Corporal Cotton's Little War

by John Harris

  ‘They are dead?’ the girl asked, her voice low and grieving.

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked at Howard. ‘And that one also?’

  ‘No,’ Cotton said. ‘But he’s badly hurt. He needs a doctor. We were going to take him to the village.’

  She said nothing, staring at the injured boy with a frown on her face, trying to work out what they could do. In the silence the man with the moustache spoke.

  ‘Why were you looking for the other boat?’ he asked.

  ‘We thought we might find survivors.’

  ‘There are no survivors.’ The words came quickly, as though the speaker were anxious there should be no doubt about the matter.

  Cotton frowned. ‘None at all?’

  ‘None. They’re all dead.’

  ‘All of them? I was told there were some. They were seen standing on the beach waving. A recce plane saw them.’

  The Greek glanced at the boy alongside him, then he shrugged. ‘There were seven alive,’ he said. ‘But the Germans came and killed them all. They arrived three days ago. The Western democracies have failed to stop them. The British will leave Greece soon and go back where they came from, and leave us to face the Germans.’ He seemed to be a Communist and Cotton remembered the worried Mayor of Iros.

  The Greek offered cigarettes. Cotton took one and was about to light it when he removed it from his lips and stared at it.

  ‘These are English cigarettes,’ he said.

  The Greek shrugged. ‘There were a lot left behind.’

  ‘Left behind where?’

  ‘Here.’

  The girl glanced quickly at the Greek as if she didn’t believe him, and Cotton frowned. ‘I didn’t know we’d been here,’ he said. ‘I thought we were the first.’

  ‘Oh, no! A ship came in. They had no drachmas so they exchanged cigarettes for wine.’

  The girl looked worried and interrupted quickly. ‘What do you intend to do now?’ she asked in her quiet, deep voice.

  Cotton gestured at Claudia. ‘We were wondering if we could repair one of the boats,’ he said. ‘This one or the other.’

  ‘There is nothing here,’ the Greek said quickly, almost too quickly, Cotton thought. ‘This is a poor island and this end is the poorest part of it.’

  ‘You’d better hide,’ the girl put in. ‘The Germans know there is a boat here.’

  ‘How do you know they know?’

  ‘We have ways of finding out. We have friends who have been taken on by them to clean their quarters in Kalani and at Yanitsa. And friends who own the café’s they use and listen to them talking.’

  Cotton studied her grave face. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Akoumianakis. Annoula Akoumianakis.’ The girl gestured at the older Greek just behind her. ‘This is Petrakis, Chrysostomos. He is my cousin. He comes from Crete. My uncle was a government official who was sent there from the mainland. I come from the Piraeus, which is the port for Athens.’ She gestured at the other man. ‘This is Cesarides, Gregorio. He is only a boy. There is another one up the hill, watching. His name is Xilouris, Giorgiou. He comes from Antipalia on the mainland.’

  Cotton said nothing for a moment. In its trudging regimental way, his mind was working. Something told him that the feverish-eyed Greek was not to be trusted. ‘And the guns?’ he asked. ‘Why are you carrying guns?’

  The girl glanced at Petrakis. ‘My cousin prefers the hills to the towns now that the Germans have come. I was in Ay Yithion just over the cape. It is a fishing village. He came for me and brought me along, too, because I speak a little English.’ She gave a twisted smile and shrugged. ‘But not much. My cousin lives up there.’ She indicated the hills to the west. ‘There are other men, too, and more will join.’

  ‘How many?’

  The girl glanced at Petrakis and he answered brusquely. ‘My cousin says there are many,’ she said. ‘Very many. He has a lot of support.’

  Cotton was aware of Bisset watching him, urging him to get on with it so they could continue with what they’d been doing, but he was deliberately slow.

  ‘How far is it?’ he asked. ‘The other boat?’

  ‘Three cigarettes,’ the man said.

  ‘Three cigarettes?’

  The girl explained quickly. ‘He is a Cretan and this is how they measure distance on Crete. The time it takes you to smoke a cigarette.’ She smiled gravely. ‘But I warn you, although Cretans can move fast in the hills, they are no judge of distance.’

  ‘Is he starting a Resistance movement?’

  ‘We aren’t fighting for the Western democracies,’ Petrakis interrupted. ‘We’re fighting for Greece. And that doesn’t mean the king.’

  The girl glanced round her at the cliffs. ‘The Germans will come soon,’ she said uneasily.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘The north side of the island. They’re building a new airstrip at Yanitsa. It’s flat there. There is nothing but windmills and they are already pulling them down. You ought to hide.’

  ‘Where?’ Cotton asked and she indicated the shrub-covered hills.

  Petrakis gestured at Claudia ‘What about the guns?’ he said sharply.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘The Germans will take them when they come. We’ll look after them for you.’

  Cotton looked at him coldly. He had already decided he didn’t like Petrakis very much and the thought of handing over Royal Navy guns to a stranger took his breath away.

  ‘We’ll look after them ourselves,’ he said sharply.

  The 303s were no problem because they were on temporary mountings and had only to be lifted off. The 20mm was more difficult, but Cotton knew what to do and they carefully detached the barrel and recoil spring. They had just finished removing the gun when there was a whistle from the top of the hill and the two Greeks turned at once and ran for cover, splashing in the shallows until they reached the slope. Leaping from boulder to boulder, they disappeared from sight.

  ‘It’s the Germans,’ the girl said. ‘That was Giorgiou Xilouris.’ Bisset looked towards the three stiffening shapes lying under the trees. ‘What about that lot?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s no time,’ the girl said. ‘Hurry!’ She gestured at Howard. ‘Quickly!’

  ‘What about the guns?’

  Cotton stared about him. It would take them too long to get the guns up the beach and hidden. ‘Over the side,’ he said. ‘As far under the stern as we can get ’em. They’ll not notice ’em there with a bit of luck and they’re well greased. It was my job to see they were, and we can get ’em back before they come to any harm.’

  They pushed the guns overboard, so that they dropped under the stern. Then they climbed from the launch’s deck, taking the ammunition, the drums and the breech blocks with them. The girl was still waiting for them, fidgeting anxiously as she watched Cotton’s painstaking preparations.

  ‘Hurry,’ she called.

  Dropping to the beach, loaded with metal objects, they lifted the stretcher as she began to run along the edge of the sea. Then she turned and gestured. ‘In the water,’ she said. ‘Or they’ll follow the footprints.’

  They splashed along in the shallows until they reached the rocks. Then, manhandling the stretcher, they followed her up the slope. Behind them there was no indication of where they’d gone, only the footprints round the bodies and the wrecked launch, and the marks on the sand where they’d struggled with the dinghy.

  As they hurried after the girl, they heard the sound of vehicles beyond the hill and shortly afterwards saw soldiers climbing down at the other side of the bay. They wore square German helmets and they could hear their shouts.

  Petrakis and Cesarides had disappeared and only the girl remained. They all crouched among the rocks, praying that Howard, who had been roughly handled during the climb, would not cry out.

  Watching between the clefts of stone, they saw the Germans, led by a sergeant, reach the beach. Baldamus’
instructions that they leave Kalani at first light had been thwarted by the arrival of another two Junkers and the need for vehicles to unload them. The sergeant seemed irritated, as if the stuffy heat in the narrow bay was causing the thick clothes and equipment he was wearing to chafe his sweat-damp skin.

  As they reached the sand, they crossed to the three blanketed shapes under the trees. For a while they stood in front of them, talking; then they scrambled aboard Claudia and began to move about her decks. As they stopped by the 20mm and 303 mountings, one of them pointed out to sea.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Cotton whispered.

  ‘They think we’ve bunked with the guns,’ Bisset said. ‘They think there were two boats and that we’ve been picked up.’

  The sergeant gestured and one of the Germans ran for the cliff and began to toil upwards.

  Bisset watched him. ‘He’s been sent to warn the Luftwaffe that there’s another launch in the area with survivors.’

  After a while, the Germans climbed down from the boat and the sergeant sent two more men up the cliff. They returned with spades and began to dig.

  ‘Now what the hell are they up to?’ Gully demanded.

  ‘They’re digging graves, you bloody fool,’ Bisset said.

  The Germans scraped three shallow holes at the head of the beach and laid the bundled shapes in them, then the sergeant, who’d been poking about in the trees, reappeared with three short stakes which he stuck in the sand above the graves. They saw him writing in a notebook, then he tore three sheets out and fastened them to the stakes, while the soldiers stood still for a moment by them. After a second or two the sergeant pointed at Claudia.

  The men who’d first disappeared up the cliff had returned now and they began to swarm all over the boat. The luxurious blue blankets that Spiro Panyioti had provided for his comfort were tossed down. The sheets followed, together with other articles.

  ‘They’ve got the rum,’ Gully groaned.

  The Germans were passing the rum keg around, swigging from it as it went from hand to hand. When they’d drunk, they poured the water from their bottles and, filling them with the rum, tossed the keg aside. By now they were laughing and joking among themselves.

  A few tins of food that had been overlooked were also passed down and stacked on the beach, and the sergeant set up a carrying party which began to lift their finds up the cliff. As they went, one of them, an older man with a lined face and bowed legs, vanished among the bushes.

  ‘What’s he up to?’ Bisset said.

  ‘The bastard’s hiding the other rum jar and one of the blankets,’ Cotton said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘What for?’ Gully’s words were almost a moan. ‘So he can come back later and nick it for himself, I expect.’

  Carrying the boat’s equipment up the cliff required several trips and Gully was complaining all the time.

  ‘All them lovely blankets,’ he said. ‘They’d have fetched a quid apiece in the bazaars in Alex.’

  When they’d finished the Germans stood on the beach talking, the sergeant shouting to a man on Claudia’s bow.

  ‘They are saying they will come back to pump out the petrol tanks,’ the girl said.

  ‘Can you understand them too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He didn’t ask her how or why, but just accepted the information. ‘When are they coming?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Are they going to destroy her?’

  ‘They haven’t said so. They haven’t destroyed the other boat.’ By the time the Germans disappeared it was evening and the sun had gone. When they heard the German lorries drawing away and were certain the coast was clear, they stood up, easing their muscles.

  Cotton looked at Howard, comatose now in the shadows on the stretcher. ‘We’d better get him to the village,’ he said.

  The girl shook her head. ‘It’s too late. And the path is bad. Can he live through the night?’

  Bisset nodded and she gestured. ‘Then keep him here. I’ll get them to send a boat round. If you try to take him over the top tonight you’ll kill him.’ She gave Cotton a smile which transformed her sobersides little face. ‘You are safe from the Germans now. This is the high part of the island, and they prefer to stay in the plain near Kalani. They know there are a few groups of patriots who have hidden in the hills. That’s why they don’t go near the other boat. My cousin says they took away the guns and set fire to it. He put the fire out. It had a good engine, I think, and there are less holes in it than in this one.’

  ‘Will you come back tomorrow and show us how to get to it?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘If they’ll let me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Chrysostomos and the others. They haven’t finished with it yet.’

  ‘What are they doing to it?’

  She smiled again. ‘Mostly arguing. They are good democrats and believe nothing should be done without everybody having his say first. I expect they’ll still be arguing when the Germans decide to come back and tow it off.’

  ‘Can it be towed off?’

  ‘Chrysostomos is thinking of towing it off.’

  Cotton’s heart thumped. ‘Will it float?’

  ‘With a few holes plugged up, it will, I think. The fishermen thought so too.’

  Cotton looked at Gully; then he turned back to the girl. At that moment she seemed the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. ‘We’ll wait for you here on the beach,’ he said.

  As she turned away and began to climb in the growing darkness, Gully rounded on Cotton. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he complained. He pointed at the sky which was changing in the west to a deep violet-grey. ‘We should have gone to the village. We’re going to get wet.’

  Cotton turned and glared at him, his face only inches away from the carpenter’s. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll get wet. But we’re staying here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s my guess those bloody Greeks’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning to get our guns.’

  Gully’s jaw dropped. ‘What!’

  ‘I’ll bet my last bob the bastards were watching us from up there somewhere.’ Cotton gestured towards the slope of the mountain and, as he did so, he noticed that the first spots of Gully’s rain were falling. ‘I expect they want ’em for their gang of bolshie patriots or something.’

  ‘Well, why can’t they ’ave ’em?’

  ‘Because they belong to the navy,’ Cotton said. ‘And I want ’em myself. That lot couldn’t do a thing with them. They don’t know how.’ He had all a trained soldier’s contempt for amateurs. ‘That’s why when they come back tomorrow to fish ’em out, they’ll find I’ve been there first.’

  Four

  ‘You know what?’ Gully said.

  ‘What?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘I think you’re bloody barmy.’

  ‘That’s what Docherty thought,’ Cotton pointed out. ‘I think he was wrong. I think you’re wrong.’

  He was quite unperturbed by Gully’s opinion. Though Gully had been right about the weather, and it had not only rained, it had poured, and he had spent a wretched night under an overhang in the stream bed with Howard, hidden from the boat, damp, chilled and miserable, watching the trickle of water by his feet grow wider and faster until it lapped his shoes. But at least Howard had been dry and it had seemed safer there than on the boat where they might have been surprised and unable to get him away.

  Docherty studied the lopsided launch. With her tilted deck and mast and the smashed wheelhouse, she looked a total wreck. ‘Suppose the Germans come and set fire to her?’ he said.

  ‘And suppose they don’t,’ Gully added. ‘What’s the difference? She won’t shift. So we’ve got guns and petrol but no bloody boat.’

  ‘There’s the other boat,’ Cotton pointed out patiently. ‘That girl said she was in better shape than this one.’

  Gully grunted. ‘I still think you’re barmy,’ he said.

  Cotton shrugged. He’d b
een called a few names in his time. ‘It takes all sorts to make a Marine,’ he said, unperturbed. ‘We once had a woman in the corps even. She was wounded six times at Pondicherry and finally kept a pub at Wapping.’

  Gully stared at him as if he were mad but Bisset, guessing what it was that was driving Cotton, broke into an unexpected grin.

  Gully shrugged. ‘I still think you’re barmy.’

  Cotton didn’t bother to answer. What was in his mind would never have made sense to a civilian. Though Gully didn’t know it, he’d been prowling round even before first light, looking for a safe place to hide Claudia’s guns, the dinghy and the petrol.

  ‘I mean–’ Gully was just beginning to get properly wound up ‘–what can four of us do to a set of Germans?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Cotton said calmly. ‘I expect I shall think of something.’

  ‘I mean – getting us up at this bloody hour, with nothing to eat in our bellies, swimming around picking up guns and things!’

  Stark naked and looking like a large skinned bulldog, Cotton sat in the dinghy between the two dripping Lewis guns, shivering. ‘I’m doing the swimming,’ he pointed out. ‘Me and Docherty. You’re just sitting in the boat pulling on the oars. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.’

  ‘What are you going to do with the bloody guns anyway?’

  ‘Shoot Germans, I expect,’ Cotton said off-handedly. ‘I haven’t worked it out proper yet.’

  They landed the Lewis guns and, while Cotton stripped them down, Bisset carefully wiped the parts and greased them well. When they’d assembled them, Gully and Bisset rowed the dinghy out again, towing Cotton in the water behind. Docherty had started working in the silent engine room.

  ‘Did you ever swim the Channel by any chance?’ Gully asked.

  ‘No.’ Cotton answered seriously. ‘You need a lot of fat on you for that. Like you.’

  While Gully and Bisset waited in the dinghy, Cotton took the end of the heaving line and dived down into the clear water among the rocks and the waving seaweed and the sea urchins under Claudia’s stern, and attached it to the barrel of the 20mm. As he burst to the surface, gasping, Bisset and Gully began to heave.