New England 04 - Remember Brave Achilles, page 19
Apparently, the submersible – at this stage there was inevitably no little doubt about its actual provenance, one suggestion was that it was a vessel of the Armada de Nuevo Granada – had dived bow first into the sea bed and its stern was still above water, enabling the rescue of a handful of her men. Had it not been from the intelligence which might be wrung from the survivors Collingwood would happily have ordered his people to feed the wretches to the sharks. As it was, Indomitable, unable to steam had anchored while her list to starboard was corrected by counter-flooding, and damage control and engineering teams laboured to stem the ingress of water, and to get her back under way.
No precise casualty figures were yet available but mercifully, with the great ship having been closed up at battle stations, less than twenty deaths and serious injuries had been suffered. That said, it was already clear that Indomitable’s part in the new war was already over. Collingwood’s engineering staff was busy making arrangements to ready a floating dock at the St John’s River base in Florida. Ocean-going tugs at Bermuda and Norfolk were on standby if the great ship was unable to proceed under her own steam, and already facilities were being readied at Mobile Bay in the event Indomitable had to be towed inshore to be patched up before proceeding to Florida.
“What’s going on down at the Inagua Islands?” Collingwood inquired; his voice quiet with thoughtfulness.
“The Spanish, a mixed Cuban and Dominican force, we think now,” he was informed, “have landed three separate forces and have clearly achieved a decisive lodgement on Great Inagua, sir.”
Collingwood nodded.
What the Devil were the blighters doing throwing thousands of men and at least a dozen major surface units at a couple of sand-covered rocks which were – the salt flats on the larger island excepted – strategically irrelevant. The harbour at Matthew Town was small, ill-equipped and there was no militarily viable airstrip on either island. Tactically, as a stepping stone to the Turks and Caicos Islands a case could be made – although, hardly a compelling one - for investing the mostly barren archipelago but…
It was hard to get inside of a medieval mind!
But his enemy was not thinking like a late-twentieth century military planner; his stratagems were not those of a modern admiral or general, uncluttered by contemplation of the juxtaposition of the air-sea-land theatre of operations but, it seemed, by slashing, bull-like aggression, not applied consistently or against a particular objective, rather wildly, at this and then that objective…almost as much for show as for military advantage. There was a randomness, an unpredictability about the deployments of the Triple Alliance that had already convinced many of Collingwood’s staffers that they were dealing with an angry giant, incapable of delivering rapier-like blows to the heart…
Collingwood was not seduced by this notion.
Granted, only an imbecile was going to believe that taking possession of, say, Grand Turk was worth the candle. Surely, southern Florida was in the enemies’ sights, anything else was a wasteful diversion. Unless, of course, the object of the exercise was not to take, or to hold territory, per se, rather to attract, in the manner of honey to a bee swarm, the Atlantic Fleet’s main striking power down into Bahamian waters within range of the air forces on Cuba and Santo Domingo?
And of course, those bloody submarines!
Project Poseidon was only rarely out of Cuthbert Collingwood’s thoughts. One part of him ached to deploy its incomparable ‘assets’ against the Spanish, settle the triple Alliance’s hash in an afternoon; the sane half of his brain told him that to so do risked steaming at full speed straight down the road to perdition.
So, maddening as it was to have to fight, for the moment at least, with one hand tied behind his back – not to mention his ankles metaphorically chained together – he was reconciled to doing what needed to be done solely with the tools he had to hand, and in the coming weeks and months, because this was going to be a long slog, those men, ships and aircraft his principals in Whitehall saw fit to place in his hands.
The torpedoing of the Indomitable added an unwanted complication to the situation map; a shock and a complication which he suspected would prompt debate among those who knew the full extent, and capabilities of Project Poseidon to question whether or not, the partial unveiling of the monster they had created, ought not to be revealed to cut short the coming war. That, the C-in-C Atlantic Fleet, guessed would be predicated by the Government’s assessment of how urgently the German Empire needed to be ‘warned off’.
In the meantime, Indomitable, gallant old ship that she was, was badly damaged, and had to be recovered to a safe port through hundreds of miles of potentially hostile waters. That would, of itself, demand the diversion of significant resources from the forces now converging on the Caribbean.
First the Achilles outrage and the invasion of Jamaica.
Then the occupation of Great Inagua.
Now the Indomitable was out of the fight.
And the war had hardly begun!
“You say that at least a couple of the old Ferdinands are involved in the operations off Inagua?” Collingwood asked, thinking out aloud as his mind ranged over other great issues, far, far away from the low-lying, forgotten islands of that sparsely populated archipelago.
The CAF had flown and continued to fly a shuttle program of Albatross aerial reconnaissance missions high above Cuba, Santo Domingo and the seas between those lands and the Florida Keys.
“What about those blasted German cruisers?”
“Guantanamo Bay is virtually deserted, sir.”
The C-in-C grunted, held his peace.
“We anticipate receiving the latest reconnaissance pictures from Jamaica in the next hour or so, sir. Apparently, the Albatross tasked with that mission has just landed.”
Cuthbert Collingwood realised that he must seem to be brooding overmuch to his hard-working, hard-pressed staffers. With an effort he forced a smile.
“Everything always takes longer than you think,” he quirked ruefully. “Especially, in war, gentlemen.” He moved on. “Perseus is still on schedule to clear Norfolk by dawn tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir.”
Back in London the First Lord of the Admiralty was already coming under pressure to ‘jog Collingwood’s arm.’ That was not going to happen. The C-in-C Atlantic Fleet had no intention of deploying his ships piecemeal in the manner of a man plugging successive cracks in a dyke with fingers, hands, arms and so forth. The object of the exercise was, in the following order, to take command of the seas between the Delta and the Floridian isthmus, hold the line of the Bahamas, and thirdly, by patrolling the surrounding seas of other imperial colonies and protectorates in the eastern Caribbean – the Leeward and Windward Islands – to limit the spread of the oceanic war. Once the conflict was contained within the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, regardless of what transpired on the ground in the South West, thereafter, it would simply be a matter of – boa-constrictor like – squeezing the life out of the Triple Alliance and its collaborators. Needless to say, there would be fleet and raiding actions by his ships and aircraft, and if the opportunity arose, he fully intended to seek decisive surface encounters with enemy forces. However, what he was not about to do was rush in like a bull in a china shop!
Not least because with the Ulysses and the Perseus in hand he possessed the priceless advantage of having two highly mobile major seaborne airfields at his disposal. In the old days the big ships would have steamed over the horizon and blasted away, these days his big ships need never go into harm’s way other than when the candle was well and truly worth it.
Of course, Indomitable was already as good as removed from the chess board. Worse, if that blasted submarine turned out to be of German design, or to have had any more of the Kaiserliche Marine’s bloody ‘advisors’ on it, there would be Hell to pay!
He would worry about that later.
He had requested the latest underwater – echo-location and listening technologies – to be installed on his ships soon after he had assumed command at Norfolk, that was eighteen months ago and he was still waiting.
Again, the underwater detection technologies, digital communication capabilities and remotely guided weapon systems under development and already deployed as part of Project Poseidon, would have been of incalculable value to the men manning the ships escorting his aircraft carriers, battleships and cruisers but all those systems were still so deeply classified that no inkling of their very existence had yet leaked out.
One fights wars with the ships, aircraft and men one has; not the ones one wishes one had!
Presently, Indomitable’s escorts were equipped with 1950s hydrophones and half-a-dozen ‘dumb’ depth charges likely to blow the stern off a ship when they were rolled overboard. If the submersible which had attacked Indomitable had been in deeper water the damned thing would almost certainly have got away.
Collingwood was careful not to allow his existential angst to surface. If ever there was a time for cool heads and reasoned judgements, this was it.
Back in England, the twenty-thousand-ton assault ships Delhi and Madras were loading war stores and over two thousand elite Royal Marine Commandos at Devonport, as he ruminated on the next phase of operations. The Admiralty had already promised him another clutch of cruisers and destroyers, although frankly, he had enough to be going on with as things stood. Moreover, his seaborne logistics train was adequate to maintain approximately two-thirds of his present ships at sea, regardless of the intensity of operations; so, he had no need of the extra fuel, provisions or the ammunition demands inherent in rushing reinforcements to a theatre of war in which at present he felt himself to be adequately supplied.
Obviously, if hostilities went on for a protracted period those reinforcements would allow other fleet units to rest, refit and take on board new drafts; but that was several weeks down the line. Right now, he had what he needed to hand and he intended to concentrate on the most effective, and ruthless employment of those forces.
Losing Indomitable was unfortunate; it was in no way critical.
Whereas, losing one of his big fleet carriers…
Well, his admirals knew better than to unnecessarily put either the Ulysses or the Perseus in harm’s way.
Not that any of the pre-planned war missions now rapidly coming to fruition required any of his big ships to operate in narrow, possibly submarine or mine-infested waters. Once clear of the Mississippi Delta, Indomitable would have been out of reach of submarines and operating in waters too deep for bottom anchored mines.
Indomitable had just been unlucky.
“Sir, this has just come in,” an aide apologised, hesitantly, almost guiltily, holding out a message flimsy.
Collingwood took the note.
He read it, inwardly digested its contents in silence.
The land offensive in the South West had begun.
Several, multi-division or brigade sized incursions across the demilitarized zone south of the Border had been reported and confirmed at places tens and hundreds of miles apart. The scale of the attack was massive, unprecedented and defied all previous intelligence assessments. Colonial forces were falling back all along the Border and a number of CAF airfields had already been heavily bombed.
Worse, there was another flimsy awaiting the C-in-C’s attention.
Collingwood read it.
“Jamaica has fallen,” he said, looking up. “The garrison commander surrendered the island to prevent further civilian deaths at zero-nine-three-zero hours local this morning.”
Nobody really wanted to meet the C-in-C’s eye.
He understood why, and thought no less of any man for doing whatever he might to conceal his shame…and his shock.
“Gentlemen,” Collingwood said, his tone oddly upbeat.
Several of the men around him bore the scars, physical and psychic of one or other of the Empire’s ‘little colonial wars’, of clashes in the Hindu Kush along the North West Frontier, or from cutting out operations in the Sunda Strait, sharp actions with pirates in the Indian Ocean, or from thankless peacekeeping duties in the wilds of Africa. The Pax Britannia was a thing best experienced in Northern Europe, elsewhere the price of Empire was paid, more often than not, in blood and grief. There were mutinies to be put down, riots to quell, insurgents to be rooted out, ‘policing duties’ to be performed, frequently onerously at no little moral peril. And then there was the constant training, preparing for wars that mercifully, usually never came to pass. So, what with one thing and another, the men in the Situation Room at the heart of the great, sprawling Norfolk Navy base, were not ‘Imperial Virgins’, unsullied by the reality of military life in the Empire: to do or die was the unspoken motto of all who served the Crown, and everybody present knew men, sometimes close friends, or brothers, uncles, cousins, who had already paid the ultimate price in some godforsaken place nobody had ever heard of before, invariably in glad sacrifice in the service of a thing greater than themselves which they had been sworn to protect and defend since boyhood.
Therefore, everybody in the room was a member of the same brotherhood; and right now, each man was wondering what it must have cost their brothers, and sisters, in Jamaica to lay down their arms.
The fate of the Achilles, and of those men who had died on board the Indomitable was simply the price of Empire; surrender was another thing. In yester year it would have damned a man’s name in perpetuity but today, well, had the World really changed so much of late?
Possibly, yet the stain of surrender, of not fighting to the death that was, well, quixotic, a bad precedent which risked giving the King’s enemies the mistaken impression that the Empire was not quite what it once was. Nobody in the Situation Room was prepared to concede that notion for a single moment, it was unthinkable.
“Gentlemen,” Collingwood repeated, waiting until each man had snapped out of his understandable introspection. “We shall not dwell on these setbacks. Nor will we apportion blame, culpability of any colour, or speak ill of brothers who have acted as they honestly, in good faith thought best in circumstances which only they were in a position to fully appreciate. In times such as these it is ever-more important that we trust in each other. We serve to preserve civilisation and to confound the King’s enemies. This we shall do.”
He looked around the circle of faces, making unhurried eye contacts.
“We will hear more bad news in the days to come,” he sighed, smiled wanly, “but in the end we shall prevail.”
This said the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet turned to practical matters.
He clapped his hands together.
The navel gazing was over for the rest of the war.
“I think that what the situation calls for,” he declared, “is a nice soothing cup of tea!”
Chapter 22
Monday 10th April
Little Inagua, West Indies
Twice the Dominicans had tried to send launches through the gap in the reef to put men ashore to find and outflank Abe. Both times he had fired into the oarsmen, one shot killing or wounding two, sometimes three men. The first boat had turned away, the second had carried on with its dead, wounded and living coming to grief on the unforgiving reef as the wind picked up from the south east and dashed them on the razor-sharp coral. Several of the bodies had now washed up on the beach, others were floating in the surf.
One five-round stripper clip loaded.
Three spare bullets left in my pocket…
The first flurry of sniping and shooting on the two boats attempting to pass through the reef apart, Abe had spent most of the day taking occasional shots from new concealments, some as far as half-a-mile distant from his original scrape in the dunes.
Many times, sustained bursts of machine gun and rifle fire from the Reina Eugenie had raked the sand near him, more often the shooting had been blind, directed hundreds of yards down the beach.
Twice during the day, he had sought rain pools, puddles from which to slake his raging thirst, each time giving the Spaniards an uneasy, hour or so long, fraught respite.
About an hour ago, with the sun setting, one of the ironclad cruisers had anchored astern of the battleship and begun to systematically hose bullets along the shoreline. Now and then rounds whispered over Abe’s head as he slid back into the undergrowth and crawled back to where Ted Forest had, hopefully, safely spent the day.
With the sunset the big ships would surely send more men ashore; angry men seeking vengeance. He and his friend needed to be far inland by then.
Abe was desperately thirsty again, and trembling with hunger. He was as near to exhaustion as a man could be and still, at some level, function. Still he scrambled through the brush, night was falling fast as it always did in these latitudes.
Ted Forest almost shot him as he emerged from the darkness.
Abe collapsed on the sand, breathless.
“I thought they must have got you, old man,” his friend confessed.
“They’ll get us both if we stay here,” Abe gasped, the words cracking in his dry throat.
Ted Forest pressed a canteen into his shaking hands.
“It’s half-full,” he explained. “I knew you’d need a drink when you got back!”
Abe drained it in one draft.
The ships off shore had stopped shooting once it was full night and the ships had gone dark, not a light showing. Abe thought that was the first intelligent thing the Spanish had done all day!
Spanish…New Granadans, Cubans, Dominicans, Hispanics, they were all Spaniards, sons of the Conquistadors who had raped the Indies all those centuries ago. Until then, Abe had never really subscribed to the implicit racialism, a sense of some God-given moral superiority most people in the First Thirteen wrapped about them like a flag when it came to the…Spaniards. Even now, he felt a little guilty, dirty thinking of the men he had killed as somehow lesser, meaner folk.
