Corporal Cotton's Little War (6 page)

‘Nico will show you where the petrol is,’ he went on, indicating the boy. ‘It’s in a shed behind the town. There are six drums.’

‘I was told eight,’ Duff said. ‘I’ll bet the corrupt bastard’s hidden two for himself.’

They followed the boy up the narrow street and down white steps between more flat-roofed buildings. Against one of them was a wooden lean-to, timbers and old tyres piled against it. The boy gestured and began to move the tyres until eventually, they saw a padlocked door. The boy took a key and unlocked it. Inside the shed, there were seven drums and several new tyres. The boy banged the drums; one of them sounded empty.

‘How do we get them to the boat?’ Duff demanded. ‘The bloody moke can’t carry ‘em.’

Cotton asked the boy, who vanished, leaving them awkward and uneasy because they were aware of the hostility on the island towards them and didn’t know where the Germans were. After a while the boy returned pushing a small cart. It looked little bigger than a child’s barrow but he began to hitch it to the donkey.

‘Let’s have a ramp of some sort rigged up,’ Duff said and they managed, with the timbers that had been leaning against the shed, to build a sloping platform against which the boy backed the cart. Manhandling the drums up, they loaded three of them into the cart and the boy locked the door again and began to pile the timbers up against it.

‘We will come back,’ he said.

The weight of the drums in the cart seemed almost to have lifted the donkey off the ground and Gully eyed it speculatively.

‘It’s never going to be able to pull those things,’ he said.

But, with the wheels wobbling and screeching on the axles, the minute beast tottered off, its hoofs click-clacking on the cobbles.

‘The bloody thing’ll have a heart attack,’ Gully said.

Duff took the rifle from Coward and handed it to Cotton. ‘Stay here, Cotton,’ he said. ‘You, too, Gully. Keep an eye on this place. I’ll go back with Coward and turn the stuff over and then come back.’

Cotton and Gully watched them disappear behind the houses towards the bay. Gully took his cigarette end from behind his ear and lit it. After a couple of puffs, he passed it to Cotton, who also took a couple of puffs and handed it back to Gully to finish.

‘What you make of this bleedin’ lot?’ Gully asked.

‘Which bleeding lot?’

‘Us. You and me. Where we’re goin’. It’s a right carry-on, innit?’

Cotton shrugged. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder. Having been recruited into the enterprise, he had accepted it with his usual unflappable logic. A Marine didn’t ask questions. He got on with it.

Gully studied Cotton for a while, puzzled by his silence. Gully was a man who liked noise and believed in making plenty. He’d grown up in a house full of people and was uncomfortable when everything was quiet.

He spat. ‘How long you been in?’ he asked.

Cotton’s head turned. ‘Nearly four,’ he said.

‘Poor bugger!’ Gully grinned. ‘I could never ‘ave joined the navy. I like to be free to ‘op it when I feel like it. “Just let me shake the dust of this old cow off me feet,” I always used to say when I was at sea. But then I’d come ashore and get into the first bar I saw and, afore I knew what had happened, I was spent up -- even me railway fare ‘ome -- and I was back aboard the bleeder again, flat broke.’ He gave a boozy cackle. ‘I was never one for discipline though. I mean - ‘ he ran a hand over his greying, grubby-looking thatch and looked hard at Cotton’s neat haircut ‘ -- they ought to give you gas for a haircut like you’ve got. After all, a feller’s got to have enough left to brush and comb, ain’t ‘e? Give me a haircut like you got and I’d have broke down and cried like a child. I pride myself on a nice eddervair.’

Cotton thought it might have been an even nicer ‘eddervair’ if he’d bothered to wash it occasionally but he said nothing and Gully went on cheerfully.

‘You look like the sort of chap who’d capture a battleship with a jack-knife,’ he said.

‘I might.’ Cotton didn’t smile. He wasn’t given to smiling much. He was a slow-speaking, slow-moving man not willing to quarrel. ‘The Marines have been around a bit.’

‘Why’d you join?’

Cotton considered. For a long time as a youth he’d wondered what he was going to do with his life because he’d never intended to spend the rest of his life writing down in ledgers the petrol consumption of London Transport buses.

‘Fancied it,’ he said.

‘But why the Marines?’

Cotton shrugged. In fact, he’d seen a poster of a Marine corporal, smart in his best blues and white helmet, talking to a blonde in a bathing costume with palms and a foreign blue sea behind him, and his mind had been made up at once. It hadn’t turned out quite as the poster showed, of course. He hadn’t noticed, for instance, such a fat lot of blondes -- they seemed to be reserved for the officers; the other ranks got the brunettes with a touch of the tarbrush who didn’t make the wardroom dances -- but he’d been to Bermuda and Jamaica when
Caernarvon
had shown the flag in the Caribbean before the war, and he supposed he had to take what came. After all,
Per Mare, Per Terram.
That was the Royal Marines’ motto.
By horse, by tram.
You didn’t argue about it.

‘Bit of excitement,’ he said.

‘Get any?’

‘Here and there.’

‘What did you do before you joined?’

‘I dunno.’ Cotton was not one to encourage discussion of his private affairs.’ I’ve been in so long, I’ve forgot.’

The donkey reappeared, apparently none the worse for dragging the three heavy drums through the village. As they loaded the last drum on to the cart, Gully looked round the shed to see if there were anything he could scrounge.

‘Come on,’ Duff said. ‘Let’s be having you.’

Gully spat and emerged with a tyre.

‘What the hell do you think you’re goin’ to do with that?’ Duff demanded.

‘Be worth a bit in Alex,’ Gully said. ‘Them Gyppos’ll give a lot for this.’

‘Shove it back,’ Duff said. ‘We depend on these bloody people for their good will. And they’d be delighted, wouldn’t they, if they found we’d been pinching things?’

Gully replaced the tyre unwillingly and they set off back towards
Claudia.
Docherty and the two RASC privates had manhandled the first three drums on board when they arrived.

‘We’ll top up at Aeos,’ Shaw said. ‘That’ll give us full tanks for the return trip.’

The sun was high now in a sky that had become startlingly blue. More men and boys had appeared on the jetty to watch them and, at the landward end, the women stood like black vultures, obviously discussing them.

‘We’ll move among the caiques,’ Shaw said, ‘and wait until dark before leaving.’

But the fishermen resented the movement of the boat among their vessels. They were well aware that the Germans weren’t far away and had obviously decided that if a prowling German plane spotted her and returned to drop a bomb, their own boats would suffer.

A large man in a jersey and wearing ear-rings acted as spokesman. He was obviously enjoying his position and the fact that the women were giving him admiring glances.

‘Philotimo,’
Patullo explained. ‘The Greek male’s sense of honour and pride in his own worth. A self-image that keeps him in conceit of himself and demands revenge for insult. It gets a bit swollen by a loud voice and great physical strength.’

It took a great deal of concentrated arguing to make it clear that it was best for everybody if they managed to hide
Claudia
rather than moor her separately across the harbour, and it was Cotton who pulled the trick in the end.

‘If we moor over there,’ he said, pointing, ‘and a German plane comes, they’ll spot her at once. And if bombs are dropped they’re as likely to hit your boats as ours. If we hide her among the caiques, they’ll probably never see her and then there’ll be no bombs at all.’

‘You should take an interpreter’s course, Cotton,’ Patullo said as the fishermen unwillingly withdrew their objections. ‘It would be worth a bit extra, and we might be glad of a few Greek speakers in the Med before the war’s over.’

The idea struck a spark. If nothing else, Cotton thought, it would mean he’d be relieved of sentry duties and might even get three stripes on his arm. To Cotton that was the very pinnacle of military glory and he decided to make enquiries when he got back.

Then he paused.
If
he got back, he thought.

4

The plain of Kalani on the north side of the island of Aeos was like a plate, with the Phythion Hills running along the south coast and dropping steeply to the sea over narrow bays overhung by trees. The north coast, less rugged, less open to the sea because of the shelter of the mainland of Greece, was fringed by more hills, but these were gentle slopes rising to the port and capital of the island : Kalani, a sprawling town of white houses round the Bay of Xinthos.

The plain was fertile but low-lying and intersected by marshes, so that across its whole length it was studded with windmills with small triangular-shaped sails, oddly like the celluloid toys children placed on their sandcastles on English beaches in summer. It was said that here Odysseus set up camp after landing on his journey to Ithaca. In addition to lemon, orange and olive trees, it contained cherry, almond, fig and quince as well as bougainvillaea and oleander. In one part of the plain, however, near Yanitsa, to the south of Kalani, there was a stretch of land which was surrounded by cotton and tobacco, and its burning noonday heat was softened by the prevailing north wind. Here, occasionally, light aeroplanes from nearby Athens had been in the habit of landing wealthy passengers heading for their summer houses away from the bustle and heat of the metropolis. A small, narrow landing strip had been built with one hangar and a set of huts to serve as workshops, stores and offices.

It was here, on 7 April 1941, that the two or three clerks, mechanics and labourers who were employed there, stood staring at the sky as a heavy three-engined aeroplane came in to land. It was made of ribbed metal, its centre engine placed in the nose of the machine. The Greeks watched it, open-mouthed, and it was only as it drew nearer that they realized that on the wings and fuselage it carried the black crosses of the Luftwaffe and on its tail the crooked cross of Nazi Germany. Knowing already what was happening on the mainland, they watched, petrified.

The radio had been full of an appalling bombing raid the day before on the Piraeus, the port for Athens and the only shipping centre of any consequence in Greece.

It had been congested to the point of chaos and three ammunition ships had been alongside, one of them with her cargo of explosives only partly removed when the first wave of bombers had arrived. The blast had showered debris everywhere, igniting small craft, while the violence of the explosion had reduced sheds to rubble. In all, eleven ships had been lost and the Piraeus had ceased to function as a port.

As a result, the people on the landing strip at Yanitsa were worried to see the Junkers coming in to land. Aeos was so far south of the fighting on the mainland they couldn’t imagine what the aeroplane was doing there. It was only as it touched down that they realized a second and a third and a fourth aircraft were coming in behind it.

The first machine had landed and was taxiing towards the hangar and the hut that was used as an office. As it slowed, the pilot jammed on his brakes and swung it round in a tight circle. The blast from the propellers raised a cloud of dust which it blew through the open doors and windows of the office, scattering papers and filling the place with blinding grit. Immediately, a door in the side of the machine opened and men in packs and helmets began to pour out. Behind them was an officer, in full uniform and wearing only a revolver.

He jerked a hand towards the row of cars standing outside the office. ‘Seize those vehicles,’ he said. ‘If anyone argues, shoot them.’

The men ran towards the line of cars as the second, third and fourth Junkers touched down. Somebody obviously did argue, because there was a short burst of firing; then, as the aeroplanes cut their engines, a shocked silence and a woman’s wail of terror. Driven by the German soldiers, the cars edged out of line and, heading towards the officer, drew up in front of him. By this time, the second, third and fourth aircraft were empty of men and the officer was pointing to the north.

‘Off you go,’ he said. ‘We want all the chief officials, port authorities, military and naval men and the Mayor of Kalani. Lock them up. If they argue, shoot them. We haven’t time to discuss things. Let it be known that if there’s any resistance, I’ll have the Luftwaffe obliterate the place.’

‘Jawohl, Herr Major!’

‘We have one hour to get control. Once we’ve got Kalani, it’s done. See to it.’

‘Jawohl, Herr Major!’

‘Commandeer any vehicle you want on the way.’

Packed with armed men, the cars swung round and began to head towards the north, roaring over the grass in the direction of the port, while the German major deployed the: rest of his men about the airstrip, setting up heavy machine-guns and establishing them in and around the office and the hangar.

They had barely finished when the telephone rang. The man sitting by the radio that had been set up answered it and handed the earpiece to the major.

‘Captain Ehrhardt, Herr Major,’ he said.

The major took the telephone, sat down in the chair behind the desk and put it to his ear. As he listened, he looked like a businessman attending to the first call of the day.

‘Well done, Ehrhardt,’ he said.

Replacing the telephone he clicked his fingers and, as the radioman handed him a signal pad, he began to write, addressing the message to General Ritsicz, 12th Army, Sofia.

‘Objective captured. No casualties. Await orders. Baldamus.’

He signed it and handed it to the signaller with a smile. ‘I think this will startle the British,’ he said. ‘At least, it should discourage them from putting men ashore here.’

This time it was Major Baldamus who was wrong, because
Claudia
was only waiting for dusk before pushing on with the next stage of her voyage.