Corporal Cotton's Little War (29 page)

The open-topped paratroopers’ vehicles had also come to a standstill and they could see the man at the wheel of the rearmost one struggling to put it into reverse. As he did so, Cotton fired. The driver was flung sideways over the door, and the car ran backwards in a short curve until one wheel dropped into the drainage ditch at the side of the road that carried the mountain rains away.

In the second vehicle Captain Haussmann had been thinking what a pleasant change it was to be away from the gloom and silence of the great house at Xinthos. Panyioti had provided comfort beyond all his dreams but, since he’d arrived, it had seemed like a prison and it had been harder than he’d imagined to keep his men inside. He’d jumped at the chance to join Fernbrugge in a fire-fighting party and had brought with him all his most intractable troublemakers to let them blow off a little steam. As the firing started he had reacted quickly to the ambush and jumped to the road, shouting and pointing out the direction of the firing; but the Bren was knocking whole chunks off his vehicle and the men struggling to jump clear fell about him like jointless dolls, the blood bursting from their arms and faces and bodies as the Bren’s five hundred rounds a minute tore into them. They were so close they didn’t have a chance, and Cotton let them have the whole magazine.

Haussmann had just realized that for the first time in the war he was facing defeat when three of the Bren gun’s bullets hit him in the face, punching in his nose and eyes and dropping him dead into the dust. The tommy-gun, with its less accurate fire, had not done such deadly work on the other vehicles but the Greeks were blazing away now with everything they possessed, and the rocks echoed to the roar of musketry. His nostrils filled with the smell of cordite as he jammed another magazine into place, Cotton heard the chink and crack of bullets whipping overhead and realized that the Greeks in their enthusiasm were in danger of shooting each other and him.

One of the paratroopers in the third vehicle had dived out of the blind side, acting on an instinct drilled into him by training. Another man trying to follow was slower and, as he ducked from the waggon, Bisset swung the tommy-gun and the paratrooper sprawled in the dust and lay still. The man beside the driver seemed to panic and stood up, staring round, spraying the air with his weapon, but he was looking in the wrong direction and Bisset’s burst lifted him clean out of the vehicle and dropped him flat on his back in the road.

By this time the Germans seemed to be all dead or dying except for a few who had dived under their vehicles. But the Greeks were spraying the ground round them and several of them were forced to make a break and started to run down the slope. Immediately, every Greek in the vicinity opened fire on them and Cotton’s throat tightened as they were flung like autumn leaves across the road, the bursts of machine-gun fire tearing into their bodies and nudging them down the slope so that they left a bloody trail in the dust.

As the shooting died, only three Germans out of the whole twenty-eight, were still on their feet and they flung their hands in the air and started yelling for mercy. As Delageorgis rose and moved towards them, holding a tommy-gun, the Germans’ arms became straighter. They seemed to be only boys and they watched the Greek with wide terrified eyes and hanging jaws. Using the tommy-gun, he herded them into a close bunch; then, without any show of emotion, pulled the trigger. The heavy bullets lifted them from their feet and dropped them into the drainage ditch. One of them was still moving and Delageorgis stood over him and pulled the trigger again.

Lowering the weapon, the Greek turned and looked at Cotton. ‘Nobody escaped,’ he said in a flat voice.

For a long time there was silence. Even the birds seemed to have stopped singing. The dust was still hanging in the air by the four vehicles and there was the smell of new blood and cordite. Then Bisset rose cautiously, holding the tommy-gun in front of him, and stepped out from the rocks, a fixed nervous grin on his face. Cotton followed, then Kitcat. They were all slack-jawed and sick-looking, shocked by the butchery.

Kitcat swallowed and Cotton saw his Adam’s apple work.

‘Jesus,’ he said softly, indicating the Greeks. ‘I thought the buggers were going to kill
us
as well.’

Three of Delageorgis’ men had been wounded by flying bullets - more than likely their own - one of them seriously. His jaw was hanging down in a bloody mash, but his friends seemed to show little sympathy and simply bound it up with a handkerchief round the top of his head.

‘I expect he will die,’ Delageorgis said bluntly. ‘It will be impossible, of course, to take him to a doctor.’

He seemed unmoved by the slaughter and they cautiously approached the dead Germans, turning them over with their feet to see if any were still alive. One of them further down the slope moved and began to whimper --
‘Mutter, Mutter,’
he moaned.
‘Hilfe! Hilfe!’ -
and one of the Greeks, holding his rifle in one hand, placed the muzzle against the German’s ear and pulled the trigger. Cotton saw Bisset wince.

‘God help them,’ he breathed, ‘when the tide turns the other way.’

The bodies were sprawled all over the road and the dusty surface was puddled with their blood. Several of them lay head-down in the drainage ditch and one sprawled with his back against a rock, his eyes wide open, his jaw sagging, an expression of startled horror on his face.

Bisset’s throat worked. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘Let’s get away from here!’

‘Hang on!’ Cotton knew his duty. ‘Let’s see if there are any documents. Pay-books and that sort of thing. They might tell the Intelligence wallahs something. One of ‘em was an officer.’

Bisset pulled a face.
‘You
can search him,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to.’

Gagging on his own bile, Cotton bent over the Germans and went through their pockets. Their pay-books were torn and bloodstained but he put them carefully into a scarf he took from the throat of one of them. The Greeks seemed unworried by the blood and were excitedly going through the jackets of the dead men, handing any papers they found to Cotton but pushing watches and money into their own pockets and posturing with the tommy-guns and grenades wrenched from the hands of the dead paratroopers. Occasionally a rifle cracked as they found someone still breathing.

Cotton looked at the papers he’d taken from Haussmann’s body. ‘You can read German, can’t you, Biss?’ he asked.

Bisset took the papers and looked at them. He seemed troubled by the blood on them.

‘Kriegsschauplatz,’
he said, reading aloud. ‘That means “Scene of operations”.
“Fallschirmtruppen
:” Paratroopers.
“Begleiten
:” Accompany. And isn’t this the German for Crete? Must be, because it goes on about
Suda Bai -
Suda Bay - and the
Englische Konigliche Kriegsmarine.
That’s “English Royal Navy”. Then it mentions Maleme, Heraklion and Retimo -’

He lifted his head and Cotton saw that his frown had deepened.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

‘These places are aerodromes,’ Bisset said, then he went on in an awed voice. ‘I think we’ve stumbled on orders for the invasion of Crete.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ Cotton said. ‘The navy’ll be pleased to have ‘em.’

‘It won’t make much difference to the navy,’ Bisset said in a tight voice. ‘Because they don’t concern the navy all that much. They’re not going by sea. They’re going to do it with parachutists and gliders.’

5

For a moment there was silence.

‘You sure?’ Cotton asked.

Bisset nodded. ‘There’s a bit here that seems to have been copied from orders. It says Hitler doesn’t intend to launch an operation against Crete, but it’s been crossed out and it says “Generaloberst Lohr, Luftflotte 4, considers Crete can be captured solely by airborne and parachute troops.” Then it says, “The Führer directs that an operation to occupy the island of Crete, Operation Merkur, is to be prepared, with the object of using Crete as an air base against Britain in the eastern Mediterranean.” That seems plain enough to me.’

Bisset stared again at the papers, frowning, his nose wrinkling at the blood on them.
‘Schlachtordnung,’
he said. ‘Order of battle. I can also see “Maleme” and “Sphakio”.’

He pulled a face as he wiped the blood from his fingers on his trousers and studied a notebook Cotton gave him, which had also come from the pockets of the dead officer. ‘I don’t know who the hell this bloke Haussmann is,’ he said, ‘but it talks about twenty thousand troops and five hundred troop-carriers and gliders from
Fliegerkorps IX.’
Bisset’s face was pale. ‘We haven’t got that many men altogether in Crete, have we?’ He read again. ‘They’ve mustered ‘em at Argos, Eleusis, Molai and Myli in Greece, and in one or two islands, including this one.
Fliegerkorps VII’s
job is to deal with the navy.’

‘You’re sure about all that?’ Cotton asked.

‘It’s pretty simple stuff.’

‘I mean those big words. “Order of battle”. That sort of thing.’

‘I was in France,’ Bisset said. ‘We were running like rabbits from these buggers. We got to know a lot of big words then, and one I’ll never forget was
Fallschirmtruppen --
paratroopers.’

‘I think you must be right,’ Cotton said. ‘It would explain all that fuss at Yanitsa. And if that’s the case, then we’ve got to get away tonight. Somebody ought to be told.’ He looked at his watch. It showed five-fifteen.

‘What about this lot?’ Bisset said. ‘When they don’t return or radio in they’ll come looking for ‘em. And if they find ‘em, they’ll soon know what’s happened, and that’ll be the end of us. They’ll have the Luftwaffe down on us like a ton of bricks.’

‘Suppose they
don’t
find ‘em?’ Cotton said. ‘Suppose we hide everything? It took ‘em three hours or more to get from looking at
Claudia
to Kalani and then back here again. Those geezers in Kalani don’t know what’s happened to ‘em, do they? They didn’t get a radio message off so they won’t worry for another hour or two. More if we’re lucky. And if they come and find nothing, that’ll delay ‘em a bit longer, won’t it? In that case, they might not arrive here until after six or seven o’clock or even later. By that time, we could chance it. It grows dark quickly here and it’d be night an hour or so later.’

‘So?’

‘So we shove ‘em among the rocks where they can’t be seen and hide the vehicles.’

‘How? By the look of ‘em they won’t go very far.’

Cotton studied the vehicles. The Lewis had smashed the engine of the SS men’s car, burst the two front tyres and shattered the windscreen. The Bren, more deadly at a closer range, had smashed the second vehicle completely and the bodies of its occupants lolled from it like red-stained grey bags.

He crossed to the other vehicles. The engine of the third had stopped but it was still switched on. He tried the starter and the engine kicked, then stopped again immediately as it tried to drag itself from the ditch and failed. The last vehicle’s engine had been caught in the crossfire from the Greeks, and its distributor was only shattered vulcanite.

He turned and stared towards the plain. ‘It’s downhill from here,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got plenty of time. Let’s drive two of ‘em down the hill and shove ‘em in a ditch where they can be seen.’

‘And?’

‘Anybody coming from Kalani will spot ‘em and investigate. They’ll not find the crews but they’ll see the bullet holes and they’ll wonder what happened. They’ll search down there, not up here.’

Bisset nodded his agreement and they lifted the bodies from the road and carried them among the rocks, sagging and sodden with blood. Then they turned the car with the smashed distributor and faced it down the road and heaved the other vehicle from the ditch.

‘Can you drive, Biss?’ Cotton asked.

Bisset grinned. ‘Grand Prix,’ he said.

‘Get in and follow me. We’ll take the rope. You’ll probably have to tow me.’

He bent to pick up a few scattered items of equipment that the Germans had thrown off in their attempt to escape and began to toss them into the back of Bisset’s vehicle with two or three of the pot-shaped helmets, a bullet-smashed gun and Haussmann’s cap.

‘What’s that lot for?’ Kitcat asked.

‘To give ‘em something to search for. While we’re down there, you get everything ready for us to get away smartly when we come back. But keep an eye on us and if anybody comes and we’re in trouble, leave the lot and run. Take the papers and make sure they’re handed over to the right people.’

Just so long, he thought, as Docherty, hearing the firing, hadn’t taken fright or fancied the money, or both, and bolted already.

They pushed the SS car into the ditch. Then, tossing the rope and a few more items of German equipment in with Bisset, they set off down the hill, Cotton leading. The hill descended steeply to the plain and rolled straight on as far as they could see before ascending gently to the other side of the island. Staring across the valley to the rise, Cotton thanked God that Aeos was one of the bigger islands and that the rest of the Germans were a long way away.

As they descended lower, three aircraft approached from the west and passed over them, before dropping in a slow, descending curve towards Kalani, finally losing height and disappearing behind a small hill as they came in to land. They reached the bottom of the hill in a cloud of dust, a good two miles from where they’d left Kitcat. A cart track ran at right angles from the road and in the distance they could see a ruined white farmhouse. Its windmill was broken and it was clearly deserted, a monument to the islanders’ increasing habit of moving to the mainland. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

Cotton allowed the impetus of the run down the hill to carry him on to the cart track. Its uneven surface soon slowed him so he stopped and climbed out. Bisset arrived alongside almost at once.

Cotton pointed. ‘On the hill there,’ he said. ‘Alongside the house. It’ll stand out against the white wall. It’s a nice way from the road and high enough to be seen by anybody coming from Kalani. There are also a few walls and ditches to make them wonder if there isn’t an ambush and the farm’s full of guns.’