The Home of Great War Fiction!

  This was the time.

  This was the ultimate test.

  This was what they had trained for, sweating and cursing the boiling sun; sensing, but not sure, that their drill would be used in ship-to-ship combat.

  And now, with the enemy destroyers almost dead ahead, Lasenby knew with a savage, convincing pride that this gun crew of his would load and fire and keep loading and firing as long as they had ammunition.

  J E MACDONNELL 18: THE GUNNER

  By J E Macdonnell

  First published by Horwitz Publications in 1959

  ©1959, 2023 by J E Macdonnell

  First Electronic Edition: January 2024

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

  Series Editor: Janet Whitehead

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “PETTY-OFFICER LASENBY, this is Petty-Officer Durham. You two can play with trigonometry or algebra or noughts and crosses all day—Durham’s after his commission too.”

  His introduction completed, the coxswain of Fleet destroyer Whelp swung about and strode off. With a new crew joining, he had more to do than play nursemaid to two experienced petty-officers.

  They smiled after him and glanced covertly at each other, standing on the upper-deck outside the petty-officer’s mess, directly under the squat weight of B-gun.

  Lasenby saw a man his own height, close to six feet, wiry; an impression of darkness, a face weathered by sun and wind, aquiline-sharp, like a blade.

  Durham, used also to swift judgment of men he would have to spend perhaps two years of close, intimate life with, saw broad athletic shoulders, fair complexion tanned brown; a good-looking face willing to be friendly, and blue eyes which were now squinting at him quizzically.

  “What d’you reckon?”

  Lasenby had spoken impulsively, almost before he thought of the words; compelled by the realisation that Durham was summing him up too—and by some other thing, some recognition of the appreciative intelligence in Durham’s face.

  “All right. Fine. Now …”

  Durham’s voice was drawling, half-laughing.

  “But in six months we’ll probably be cutting each other’s throats.”

  Then Lasenby knew he had been right—knew with a pleasurable certainty that here he had found a kindred spirit. Most men newly-joining a destroyer felt cautious and wary about their messmates—but he had yet to meet a man with wit enough to express the feeling.

  “So you’re after the old thin ring too?” he asked, and was conscious of an easiness with this man he had just met.

  “A bloke might as well fill in his time with something.” Durham started. “No,” he corrected himself, lifting his eves for a moment to Lasenby’s. “I’m after that ring. Should have gone through years ago. But you—you’re doing the right thing. Twenty-five?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “That gives you eight years on me.”

  Lasenby nodded. He had already noted that Durham carried three good-conduct badges under his petty-officer’s insignia—he himself rated two.

  “It’s lucky we got the same draft,” he said, smiling, “now we can worry each other to death—like the ’Swain suggested. He seemed a nice bloke. Know him?”

  “Jackie Gray? Yes. I’ve shipped with him before, in the old Vampire. As you say, a nice bloke. But don’t cross his bows. When he has to be, he’s cox’n all the way through.”

  “I’ll remember that. Hullo. Who’s this?”

  A petty-officer had come running up the ladder from the iron-deck below the break of the foc’s’le, making the chains rattle with the urgent vehemence of his climb. He hurried towards them, and both Lasenby and Durham became instinctively alert—obviously there was something on, something had happened.

  Lasenby took in the new arrival’s appearance automatically. He was medium height, strongly built, dressed neatly enough. Round his waist on a lanyard was slung a big seaman’s knife. It swung forward as he strode towards them, purpose in every line of his serious face and movement of his legs.

  A few paces away he tripped on a ringbolt in the deck. He staggered forward and recovered himself almost against Lasenby.

  “You won’t shift it,” Lasenby grinned, offering the traditional answer to a ringbolt-kicking. Then he and Durham waited. Was it a fire down aft, or a crash run to sea, or an oiling pipe burst all over the upper-deck?

  They wailed, and the new arrival said:

  “Nice morning.”

  Automatically Lasenby nodded, squinting in surprise. The serious face had broken into a smiling expression us guileless as a glass of milk. The urgency had disappeared like water down a drainpipe.

  “You blokes just joined?”

  They nodded, wondering.

  “My name’s Flue Shake …” and as Lasenby put out his own hand the other’s poked him in the midriff. “… speare,” Petty-Officer Flue exulted. “Get it? Shake ... speare.”

  Durham breathed in.

  “You are not,” he asked, “known as Cocky Flue?”

  “That’s right,” he nodded quickly. “Strike me, this is a small outfit.”

  Lasenby looked at Durham. Their thoughts were identical. In the biggest Fleet in the world, Cocky Flue’s name would be known. Once met never forgotten. The Fleet clown. The modern counterpart of the Court jester, the tumbler: the man who could trip over a chalk line, who opened his mouth only to put his foot in it, the jester with as many tricks as there are commas in the Bible.

  And now, in a ship where it was an unwritten law that no man smiled, let alone laughed, before ten in the morning, they were stuck with the one and only Cocky Flue.

  “My God,” Durham breathed.

  “What’s all the hurry?” Lasenby asked—the time was just on ten-thirty, and he smiled into the puckish face.

  “No hurry,” Cocky answered, surprised “I’m just on my way to the mess. Stand-easy—we have coffee for stand-easy.”

  “I see. By the way, my name’s Lasenby—Jim Lasenby. This is Petty-Officer Durham. Ah ...”

  “Neil Durham.” the other supplied, his expression saturnine, and held out his hand. Lasenby waited for a tumbling trick, but in the face of Durham’s expression Cocky merely shook his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, cobs. Come on in and meet the team.”

  They stepped over the coaming and into the comparative dimness of the mess.

  Lasenby had come from an eight-inch cruiser, but he had been aboard destroyers before. He noticed with relief that the mess spanned almost the whole width of the fo’c’sle deck, and that it ran back to the bridge structure. He saw on his immediate left a ladder leaning downwards, and he made a mental reservation about slinging his hammock nearby—in port that ladder would be used all night by drunks.

  Three men were sitting at a white, scrubbed table. They looked up at the visitors with veiled interest. It’s always like this, Lasenby remembered. Whelp, back in Sydney from a year overseas, would retain some of her original crew, but most of the present ship’s company would be new, and this was a period of getting to know your neighbour, of forming opinions, of selecting go-ashore oppos, of bracketing-off the nasty type—there would be one, there always was; sometimes more than one.

  “We live here, on this side,” Cocky pronounced, waving his hand at the nearby table, “the erks live on the other side.”

  Lasenby glanced across, but he could not see the second table on the starb’d side because of the circular bulk of the great root of B-mounting, which ran down through the centre of the mess. But he knew what Cocky meant—over there would mess the non-seaman petty-officers, telegraphists, signalmen, supply-petty-officer, electrical artificers.

  “Now,” said Cocky, “step up boys, don’t be shy. In two months’ time you’ll know everything about each other.”

  That’s true enough by hell, Lasenby thought. He put a tentative smile on his face and looked at the three waiting men.

  “Here we have Jim Lasenby and Neil Durham,” Cocky started, “just come to join the happy throng, and here are Eddie Bird, Doug Milton and Richard Moreton-Lane. That’s right,” he repeated, grinning. “Moreton-hyphen-bloody-Lane.”

  The first two men put out their hands. As he took them Lasenby noted that Milton was fair and amiable, and Bird was precisely like his name—eyes that blinked quickly up at him, a small parrot-face which nodded a greeting in quick little jerks.



  He looked at the man with the hyphenated name.

  Here it is, his brain shouted silently. Here’s the snag. A heavy, unsmiling face topped with red hair stared back at him with curt disinterest. Moreton-Lane did not offer his hand. He nodded at the two new men and spoke to Cocky. His voice was deep and surly.

  “All right, clown, where’s the blasted coffee?”

  “On the way up—I think.” Cocky answered, and Lasenby noticed there was an edge to his voice, “but how the hell would I know?”

  “You’re the mess caterer, aren’t you? It’s your job to know. Half our stand easy’s gone already.”

  Lasenby tossed his cap onto a nearby kit-locker and sat down on the padded bench-seat beside Durham. Here it was, started already, with the ship still in Sydney. Moreton-Lane was right—they had only ten minutes for stand-easy, and a petty-officer had to be the first back on the target. But in a destroyer you accepted little things like that. If the coffee was late, you smoked your cigarette, went back to see your hands were working again, said a few words to the leading seaman, then repaired again to the mess to enjoy the delayed drink.

  You didn’t winge about it—and certainly not in the presence of two new men. The façade of pleasantness and unity was maintained for a few days at least. But not here, not with this big red-headed man.

  But be careful, Lasenby’s experience warned him. You’ve learned by now never to judge on first appearances, never to accept the opinion of one man by another. Moreton-Lane looks surly, not at all the sort of messmate you’d wish for. But maybe Cocky rubs him up the wrong way. Maybe he’s shipped with him before, is sick of his childish buffoonery. You’ve seen that before, too—a normally decent bloke made savage by someone whose guts he hates, by having to live with him for months and months in the close confines of a destroyer’s mess.

  That doesn’t make it any nicer, he reflected. Whoever is in the right, the unalterable fact is that these two men have to live in each other’s pockets, not for months but perhaps years. A three-year commission in the one ship was not uncommon. And this commission would be affected by the peculiar conditions of war—of hard, monotonous hours closed-up at guns in all weathers, of weeks of sea-time without getting ashore, without the safety-valve of a pissy run to get it out of your system.

  He could be wrong—but he knew he wasn’t. Either from his dislike of Cocky, or some maladjustment in his own system, Moreton-Lane lacked the easy camaraderie so essential to a destroyer man’s tolerance of the peculiar conditions found in the boats. He had just met two new members of the mess, and he had made no attempt to hide his irritation over a trivial matter.

  “And you can cut out the cracks about my name,” Moreton-Lane said suddenly. He stared coldly at Cocky. “You know something?” He shook his heavy head slowly. “You’re not funny. Not funny at all.”

  Cocky did not look very funny at that moment. He rubbed his fingers nervously across his chin. Keep out of it, Lasenby advised silently—something’s biting this fellow; wait till you find out what it is before you put your own fool foot into it. It could be a girl, or a knock-back for promotion, a hundred things. Don’t bring it to a head; don’t jump in.

  “Coffee, gents,” a hearty voice said near his shoulder. The big kettle was placed on the table in front of him; it steamed aromatically He glanced up and saw the able-seaman messman.

  The seaman started to speak, but Moreton-Lane, his face set in harsh anger, silenced him. “I don’t want none of your blasted excuses! The erks on the other side got their coffee? I bet they have!” He swore vilely. “Go on, get to hell out of here! And tomorrow you better be on time! Now beat it.”

  His face tight, the messman retired round the gun’s barbette.

  “Come on, pass the flamin’ thing down,” Moreton-Lane growled at Durham.

  “There’s no need to let him have it like that,” Durham said evenly.

  “Who says so?”

  “I do. He’s a seaman. The blokes over the other side might be erks to us, but they’re petty-officers to him. And where I come from you don’t use language like that to junior ratings.”

  “You don’t eh? You’re the president of this blasted mess?”

  “Don’t be ruddy stupid,” Durham answered, his voice still level, “you know I’m not, so why ask?”

  “Aw, balls!” Moreton-Lane grunted crudely. “All I want is me coffee.”

  “Then get stuck into it,” Bird said, and slid the kettle along, “you can fill all the cups while you’re about it.”

  The big man looked at him, but he filled the six cups. Cocky reached over.

  “Thanks,” he grinned impishly. “I’ll enjoy this.”

  Moreton-Lane did not answer him. He poured thick tinned milk into his cup, then got up and walked slowly out on to the upper-deck.

  No one spoke after he had gone.

  “Who’s who?” Lasenby broke the silence, smiling generally.

  Cocky sat on the table and took over. “Eddie Bird’s captain of the side, Doug Milton here’s the captain of the foc’s’le, and the happy red-head’s captain of the quarterdeck.”

  “And you?” Lasenby asked.

  “I got the important job—the navigator’s party. Any time you wanna know the buzz where we’re heading. just call on Cocky.”

  “We do carry a navigator?” Durham asked pointedly.

  “Yeah, but don’t worry. I’m always on hand to help him.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Durham growled, and sipped his coffee.

  “So it looks like one of two jobs for each of us,” Lasenby mused, glancing at Durham.

  “That’s right—captain of the iron-deck, or gunner’s party.”

  “How do you feel about that ... Neil?” Lasenby asked.

  “Doesn’t worry me, Jim. In any case, you know the outfit—we’ll be detailed off anyhow. But both jobs could be helpful.”

  Lasenby nodded over his cup. They were after their commissions as gunners—this involved comprehensive study in both seamanship and gunnery, for they would be officers first, then gunners second. If he were given the gunner’s party, in charge of the half-dozen or so hands working under the ship’s gunner, he would learn a good deal about gunnery stores, a most necessary requirement when he became a ship’s gunner himself.

  On the other hand, captain of the iron-deck meant being placed in charge of all the space and equipment between the fo’c’sle and quarterdeck, more than a third of the ship’s length. This would be seamanship at its best—responsibility for wires, boats, maintenance of paintwork, guardrails and the hundred and two things required of a captain of a top.

  As well, of course, being a quarters rating second-class, and a petty-officer, he was sure to be given charge of one of Whelp’s three twin gun mountings. Whichever job was allocated to him, he could be sure he would get his whack of both seamanship and gunnery. That was the beauty of serving in the boats—a destroyer man, because of limited numbers, was required to carry out all sorts of jobs denied him in a cruiser or carrier, where the greater number of senior ratings limited the work they had to do.

  A shrill pipe sounded through the mess scuttles.

  “Out pipes. Hands carry on with your work.”

  “We’d better get down and report to the Jimmy,” Lasenby said to Durham, and laid his cup down.

  “Yep. Let’s hear the worst.”

  For a few brief seconds both men waited. The Jimmy, the first-lieutenant, the captain’s deputy and the officer to whom all the seaman petty-officers were responsible, was to them the ship’s kingpin. They worked directly under and with him. He could make or break the ship, in the sense of efficiency and compactness and happiness.

  The Jimmy it was who detailed the work he wanted done. To the Jimmy came more questions than to the Man In Grey. If you wanted the sea boat’s falls end-for-ended, or the funnel painted, or a new guardrail rove, or an awning spread, you saw the Jimmy. You saw him for leave, to have an allotment stopped, to put in for another badge, or to grow a beard.

  And to him you took your defaulters.

  That was the crucial function so far as petty-officers were concerned. If you caught a man committing an offence, and you judged his punishment deserved higher authority, you took him before the Jimmy. In almost all cases in Lasenby’s experience, the Jimmy stood four-square behind his petty-officers in the critical matter of discipline. In almost all ...

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14