The Queen intervened again.
“Is it the view of the Chiefs of Staff that the Gibraltar crisis has been materially worsened, or perhaps, provoked by Admiral Staveley-Pope’s actions?”
“Possibly, ma’am,” the First Sea Lord confirmed reluctantly. “Although, the latest intelligence summaries suggest that the Spanish may have been planning their move against the Rock for some months. It may simply be that they’ve moved now because they think that we have taken our eye off the ball.”
“Prime Minister,” the Queen remarked, her tone regretful in its finality, “we have just sacked several men — all of whom honestly believed that they were, and remain good men and true — for failing to come up to scratch in the face of the cruel demands of this chaotic new world. Does not the conduct of Admiral Staveley-Pope fall into a similar category?”
“Jim?” Edward Heath asked, half-turning to face the Minister of Defence.
The Leader of the Labour Party steepled his fingers.
“Staveley-Pope’s conduct verges on treachery, ma’am.”
Both the First Sea Lord and Julian Christopher frowned and the latter seemed, for a moment, to be minded to protest.
Jim Callaghan raised a mollifying hand.
“I am aware that you and Hugh Staveley-Pope have been personal friends for nearly forty years, Admiral Christopher,” he half-apologised, “but the man has been behaving,” he spread his hands, “eccentrically. In the last few days he’s started emptying the prisons in Cyprus and Malta while at the same time cutting the daily ration of all food stuffs by half and closed all fuel depots to civilians. Cyprus is already a powder keg, Malta will be the same in a few days. Having previously prioritised civil order over virtually all other military considerations we have a very poor feel for the general situation in the central and eastern Mediterranean,” he explained with ill-concealed exasperation, “which means that Operation Homeward Bound might not even be viable in the case of Cyprus, and impossible to efficiently carry through on Malta. Even if such an outcome was remotely to be desired.”
Sir David Luce, First Sea Lord re-entered the fray.
“Operation Homeward Bound was conceived as a joint staff exercise to inform long-term planning in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. It was never envisaged as a contingency plan to be activated at the discretion of local commanders. If, as we suspect, Staveley-Pope has taken it upon himself to activate Operation Homeward Bound the consequences will be incalculable. Our already somewhat tenuous lines of communication with Middle East Command in the Arabian Peninsula will be severed, our remaining forces east of Suez will be cut off and forced to withdraw to Australasia…”
“I think we all get the picture, Sir David,” Edward Heath interjected impatiently. “Somebody is going to have to remove that man from command in the Mediterranean.” He looked Julian Christopher in the eye. “How soon can you fly to Malta and take over as C-in-C, Admiral Christopher?”
Julian Christopher’s one visible reaction was the barely perceptible elevation of his left eyebrow.
“As soon as transport can be arranged, Prime Minister,” he replied. “However, I have two caveats.”
If Edward Heath cavilled at the invitation to discuss terms it was not apparent to the witnesses to the exchange.
“Two caveats?”
“Gibraltar and the Western Med must be reintegrated into a unified Mediterranean Command.”
The Prime Minister nodded. He’d never understood why the two commands had been separated in the first place. When the Spanish had begun to re-apply pressure to Gibraltar he’d kicked himself for not having attended to the matter sooner.
“Yes, I agree.”
“Thank you, sir.” Julian Christopher quirked a half-smile at Edward Heath in acknowledgment. “In voicing a second caveat I apologise in advance for my presumption,” he looked to the Queen. “Ma’am, Hugh Staveley-Pope is a man possessed of immense personal honour. The one thing I can be absolutely sure of is that whatever he is doing, he believes that he is doing it for the best possible reasons and in your loyal service. Respectfully, may I request you to write Hugh a personal letter?”
The Queen thought about this.
“If the Chiefs of Staff have no objection to my communicating with a serving officer over their heads,” she decided, “I will write to Admiral Staveley-Pope commending him on his loyal service to my person and regretfully relieving of his command.”
This concluded the business of the shortest Cabinet meeting in the short history of Edward Heath’s United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration.
Chapter 26
Captain Walter Brenckmann (United States Navy Reserve) hesitated a moment before he signed. Then, with a sigh not so much of relief as sad resignation he pushed his chair back from the desk and stared out of the window. The Embassy was a quarter of a mile from the end of the runway of RAF Cheltenham. As if on cue a big turbo-prop transport — a Britannia — swooped overhead and landed in a puff of spray on the great, broad swath of tarmac that cut the old race course in half. The former grandstand still served as the reception terminus. Signs like ‘Members Only’ and boards giving directions to ‘The Royal Box’ had yet to be removed.
The previous evening he’d formally protested to the British about ‘the Dreadnought incident’. He’d advised the Ambassador that it was a bad mistake to protest about an ‘incident’ which had demonstrated a critical shortcoming in US Navy’s tactical anti-submarine doctrine. HMS Dreadnought had shown, conclusively, that the Navy’s newest, biggest carrier was virtually defenceless against a single well-handled nuclear attack boat. While the Big E’s air group had been playing stupid and dangerous ‘war games’ against the Ark Royal Battle Group’s screening destroyers the Enterprise herself had been squarely in the sights of the Dreadnought.
The CO of the USS Scorpion had handled things nicely and the sensible thing to do now was nothing. Unfortunately, the Pentagon didn’t see things that way. Sanity had never been a given in that place.
He’d protested; the First Sea Lord’s Secretary, Captain Thomas Pakenham, had accepted the protest with grace and tact even though he must have been laughing inside. Afterwards, Tom Pakenham had offered him a drink and informally slipped him the chilling intelligence that ‘over a number of days Dreadnought had achieved as many as seventeen firing solutions on the Enterprise’. He’d added: ‘I do hope your chaps understand that if the situation had been reversed and Dreadnought had found one of your boats in the vicinity of, say, Ark Royal or Hermes, she’d have opened fire?”
Before writing his letter of resignation Walter Brenckmann had gone for a walk in the cold, crisp frosty evening twilight. He strolled to the air base perimeter fence in time to see a Comet 4 land while high in the grey wintery skies the four silhouettes of interceptors circled. A little later he’d watched a convoy of staff cars headed by a Ferret armoured vehicle drive at speed across the airfield cluster around another, waiting Comet 4. He’d wondered what was going on. Presidential type cavalcades weren’t the Brits normal style so something had to have been going on and true to form the Ambassador, Loudon Baines Westheimer II, wasn’t at Cheltenham to see it.