Corporal Cotton's Little War

by John Harris

  ‘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 man-handled 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.

  ‘Philótimo,’ 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.

  Four

  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 bustl
e 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 realised 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 realised 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 business-man attending to the first call of the day.

  ‘Well done, Ehrhardt,’ he said.

  Replacing the telephone he clicked his fingers and, as the radio-man 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.

  A sort of dread seemed to have settled over Iros. As the day advanced they began to hear the soft thud-thud of guns to the north and the distant hum of aircraft which never came close enough to be seen. Otherwise all was extraordinarily quiet, the islanders moving about in small silent groups as if in need of constant company. There were no voices, not even the voices of sea birds, and the women in the low fields by the shore seemed to speak in whispers, because it was impossible, even in the still air, to hear them.

  Occasionally, groups of prune-eyed children or old men came down the jetty to look at Claudia, moored among the caiques and disguised with blankets over her guns; but no one asked about her, or the purpose of her voyage. It was obvious the islanders suspected that no good could come of her visit and they were all holding their breath, wondering when nemesis was going to arrive in the shape of a prowling German aeroplane.

  Even the harbour wall was silent and deserted except for a man using a six-inch nail to splice an eye in a heavy wire hawser.

  ‘He’d do better with a spike,’ Shaw observed and Patullo smiled.

  ‘He’ll manage,’ he said. ‘It’s a habit of the Greeks to use things for multiple purposes. I once saw the fire brigade turn out in a suburb of Larisa, complete with engines and brass helmets, to water the flowers in the public gardens.’

  Gully pulled his concertina from under the dreadful heap of rubbish in the brown-paper parcel that he called his gear and tried a few notes. ‘I’m a flying fish, sailor, just ’ome from ’Ong Kong,’ he began.

  Docherty stopped him. ‘Gi’e us something proper,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of proper?’

  ‘Know “Ramona”?’

  ‘’Oo’s she?’ Gully asked. ‘That bit that used to wait outside the docks at South Shields?’

  But he started to play the tune and Docherty sang in a breathy tenor, doing dance steps round the forecastle. ‘These bloody navy jobs,’ he complained. ‘They get me chocker. No room to move. If I’d built this scow for meself I’d have had a bar and a big double bed for the bints.’

  ‘Your mind runs on rails,’ Bisset said.

  Docherty grinned his mad grin. ‘It’s a short life, so you might as well make it a merry one. I was in Singapore before I come to the Med. The bints there were all right – one of coffee, two of milk, and red hot in bed.’

  At midday Bisset managed to pick up the BBC news again, and they listened with hearts that seemed to be clutched by cold fingers. The Axis troops were active again in North Africa and Tobruk was still besieged, while to the north in Greece the British army was as hard pressed as it seemed to have been everywhere since the war had wakened up the previous year.

  ‘The situation is grave,’ the announcer said in the smooth, cool tones of someone sitting out of the way in London. ‘The Greek government has left Athens and the whereabouts of the king are at present unknown. Australian and New Zealand troops are taking up positions – ‘On Crete,’ Bisset put in.

  ‘–and a British fleet is in the Adriatic–’

  ‘Assembling for evacuation, I bet.’

  ‘–Naval units, assault ships and A-lighters are being gathered.’

  ‘That makes it evacuation,’ Cotton said bluntly. ‘The assault ships are the Glen Line vessels and the A-lighters are tank landing craft. They carry a lot of blokes.’

  ‘And they’re bloody unhandy jobs into the bargain,’ Docherty observed, rolling a cigarette with his oil-stained fingers. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can stuff ’em where the monkey stuffed its nuts.’

  They’d all known t
hat evacuation was inevitable but the news that it was now clearly a fact depressed them all a little, even Docherty.

  Later Bisset picked up Berlin and crouched over the set, listening with his head cocked, his eyes thoughtful.

  ‘Where did you learn German?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘At school.’

  ‘Can you understand it?’

  Bisset smiled. ‘It was rather a good school,’ he said. ‘I even spent a year in Heidelberg – officially studying the German language, unofficially chasing the German girls – all at my father’s expense.’

  Cotton’s family had never had enough to send him even for a week to Brighton, and he frowned. There was something about Bisset that puzzled him. With the world falling about their ears, he seemed quite unperturbed.

  ‘I never know when you’re pulling my leg,’ he growled.

  Bisset beamed at him. ‘As a matter of fact, neither do I. And now I think you’d better fetch Patullo. They’re having a bit of a gloat about what they’re going to do and he might like to know.’

  Patullo and Shaw arrived in a hurry and listened with grave faces. ‘They’re hoping to get Junkers 87s on the Salonika airfields,’ Bisset said. ‘Supported by transports. They’re beginning already to move through the Monastir Gap and the Rupel Pass. They say they intend to seize the Corinth Canal.’

  He was about to say more when the harsh German voice started again. As it stopped, Bisset sat back. ‘They’re flying out to the offshore islands,’ he said. ‘They mentioned Aeos.’

  Patullo frowned. ‘Probably won’t affect us,’ he decided, but he didn’t sound too sure. ‘Aeos is a big island and the airstrip’s up in the north near Kalani. They’ll probably not get around to Xiloparissia Bay for a couple of weeks. With luck, we ought to be able to pick up what we want and get out before they notice us.’

  As the officers disappeared and Bisset switched off the receiver, Cotton studied him again. He’d met men like Bisset before – strange types from happy homes who’d decided on uniform and were content enough not to want to throw it off, indifferent to commissions or promotion.