreams either… seems like the Grenadiers got a bloody good dusting too.”
Aston nodded, concern at the loss of so many members of the Guards Brigade written large on his face.
Squires, clubman and an ex-Coldstream Guardsman himself, moved towards the pair as quickly as his disability would allow.
“Colonel Fabian… Major Percy… The Sunday Evening News, sirs.”