Dust on the Sea (1999)

by Reeman, Douglas

  When they reached a barrier of fallen rocks, just inside the entrance to the lagoon, two more marines were hit by hidden marksmen. Bren fire and rifles responded, more out of fury than with any hope of success.

  Blackwood said, ‘Bring those men back. We leave no one behind.’

  Archer knelt and fired. Blackwood saw the butt plate recoil against his shoulder, heard him swear. ‘Missed the sod!’

  Someone shouted, ‘Here comes a late volunteer!’ Another gave a wild laugh. It could not last much longer.

  Archer was pressing two more clips into his rifle’s magazine, but looked up, surprised. ‘You’re not supposed to be ’ere, you twit!’

  It was Marine Pratt, his features very serious and intent as he dropped on one knee and checked his rifle, as calmly as if he was on the range at Whale Island.

  Blackwood heard Despard call, ‘Who told you to come here? What are you thinking about, man?’ It was rare for him to reveal anxiety.

  Pratt looked defiantly across his rifle.

  ‘The Colonel told me, sir. It was an order, he said!’

  There were more shots, but nothing seemed able to break the sudden tension.

  Blackwood stepped swiftly from one pile of rock to the next. His back tingled, recalling the nearness of the sniper’s bullet.

  ‘Tell me, Pratt. Why did you leave him? He’s wounded, he might not know what he’s doing!’

  Pratt regarded him impassively. ‘It was an order, sir.’ He almost smiled, but it made him look even more lugubrious. ‘He says to me, good luck, Pratt. We’ll show ’em, eh?’

  It was exactly what Gaillard would have said. He could hear him saying it.

  ‘An’ then . . .’ Pratt frowned, the two words dropping like the stone which had betrayed the German sniper.

  Despard repeated sharply, ‘Then?’

  ‘He says, give me your grenades before you go.’ He frowned again. ‘It was an order, sir. From the Colonel himself!’

  There was another fusillade of shots, separate weapons, but so close together that it sounded like a machine gun.

  ‘The boat! For Christ’s sake, the boat!’

  Before he had managed to scale the next barrier of rocks Blackwood knew it was Gaillard. He heard the boat’s engine coughing and roaring, the sound rising up the steep cliffs to drown out the sharper clatter of small arms.

  He did not need his binoculars, just as he knew he would not have used them. It would have been an intrusion.

  The motor boat was moving slowly but purposefully in a tight arc, the water boiling from its stern as it idled into the hard light. Feathers of spray spurted all around it, and he knew that the hull must have been hit several times. He could see Gaillard clinging to the controls, the other hand holding his side, blood everywhere. There was no sign of the dead helmsman. Gaillard must have used his dwindling strength to drop him over the side. Alone to the end.

  How he had managed to get into the boat and move it away from the sappers’ landslide was beyond belief. The engine had been running all this time, since Archer had shot down the helmsman. All this time. It was not long; it only felt like it.

  The boat’s explosive device would be out of action.

  He thought suddenly of Pratt’s wooden determination to do the right thing. To obey orders, as he had always done.

  Give me your grenades before you go.

  Just one of those would be enough.

  Disregarding stray shots and darting figures, he dragged out his whistle and blew it as hard as he could. Men froze where they stood, as if it were a referee’s whistle at a football match. Or an order to abandon ship.

  ‘Get everyone out of it, George! Fast as you like.’

  Archer was dragging at his arm. ‘Come on, sir! Remember what you promised the little lady!’ Saying anything that came into his head, to make him move, run with the others.

  He had not realised that everyone else had gone. He watched, unable to drag his eyes away. The boat was moving, unhurriedly or so it seemed, towards the inner darkness where sunlight would never reach. No feathers of spray. The Germans had recognised the peril, the solitary boat, packed with high explosive, heading directly towards the hidden moorings.

  Blackwood raised his whistle, and hoped Gaillard was still alive and able to hear it before he threw his grenades into the forepart of the boat. Then he turned away, his eyes stinging in the smoke. Except that, with the guns now silent, there was little of it.

  Archer was dragging at his arm, but he had to pause. It had to be now.

  He said quietly, ‘Not a retreat, Colonel. Not this time.’

  Then, as Archer pulled him around the rock barrier, the world seemed to explode.

  The last order had been carried out.

  Epilogue

  MICHAEL BLACKWOOD TURNED down the collar of his greatcoat and stared out of the train window. He could not recall ever being so cold, or feeling it so much.

  He was thankful that the R.T.O. had managed to get him a corner seat by a window. The compartment was full. They always were, but he did not want to speak to any of the occupants. To anybody.

  The weather was surprisingly fine and clear, fields moving slowly past as the train reduced speed, probably because of the gradient and the extra carriages. Small houses, one with a flag painted above the doorway. A welcome for someone, perhaps.

  November. No wonder it was so cold. He tried again, his mind drifting back over the journey. Flights from unknown airstrips, then on to a larger plane, for England.

  Strange to realise that it had been November when he had left here before. A year ago. He had been feeling the cold then, too, after Burma. It seemed much longer in some ways, and yet towards the end, time seemed to have speeded up. And now he was feeling lost, among strangers, even those who were wearing the same uniform.

  Force Trident, or what was left of it, was returning by a slower route, around the Cape. Jubilant, emotional, pretending to be neither, but at least they were together. Coming back for a brief leave before rejoining a new unit, part of another, bigger Commando. Even Steve and his sappers had returned to their old unit.

  Perhaps that had been the worst part. Leaving behind what they had won and created together.

  By the time they eventually reached England they would have had time to find themselves again, to discuss and brag about their achievements and their blunders. To talk of the characters, and, after a week or so at sea, even of the dead whom they had tried so hard to forget.

  He shifted in his seat again; even the uniform was new. And there was something else. He was Major Blackwood now, albeit brevet. There had been a signal from Vaughan himself. It was settled.

  And yet, when he had put on the unfamiliar uniform for the first time he had felt like an imposter, a stranger. That had been in Alex. Maybe that was it.

  Looking back, it was difficult, sometimes impossible to measure the significance of what they had done against the greater happenings elsewhere. As promised, the invasion of Italy had taken place, exactly two months after the first troops had landed in Sicily. A lifetime. The invasion had been carried out in the Bay of Salerno, with Naples the first objective. As predicted, the coming of winter had slowed all progress, but the Allies were still advancing, and the Italians had changed sides.

  The invasion itself had been stiffly resisted, as everyone on the staff had known beforehand. New weapons, not least the deadly radio-controlled bomb which could be guided by aircraft on to a target, had taken a heavy toll of shipping. Even the gallant old lady, the flagship Warspite, had been hit by one, and two American cruisers had also been early victims.

  Casualties had been heavy also, and there had been times when the impetus of the attack had been slowed. Uncertain, one newspaper correspondent had described it.

  But not a single explosive motor boat made an appearance. Only then did that tiny, hostile islet off the coast of Sicily assume its true importance.

  All the boats must have been destroyed in a chain reaction of exp
losions, most of them buried under another avalanche of lava rock. Perhaps nobody would ever know about it. The war might go on for years, although Blackwood had been surprised by the optimism he had encountered in this battle-hardened country. A second front was now being spoken of, an invasion of France, which would lead inevitably to Germany. It was difficult to compare such plans with a remote cross named Angelo on a chart.

  Leaving had been the worst part. After the full-scale and heady excitement of the promised air support, the Spitfires diving and rolling above the battered landing craft, and the welcome at Alex, it had been even harder to take.

  George Despard had been nicknamed ‘the Iron Man’ by some of his marines, and it would stick, as was the way with the Corps. He had not remained so calm and steadfast when he had been told of his promotion to captain.

  Blackwood had shaken his hand, sharing it, and had said, ‘Whether you bloody like it or not!’

  And Lieutenant Fellowes, who seemed suddenly a man, no longer playing a part. Sergeant Paget, grinning, and insisting that they would meet again in the next posting. ‘Sticks’ Welland, much more subdued since the last fight, because he had expected to be killed. He would need somebody to share it, carry the load until he found himself again. Perhaps he had been thinking that when they had shaken hands and said good-bye.

  And Percy Archer; he would miss him for all kinds of reasons. For his courage and his ability to make light of almost every problem. For his concern when he had believed his own inattention had all but cost his captain his life.

  He had passed it off quite typically. ‘You won’t need me no more, Cap’n Blackwood. I’ll go for me tapes. I can chase some other poor sod about then!’ It had been, perhaps, the hardest moment for them both.

  And Gaillard; how would he be remembered? A posthumous Victoria Cross? There was no one to cherish either medal or memory. There had never been anything but the Corps for him to believe in.

  It was almost impossible to recreate those final moments; they said that the force of the explosion could do that to a man’s memory. Blackwood knew in his heart that he wanted to leave it like that. Perhaps, after all, Gaillard’s was the only true courage.

  The door slid back and a voice said from the corridor, ‘Waterloo in ten minutes, gents!’

  It was unnerving. It could have been the same man, a year ago.

  He thought of the telephone call, his impatience getting the better of him when the R.A.F. type at the airfield had moaned about secrecy and ‘the war’.

  He had said, ‘Where the bloody hell d’you think I’ve been?’ Unfair, unreasonable. Like Gaillard.

  But he had got his line, and had been half afraid that she would be away.

  She had listened in silence while he had blurted out something about meeting her, and for a moment he had imagined she was upset, or shocked by his unexpected arrival.

  She had said, ‘I knew, Mike. I shall be there.’

  He had sensed the irritation of the switchboard operator, had imagined the train leaving before he could reach the station.

  And now it was almost time. Not merely a dream, a desperate hope when he had expected to die, too like too many others.

  There would be a couple of days in London, to make his report, maybe to meet his new boss. But there was somewhere else to go, something else to do.

  She might not even like Hawks Hill when she saw it, if she agreed to go with him.

  ‘We must be almost there by now.’ A hand touched his cuff. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it for so long. Now I’m thinking it might be a bit dicey!’

  He looked round. The other officer had been asleep for the entire journey. In R.A.F. blue, like Joanna’s uniform; even ‘dicey’ brought it all back, like his own uncertainty.

  He said, ‘Got someone meeting you?’

  The young pilot nodded, hand still on Blackwood’s cuff. ‘Thanks. Yes, I have.’

  The train was running into the great station with its bomb scars and boarded-up windows. He was back. But all he could think of was the young airman who had no face. Dicey.

  She saw him coming before he had found her in the cheerful, anxious, hopeful crowd.

  Somebody gave a whistle as he kissed her, and she threw her arms up around his neck. All right for some . . .

  She had seen his face when he had looked over towards the disfigured pilot, who had been hugging two women, laughing, crying, it was impossible to know.

  But she had seen his face, the man she loved, had never stopped loving. The rest would get better.

  She said, ‘I’ve found a place. It’s private.’ She shook her head, remembering. ‘Not a bit like Alex!’

  She saw a marine turn and throw up a salute. Very young. Brand new, probably.

  Blackwood said, ‘I love you.’

  The marine paused and looked back at them. In some strange way, it seemed to give him confidence.

  It’s what we do.

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  Epub ISBN: 9781407010502

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Copyright © Bolitho Maritime Productions Ltd 2000

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  Douglas Reeman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1999 by William Heinemann

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  ISBN 9780099421672