Atlantic Fury

CHAPTER FOUR

(October 22–24)

Long before my first contact with Base, before even our Mayday call had gone out, all Services had been alerted and the first moves made to deal with the emergency. Coastal Command at Ballykelly had flown off a Shackleton to search for the Viking Fisher, the Navy had dispatched a destroyer from the Gareloch. Weather ship India had left her station headed for Laerg, a fishery protection vessel north-west of the Orkneys had been ordered to make for the Hebrides at full speed and a fast mine-layer was getting steam up ready to sail if required. By nine o’clock the emergency operation was being concentrated on L4400, then a battered wreck running before the storm somewhere to the west of Laerg. The destroyer was ordered to close her with all possible speed and either stand by her to take off survivors or to escort her to Leverburgh or back to the Clyde if she could make it. A second Shackleton had taken off from the Coastal Command base in Northern Ireland with orders to locate her and circle her until the destroyer arrived or until relieved by another aircraft.

That was the situation when I contacted Base with definite news of survivors from the wreck of L8610. Neither the Shackletons nor the destroyer could be of any help to the men on Sgeir Mhor. Both the fishery protection vessel and the mine-layers were too far away to be effective and conditions made the use of Northern Air Sea Rescue’s helicopters out of the question. The task was allocated to the Naval tug. Not only was she a more suitable vessel than a destroyer for working close inshore among rocks, she also happened to be much nearer. She sailed from Lochmaddy at 09.17 hours.

In these conditions and in these northern waters the Army was largely dependent on the other Services, and their resources were limited. Standing had to make use of what was available and in the circumstances improvisation was probably justified. When I spoke to him I think his mind was already made up. It’s easy to be wise after the event and say that it was a panic decision, but considered from his point of view, he hadn’t all that much choice. The tug couldn’t possibly reach Laerg before nightfall. In those seas, even allowing for the fact that such a violent storm was bound to die down quickly, it would be good going if she were in Shelter Bay by dawn, and the forecast for dawn next day was not good. The depression, which had been stationary to the west of Ireland, was on the move again and expected to reach the Hebrides within twenty-four hours, instead of a polar air stream there would then be southerly winds force 6, veering later south-west and increasing to force 7, possibly gale force 8. He had checked with Ferguson and with Field, both officers who knew Laerg well and who had climbed over Sgeir Mhor. They confirmed what I had told him, that the rocks were sheer on the side facing Shelter Bay and that the only possible landing place was on the seaward side. And since that was the side exposed to winds between south and west it was obvious that the forecast not only made it extremely unlikely that any landing could be attempted the following day, but also that there was a grave danger of the survivors being overwhelmed by the force of the waves. That there were any survivors at all was obviously due to the change of wind direction that had occurred almost immediately after the ship had struck, and by dawn they might all be dead of exposure.

Time was, therefore, the vital factor. Moreover, both Ferguson and Field agreed that the only practical way of getting them off was to fire a line to them from the Butt of Keava and bring them over the gut by breeches buoy. That meant a rocket life-saving apparatus. The only equipment of this sort possessed by Guided Weapons had been allocated to the Learg detachment and nobody was certain whether it had been shipped out or not. Rafferty thought not, but the Movements Officer disagreed and a squad was dispatched to search the stores heaped behind the quay at Leverburgh. Meantime, Adams had been called in. The wind at Northton was around 35 knots, gusting 40 plus. He refused point blank to fly his helicopter anywhere near Laerg. He had come to Standing’s office direct from the Met. Office. He was well aware of the urgency of the situation. He also knew that the turbulence of the air around Laerg made it quite impossible for him to make a landing there.

Time was wasted contacting the two main lifeboat stations. They were standing by, but though they had breeches buoy equipment available, they were even less well placed than the tug for getting it there. There was only one answer, then, to parachute the life-saving gear in. But no Shackleton would dare fly low over the island and a high-level drop would almost certainly result in the parachutes being blown out to sea.

It was Adams who suggested a possible solution. A small aircraft owned by one of the charter companies was waiting at Stornoway for weather clearance back to the mainland. He thought the pilot, a Canadian named Rocky Fellowes who’d done a lot of bush flying in the North West Territories, might have a shot at it. And at Stornoway there was the life-saving gear they needed.

It was then that Ferguson volunteered; if the first drop were successful and the gear landed in a place that was accessible, then he’d make the jump and organise the setting up of the breeches buoy. It faced Standing with a difficult choice. He had now received my second call. He knew there were at least five men marooned on Sgeir Mhor and only seven hours of daylight left. The risk of one man’s life against the almost certain death of five; rightly or wrongly, he accepted Ferguson’s offer. It was then eleven forty-five. Ten minutes later Ferguson was on his way. Field went with him: also a sergeant and two men, all of whom had completed a parachute course. And while the staff car started its forty-mile dash to Stornoway, Standing got through to the airport and asked them to find Fellowes and have him ring Northton immediately. He also asked them to arrange for the life-saving apparatus to be brought to the airfield and the parachutes to be got ready. Menatime, the tug was ordered to put into Leverburgh in the hopes that the Army’s life-saving gear would be located.

This was the situation when I made my next contact with Base. I had found an alarm clock in the remains of the cook-house and the time by this was 12.53. Standing was then able to tell me that Fellows had agreed to attempt the drop. The wind speed at Stornoway was slightly less than the reading shown by Cliff Morgan’s anemometer. It was beginning to fall off and he was optimistic. I suppose I should have warned Standing. The wind speed had fallen at Learg, too. But there is a difference between a drop from around 50 knots and a drop from the fantastic wind speeds we had been experiencing. It was still coming down off the Saddle in gusts of considerable force. Whether it would have made any difference if I had warned him, I don’t know. Probably not. Nobody sitting in his office almost a hundred miles away could possibly have any idea of the battering Laerg had received and was still receiving. In any case, I was thinking of those men out on Sgeir Mhor. If the pilot was willing to try it, then it wasn’t for me to discourage him. The ETA Standing gave me for ‘ the plane’s arrival was 14.15 approximate. In an hour’s time the wind might have dropped right away. I had known it happen with storms of this intensity. And if it did, then the whole situation would be changed, and a plane overhead could make the difference between life and death to the survivors. It was up to the pilot anyway.

Standing was still talking to me, explaining about the tug and that Adams was standing by in the hope that conditions might improve sufficiently for him to fly the helicopter. Suddenly he stopped in mid-sentence and I heard him say, ‘Just a minute.’ And then another voice — a voice I recognised, much fainter, but still quite audible: ‘Please. I must see you. You can’t do it. If you make Mike jump

‘I’m not making him. He volunteered.’

‘Then stop him. You’ve got to stop him. He’ll kill himself. It’s murder expecting him to jump in this wind, just to prove he can do it.’

‘For God’s sake, Marjorie. Pull yourself together. He’s not trying to prove anything.’

‘Of course he is. You’re taking advantage of him.’ She was beside herself, her voice shaken with the violence of her emotions.

‘It isn’t fair. He’ll be killed and…’ I heard the clatter of the phone as he dropped it and his voice was suddenly farther away: ‘Look, my dear. Try to understand. This isn’t just a question of Mike Ferguson. There are survivors out there and the one chance of getting them off…’ 7 don’t care. ‘I’m thinking of Mike.’

‘Your father’s with him. He’ll see he doesn’t do anything rash.’ But she didn’t accept that. ‘Daddy and Mike — they’re both made the same way. You know that. They’ve both … ” She hesitated, adding, ‘He’ll jump whatever the conditions.’ And then on a different note: ‘Is it true Mr Ross is one of the survivors? Major Rafferty said something about…’

‘I’m just speaking to him now.’

And then I heard him say, ‘Marjorie!’ his voice sharp and angry. She must have grabbed hold of the phone for her voice was suddenly clear and very close to me, trembling uncontrollably so that I caught her mood, the desperate urgency of her fear. She might have been there in the hut with me. ‘Mr Ross. Help me — please. Mike mustn’t jump. Do you hear? You’ve radio. You can contact the plane.’ And then, almost with a sob: ‘No, let me finish.’ But he’d got the phone away from her. ‘Ross? ‘I’ll call you back at fourteen hundred hours.’ There was a click, and after that silence.

Fellowes took off from Stornoway at 13.40 hours. Conditions had improved slightly with the wind easterly about 30 knots. The overcast, however, had come down again and there were rain squalls. They were in cloud before they’d reached 1,000 feet and they had to climb to more than 6,000 before they were above it. Field was in the co-pilot’s seat; Ferguson, the sergeant and the two men back in the fuselage. The plane was an old Consul, the metal of the wings burnished bright by hail and rain, by subjection over many years to the abrasive forces of the elements. They flew for almost forty minutes in watery sunlight across a flat cotton-wool plain of cloud. Airspeed 120, the altimeter steady at 6.5 and towards the end, the pilot searching for an orographical cloud, a bulge in the overcast that would pin-point the position of Laerg. But there was no orographical cloud and at 14.20 they started down through the overcast.

Fellowes’ dead reckoning was based on course and speed. He had corrected for drift, but he had no means of telling whether the wind had remained constant and he was doing his sums the way the early fliers did them, his navigational aids on his knee. And all the time he was having to fly his plane in strong winds. He had spoken to me on the radio. But I couldn’t even make a guess at the wind speed, for it was broken by Tarsaval and Malesgair and came down from the direction of the Saddle in violent eddies. All I could tell him was that the ceiling was under a thousand. Creag Dubh was just over the thousand and Creag Dubh was blanketed.

Coming down like that through thick cloud couldn’t have been very pleasant. Field told me later that he didn’t dare look at the altimeter after it had unwound to two thousand. He would like to have been able to shut his eyes, but he couldn’t; they remained fixed on the grey void ahead, his body tense and strained forward against the safety belt. The engines made hardly a sound, just a gentle whispering, the wing-tips fluttering in moments of turbulence. Fellowes, too, was strained forward, eyes peering through the windshield. They were both of them waiting for that sudden darkening in the opaque film ahead that would mean hard rock and the end. Theoretically, Fellowes had overshot by five miles and was coming down over empty, unobstructed sea. But he couldn’t be certain. Tarsaval was 1,456ft. high.

Five minutes — one of the longest five minutes of his life, Field said. Finally, he tore his eyes away from the empty windshield and glanced at the altimeter. Eight hundred feet. The cloud darkened imperceptibly. His eyes, with nothing substantial to focus on, were playing tricks. He was on the high slopes of a great mountain again, the cloud swirling about him. And then suddenly there was a pattern — streaks of black and white, long foaming lines coming up towards them. The sea, and the long march of the waves had their tops torn from them by the wind.

The aircraft banked sharply, the wing-tip seeming almost to touch the crest of a roller that reared up, curling and then breaking in a great surge of thrusting water. They straightened out, skimming the surface, the black curtain of a rain squall ahead. Bank again to skirt it and then momentarily blinded as water beat against the windshield, driven by the force of the wind into long rivulets that were never still. And on the other side of the squall a dark wall coming to meet them, towering cliffs of black rock sliding back from the starboard wing, the glimpse of two stacs, their tops hidden in cloud. Fladday. Course 280° then and Shelter Bay opening out ahead. Fellowes came right into it, flying at just over 500 ft., and when he turned the wind caught him and flung him like a wounded gull across the top of Sgeir Mhor.

They saw nothing that first run, but when he came in again, slower this time on a course of 020° headed straight into the wind, Field could see men standing amongst the rocks, waving to them. Through his glasses he counted eleven, and when they came in again, slightly lower this time, skimming the tops of the rocks, he made it fourteen. They stood off then, circling the open sea beyond the two arms of the bay whilst Fellowes reported to Base by radio.

Fourteen men still alive. Standing had no choice then. Nor had Ferguson. Nor had Fellowes. He yelled for the men back in the fuselage to get ready and headed back into Shelter Bay. The fuselage door was held open against the slipsteam, the two packages poised in the cold blast of the opening. Fellowes raised his hand. ‘Let go.’ They were flung out. The fuselage door slammed shut. The aircraft banked.

I had left the radio then and was standing in the lee of the hut. I saw the two packages fall — two black dots like bombs dropping from the side of the plane. Twin white canopies blossoming and the plane blown like a leaf towards Sgeir Mhor, losing height, its wings dipping like a bird in flight. It cleared the rocks and vanished into rain. The parachutes moved across the sky above my head, growing larger, but drifting very fast. And then first one and then the other were caught by down-draughts, the nylon canopies half-collapsed. They came down with a rush and then, just before they hit the beach, they each filled with a snap I could almost hear, were whirled upward and then landed gently, almost gracefully, halfway up the slopes of Keava.

I saw what happened to them, but Fellowes didn’t. He was too busy fighting his plane clear of Sgeir Mhor. And Field had his eyes on the rocks, not on the parachutes. All they saw when they came out of the rain squall and circled the bay were two parachutes lying side-by-side like two white mushrooms close under the first scree slope on Keava. They didn’t realise it was luck not judgment that had put them there. Field signalled back to Mike Ferguson, both thumbs up, and Fellowes took the plane in again. The drill was the same. The two men held the fuselage door open. The sergeant acted as dispatcher. But this time he was dispatching a man, not two inanimate packages. Again Fellowes judged his moment, raised his hand and shouted, ‘Jump!’

Whether Fellowes misjudged or whether Mike Ferguson hesitated, as the sergeant said he did, nobody will ever know. Field’s impression was that he jumped immediately. But in moments like this fractions of a second count and a pilot, tensed and in control of his machine, possesses a sensitivity and a speed of reaction that is much faster than that of the ordinary man. Fellowes thought it was a long time before the sergeant called out that Ferguson was away. In view of his parachute course record it seems more than likely that Ferguson did, in fact, hesitate. If he did, it was a fatal hesitation. He may have felt in those last few moments of the run-in that he was jumping to his death. The sergeant reported that his face was very white, his lips trembling as he moved to the door. But then again, in view of his previous experience, some nervous reaction was inevitable.

In a tragedy of this sort it is pointless to try and apportion the blame. Each man is doing his best according to his lights and in any case it was the wind that was the vital factor. My back was against the hut and at the moment the plane banked and that tiny bundle of human flesh launched itself from the fuselage I felt the whole structure tremble under the onslaught of the wind. It wasn’t just a gust. It came in a steady roar and it kept on blowing. I saw the parachute open, his fall suddenly checked. He was then at about 500 feet and right over my head; the plane, still banking, was being flung sideways across Sgeir Mhor.

If the wind had been a down-draught it might have collapsed his parachute momentarily. That was what had happened to the two previous parachutes. He might have landed heavily and been injured, but he would still have been alive. But it was a steady wind. It kept his parachute full. I saw him fighting the nylon cords to partially collapse it, but it was like a balloon, full to bursting and driving towards Keava at a great rate, trailing him behind it. For a moment it looked as though he would be all right. The sloped rock spine of Keava was a good 70 feet high at the point he was headed for, but as he neared it the steep slope facing Shelter Bay produced an up-draught. The parachute lifted, soaring towards the clouds. He cleared the top by several hundred feet. For a moment he was lost to sight, swallowed by the overcast. Then I saw him again, the parachute half-collapsed and falling rapidly. It was a glimpse, no more, for in the instant he was lost behind Keava.

Beyond the ridge was sheer cliff, and beyond the cliff nothing but the Atlantic and the gale-torn waves. It was all so remote that it seemed scarcely real; only imagination could associate that brief glimpse of white nylon disappearing with a man dead, drowned in a wet, suffocating world of tumbling water.

The plane stood off, circling by the entrance to the bay. It didn’t come in again and nobody else jumped. I went slowly back into the hut and picked up Standing’s voice on the radio. It was so shaken that I barely recognised it. He was ordering the pilot to return to Stornoway.

I was glad of that — glad that nobody else was going to be ordered to jump, glad that I didn’t have to stand again outside the hut and watch another parachute blown out into the Atlantic. I found I was trembling, still with that picture in my mind of a man dangling and the white envelope coming out of the clouds, half-collapsed, and the poor fellow falling to a cold death in the Atlantic. I had liked Mike Ferguson. He’d a lot of guts to face that jump. And then I was thinking of Marjorie Field and of that interview she’d had with Colonel Standing when I had been an involuntary eavesdropper. Somebody would have to tell her and I was glad I wasn’t her father. The dead have their moment of struggle, that brief moment of shock which is worse than birth because the ties with this world are stronger. But for the living, the pain does not cease with death. It remains till memory is dulled and the face that cased the loved one’s personality has faded.

I was still thinking of Marjorie when Standing called me, demanding estimates of wind speed, force of down-draughts, height of ceiling. I went to the door of the hut. The wind’s roar had momentarily died away. Nothing stronger now than 40 knots, I thought. My eyes went involuntarily to the sloping back of Keava. If only Mike had waited. He would have had a chance now, but it was done. He’d jumped and he was gone. The sky to the south, by the bay entrance, was empty, the plane gone.

I went back and reported to Standing. He asked particularly about down-draughts and I told him they were intermittent, that at the moment they had lost much of their force. There was a long pause and then he said they’d try and make a helicopter landing. I didn’t attempt to discourage him. Those men were still on Sgeir Mhor and I was tired. Anyway, it was quieter now. How long it would last I didn’t know. I just wished to God they’d flown the helicopter instead of trying to parachute men in. I wondered whether it was really Adams who had refused to fly or whether Standing’s cold mathematical mind had been influenced by the high cost of these machines. That was a thought that made me angry. When you consider how the Services waste the taxpayers’ money, millions stupidly spent, and here perhaps a decent man had been sent to his death for fear of risking a few thousands. ‘About bloody time,’ I said angrily. ‘If you’d used the helicopter in the first place.

I let it go at that. The poor bastard! It wasn’t his fault. Decisions have to be made by the men in command and sometimes, inevitably, they’re the wrong decisions. It was something that he’d tried to get help to the survivors before nightfall. I wondered what my brother would have done. With all his faults, Iain was a man of action. His behaviour in an emergency was instinctive. ‘A pity you didn’t leave it to Major Braddock.’ I’d said it before I could stop myself. I heard his quick intake of breath. And then, in a stiff, cold voice, he said, ‘We’ll be with you under the hour.’ We! I remember thinking about that, sitting there, dazed with fatigue. Was Standing coming himself? But it didn’t seem to matter — not then. The life-saving gear was up there on the slopes of Keava and all we needed were the men to collect it and set it up. Men who were fresh and full of energy. I was tired. Too tired to move, my aching body barely reacting to the orders of my brain. Nerves, muscles, every part of my anatomy cried out for rest.

I woke Cooper, told him to keep radio watch and wake me in forty minutes’ time. Then I fell on to Pinney’s bed, not bothering to undress, and was instantly asleep.

‘Mr Ross. Wake up.’ The voice went on and on, a hand shaking my shoulder. I blinked my eyes and sat up. ‘Gawd Almighty! Yer didn’t ‘alf give me a turn. Thought you’d croaked. Honest I did.’ Cooper bending over me, staring at me anxiously. ‘You orl right, sir?’ And then he said, ‘They’re on the air now. Want ter know what conditions are like. I told ‘em: still blowing like ‘ell, but it’s clearer — only the top of Tarsaval’s got cla’d on it now.’

I got up and went to the radio. The time was twelve minutes to four. Adams’ voice came faint and crackling. He wanted an estimate of the wind speed, its direction, the strength of the down-draughts. I went to the door of the hut. It was certainly much clearer now; quite bright, in fact. The overcast was breaking up, torn rags of clouds hurrying across a cold blue sky and the broken water seaward shining white in patches of slanting sunlight. Keava and Malesgair, the two arms that enclosed Shelter Bay, were clear of cloud. So was Creag Dubh. For the first time I could see the Lookout where the tracking station radar had been housed. Only the summit of Tarsaval was still obscured, a giant wearing a cloth cap made shapeless by the wind. It was blowing harder, I thought, and the down-draughts were irregular. Sometimes there was a long interval in which the wind just blew. Then suddenly it would wham down off the heights, two or three gusts in quick succession.

I went back to the radio and reported to Adams. He said he could see Laerg quite plainly and estimated that he had about seven miles to go. ‘I’ll come in from the south at about four hundred,’ he said. ‘You know where the landing ground is — down by the Factor’s House. ‘I’ll watch for you there. ‘I’m relying on you to signal me in. ‘I’ll need about sixty seconds clear of down-draughts. Okay?’ I don’t think he heard my protest. At any rate, he didn’t answer, and I went out, cursing him for trying to put the onus on me. Did he think I could control the down-draughts? There was no pattern about them. They came and went; one minute I was walking quite easily, the next I was knocked flat and all the breath pushed back into my throat. Damn the man! If I signalled him in it would be my responsibility if anything went wrong.

But there wasn’t time to consider that. I’d barely reached the beach when I saw the helicopter, a speck low down over the water beyond the entrance to the bay. It came in fast and by the time I’d reached the Factor’s House I could hear its engine, a buzz-saw drone above the suck and seethe of the surf. A down-draught hit, beating the grasses flat and whistling out over the bay, the surface boiling as though a million small fry were skittering there It was gone almost as soon as it had come. Another and another hit the ground, flattening the long brown wisps of grass, whirling the dried seaweed into the air. They came like sand devils, spiralling down. The helicopter, caught in one, slammed down almost to sea level and then rocketed up. It was very close now and growing bigger every minute. the sound of its engine filling the air. In the sudden stillness that followed that last gust I thought I could hear the swish of its rotor blades.

No point in waiting, for every second he hovered there he was in mortal danger. I waved him in, praying to God that he’d plonk himself down in one quick rush before the next blast struck. But he didn’t. He was a cautious man, which is a fine thing in a pilot; except that this was no moment for caution. He came in slowly, feeling his way, and the next gust caught him when he was still a hundred feet up. It came slam like the punch of a fist The helicopter, flung sideways and downwards, hit the beach; the floats crumpled and at the same instant, with the rotor blades still turning, the whole machine was heaved up and flung seaward. It touched the water, tipped, foam flying from the dripping blades, and then it sank till it lay on its side, half-submerged, a broken float support sticking stiffly into the air like the leg of some bloated carcase.

Stillness then, the wind gone and everything momentarily quiet. A head bobbed up beside the floating wreck. Another and another. Three men swimming awkwardly, and then, the tin carcase rolled its other splintered leg into the air and sank. Air came out of it, a single belch that lifted, the surface of the water, and after that nothing; just the flat sea rippled by the wind and three dark heads floundering in to the beach.

Fortunately there was little surf. One by one they found their feet and waded ashore, drowned men gasping for air, flinging themselves down on the wet stones, suddenly exhausted as fear gripped them. I ran down to them, looking at each face. But they were men I didn’t know. They were alive because they’d been in the fuselage within reach of the door. Standing had been sitting with Adams up by the controls. They’d both been trapped.

It was only minutes before, a few short minutes, that I’d been talking to Adams. It didn’t seem possible. One moment the helicopter had been there, so close above my head that I’d ducked involuntarily — and now it was gone. I stood there with those three men moaning at my feet staring unbelievingly at the waters of the bay. Nothing. Nothing but the steel-bright surface exploding into spray and beneath it Standing and Adams still strapped into their seats, eyes already sightless…. Was it my fault? I felt sick right through to my guts, utterly drained.

‘Christ, man. What are you staring at?’

One of the figures, a sergeant, had staggered to his feet and was staring at me, wild-eyed, his hair plastered limp across his head.

‘Nothing,’ I said. It was nothing that he could see. The two dead men were in my mind and he wasn’t thinking.of them, only of the fact that he was alive.

‘Jesus! It was cold.’ He was shivering; moaning to himself. But then habit and training reasserted itself. He got his men to their feet and I took them up to the camp.

It was, I thought, the end of all hope for the survivors on Sgeir Mhor; three men killed and nothing achieved.

Standing’s death had a numbing effect on the rescue operation. It was not so much the man himself as the command he represented. It left a vacuum and there was only one man in Northton with the experience to fill it; that man was lying on his bed, nursing a hatred that no longer had any point. In the midst of the flood of teleprints back and forth nobody thought of informing him that Standing was dead. He heard about it from his escorting officer who had got it from the orderly who brought them their tea. It took time for the implications to sink in and it wasn’t until almost five-fifteen that he finally stirred himself, got to his feet and ordered Lieutenant Phipps to accompany him to the Movements Office. There he sent off a teleprint to Brigadier Matthieson: In view of Colonel Standing’s death presume I have your authority to take over command. Please confirm so that I can organise attempt to rescue survivors dawn tomorrow. This was despatched at 17.23 hours.

Brigadier Matthieson, who admitted later that he considered Standing’s action in placing his second-in-command under close arrest ill-advised, immediately signalled back: Your temporary command Northton confirmed. Advise action planned for getting survivors off. Queen’s Regulations are not very specific on the subject of an arrested officer assuming command and Matthieson’s signal carefully avoided reference to the matter. He had, in fact, very little alternative. There was no other officer at Northton competent to take control in a situation like this and to fly a replacement C.O. in would take time. Moreover, Braddock had the confidence of his superiors at the War Office. There was another factor, too. The Press were now alerted to what was happening up in the Outer Hebrides. The Press Officer at Scottish Command had, during the past hour or so, faced a barrage of demands for information from London as well as Scottish newspaper offices. They knew about the trawler that had disappeared.

• They knew that a landing craft was in difficulties to the west of Laerg. They also knew that another LCT had been shipwrecked on the island and that there were survivors. No doubt they had been briefed by amateur radio operators — either Scottish ‘ham’ operators monitoring my radio contacts with Base or Irish radio enthusiasts picking up the signals passing between Coastal Command and their two Shackletons.

Whatever the source of their information the effect was the same; it convinced Matthieson that this was no longer a strictly Army affair but had become something much bigger. Like a submarine disaster, it had all the dramatic qualities to capture the imagination of the British public. From tomorrow morning onwards the whole country would be waiting for news of the survivors, and if the news were bad…. Well, he certainly didn’t intend to be blamed for it, not with only a few months of his time to go. In confirming my brother as temporary Base Commander, he was clutching at a straw. If things went right then he could take some credit. And if things went wrong then he had his scapegoat. I’m convinced that that was the way his mind was working when he made the decision.

At approximately five-thirty when my brother officially took command the position was this: Two relief Shackletons had been flown off, one to continue the search for the missing trawler, the other to watch over L4400 until the destroyer, now little more than 100 miles away, reached her. W/S India had been ordered back on to station. The Naval tug was still snug against the quay at Leverburgh.

Apart from shore-based aircraft, there was nothing else available in the area to assist in the rescue operation. True, the destroyer would pass quite close to Learg, but L4400 urgently needed her. The landing craft was barely afloat. Almost half her crew were casualties, the bridge deck ripped to pieces, mast and funnel gone, the tank hold full of water and the pumps barely capable of holding in check the sea pouring in through her strained and buckled plates.

And since conditions made the use of aircraft impracticable, the tug remained the only hope.

In the uncertainty that followed immediately on Standing’s death, nobody had apparently thought of informing the skipper of the changed situation. That his vessel was still tied up in Leverburgh was not due to any lack of initiative on his part. He was waiting for conditions to improve, knowing that he needn’t sail until six at the earliest to reach Laerg by first light.

Braddock’s immediate reaction to the situation was to send out three signals in quick succession — to Command, demanding the instant despatch of two helicopters; to Coastal Command requesting that a further Shackleton be held fuelled and ready for immediate take-off should he require it; to the destroyer urging her captain to close Sgeir Mhor on his way out to L4400 and endeavour to float off supplies to the survivors, or if that were not possible, to signal them by lamp that help was on its way. Then he went to see Cliff Morgan.

Captain Flint, who was in Movements at the time, said he personally felt a great lift when Braddock took command. If any man could get the survivors off, he thought Braddock would.

Cliff Morgan’s reaction, on the other hand, was very different. Like Standing, he regarded Braddock as responsible for what had happened. He was appalled when Braddock came into his quarters — ‘Bold as brass, man,’ was the way he put it. ” ‘Colonel Standing’s dead and I’ve taken over command. Now, Morgan, let’s have your ideas of the weather for the next twelve hours.” Just like that. And when I told him it was a pity it was Standing who’d gone and not him he laughed in my face; told me to mind my own bloody business and stick to the weather which he thought perhaps I understood. I was in radio contact with a “ham” over in Tobermory at the time and when I started to finish the conversation, he put his big hand over the key. “You take your fat arse off that chair,” he told me, “and come over to the Met. Office or I’ll take you there by the scruff of your neck.”

Over in the Met. Office Cliff had given him a forecast that he admitted was enough to daunt any man planning a rescue operation on an island a hundred miles out in the Atlantic. The effect of the local depression that had caused all the havoc would die out entirely within the next hour or so — probably it had died out already. For a time then the island would come again under the influence of the polar air stream with winds northerly between thirty and forty knots. Later those winds would decrease and perhaps die out for a while as the polar air stream was gradually dominated by the new depression moving in from the Atlantic. The period of relative calm would be followed by winds of rapidly increasing strength as the depression built up and spread over the area. Southerly at first, the winds would veer south-westerly increasing to gale force.

‘When?’ Braddock had asked. ‘When will that happen?’ And Cliff had shrugged.

‘You’re asking me how fast that depression is moving. I don’t know.’

‘Then contact somebody who does. There are more than a dozen men on that bloody rock and when this depression hits …’ Braddock checked himself. He even patted Cliff on the shoulder. ‘Just tell me when. Better still, tell me when that period of calm will be.’

Cliff says he hesitated, unwilling to commit himself. He was staring at the map he’d drawn. Sykes came in with another sheet from the teleprinter, more barometric pressure figures. He entered them in, connected them up, scoring the isobars with a red pencil. One of those figures represented a report from the Shackleton circling L4400.

It showed a drop of two millibars in the past hour. ‘The calm will be just about there; within the hour, at any rate.’

‘Goddamit!’ Braddock said. ‘An hour. Are you certain?’ And when Cliff nodded, he said. ‘How long will it last? Listen. In an hour and a half perhaps I could have helicopters here. Say three hours by the time they’re refuelled and have reached Laerg. I need four hours. Can you give me four hours?’

‘No.’ Cliff shook his head, quite definite now. ‘You can see for yourself.’ He was pointing to the red lines he’d drawn. The nearest was almost touching Laerg, coming down in a broad sweep from Iceland and running away westward just north of Ireland. ‘Two hours I’d give it; no more. Two hours from now and the wind will begin blowing from the south. It must do.’

‘Then God help them,’ was all Braddock said and he turned and went out, walking swiftly through the fading light. Cliff called after him that there was a warm front associated with the depression. There would probably be heavy rain accompanied by low ceiling and poor visibility. Braddock didn’t answer. He made no acknowledgment that he’d heard, but walked straight on, shoulders very square, head held well back on the short, thick neck — a man bracing himself for a fight, Cliff thought. And overhead the clouds gathering again, aerial cavalry of a new enemy onslaught forming themselves into dark ranks, galloping eastward and rolling up the blue-green late afternoon canopy that, though cold, had the bright promise of hope. Now hope was fallen victim to the gathering clouds and my brother, alone in the loneliness of command, had to decide what further lives, if any, should be risked to attempt to save men doomed to face a night of terror, exposed again to the fury of the elements.

Field was back when he reached the Movements Office — Charles Field, looking old and grey and stooped, the lines of his face etched deeper than ever and an uneasy, shifting light in his steel-blue eyes. He said what he had to say, adding, ‘It was nobody’s fault. Nobody’s fault at all. I’ll write a full report, of course.’ He was edging towards the door. ‘Think I’ll go over to the Mess now.’

‘The Mess?’ Braddock stared at him, saw the lips twitching, the slight blink of the eyes, that shifting look. ‘For a drink?’

Field nodded unhappily. ‘I thought just one. Just a quick one, to steady me. A shock, you know. A most frightful shock.’ And he added, justifying himself. ‘I hope you realise, I don’t normally drink. But on this occasion. You understand….’

Braddock reached him in two quick strides, seized hold of him by the arm. ‘Sure. I understand. Just one, and that’ll lead to another. You’re the one man I want sober. So you stay here. Okay?’ And he pushed him into a chair. ‘You’re going back to Laerg — tonight.’

‘No.’ Field was up from the chair, his eyes overbright. ‘No. I absolutely refuse.’

‘Then I’ll place you under arrest and have you escorted on board.’ He patted his arm as though comforting a child. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be with you. We’re going out there together.’ And he sent Phipps for the long wheel-base Land-Rover and dictated a signal to Brigadier Matthieson: Weather forecast suggests quite impracticable attempt lift survivors out by helicopter. Am proceeding to Laerg by Naval tug. Will personally direct rescue operations on arrival dawn tomorrow. It was sent out signed: Braddock, Commanding Officer Guided Weapons, Northton. In taking Field with him my brother was instinctively seeking the support of the one man whose experience and background could help. He also took the M.O., Lt. Phipps, a Sergeant Wetherby and four men, all hand-picked for their toughness and their known ability in the water and on the Laerg crags. Flint went with them. It took almost half an hour to gather them and their kit and the necessary equipment — climbing ropes, inflatable dinghy, aqualung cylinders and frogmen’s suits, everything that might possibly be of use. Meantime, radio contact had been established with the tug and the skipper requested to stand by to sail immediately they arrived on board.

They left the Base at ten to six. Unfortunately, the clothes Field needed were at his croft. It was only a few minutes’ drive from Leverburgh, but Marjorie was there. For the past two hours she had been with Laura Standing. She knew what had happened. She was white-faced, on the verge of hysteria. ‘Why did you let him jump?’ she demanded of her father. ‘Why in God’s name did you let him?’ And he stood there, not saying a word, because there was nothing to say, whilst his own daughter accused him of being responsible for Mike’s death.

Braddock got out of the Land-Rover. ‘Hurry up, Field. We’ve no time to waste.’

Marjorie was still pouring out a flood of words, but she stopped then, staring at the Land-Rover, the significance of it standing there full of men slowly dawning on her. She doesn’t remember what she said or what she did, but Flint described it to me: ‘Moments like that, when you’re headed for trouble an’ you don’t know how bad it’s going to be, you don’t want a girl around then, particularly a girl who’s just lost somebody she cared about. One moment she was giving her father hell, saying it was all his fault, and then all of a sudden she switched her attention to Major B. That was when she realised he was taking her father out to Laerg. “You can’t do it,” she said. “He’s not a young man.He hasn’t climbed in years.” She knew what it was all about. She’d broken the news of Standing’s death to his wife. She knew what had happened. She knew the sort of man Braddock was — guessed he’d stop at nothing, risk anything to get those men off. She went for him like a bitch defending her last remaining puppy, screaming at him that it was all his fault, 1 that he’d killed Mike, killed Simon Standing; it was plain bloody murder, she said, and she wasn’t going to let him kill her father. Braddock tried soothing her with logic — her father was in the Army, there was a job to do and that was that. But reasoning with a girl who’s scared out of her wits, whose emotions are tearing her nerves to shreds, is like pouring water on a high voltage short — it just doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. In the end he slapped her. Not hard. Just twice across the face and told her to pull herself together and not disgrace her father. It shut her up, and after that she just stood there, white an’ trembling all over.’

It was just after six-fifteen when they boarded the tug. The warps were let go immediately and she steamed out into the Sound of Harris, heading west. We were then experiencing the lull Cliff had forecast. It was so still in the hut that I went out to see what was wrong. After hours of battering the sudden quiet seemed unnatural. Darkness was closing down on Laerg, the clouds low overhead and hanging motionless. I could see the outline of Sgeir Mhor, the sloping spine of Keava disappearing into the blanket of the overcast, but they were dim, blurred shapes. The air was heavy with humidity, and not a breath of wind.

I got a torch and signalled towards Sgeir Mhor. But there was no answering flash. It meant nothing for it was unlikely that any of the survivors had got ashore with a torch. I tried to contact Base, but there was other traffic — Rafferty talking to the destroyer, to the tug, finally to Coastal Command. And then the destroyer to me: ETA Laerg 01.25 hours. Would I please stand by the radio as from 01.00. Base came through immediately afterwards: The tug’s ETA would be about 04.30 dependent on conditions. I was requested to keep radio watch from four-thirty onwards. Roger. I had six hours in which to get some rest. I arranged with Cooper for a hot meal at one o’clock, set the alarm, undressed and tumbled into bed.

I must have recovered some of my energy, for it wasn’t the alarm that woke me. I reached out and switched on the light. A mouse was sitting up by the edge of my empty plate, sitting on its haunches on the bedside table cleaning its whiskers with its fore-paws. It was one of the breed peculiar to Laerg, a throw-back to pre-glacial life, to before the last Ice Age that covered the British Isles anything up to ten thousand years ago. It was larger than the ordinary British field-mouse, its ears were bigger, its hind-legs longer and the tail was as long as its body; the brown of its coat had a distinctly reddish tinge brightening to dull orange on the under-belly. It sat quite still, two shiny black pin-head eyes staring at me. It seemed possessed of curiosity rather than fear, and after a moment it resumed its toilet, cleaning its whiskers with little stroking movements of its paws. The time was eleven minutes past midnight. The wind was back, beating round the corners of the hut in a steady roar that drowned the sound of the generator. And behind the wind was another, more sinister sound — one that I hadn’t heard for some time; the crash and suck of waves breaking on the beach. I thought it was this sound rather than the mouse that had woken me.

There was something about that little morsel of animal life that was infinitely comforting; a sign perhaps of the indestructibility of life. The mouse in that moment meant a lot to me and! I lay there watching it until it had finished its toilet and quietly disappeared. Then I got up and dressed and went to the door of the hut. It was a black night, the two lights Cooper had left on in the camp shining in isolation. The wind was from the south, about force 7. The waves, coming straight into the bay, broke with an earth-shaking thud. The sound of the surf was louder than the wind, and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I could see the ghostly glimmer of white water ringing the beach; just the glimmer of it, nothing else. It was a wild, ugly night, the air much warmer so that I thought I could smell rain again, the warm front moving in.

At one o’clock I contacted the destroyer. She had Laerg clear on the radar at thirteen miles range. ETA approximately, one-thirty. Alf Cooper appeared at my side, a khaki gnome, his head encased in a woollen balaclava. ‘Grub up.’ He put the tray down on the table beside the radio — a Thermos flask of oxtail soup and two mess tins full of corned beef and potato hash all steaming hot. ‘A night for the flippin’ bears, ain’t it. ‘Ibernation, that’s my idea o’ paradise this time of the year. You reck’n that destroyer’ll be able to do any good?’

‘No,’ I said.

He nodded, sucking at his soup. ‘That’s wot I fort. Ruddy waves must be breaking right over the poor bastards.’ I asked him about the men from the helicopter. ‘Sleepin’ their ruddy heads orf,’ he said. ‘Orl right for them. They got full bellies. Me, I’m fair famished.’ He reached for one of the mess tins. “Ope yer don’t mind bully. Easy ter make, yer see. Fillin’ too.’

At one-thirty we went out of the hut and stood in the teeth of the wind staring into the black darkness that hid Sgeir Mhor. It was drizzling, a wet, driving mist. Suddenly light blazed, the pencil stab of a searchlight that threw the blurred shape of Sgeir Mhor into black relief. It probed the mist, producing strange halos of light in the damp air. A gun flashed, a small sound against the thunder of breaking waves. The overcast glimmered with light as the star shell burst. It was a minute or two before it floated clear of the clouds over Keava; for a moment the bay and the surrounding rocks were bathed in its incandescent glare. It was an unearthly sight; the waves marching into the bay, building up till their tops curled and broke, roaring up the beach in a welter of foam, and all around the horseshoe curve of breaking water, the rocks standing piled in ghostly brilliance. Rock and cliff and sodden grass slope all looked more hellish in that macabre light. I saw the spume of waves breaking over the lower bastions of Sgeir Mhor. Then the flare touched the sea and was instantly extinguished, and after that the night was blacker, more frightening than before.

A signal lamp stabbed its pin-point of light just beyond the tip of Sgeir Mhor: Help arriving first light. Stick it out four more hours and … That was all I read for the destroyer was steaming slowly westward and the stab of her signal lamp was obscured by the rocks. The searchlight probed again, searching the far side of the rock promontory as though trying to count the survivors. And then that too went out and after that there was nothing but the pitch-black night.

I re-set the alarm and lay down again on Pinney’s bed, not bothering this time to undress. Time passed slowly and I couldn’t sleep. The mouse came back. I could hear its claws scratching at the aluminium of the mess tins, but I didn’t switch the light on. I lay there with my eyes closed waiting for the alarm, thinking of those men out on the rocks drenched by the mist and the spray, wondering whether it would be possible to get them off.

At four-thirty I was at the radio and the tug came through prompt on schedule, my brother’s voice requesting information about sea and landing conditions. I was able to tell him that the wind was now west of south. But it had also increased in strength. It was definitely blowing a gale now and it was raining heavily. However, if the wind veered further, as seemed likely, there was a chance that a landing could be made in the western curve of the bay, close under Keava where there would be some shelter. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll recce the lee side of Sgeir Mhor first and if that’s no good, we’ll anchor and attempt to make the beach on inflatable rafts.’ It was still dark when they came into the bay and all I saw of the tug was the two steaming lights, one above the other, swinging and dipping. She came right into the bay, almost to the break of the waves, and then the lights moved apart and the distance between them increased as she turned westward. The green of her starboard navigation lights showed for a while, still half-obscured by rain. And then that vanished, together with the steaming lights, and I caught glimpses of her stern lights as she browsed along the western arm of the bay, a will-o’-the-wisp bounced from wave-top to wave-top. A searchlight stabbed a brilliant beam, iridescent with moisture, and the rocks of Sgeir Mhor showed ghostly grey across tumbled acres of sea; columns of spray like ostrich feather plumes waved behind it, sinking and rising with the surge of the Atlantic.

Dawn came slowly and with reluctance, a sheathed pallor stealing into the curve below the encircling hills. The tug lay close under Keava, just clear of the narrow, surf-filled gut that separated it from Sgeir Mhor. She didn’t anchor, but stayed head-to-wind under power, and they came ashore in rubber dinghies where the surf was least.

I was coming along the foreshore when my brother staggered dripping out of the suck of the waves, dragging a rubber dinghy after him. He was dressed like the others in a frogman’s suit and I can see him still, standing there in that twilit world that was the dawn, finned feet straddled at the surfs edge, not looking at that moment at his companions, but staring up at the cloud-hidden heights. There was a stillness about him, an immobility — he seemed for an instant petrified, a part of the landscape, his body turned to stone, statuesque like a rock.

Then the others piled in through the surf and he was a man again, moving to help them, going back into the waves to pull two more rubber dinghies ashore.

I met them on the beach. ‘Thank God you made it,’ I yelled to him above the wind.

He stared at me. His face looked haggard, his eyes wild. I swear he didn’t recognise me.

‘Iain. Are you all right, Iain?’

For a moment his face stayed blank. Then his eyes snapped. ‘Ross.’ He glanced quickly at Field standing at the surfs edge. Then he came towards me, gripped my shoulder. ‘The name’s Braddock, damn you,’ he hissed, his fingers digging a warning into my flesh. His mouth had hardened and his eyes blazed black. He’d have seen me dead and drowned before he’d have admitted to his real name.

Field wiped a smear of phlegm from below his nose. ‘We saw several men clinging to the rocks.’ His eyes looked dead and tired, bloodshot with the salt. ‘Where are the parachutes — the life-saving gear you dropped?’ Braddock asked.

‘Up there.’ Field nodded to the heights of Keava, the long slope leading to the spine.

‘Yes, up there,’ I agreed. But the rain-dimmed dawn showed nothing on the slopes — only the clouds writhing in white pillars.

Their clothes, tied in plastic bundles in the dinghies, were safe and dry. They changed in the bird-oil stench of an old cleit, and then we climbed, strung out across the slopes, climbed until we met the clouds, gasping wet air. The daylight had strengthened by then and ragged gaps in the overcast showed the slopes of Keava bare to its spine and to the cliffs beyond. The parachutes had gone. Some time during the night, I suppose, a gust had filled the nylon canopies and carried them over the top and far out into the sea beyond.

Braddock shook Field’s arm. ‘Are you sure that’s where you dropped them?’

Field nodded.

‘Then they’re gone.’

Field’s face was set in a wooden look as he agreed they’d gone. Up there in the wind and the driving clouds, with the thunder of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliffs, i he and I, we could both recall the solitary parachute lifting and sailing out into the Atlantic. ‘Wasted. All wasted.’ There were tears in his eyes, but it may have been the wind.

‘Okay. Well, there’s only one way to get a line across.’

Field nodded absently.

‘We’ll have to take it ourselves. Swim it across the gut, and then climb with it.’

Easy to say; not so easy to do. The drop from the Butt of Keava was possible, the 350-ft. cliff went down in a series of ledges. It was the gut between and the sheer cliff beyond. The gut was 50 yards at its narrowest and the seas were breaking there in a welter of foam; the cliffs of Sgeir Mhor were black volcanic gabbro, hard as granite, smooth and unbroken for long stretches.

‘Well?’ Braddock stared at Field. ‘I swim it, you climb it, eh?’ And his face cracked in a grin. It was a dare. This was the sort of thing he loved — physical action spiced with danger. And if the other man cracked.… Poor Field’s face was ashen, his eyes staring at the smooth black panels of wet rock beyond the maelstrom of the chasm.

I think my brother had watched quite a few men crack. I don’t say it gave him pleasure, but it may well have been something he needed, a bolster to his own morale. His world had always been a physical one. Mentally and emotionally he was something of a child; or that was how he had often seemed to me; which was why, I suppose, our relationship, so inimical at times, had been at others so strangely close; we had each supplied what the other lacked.

Now, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even watch for Field’s reaction. He caught the man’s fear at a glance and overlaid it with his own determination, the quick positiveness of his orders. He led us pell-mell back down the slope, back to the beach and the dinghies laden with rope and all the things he’d feared they might need. And then, in his frogman’s kit again, up the sloping shoulders of the rocks to the wet thunder of the surf breaking through the gut.

The sergeant and I, with two men, were ordered to the top of the cliff with one end of the nylon climbing rope. Down at the bottom he and Field, together with Lieutenant Phipps and the two other men, manoeuvred one of the rubber dinghies.

Flat on my stomach at the cliff’s edge I watched Iain working his way along the ledges westward through the gut. He was alone and his thick, powerful body in its black rubber suit looked like a seal’s as it flattened itself against the rocks to meet each wave as it broke foaming across the ledges — a baby seal from that height, the rope around his waist and trailing white behind him like an umbilical cord. And then from the farthest point west that he could fight his way, he suddenly stood on a sheer-edged shelf of rock and dived.

He dived into the back-surge of a big wave and went deep, his fins beating furiously, drumming at the surf. It looked so easy. One moment he was diving and the next he had bobbed up on the back of a breaker on the far side, a black head with black arms paddling. A quick look round, then down again as the next comber broke, and as it spent its energy, he rode its back on to a long, sloped ledge, and pulled himself up.

Now, with the dawn light stronger, I could see two figures prone among the rocks on the far side, peering down. I thought I recognised Wentworth, but I couldn’t be sure. The face was a dim blur in the rain and the flying spray.

Iain was clear of the water now, clear of the surge of even the biggest waves, curled up at the farthest end of that sloped ledge and pulling on the rope. Below me I saw Field hesitate. The rope came taut on the rush of a wave. The rubber dinghy shifted on the rocks. And then it was in the water, and he was in it, head down, hands gripping the gunnels as it was pulled across. Once I thought he was lost. The dinghy reared on a curling crest, turned half over as it broke. But then it righted itself, lifted on the backwash from the far side, and in one buoyant rush came to rest on the ledge where Iain crouched.

I saw arms wave on the cliff opposite. There were three bodies there now, all waving in the excitement of imminent rescue. But there was still that sheer cliff and the men on the top could do nothing to help. It was up to Field now. Field alone could lift the end of that rope the 300 feet, that would transform it from just the tail-end of a line into a connecting link, a bridge between the two masses of rock — a bridge that could act as a means of escape.

Field had crossed the gut barefooted, but in his battledress. How, soaked to the skin, he leaned against the vertical rock and put on his climbing boots. That done, he fastened a belt round his waist that was stuffed with rock pitons like steel dog’s teeth. An ice hammer looped by its thong to his wrist, the rope fastened around his waist, and he was ready. But then he stood for a long time with his head thrown back, gazing up at the cliff above him.

He stood like that for so long that I thought he was held fast by the sheer impossibility of it. Perhaps by fear, too. And I for one wouldn’t have blamed him. Those shining panels of rock, trickling water — a spider would have its work cut out to find a footing. There were ledges and crevices, it was true. There are in almost any rock. But they were so minute and spaced so far apart. And all the time the sea swirled about his legs. The din of it was incessant, the gut streaming with wind-blown spray, gusts of spume, spongy masses of it flying through the air.

At last he moved; a flick of the hand holding the rope. Iain squatted tighter into his niche, waiting, both hands on the rope. The three men on the cliff-top opposite me leaned out and waved. Field saw them, for he lifted his hand. And then at last he began to climb, traversing out along a toe-hold crack that was a fractured continuation of the ledge on which he had stood.

It was fascinating to watch him. He must have been over fifty and out of practice, yet he balanced himself like an acrobat, hanging in space and moving steadily upwards, his feet doing the work, the rest of his body still and quiet. To the left at first, a long traverse, and then a quick gain of perhaps fifty or sixty feet up toe and finger holds I couldn’t see; a short traverse right and then a pause. The pause lengthened out, his hands reaching occasionally and drawing back. Then for a long time he hung there quite motionless.

Had his nerve gone? I don’t know. I asked him once, but he only smiled and said, ‘It was an ugly place. I thought it better to start again.’

I didn’t see him jump. One moment he was there, and the next he was in the sea, and Iain was hauling him back to the ledge where he lay for a while getting his breath. Then he started up again.

The same route, but a left traverse at the top and then he was hammering a piton into a crevice, snapping on a hook for the rope, and up again using pitons from the clanking string of them around his waist, one after another. He must have hammered in about two dozen of them before he reached the overhang, and there he stuck with less than fifty feet to go — a fly on wet slate with the spume curling up like smoke from the cauldron below him.

He got round it eventually by going down about half the distance he’d climbed and working another crevice line to the right. This brought him almost opposite me, and right below him then was a deadly mass of rocks awash. He looked down once and I could imagine how he felt with only the rope running now through three pitons to hold him. The last 50 ft. seemed to take him almost as many minutes. The crevices were too shallow for the pitons and he was white with cold, his clothes heavy with water. But he did it.

His head came level with the clip-top. Hands reached down and he went over the top on his belly. Then he suddenly passed out, lying there, limp. But the rope was there and that was life to those who’d survived. The tail-end, passed back down the cliff to Iain, was made fast to a heavier line, and so, with many goings back and forth to the camp, we rigged up a makeshift breeches-buoy.

It took us all morning in the teeth of the gale with five of the tug’s crew and the Doc and the men who had survived the helicopter crash. Baulks of timber had to be brought up, heavy hawsers, block and tackle, and everything rigged by trial and error. Just after midday we managed to get food and clothing across to them. But it wasn’t until almost 2 p.m. that we got the first man over the gut and safe on to Keava. And after that it was slow, back-breaking work, for many of them were stretcher cases, who, when they reached Keava, had to be carried down the slopes and along the beach to the camp. There was no vehicle, no means of transporting them other than by hand.

We took altogether twenty-three men off Sgeir Mhor, five of them unconscious, and several badly injured. All were suffering from exposure, their skin a leprous white from constant immersion in salt water. Wentworth was the last to come across, a different man now, burned up by the twenty-four hours he’d been in command. Stratton was dead — with the Cox’n he’d been getting the men out of the mess deck when the whole bridge structure had been crushed like a biscuit tin; and Pinney, who’d thought Laerg the best posting he’d had. Four men had died during the night, including the young steward, Perkins, whose rib-cage had been stove in by the slam of the water-tight doors. Field said there was no sign of the landing craft, only bits and pieces of metal scattered among the rocks.

The wind went round that night into the north-west and the tug came close inshore. By midnight everybody had been embarked. Everybody except my brother. It was the Doc who discovered he wasn’t on board. He’d had a list made and a roll called, for the confusion on the tug was indescribable — thirty-five extra men, many of them casualties.

‘Where’s Major Braddock?’ I heard the question passed along the deck. ‘Anybody seen Major Braddock?’ Voices calling in the darkness of the decks. And then the Skipper giving orders. Sergeant Wetherby piling into the boat again, the outboard motor bursting into life. I jumped in beside him and we shot away from the tug’s side, slapping through the shallows over the low tide sand bar.

The outboard died as the bows grated and the boat came to a sudden halt. We scrambled out into a foot or more of water and ploughed over the sands to the beach. Wetherby thought he might have gone to check the remains of the transport that lay, battered and derelict, among the rocks behind the loading beach. He was an MT sergeant. Whilst he went towards the dim shape of the bulldozer, now standing high and dry on the sands, I hurried to the camp. Every now and then the wind brought me the sound of his voice calling: “Major Braddock! Major Braddock!’

The lights were out in the camp now, the generator still. I stumbled about in the darkness, calling. At first I called his Army name, but then, because it didn’t seem to matter here alone, I called: ‘Iain! Iain — where are you?’ I reached the hut and, fumbling in the dark, found the torch I’d used. The place was empty; the radio still there and all the mess and litter of its temporary use as a casualty clearing station. I went outside then, probing and calling.

I’d never have found him without the torch. He was standing in the lee of the cookhouse, quite still, his back turned towards me as though afraid his face might catch the light. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ I demanded. ‘Why didn’t you answer?’

He stared at me, but didn’t say anything for a moment. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth and his face was deathly pale. ‘Are you ill?’ I asked.

He moved then, came close to me and reached for my arm. ‘Donald.’ His voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper against the blatter of the wind. ‘Go back. Go back to the ship. You haven’t seen me. Understand?’ The urgency of his request was almost as startling as the request itself. He jerked at my arm. ‘Go — back.’ Behind the hoarseness of his voice, I caught the tremor of his mood, something deep that he couldn’t control. ‘As you love me, Donald, go back.’

‘But why? What’s wrong? Is it Lane?’ I asked. ‘Has he been worrying you?’

‘He’s been on to me — twice from the mainland. But it isn’t that.’ His grip tightened on my arm. ‘Leave me now, will you.’

‘But why?’

‘Damn you, Donald! Can’t you do what I ask?’ And then, his voice more controlled: ‘Something I have to do. We left in a hurry — the tide and a change of wind. No time … and Leroux half dead, too weak to do anything. It was either that or be trapped.’ His voice had died to a whisper.

‘You mean you were here?’ I asked. ‘After the Duart Castle____’

‘Try to understand, can’t you? Just leave me here and no questions.’

I hesitated. The torch on his face showed his mouth tight-set, his eyes urgent. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want….’

But I was too late. As I switched off the torch and turned to go, a voice spoke out of the darkness behind me: ‘You’ve found him then?’ It was Sergeant Wetherby. His jacketed figure loomed bulky from the direction of the generator. And to Iain, he said, ‘Major Braddock, sir. The tug’s all ready to go — everybody on board. Only yourself, sir. They’re waiting for you.’

I heard Iain’s muttered curse. And then in a flat voice: ‘Very good, Sergeant. Sorry if I held things up — just a last check round.’ He came with us then. There was nothing else he could do for he couldn’t hope to persuade the sergeant to let him stay. And so we embarked and at 01.15 hours on the morning of October 24, the tug steamed out of Shelter Bay with the last remnant of the Army Detachment.

The evacuation was complete at a cost of fifty-three lives, the loss of one landing craft, a helicopter and a great deal of equipment.