by Alan Evans
Griffiths rubbed a hand over cracked, dry lips and shouted above the rifle-fire, “They can’t cross the open ground but that scrub is swarming with them!” Beyond the ridge was a stretch of sandy plain but three hundred yards away it ended in rolling scrub and cactus. Griffiths said, “I’ve brought down fire from Dauntless and swept it but they’re still there and working around to the right. Some of them are in that wood —” The salvo rushed overhead and burst near a copse straggling back from the river and a quarter-mile away to the right. Griffiths went on, “That one. In a few minutes they’ll be able to fire into the lighters and enfilade us. And the instant we cease firing to move out they’ll be out of that scrub and up here.”
A half-mile away the two Shorts came floating down to skim across the top of the scrub. Griffiths used his glasses and said, “Don’t know who’s leading but that’s Delilah in the rear. They’re firing the Lewises.”
Smith muttered, “They’re dangerously low ...” He had told Pearce he needed them and they were giving all they had, chancing too much. There were machine-guns firing back at them, the lines of tracer sliding up, criss-crossing.
Griffiths said, “They’ve done it two or three times in the last few minutes.”
“They’ll do it once too —” Smith bit off the rest of it. The leading Short had suddenly erupted in flames that streamed back along the fuselage. It tilted on one wing and slid away, down into the scrub. They did not hear the smash as it drove into the earth but the smoke rolled black across the plain. Delilah was climbing and turning away inland.
Smith swore under his breath. Soon Turkish machine-guns would be brought up and sited in the edge of the scrub facing him, which already sparked with rifle flashes along its length. He turned to peer back at the ford. “In a minute or two we’ll be out of it.” Two of the lighters were afloat and going stern-first towards the mouth of the river. The last horse was being hauled up the ramp of the third lighter, the last men stumbling up the ramp of the fourth close by the shore. He ordered Brand, “Take your marines now.”
Brand shoved back from the crest, bawled at his men and led them down the slope at a run. As they splashed across the ford to the lighter Smith stepped down the ridge, until he could stand below it out of sight of the Turks. He pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and flagged it over his head, saw an answering wave from the far crest and then Jameson and the cutter’s crew came spilling down towards the river.
He turned — and saw shells burst on the open beach in a close-packed line. As the dust blew away Griffiths said, “That’s torn it. They’ve got a battery of field guns in action.”
Smith rubbed at the dust and sweat mingled on his face. “Take your signaller out now.”
He snatched a rifle and bandolier from the man and sprawled behind the crest, Jackson, Taggart and Buckley spaced out to his left. They opened fire, shooting rapidly into the scrub. The Turks had to believe the ridge was still held in strength long enough for Jameson and Brand to get their men into the boats.
The next shells came down just short of the ridge, raining sand and pebbles on the four of them huddled down over their rifles. Smith twisted round to peer through watering eyes at the ford. Brand’s men were already away, and Jameson’s men were shoving out the cutter, scrambling into it. Griffiths was at the tiller of the motor-boat. Smith shouted “Right! Let’s go!”
He pushed back from the crest but Buckley said, “Sir!” And pointed. Smith’s eyes followed the line of his outstretched finger and saw the far shore deserted except for Adeline Brett’s abandoned wagon — and Adeline herself on her knees beside the wagon, bent over the body of a man.
Jackson said, “Why the hell doesn’t she get out?”
Smith answered, knowing her, “She can’t lift him and she won’t leave him. The rest of you get down to Griffiths. I’ll fetch her.”
He ran down to the ford, waded across it and realised Taggart, Jackson and Buckley were with him. Jackson panted, “If she won’t leave him, you’ll need us.”
They trotted on stiff and leaden legs to the wagon and now Smith saw it hid Charlie Golightly, sitting with legs sprawled and eyes closed, exhausted. The wounded man was the red-headed corporal, his tough face twisted in pain. Adeline Brett, knotting a field dressing around his leg, looked up at them. Her face was dirty as theirs, her hands filthy with blood and dust. She said hoarsely, “He’d crawled under the wagon so nobody saw him except Charlie and he came along to help me.”
Smith thought Charlie was game but hardly able to help himself now, a sight too old for this. Jackson grabbed Charlie’s arm, Taggart and Buckley lifted the corporal between them and Smith pulled Adeline to her feet. “They’ll be firing down on us at any second!”
They started down to the ford, boots sliding in the soft sand, and waded out on to it. The motor-boat was under way, Griffiths sending it sidling down to them. The shells from Dauntless no longer howled overhead and Smith could hear the rasping breathing of Adeline and the rest of the party ahead of them. The sea washed up into their faces as the motor-boat slid down on them with hands reaching out to lift aboard the wounded corporal, grabbing at Smith and the others. He was last aboard and panted at Griffiths, “Get out!”
He saw Turks appear some three or four hundred yards away at the bend of the river but then the engine opened up and the boat surged seaward.
*
The shore lay far astern of them now and the motor-boat with the cutter in tow plugged out to sea. On the banks of the Auja river the Turks swarmed like ants. Smith sat with Major Taggart in the sternsheets beside Griffiths, Adeline Brett forward with the wounded corporal. The men lay about the cutter and motor-boat in slack exhaustion, uncaring of the rain that fell on their faces now. Ahead, under a grey sky, were Dauntless, Morning Star and the four lighters, while Blackbird was hurrying up from the south. Smith thought it was a ramshackle little armada, thrown together to attempt a desperate enterprise with a landing force of a handful of the world’s finest mounted troops and an indomitable battalion of outcasts, but they had done the job.
He said to Taggart, “You must be proud of them.”
Taggart nodded wearily. “I am. But they’ll be split up after this.” And when Smith looked the question at him: “Garrett is dead, so there’s no more need for silence ... It was he who shot the colonel back in Salonika — his brother had been killed in the last attack there and when the colonel started bawling about cowardice Garrett walked out in front of the battalion and fired three rounds as cool as you like, while the rest of us just gawped at him.”
Taggart shook his head as if to shake off the memory. “I’d seen Garrett in action a few times. I suppose he was just a killer, and him and Edwards were a pair.”
A killer? Smith remembered the cold menace as Garrett had ordered Edwards into the truck, a menace Edwards had recognised.
Taggart said, “The others protected him because they felt he did it for all of them — they were all guilty of wishing the colonel dead before he could be the death of every one of them. And me? Well, I didn’t think Garrett deserved a firing squad. Not after what he’d been through.” He shifted on his seat. “If we get out of this I’ll make a full report to Finlayson and he can do what he likes.”
He rose awkwardly and moved away forward. Smith felt only compassion. No outrage, and no surprise either ... perhaps he had guessed the truth long before. Now he was weary to the bone, numb. He thought that later he would consider the risks he had so boldly taken and they would cost him sleep, but now he did not care. He held his arms folded tightly across his chest and watched the ships creep closer.
11 — Walküre
Adeline Brett said, “I’ve had enough.”
She had come aft. They were nearly at the ships now. She pushed at damp tendrils of hair that clung to her brow. Her hand was steady as she lowered it to stare at it, and clean; the sea had done that. She raised her head to look at the lighters and, knowing Smith was watching her tenderly and what he was thinking,
she said, “There’s plenty still to do — the wounded — and I’ll do it. But afterwards —” She glanced sideways at him. “Garrett is dead.”
Smith nodded. “I was there. And Taggart’s just told me all about him. He’s going to make a full report to Finlayson.”
Adeline asked worriedly, “Will John get into trouble for hiding it all this time?”
Smith thought about it, watching Taggart and Jackson further forward in the boat, sitting shoulder to shoulder in companionable silence. He said with relief, “I think he’ll get away with it. After his part in this action they’ll hush up the business of the colonel. Garrett is dead and there’s no point in trying a dead man.” His gaze shifted to Charlie Golightly where he lay in the bow, his bulk limp and drained by exhaustion, plump cheeks sagging loosely. Charlie would get away with it, too, especially as Smith would recommend him for a decoration — the public did not like tarnished heroes so there would be no court martial for Charlie.
Tarnished heroes ... Edwards. Smith would tell Braddock and Finlayson the truth but his report would say only that Colonel Edwards was killed during the attack on Lydda. Because Edwards had found the Legion and even more importantly, the exact date of its planned arrival in Beersheba. Also he had led the battalion to Lydda. If anyone played a crucial part in this operation and deserved a hero’s laurels it was Edwards.
Adeline Brett went on, “They’ll break up the battalion now and I won’t go to another for a while. I have money in Cairo and I’ll go there and rent a house or something. I’ll see this war through to its end but just for now I’d like to live a little.”
She paused, then said very quietly, “Could you come with me, please?”
The question was unexpected but he needed no time to think. Dauntless would undoubtedly go into the dockyard and he would get leave. “I’d like to. Yes.”
Dauntless was looming, the way coming off her as she stopped to pick up her boats. Her crew were lining the side and cheering. Smith saw Ackroyd out on the wing of bridge, saw him take off his cap and wave it wildly, his Yorkshire stolidity cast aside.
*
Smith climbed to the bridge and leant against the screen with head on his folded arms. He was leg-weary, ached as if beaten all over and his eyes were rubbed red raw by the dust. The breeze was chill, the rain fell coldly. And still he felt young again, full of hope.
He raised his head as Ackroyd said delightedly, “Terrific, sir! Shall I send a signal to the admiral now?”
Smith answered huskily, “Just send: ‘Attack complete success. Dump destroyed, railway cut and Legion halted. Few casualties. Force re-embarked’.”
That was all Braddock and Finlayson wanted to know for the present. Braddock would have to be told, but not now, that Smith had flagrantly disobeyed orders and gambled on his own initiative — yet again. The old admiral’s comments would be blistering but delay would temper them. Besides, the thing was done and successful.
Ackroyd passed the message, turned back, “I must say I was surprised as well as relieved, sir, when I saw the troops coming off, that there were so many. I’d thought the casualty rate would be much higher.”
Smith knew Braddock and Finlayson also would be relieved. The raid could have been a bloody disaster. If the men had dawdled, hesitated, if they had not been so brave, so well drilled, well led. Taggart and Jackson. The Australians had got them in and got them out at the end, but it was Taggart’s battalion that had actually done the job, had stopped the Afrika Legion in its tracks. While the Shorts and their crews, the guns of Dauntless and the parties ashore, all had played their part and he must make that clear in his report.
He realised he was staring vaguely out over the screen as his thoughts meandered and that Ackroyd was watching him curiously. What had Ackroyd said? Casualty rate? The casualty rate was a statistic and a phrase that Smith hated. Men were being lifted senseless from the lighters to be hustled below to the sick bays in Dauntless and Blackbird, while Ackroyd talked glibly of the casualty rate as if it was no more than figures or a list of names on a roll, yet Ackroyd was a humane man, concerned about his own men and their welfare. Smith wondered if he was himself overly sensitive. He remembered the faces of the wounded as they were dragged along the long, dusty track from Tel Aviv to the Auja river ...
He said, “Maybe we were lucky.” And: “Will someone fetch me a cup of coffee, please?”
He drank it standing on the bridge, telling himself not to be so bloody detached when everyone else was in such high spirits. They had steeled themselves to meet a disaster and now they were relieved and excited, jubilant. Buckley stood at the back of the bridge, teeth showing white in a face smeared with dust and streaked with sweat runnels, grinning widely. The signal yeoman had shoved a mug into his hand, Buckley was gulping from it and Smith could smell the rum from six feet away, which meant that stern disciplinarian the yeoman had been hoarding his tots and that was against regulations, but in this case at least in a good cause. Buckley had earned it.
The wide grin on the face of the big leading hand was infectious and Smith wondered why he remained depressed on this bridge with the open exuberance all around him. They were returning to Port Said and there would be leave then, the battalion would be breaking up as Adeline Brett had said, and she wanted him in Cairo. But still his jaded mind was uneasy, he felt there was something he had overlooked, that had clamoured for his attention during the raid but had been lost in the press of events ...
Ackroyd said, “Here’s a Short.”
She came out from the coast as if she had flown along the line of the railway from Lydda to Jaffa, passing north of the town and right over Tel Aviv, losing height steadily as she flew out towards the group of ships lying under the rain. Blackbird was close now, turning to make a lee for the Short, and they could see the mottled red skin of her. Smith said, “Ask Blackbird who’s in Delilah?”
A pause as they watched the Short, then the signal yeoman reported, “Rogers and Maitland, sir.”
As she came closer Ackroyd said uneasily, “Is Captain Webb going to swim for it again? That engine sounds a bit funny to me. I’m no engineer but —” His voice drifted away but Smith knew what he meant. Smith was no engine fitter, either, but he had heard the Shorts fly off and return often enough these last weeks and the engine of Delilah had a different rhythm to it, there was a recurrent faltering. He thought the aircraft looked to be flying heavily, one wing-tip sagging and a misty vapour streaming back from the big, laundry basket of a radiator just forward of the pilot. He glanced quickly across at Blackbird and saw Pearce running across her bridge as the Short swung around the carrier, turning into the wind. The fitters and riggers in Blackbird were on the run, too, and there were men already over her side and balanced on her wide rubbing strake. The men in Blackbird knew there was something wrong.
Smith said, “Tell the motor-boat to stand by.”
Delilah came down, flying into the wind with her starboard wing still tilted low but she straightened the instant before the big floats rubbed into the long, kicking waves. Rogers was slumped and head hanging now and Maitland’s white face was turned desperately towards the cruiser as the Short ripped past her across the wave-tops and sent the spray flying. Then the floats dug in and the Short settled, sat back on the tail float and the engine died. She was out in the open rocking in the sea, the wind was pushing her and must soon overturn her but the motor-boat from Dauntless surged past the seaplane, swung in under Delilah’s nose and stopped. A man leapt on to a float and made fast a line that paid out as Delilah drifted rapidly downwind. She was still upright and the man on the float lifted a hand, Smith saw his mouth open, shouting, and the motor-boat forged ahead. The line straightened and the Short followed the boat into Blackbird’s lee.
Ackroyd muttered, “That was lucky.” He meant that the Short had not been blown away like a fallen leaf but Smith doubted the extent of Delilah’s luck. They were hooking on the Short but at the same time they were lowering Rogers down into t
he motor-boat and young Maitland was climbing down after him.
Smith said, “I want to talk to Maitland.”
They brought him to the bridge and he was pale and deliberately calm as he told Smith that following Pearce’s orders the three Shorts had flown to Lydda. “But we passed too close to that German anti-aircraft battery just south of the station and they got Beckett. We saw them go down.” He swallowed, “Anyway, Kirby and we pushed on — and the dump was burning like mad, sir! All the track was chewed up and there were two trains stopped on the line, but we couldn’t see any sign of our chaps so we headed for the mouth of the Auja and that’s when we saw you.”
Smith nodded.
Maitland went on, “Well, we saw all the Turks coming down towards the river so we dropped the bombs and then made a few passes over them. That’s when Kirby caught it. There was a lot of machine-gun fire.”
Smith nodded again, remembering as he watched Maitland trying to keep his thoughts in order, his tongue from running away and stumbling.
“So we cleared off and saw you all get away. Then Rogers shouted that we should have another look at Lydda. He said you’d want to know. So we did and the dump was still smoking and there were four trains stopped on the line, one behind the other and the place was swarming with Germans. We nipped over just once pretty low and there was no mistaking them — Germans.”
Smith thought there might be ten or a dozen trains halted on the line north of Lydda by now, the Afrika Legion halted dead in its tracks. Maitland had stopped. Smith waited, then prompted him. “So?”
Maitland took a breath. “So we started back, following the railway to Jaffa. We were at about seven hundred feet but then the engine cut out. We glided down and it fired again when we were only a couple of miles from the coast but pretty low. There were some Turks by that little place Tel Aviv. They fired up at us, only with rifles but Rogers was hit and a shot went through the radiator.” He stopped for a moment, then finished, “That was rotten bad luck, sir, being hit by chaps with rifles.”