Cloaked in Darkness by Bernard G. Lord

Author:Bernard G. Lord [Lord, Bernard G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7414-9372-9
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Published: 2006-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The coldness of the January night seeped into the bones of Lieutenant James Wainwright as he stood, frozen in place, at 0300 hours on the bridge of his motor torpedo boat holding station two miles to the seaward of the Cherbourg Peninsula. Although swathed in two thick woolen sweaters and oilskins, and wearing fleece-lined seaboots, the cutting northerly wind still found chinks in his armor sufficient to shiver his lean 5 feet 11 inch-body. And the wind was wet with spray gathered up from a moderate sea that slipped easily around the boat as she prowled along at 6 knots on her quiet auxiliary engines. The spray and the perpetual dampness were worse than the cold; nothing was really dry, not clothes, not bedding, not charts or logs, not benches, not binoculars, not even the toilet paper. Everything was covered in a cold condensation. The lieutenant’s one solace was a steaming mug of hot cocoa which he held in his bare hands, lovingly, and which he sipped slowly as though he wanted it to last all night. Occasionally, he paused in his drinking to wipe his mouth free of the thin deposit of sea spray that would otherwise add a little saltiness to the cocoa. His face had prominent cheek bones and an aquiline nose whose nostrils sprouted strong black hairs. He was clean-shaven, but, having jet-black hair, his chin usually showed a dark shadow which could easily grow into a formidable beard, if allowed.

James Wainwright, at age twenty-three, was the commanding officer of a Vosper motor torpedo boat (MTB), with pennant number 9339. Her crew of two officers, two petty officers and six ratings was one of three MTBs lying off the French coast, waiting to pounce on German E-boats returning from raids on Allied convoys on the other side of the English Channel. The Germans would be tired and battered from jousting with the convoy escorts, carrying dead and wounded, and hoping to make a safe landfall in Cherbourg harbor. But like the Allied sailors, the German crews were all very young and very tough, and no matter what their condition, they would put up a stiff resistance.

But first, the E-boats had to be found in the darkness of the sea and the sky. Even though mariners had coined the name “the narrow seas” for the English Channel, there was water enough to be lost in. And Jimmy Wainwright knew it. He and his crew had spent many hours on many other nights patrolling the French coast, sent on operations, supposedly carefully planned, to seek out the enemy and strike swiftly, only to find nothing but disappointment in the moody, empty sea.

Supporting the three MTBs were two motor gun boats, MGBs, which, although not equipped with torpedoes, carried more guns for attacking the enemy in face to face situations. The two types of boat were very similar in overall length, the MTB being 72ft 6ins and the MGB 70ft, but their displacements differed. The MTB weighed in at about 47 tons whereas the MGB was typically 31 tons.

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