An Extra Knot Part III: A Different world War II, #3

By HUGH LUPUS

Churchill is trying to persuade the Americans to commit to the war but Rommel has the task of pushing an army deep into the Basque heartlands and is facing a new form of war - barbaric, subtle and bloody guerilla resistance. And meanwhile The Hood and her sisters are loose on the high seas...

• Language: English
• Publisher: APS Publications
• Release date: May 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393817451

Book preview

THE ROCK

The rock rose up out of the sea.

Green and white capped it was, older by far than man. Yet it was a child of war and blood had soaked into every inch of it. It stood as guardian, gatekeeper and refuge, for whoever held the rock held the tideless sea as far as the eye could see. In the game of war it was a prize of great price. And once more men contended for its ancient rocks.

The Dorniers, the Heinkels and the Junkers took off from green French fields before the first stars began to dimly shine. Their engines strained to clear cold mountains as they crossed the border, noses pointing south. The eternal war of cold air and warm drafts buffeted them, but that was the least of their troubles.

Enemies rose up to meet them. Some wore the roundels of an old and hated foe; others wore the yellow cross of a new opponent. For these were the disputed lands, the valleys broad and narrow that led down into the Spanish heartland, lands where men fought and men bled. For some the journey ended here and the air filled with smoke and the last cries of doomed men.

But most flew on, and their journey continued over a land that held only apathetic peace. The great arguments that had swirled through Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Rome were a mystery to these survivors, and only vaguely did they understand the struggle between men on widely separated battle fields. Though they did not know it they were a scarce resource. They could be harrying retreating Russians, strafing stubborn Greeks or setting fire to British supply dumps in Gijón or Tobruk. In all of these places they could swing the pendulum and add their weight to the scales of battle. Yet tonight and for many nights to come they flew south to bomb docks and airfields. The battle for Gibraltar had begun.

The last smoke from Churchill’s now dead cigar was gripped by the sluggish fan and flung to the far corners of a room where most of the chairs lay unused. Few sat here this night; only a trusted few. Some were his friends, others political opponents; all were there by merit for time had winnowed away all but the very best. And every man listened while a middle-aged man with bright red hair and matching moustache told tales gleaned from a thousand secret sources.

There were bright spots. The sinking of the Bismarck and her companion had, for the moment relieved some pressure from a beleaguered Royal Navy and coastal Command, and the destruction of Rommel’s centre by the allied army had brought smiles to every face. The Greeks still held the stubborn Isle of Crete and plans were in place to strengthen the garrison there. Behind them Yugoslavia heaved in a fratricidal rebellion that no amount of blood could drown In Africa the Nazi tide had lapped around the port of Tobruk, but fierce fighting had seen that tide forced to recoil upon itself in a welter of blood and broken hopes. Australian and Indian troops were cautiously beginning to leave their trenches and push back at a German army that was desperate to fall back on its supply bases. Better yet American resources were beginning to flow ever faster and public opinion in every corner of the great Republic was growing more hostile towards the Axis powers.

And yet those bright spots were threatened by shadows that grew ever blacker.

In the Far East Japan had completed its expansion in Indochina and the French empire there existed now in name only. Singapore had begged for reinforcements, but there were none to be had, every man, every reserve needed to be kept close at hand. All that could be sent to the lands east of India were promises that may not be kept.

Great hope had been placed on the enormous Russian armies but they had reeled from a Blitzkrieg practised by men who used the vast plains to encircle army after army. Scarce resources had been sent to her. Messages urging courage and patience had been delivered but only the gods of war knew if the Soviet Union would still be fighting a year from now.

And now there was another black spot, one that threatened to grow ever greater and ever blacker.

Gibraltar.

Bombs had fallen on her for eight nights now and already the Admiralty was making nervous noises. Ships had been sunk in the harbour and the newly re-built airfield had been damaged. Spanish gunboats based in Algeciras had traded shots with the Navy and although they had been driven off with heavy losses this was obviously only the beginning of a campaign designed to take the rock itself.

They had read the reports; they had spoken to men whose trade was war and men like the red headed Major whose minds ran along other, more devious paths. Long had they consulted. Long and perplexing were the talks but at last order had been marshalled out of confusion. Gibraltar would fight. To do otherwise would be politicly disastrous, but stand or fall there would be no reinforcements. In so small a space how could they help? Gibraltar would fall, but there were other options other positions which would take the place of the great rock.

The devious ones, the planners, the more thoughtful had placed before them folders, red folders with strict warnings written in black ominous letters on their front covers.

The Germans had played what they thought was a winning card. But Churchill was a card player of old and this was a game where you made your own luck and invented your own cards. And he had new cards. Cards named New pilgrim, Golden eye and Tracer. Operations large and small. Each and every one of them designed to hurt Berlin and to teach Madrid that joining the Axis powers was a most serious error. And one operation in particular, one that appealed to the military romantic that lay bubbling just below his skin.

His hand touched the slim folder that told of awful penalties for unlicensed eyes and a sly grin grew on a mouth which had just accepted a freshly lit cigar. He looked at the man who had for his own protection assumed a false name and a false rank.

‘Tell me about Beard, just how do you intend to proceed?’

The hooded eyes looked back at Churchill and a slight smile appeared. He knew that this operation above all others would capture the Prime Minister’s imagination, yet of them all this was the truest gamble. But the risk was small and the potential rewards great.

Churchill was already half convinced. He could see the possibilities but convincing the hard headed men who sat around him would be a far more difficult task, for even the small forces that would be used could with profit be sent elsewhere and every man in the room knew how thin they were being stretched.

His smile faded and his face assumed the lines of the professional soldier and spy master. His voice long schooled in showing little emotion grew ever flatter and drier. He began to talk, conquering Churchill’s last reserves in the first few moments, but it was a long question filled hour before the rest of the room was convinced.

Operation Beard was added to a host of others, and long before the night ended legions of typewriters clattered and leather clad despatch riders roared along darkened roads to far flung men and ships whose lives now strode down different paths. All that remained now was to wait and pray.

Sightless eyes gazed through the water-filled rooms and water-filled mouths still attempted to give last warnings. Fingers now stilled for ever were clamped over a spark-less Morse key and torpedoes waited for the last action that would send them spinning towards ships that had long since passed.

She had been a watcher on the wall hidden under scant fathoms of water waiting for a long pent up enemy to sally forth. And her enemy had moved. But not south to the beleaguered garrisons of Africa did these ships sail, but west to the gates that held back all but a trickle of the Atlantic. A summer squall had all but blinded her single eye though the sounds of fast churning propellers had not escaped her and her young crew. Hotly she pursued, but only the last of the fleeing ships could be seen vanishing in grey rain clouds. She fired at their sterns hoping against hope that perhaps fate would smile on her and turn a glowering face upon their enemies. It was not to be. There would be no flying of black flags on this day. Watching eyes had seen the churning tracks and excited voices had reached out.

The convoy had their own watchdogs, alert and ready and soon the sea churned with their anger. There was no time to warn and less time to escape and soon she lay broken backed and a fresh home for brightly coloured fish. And the Italian convoy sailed on.

On to the capture of the rock.

Atticus listened to the radio with only half an ear while outside he heard his son argue about obscure facts around the chances of the Chicago Bears winning this year’s championship. After a last appeal to buy Lux toilet soap the dry measured tones of the news reader filled the room.

This is H.V Kaltenborn speaking.  Today the war in the Atlantic took a further grave turn. In a surprise move heavy units of the Royal Navy have sailed to the Spanish controlled Canary Islands and have, to quote an official communique begun operations to secure the islands and prevent them from being used by hostile forces. The islands lie less than two hundred miles from the coast of Africa and lie on vital trade routes connecting the British Isles with many parts of her empire.

Military analysts here have commented that the invasion and eventual occupation of the islands gives the Royal Navy an ideal base to prevent access to the Western Mediterranean which is still of great importance to them despite the fall of Gibraltar last month. Reports are still coming in, but it seems that just before dawn the British began a two-hour bombardment of shore installations and launched aircraft which ranged over the islands destroying, and again I’m reading from the official communique, selected targets and installations. There is no word yet as to the landing of troops, but that can only be a matter of time.

Madrid has responded to the attacks with a tersely worded statement which promises that the sacred soil of Spain will be defended to the last man. In an official announcement from Washington, Secretary Hull pointed out that Spain and her possessions were legitimate targets and that the rights and duties of self-defence are of prime importance to every free nation. Hull’s words are seen by many as being a statement aligned with the administration’s policy of active defence, which has seen United States forces being sent to Iceland and the Azores, and after much debate the Asturian and Basque republics being added to those who can receive lend lease.

There has been no word yet from either Berlin or Rome, but that cannot be long in coming and we can only guess whether the response will be military or diplomatic. What this means in regard the war in general and to America in particular is uncertain, but we can be sure that......

Atticus turned the radio off with a grimace that showed both distaste and fear and walked to the window where his son was now idly throwing a pigskin ball. Jem had nearly reached his full height now and nature was now adding muscle to a frame that had seemingly shot up overnight. His nation was sliding into war and Atticus had a sudden vision of his sons newly fashioned body wearing a uniform and travelling far across the sea. It was not a pleasant thought.

They were not first line troops, they were reservists, old and young. They were farm workers pulled from the fields and mechanics sent from the factory who donned a uniform and had a rifle and a handful of bullets thrust into their hands. Their colonel was a dentist and their captain a teacher of art.

Old and battered ships had weaved their way around British patrols and deposited them on islands which boasted high brown mountains and lush green plains where sugar cane waved in the Atlantic wind.

There they joined the regulars who manned the guns made when Spain warred with America and jostled for scanty food with men who had fought with Franco and wore their blue shirts with savage pride.

They were a mobile reserve and had been issued bicycles to make that fact a reality and when the alarm sounded, they were ready. Five hundred bicycles threw up a lot of late summer dust, and that dust rising in the morning air killed more than one of them. It drew the drab painted aircraft down on them like the furies of old. A few of the grey killers still had bombs that had failed to find worthwhile targets on their outward journey and these burst amongst the bicycles killing and maiming.

The dentist was not among the survivors but those who fled into the tall cane included a teacher wondering how he would teach art now he could no longer see.

Still their punishment had not ended, for the aircraft were now harvesting sugar, not with sharp blades, but with hissing bullets and the ground was newly fertilised with fresh blood and shards of bone that next year’s crop would eagerly drink. At last their oppressors vanished, waggling their wings in malicious glee and the remnants of the battalion began to bury their dead. They would never march to the coast and so were spared the sight of smoking holes where once old guns spoke futile words of defiance. They never saw the men from Canada crush the blue shirted veterans. They never heard the last words of men who fought without tanks or artillery against men who had just enough of both.

Instead leaderless and with many wounded they retreated to the shelter of the island’s stone farmhouses. They were still there two days later when they heard the strange sounds of bagpipes. The men wearing cap badges bearing sharp pointed leaves ended their war without firing a single shot.

Two weeks.

Fourteen days plus a few hours that hardly counted. Still in its own ways it was a glorious action, and one that would not soon be forgotten, but once the Italians had begun to press down from the north and the east, once they captured the water plants that gave life to Gibraltar then the end was inevitable. The surface war mutated into a series of bitter hand to hand struggles in the dark tunnels that generations of military engineers had dug in the soft limestone. And then it ended, an exhausted fortress surrendered and the few remaining troops marched into captivity.

Or nearly all. A few diehard’s, planned and unplanned, refused to follow the Governor into confinement and the conquerors had but an uneasy and nervous hold on the limestone rock. But nervous or not the Axis powers had now closed the Gates of Hercules.

It had been a bad week in the Commons. A very bad week. The loss of prestige not to mention the worsening world situation had seen more than a few barbed comments flung his way and the editorial in the Manchester Guardian suggesting that he step down as Prime Minister or at least as Minister of Defence had been echoed and re-echoed even in the Houses of Parliament.

Not that he did lacked his own defenders. Other voices pointed out that Italy had lost ships and men in the attack, ships and men that would not be easy to replace and which surely were her last reserves. They told of Italian garrisons in Africa and Greece that would have welcomed new recruits with open arms but now must wither a little more for want of supply and how the new Rome was not strengthened but rather weakened by this new conquest. They revealed the growing distrust between a boastful and intemperate Duce and a cold Caudillo who saw Spain’s long held wish for the return of Gibraltar frustrated by Rome and Berlin’s insistence that the rock remain a fortress under military occupation and how Vichy, for all its collusion and submission, must now look with new eyes at Axis intentions in the Mediterranean.

All this and more was thrown in the faces of his accusers.

But it was a poor politician who had no enemies and those enemies, as once before, combined and the grumbling and the sniping was an ever-present noise which even the foreign papers were beginning to comment on. Radio Berlin sent forth the drawling, hate-filled voice of William Joyce who made much of this seeming fall in British power. It was time to put an end to the division and he planned his campaign with care, choosing his own time to strike, knowing that he had weapons that were yet to be drawn.

So, he asked for a vote of confidence in his government. In this way he would be the attacker and not the defender.

Before breakfast of that day the news broke of the first landings at Tenerife and it was obvious to even the most blind that the road leading to Gibraltar was now firmly closed. The latest trade mission had returned from Washington over burdened with good news and promises of increased deliveries, while the German advances in Russia seemed at least for the moment to have slowed down. The news was uniformly good, disturbingly good for his enemies and the timing had left them precious few hours to regroup.

The confidence debate was, as befitted the Mother of Parliaments loud and acrimonious, but at the division bell only twenty-seven members stood against him and the weed of revolt which had threatened to burst into full bloom was now blasted down to its roots...at least for now.

It had been an altogether satisfactory day and certainly one deserving of a celebratory cigar, large brandy and broad grin. The cigar grew shorter and the brandy diminished in volume, though not in effect and each folder in turn was given the attention it deserved. The thoughts which would eventually lead to a second cigar and a refill of the now empty glass were beginning to form in his head when he came to the last red folder. A neatly cut slip had been pasted on its cover with the single word Beard carefully typed upon it. Inside were photographs, maps, tide tables, designs now fully formed, and long lists of men and ships, aircraft, and guns. And all just waited for a single last word. His word.

The cigar was now forgotten, the brandy remained unpoured as he drank in the scenes that appeared in his head. He could see them all now, lit up by an imagination that even after many decades still held all the passion of youth. He could see the brave men, hear the bullets hiss, smell the smoke of shot and shell, and that same imagination could see the blood and the loss of young lives. Despite that he never hesitated and with a grunt of satisfaction signed his name to the neatly cut slip.

From that moment Beard took its first faltering steps. Soon it would run full tilt at its enemy but before that there was much to be done.

Two of the funnels had gone and rough plating now filled their place. Her long mast that had sloped back at a rakish angle was cut down without ceremony and only burnt deck steel was left to mark its passing. Every useless piece of machinery, every galley, every bunk and store had been ripped out and now lay rusting and forlorn on the dock. She melted away under the bright blue glare of the cutting torches until only a passing resemblance remained of what she once was.

Her sister too had been stripped with speed as the men of Jarrow used long honed skills to rip and tear. Though for her the indignity was less, still she was changed and she too was now fitted for but a single purpose. Two great boats sat on her deck and she bristled with small guns. And still changes were wrought upon them. Armour plate long rejected and condemned to rust was fastened to them in a mad patchwork that defied both sense and beauty and paint of a shade never seen before was hastily slapped onto their sides. Far into the early autumn nights men worked while sweat dripped and sparks flew, but at last their temporary visitors were ready and were towed out and sluggishly moved south.

Heads were shaken at the sight, for it was Jarrow’s pride that any ship of theirs left better than it arrived, and though all could agree there was a great difference in the ships appearance very few believed the changes were for the better. Still there were now empty docks that were destined to be filled with a never-ending stream of stricken ships that needed their wounds healed and soon the two odd ships were forgotten under a layer of new problems and new solutions. It was only later that they realised just what they had done.

She was born on the banks of the Kennebec river in faraway Maine built by men who had only a dawning idea of the true strength of their nation. For years she served with a star flecked flag flying from her stern. Warm water or cold, she was a reminder in steel, brass and bronze that she was her country’s ultimate argument. Then came the years when her heart beat slowed and stopped, when feet no longer trod her decks and cables green with slime tied her to an eternal dock.

But happy release came, though it was bought at a terrible cost. The flag she had proudly borne since birth was hauled down and a new one rose in its stead. Plain white this one was with a blood red cross emblazoned across it and with the new flag came a new name that linked her with a strange and foreign town that lay in a strange and foreign land. A new crew taught her to hunt and to kill, to protect and to guard. She had new sisters now, sisters who taught her traditions that looked back to times when axe wielding men in dragon-headed ships ravaged and burnt their lands and how their ancestors had banded together to serve hearth and home, king and country. And serve she did, and in time a cold reserve turned to respect and the greetings she received from her new sisters were no less despite her foreign birth.

The memories of her old voyages still lived within her and she used them as a spur hoping that in wearing a new flag she was still serving and still protecting her birth land. The thoughts comforted her as she and her sister began the wide loop through the narrow seas that would eventually see their bows pointed south towards the grey waves that were watchmen to the blue inland sea.

He was the third Simon Fraser of recent times, though to his friends he was known only by a word that was a butchered version of his Gaelic name. To his clan he was their sixteenth laird and head of a family that had covered the globe. To the army he was a temporary major and leader of this expedition. To the one hundred and forty-eight men he led he had acquired a new name, that of chief sardine. It was a very apt name for they were packed into a ship that had steel drums and wooden packing cases filling every space. They were cold and a little seasick, for the Atlantic has never been known as a kind ocean and the turning of the seasons had only added to its malice.

But they were chosen men, chosen just as he had been and all of them sat crammed in the long passage way that ran the length of the ship. They were the very best that could be found for he would accept no less than that from anyone including himself. He had the reputation of five hundred years to uphold. For all of that time his family had schemed and plotted, but above all they had warred, sometimes for the Crown sometimes against, but always they had warred.

Officially he and his men were Drake Force, the southernmost component of the far larger Operation Beard. Yet, though small, they too would play their part. For if all went well, they would cause more than a few deaths and more than enough damage to make General Franco to rue the day when he added his name to the list of Britain’s enemies.

He was Simon, Lord Lovat and he was going to war.

She had parted company with her sister who stayed hidden from prying land-based eyes and plunged on into the night. She did not know her destination nor her mission. She knew only that it was important and she would hurt the enemy. And that was