A Long and Lonely Road by Flynn Katie

Author:Flynn, Katie [Flynn, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

April 1941

Steve’s training was finished and he and the rest of the crew of HMS/M Centurion had been sent to Malta by the submarine service – or ‘the Trade’ as it was known to the submariners – whence they scoured the Mediterranean, attacking enemy shipping, and sometimes coming back to port after a ten-day patrol with the skull and crossbones flying and two or three more definite kills to their name.

Oddly enough, the thing that he had most dreaded had not come to pass. Steve had always disliked – feared – enclosed spaces yet he had no such feelings aboard the Centurion, even when she was sailing at her maximum depth. He felt safe from the terrors he had known aboard HMS Jericho, almost began to think of the sea as a friend. Now, they were the lurking peril searching for prey. They were the wolf pack, the terror which struck from below on a calm, blue day; it was their torpedoes which streaked through the water whilst men were relaxing, asleep in their bunks, eating a meal.

He said as much to Ted as the two of them were sprawled in the mess. ‘I never thought I’d say it, but I prefer subs to surface ships,’ he remarked. ‘We’re like – like invisible to them up above. They don’t even know we’re there until they feel the deck moving under them and hear the explosion. Oh aye, I’d rather be a wolf than a sheep, if you see what I mean.’

Ted was writing to his wife; Steve to Alby. The correspondence between the two men was, naturally, of a sporadic and infrequent nature but, whenever he got into port, Steve looked as anxiously for a letter from Alby as Rachel would have done. He had been parted from his friend by fate and the exigencies of war, but he did not intend to lose touch with the other man. They were both Liverpudlians and would both return to their native city when hostilities ceased. If they kept in regular touch, then they would simply pick up their friendship where it had left off. So Steve was determined to keep up the correspondence, hard labour for him though it might be.

Ted looked up from his own letter with a grin. ‘So you like being the hunter, rather than the hunted, eh? Just you wait, me old china, until we’re lyin’ on the bottom, pretendin’ to be a rock with ten battleships circling above and depth charges goin’ off all round us. I know they fired at us yesterday, but that was nothing compared to what some subs go through.’

Despite the fact that he and Ted were, so to speak, in the same boat, their attitudes were totally different. Steve paid very little attention to words or warnings. It was actual personal experience which had taught him the lessons he had learned in life. His mother had told him to be gentle with women, but his father had shown him how

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