An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War Read online

  “Come on,” he said, “out of here,” and blushing and taking her hand hurried her to the door.

  They collected their coats and his suitcase from the cloakroom and Fingal helped Deirdre into hers. She turned and faced him as he shrugged into the new duffle he’d bought this morning. “Last hug,” she said, then moved into his arms and held him tightly. “Look after yourself. Please.”

  He held her hand and together they went out onto York Street.

  As he settled her into one of the recently established W. J. McCausland’s Auto Taxis and paid the driver, he looked at the love of his life, into sad, brimming blue eyes, at her soft lips, her trim figure, and said, “You look after yourself, darling. I’ll get leave one day and until then I’ll write. I promise.”

  “I’ll not say ‘good-bye,’ Fingal,” she said. “Just, ‘until the next time.’ I love you, a cuishle. Take care.”

  And Surgeon Lieutenant Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, not wanting to see her tears, heart like lead in his chest, closed the taxi door, clenched his teeth—and went to war.

  6

  Come Cheer Up My Lads, ’tis to Glory We Steer

  Thank the Lord the open motorboat, a thirty-six-foot pinnace Warspite had sent to collect Fingal from Greenock Docks, had three dodgers. The canvas screens were in place and each at least provided some protection from the elements. He sat amidships on a bench behind the shelter nearest to the stern and shivered, paying little attention to any possible view ahead. He was tired, cold, and distinctly out of sorts.

  The ferry crossing last night from Larne to Stranraer had been rough and the Scottish boarding house there damp and draughty. A six A.M. train, which had covered the hundred miles to Greenock at a crawl, was crowded. He’d missed lunch, and the couldn’t-care-less-sir petty officer in charge of arranging transport seemed to think that delivering junior officers to His Majesty’s battleships ranked a good deal lower on the scale of importance than sending a month’s supply of toilet paper to an armed trawler. Fingal had languished cold and bored in a rickety dockside hut.

  Spray struck his cheek. He hunched his shoulders, but his convoy coat (naval jargon for duffle), provided little protection from the wind. The coat was so new he’d not even had time to put his rank shoulder straps on.

  He shivered. What had been a breeze had kicked up to a gale howling down from the mist-shrouded Rosneath Peninsula across the upper Firth of Clyde. All he could hear was the puttering of the engine, a whistling noise as the tempest tore over some projection on the boat, and the constant slapping against the hull of a vicious chop. Spray was being torn in tattered streamers from the wave crests. The little vessel was making heavy weather of the last part of the shore-to-ship voyage.

  “Hang on, sir,” a deep voice roared. “Not much longer.” The boat’s cox’n was a leading seaman. The killick badge on his left upper sleeve, an anchor fouled by a rope wrapped loosely round it, denoted his rank. He was the possessor of one of the biggest ginger beards Fingal had ever seen. The man stood at the helm as unconcerned as if he’d been on a parade ground ashore.

  The pinnace pitched and rolled and took water green over the bows to be smashed into wind-driven spume against the canvas screen. Fingal pitied the able seaman who crouched behind it there. Another AB of, O’Reilly guessed, nineteen or twenty shared the space aft. Those two sailors’ main function was to handle the bow and stern lines when docking or casting off.

  Fingal tasted salt mixed with a suggestion of bile in the back of his throat. There was a churning in his guts. Perhaps it was no bad thing he’d not eaten for a while. He’d last had sea legs in 1931 and hoped he wasn’t, like Admiral Lord Nelson, going to be seasick in harbour. Fingal knew from his previous nautical experience that fixing your eyes on something immobile, like a horizon, could help avert seasickness. He moved along the bench to the port side and stuck his head around the dodger.

  He had to grab his cap before the wind took it. The gale stung his cheeks and made his eyes water. The sight he saw made them widen and his mouth gape. “Holy Mother of God,” he said, and was barely aware he had spoken. The earlier sea mist that had shrouded his view from the dock had been whipped away. Tail of the Bank, the main anchorage in the Firth of Clyde, lay open to his gaze and before him were more ships at anchor than he had ever seen collected in one place. Lines from Henry Newbolt’s “Little Admiral” came to mind.

  Brag about your cruisers like leviathans—

  A thousand men apiece down below

  How many and who were the men in those grey, grim giants? Some would be career navy, but many would be conscripted “hostilities only” ratings, civilians drafted to serve in the war. They’d be barely trained, resentful, scared, and, like him, missing their loved ones. And yet, he suspected, they’d also be not a little proud, as deep down he was, to be following in the footsteps of Admirals Nelson, Howe, Bowen. And every man jack, volunteer or conscript, would be facing immersion in the ocean, fire, explosion, flying metal fragments, bullets, and disease, all things that might kill—or horribly wound. Nor would they be immune to the regular ills of the flesh.

  He took a deep breath. And it would be his job, with the two other doctors and one dentist of Warspite’s medical branch, to tend to the 1,200 crew of the battleship, and any casualties brought aboard. What the hell did I ever learn at medical school to prepare me for that? The half of sweet bugger all. He hoped he’d be up to the job.

  He studied more closely the largest ship he could see and recognised the Home Fleet’s flagship from seeing her description in Jane’s Fighting Ships. Shore boats fussed round her. HMS Nelson, where Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, GCB, DSO, flew his flag, was an imposing if unusual sight. She carried her main armament of nine sixteen-inch guns on an elongated foredeck ahead of the tall bridge tower and single funnel.

  The anchorage was full to overflowing and she was surrounded by cruiser squadrons and destroyer flotillas. Nearby he saw a single pipsqueak among the bigger ships, a Flower-class corvette, about two hundred feet overall. Many of these escort vessels were being built in Belfast. Seeing her, small among giants, but from his own home country, gave Fingal a twinge of homesickness, even loneliness.

  In the merchant anchorage, a convoy was forming with ships anchored in lines. Part of one bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, perhaps? And that little corvette was going to help escort them across the Atlantic? Good luck.

  He staggered as a higher-than-usual wave made the pinnace heel, but managed to grab hold.

  Around them and among the anchored fleet were harbour craft, drifters shuttling crew back and forth, launches, supply boats and, he noticed, an admiral’s barge putting out from Nelson—all battling the waves. The wind was freshening.

  He watched as the pinnace rounded the battleship’s stern, and as it did another great grey warship slowly was unmasked. Grey, yet of a lighter shade than the other vessels of the Home Fleet. HMS Warspite was still wearing her Mediterranean colour scheme. She’d been there at the outbreak of hostilities. They were approaching her at an angle from astern on the ship’s port side. Fingal knew that the aft starboard gangway was reserved for admirals. To his relief, the great hull was acting as a windbreak and the waters in her lee were relatively calm. His nausea began to settle.

  His gaze was attracted to the ship’s aft fifteen-inch turrets, designated X and Y. The measurement referred to the diameter of the rifles’ bore. The barrels were nearly fifty-five feet long. The pinnace was close enough so he could make out the tompions, plugs that were kept in the guns’ muzzles to keep salt water out. On each was embossed the ship’s emblem, the green woodpecker or “spight.” The first HMS Warspite had actually been Warspight and had been Sir Walter Raleigh’s at Cadiz in 1596.

  This modern Warspite, the seventh to bear the proud name, would be his home for God only knew how long.

  The cox’n answered a hailed challenge from the deck above and brought the pinnace alongside a boarding platform. Fingal craned to look up at the battlewag
on’s towering cliff of a side. It seemed a very long way up. His job was to get out of the pinnace without falling overboard—and it did happen—and scale the stairs. Fingal realised that he’d now have to remember and use the arcane language of sailors. It was called an accommodation ladder even though it was a staircase. At the top he’d stand at attention, salute the bridge, salute the officer of the day, and report himself. After that, naval routine would take over.

  Surgeon Lieutenant Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly smiled, thanked the pinnace’s coxs’n, and stepped onto the platform. One of the ABs followed, carrying Fingal’s suitcase.

  As he climbed, he slipped a hand into his duffle coat pocket. His pipe and tobacco pouch were still there, but when he thrust his hand lower, he found something beneath that he’d not noticed before. He hesitated on a stair, pulled out an envelope, and read, To my darling Fingal, in Deirdre’s neat handwriting. She must have slipped it there during their last embrace in the hotel lobby. He’d open it the minute he was alone, but the officer waiting on deck for the new arrival would not be pleased if Fingal spent any longer coming aboard. He started to climb, sad but accepting that, for the duration at least, love must take second place to war.

  * * *

  How in the hell would he ever find his way around this floating maze? The young seaman who’d brought Fingal’s suitcase from the pinnace had been detailed by the officer of the day to “Take this medical officer and his luggage to his cabin and then to the PMO. He’ll be in the sick bay.”

  Principal medical officer—PMO. O’Reilly had to remind himself of the term as they walked away along the quarterdeck from the stern through a doorway. O’Reilly corrected himself—hatch. “Upper deck,” said the young man. “There’s another deck, the foc’s’le deck, above this and a couple of gunnery control towers above that again. Going for’ard there’s the funnel, then the command bridge.” They went past watertight hatches along a corridor.

  Over all hung a pervasive, ever-present stink of fuel oil. And the sounds: the humming of intake fans supplying air to the machinery spaces, a metallic ringing of hammers, the soughing of the wind through rigging, the splashing of bilge water being discharged and, neverendingly, although her motion was not nearly as lively as that of the pinnace, the great ship rose and fell as the seas rumbled under her keel.

  His guide, a stocky, bowlegged young man who Fingal now knew was AB Alfie Henson from Harrogate in Yorkshire, seemed to have overcome his initial shyness and was providing a running commentary. The younger man’s tone was slightly patronising. He reckons I’m a naval innocent from the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Fingal thought. They were amateurs, and mostly had been yachtsmen in civvy life or a few needed professionals like doctors, lawyers, and chaplains. In 1939, they’d only have had ten weeks’ basic training at HMS King Alfred, a shore base in Sussex. When Fingal had enquired of Henson about his service, he had replied, “Five years I’ve been in the Andrew…’ He’d paused to see if the naval slang had been understood. Not one to let the patient, or in this case a junior rating, get the upper hand, O’Reilly said, “The Grey Funnel Line?” the other irreverent title used for the Royal Navy.

  “Right, sir.” A little more deference. “I joined the navy as a lad. I was fifteen.” He grinned to reveal a missing lower incisor. “I do like it, sir. I want to make a career of it.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  They went down a staircase—companionway. The old lingo was returning to him, along with a cascade of memories from nine years before. “We’re on the main deck, now, sir. Port side. This big bugger amidships is the barbette of X turret.” Henson pointed at an arc of a steel cylinder that clearly continued beneath the deck on which they stood and on above the deckhead overhead. “And this, over to port,” he walked to a bulkhead, along which was a row of doors spaced at regular intervals, “officers’ berths. You’re a lucky bugger for a junior officer.”

  It was a reasonable assumption. All newly commissioned medical officers were granted the rank of acting surgeon lieutenant. Fingal wasn’t acting and he had four years’ seniority.

  Henson opened the door. “They’ve given you one with a bit of daylight, like, not like the other buggers inboard where the sun never shines.”

  Fingal looked into a small, Spartan, grey-painted room with a corticene “sole,” as the flooring of a ship was called. The space held a cot, a chair and metal table, and a wardrobe, all bolted to the sole. On the far side of the room, a circular porthole of salt-streaked glass let in a faint light. AB Henson put the two suitcases on the bed as Fingal shrugged out of his duffle coat and hung it in the wardrobe. He wanted to open Deirdre’s envelope. “Wait outside for a minute, will you, Henson?” Fingal noticed Henson glancing at the ring on Fingal’s now-visible uniform jacket sleeve. Regulars’ rings were solid, Royal Naval Reserve officers’ insignia were like thin chains, and Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve had wavy stripes on their cuffs. Hence “Wavy Navy.”

  “Here,” Henson said, “you’re not Wavy Navy. The principal medical officer, Doctor Wilcoxson, he’s Royal Navy, but the two junior pills and the dentist are all Volunteer Reserve.”

  Fingal laughed. He really would have to brush up on his navalese. “Pills” and “sawbones” were slang reserved for junior MOs. “I’m a pill myself, Henson, but I’ve a second stripe to keep that one company. Just haven’t had time to put it up yet.”

  “So? You’ve been in the navy, sir?”

  “Merchant service for three years. Year on the old Tiger in ’30.” Fingal reached into the duffle’s pocket. “Now, Henson, give me a couple of minutes, please.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” The AB left and closed the door.

  Fingal ripped the envelope open. It contained a green silk scarf, a trace of her perfume—Je Reviens—and a single page of notepaper. He read. You gave me this scarf for my birthday and I loved it then. Please wear it when the weather is cold and let my love in the scarf keep you warm until you come back to me. Yours eternally, Deirdre.

  He took a deep breath, waited for the prickling in his eyes to stop, took a deep breath, put the letter and scarf under the pillow on the cot, and went and opened the door. “Next stop sick bay, I think,” he said, struggling to keep his voice level.

  “Right, sir.” Henson led the way. “You were on Tiger, and I did a year on Hood, sir.” He smiled his missing-tooth grin. “You and me’s—if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, seeing we’re both old battlecruiser hands—nearly old shipmates. I hope you’ll soon feel at home on Warspite. She’s a happy ship.”

  “Thank you, Henson,” Fingal said, remembering how lonely he’d felt back on the pinnace when he’d noticed the Belfast-built corvette. “I’m starting to feel that already.”

  “I hope so, sir. The owner—”

  “You mean the skipper?”

  “Aye. Captain Victor Crutchley, VC. He’s a proper gent.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Fingal, “and you sound content.”

  “I am.” He frowned. “But there are one or two right sods.”

  Fingal reckoned it would be surprising if there weren’t, with more than a thousand men on board. A shrill piping noise filled the air. It was coming from loudspeakers of the SRE address system. A tinny voice said, “Liberty men close up. Liberty men close up at port fore and aft accommodation ladders. The drifters will be leaving at four thirty.” The message was repeated.

  “Jammy buggers,” said Henson. “I’d not mind a run ashore myself even if we only get four hours, but my turn’s coming.”

  O’Reilly nodded sympathetically.

  Henson pointed up. “There are six-inch guns on the upper deck immediately above here, sir, and the same to starboard.” Fingal heard the pride in the man’s voice. “I’m the loader on six-inch gun four, starboard side.”

  “A responsible job.” Fingal became aware of cooking smells. His mouth watered.

  “Main galley and main kitchen’s in there,” Henson said, pointing inboard. “The wardroom galley for
officers is farther aft on the deck above and the wardroom, where you’ll be dining—”

  Soon, I hope, thought Fingal.

  “—is just ahead of X turret on the upper deck.”

  Fingal’s tummy rumbled.

  “More guns in that turret,” Henson said. “I hope to be a leading rate soon. If I can, I want to go to the Whale Island gunnery school, HMS Excellent, at Portsmouth. Specialise in gunnery.” There was not only affection. The lad was bubbling with enthusiasm.

  “Can I help—” Fingal cut himself short. He wasn’t in a Dublin tenement trying to find work for an unemployed cooper. It was none of his business. “Sorry, Henson. I’m sure your divisional officer will be able to advise you.”

  “You’re right, sir. He’s a decent enough bloke, Mister Wallace.” He paused at another stair. “Down here, sir.” Henson led the way down an amidships companionway into a lobby. The aft bulkhead was curved like the one astern near Fingal’s cabin. Another big gun barbette, he assumed.

  “That’s A turret,” said Henson. He pointed to the ship’s port side. “Dispensary’s in there if we need medicine and—” He walked to starboard and stopped at a door. “—sick bay and all medical spaces are through there, sir.” He pointed for’ard. “Next space ahead of the sick bay is the chief petty officers’ mess.” He frowned and curled his lip.

  “You don’t like CPOs, Henson?”

  Henson shrugged. “Most of them are decent blokes, but there’s one, Gunnery Chief Petty Officer Watson?” Henson’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head rapidly. “That bugger’s a right bastard.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Fingal said, his curiosity piqued.