CHAPTER 18

Bog s Noma still had the barnacles on her hull and could not be relied upon for more than about eight knots, even with her engines in good condition again after a week's attention from the crew "Q" had been kind enough to supply. For this reason we had decided to send her back in two stages, the first to be sailed in daylight, the second, of course, in darkness; the first to take her to Vieste, about sixty miles up the Italian coast, the second to carry her across the eighty miles of Adriatic that would then still separate her from her goal. As far as Vieste she would be safe from all attack; by leaving Vieste at 1600 hours (four o'clock in the afternoon) she would reach Vis under cover of darkness at about two in the morning.

When we had had a drink to the Fleet we had just acquired and to its success against the Hun, Steve said: "When can we sail Bog s Noma?"

I answered: "We can sign her up right now, and how about getting her away tomorrow morning?"

"She's ready," Petrinovic said.

"Then let's send her," said Steve, burning with eagerness to see the first ship set out with a cargo for Jugoslavia.

I had hoped to put aboard the Bog s Noma the list of medical supplies promised the three doctors at the hospital in Vis and reminded Steve of this.

"There are medical supplies aboard," he answered. "We have a good many tons of them stored in the main saloon with the cigarettes and the chocolate. Admiral Power sent them up to us. But we don't know what's in the cases. Why not send the doctors a note telling them to check the contents of those cases and promising to fill their prescription with the next ship?"

The suggestion seemed good and was adopted. We then sent for the ship's log-book and ceremoniously entered in it the contractual phrases Ian Campbell had prescribed. The Captain, as dirty and disheveled and as misanthropic in his manner as usual, then joined us to sign his name, thereby agreeing to take over the vessel "without prejudice." Tim and I then proceeded to Navy House to seek out the Operations Room—a sanctum-sanctorum which we had never entered— and plot her course.

To the men whose business it is to sail ships through belligerent seas in wartime, the clearance of a little vessel like the Bog s Nama is just unimportant routine, but to Tim and me it was an adventure. At "Ops" we looked at the charts on which our own mine-fields were entered, and laid out a course for Bog s Nama, reading it off in terms of degrees with the parallel mechanism of the ruler from the little circle whose "360" was north. There were several changes in her course. With a pair of dividers we measured carefully the distance she would have to go on each leg of her journey. On a chart of our own, which we would give her skipper, we traced her entire course in pencil, then we prepared a message for the Flag Officer at Taranto telling him that Bog s Nama would sail at 0700 hours on the morning of Friday, October fifteenth, and telling him just what course she would follow. It would be up to him to see that if the ship met any of His Majesty's destroyers they would leave her alone, that no British or American aeroplane on patrol should impulsively sink her simply because she had no recognition signals.

When all this was done we inquired from the lads at Ops whether they knew when HMS Brittany would be in.

"She's coming in now," one of them answered. "That ought to be her right there. . . ." He pointed out of the window at a vessel for whom the boom had just been opened and added, "Have a look," pointing at the binoculars on the table in the center of the room. Tim squinted through the glass. "That's her," he said. "Where will she be berthed?"

"She'll be anchoring—near you," the Lieutenant answered.

Tim and I were aboard her a few minutes after she had dropped her hook. He introduced me to Commander Numan, her Captain, whom he had met in Brindisi, and after visiting with him for a few minutes we invited him and his officers to join us for dinner at the Imperial that night. The Commander accepted and we went off to give Bog s Nama her sailing orders and hurry to the hotel to make our arrangements with the maestro.

He did very well for us and dinner passed pleasantly, providing us with an excellent opportunity to make friends with the Commander and his officers. Ivo and Steve attended. Commander Numan was disappointed about being ordered to Bari to unload. He had stowed his cargo with great care, expecting to take it all the way to the Jugoslav coast himself, so that it could be unloaded rapidly from five different positions; he regretted that his mission would be completed so tamely in the port of Bari. Tim discussed arrangements for transferring the cargo in the night of Friday to Saturday, so that prying eyes should not see what was being done—not see what was being shipped aboard our little vessels, and the Commander agreed to have his crew assist in the work.

It was not until after midnight that we managed to get to bed.

We were all on the dock the next morning at six-thirty to see Bog s Noma cast off and start for Vis. There was a group of Partisans with us on the end of the pier as she pulled away and a cheer rose spontaneously as we waved good-bye.

"That's one thing done," Tim said, grinning from ear to ear as we turned away to attend to the ten thousand details that would fill the next thirty hours.

Tim looked after most of them. He was determined to get everything finished and come with me to meet Colonel Hie or his representative on the coast. It was Friday morning. I would have to leave not later than Sunday afternoon to keep that appointment punctually—and I had yet to find a ship to take us over.

New problems were cropping up, too. We would need many additional Partisan crews for the ships we were about to take over. Steve and I discussed this and other matters as we set off with a Partisan guard of twelve armed men to commandeer some of the vessels on the list.

Throughout most of the morning we were engaged with this not unpleasant work. The captains of most of the ships accepted the news of their dispossession philosophically. We warned them against carrying away any of the ship's property and posted our guards aboard. The guards themselves were probably warning enough. They looked tough as tigers and quite ready—if not eager—to challenge everyone aboard. They watched the Italian colors come down and the Jugoslav flag with the red star in the center go up in its place with broad and happy grins, but the rest of the time they looked their fiercest.

By eleven o'clock our twelve men had all been posted to duty and we headed back to the pier. Six of the eleven ships that had been in Italian hands that morning were now flying the Partisan flag; five still remained to be taken over.

At the root of our pier, moored one behind the other, lay two Royal Air Force "crash boats" which I had noticed before but had never found time to investigate. The crash boats are high-speed launches about sixty feet long, built much like the famous "PT" boats used by the American Navy but without torpedo tubes. As the name suggests, they are used to rescue flyers shot down at sea. They are built to move fast and normally cruise just under twenty knots. They have a top speed of about thirty, and their armament consists of machine guns in power-operated turrets and one or two 20-millimeter automatic cannons.

As we walked by it struck me they would be absolutely ideal sea-going taxis for the errands we had to run across the Adriatic. I suggested to Steve that he go on without me and stopped to see what could be done about enlisting sympathy for our good cause.

The crew of one of the boats had built a small fire on the pier and were frying themselves some eggs. "Is the CO aboard?" I asked. One of the men stepped across to the deck of the launch and called down the companionway: "Mr. Walsh . . . someone to see you, sir."

I stepped aboard just as a stalwart young officer climbed up out of the cabin, a razor in his hand and half of his face covered with lather.

"Jack Walsh—Flight Lieutenant," he said, shaking hands and grinning through the soap. "Sorry about the disguise. I'll get it off right away."

I went below with him while he finished shaving. He had noticed our ships at the end of the pier and had attended one of Bog s Nama's moonlight concerts, so he already knew a little about the Partisans. I told him a little more. One of his men brewed us some tea and I listened to stories of nights at sea in the rough water of the English Channel. Walsh was not very tall but compact and powerfully built. His hair was jet black and he wore a small raffish mustache above his wide and smiling lips. He appeared gay and reckless and was on easy terms with his men, who obviously liked him. He looked like a valuable ally, so I told him about my trip across to "one of the islands."

Before I left, half an hour later, he was begging to be allowed to take us over on our next trip; he was pretty sure it could be arranged, although he would have to talk it over with his CO, Flight Lieutenant Shackery, who was in charge of the other launch. "Shack" was away until one o'clock. I promised to stop by again after lunch.

That was an appointment I kept punctually. "Shack" proved to be the same cavalier type as Walsh and just as enthusiastic about helping us. The pair of them detained me for half an hour, showing me their boats and doing their best to convince us that they were ideal for such missions as we had in mind.

"Do you think you could get permission to take us over tomorrow afternoon?" I asked.

"I'm sure we can," Shack answered. "I'll go straight over to the RAF building and arrange it." The last words were spoken over his shoulder, for he had already leapt to the pier and was on his way.

"Goddamn it," Walsh said. "I wanted that trip."

"Well, this won't be the last one," I assured him.

Shack was not able to get an immediate reply to his request for permission to take us over. It was not until next morning that the authorization was confirmed, so I found myself obliged to see what other facilities were available in the event he should prove unable to go, and I preferred not to use the Gull again. She had to preserve her "cover." That afternoon three MTB's (Motor Torpedo Boats—the equivalent of our PT's) arrived in port. I approached the officer commanding them at once. He, too, responded eagerly. He would be delighted to take us over, but he would have to obtain the permission of the officer commanding the small boat flotilla to which he belonged, Commander Welman, RN, who was aboard the flotilla's mother ship in Brindisi. Did he think the Commander would agree? He was practically sure that he would. The only possible difficulty might be experienced in attempting to reach him . . . the commander might be on his way up to Bari by car. . . .

It seemed pretty sure that one of them would come through all right. If not, I would have to tackle the Admiral again in the morning. So I left him then and went back to the end of the pier where Tim had established temporary headquarters aboard another little passenger steamer, the Zagreb, which we had taken over at ten o'clock.

Tim and Steve were getting on very well. One of the big wooden schooners in the original Partisan fleet had been brought alongside and additional cargo was being loaded into her from one of the depot ships. The schooner would be ready to sail by nightfall and could follow the Bog s Noma out and proceed along the same course the next morning. Our ships now occupied one whole side of the pier and the end of it as well, a big freighter having been brought over and moored end-on, with a shaky gang-plank running out to her stern. The other side of the pier was lined with lighters unloading mountains of five-hundred-pound bombs.

A crew of welders were patching up holes punched by heavy machine-gun fire in the bows of the Zagreb.

"The Partisan fleet!" Steve said proudly, with a wave of his arm.

"Our big problem," Tim said, "is going to be getting enough cargo to keep this shipping-line busy. Do you think they can take it to the coast as fast as we can deliver it at Vis?"

"We'll find out tomorrow," I answered.

"I've got everything ready for tonight," Tim told me. "We have five ships standing hy to move over to the Brittany as soon as it gets dark. NOIC has given us permission to use subdued lights tonight. We'll trans-ship right out there in the harbor. By tomorrow afternoon we'll be up-to-date with our work for the first time. . . ."

"I get it," I answered. "Okay. It'll be nice to have you along. We'll probably go on .one of the crash boats moored just down the pier, or in one of the MTB's that came in a little while ago." He flashed me a radiant smile and turned back to his stevedoring as I set out in search of the medical supplies promised the doctors of Vis.

Tim was right. We got all our work finished. I obtained the medical supplies and stowed them aboard the Zagreb. Somehow we managed to get all the rations and supplies we needed drawn and signed for. We established priorities for ship and engine repairs. We found quarters for a couple of sick Partisans and sent a doctor to see them. We sent cables, we checked manifests, we argued with the taxi-drivers who charged us too much for overtime . . . We managed to eat, gulping biscuits and bully-beef as we walked up and down the pier. I even managed to get some sleep; but poor Tim worked until five-thirty in the morning aboard the Brittany supervising the trans-shipment of her cargo.

When he came in a little after six I tried to persuade him to lie down for a while, but he still had too much to do and waved the suggestion aside. "I've taken some benzedrine," he said. "That'll keep me going. I'll sleep on the way over tonight."

By eight o'clock we had finished breakfast and were back on the pier. There was still plenty to do before three o'clock when we would have to leave. The five ships Tim had loaded in the night were anchored in a line a hundred yards west of the pier, their decks heaped high with goods and cases all artfully covered over with tarpaulins.

"Who would ever guess what's in em?" Tim asked. "There are six light mounted field guns, ten thousand rifles, forty tons of ammunition and a lot more stuff including radio sets, machine guns and mortars stowed away there; and I know where every piece of it is."

Tim's precautions were well warranted. The Allies had only been in Bari a few days and there were still hundreds of fascists about. Any one of them was capable of reporting to the Germans every move we made in the port. A thousand windows looked out across the basin where we worked and at best much too much would be known about "Operation Audrey." We could not afford to overlook any precautions at that time.

At about ten o'clock, Shack strolled up the pier, beaming .with good news. "I'm all set," he said. "Orders just came through. We're fueled and ready. What time do you want to leave?"

"As soon after three as we can make it," I told him.

Later in the morning, Steve and I were summoned to Navy House to meet Commander Welman, who had just arrived. He was eager to know everything he could learn about the situation on the other side of the Adriatic, having in mind possible operations there. I assured him no difficulty would be experienced in concealing his boats among the islands during the day if he wanted to lay over and he decided to go over and have a look, that being the case. Steve then undertook to furnish a Partisan pilot. The Commander accepted at once and asked if we would care to join him. I thanked him and explained that we had already made arrangements to go over in a crash boat. We would make a point of going in ahead of him and arranging for his safe entry to the harbor. These proposals accepted, the necessary signals were sent, notifying the Flag Officer and the operations officers of the air force. The Commander would leave about five o'clock, but as the MTB's are faster than the crash boats we would need to leave at least an hour before them.

When I got back to the pier Shack was waiting with an anxious face. He knew I had been called to NOIC's office in connection with the Commander's arrival and had visions of our going off with the Royal Navy and leaving him tied up at the foot of the pier, very bored because none of our aircraft was kind enough to fall in the sea and give him a job to do. When I told him we would have to beat the Royal Navy across in order to arrange their entry to the harbor his spirits soared.

"We want to leave without any fuss—without attracting any attention, at three o'clock," I told him.

Aboard the Zagreb I gave strict orders that no one was to go near the crash boats and that no one at all was to come down to see us off. The "Santa Claus" cargo of bully-beef and biscuit and cigarettes, butter and cheese and chocolate could be set down onto the pier beside the launches. The crew would pick up the cases themselves a few minutes later.

Promptly at three o'clock, Tim and Steve and I climbed aboard Shack's boat, our machine guns carefully wrapped in duffel-bags, looking as though we were coming aboard for a drink or a cup of tea, and a few moments later we were sliding out between the piers in the afternoon sunshine, the launch tucking her stern into the water as the engineer cracked on extra revolutions to bring us up to twenty knots. Tim and Steve and I were sitting on the cabin roof, swinging our legs to the roll of the sea.

"Not bad," Tim said, smiling happily.