Dust On the Sea Read Online Free

his own rank, back in the life he had yearned for. It had not been much, an appointment to the Royal Marines Department of Recruiting. Not much . . . but when Harry Payne haddescribed it Blackwood could have been there with him. His father had been in Plymouth to accept the job. Fate had decided otherwise, in the form of a stick of bombs, a common enough occurence in that battered naval port. There had been people trapped in a burning house and Colonel Jonathan, ‘Jono’, Blackwood had acted without hesitation. Then the building had collapsed. There had been nothing anyone could have done. They said.
    He thought again of the funeral. Every pew in the small church filled, the vicar grave-faced in the presence of so many visitors, senior officers, and grey-haired veterans from another war. Listening, remembering. Sharing.
    Vaughan had been there also, although no one had seen him arrive or leave. It was his way of showing what their friendship had meant to him.
    A lot of quiet condolences and firm handshakes . . . a few of the local women sobbing, if not for the man then for the name, the family which had been part of their lives for so long. . . .
    One old boy wearing a poppy above his medals had said, ‘A hard path to follow, Captain Blackwood!’
    Hard? It was impossible. Like the sermon, it was for the family, not the man. Two Victoria Crosses, and God knew how many other decorations. Africa, China, the North Sea and the Atlantic, wherever the world’s greatest navy had shown its flag.
Impossible.
    Someone had reached the window and lowered it slightly, and the cold air was refreshing.
    The anonymous shape muttered, ‘Another bloody raid, by the look of it!’
    Before he pulled at the strap again Blackwood saw the distant flashes in the sky, like tiny stars. Flak. Probably asolitary hit-and-run raider, without much chance of hitting anything.
    The W.A.A.F. officer stood up suddenly, and then staggered as the train gathered speed again. She fell with one hand on Blackwood’s knee, and he could smell her nearness, perhaps only soap, but in these dull, damp surroundings it was like perfume. She stammered something in apology and then he heard her dragging the corridor door open. There were a few sleepy remarks and nothing more, but she would know what they were thinking. For her sake, he hoped that the card school had broken up.
    He tried to think clearly. London, then. Why not Eastney Barracks, or Stonehouse at Plymouth? He wondered if the general public understood, the ordinary people who faced the rigours of rationing and shortages every day, and the unending dread of receiving one of those hated telegrams.
We regret to inform you that your husband, son, lover
 . . . It never stopped, even in small places like Alresford. They clung to optimistic reports in the newspapers or on the cinema newsreels, grinning soldiers giving a thumbs-up to the camera, Spitfires performing a Victory Roll after another clash over southern England. Propaganda, part of the myth? It was all they had.
    He considered the navy as it had been when he had joined his first ship, all the great names, as familiar to the public as to the men who served and later died in them.
Royal Oak
and
Courageous
, and the world’s largest warship in her day,
Hood
, the nation’s darling;
Repulse
and
Prince of Wales
, trusted symbols of power and invincibility. Now gone, wiped out as if they had never been. Even the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
, the luckiest shipin the fleet, claimed as a prize so many times by the German propaganda machine, had finally been torpedoed and sunk by a U-Boat off Gibraltar. Her famous luck had, at last, run out.
    Such awesome losses set against the smaller, little-known operations of the commandos and other special services, the ‘cloak-and-dagger brigade’, might have broken the morale of the nation. But it had not broken.
    There were groans and