Corporal Cotton's Little War

by John Harris

  As Baldamus swung round, he saw a white curving wave and the faint bulk of a boat behind it, cutting across the bows of the launch at high speed; above it apparently unattached, the fluttering square of the white ensign.

  ‘Fire!’ he screamed. ‘Fire!’

  But it was impossible to bring the gun to bear because the wheelhouse, with Baldamus and the engineer-lieutenant standing alongside it, were all in the way and the crew could only wait until the enemy had moved further to their starboard side.

  ‘Fire!’ Baldamus screamed again but it was almost as if the wrong people had heard because little slots of light began to float over his head. They seemed at first to come straight at him, then they appeared to change course and whip beyond the launch. The windows of the wheelhouse disintegrated, showering him with glass and he heard a twang as one of the stays that held the mast parted.

  By this time the boat seemed to be falling apart all round him and huge splinters of wood were flying from the deck. The men at the gun on the stern were still waiting for their sights to bear when a burst of machine-gun fire flung them all to the deck and, to his horror, Baldamus realised that cannon shells were thumping into the side of the launch. He heard screams from the engine room and knew that men were being injured there. Then, as the crew of the stern gun tried once more to reach their weapon, he heard the high tearing sound of a high-speed weapon and they were literally lifted off their feet and flung over the side.

  The British boat was passing close by the launch’s bows now and shells were probing her side between the wheelhouse and the stern where the petrol tanks were situated. A vast shaft of flame leapt up with explosive force, tearing at the deck to lift planks and metalwork and blast men’s bodies, and as the heat burned his face and he felt himself blown over the side, his flesh scorched and charred, it occurred to Baldamus in a blinding flash of reality that seared through ambition, hope and guesswork, that all those fine plans of his had finally come to an end.

  As Loukia drew clear of the German launch, Bisset was yelling with excitement. A last attempt to reach the gun on the stern had been stopped in its tracks and they were now crossing the bows of the caiques with no more than twenty-odd yards between them.

  Men on the deck of the caiques were firing with rifles and sub-machine-guns now. There seemed to be dozens of them, packed in like sardines with more appearing from below. Cotton swung the Bren and pressed the trigger, knowing he couldn’t miss and that they couldn’t hide or dodge or run. It was hard to see for the muzzle flash but, as they roared past, he saw men falling in windrows, like corn before a scythe, and more of them jumping into the water.

  Gully was screaming with excitement – ‘I got ’im! I got ’im!’ – and out of the corner of his eye Cotton saw him crouched behind the port Lewis. He had pressed the trigger and was letting the whole panful of ammunition go in one long roar across the top of the wheelhouse, the stream of bullets coming nearer and nearer to Bisset’s head. Fortunately the ammunition ran out just in time and, as he started pounding the gun, Cotton heard him cursing.

  ‘The fucken thing’s stopped,’ he yelled in disappointed fury. ‘The fucken thing’s stopped!’

  ‘It’s empty,’ Bisset yelled back at him as he slammed another magazine on his own Lewis. And a bloody good thing too, Cotton thought.

  Kitcat’s cannon was doing deadly work and the big German launch seemed to be literally melting away as they roared past. The 20mm swung as they surged ahead and Kitcat was shooting over the stern now. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a tremendous flash and a flare of flame as the launch’s petrol tanks ignited. In the glare they could see planks flying through the air and men hurled into the sparkling water.

  For a second Kitcat stopped firing. Then he switched to the caiques, doing dreadful slaughter among the crowded Germans, the shells flashing and bursting among them, so that their screaming could be heard above the roar of the engines. The outside caique, its anchor up at last, was swinging away to safety, while the inside one lay wallowing on the sea, its crew still too shocked to make a move.

  They were fifty yards ahead now, with Kitcat firing short bursts over the stern. In the glare of the flames, they saw the caique’s wheelhouse start to burn and men jumping overboard. A man wearing an officer’s cap tried to set up a machine-gun on a mount but one of Kitcat’s shells hit him and he seemed to explode into tatters of bloody flesh. Then they saw the flames reach up in a great flare and everybody on deck started leaping into the water as Kitcat turned his deadly weapon on to the second caique.

  A solitary brave figure fought to use a machine-gun by the wheelhouse and, as it started, Cotton seemed to be staring straight into the muzzle flash. Slots of light vanished on either side of him. Then Loukia’s remaining windows fell in and he heard Varvara yell in the darkness just as something exploded in his head and he was flung against the wheelhouse, half-blinded, his big fists still trying to clutch the Bren.

  ‘Smoke,’ he yelled and through the haze of blood be saw Bisset run aft and, in his excitement, pull the cocks of both canisters.

  As the smoke poured out, forced away by the compressed air, it filled the well and trailed astern to cling to the surface of the water, and Cotton reckoned he’d never seen so much bloody smoke in his life. It seemed to fill the whole world, and Bisset and Kitcat and the two Greeks emerged from the well coughing and spluttering, their eyes streaming.

  As Loukia lurched off course and was wrenched back again, Cotton staggered. For a moment, as he clung to the Bren, he was staring down into the dark rushing sea alongside him, the drenching sound of hurrying water filling his ears. Kitcat’s gun had stopped now and in an explosive sigh Cotton let out the breath he seemed to have been holding ever since they’d left Xiloparissia Bay.

  It was Bisset who grabbed him as he swayed. Then the boat hit a wave, and as it lurched both he and Cotton crashed down the wheelhouse steps to the deck, to sprawl just behind Varvara among the shards of glass and splinters of woodwork.

  Nine

  Loukia arrived off Suda Bay two days later in the first opalescent light of dawn at just about the same time as Captain Ehrhardt was fishing what was left of Major Baldamus from the sea off Cape Kastamanitsa and just as an air raid was developing from the direction of Rhodes.

  There were two ships, packed with soldiers in a khaki mass along their decks, and the German aircraft hardly noticed Loukia. The aircraft were Junkers 87s but their attacks were indecisive and desultory, the machines skimming over the hills to do more of a low-level glide than a dive, so that their bombing was inaccurate. One bomb closely missed one of the transports, however, and they saw her heel over and steady, then come to a stop with steam coming from her engine-room ventilators.

  They had managed to pick up extra petrol at Sifnos and Sikinos and, by using one engine at a time to conserve it, had crept southwards all day and all night. At first light on the second morning, unnoticed by the aircraft that swarmed overhead, they had slipped past as Stukas attacked a convoy on the horizon. They could see the columns of water rising alongside the struggling ships and hear the thud of explosions. God alone knew what the men on board were going through and had gone through already to get so far. But by this time the army was pouring out of Greek ports, and the only glimmer of brightness to penetrate the gloom was the hope of rescue by the navy.

  There had been one or two nightmare moments when they’d seen flights of Junkers 875 going over, often with 88s higher up, but Loukia had remained an insignificant spot on the surface of the sea and nobody had bothered to investigate them until a British destroyer, already laden with troops, had moved across their path and stopped to ask them who they were.

  It had even offered to take their passengers aboard but Cotton and not only Cotton but the others, even Docherty – having made their own way so far, were in favour of completing the journey under their own steam and they’d rejected the offer. The naval officer on the deck above them had indicated the bandage on Cotton’s hea
d.

  ‘How many wounded?’

  Cotton gestured. ‘Two,’ he said. ‘Only slightly.’

  It hadn’t seemed slight at the time, however, he’d thought, as he’d come round on the wheelhouse floor with Annoula crouched over him, her hair across his face like a dark wing as she wept.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Varvara had snorted, holding his own injured shoulder, and she snapped into efficiency, tearing at her skirt and bullying the other women to give up clothing to make bandages.

  Cotton was just laboriously finishing his report when they caught the first glimpse of Crete and a convoy of ships packed with soldiers.

  ‘We’ve arrived!’ As they swung into Suda Bay, Bisset put his head into the smashed radio cabin where Cotton was working.

  ‘Right.’ Cotton put down his pencil and picked up the battered log, written up in his neat square hand. It was all there, right from the beginning, not very fulsome and lacking in resounding phrases, but there nevertheless.

  ‘Casualties,’ it ended. ‘Dead: Lt Shaw, Lt Patullo, CERA Duff and Pte Coward RASC. Wounded and prisoner of war: Pte Howard, RASC. Wounded: Self (slightly) and one refugee, Athanasios Varvara (cut by flying glass).’

  He signed it, and closing the log book, went on deck. The sight of Crete lifted his heart, though from the German papers in his pocket he knew the respite was only temporary. Vessels of all kinds were gathering there, caiques, motor boats and small local craft from harbours and coastal villages all round the island, their reluctant owners urged to help the hard-pressed British army. In the bay, destroyers packed with men were still alongside oilers, unable to disembark the soldiers on to the ships that were to take them to Egypt because the berths alongside those ships were already occupied.

  As they approached, a frigate came rushing towards them and men’s heads appeared as they leaned over to gape at the strange multi-coloured launch, bald-headed without its mast.

  ‘What ship are you?’

  ‘Loukia. From a mission to Aeos. With Greek refugees and survivors from Claudia.’

  ‘There’s a wooden jetty at the far side of the harbour. You can get in there.’

  The morning seemed to be dragging out, the sun apparently nailed to the sky, and everyone was on edge in case another flight of 87s, more determined than the last lot, arrived. But none came and they moored by the wooden jetty alongside a destroyer.

  All round the bay gun positions were being erected, and the men on the destroyer said there were more going up at Heraklion and Canea and everywhere the Germans might get a troopship or landing craft in. The destroyer was due to leave for Greece at any moment to pick up more troops and bring them back to man the growing defences, and the crew were all busy, clearing away the rubbish left by the last lot, the scraps of letters, the fag ends, the pieces of bread and stale bully, and the lost items of equipment and steel helmets.

  ‘It’s bloody hopeless,’ they said. ‘Some of the bloody senior officers have given up hope and, while there’s some regiments parading as if they were outside Buckingham Palace, as you go alongside there’s others so disorganised they’ll never get fetched off.’

  The Jerries had got Diamond and Wryneck, and were expected to get a few more before they’d finished, while a Junkers 53 had landed on Milos and demanded that it surrender or they’d take off again and bomb it. Milos had surrendered.

  They were splicing slings for stretchers, and lashing drums together to make rafts, because already it was clear that the men in Greece would have to find their way out from the beaches on anything that would float. Benches were being roped off for operations and the cooks were baking double helpings of bread. The sailors seemed fatalistic and indifferent, not bothering to clean up because they took the view that it wasn’t much use if the pongos were going to come and muck it all up again.

  Loukia had hardly got her ropes across when a car appeared, heading for the jetty in a cloud of dust. Its horn going, it edged along the planking until it stopped by the destroyer. The man who climbed from it was Lieutenant-Commander Kennard. He crossed the destroyer’s deck in a series of bounds and dropped into Loukia’s well. Cotton threw him up a salute that was fit for the quarterdeck of Caernarvon.

  ‘What in God’s name happened?’ Kennard asked. ‘We thought we’d lost you.’ He turned and stared round at the charred woodwork, the coloured patches and the damaged wheelhouse. ‘This isn’t Claudia,’ he said. ‘It’s Loukia. Where’s Claudia?’

  ‘You might well ask,’ Bisset said, a ragged, bearded Bisset sucking at a fag one of the sailors had tossed down from the destroyer.

  ‘Where’s Lieutenant Patullo?’

  ‘Dead, sir,’ Cotton said. ‘With Lieutenant Shaw.’

  ‘And Commander Samways?’

  ‘Also dead, sir. Murdered by Greek bandits. We killed the Greeks.’

  Kennard stared. ‘Did you, by God?’ he said. He indicated the bandage round Cotton’s head. ‘How about you? You hurt?’

  Cotton stiffened. ‘Nothing to speak of, sir. We also lost CERA Duff and Private Coward, and Private Howard wounded and a prisoner.’

  He began to explain, anxious to get it off his chest and receive the reassurance that there was nothing else he could have done. Kennard gestured. ‘You’d better tell me about it,’ he said. ‘Let’s go into the captain’s cabin.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Cotton stopped him dead as he turned away. ‘Three kids sleeping in it. It’ll have to be here.’

  Standing on the foredeck, he handed over the log and outlined what had happened, in a flat voice, unemotionally, leaving nothing out and adding no frills. When he’d finished, Kennard blinked.

  ‘And the money?’

  ‘Below, sir. The kids are lying on it.’

  ‘And this boat?’

  ‘It’s a bit of Claudia and a bit of Loukia.’ Cotton’s mouth twitched. ‘I reckon she ought to be called Cloukia.’

  Kennard gestured. ‘Did you do it all without a slipway?’

  ‘There wasn’t a slipway, sir.’

  Kennard nodded. ‘You did well, Cotton.’

  ‘We were lucky, sir.’

  ‘I’ll take the money with me. What about the refugees?’

  ‘They helped us, sir. It didn’t seem safe to leave ’em behind. We brought their families with them. Three are women. I think the men would like to join the Greek navy, sir. If there is one.’

  ‘That’s something we’ve still to find out. We’ll pass ’em south. It probably won’t be very healthy here before long. We’re getting out of Greece, Cotton. Did you know?’

  ‘We heard about it, sir.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy. We’ve got the Glen ships but we can’t get ’em into the Piraeus. Bloody place blew up. They hit three ammunition ships – Clan Fraser, City of Roubaix and Goalpara. They took Clan Cumming with ’em. It was bloody hopeless from the start. There weren’t enough airfields in the forward areas and a complete lack of aerodrome defence weapons, blast pens and even transport. We never got off the ground. We’d no sooner settled in than we started getting out again. Our recce planes tell us there are a hell of a lot of caiques in the Piraeus, and I expect they’ll eventually be heading here or to Canea or the beaches.’

  Cotton blinked. ‘That’s another point, sir,’ he said. ‘I think it would be wrong to expect a seaborne invasion.’

  Kennard’s head jerked round. ‘What the devil do you know about it?’

  Cotton produced Captain Haussmann’s notebook and papers and the torn and bloodstained pay-books and letters they’d taken off the men they’d killed.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ Kennard asked.

  ‘Took ’em off some Germans, sir. Four of ’em were SS men or Gestapo or something. The notebook belonged to an officer. Bisset – that is, Leading Aircraftman Bisset – speaks German, as you know, sir, and he said they seemed to suggest an airborne invasion of Crete.’

  ‘Airborne?’

  ‘That’s what he said, sir. The airfields at Maleme, Herak
lion and Retimo. I think he was right too, because we got these papers off a lot of paratroopers.’

  Kennard stared at the papers and then at Cotton. ‘How, for God’s sake?’

  ‘We killed ’em sir.’

  ‘The paratroopers?’

  ‘Yes, sir. All of ’em.’

  ‘Did you, by God?’

  ‘We had a bit of help from some Greeks, sir. They were using the guns off Loukia.’

  ‘Were they indeed? Well, at least we’ve started something that looks like resistance.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We also sank one German caique – probably two – both full of troops – as well as a German armed launch.’ Cotton couldn’t resist a last prideful comment. ‘She had what looked like a four-pounder on the stern.’

  Kennard stared. ‘Good God, Cotton,’ he said, ‘don’t sound so bloody modest! You seem to have taken on the whole German garrison of Aeos – and beaten ’em too!’

  Cotton didn’t think it very odd. After all, that was what the Marines were for, and since Kennard had come up at his briefing with a quote from Kipling’s poem about Joeys – one that Cotton had known almost since the day he’d put on his first pair of ammunition boots – he thought that, now that the thing was over and done with, he might toss it back at him.

  ‘An’ ’e sweats like a Jolly,’ he quoted humourlessly. ‘’Er Majesty’s Jolly – soldier and sailor too! For there isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know, nor do.’

  Kennard’s eyebrows had shot up and his mouth widened in a grin. ‘There’s a bloody sight more to you than meets the eye, Cotton,’ he observed.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Cotton agreed placidly. ‘They’re red-hot on that sort of thing in the Marines.’

  ‘We might even get you a gong for this.’