A Dawn Like Thunder Read Free

would visit the British Legion. Like so many round there, he was a veteran of that other war,
a survivor
he had called it once when he had had a pint too many. Otherwise he said little about it, hoarded the memories and shared them only with a few, and certainly not with the kids.
    Tucker had had a few days’ leave before joining the submarine at Portsmouth. Nothing had changed. The house was shabbier, with a few slates missing, like the blind windows in other houses in the street where bomb-blast had damaged them. But the kettle was always on, and there was plenty to eat despite the rationing.
    His mother, now seemingly old and tired, had asked him, ‘Do you still miss her, Mike? Not found another girl yet?’
    His father had been sitting at the kitchen table, his driver’s cap with the oilskin top and Southern Railway badge still on his head. ‘Leave it, Mother. So long as
he’s
safe, that’s the main thing.’
    They had exchanged glances: understanding, gratitude; many would describe it as love.
    The house had seemed empty, somehow. His brothers, willingly or otherwise, were in the Army although Terry, the youngest, was in the Andrew. Two of his sisters had married and were doing war-work and Madge, the baby of the family, was working in a club in the West End which had been opened for the American forces in London. She was breaking her mother’s heart with all that make-up and the silk stockings, the late hours and nights when she did not come home at all. He could imagine what she was up to.
    His father, of course, had said, ‘Don’t worry so much, Mother. She’s young, and there’s a war on.’ They had both laughed at the absurd comment.
    Tucker thought of the officer he would be joining shortly: Lieutenant James Ross. At first he had told himself he could never work with an officer, and a regular one at that, but now they were on a first-name basis and had slowly developed a closeness that would have been unthinkable in any other section of the Navy.
    Tucker had worked with Ross for almost two years, and trusted him completely. But know him? He knew he never would.
    Now, he glanced at the inert shape of the sick rating with whom he had been attempting to play cards. Poor little bugger: his first ever operational cruise in this or any other submarine. Days out from Portsmouth on passage for the Med, they had been on the surface running the diesel engines to charge batteries. It was supposed to be a safe area, and the boat’s skipper would have had strict orders not to forget his mission just to give chase to a juicy target. It should have been all right. The skipper and two lookouts had been up on the open bridge, swaying about like drunken seals in their streaming oilskins, when two aircraft had appeared. Out there, it did not matter much if they were ‘theirs’ or ‘ours’. The klaxon had shrilled,
Dive! Dive! Dive!
and the water had thundered into the saddle-tanks to force her down. One of the lookouts had been this young, green seaman, no doubt up until then feeling like part of a wartime film.
    Tucker had learned the hard way. When the klaxon sounded, you had fifteen seconds to clear the bridge and get below, pausing only to slam and lock upper and lower ‘lids’ as you went. By then, the hull would be diving fast, the sea already surging into the confined place where you had been standing.
    The kid had fallen, breaking his ankle and fracturing a wrist; it had been no help that the others had landed on top of him. A submarine did not carry a doctor, and first aid was simple and basic: the powers that be obviously thought that anything more was needless luxury. In a submarine it was accepted that either everyone lived or everybody died.
    Tucker watched the youth’s face, drugged, pinched with pain. He would not receive proper attention until the boat returned to base, or to wherever else they might be ordered.
    He recalled talking