Corporal Cotton's Little War (26 page)

‘This is my Body .... This is my Blood. Thine of Thine Own we offer Thee....’

The intoning voice droned on but, their ears tuned to what was going on outside, no one was listening. Lorry doors and tailgates banged methodically and they heard the clump of nailed boots.

‘By the Holy Spirit....’

‘Amen, Amen, Amen -’

The chant was cut across abruptly by a burst of machine-gun fire that jerked every head up as one. Frightened eyes stared towards the door.

The priest, who had been preparing to offer Communion, was standing as if petrified, holding the bread and the wine and the spoon he used. His face was expressionless but from the way his eyes were working Cotton could see he was thinking fast.

A man in front of Cotton rose to his feet and began to leave the church. As he did so, there was another long burst of machine-gun fire, then a scream, the harsh dry scream of a shocked woman, and a series of harsh shouts outside, and the man began to run. At once, other men rose and followed him, followed by the woman. The priest was still standing by the altar, motionless. As the church doors burst open and the congregation spilled outside, there were more shouts, then more shots and screams.

Finally the priest moved, beckoning the few remaining people in the church towards him. Annoula seemed to be petrified with terror and Cotton dragged her to her feet, and they ran down the aisle towards the front of the church just as the priest disappeared. Pushing through the door beyond the altar where he had vanished, they found themselves in a small room full of varnished brown wood and pink-washed walls, the register open on a desk, alongside it the pair of down-at-heel boots the priest wore about the village. A picture of the Virgin Mary, its peeling tinfoil frame held in place by a piece of sticking plaster, stared at them. The priest opened a door and pointed to a narrow alley beyond.

The few people who had been left in church crowded through after them and began to run, dispersing as they went. The shooting was coming more often now and the air was filled with despairing and agonized screaming and the shouts of men. The smell of smoke and the crackling of flames beyond the church grew stronger and, as they pushed past a line of nets and octopus drying in the sun, they caught a glimpse of German soldiers holding tommy-guns. They had dragged outside all the men who’d been in the cafe eating rolls and drinking their morning coffee and lined them up against the wall with their hands in the air. For a second they were fully occupied and Cotton snatched at Annoula’s hand and dived into a whitewashed alleyway that rose in front of them, shallow step by shallow step along the hillside. Above them, Cotton noticed, the rain clouds had receded and the sky was full of long rinsed lines fading through apricot to yellow; then they were running along a lifting alleyway topped with wet bougainvillaea and dripping strands of honeysuckle and cacti against a stark white wall.

The shooting seemed to have intensified and kept coming in regular bursts now, and as they climbed they could see dark brown-yellow smoke lifting into the sky.

‘What are they doing?’ Annoula panted.

As they climbed, they heard a shout and the clump of feet behind them and had to dive into another alley running along the side of the hill. There was a yard full of dust and crowded with chickens, and they ran through them, sending them flying in a squawking cloud of feathers. Pushing Annoula over a low wall, Cotton climbed after her to fall on top of her on the other side.

They were on the outskirts of the village now, hidden from the road to Kalani, as it ran round the curve of the hill by a thick screen of aloes. Through the heavy spiked leaves he could see a blindfolded donkey, shaded by a walnut tree, plodding round a well, then he saw a German car moving slowly up the road with two civilians in it. There was a small scouting vehicle behind it and several men moving alongside. Grabbing Annoula round the waist, he pulled her down among the long stalks of dried grass.

‘Wo sind sie?’
The harsh voice was on the other side of the wall and, as the girl gasped with terror, he clapped a big square hand over her mouth and pulled her to him, enfolding her in his big arms to hold her still and quieten her terror. Her fingers clutched at his shirt and he could feel her shuddering in his grasp.

The voices sounded nearer now but, as he removed his hand from her mouth to unwrap the revolver, he realized the footsteps beyond the wall had moved away and the voices were growing fainter. For a long time, they remained silent, clutching each other in the shadows beneath the aloes, hidden from the road by the long grass.

‘Why? Why, Cotton, why?’ The girl’s mouth was so close to his face he could feel her breath on his cheek. ‘What are they doing? They’re destroying the whole village.’

Her arms went round his body in terror and he felt her shaking violently. He pulled her closer, holding her against the wall, her face against his, one hand round her under her breast, so that he could feel the beating of her heart through her thin yellow shirt.

‘Perhaps they found out that Varvara was helping us,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps they learned about the petrol.’

‘But how? How could they? Why should they do this to Yithion?’

The shooting seemed to have died away now, and all they could hear was the wailing of women. Then they saw the German car in the distance move away and the soldiers on the road move back to their own vehicle and climb into it. It moved down the hill nearer to the village and soon afterwards they saw it parked and four men moving forward carrying a stretcher made from a torn-off door. Even at that distance, Cotton could see that one of them was carrying a khaki blouse and he knew the figure on the stretcher was Howard.

‘They’ve got the kid,’ he said.

Her eyes probed the depths of his distress and, as he moved, almost as though he intended to dispute what was happening below them, she clung to him tighter, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arms. The lorry moved away and another half dozen vehicles, with soldiers sitting in them, upright like dummies, followed it. They seemed untouched, as though they had committed no crime, clean, wholesome-looking men, but they were sitting very still and not talking much.

They watched the lorries disappear over the brow of the hill but they still didn’t move. The sun was hot now and the little hiding place against the wall was warm. Cotton, who had been peering at the road through the broad thick leaves of the aloes, turned. A pair of huge, frightened charcoal eyes were staring straight into his and for the first time he became aware of the warmth of Annoula’s body against his, and the soft flesh of her breast under his ringers. Abruptly he snatched his hand away and stood up, moving the palm guiltily against his trousers as if to wipe away the feelings of warmth and life. Her eyes followed him. She looked desperately small and frail.

‘I’ve got to get back,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get to the boat.’

She seemed to come back to the present with a jerk. She pulled her skirt down where it had ridden up over her thighs and scrambled to her knees.

‘We’ve got to get away,’ Cotton said. It surprised him that he was able to make up his mind so easily, that he was able to abandon Howard without any agony of guilt. He supposed this was what ships’ captains, generals and leaders had to do all the time but he’d never supposed it would ever happen to him or that he’d be able to face up to it so easily. But the elementary facts were clear. There was nothing they could do for Howard. He was a prisoner and it was beyond their strength and resources to free him. The only thing he could do now was make sure everyone else who depended on him was safe.

Annoula was staring towards the village and the smoke, her face desolate and wretched. ‘I must find Varvara,’ she said.

‘For Christ’s sake, take care!’ For the first time, Cotton was thinking of her safety and she gave him a look that was frightened and uncertain.

He lifted his head cautiously and stared over the wall. There was no sign of life but he could see a thick column of smoke lifting above the houses near the harbour.

‘Have they gone?’

‘I think so.’

He pushed her over the stones and they moved cautiously down the alley towards the harbour, Cotton holding her hand in his. She made no move to withdraw it. Then they saw the body of a man lying in a doorway, blood splashing the white walls, and a sobbing woman crouched near it, clutched by two screaming children.

‘Why do you leave us?’ she was wailing as she pressed at her temples in her grief. ‘Why must they do this to you?’

Sickened and shocked, they turned out of the alley and into the narrow, descending set of shallow steps that was the main street. Across one of the steps, a donkey sprawled dead with its load, its owner spread-eagled alongside it, his sightless eyes staring at the sky.

They began now to meet more people and see more bodies. The priest was intoning a vigil.

Down by the harbour the village was well ablaze and the air was full of flying sparks and crackling timber and the nauseating smell of death. Men and children were running with buckets from the sea, but there weren’t many men and most of the women seemed dazed. There were two or three dozen bodies sprawled outside the cafe and Cotton stared at them with narrowed eyes. The Germans had clearly shot everybody they’d found inside.

‘Don’t go down there,’ he warned.

As Annoula shook her head, he pulled her into a doorway. He needed to get back to the familiar sound of English voices and the feeling of being part of the navy.

‘We’ll be leaving at dusk,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like to leave without seeing you again.’

She stared at him with an agonized expression so that he pressed on in a stumbling mutter, his eyes refusing to meet hers. ‘To say goodbye.’ He tried to explain. ‘You know what I mean. That sort of thing. You’ve all put up with a lot for us.’

She waited until his eyes finally met hers. ‘I go to church and believe in God.’ She sounded like Cotton’s mother on Sundays, arguing with his father who preferred to stay in bed. ‘I’m not my cousin Chrysostomos. I will do anything to help anybody stand up to these anti-Christs.’

Her black eyes blazed then she reached up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

‘Go with God, Cotton!’

He answered her automatically, then, holding his hand for a second longer, she turned away through the pall of smoke.

2

In his headquarters in Kalani, Major Baldamus was growing worried. He had suddenly seen the possibility that he might after all miss that rise in rank to colonel that he’d been coveting so much since his arrival on Aeos. He was due for another promotion soon and it suited him best to have it here on Aeos. The Greek campaign was virtually over. The British were in hopeless disarray, lacking orders and heading south with no idea of where they were going, and he’d heard rumours that another campaign was being planned for the East. Russia, it was said, and since Major Baldamus didn’t quite see himself trying consequences with moujiks, he was suddenly uneasy. What Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge had told him had made him so.

‘He found his petrol,’ he said angrily to Ehrhardt. ‘Only two drums, mind you, and he had to shoot two dozen people to get even that.’

Ehrhardt scowled. ‘Seems a lot of suffering for two drums of petrol,’ he growled.

‘I don’t suppose it was really for two drums of petrol,’ Baldamus said, his face grim. ‘It was for the honour of the greater German Reich. There’s one other thing. He thinks there are British survivors from those two boats we destroyed at the south end of the island.’

‘Where?’

‘They’ve been seen in Ay Yithion. He radioed in. They found a wounded British soldier from that boat the Messerschmitts shot up. They didn’t escape, after all, it seems. Fernbrugge, of course, made sure that everyone in Ay Yithion learned the lesson that they mustn’t harbour escapees.’

Ehrhardt looked as uneasy as Baldamus. ‘Where’s Fernbrugge now?’ he asked.

‘On his way to Kharasso Bay. I suggested he should go, but he was going anyway.’ Baldamus sighed. ‘I doubt, in fact, if I could have stopped him under the circumstances.’

While Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge was heading across the island from Ay Yithion to Kharasso Bay, Corporal Michael Anthony Cotton was climbing up the ridge that overlooked the sea.

His mind was seething with unhappiness because he’d just realized that among the other things a ship’s captain had to suffer was the weight of guilt. The destruction of Ay Yithion was undoubtedly caused by the discovery of Howard and the petrol that Varvara had obtained for him, and now he had to learn to live with his conscience. In saving one life he’d caused the loss of twenty-odd others. He’d heard of this dilemma - the risk of many lives to save one. In fact, in
Caernarvon
when a man had fallen overboard, Captain Troughton had refused to turn the ship back for him because of the nearness of German bombers. There had been hidden catcalls from aft and a great deal of bad feeling, but when the ship was caught at the extreme length of the bombers’ range and they’d escaped untouched after only a brief attack before the planes had had to turn for home, the ill feeling had died away and they’d realized the captain had been right. Perhaps what none of them realized, however, was what Cotton was realizing now: how much courage it had required to make that decision. Because he had generations of navy behind him, Captain Troughton had probably made it without too much searching of his conscience, but it wasn’t that easy for Cotton.

As he climbed, his thoughts pressed in on him. A hundred and one questions bothered him and he even began to wonder if they ought not to have left the night before and taken a chance on being short of petrol.

When he reached the top of the ridge, the Junkers 87s and 88s were taking off all the time from the north side of the island and circling beyond Cape Kastamanitsa to turn on course towards the mainland. The thud of guns was loud now, and he guessed the Luftwaffe had found the navy as it escorted the troop transports. The strip at Yanitsa was right across their route south.