Sword at Sunrise

By Alan Evans

A thrilling story of the greatest achievement in British military history.

When young Richard Langley salvages, against all odds, the doomed Landing Craft that becomes known as Bloody Norah, little does he realise that in just a year’s time both of them will be involved in the greatest combined sea and air assault in history.

Back in Britain, the preparations for Operation Overlord are being finalised. Crucial to the effort will be the dawn landing on Normandy beach, codenamed Sword, and the capture of a fortified chateau under the command of the ruthless Captain Franz Engel.

Success hinges on the contribution of Patrick Ward’s gilder units, Langley and Bloody Norah, and the reconnaissance gathered by nurse turned SOE agent Suzi Jones.

The countdown has begun to their appointment with destiny on the 6th June 1944. D-Day.

A stunning, action-packed novel of the end of the Second World War, for fans of Jack Higgins, Philip McCutchan and Douglas Reeman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Action
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788638616

Alan Evans

Alan Evans was an enthralling British writer of First and Second World War adventure thrillers, mainly based on naval battles. Carefully researched, and with his own experience of active service, the novels skilfully evoke the tension and terror of war. Many of the figures and events are based on real-life models.

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Copyright

Sword at Sunrise by Alan Evans

My thanks go to Messrs Paul Motte-Harrison, J. A. Cresswell and Henry Higgs, all LCT men. Also to John Lambert for plans and the staff of Walton Library for their assistance with research. Finally I would like to acknowledge the mine of information I found in The War of the Landing Craft, by Paul Lund and Harry Ludlam.

Author’s Note

This book is a work of fiction and the characters in it are fictitious. I have used Landing Craft (Tank) numbers 332, 403 and 7011, but for fictional craft. They have no connection with the original ships bearing those numbers. The village of St Florent is fictitious, but anyone who was there might see a resemblance to Colleville.

1

May 1943. Off the North African coast

Just a year to the Big One, the invasion of Europe.

‘She’s an LCT!’ Langley was tall, twenty years old, long-armed and long-legged like a young Gary Cooper in crumpled white shirt and shorts. He shouted the report, binoculars pressed to his eyes, staring out at her on the distant horizon.

Scouse Gilhooley named her but that came later. Richard Langley, Sub-Lieutenant, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, saw her first. Through the glasses he could see she lay under a low cloud of black smoke and there was a heat shimmer above her. He added, ‘She’s on fire in her hold!’

She was a twin of the ship in which he served, LCT 403, but she lay burning and lifeless on the sea. She was a Landing Craft (Tank), a steel shoebox nearly two hundred feet long and thirty-one in the beam, with her engines at one end and at the other a square bow that let down to form a ramp. Between was the hollow, roofless hold of the tank deck, built to carry five 40-ton tanks or ten Shermans. The fire blazed there. The flames were pale in the brassy glare of the midday sun. The Afrika Korps had been driven out of Africa or surrendered just a week ago, but the aircraft of the Luftwaffe still flew from their bases in Sicily and Italy. Langley thought that this looked like their work.

‘Dear God!’ He whispered it to himself, imagining the horror that might lie inside her. He had been first lieutenant for six months now. But there were only two officers aboard those craft anyway, captain and first lieutenant. In this one they treated each other with polite dislike.

‘You’re getting to be a nuisance, Number One! I hope you aren’t going to make a habit of this! You keep bringing things that nobody wants like a dog fetching sticks.’ Lieutenant Ralph Bellanger was captain of LCT 403. While Langley and the rest of his crew dressed in whatever was comfortable to work in, Bellanger wore a spotless white drill shirt and shorts, with his cap cocked on one side of his head at a jaunty angle. He was handsome, smiled a lot and showed his teeth in a grin now, implying that he was joking. Langley did not believe he was. Bellanger went on, ‘Only a week back you found that dinghy with the body in it and we had to carry it into Alex. Bloody thing stank us out!’ His crew listened in shocked silence. Langley stared at him and wondered how he could be so callous.

Bellanger snapped bad-temperedly into the voice-pipe, talking to the helmsman, ‘Port ten.’ It was said reluctantly, but they had to go and look at the ship on fire.

Langley had been standing his watch on the bridge a week ago, as Bellanger said, but the signalman had sighted and reported the dinghy. Langley did not argue because it did not matter. And anyway he had passed that stage with Bellanger. He watched the other craft as they closed it, until they were within a cable’s length and he could see her number painted on the front of her bridge: LCT 332.

Bellanger began to circle her now at that cautious distance of two hundred yards. They found bodies in life jackets floating in the sea but none of them living. Bellanger stopped again and again so the hands could climb down a scrambling net and put a line around each of the bodies in turn. They were hauled up and inboard, then laid out under a tarpaulin in the empty tank deck. All of them were near naked, the clothes burned from them. And they had burned. The hands toiled in the midday heat in silence, appalled. These had been men like themselves.

‘You’ve brought us some more, Number One!’ That was Bellanger shouting down from the bridge. Langley was helping with the work, down on the catwalk that ran along each side of the ‘shoebox’ above the tank deck. In those craft the bridge, engines and accommodation were all right aft with the tank deck stretching forward into the bow.

Langley squinted into the sun, peering up at the bridge. He did not answer at once but took off his cap to run his fingers through his hair. It stood up on end, yellow as straw. He thought that LCT 332 had not sunk nor exploded. So they had to do something about her. Ralph Bellanger’s lips moved, swearing. He changed that to a smile when he saw Langley watching him, but Richard had seen that cursing and exasperation, knew the cause of it. All he said was, ‘I’m ready to go aboard her, sir.’ His voice was startlingly deep for so young a man, and it carried.

Bellanger grumbled, ‘There seems damned little point in that. She’s showing no signs of life, the fire’s gutted her and she’s a danger to shipping. Best to sink her by gunfire so she won’t be a hazard.’

‘We might be able to salvage her and—’

Bellanger cut in: ‘And we might not. I’m not asking some chap to risk his life for a wreck that could go down any minute.’

Langley objected stubbornly, ‘She hasn’t yet.’ And before his captain could refuse again he went on, voice carrying from end to end of the ship, ‘And besides, sir, we’ve only picked up five bodies and she’d have a crew of twelve, same as us. There might be one or two of them below, too badly hurt to come up on deck or make a signal. We can’t…’ He stopped there, did not finish ‘…sink her with them aboard.’ He left the phrase hanging in the air for any of the crew around to hear and complete for themselves.

Bellanger knew they would do that and saw what he had to do, make the best of it. ‘Right, Number One! I think you’re being optimistic and when you’ve seen as many bombed ships as I have… But we’ll have to give it a try.’ He knew his job and now he gave his orders crisply. He was a ruggedly handsome man who cut a bluff, swashbuckling figure with his cap tilted on one side and his seemingly easy-going grin.

Richard Langley dropped down the ladder from the bridge and ducked into the little wardroom to pick up his life belt, thinking: Just in case. Out on deck again he pulled on the belt and picked up a couple of fire extinguishers. A four-foot wide catwalk ran along each side of the hold. He loped along that on the port side until he came to the bow and halted there, fastening the life belt and glancing warily down into the narrowing strip of sea as Bellanger conned his ship in towards the derelict. Two of the hands came running at his bidding to hang fenders over the bow where she would rub against the other. One of them grumbled, ‘We haven’t got any paint to worry about, for Christ’s sake! What does he think she is? The Royal bloody yacht?’

The other warned, ‘You look out for yourself over there, Mr Langley.’

‘I’ll try,’ answered Richard. He held out the two fire extinguishers he had picked up on his way forward: ‘Throw these over to me when I get across, please.’

‘Aye, aye, sir!’

Now the bow was closing the stern of 332, at first frighteningly quickly, then checking and inching in as Bellanger sent the engines of 403 astern then stopped them. With the last of the way on her 403 rubbed her fenders against the rust-streaked after end of the derelict. A shift of the wind suddenly sent a cloud of smoke swirling aft from the fire in her hold. The smoke wrapped around Langley and the two men with him, setting them all coughing and squinting into it, but Langley was poised, ready, and he jumped.

He hurdled the gap clumsily, all arms and legs, and landed on the deck of 332 on his hands and knees. He climbed to his feet, still half-blinded and choked by the smoke and wondered if he had bitten off more than he could chew. But he yelled, ‘Right! Toss ’em over!’

He caught the extinguishers one by one and just in time; Bellanger was already hauling his ship astern, wanting to take her clear of the danger of fire or explosion threatened by the burning craft.

One of the men in the bow said, ‘Him and young Langley don’t like each other, do they?’

The other, older, answered shrewdly, ‘Bellanger wants to be an admiral and to hell with everybody else. Langley knows it and shows his feelings. You wait. Bellanger’ll get rid of him.’

Langley did not stay to watch 403 go but turned and edged forward through the smoke and past the bridge, its paint scorched and blistered, until he could see down into the tank deck. There was the source of the fire – and where the fire had been.

Now he could paint a mental picture of what had happened, just by looking around him. She had been attacked from the air – there were holes from cannon shells punched in the wheelhouse and the deck. Her cargo had been three trucks and one of them, that nearest the bridge, was loaded with petrol in cans. That had been hit and burned. With her engines stopped so she could not manoeuvre, the wind had blown the flames aft. Those of her crew who had survived the air attack had become human torches and jumped into the sea to escape, only to die there from their burns and shock.

But the fire now was only smoke and smouldering embers. There was one truck right forward in the bow, its canopy destroyed and paintwork scorched but otherwise apparently intact. The smoke swirled around Langley again. He choked and coughed, wiped his eyes and asked himself, Can I put that out?

He could see no water in the tank deck. He thought, She’s not holed, then.

He looked for the wounded, first dropping down through the open hatch to the engine room. There were huge holes in the deckhead and the twin Davy Paxman diesel motors looked, to Langley’s eyes, as if they had been attacked with a sledgehammer. That was the work of cannon shells again, of course. Diesel from ruptured fuel lines spattered across the gratings and over a boiler-suited figure that had been the engineer. Cannon shells had done that, too.

He returned to the deck and climbed the ladder to the bridge. The two officers lay there. The four men that were the crews of the two 20mm guns, one on either wing of the bridge, sprawled by the weapons. They were surrounded by used shell cases that rolled and tinkled on the deck as 332 wallowed in the swell. All of these seemed to have died horribly from machine-gun fire. He vomited into the sea before he finished his inspection, hung over the rail then took a breath and turned inboard.

All accounted for. Now he should report to Bellanger, who was eager to get to Malta because his craft was one of twelve in a flotilla. The present commander of the flotilla was moving up into another job any day now and Bellanger as the senior captain should succeed him in command. That was common knowledge. Langley believed Bellanger wanted to be in Malta, in waiting, to grab the job as soon as it was offered to him.

He thought that this nondescript steel box of a ship had survived the air attack and been abandoned by her crew. She was still here. And he thought that there would be petrol in the tank of the truck that had survived so far. As long as the fire smouldered there was a danger that a shift in the wind might spread the blaze again to that truck – and whatever else might be stowed forward, paint, timber or other stores.

Langley climbed down into the tank deck and put out the fire. He used the extinguishers he had brought with him and three more he found near the bridge of his new vessel. He was left with shirt and shorts singed and holed, red and weeping eyes and numerous burns where he had rubbed against hot steel. Once he stumbled and grabbed at the side of the burned-out truck to save himself from falling into the ashes. The truck was still hot enough to take the skin off his hands. He stamped out the last few embers with his white shoes then walked back along the tank deck and climbed back up to the catwalk. Only then did he hear Bellanger’s exasperated bellowing echoing metallic from the tin megaphone that was all they had as a loud-hailer: ‘Mister Langley! What the hell are you doing?’

Langley saw Bellanger had brought the ship in close – because he had repeatedly hailed without result? He made a funnel of his hands that were blistered and raw, and answered, ‘No survivors, sir, and I think all the crew are accounted for, seven of them.’ And before Bellanger could speak. ‘I’ve put out the fire, she’s not holed and we can get her in to Malta. I’ll make ready to receive a tow.’ He did not wait then for his captain to speak but started forward. Bellanger wanted to be on his way without delay, but at the same time he would be tempted by the chance to steam into Malta with a salvaged LCT in tow. And it would be hard for him to refuse now; the whole crew knew the chance was there so if he failed to take it up they would talk about it. And that might be the end of the job of Flotilla Leader for Bellanger.

He only took a few seconds to think it over. ‘Right, Number One!’ his voice rang across the narrowing gap as he brought his ship closer. ‘Stand by to take a tow!’

Langley stood in the bow and bawled again, ‘And could I have another man to spell me at the wheel?’

Bellanger answered testily, ‘Very well!’

His coxswain, a petty officer, stood below the bridge out of earshot. He shook his head and muttered, ‘Watch yourself, Langley, boy. He’s got it in for you.’

A seaman new to the ship asked, ‘What for?’

‘Because Langley’s too good. Bellanger knows his job all right, but that lad is better. Langley doesn’t know it but Bellanger does. And Langley doesn’t like him and Bellanger knows that as well. One of them will have to go and it’ll be the lad. Pity.’

The tow was passed and a man came with it. Langley swore when he saw him: Scouse Gilhooley. He was a young man of Langley’s age but skinny and undersized, so all his clothes looked too big for him. He was shipped as a stoker aboard Bellanger’s craft. There were two stokers and a motor mechanic to stand watches in the engine room. The motor mechanic was a foul-tempered Glaswegian who ruled the engine room with an iron hand. His bellow coming out of the engine-room hatch as he berated Gilhooley had become familiar: ‘Ye’re a thickheid! A bluidy amachoor! Ye’ve got certificates? Pieces o’ bluidy paper’ll dae ye nae guid oot here! Ye can’t dae bugger-all on yer own, have ter be telt iverything! Ye useless gowk!’ And Gilhooley was sullen, uncooperative and kept to himself, the odd man out. On the few occasions Langley had given him an order or spoken to him he had obeyed only lethargically or answered in monosyllables.

Now, as the stern of the other craft eased towards Langley, with the two men standing ready with the steel shackle of the towing hawser, Gilhooley peered gloomily into the narrowing gap then scowled across at Langley, who thought with a sinking heart – it would be him. Of course, Bellanger had sent him the man most easily spared, the one he wanted to be rid of.

Langley shouted to Gilhooley, ‘Come on, then, man! Jump!’ There was a moment when the two craft rubbed together and Scouse stepped over. Langley grabbed him and pulled him inboard. Then together they heaved in the shackle and the first few feet of the wire towing hawser before the other craft drifted away. They made it fast, Gilhooley being a necessary, extra pair of hands, but doing only what he was told. When that was done he stood back and waited for orders.

Langley started aft and called, ‘Shake it up! We’ve got a few jobs to do!’ And thought, He won’t like this one. Nor would Langley himself; the corpse in the dinghy had been the first dead man he had seen.

Gilhooley looked down into the tank deck as they walked along the catwalk and then up to the bridge that was pockmarked by cannon fire. He muttered, ‘Bloody Norah!’

Langley said drily, ‘That’s not a bad name for her.’

But when they came to the bridge and the gun positions he heard Gilhooley’s sharp intake of breath.

They collected the torn bodies with horror, but as gently as they could, because they were young men like themselves. They laid them on the tarpaulin aft of the bridge, another tarpaulin spread over them. The body in the engine room was last and worst. They had to haul the man up on a line and realised the full meaning of the term ‘deadweight’. And then Gilhooley vomited over the side. Langley told him, ‘If it’s any consolation I dumped my breakfast over there too.’

Gilhooley weakly muttered an obscenity.

Bellanger was bawling furiously again. ‘What’s the delay, Mr Langley? We’re ready to get under way!’

Langley looked at Gilhooley, sweating and pallid under his tan, and asked him, ‘All right now?’ Gilhooley nodded and Langley told him, ‘See if you can find yourself a drink of something. You’ll feel a bit better. And fetch me some as well.’

Gilhooley muttered, ‘Won’t be owt worth having on this old cow.’ But he followed Langley into the deckhouse under the bridge. In the passage there he turned right and slouched off to the galley. Langley turned left and passed the captain’s little cabin. He pulled open the door into the wheelhouse that was right under the bridge, stepped inside and took the helm. Bellanger moved ahead and the towing hawser straightened. There was a jerk that sent a shudder through the craft and then Bloody Norah was under way. Langley steered her in Bellanger’s wake and now she had some life about her, albeit artificial, as she rose and fell to the seas.

And she was his. He was no longer just the first lieutenant, engaged in a long-running battle of wits with Ralph Bellanger, but in command. He laughed at that, in spite of his empty stomach and the pain of his burns. Captain of a ship with a one-man crew, and that man in a permanent state of near-mutiny!

He looked round from the wheel and saw Gilhooley staring at him. Langley said, ‘Sorry. Just thought of something funny.’

Gilhooley waited a few seconds, but when Langley did not explain, he shrugged and held out a thick white china mug. ‘Found some tea an’ made a brew.’ Then he caught Langley’s eye on him and added, ‘Sir.’

Langley lifted one hand from the wheel and took the mug. The tea was strong, hot and sweet with tinned milk. He sucked at it gratefully, suddenly realising that he had been labouring and sweating rivers through the heat of the day, was parched and hungry. Then he saw that Gilhooley was staring at the wheel and there was blood on the spokes where he had held it.

Gilhooley said, ‘What’ve you done to your hands?’

‘I burned them a bit.’

‘They look bad to me.’ Scouse pulled a face then said, ‘I found these an’ all.’ Now he held out a tin of biscuits. Langley set the mug down on a ledge and took one. They munched together until the tin was empty.

Langley had used the time to think. He was not ready to surrender the wheel. He told Gilhooley, ‘Those engines looked to be in a right mess to me, but I’m not a mechanic.’

Gilhooley sniffed. ‘You were right, anyway. Knocked to bits, they are.’

‘Can’t you do anything with them?’ And before Gilhooley could answer, Langley went on, ‘Look, I’ll see to things up here for the time being and you have a go at those engines.’

He got a shrug and, ‘If you want.’ Then Gilhooley caught his eye again and finished, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ He gathered up the empty mugs and biscuit tin then slouched out of the wheelhouse.

Langley stayed at the wheel all through that afternoon and into the evening as Bloody Norah plugged on westward at the end of the tow. He finally decided to call Gilhooley up from the engine room when there were only a couple of hours daylight left. His hands were hurting him and sticking to the wheel. He had to wrench them free, painfully, again and again.

It was then that Gilhooley shouldered in through the wheelhouse door. He carried a mug in one hand again, and in the other a plate with sandwiches. ‘Found this lot. Only corned beef an’ a bit o’ mustard. And these.’ He held up some bandages and a tube of ointment. ‘It says it’s good for burns.’

So he smeared each of Langley’s hands in turn as he held the wheel and wrapped them in the bandages.

‘Thank you.’ Langley eyed the sandwiches and realised he was ravenous, but asked, ‘What about yourself?’

‘Had some… sir.’

Langley said, ‘I want you to take the wheel for a bit.’

Scouse recoiled as if avoiding a bite from a dog. ‘Me?’

‘There’s nobody else. Here, get hold of it.’ And when Gilhooley reluctantly gripped the spokes, Langley told him, ‘Just watch her head and the tow.’ From the wheelhouse they could only see the ramp in the bow, the first few feet of the tow and the tip of 403’s mast. The other craft towing them was hidden by the lift of the bow. ‘Be ready to put the helm over because she has a tendency to yaw, but go easy, don’t overdo it.’

He watched Gilhooley steer as he ate the sandwiches. The corned beef was warm and semi-glutinous but he was used to that. He had to grab one-handed at the wheel a couple of times because Scouse was overcautious to begin with, but then he gained a little confidence and made a good enough job of it. So when Langley had drained his mug he said, ‘I’m going to take a look round, maybe have a wash. Yell out if you want me.’

But first he walked forward along the catwalk and checked on the tow for any sign of chafing. He found none and from there he went to the officers’ heads, aft of the galley, found soap and a towel and washed. That left the bandages damp but he decided they would soon dry. On his way out he passed through the little wardroom, with its three-foot-long table and the six-foot-long settees on either side that doubled as beds. A shirt lay on one of the settees. It looked clean and intact, far different to his own that had huge holes scorched in it and stank of burning. The same could be said of the life belt. He took the clean shirt with him – and found a half-written letter under it, abandoned when the machine-gunning started. There were dog-eared photographs of smiling girls stuck up on the bulkhead. He came out of there sick at heart.

He stood on the catwalk looking down into the tank deck to see if there were any signs of fire breaking out again. As he did so, he stripped off the life belt and shirt, balled them and set them aside. He pulled on the new shirt and it felt cool against his skin.

He nodded with satisfaction then, because there were neither smoke nor flames in the hold. He walked on and finally peered into the engine room to see what, if anything, Gilhooley had done. The gratings were littered with chunks of machinery. It was as if the engines had disintegrated. Langley withdrew, appalled, and climbed up to the bridge. From there he could look forward over the length of the tank deck. He thought that she still looked a mess: ‘Bloody Norah!’ But she was no longer on fire and she was sound. He muttered, ‘I think we can get you home, Bloody Norah, old girl.’

He returned to the wheelhouse and asked Gilhooley casually, ‘Think those engines are a job for the dockyard?’

Scouse sniffed and said gloomily, ‘More like a breaker’s yard… sir. I reckon they weren’t too clever afore those cannon shells hit ’em.’ But he went back to them when Langley took over the wheel again. Richard remembered then that he had left his burnt shirt and life belt out on the deck. He shrugged; he would pick them up later.

He saw a small figure appear at the masthead of 403. It hung there for a minute or so and he thought he recognised the coxswain, wondered what he was doing. Then he saw the figure descend out of sight, leaving a red light, pale in the dusk, at the top of the mast. The coxswain was looking ahead.

So was Richard Langley. He would have to sleep and so would Gilhooley. They would have to stand watch and watch about, four hours at the wheel, four off. Night was falling now and the sea was getting up. He thought he would stand this first watch until he saw how the weather was shaping. The darkness closed in and the craft ahead of him faded to nothing but a blurred square of deeper darkness, marked only by the single red pinprick of light at her masthead. She was blacked out because there were enemy submarines operating in these waters.

He held Bloody Norah on her course at the end of the tow as the wind strengthened and the bow crashed into bigger and bigger seas. Just short of midnight there was a change in her motion. For a minute or two he didn’t realise the cause, only felt that there was a sluggishness about the feel of the helm as if she wasn’t answering. Then it came to him as he looked for the red masthead light and found it gone. The tow had broken under the pressure of the wind and seas. Bloody Norah was left wallowing heavily in the sea as he had found her, a powerless hulk.

For what it was worth, he lashed the wheel, then staggered forward along the catwalk, shifting from handhold to handhold as she rolled. She was shipping the big seas in over her side, threatening to tear him loose and throw him down into the tank deck. Half the time he was under water as a huge wave broke over him. When he finally got to the bow, it was to find it a fruitless exercise. He only confirmed what he had guessed. The shackle of the tow was still there but the wire dangled loosely over the bow, straight up and down.

He made his way back to the wheelhouse and tried to keep her head to the sea by use of the rudder but that was hopeless. He could see water slopping about in the tank deck now, glistening black in the night and creaming, and more falling into it with every minute that passed. He shouted into the voice-pipe to the engine room, again and again, ‘Gilhooley! Gilhoo-ooley!’

And finally heard him answer, ‘’Ello?… Is that you, sir?’

Who did he expect? Langley shouted, ‘Get up here, Gilhooley!’

The answer came squawking, ‘Sir, the engines…’

Langley was not in a mood for argument. ‘Never mind the bloody engines. The tow’s broken. I’m trying to keep her head to sea but it’s no good and she’s taking water aboard by the ton. I don’t want you down there when she fills up!’ He wondered briefly what they would do then, without a boat or raft? She carried a floatnet, as all those craft did, but that was no more than a net with cork floats at every knot to give it buoyancy. You were supposed to throw it