Band of Brothers by Alexander Fullerton

Author:Alexander Fullerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2017-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

Rumbling southwestward. 2244 now. He’d memorized, for later entry in his notebook, the time of the last alteration—2239—and had the overall picture in his mind, as well as one knew it—the outline of the coast from Pointe de Barfleur to Cap Levi, roughly where Furneaux’s MTBs would be patrolling—or lying cut, as the case might be—a couple of thousand yards inshore—and the line of this unit’s slightly oblique approach from seaward. The main imponderables being (a) the timing of the Heilbronne's arrival off the point, (b) the strength and disposition of her escort, and (c) where any other enemy forces or patrols might be. Guessing there had to be such forces: otherwise who’d been letting off all that tracer? Who’d blown up and then lain stopped and burning?

German versus German—just possibly. It had been known. Itchy trigger-fingers, faulty recognition, assisted sometimes by bad staff-work. Otherwise—Mike Furneaux off the rails, running his own show?

Less likely. Especially as there’d been no enemy report.

Cleaning his front lenses again. Thinking that whatever was out there, it wouldn’t be at any great distance now. Not if the Heilbronne still was coming. Which please God she had to be… This was the natural focal point, the meeting of the ways; whatever was about to happen would happen here. The gunboats at low revs taking it hard meanwhile, plunging and wallowing… Bob Stack searching across the bow, Barclay over on the port side still, further aft the lookouts’ black shapes outlined against whitened astern. Each of them, as it were, isolated, absorbed… He put his own glasses up again: clean and dry, for the moment. Starting abaft the beam, training slowly left, body swaying to counter whatever angle was on the boat while head and shoulders stayed level, the lenses’ intersecting circles shifting slowly around a barely definable horizon.

Stack was probably right about not using radar if you didn’t have to. Might well have taken his cue from Peter Dickens—a highly successful and popular SO of MTB flotillas up there on the east coast in recent years, who’d stated at one briefing at which Ben had been present that he’d as soon switch on radar as he’d break W/T silence or light a cigarette. Adding—or this might have been on some other occasion—that in his opinion the radar sets available to Coastal Forces were significantly inferior to the human eye, in all but the most extreme conditions such as a combination of pitch darkness and thick fog.

The Yanks had bloody marvellous radar in their PT boats. If Coastal Forces could have had that gear it would have been another thing altogether.

Sweeping back now, left to right. A small up-and-down movement now and then helped to identify as much of an horizon as was visible. Reflecting further on the business of Bob Stack and Joan: that he must have known she’d had a fling or two. Odds on, she’d have told him so, as much from wanting to play it straight as to forestall any gossip he might hear later.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.