Corporal Cotton's Little War (30 page)

Bisset grinned as he took the rope. ‘You ought to have been a paratrooper yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a good eye for country.’

‘I’m a Marine,’ Cotton said simply. ‘They’re red-hot on country in the Marines.’

Towing the bloodstained car, they left it alongside the wall of the broken-down farm where it stood out clearly against the white. Then they scattered the items of equipment, the steel helmets and the smashed gun where they could be seen after a little easy searching. Finally Cotton tossed Haussmann’s cap down at the foot of a wall alongside the cart track.

‘That’ll make ‘em think a bit,’ he said. ‘It’ll give us a few more minutes. Perhaps longer.’

Tossing the rope back into Bisset’s vehicle, they drove back along the track and up the hill to where Kitcat waited with the Greeks.

Delageorgis greeted them. ‘That was a good beginning to the war on Aeos,’ he observed.

Cotton wasn’t so sure. The Germans weren’t known for taking the butchery of their men lying down and there’d be reprisals as there had been at Ay Yithion. If they could shoot men merely for the possession of petrol, they’d certainly not accept the wiping out of a twenty-eight-man patrol of paratroopers without hitting back.

‘You are leaving now?’ Delageorgis asked.

Cotton nodded and Delageorgis pointed in the direction of Cape Kastamanitsa.

‘Remember there is a look-out post on the headland,’ he said. ‘They’ll see you. They’ve put up two guns and a searchlight. They don’t intend anyone to escape south.’

Cotton nodded. They weren’t out of the wood yet, just in a different stretch of trees. Delageorgis seemed to understand how his thoughts ran.

‘We’ll attend to the Germans on the headland,’ he said. ‘They’ll not be expecting anything. There are only twenty of them under a lieutenant and there are twenty-four of us. And we now have plenty of German grenades and automatic weapons.’

Up to a little while before, Cotton wouldn’t have expected twenty-four untrained Greeks to be a match for twenty well-armed and organized Germans, but after the butchery on the bend he wasn’t so sure. At least they knew the country and they were possessed of a burning desire to kill.

‘As soon as it’s dark,’ Delageorgis promised. ‘I’ll leave three men here to warn you in case any more come.’

He gathered his party together, ragged men in shabby black coats and baggy trousers, jerseys, woollen caps and turbans. Some of them were old and leather-skinned, one or two mere excited boys.

As the Greeks moved off, they dumped the guns in the wagon and Bisset drove over the ridge of the hill and down the other side towards where
Loukia
lay. At the end of the track they pushed the vehicle into a small ravine overlooking the sea and tossed branches and foliage over it until it was hidden.

‘That ought to make ‘em think a bit too,’ Cotton said.

Scrambling down the slope, he was pleased to see
Loukia
still there under the trees. At least Docherty hadn’t panicked and bolted.

‘I heard the firing,’ he said as they appeared. ‘I thought the bastards had got you. What happened?’

‘We
got
them
instead,’ Bisset said. ‘Twenty-eight of ‘em.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘We had a bit of help. A few Greek partisans turned up.’

‘What about their pals from Kalani? Won’t they come?’

‘It’ll take a bit to find ‘em. We hid ‘em.’

‘I’m bloody glad you’re back,’ Docherty said feelingly. ‘I’m no ship’s captain and that’s a fact.’

He was clearly in a highly nervous state and certainly didn’t possess the fibre to make decisions. It made Cotton, still nauseated by the slaughter at the top of the hill, feel a little better.

Young Varvara returned soon afterwards. To Cotton’s surprise, he came without the caique and leading a straggling file of people over the crown of the hill from Ay Yithion. There were five men, three women and three small children, and they were carrying haversacks, suitcases, wine bottles and what looked like petrol cans, together with a single fowling-piece that looked as if it dated from the last Turkish invasion.

‘My brothers,’ Varvara said. ‘Two of my crew. Also their wives and families. We wish to come with you.’ He indicated the petrol cans. ‘We have brought you some more petrol. Not much, but as much as we could carry. It was very heavy.’

‘We have brought our own food and wine,’ he went on. ‘There is no longer any point in our staying. The radio says that the British have started evacuating their troops and that Greece is expected to capitulate tomorrow. The Germans are across the Corinth Canal and already hold many of the islands to the north. It is the end for us. Yesterday they bombed a hospital ship in the middle of Piraeus harbour. It was packed with wounded and women and children, and almost everybody perished. They say the caiques the Germans have collected are for the invasion of Crete.’

Cotton frowned. The blows seemed to be growing heavier with every day.

‘Will they capture Crete?’ Varvara asked.

Cotton had a suspicion that they would and that eventually they’d all be jam-packed into the Egyptian corner of the Mediterranean waiting with their backs to the Suez Canal for another Battle of Britain to be fought in Africa. All the same, he decided, with a little foreknowledge they could make it a hell of a lot more difficult.

‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘If we get there first.’

‘We shall join the navy,’ Varvara said. ‘We have decided this. The radio said that Greek naval vessels are already assisting the British and that they will head for Alexandria to lay alongside your ships. They will be glad of us, I think.’

‘Why didn’t you use the caique?’ Cotton asked. ‘You’d be less crowded.’

Varvara gave him a troubled smile. ‘The Germans have posted a notice in the village that there must be no movement of boats and there’s a sentry on the harbour wall. We had to leave in ones and twos.’ He made a despairing gesture. ‘There’s also a naval launch which has arrived from Kalani to make sure the order’s carried out. It’s lying off Cape Kastamanitsa with two caiques. We saw them as we came over the hill. They’re full of troops. They came from Kalani.’

‘What for?’

‘For the invasion of Crete. What else? They’re going to Isfos further south. They’re grouping there. They’re leaving tomorrow morning.’

‘This launch you saw.’ Cotton gestured. ‘What’s it like?’

‘It looks fast.’

‘Fast as this?’

‘Perhaps. It also has a big gun on the stern.’

Cotton frowned and gestured at Bisset. ‘Biss, get up the hill. Take the binoculars and stay where you can see the road. Come back if you see the Germans coming. If they do, we’ll have to shove off and chance it. Come down before dark.’

In his heart he knew his decision to wait until dark was also influenced by the hope that Annoula would return. There’d been no sign of her since she’d disappeared in Ay Yithion and he’d been hoping all afternoon that she’d decide to throw in her lot with young Varvara and join them.

His eyes turned towards the slope. There was no sign of life beyond the donkey, which they’d set free, grazing quietly halfway up the hill; nothing but the purple-brown slopes burned by the sun.

He found Varvara alongside him. ‘Did you see Annoula?’ he asked.

Varvara shook his head. ‘Perhaps she will come,
Kapetane.’

As Cotton moved towards the foredeck, restless, watching the ropes, checking that everything was ready for departure, Kitcat placed the Lewises on their stands, and the pans of ammunition over the breeches. The 20 mm was on the stern mounting, a drum in position, the remaining drums on the deck below ready to be handed up. Inside the engine room he could hear the clink of Docherty’s tools and Docherty himself whistling with a surprising cheerfulness that lifted shrilly over the deep thudding of guns to the north.

Kitcat was explaining the working of one of the Lewises to Gully who was staring at it, bewildered.

‘Fed by a circular magazine,’ Kitcat was saying. ‘This one. It’s fixed horizontally over the breech mechanism and holds forty-seven rounds.’

He indicated which was the breech and Gully frowned. Cotton knew how he felt. When he’d first made the acquaintance of a machine-gun it had been nothing but a meaningless conglomeration of oddly shaped bits of shiny steel.

‘Perhaps you’d better just pull the goddam trigger,’ Kitcat said in disgust, ‘and hope for the best.’

He removed the magazine and stood alongside Cotton, listening. The air seemed full of the sound of guns and the lower note of aircraft. It seemed to Cotton to make them more cut off. For days he’d been existing entirely on drilled-in discipline and the morale they’d shoved into him at Eastney, but it was beginning to wear a bit thin now. A man could live cut off from his friends only for so long, and they seemed to have been in the wilderness for ever.

Kitcat was watching him and he felt he had to say something.

‘Somebody’s copping it,’ he offered.

‘Navy.’

Cotton nodded, his head cocked, listening. ‘If they’re trying to lift the pongos off the mainland they’ll be getting it thick and heavy, because the Jerries have airfields within easy distance of the coast now. Think they might just know in Crete what we know?’

Kitcat sighed. ‘It’s always been my experience,’ he said, ‘that they don’t know a goddam thing about what’s coming till it drops on ‘em.’

A stone clattered ashore and he swung round.

‘Somebody coming.’

Thinking it might be Bisset returning, Cotton called to Docherty to stand by, and Gully moved to the forward mooring rope.

But it wasn’t Bisset. Three figures were emerging from the scrub. It wasn’t possible to see who they were as they entered the fringe of trees but they saw the flash of coloured shirts and, as they came out of the trees, Cotton saw they were Chrysostomos Petrakis, and his two companions, Xilouris and Cesarides, wearing blankets in rolls round their chests.

They stopped among the dusty rocks alongside the boat. ‘I am glad you have repaired it,’ Petrakis said.

Cotton scowled at him. ‘How did you know we’d repaired it?’

‘We have been watching.’

‘What difference does it make to you?’

Petrakis smiled. ‘We are sorry we have caused trouble, but whatever our ideals and whatever yours, we are both fighting the same enemy.’

‘It took you long enough to find out.’

‘Perhaps.’ Petrakis smiled again. ‘But it’s all over here now and we wish to go with you.’

6

‘We may come aboard?’

Petrakis smiled and gestured towards
Loukia’s
foredeck. Cotton scowled. He disliked Petrakis and didn’t trust him, but he had to suppose that anybody who proposed joining in the fight against the Nazis would be welcomed in Egypt. The fact that he didn’t like him had nothing to do with it. If he’d looked through the army, navy and air force muster rolls, he’d doubtless have found plenty of men he wouldn’t like.

‘I thought you were going to stay here and fight,’ he said.

Petrakis smiled and shrugged.

‘And what about that army you said you had?’

Petrakis gestured at Xilouris and Cesarides.

‘These two? Just these two?’

Petrakis shrugged again. ‘We may come aboard?’

Cotton turned to Kitcat. ‘I suppose they’d better,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Put ‘em forrard and see they stay there. They’re not to come on deck.’

‘We’re not proposing to steal your boat,’ Petrakis said coldly.

‘I’m not going to give you a chance,’ Cotton snorted. ‘The women and kids are to stay below too,’ he went on. ‘And Kitcat’ -Cotton lowered his voice - ‘stick around that forrard hatch. Just keep an eye on those bastards. I wouldn’t put it past ‘em to stir up trouble of some sort even now.’

Kitcat nodded and ushered Petrakis and the other two below. As they vanished, Cotton moved round the boat.

‘Think she’ll stand up to it?’ he asked Gully.

The carpenter was bending over the port Lewis, frowning. With the chance of success round the corner, he had recovered his aggressiveness. His new courage took the form of confidence and he straightened up and grinned. ‘If I do a job, son,’ he said, ‘it stays done. She’ll get you there if the engines keep turning.’

‘What about the holes?’

‘You’ll not get enough water through ‘em to worry you. And they won’t leak much in less than ‘alf a gale.’

In the engine room Docherty was bent over the starboard engine. ‘How’s it going?’

Docherty looked up. ‘They’ll be all right,’ he said.

The day seemed to drag through the last hours of the afternoon; the sun turned from piercing gold to bronze, and the shadows of the trees reached across the deck until they showed in the water at the far side. For the hundredth time Cotton looked at his watch, then at the two clumps of rock in the entrance to the bay, fixing in his mind exactly where they lay so that they could safely negotiate them in the dark. Finally he looked towards the hilltop for some sign of Bisset.

Nothing was moving and for something to do, he cleaned himself up, shaving for the first time in days, polishing his cap badge, trying to rub the spots off his trousers. He was a Royal Marine and it was his duty to look like one. He’d heard of the Marine colonel who’d acted as beachmaster at La Panne during the evacuation of Dunkirk; contriving to put on his best uniform to go aboard ship, he had made himself so smart the women doling out rations in the train to London had refused to supply him because they wouldn’t believe he’d just come across the Channel. Cotton understood what lay behind the gesture and thoroughly approved.

Gully appeared. ‘What are you polishing up for?’ he said.

Cotton couldn’t explain; he couldn’t have explained why the colonel at Dunkirk had put on his best uniform either, even though he understood. ‘They’re red-hot on polishing in the Marines,’ he said shortly.

Still nothing happened and he doggedly began to hum the Marines’ march, a little number called ‘Sarie Marais’ they’d picked up from the Boers in the South African War. Then he stopped dead as the Greek women started to sing, too; softly, perhaps to lull their children to sleep, a slight tuneless melody with a strange touch of the east, all half-notes that never quite arrived where they appeared to be going. Cotton guessed it was probably an inheritance from the days when Greece was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.