95

• Scene [Torpedo (Friday morning 1/1/43, 4 a.m.)]

There is, again, movement in the dark depths. A faint pinging is heard, a swirling. Is there a shape, black against the blackness, moving through it? We are still straining to make it out when …

EXPLOSION.

CLOSE-UP of Angus’s eyes opening out of some unimaginable depth. Was the noise only in his dreams? It seems not: there are clanging pumps and sirens, shouting voices, all coming from outside.

WIDE-ANGLE shows his narrow, cramped cell, shared with Jack. There is little in the way of belongings: no ornaments or photographs. He rolls out of his bunk, starts (once more), to huddle on clothes and sea-boots …

The screen now shows, over black-and-white newsreel scenes of grey seas and sinking ships, the following lines:

At 4 A.M. on New Year’s Day, 1942, the Rhakotis – a blockade runner bound for St. Nazaire – was attacked and sunk by a British cruiser.

Angus Macdonald was picked up by a U-boat and carried to a French port, then escorted to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.

Jack Edmead reached Spain. He was repatriated to England, where he joined another ship, which was later torpedoed and sunk with all hands.