Corporal Cotton's Little War

by John Harris

  ‘If we use one engine at a time,’ Cotton said, ‘we can stretch out the juice.’

  ‘Not to Crete,’ Docherty pointed out.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. However far away we get from here, we’re that much nearer safety. The number of RN ships there are in this neck of the woods at the moment is bound to help. We’ve only to get across their course for them to spot us.’

  They examined the work they’d done on the hull and the engines minutely, and during the afternoon Annoula returned from Yithion with a basket of food and two bottles of wine. Her eyes were alight and she seemed pleased, as though their escape was a matter of great importance to her. She seemed even to have forgiven Docherty, who went out of his way to exert his crazy charm on her. With Cotton she was thoughtful and silent and he had a feeling that in her silence there was an accusation.

  ‘I had to tell the Varvaras about the guns,’ he explained. ‘They weren’t brought here for your cousin and his friends. Men died bringing them. Besides, I don’t trust him and I’ll feel safer now he’s not got them.’

  For a moment she remained silent. Then she lifted her head. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It is safer that way.’

  He felt relieved that she understood. She reminded him a little of his sister, Rhoda, the best one of the three, the one without the spiteful tongue. She had married a Greek waiter who worked with his father and had a horde of black-eyed children who screamed around the place, not in good King’s English but in a jargon of two languages that had always irritated him.

  ‘What will you do when we’ve gone?’ he asked. ‘Petrakis is a fanatic and he’ll probably think you betrayed him.’

  She gave a shrug. It had an element of hopelessness about it that wrenched at Cotton’s stiff soldierly heart.

  ‘I will get the Varvaras to take me to Mykos as soon as they can,’ she said. ‘I have friends there. They will look after me.’

  ‘Good friends?’

  ‘Not very. But they are kind.’

  It seemed a wretched sort of future for her, especially after she’d jeopardised her life on Aeos by the help she’d given, and suddenly the idea of leaving without her seemed cold and harsh. ‘Come with us,’ Cotton said.

  She shook her head. ‘I belong here,’ she said. ‘I am not English. I am Greek. I would be lost among the English.’

  Again Cotton almost told her of his own background, but he’d spent so much of his life dodging it that the words stuck in his throat, and he backed away from the warm feeling that had taken hold of him.

  Among other things, she had brought the news that the Greek Epirus army had folded up and that the rest of the Greek forces were disintegrating and were expected to surrender any day. The Royal Air Force, hammered over Athens and the Piraeus in an attempt to protect the capital, had reached the end of its tether, while the British army was clinging to the last ditches of Thermopylae. The shadow of catastrophe, as great as that of Dunkirk, hung over them.

  During the evening, as Gully started on the final repairs to the stern, Cotton slapped the paint the Varvaras had brought over the patches he’d put on the bow. When he’d finished, they all stood back and studied the effect.

  ‘Looks like a bloody big dipper at ’Ull fairground,’ Gully said. ‘A burnt-out big dipper.’

  Certainly Loukia presented an odd sight. Outwardly, with her scorched sides and smashed wheelhouse, she still looked a wreck, but by this time they were all growing enthusiastic because the next step would be to start the engines. Below, in the forecastle, the two Lewises and the 20mm, stripped down, checked and freshly oiled by Kitcat, waited only for mounting. On Cotton’s instructions, Gully unscrewed the splinters of the engine-room door.

  ‘You’ll get a bloody row through there,’ he pointed out.

  ‘We’ll chance it,’ Cotton said. ‘And at least, I’ll be able to keep an eye on Docherty.’

  No one came near the bay and they continued to wonder why the Germans showed no more interest. When he brought the ropes and blocks they were going to use to haul themselves off, old Varvara gave them some hint.

  ‘There is something going on,’ he said. ‘We went round to Kalani with a load of lambs. They told us there are more caiques at the Piraeus and hundreds of Germans. They are clearly planning something.’

  ‘What about the British?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘A few of them have got across into the Peloponnese. The Germans are trying to cut them off. If they get the bridges over the Corinth Canal, they will be marooned in Thessaly and Sterea Hellas, within reach of the bombers on the Salonika airfields. They are also on Rhodes, and that means their bombers will be right across the route of your ships from Egypt.’

  ‘And here?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘They are still working on the airstrip. They’ve pulled down all the windmills and they are landing drums of fuel for the aircraft.’

  ‘Stukas?’

  Varvara shrugged. ‘Some. But transport planes too.’

  He left them a bottle of raki which Cotton hid ashore as soon as he’d gone.

  The next day they installed the extra pump aft and Docherty primed the engines. There was a tremendous feeling of excitement and Docherty’s face was tense, as though he knew what rested on his skill. They had put the anchor out to port so that they couldn’t be pulled on to the shore by the creep of the engines, and Cotton stood on the stern, watching while Docherty finished his preparations in the engine room. He could hear him whistling between his teeth and occasionally addressing remarks to Kitcat alongside him. The starter motor whined but there was no response and Cotton’s heart sank.

  ‘Try a new flint,’ Bisset said softly.

  There was a long silence and they could hear Docherty muttering. Eventually his head appeared.

  ‘Hold your hat on,’ he said. ‘This time.’

  When the explosion of the starboard engine starting came, Cotton wasn’t expecting it, and it made him jump. Docherty grinned briefly at him through the door of the engine room, then the port engine exploded into life too. Docherty’s face appeared again, a beaming smile across it.

  ‘Told you they’d work,’ he said.

  Cotton stared at the cliffs. ‘Think the Germans could hear?’

  ‘Only if they’re listening.’

  Cotton swung round to Bisset. ‘Let’s get the mast clear,’ he said. ‘It’s time to spruce up a bit.’

  With the exhausts poppling encouragingly astern, they unlashed the lines and unscrewed the shackles and turnbuckles that had supported the shattered mast and pushed it ashore among the trees.

  ‘Unless we run into a gale,’ Cotton said, ‘we ought to be able to make it in easy stages: Serifos. Sifnos. Sikinos. Folegandros. Then a dash for Suda Bay.’ His smile died. ‘If the Germans haven’t got there first,’ he ended.

  They rigged up ropes to the trees further out, and dropped a heavy anchor well astern from the dinghy, with the rope running to the stern post. Then they hauled in the chain to their own anchor which they’d dropped off the port quarter so they couldn’t swing unexpectedly on to the rocks.

  ‘We ought to make it,’ Cotton said. ‘She’s floating pretty high astern without the 20-mill and the petrol.’

  Annoula was smiling at them from alongside the wheelhouse.

  ‘You have done it,’ she said.

  Cotton pulled a face. ‘Not me. Them. I’m not clever.’

  ‘You are cleverer than you think.’

  He took her hand and pulled her into the wheelhouse. ‘This is where you’ll have to leave us,’ he said. ‘Unless you come with us.’

  Her smile died and she shook her head.

  ‘I’m a Greek,’ she said.

  ‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Cotton said. ‘There are plenty of Greeks in London.’ Then, before he realised what he’d done, he’d blurted out the very thing he’d tried all along to hide. ‘I’m one.’

  Her eyes lifted to his, wondering and doubtful.

  ‘You are Greek?’

  He f
elt like biting his tongue but he was a blunt man who believed in facing up to things and, having betrayed himself, he could see no point in trying to hide it any more. ‘My mother was Greek, wasn’t she?’ he said. ‘She came from the Piraeus. A long time ago. She came to London to work for relatives there and stayed when she met my father. His father was a Greek. He came from Athens, I think. I don’t really know. I never met him and I’ve never been to Greece except with the navy.’

  She still seemed very doubtful and he pressed on. ‘How do you think I learned to speak Greek?’ he said. ‘Nobody in England learns Greek at school. Only French and German, and not so bloody much of that.’

  He hadn’t ever intended to tell her but it had slipped out as a means of helping her in her distress. She was clearly tempted but then she gave him another look, her eyes large. There were dark rings under them, as there were under the eyes of them all. They had all worked harder in the last few days than they’d ever worked in their lives before, and had slept a great deal less. Now that it was finished, though, he could see she was uncertain of her place in his world, afraid to leave her homeland and the familiar things of her own country. She shook her head again, firmly, and turned away.

  ‘I will make tea,’ she said quietly.

  It was late afternoon and dusk was not far away when the Varvaras’ caiques arrived. The old man seemed excited.

  ‘I have told Nichomacos Delageorgis about the guns,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s Nichomacos Delageorgis?’

  ‘He owns land near Skoinia and when the Germans came he went into hiding in the hills near Cape Asigonia. He is much respected. If anyone can lead a resistance on this island, he can.’

  ‘What about Petrakis?’

  ‘Aie!’ The old man’s hand came down in a chopping motion. ‘That one is only a talker, a back-street brawler who uses ELAS as an excuse for what he does. Delageorgis will deal with him.’

  The younger Varvara was staring out to sea. He seemed nervous and anxious to start work. ‘We haven’t much time,’ he said. ‘We have to report back before dark, and they’ve set up a look-out post on Cape Kastamanitsa to stop anybody escaping to the south.’

  Wire hawsers were attached to the caiques’ sterns and the two boats started their engines. When the hawsers were taut, Docherty started Loukia’s engines. The thump and crash as they exploded into life seemed loud enough to be heard all over the island.

  ‘Right,’ Cotton said. ‘Bisset, Gully, Kitcat – lay on the kedge rope.’ The girl was alongside him and he nodded to the quarter rope. As she took hold of it and began to pull, he waved to the caiques. ‘Give it all she’s got, Docherty,’ he yelled.

  The water astern began to thrash and boil. The whine of the engines grew higher and a dirty froth floated forward as the screws churned up the sea bed. For a long time, Cotton thought they weren’t going to do it. Then he felt a shiver run through Loukia, different from the shuddering the engines were causing, and he knew she was sliding into deeper water.

  ‘Pull!’ he yelled and, leaving the girl, he added his weight to that of Bisset, Gully and Kitcat. The water at the stern of the caiques surged. Then suddenly he realised the rope in his hand was no longer taut and he was hauling it in, and the boat had settled comfortably, her bows lower, like a duck taking to a pond, afloat and alive once more.

  His wash-out signal stopped the caiques and, as they came alongside, he grinned at them and held up his thumb.

  Bisset had taken a boathook and was probing down by the stern. ‘We’ve got a good three feet below the rudder, I reckon,’ he said. ‘That’s enough for safety. When do we leave?’

  Cotton frowned. ‘What about the petrol?’ he said.

  Varvara grinned. ‘I know where there is some,’ he said. ‘My brother-in-law found it. I’ll be round with it in the morning before daylight.’

  That evening, after the Varvaras and the girl had gone, Cotton wrote up the log and they sat round the forecastle table to discuss their next move. They were all irritable now and worried with the fretfulness of exhaustion. They were dirty and oil-stained, their clothes marked by the blackened ash of the charred interior of the boat. Bisset’s sleeve hung loose where it had caught on a bramble as they had crossed the ridge, and their legs and arms were all scarred and marked. Cotton’s face was blue-black with bristle and the others all had varying degrees of beard, differing in colour from Docherty’s Irish black through Bisset’s yellow fuzz to Gully’s mottled grey, as tatty-looking as the skin of an old terrier.

  Cotton knew he had driven them too hard at times, but he’d also driven himself because he’d known all along that they hadn’t any time to waste. On the night when Docherty had fixed the pump in place he’d ended working by the light of Varvara’s candles.

  The mutter of guns to the north sounded louder and the sky seemed full of aeroplane engines.

  ‘Something’s starting,’ Docherty said.

  ‘Probably the evacuation of the mainland.’

  ‘Poor bloody navy!’

  Cotton had made up a rough chart from the torn and bloodstained fragments he’d salvaged from Claudia’s wrecked wheelhouse. It wasn’t very satisfactory but it gave him some idea of the sea around Aeos and a rough direction to steer. His mind churning slowly, he had applied himself to it as he’d seen Patullo and Shaw and other officers do.

  ‘We’ll leave as soon from now as we can,’ he announced.

  ‘My engines’ll get us home,’ Docherty said.

  Bisset gave him a look of contempt. ‘They probably will,’ he agreed. ‘But it isn’t your engines that are getting us back to Suda.’

  Docherty’s head jerked up. ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘Guts.’

  Docherty looked bewildered. He hadn’t noticed much in the way of guts about. To Docherty, guts were something that went with fighting. In his bar-room brawl of a career, he had always mistaken strength for courage.

  ‘Whose guts?’ he asked. ‘Mine?’

  Bisset gave a shout of laughter. ‘You, old son, are nothing but beer-cheapened hoddy-noddy! No, they belong to our good friend, Cotton. Just try to stop him taking you home. You might as well attempt to halt the Thames–Clyde express.’

  Docherty stared at Cotton, then at Bisset, and though he would rather have died than admit it, he had a shrewd suspicion Bisset was right. ‘You slay me,’ he said.

  There was a long silence and Cotton looked embarrassed. He pretended to fiddle with the lists he’d kept, cleared his throat, said ‘Well–’ then turned in desperation to Docherty in an attempt to restore his good humour.

  ‘Are the batteries all right?’ he asked. ‘There’ll be no mistake?’

  ‘They’ll start,’ Docherty sniffed.

  ‘Right.’ Cotton looked round them, glad to be occupied again. ‘When we leave, Gully’ll have to handle the port Lewis, so you’d better show him how it works, Kitcat.’

  Bisset watched him as he spread out the scraps of chart. ‘Know anything about navigation?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a bloody thing! But if we head south we ought to make it.’

  ‘What about the compass?’

  ‘Ought to be swung. But I can’t do it. I don’t know how. But Crete’s right across our path so we ought to hit it somewhere if we head towards the sun.’

  ‘What about the extra petrol?’

  ‘With what Varvara brings, we ought to get as far as Sifnos, perhaps even further. We might even make Iros and get some more out of that mayor.’

  ‘A tommy-gun stuck up his nostril ought to encourage him,’ Docherty grinned.

  As they broke up, Cotton climbed ashore to look at the boat. Without her mast she had a sleek look about her, low and fast, and he decided it might even help them slip past any prowling Italian MAS boats that might be about.

  She looked incomplete, however, and he climbed ashore with the axe and cut down a long pole from one of the trees. Trimming it carefully, he lashe
d it firmly to the stump of the broken mast.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Kitcat asked.

  ‘The ensign,’ Cotton said. He studied the new mast from all angles; then he turned to the Canadian. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘You remember where you hid that money Samways was carrying?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I think it’s time to get it aboard.’

  Concerned about whom he should leave on board, Cotton had decided Bisset was probably the most reliable. He was a funny bloke, but at least he had a cool head, a good temper, and a sense of humour; and Cotton had once heard it said that a man who could make you laugh was of more value when you were in trouble than a bore who could only shoot straight.

  Bisset received the news without turning a hair. He gave Cotton an interested glance. ‘Thought there was something I hadn’t been told,’ he admitted cheerfully.

  Cotton looked quickly at him. ‘Did it show?’ he asked.

  ‘At times, old son, I felt like hitting you over the head, because it was obvious to anyone possessed of an atom of intelligence that you were hugging some secret to your bosom.’

  Cotton flushed. ‘There was also money on board,’ he growled.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty thousand quid.’

  Bisset’s eyebrows rose but he showed no other sign of interest. Perhaps, Cotton decided, it was because he came from a wealthy family and money didn’t impress him much. He saw Docherty trying to catch what they were saying and, without thinking much more about it, he slapped a tommy-gun into his hands and told him what they were about to do.

  ‘Money?’ Docherty said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Up the cliff.’

  ‘Whose money?’

  ‘The government’s. It was on Loukia when she ran aground.’ Docherty thought for a while. ‘How much?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty thousand quid.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Patullo told me. In Suda Bay.’

  ‘Twenty thousand quid!’ Docherty sounded awed. ‘You’re a close bastard, aren’t you? That’d buy a few pints of old and mild. We could even nip away somewhere neutral like Turkey. With all the bints you want – black, white and khaki. Do we get to have a look at it?’