by Alan Evans
Another lighter was towed alongside Blackbird by a steam tug and she carried on her deck a Short seaplane, wings folded back along the fuselage.
Ackroyd said with distaste, “What is that? And who painted it? Joseph?”
Pearce, pale and weary, answered shortly, “I suppose she is a bit gaudy.”
Ackroyd muttered, “Bloody funny colour.”
Smith thought ‘bloody’ was right; the fabric of the wings and fuselage was mottled red to pale pink, as if someone had tried to wash it clean of blood with only limited success.
Pearce explained, “She’s a rebuild job. I went ashore to sign for her and it was still dark. They told me she’d been badly shot up and they’ve put her together again. Still needs work done on her engine but I said we’d do it; couldn’t wait. I can only suppose some colouring got into the stuff the riggers slapped on her. The chaps I took ashore with me spotted some initials painted just below the cockpit. You can just see them through the dope: D. L. L. R. So they’ve christened her Delilah.”
Ackroyd led Pearce and the fliers into the main cabin. Smith paused for a minute and watched as the Short was hoisted aboard Blackbird. If the plane had had to be rebuilt he wondered grimly what had happened to the pilot with the initials D.L.L.R. He turned and entered the cabin as Pearce said, voice high and impatient, “I know you don’t believe me and I don’t give a damn! There’s a day not far off when there will be aircraft with an accurate bomb-sight and big enough, fast enough to sink capital ships! I’m telling you —”
He broke off as Smith entered the cabin. Chris was scowling, running fingers through his hair. Smith watched him and wondered. Sink capital ships? The rest of the Gang looked embarrassed at what they thought were Pearce’s wild flights of fantasy, but Smith was not so sure. He grinned at the pilot. “But for the moment, Chris? If you attacked a capital ship in a Short?”
The Gang chuckled and Flight Lieutenant Cole said “Pray, for one thing.”
Pearce shrugged. “To hit a ship under way you’d have to sit a Short on the funnel and you’d be shot to bits trying it. Unless —” He stopped.
Smith prompted, “Unless —?”
But Pearce would not be drawn. “You’d have to be lucky.”
He had been about to say something else but Ackroyd’s dour Yorkshire eyes were on him.
Smith let it go. “Sit down, gentlemen, please.” He told them about the Afrika Legion, and the task set Dauntless and Blackbird. “But particularly you. If the Afrika Legion comes then we — you — must find it.” Though if they failed, Smith would have to answer for it. He looked at the Gang, ordinary young men of assorted sizes, from the big and beefy Hamilton to the diminutive Maitland, but all with serious, selfconscious expressions now. So he grinned at them. “Well, don’t look so worried, for God’s sake! You’re only going to fly. I’m not asking you to do any real work like the rest of us aboard these ships.”
That sent them back to their ship in a more cheerful mood but Smith knew the task he was setting them and its dangers, and that he would have to answer for them too, if only to himself.
He went to the bridge and Henderson said, “That was bad luck.” And when Smith looked at him questioningly: “When they were hoisting that Short aboard Blackbird it swung and knocked one of the hands from the lighter into the harbour. Poor chap drowned.”
Smith shook his head. It was a reminder that even in peaceful pursuits men died from a moment’s inattention. He himself had watched the Short hoisted in and had not seen the accident. The man had slipped unnoticed out of life. He hoped Pearce was collecting the evidence. Inevitably there would have to be a court of enquiry.
Morning Star signalled that her engines were ready to take her to sea and the party of engineers climbed down into their boat alongside her and headed for the shore. Blackbird completed with coal and bombs, the lighter was towed away and the bloody Delilah was wheeled into the hangar and out of sight. A bare few hours after entering Port Said Smith led his little squadron to sea again. As he stood on the bridge of Dauntless he was grimly aware that the mood of confidence was gone, the anticipated victory now in jeopardy. They had to find the Afrika Legion.
He walked out to the starboard wing of the bridge as Dauntless turned on to the northerly course that would take her to Deir el Belah and beyond, to Edwards’ landing south of Jaffa. Astern of her, and ahead of Blackbird, steamed the S.S. Morning Star with her cargo of ammunition and the silent, watching, waiting men of Taggart’s battalion. He wondered which might prove the more explosive.
4 — The Search
In the blazing heat of the afternoon of that day; the 27th October, Morning Star plodded into the anchorage at Deir el Belah. Smith watched from the bridge of Dauntless as the tramp passed inside the anti-submarine nets that formed the anchorage while Dauntless and Blackbird steamed on, altering course a few points to port so that they headed seawards as if bound for Cyprus. That was for the benefit of the Turks watching from Gaza.
There were many ashore at Deir el Belah who watched Dauntless slip by close enough inshore for them to see the clean lines of her. One was Sapper Charlie Golightly of the Royal Engineers. He was the driver of an engine that puffed up and down between Kantara on the Suez Canal and the railhead at Deir el Belah, twelve hours each way, hauling a train of open trucks. He brought supplies and reinforcements up from Kantara and took down wounded and leave men. The engine and its train stood in a siding now, close by the big sand dunes that lined the shore, while a score of yards away Charlie reclined in a deckchair under the shade of a clump of palms. In that shade he was sweating only slightly. Short, moon-faced, bald and fifty, plump and fond of his beer, only the heat and his work prevented that plumpness running to obesity. He was well-dressed in tailored khaki drill, well-fed and comfortable. He sucked at a cigar and a glass of cold beer stood in easy reach by his chair.
Albert had brought him the beer, chilled in the box of ice Charlie had taken aboard at Kantara. Albert had also cooked the meal and was now washing the dishes. He was an Egyptian boy of fifteen or so with a wide smile who was Charlie’s fireman when he drove the train, his cook and servant when he was at ease. Charlie had named the boy Albert. “Never mind what your Ma called you. Now you’re with me you’ll have a Christian ’andle. You do as I tell you an’ we’ll get on all right. If things had worked out different I might ha’ had a son o’ your age now.” The probability was that Charlie did have a son or daughter of that age and several more in ascending and descending order of seniority. Somewhere.
Now, through a gap in the dunes, he watched Dauntless pass.
Albert sat back on his heels, wiped wet hands on a rag and smiled up at Charlie. “Fine ship.”
“Fine ship?” Golightly sucked on the cigar. “Ah! Ships and women. Either one’ll get you into deep water. Steer clear of them both, except when you has to — if you see what I mean.”
Albert said seriously, “Like the French woman in Port Said.”
Charlie nodded. “A feller needs a bit o’ home comfort after the day’s work.”
That made him thoughtful. The day’s work? It was time he gave some thought to it. He clasped his hands under his round, hard little belly and pondered logistics. Militarily speaking, Sapper Golightly’s only concern with logistics was driving his train, but his present interest was not military. Charlie was in his thirty-second year of service, his thirty-fourth if you counted his time as a bandboy, and in all that time he had neither sought nor been offered promotion. He was without ambition but for many years now he had thought of the future and made provision for his old age. From a succession of stores and depots and while transporting supplies between them he had taken his toll. He would have his pension, of course, and the rents from half-a-dozen little houses he had bought in Bermondsey over the years. But what he yearned for, home and income both, was a pub. In 1914 it had been almost within his grasp and Charlie was ready to call it a day, but the army was not; there is no discharge in a war. So he decided to ma
ke the profitable best of a bad job.
So — logistics? His gaze rested on his tent in which were stacked souvenirs of the war at the front, from Turkish helmets to spurs, water-bottles and swords, bayonets and pistols. From there his gaze drifted to the engine with its tender piled high with coal. There was a false bottom to the tender that could be loaded from underneath. In Port Said there were plenty of buyers for souvenirs and from Port Said he brought back scotch, purchased remarkably cheaply because it was stolen, to trade for more souvenirs. He was making his profit but he knew that soon the army would move forward, the trip from the front would lengthen in distance and time and thus reduce his turnover. He was thinking that the answer might be to concentrate on the smaller souvenirs that fetched a higher price, like the pistols ...
*
Lieutenant William Jackson of the Australian Light Horse looked up from the letter he was writing, and also watched Dauntless steam past Deir el Belah. He was a long-armed, long-legged six-foot folded on to an ammunition box, writing pad on his knee. He was not wearing the badges of his rank nor anything else, except a pair of cotton drawers and the Australian wide-brimmed slouch hat tipped forward to shade his eyes. He was burned nearly black by the sun and he needed a shave. He glanced at his watch, remembering that his troop was detailed for a working party and bawled, “Troopsarn’t Latimer! Get ’em out on parade!”
From the tents around him came cursing, obscenities, grousing. No one appeared but a voice bellowed, outraged, “What the flamin’ hell are you at, Jacka? We’ve done enough this week! To hell with it!”
Jackson took no notice. It was always the same so he always called them ten minutes before he wanted them. He stared at the palms and the glint of sunlight on the little lake they surrounded. Water. The horses, called Walers because most of them came from New South Wales, had gone mad when they finally fought their way out of the desert of Sinai and found Palestine and grass. The army had been told that in this coming battle they would have to go for twenty-four hours or more without water. Well, they were used to that after Sinai. Getting used to it had not been funny.
He returned to the letter, writing neatly, quickly. At home before the war he had worked on his father’s sheep station and had grown up on horseback. The Australians were all natural horsemen. He finished the letter: “Your loving son, Bill”.
Men were emerging from the tents now. Some were in riding-breeches, others in shorts. Most wore leggings and others made do with puttees. All were in sleeveless flannel shirts or singlets. When they had first come out of Sinai and supplies had caught up with them, they drew what new clothing there was, but unending patrols and skirmishes had set them back again. Jackson himself owned a tattered tunic and was lucky because many officers did not. Some of the men were clean-shaven but most were as black-jowled as he was. But every man had his rifle, bayonet and bandolier of ammunition, all his equipment and all of it clean and serviceable. And there was nothing wrong with the Walers, the troopers saw to that.
Jackson dragged on his breeches and reached for his boots, thinking that the troop had lost a couple of horses in the last stunt, a savage tussle with a patrol of Turkish cavalry. No remounts had come up but there was an English Yeomanry Regiment a mile down the road.
When it got dark he could take some of the boys down there ...
*
A clear night and the sky filled with stars. Smith came on to the bridge of Dauntless as she thrust steadily through a smooth sea, heading for the coast of Palestine south of Jaffa at an easy ten knots. That enemy coast lay five miles ahead of them, the long, low line of it hidden by the night. Blackbird kept station a cable’s length astern. The two ships had steamed out of sight of the land and only turned to close it when the sun set.
Henderson emerged from the chartoom and said, “Twenty minutes, sir.”
Smith nodded then asked, “Has Colonel Edwards been told?”
Ackroyd, who had the watch, said sourly, “I sent young Bright to wake him ten minutes ago. He told Bright to go to hell.”
Ackroyd had extended the hospitality of the wardroom to Edwards but he had not taken it up. Instead he sat with his boots up on the bunk in the little cabin they gave him, the curtain drawn back so that any who passed saw him steadily making his way through the bottle of whisky that stood at his elbow with a glass and a jug of water. He did not use much water and stared up at the deckhead, lips pursed in an inaudible whistle. By noon the bottle had been empty and he slept.
Now Ackroyd muttered, “He’s a rum chap. Saw me looking at the bottle and said: ‘Won’t get another chance for a while, old boy.’” It was only a moderate imitation; Ackroyd’s Yorkshire accent could not cope with the Home Counties drawl of the colonel but he had got the huge confidence right. He said, “But whatever he’s got on his conscience, it doesn’t trouble him. He sleeps like a baby.”
Smith wished he had Edwards’s facility. He had tried to sleep in his little sea-cabin abaft the bridge and failed miserably, had lain with his eyes wide open and thought about the Afrika Legion, seeing with his mind’s eye the trains packed with the tough, elite soldiers hurrying towards Palestine.
He asked, “Is Jameson ready?” Lieutenant Jameson was a boxer, a tough middleweight, quick and cool. More importantly he was a good officer, a fine seaman and was to command an armed party in the cutter to set Edwards ashore.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going along.”
Ackroyd hesitated a moment, not liking the idea, then said reluctantly, “Aye, aye, sir.”
“You know what to do. Patrol till we return but if something goes badly wrong and we don’t come off again then you report to the admiral and carry on with the search for the Legion as ordered. No rescue attempts.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Ackroyd did not like that, either, but saw the sense of it. If one armed party was taken then the coast would be alerted and any rescue attempt would be suicidal.
Smith said, “I’m going for a word with Edwards.” He turned and went to his sea-cabin at the back of the bridge, took the Webley revolver from the drawer in the desk and belted it around his waist. He left the bridge, made his way aft and climbed down the ladder to the wardroom flat, then walked along to the cabin they had lent to Edwards. The curtain was drawn across the doorway now and Smith called, “Colonel Edwards?”
“Who is it?”
“Commander Smith.”
“I’m changing. Come in.”
Smith entered and drew the curtain behind him. Edwards stood by the desk, shirtless, tunic in hand. He scowled at Smith but that was only an edge of temper. Smith had seen many a drunk and, whisky or no, Edwards was stone-cold sober. He asked, “Getting close?”
“Less than twenty minutes.” Smith did not like soldiers who were enjoying the hospitality of his ship to swear at his junior officers as Edwards had done at Bright, but this was not the time to make the point. Edwards was about to embark on a dangerous mission. Instead he said, “We’ll put you ashore where you indicated. If there’s anything else we can do —?” He let the question hang.
Edwards shook his head. “I’ve got all I want. But you can put my case ashore next time you’re in Port Said. There’ll be my uniform, boots and other kit in it.” He tucked a silver cigarette case into the pocket of the tunic, dipped his hand into the suitcase and held up a full bottle of whisky. “And this. So tell your chaps to go easy will you?”
He caught Smith’s deliberately neutral stare and laughed hoarsely. “You fight your war, Commander, and I’ll fight mine. I suppose Finlayson told you about me. I’m a temporary gentleman, not Finlayson’s style at all. Before the war I got a banker’s draft from home once a quarter so long as I stayed out here. There’d been some trouble with a girl or two so I was thrown out. The draft was just enough to exist on, so I started dealing in any damned thing that would turn a few quid and let a man live decently. But after the war it’ll be different. I’ve got friends among the Arabs and they’ll be grateful to anybody who helps
them kick out the Turks. I’ll be somebody around here. That’s what my war is about.” He pointed a finger. “And the women? Look, when I get out of that bloody desert I look for a woman. I need a woman. I risk my neck every minute I’m out there so I think I’m entitled to all I can get. Money. Influence. And women.” He paused, then: “So?”
But Smith only said, “You’ve got about ten minutes.” He pushed through the curtain and climbed to the upper-deck.
*
He waited by the rail with Jameson and the cutter’s crew, all armed with pistols. Buckley was among them — Smith had not ordered Buckley to come so he’d taken it on himself. Jameson had probably accepted that where his captain went, so also went the big leading hand.
Dauntless was swinging gently to port, turning her starboard side to the distant coast that Smith now thought he could see as a low shadow against the night sky. Turning also to make a lee for the cutter though there was little wind. The way was coming off her; she was stopping. The shore was in darkness but to the north-east there were lights and they marked the old Arab port of Jaffa, the town on its little hill. And beyond them ...
Intrigued, Smith lifted the glasses that hung on his chest, found the lights and beyond them another that moved steadily, like a slowly descending star, towards the lights of the town. He realised what it was; the train from Lydda running down the last long gentle slope from the crest of the hill above the little township of Tel Aviv. So now that they’d had enough of being shelled and bombed on the daylight runs they were running at night. Probably that last bombing raid of Pearce and himself had been the final straw. He grinned briefly, finding satisfaction in that, but then the grin faded. It was a different game now. There was the Afrika Legion.