The Skipper said, 'Go round the boat, Number One. Just to keep up their spirits.' He studied me through the darkness, his cap shining with spray. 'Okay?'
    I grinned. 'As I'll ever be, sir.'
    How close the sea was as I groped my way aft, licking across the deck and dropping away again as the hull swayed over.
    I knew them all by name, and a lot more beside. Anonymous shapes with pale blobs for faces. Strapped to their guns, or crouching like athletes waiting for the starter's pistol, ready to slam in fresh magazines or belts of ammunition. No matter what was happening around them. No matter what.
    The deck rumbled and quivered and the sour stench of fuel swirled up from the vents to make my stomach contract again. Below my sea-boots the small team of artificers and motor mechanics would hear and see nothing of the danger outside their frail mahogany protection.
    'Aircraft!'
    But for once it was not a sneak raider tearing down to investigate the array of bow-waves and white wakes. Even as I bustled back to our squat bridge I heard them droning overhead. Exactly on time, precisely as described in the secret orders. We all looked up but saw nothing. The air seemed to cringe to the mounting roar of engines. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of them.
    It seemed to take no time at all for the bombers to reach their first objectives. You could faintly see the blur of land beneath the bombardment while the clouds overhead danced and reared up in vivid red and orange flashes.
    The sky was not merely lit by the flashes. It really was getting brighter. When I peered abeam I saw the nearest landing-ships, suddenly bright and vulnerable as the early light found them. More bombs muttered across the water, and an aircraft fell briefly across the scarlet glow to starboard. Like a dying bird, not real somehow.
   The Skipper was speaking with the coxswain. He said suddenly, 'Hoist Battle Ensigns!'

    I had never seen it done before. With our tiny mast, it was hard to carry out anyway. But eventually the crisp White Ensigns were streaming from either yard above the bridge. We kept them for special occasions. Sea burials, important visitors, and even more rarely for Sundays in harbour. They looked so clean and somehow beautiful that I wanted to cheer. I think we all did.
    The coxswain asked to be relieved from the wheel, and some wag called from the gloom. 'Gone to get yer brown trousers, Swain?' He ignored it and returned a few minutes later wearing his best shore-going reefer, gold badges and everything. He glanced up at the ensigns and said, 'Might as well do it proper.' He sounded defiant.
    The Skipper nodded but said nothing. He and the coxswain had been together from way back. If ever a boat had two backbones, we surely did.
    It was getting lighter by the minute, the lines of ships stretching out abeam and ahead like a Roman phalanx on the advance.
    Someone gave a cheer, and we saw the first of the heavy warships sweeping up from astern. The real navy. From our low hull the cruisers looked enormous with their streaming battle flags and their turrets already swinging towards the land, high-angled and ready to fire.
    On one landing-craft the soldiers were standing on their tanks to cheer and wave their black berets while the ships surged past. But their voices were lost in the roar of the fans as the ships worked up to full speed, with the destroyers sweeping on either side to protect them.
    It was infectious. We all waved and shouted into the din, and whereas some of us had been afraid we would be forced into the lead, we were now fearful of being left behind.

NEXT ... 'OPEN FIRE'

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