Killing Ground by Douglas Reeman Page B

Even if he owned a car, the petrol ration would have been denied him. There were the local village shops, of course, but if he had swallowed his pride he could have visited one of the several naval establishments. There was one situated quite near, well outside the tempting target of Portsmouth, where he would surely have been offered some extra rations.No, he was not the type.
    Howard’s mother had died immediately after the Great War from the devastating flu epidemic which had followed the Armistice. He could remember little more than a shadow of her now. His brother, Robert, three years his senior, had often tried to describe her to him; instead she had become even more of a stranger.
    Robert was an acting-commander now, on a course in Portland before being offered one of the new escorts, as second-in-command of a whole group. He would likely have found a billet nearby for his wife Lilian. That would mean the Guvnor, as they called their father, was all on his own.
Unless …
There had been another woman after their mother had died; maybe more than one. It was like entering the Navy in this family, he thought; you never really questioned it.
    In his mind he could see him now. So different from here. Spring over Portsdown Hill and in the many villages lying off the Portsmouth Road which sailors had used for centuries.
    The Guvnor had lost himself in his garden, digging for victory, so that he was almost self-supporting. What he did not need he shared with his old chum, Mister Mills. Howard could never recall his being called by any other name. An army veteran from that other terrible war, who nearly caused a riot in their quiet village by running the engine of his little van on Armistice Day while everyone else stood in respectful silence, heads bared, faces sad.
    When someone had accused him of insulting the dead, Mister Mills, not a big man, had seized him by his lapels and had retorted hotly, “What d
’you
know, eh? An’ what do all those po-faced hypocrites know? You bloody well tell me that!”
    He had served in Flanders, the Menin Gate, the lot. He knew well enough. They made a strange but companionable pair, Howard thought.
    A voicepipe muttered tinnily and Sub-Lieutenant Bizley snapped, “Forebridge?”
    Howard paused with an unfilled pipe half drawn from his duffle coat pocket. It was amazing how the past few days had changed Bizley in some way. Tougher, more confident, and yet …
    Bizley faced him, his face and eyebrows wet with dissolving snow.
    â€œW/T, sir. From Admiralty,
Most Immediate. A large enemy surface unit has left Tromsø, heading West.”
    Howard returned to the chart and remarked, “Not many other ways they could go, I’d have thought.” It gave him precious seconds to think, to escape their eyes as they listened to Bizley’s clipped voice.
    â€œWhen? Does it say?”
    He pictured the other escort skippers like himself, the big Canadian in his Tribal Class
Beothuck,
Spike Colvin in their sister-ship
Ganymede,
all studying their charts, measuring the distances, weighing the chances.
    Bizley returned from the voicepipe. “Not known, sir.”
    Howard stared at the jagged outline of Norway’s northwest coast. The big warships had often used the Tromsø anchorage,
Scharnhorst
and
Hipper,
even the biggest of them all,
Bismarck.
It made good sense because of the heavily defended airfield there.
    Perhaps this was the moment the Home Fleet had been anticipating, and their own heavy units were already smashing through the Arctic waters to seek out the enemy, cut them off from their base.
    Over his shoulder he said, “Call Pilot to the bridge, Sub.”
    What men had braved capture and torture to provide this piece of intelligence? But where free people were oppressed, there would always be the brave few to outshine the collaborators and the black marketeers.
    â€œSir?” Treherne’s heavy boots thudded across the bridge