Corporal Cotton's Little War (11 page)

They stared at him as if he were mad, but Cotton’s mind was running on perfectly rational, straightforward lines. In the evacuation of Norway, when the Marines had been accused of keeping the navy waiting, they’d offered only a cold reply: ‘It isn’t the policy of the Royal Marines to leave its guns in enemy hands.’ And that was how it was with Cotton now.

He knew he could surrender, but surrender simply was not consonant with good order and training, and he rejected the idea out of hand. He was acting on his own initiative with no one and nothing to tell him what to do but discipline, and he was in no doubt about where his duty lay.

He stared at
Claudia
lying on the rocks like a stranded whale. ‘I’m not nuts,’ he said at last.

‘You must be,’ Docherty shouted. ‘Have you bloody seen her, man? She’s a wreck! Half the island’s sticking through her bottom!’

‘It might be done.’

‘How?’ Bisset asked. ‘How’re you intending to repair a boat that’s still in the water?’ She’d have to come up a slip for that.’

‘Perhaps we can do it without a slip.’

‘She’s got holes in the side,’ Docherty yelled. ‘A big one in the bow. And one engine’s nothing but a load of old iron!’

‘What about the other?’ Cotton asked. ‘What’s it like under there, Docherty?’

‘One screw’s smashed up completely, so there’s nothing we can do about that. The other’s got a kink in one of the blades.’

‘How about the rudders?’

‘One’s sheered off. Other’s bent.’

‘Could we get the bent prop off and hammer it out and put it on the good engine?’

‘No.’

Cotton glared, convinced Docherty was just being difficult. ‘Why not?’

‘Because the props turn in opposite directions to each other, to balance each other’s torque. You can’t put the port-’and prop on the starboard-’and shaft. It’d fit but it’d turn the wrong way.’

Cotton’s heart sank. ‘Couldn’t you put it on back to front so it’d come right?’

‘It’s a prop, not a pair of bloody socks!’

Cotton was determined not to give up. Something, he felt sure, would turn up and he needed to know all about the workings of the propeller, the shaft and the rudder, things which so far he’d never considered his concern.

‘How’s it held on?’ he asked.

‘With a key, and then a castellated nut held in place by a split pin. The nut forces the prop on to the key so that it’s held tight.’

‘How do you get it off?’

‘Tap the end of the shaft. That loosens it.’

‘Suppose we could make it work -’

‘We can’t.’

‘Suppose,’
Cotton said doggedly. ‘Could it be done under water?’

Docherty shrugged. ‘It’s been done,’ he admitted grudgingly.

‘Couldn’t
we
do it?
If
we could make it work, I mean.’

Docherty stared at him as if he were mad. ‘We
can’t
make it work,’ he said.

‘Suppose
we could?’ Cotton felt like throttling him.

‘Who’s going to do it?’ Docherty asked, going off at a tangent.

Cotton turned and looked at him. ‘Couldn’t you?’

Docherty’s face went red. ‘I’m not a fuckin’ fish,’ he said. ‘Talk sense, you stupid Marine git.’

Cotton frowned. ‘I
am
talking sense,’ he said.

‘Then, okay, tell me this: Even if we get the engines going, even if we repair the holes in her, how are we going to get the bloody boat back in the water?’

Cotton hadn’t reached that point yet. He was a painstaking man who tackled problems painstakingly and he hadn’t yet considered that difficulty. All the same, he remembered all that Patullo and the other two men in Retimo had told him when he’d first been dragooned into joining the expedition, and it seemed to him he ought to do something about it. He was known in the Marines’ mess as stubborn, dim and regimental, but they were qualities that sometimes made a good Royal.

‘There’s supposed to be some other fellers on the island,’ he said.

‘What sort of fellers?’

‘From the other boat -
Loukia.
Patullo told me. They sent a Blenheim over to do a recce and it reported seeing ‘em on the beach by the wreck, waving. If they’re still there, it’s up to us to take ‘em off, isn’t it? Any case, we can’t just sit here and wait for the Germans to come and take us prisoners, can we?’

That seemed to make Docherty think. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘We can’t.’

‘Can’t we
pinch
a boat or somefing?’ Gully asked. ‘All this about repairing this one’s a lot of bloody balls. You might as well try to manure a forty-acre field with a fart. You’ve only to look at ‘er. You’ve only to think twice. We ought to pinch one of them Greek boats?’

‘How?’ Bisset asked.

‘Christ!’ Gully grinned unexpectedly. ‘How do you go about pinching anything? You walk up to it, put out your dirty little mitt, then grab it and run. Think we could make it back? It took us two days to get here.’

‘Where are we, anyway?’

‘This is the island of Aeos,’ Cotton said. ‘This is Kharasso Bay.’

For a long time, they stood on the beach staring at the stranded
Claudia.
Now that they were beneath her, on the sand, she seemed enormous.

‘Only wants a few winkles and it’d be like Bridlington ‘arbour,’ Gully observed heavily.

‘We
might
get the bent prop off and straighten it,’ Bisset said.

‘Then what?’ Docherty asked.

Cotton’s expression was murderous. ‘I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you,’ he said icily, ‘that it might be useful on the
other
boat. They’re sister ships. Same engines. Same props. Perhaps she’s in better shape than this one.’

‘She didn’t look it to me.’

‘We haven’t examined her yet. And if she is, we might be able to get her going with bits from this boat.’

This obviously made Docherty think again but he didn’t give up easily. He was a product of the back streets, wary, cautious and unyielding. Everything he’d had in life had been acquired by craft, wiliness or nerve, but he’d never done anything without thinking it out first,

‘She looked a mess to me,’ he said slowly.

‘We’re not going to go full belt.’

‘Suppose she’s got a bent rudder like this one? How’re you going to manoeuvre?’

‘We only want to go home,’ Cotton said.
‘Creep
home, if you like. So long as we don’t stay here. Couldn’t we rig a jury rudder or something? Gully could make one, and we could change the props and so on. We’ve got a diving suit.’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Docherty said. He seemed to find Cotton trying.

‘If you won’t do it,’ Cotton said savagely, ‘I will.’

Docherty’s voice rose. ‘What about petrol?’

‘Christ - ‘ In his frustration, Cotton was shouting, too, now ‘ - we’ve got a boat
full
of petrol! Shaw was going to fill up from these drums when we arrived, for the journey back. We’ve got about five hundred gallons. That’s fifty miles or more - more still if we stretch it out.’

‘What’s fifty miles?’

‘It’s fifty miles away from here,’ Cotton snapped. ‘And that’s halfway back to Suda.’

Docherty glared at him. If Cotton had been an officer, he’d have done as he was told without arguing because that was how he’d been trained. But Cotton was only a junior NCO and a Joey into the bargain, and that gave Docherty the right as a Stoker, RN, to state his view of the case.

‘Ask a bloody mud-crusher how to do things,’ he said, ‘and he’ll give you all the answers - the wrong ones. Okay, you daft Marine twit, so we’ve got the petrol. But you haven’t seen the other boat yet.’

‘We can soon organize that.’

‘And, in any case, you’re asking us to do something that would take a fully-equipped marine workshop and a boatbuilder’s yard to do.’

‘We can try, can’t we? There must be villagers. Perhaps they’d help.’

‘How do you know there are villagers? I’ve not seen any.’

‘We saw houses as we were coming in. Patullo said it was called Ay Yithion.’

‘Hi who?’

‘It’s a village.’

‘It’s a bloody funny name for a village.’

While they’d been talking, Gully had been wading round the fore part of the boat, studying the holes.

‘Can it be repaired?’ Cotton asked. ‘We’ve got planks aboard.’

Gully shrugged. ‘Not enough for this lot,’ he said. ‘Ribs is gone. And, Jesus, we’re high and bloody dry!’

‘We’ll get the planks ashore, all the same,’ Cotton decided.

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

Bisset managed a twisted grin. ‘Can’t we wait?’

‘What if the Germans come?’ Cotton said.

‘They might not.’

‘We hit an aeroplane, didn’t we?’ Cotton pointed out patiently. ‘I saw a bit fall off. When he got home, he must have reported what happened. If he didn’t get home, then his pals would. That’s why that second one came to have a dekko. It won’t have taken him a minute to do a bit of the old dot-dash on the buzzer, will it? The Germans are going to start looking for us.’

‘Perhaps there aren’t any Germans here yet.’ Gully like Docherty, seemed to be determined to be argumentative.

‘Patullo said there were. It was on the radio. Anyway, it won’t be long before there are, will it? We ought to hide.’

‘Where?’Bisset asked.

Cotton stared about him. It was a good question but it seemed best to shelve it for the time being.

‘Okay,’ he said, ignoring Bisset. ‘We’ll get the dinghy and the rubber raft ashore and hide ‘em. Then, if they do come, they’ll think we’ve tried to row away.’

Bisset stared at Cotton. ‘Well, that’s not a bad idea,’ he admitted.

‘We’ve got plenty of grub,’ Cotton went on. ‘Apart from normal ship’s stores, we took extra rations aboard.’

‘It’s worth a try.’

Docherty considered it for a while. In the end, even he couldn’t find much wrong with the idea. ‘What about them lot?’ he asked, indicating the bodies lying in the shade of the trees at the side of the beach.

‘We can leave them for a bit. Let’s get the petrol drums ashore.’

Gully grinned nervously. ‘He thinks he’s bloody Nelson or something,’ he said.

‘We’re in the bloody war to fight,’ Cotton growled. ‘What’s wrong with trying to?’

‘Who?’
Gully flapped a hand in a deprecatory gesture. ‘You, me and us two? You after a Victoria Cross or something?’

Cotton glared at him. Discipline was what counted, he thought. Morale. What the sergeant at Eastney Barracks had called
es pritty corpse.
‘Behaving like a sick headache don’t help, does it?’ he rumbled, and picking up one of the mooring ropes, he began to make a parbuckle.

Between them, they lowered the drums of petrol from the boat to the beach and Bisset and Gully rolled them up among the trees and covered them with foliage and stones. Cotton followed them, sweeping the marks from, the sand with a dead branch he found among the rocks.

‘What you think you are?’ Gully asked. ‘General Custer fighting the Indians?’

‘Can’t you think of anything bloody better to do?’ Cotton snapped. ‘Except find fault?’

Gully flexed his muscles. ‘I’ll have you know, mate, now that them lot - ‘ he gestured towards the silent shapes up the beach, then stopped. Cotton waited. For all his bounce, Gully wasn’t a man of deep moral fibre.

‘The bloody thing won’t run! It’s broke!’ Gully’s voice rose to a shriek and he seemed to lose his nerve for a moment in his despair. ‘The engine’s broke! The propeller’s broke! The bloody bottom’s broke! It’s full of holes! Them three - ‘ he gestured again helplessly ‘ -
they’re
full of holes!’ He seemed to find Cotton wearying. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he moaned.

Cotton remained quite unmoved by the outburst. ‘We’d better get the dinghy and the raft and the Carley float ashore next,’ he said. ‘Then the blankets and anything else we can salvage.’ He looked up. The thudding of the distant guns that they’d heard ever since they’d left Suda Bay was still with them. ‘We’d better have the tinned food ashore too,’ he went on. ‘And then we’d better start rationing it out.’

‘Proper Robinson Bloody Crusoe, aren’t you?’

Cotton ignored the jibe and got them throwing down to the beach the tins of bully beef, peaches, sweetened milk and biscuit.

The planks and timbers they’d carried, Gully’s big tool box, Docherty’s smaller one, and the wooden box containing the diving gear followed.

‘There are a lot of rocks and big stones up there,’ Cotton said.: ‘We can stick ‘em among ‘em somewhere and pile things on top of ’em.’

‘It’ll take all day!’

‘Okay,’ Cotton said. ‘We’ll take all day.’

‘What about the kid?’ Bisset reminded him.

‘Let’s go and see him,’ Cotton said wearily.

They climbed back on board. Somehow, now that they’d moved everything movable,
Claudia
looked a worse wreck than ever. The blood on the sloping, splintered deck was drying, black and ugly in the increasing heat of the morning. The flies had already found it and were buzzing loudly in the wheelhouse.

Howard was moaning, his head swinging from side to side in his agony, his skin grey and dead-looking.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Gully mumbled. ‘Can’t you do somefing for ‘im?’

‘What?’ Cotton snapped.

‘Well, Christ - !’ the wounded boy moaned again and Gully’s eyes rolled like a frightened foal’s ‘ - Jesus, it gets up my wick!’

‘It probably gets up his a bit, too,’ Cotton growled. ‘Shut your trap and be thankful it wasn’t you.’

Bisset was bending over the boy now, his face strained.

‘He wants a drink,’ Gully said. ‘That’s what you give ‘em when they’re wounded.’

‘Not with stomach wounds,’ Bisset said. ‘It’d kill him. I think I’m going to use some more of the morphia to try to sew up that wound in his thigh. He’s losing blood and it might stop it.’

‘Know how to do it?’ Cotton asked.

‘Not really.’ Bisset gave a twisted smile. ‘But I once saw my little brother’s eyebrow sewn up by a doctor when he split it: It’s just like sewing a tear in your uniform. There’s some gut and needles.’

They gave Howard another shot of morphine and Bisset started to sew, with Cotton holding the lips of the wound together. They were both startled at the toughness of the flesh and Bisset was sweating as he worked. The wound looked better when he’d finished but was still by no means pretty. As they bandaged it up again, Bisset gave Cotton another smile.