Corporal Cotton's Little War (27 page)

As he stopped above Kharasso Bay, the first thing he saw was a German staff car on the dusty road above the beach. Dropping flat among the scrub, he saw four Germans climbing down to the wrecked
Claudia
and he lay in a niche between the rocks, watching.

Two of the Germans were civilians and he recognized them as the men he’d seen in the car at Ay Yithion. The other two wore the black-collared tunic of the SS.

As they reached the beach, they marched across the sand in their arrogant strut, the hateful stride of men who knew they were conquering the world. Then one of them pointed and they started to run so that Cotton guessed they’d seen the planks that Gully had removed from the hull to repair
Loukia.
For a while, they stood on the beach, staring at the wrecked boat, talking and gesturing, then one of them climbed on board and disappeared below.

After a while he re-emerged in the well through the engine-room door, climbed on to the deck and walked to the bows, where he stood shouting down to the others below him. Cotton couldn’t understand what he was saying but he guessed they’d jumped to no uncertain conclusions.

Eventually, they began to climb up the path back to the car and Cotton saw them drive off to the north of the island. As he hurried back towards
Loukia,
he saw the two German caiques making their circular tour of the coast; then, later, rounding the point as they disappeared, the brilliant red boat of the younger Varvara. Stumbling and slipping, his face wealed and scratched by twigs and brambles, he hurried down the slope just as Varvara’s caique appeared.

He explained what had happened and, as they argued what to do, all faintly depressed by what had happened to Howard, the red caique nosed into the bay. As it moored up alongside
Loukia,
young Varvara emerged from the wheelhouse.

‘I have two drums for you,’ he said. ‘My father had them hidden. We had four but when we’d loaded two, they telephoned from Kalani that the Germans were coming. We thought it was best to wait, so I took my boat out. I saw them arrive. They -’

His voice broke and he stopped.

‘I saw what happened,’ Cotton said. ‘I was there.’

‘They must have known,’ Varvara choked. ‘Someone must have told them. They took away the English boy.’

‘I saw that too. There’s nothing we can do about it.’

But it hurt, nevertheless, to be reminded of the promise he’d made to Howard only a day or two before that they wouldn’t leave without him.

‘They found the other petrol under my father’s nets,’ Varvara went on. ‘They shot him and the doctor and the mayor and his secretary, and then everybody in the cafe.’

There was a moment’s silence. There was nothing they could say to Varvara, who seemed less emotionally affected by this time than angry. His weeping had already finished and he was itching for revenge, and even his grief had not caused him to swerve from his promise of help.

‘As soon as they’d gone,’ he said, ‘I went ashore to see my father. My brothers have taken the body. They said the Germans had been tipped off. They knew exactly where to look. They’re going to search this part of the island now.’

‘They’ve been,’ Cotton said. ‘I watched them in Kharasso Bay. They’re heading now towards Kalani but they’ll be coming back. I expect they’ve gone for reinforcements.’

Varvara frowned. ‘There’ll be more reprisals,’ he said. ‘They’ll shoot more people. They’ll wipe out my family.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cotton said. ‘I’m sorry we brought it on you.’

Varvara managed a taut smile. ‘I don’t blame you,
Kapetane,’
he said. ‘You have your orders. And the sympathy of all Greece.

But I think I shall go home now and collect my people and leave when it’s dark. Perhaps you will stand by my boat until we’re clear of the island.’

Docherty, who had been watching them uneasily as they talked, had picked up the drift of the conversation. ‘If the buggers are coming here,’ he said, ‘we ought to bloody well hop it ourselves.’

‘Or stop ‘em,’ Cotton said.

Docherty’s eyes lifted to his face. ‘You barmy?’ he yelled. ‘We can’t stop the whole German army!’

Cotton’s face was bleak. ‘It won’t be the whole German army,’ he said. ‘They won’t send more than a couple of lorry-loads of men to sort
us
lot out, I bet. Perhaps we could stop
them.’

‘What with?’

‘We’ve got guns. We’ve got the Bren, haven’t we?’ Cotton looked at Kitcat. ‘How’re you with a Lewis?’

Kitcat gave a nervous grin. Since starting to fly he’d been shot at more times than he liked to remember, taking off often in a cold sweat of anticipation and returning exhausted by holding his breath at the narrow escapes he’d had. He had a feeling that he’d already pushed his luck as far as he ought, but Cotton was a persuasive man, less from his command of words than from the inner conviction about duty that seemed to be behind everything he did.

He swallowed. ‘Deadshot Dick,’ he said.

‘Let’s have a go then,’ Cotton went on. ‘We’ve got to do something because we can’t leave till dark. That bloody look-out on Cape Kastamanitsa would spot us straight away. A spot of the old dot-dash on a morse key and there’d be an aeroplane out one-time to investigate.’

‘We can’t hold a couple of lorry-loads off.’

‘We can try. We’ll not get away any other way.’

Cotton turned to Varvara and explained what he wanted to do. The Greek seemed more than willing, his eyes burning with hatred.

‘The road from Kalani winds up the hill on the other side,’ he said. ‘Then it drops down to the bay here. There’s a sharp bend near the top and cars have to go round it dead slow in low gear, you could wait there for them.’

One of his crew, a squarely-built man with fierce dark eyes, spoke quietly to him in Greek and he turned again to Cotton. ‘Argine Papaboukas here says he’ll be your guide. They shot his father and he’s spoiling for a fight.’

As Varvara’s caique headed out of the bay, Cotton, Kitcat, Bisset and the Greek gathered among the trees alongside
Loukia.
Solemnly, Cotton had entered the Greek’s name in the log. Events, names, times and dates were meant to be in logs.

‘You’re in charge,’ he told Docherty.

Docherty grinned. ‘Trust me, do you?’ he asked.

‘You’re in the navy. It’s up to you if we don’t get back.’

Docherty grinned again and Cotton went on. ‘Don’t panic, though. Even if you hear firing. We might just be winning. Wait to see what happens. You’ve plenty of time, so watch out for the rocks. Keep an eye on the slope and if you see the Germans coming, get cracking. They’d never be able to stop you.’

Docherty gave him a mock salute. ‘England expects that this day every man will do his duty. I’ve heard that bloody lot ever since I joined.’

‘Perhaps some it rubbed off,’ Cotton said hopefully.

As they began to climb the hill, he began to wonder how far he was right to extend his trust to Docherty. He was immoral and irresponsible but he was a sailor as well as a stoker, and there was no one else who could handle both the engines and the boat. It
had
to be Docherty who stayed behind, and he had to chance that sufficient naval tradition had stuck to him to make him behave well if the need arose.

The sun was high now and it was growing hot as they laboured under the weight of a rifle, the Lewis, the Bren, one of the tommy-guns, a rope and what they’d considered to be a reasonable amount of ammunition. They were sweating when they reached the top of the slope.

The Greek led them down the road to Kalani and showed them the corner Varvara had mentioned. It was steep with a hairpin turn and there was no doubt that anything negotiating it would come almost to a stop.

They rigged up the Lewis to cover it, fixing it with stakes and ropes so that it couldn’t run wild as it fired. Papaboukas, who claimed to be a good shot with a rifle, was left with Kitcat while Bisset and Cotton moved fifty yards further down the slope. ‘I just hope Varvara’s right,’ Cotton said, ‘and that they don’t come in large lumps.’

They found a place where they could see well and, setting up the Bren, covered it with scrub. Then Bisset squatted down to watch the road to Kalani. As Cotton walked back to where Kitcat and the Greek waited, he decided that things were happening almost too fast and he was unable to keep up with them, because they had to hold the Germans off until dark and it was only just into the afternoon.

Kitcat was fussing round the Lewis.

‘Think it’ll hold?’

Kitcat grinned. ‘I wouldn’t like to tackle a Messerschmitt with it,’ he said. ‘But I reckon it ought to get off enough rounds to wipe out a lorry-load of Jerries before we lose control.’

‘It might be more than one lorry-load,’ Cotton pointed out.

‘Okay.’ Kitcat shrugged.
‘Two
lorry-loads. We might well get ‘em both. These things fire four hundred and fifty rounds a minute - if they don’t jam.’ He gave a nervous grin. ‘They’re noted for jamming,’ he ended.

3

Untersturmbannführer Karl-Johannes Fernbrugge rested both his fists on Major Baldamus’ desk and leaned forward. His manner was threatening.

‘If there is one British survivor down that end of the island,’ he said, ‘then there are more than likely others too.’

Baldamus looked up. Fernbrugge’s face was pockmarked by acne. It was thin and pale and reminded Baldamus of one of the ferrets he’d used as a boy. ‘So?’ he asked.

‘So they were probably being looked after by the people of that fishing village, Ay Yithion.’

Baldamus sniffed. ‘I gather you’ve already taken care of
them,’’
he said coldly.

Fernbrugge gave a small smile. ‘They won’t hide any more survivors,’ he said. ‘I doubt if they’ll be able to hide themselves now. There is one other thing.’

‘Please go on,’ Baldamus said coldly.

‘You have a man called Festner on your muster roll.’

Baldamus shrugged. ‘We
had.
He disappeared. The good Festner was not exactly a patriotic German. In fact, I understand his father was Austrian and his mother Hungarian. He didn’t feel the same way about things as everybody else.’

Fernbrugge wasn’t amused. ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ he snapped, ‘your Festner could be a Polish warthog crossed with an Azerbaijan ferret. All I know is that he’s probably dead.’

‘Dead?’ Baldamus’ good humour vanished at once.

‘When your half-witted sergeant inspected the boat,
Claudia,
a few days ago, it seems your good Festner, who has a reputation as a scrounger, laid a little on one side for himself and a friend of his, one Pioneer Gunther. When Festner went back to find it he never returned.’

‘Deserted, perhaps?’

‘More likely murdered by your British survivors.’ Fernbrugge slapped the desk. ‘I want reinforcements! I’ve worked it out there might be around half a dozen of them in Xiloparissia Bay and I gather they have weapons - automatic weapons.’

Baldamus’ eyebrows lifted. He had long realized such a possibility existed, but it was still news to him and, though he didn’t show his concern, it wasn’t particularly good news.

‘It’s my belief,’ Fernbrugge went on, ‘that they’ve been repairing the wreck in Xiloparissia Bay and you know what that can mean, don’t you?’

‘Tell me.’

Fernbrugge scowled at Baldamus’ sarcasm. ‘They’re intending to escape. With news of what’s going on here. We were sent to back up your security people who appear to have been remarkably slack, and this seems to me a case that ought to be investigated.’

‘It does indeed.’ Baldamus’ face didn’t change but his heart thumped annoyingly that somehow his command had slipped up.

‘Why wasn’t the matter investigated before, Major?’

‘It was.’

‘Then why wasn’t it brought to a satisfactory conclusion?’

Baldamus stared at Fernbrugge, disliking him and everything he stood for. In men like Fernbrugge, he felt, there was only a thin veneer of civilization and the job they did very nearly wiped that away. Even so, there was a small feeling of doubt at the back of his mind and he was playing for time because he was well aware that when Ehrhardt’s sergeant had jumped to the conclusion that the British survivors had escaped, the idea had probably been put into his head by Baldamus’ own suggestion that there’d been a third boat. The eye saw what it wished to see and, because there’d been no sign of the British, they’d all assumed that they’d been taken away.

He forced himself to be calm. ‘You’d better ask the Luftwaffe,’ he said. ‘They did the recce.’

Fernbrugge was eyeing him. He didn’t like Baldamus any more than Baldamus liked him.

‘I
intend
to ask the Luftwaffe,’ he said. ‘For the moment, however, I need men.’

‘I have a few engineers.’

‘I need
soldiers’
Fernbrugge said contemptuously. ‘Those people I took to Ay Yithion were useless. I sent them back.’

Baldamus didn’t blink. ‘Perhaps they don’t enjoy murder.’

Fernbrugge was used to insults from the regular army and Baldamus’ dislike ran off him like water off a duck’s back.

‘They have no guts,’ he said. ‘I want something better this time. If those survivors in Xiloparissia Bay have automatic weapons, I want men who know how to deal with them - not clerks and bridge-builders.’

Baldamus began to move the papers on his desk as an idea occurred to him. He had tried incorporating the troops at Xinthos - the so-called Special Service Battalion - into his own command, if only for discipline, and had even called on Captain Haussmann, their commander. There was a built-in self-reliance among them, however, which existed from the top to the very bottom and Haussmann had made no bones about it. His troops weren’t going to answer to anyone but himself and he didn’t intend to permit anybody to push them around.

Baldamus had had to leave unsatisfied, but there had been other means and a quick exchange of signals with Sofia had provided them. ‘Subject troops,’ General Ritsicz had pointed out, ‘will conform in every way - repeat every way - with orders issued by your headquarters. Co-operation of the islanders is first essential and good behaviour of troops is of prime importance. Subject troops will be given duties but, bearing in mind the need for secrecy, will not be used except in security tasks and then only sparely.’