However, there she was!
This, Peter Cowdrey-Singh reflected, was turning into the strangest day of his life…
First, there had been that surreal interview on the bridge of the Weser, discovering that, in effect, individual officers of the Kaiserliche Marine had decided that their honour would not allow them to continue to treat their ‘English brothers’ as enemies.
Second, almost as unreal, had been the look on the faces of his men, survivors one and all of the Achilles’s last battle, as he broke the news. Disbelief, elation and a peculiar sadness, as if everybody realised, they had fought a battle to the death with the wrong navy. Forget the fact there had been several hundred Nuevo Granadans on those Kaiserliche Marine ships.
Third, and now he was sailing in the midst of a bizarre, polyglot fleet that was so disparate it could not possibly fight as a fleet. The Breitenfeld and Lutzen apart, none of the other big gun ships could be, or were capable of, concentrating their main battery fire as a co-ordinated coherent battle line. There were 12-inch, 18.3-inch and 9.2-inch batteries, each mounted on ships with negligible or non-existent ship-wide director control. Only the former German units, still crewed by key specialists, of the Vera Cruz Squadron had any, albeit seriously degraded by battle damage, ELDAR-directed anti-aircraft gunnery capabilities. Worse, like any fleet in history, this fleet’s maximum speed was limited by the slowest vessel; in this case, likely to be the Tomás de Torquemada.
If and when the fleet encountered the enemy it wanted to be travelling a lot faster than eleven or twelve knots!
Far astern the low line of the Cuban coast had slipped beneath the horizon.
Peter Cowdrey-Singh took a long, deep breath.
Melanie, his wife, would soon know that he was still alive.
But what lay in store for the nearest and dearest of the four hundred-and-fifty plus Royal Navy officers and men who had died in the Battle of the Windward Passage?
To have survived was one thing; but at what price?
Chapter 18
Monday 10th July
Royal Navy Norfolk, Virginia
Commander Alexander Fielding had spoken to his immediate superior, Commander Andrew Buchannan, the CAW, as HMS Perseus had nosed into the James River, dipping flags as she passed the C-in-C’s pennant flying at the northern end of Ocean View Point.
“I’ll only be absenting myself for a couple of hours,” he had explained.
“Go, go, go,” his boss, whom he already considered a friend, had directed with his customary jocular decisiveness.
Given that the two men held equivalent ranks – Alex’s of the wartime temporary variety – and it seemed, comparable seniority dates due to the arcane ways these things were calculated in the Colonial Air Force, there might easily have been unwanted tensions in their dealings, one with the other, a thing both men were, beneath their sangfroid, determined to avoid. In the event, they simply got on well, like houses on fire, in fact, and so after a short period of ‘feeling out’ the lay of the land in Alex’s case, and of the state of the seas in Buchannan’s, they had got on swimmingly and consequently, their naval and formerly CAF men, had too!
As soon as the gangway touched the quayside Alex had jumped ashore and cadged a lift to the married quarters estate at Portsmouth.
By then fuel lines were already arrayed, snaking across the concrete, a score of ordnance dollies on rail tracks were queued and there were a dozen brand new aircraft – six Goshawk IVs and six Sea Eagle torpedo-bombers – fresh out of their crates, awaiting to be hoisted on board.
Fifteen new pilots were scheduled to join the ship that day, each and every one of them volunteers as yet unbroken-in as ‘carrier men’.
Alex would find them later, confident that in his absence his men would start the newcomers’ induction the moment they set foot on the ship.
He gave his driver the address on Anson Road.
“You want me to wait for you, sir?”
“No, I’ve got the telephone number for the car pool. I’ll call when I need a ride.”
He did not watch the vehicle drive away.
A dapper, lean man of barely average height, Alex straightened, shot his cuffs and checked his tie while he attempted, with only middling proficiency to fix a semi-convincing cheerful expression on his face.
He lifted his finger to the doorbell button.
The label by the ringer said: Lieutenant & Mrs Lincoln.
The door opened.
Kate blinked at him for a moment.
In the background Alex heard young Tom, his nephew, gurgling, and something rattling. A toy, he assumed. To his consternation he discovered that having worked out what he was going to say, privately practiced his spiel in the car he discovered he was speechless.
To the aviator’s astonishment Kate walked into his arms and gave him a hug, as if she understood that they were both still in a state of shock. She had seen straight through his act of bravura, comprehended in a split second that beneath his carefully crafted mask of insouciance he was still, in some ways, the fragile sprog he had been all those years ago down on the Border.
“Perseus is in port, alongside for fifteen hours,” he tried to explain, “then we’re off south. Anyways, that’s what everybody thinks…”
Kate sniffed and the man and the woman disentangled themselves. Alex brushed himself down, Kate did not bother with any of that nonsense about proprieties which so obsessed ‘white folk’.
“The Germans have transmitted a list of survivors from the Achilles,” the man blurted. “Not everybody went down with her…”
Alex had followed his sister-in-law into the house, struck immediately by how neat, spic and span it was, and by how little furniture or clutter his brother and his wife had allowed into their living space.
Kate turned, touched his arm.
“Abe lives with me here,” she said, raising her fingers to her heart, “and he lives on until I know he is no longer with me in this lifetime. I miss him now. But I will not mourn him before the time comes.”
The man opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it.
“Kate, I,” he stuttered unhappily.
“Tom has grown a lot since you saw him last,” Kate declared proudly, leading him into the small living room.
In a moment Alex was down on his knees and the toddler was in his arms.
“I make tea,” the youngster’s mother announced.
It was some minutes later that Alex re-found his courage.
“Like I said. The Germans have given us a list of the survivors from the Achilles,” he said quietly, resignedly. “Abe’s name isn’t on that list but we know that there was an air battle of some kind. Abe,” he choked on the words, “might not have been on the ship when it went down.”
“Abe would have been with Ted,” Kate said simply.
Alex blinked askance.
“Ted Forest, his navigator. They were good friends. Whatever happened he was with a friend.” She would not let herself grieve. She asked: “How many names?”