Take or Destroy!

by John Harris

  ‘Made it,’ Carter said aloud, and reeled back to sit down heavily on the body of the helmsman. Slowly, feebly, he fumbled in his pocket for his flask. Lamps seemed to be going out, and little doors were shutting one after the other in his mind, each one cutting off one more cord in his brain, so that he could remember his song only in fragments. Then, for the first time in his life, he found he couldn’t recall the words at all, couldn’t even lift the flask to his mouth. He stared round him at the shambles in the wheelhouse and felt a terrible lassitude, as if he’d done what he usually did and had one drink too many.

  New song, he decided. New song. Sober him up.

  ‘Rolling home,’ he mumbled. ‘By the light of the silvery moon...’

  Then his own light finally went out and, as they dragged him from the wheelhouse, he was silent at last.

  As Umberto thumped out of control against Horambeb, her riddled main mast came down and another piece flew off her funnel. A man jumped over the side, glad to be out of the flying splinters, and secured a rope round one of the water-boat’s bitts, but with no one to correct her and only her high bows touching, Umberto began to swing and it was impossible to get ashore.

  ML 146, having discharged her men across Horambeb’s bow, reeled away with her fuel tanks on fire, her crew jumping into the water. ML 138, just behind and outside her, had to back away from Umberto’s swinging stern or be borne under. At that moment, a burst of machine-gun fire shattered her bridge and killed her captain and her coxswain. Half-blinded by cuts on the face, Lieutenant Dysart saw the danger and punched frantically at the vast body of Leading Seaman Gaukrodger, hunched alongside him.

  ‘Get on that bloody wheel, Gaukrodger,’ he screamed. ‘Shove ‘em in!’

  Umberto’s first lieutenant had now got the secondary controls working and had swung the wheel over. Then the Fairmile’s bow thumped against her stern, springing the launch’s planks and lifting the winch. As the third ML joined Dysart and they pushed together, Umberto at last began to swing alongside. Her weight shoved the lighter Horambeb towards the wall, the trapped water between the two vessels surging and thrashing as it leapt and boiled, to rock the ships like cradles.

  By now, Umberto’s upperworks, were like a sieve. In the din, another shell crashed into her funnel and reduced an Oerlikon position to a tangled nest of smoking ruin and blackened bodies, but she was still swinging in, bearing Horambeb with her. As a second rope went down to the ruined deck of the water-boat, Hockold rose to his feet. There seemed to be no point in trying to dodge the bullet that was going to kill him, and his indifference as he stood upright put heart into the men about him.

  ‘Mole parties!’ he yelled and Lieutenant Brandison’s men rushed forward, slamming their gangways across to Horambeb and racing over them. A ladder lifted from Horambeb’s port side against the wall and a man scrambled up into the smoke at the top. But the German gunners were flaying the air above the mole with their weapons and a blast of machine-gun fire flung him back on to Belcher who fell to the deck half-stunned.

  Brandison was behind them, however, and, crouching low, dived across the mole with the ropes to secure the top of the ladder. Immediately, more men swarmed up, to fling themselves flat behind oil drums, crates and piles of rope, and direct their fire towards Wutka’s wooden bridge and the 47 at the end of the mole.

  ‘Bridge party!’ Brandison and his men jumped up and went clattering away long the mole, with the smoke floats hissing and poppling from the wall on their right. The rest of Umberto’s complement began to swarm across Horambeb after them.

  Then a burst of firing caught the bridge party and Brandison went down on his face with a crash, sliding along the concrete with the speed of his run until he came to a stop against a wrecked hand-cart. As the rest reached the bridged gap, Sergeant Jacka saw Germans hurrying up the mole from the landward end where there were huts and stone-built sheds and the crew of a 47 working at their gun. He flung himself down, his Tommy gun up, and as the Germans approached, the dazed Belcher flattened out alongside him.

  ‘Laid out like dog’s dinner,’ Jacka said and, as the two guns chattered, the Germans dropped to the ground. All but one, who went on running, leaning over at an angle as if he were trying to dodge the bullets, his head lolling, his mouth wide open. Then his legs crumpled and he crashed down, his helmet bouncing away, to roll over on to his back, his arms spread-eagled.

  Jacka couldn’t tell which of the others was alive and which was dead, but they’d captured the wooden bridge. When another group of Germans made a rush forward, one of them with a grenade in his hand, Jacka’s burst caught them before they’d gone a yard and the grenade went straight up in the air to fall back against the man who had flung it. The explosion tossed his body over the edge of the mole into the harbour.

  ‘That’ll stop him coughing in church,’ Jacka said.

  They scrambled to their feet and pounded across the wooden bridge to fling themselves flat again at the far side. Almost immediately behind them, Hockold crashed across the planking and began to run along the mole.

  On the beach, clear of the smoke, Meinertz had got his Honey out of the landing craft and was heading towards the slip. The tank didn’t move very fast, but he reached the bottom of the slope hard under the cliff where he couldn’t be hit either by the 75 above or the 47 on the mole, and stopped to wait for Sergeant Gleeson.

  He could hear both guns firing just above him and the clatter of machine-guns, and, pushing his head out of the hatch, he saw that Gleeson’s tank had stuck on a patch of soft sand and was sinking deeper with every turn of the tracks. A shell from the 47 hit it low on the port side and a cloud of sand, water and grit shot upwards. Thick smoke came from the turret and he saw the glow of an explosion inside. There was rubber in the burning smell, and hot oil mingled with something else that was nauseating, and he heard someone howling like a sick dog. He stared, helplessness quickening the horror as the ball of flame that seemed to surround the tank grew, fattened and bloated. After what seemed an age, the turret opened and he saw Gleeson’s head appear, his hair ablaze. But then the flames shot up round him like a gas jet and Meinertz had to shut his ears to the screams.

  By this time, men were running through the streets of Qaba carrying weapons. Unteroffizier Upholz, magnificently indifferent to flying shards of metal, was standing at the bottom of the Shariah Jedid, waving a carbide torch to direct them into the buildings at the end of the mole. The whole town was alert now, but the Germans were so preoccupied with watching the harbour and keeping their guns on the mole that at first no one noticed the three RAF launches rushing in alone on a separate course to the eastern beaches. Then one of the guards in the watch tower of the POW compound spotted them and pressed the alarm while his mate snatched at his Schmeisser MP 38 and started firing. The MP 38 didn’t do much harm but it brought the crew of a heavy machine-gun below to life and as it started directing a stream of bullets out to sea, it was followed immediately by the 47 near the palace.

  In HSL 117, Second-Lieutenant Sotheby, standing dry-mouthed with Sergeant Berringer, saw the launch in front stagger in the water, then there was a tremendous thump as the explosives on board went up. In a moment the whole boat was enveloped in fire and Sotheby could see men with their clothes ablaze jumping frantically into the sea and trying to swim away from the spreading area of burning petrol.

  ‘That’s cuck-cuck-Collier’s lot,’ he said nervously. ‘It looks as if it’s up to us.’

  They passed the burning wreckage and screaming men in the water without stopping. The 47 seemed to have missed HSL 117 and was now firing at the last launch in the line, hitting her repeatedly. Sotheby turned to the officer in command, a boy no older than himself.

  ‘We’ll never be able to gug-get ashore with the dinghies,’ he said. ‘The bastards’ll knock us out.’

  ‘I can put her bow on the rocks there,’ the RAF man said. ‘Will that do?’

  ‘It’ll bub-bloody have to,’ Sotheby said.


  They moved in until the bow of the launch butted against the rocks that lined the low cliffs and, keeping the engine going ahead, the RAF man held her there.

  ‘Cuck-come on, Berringer,’ Sotheby said as he leapt ashore. ‘I think we’d bub-better get cracking.’

  Hockold had been the first man of the main party across Wutka’s wooden bridge but the machine-gun near the 47 at the end of the mole was dropping his men as they ran. They could see a barrier of wire in front of them dancing and pinging as the bullets struck the strands, and hear the whine as they lifted and whirred into the air over their heads. As they flung themselves down behind drums, crates, and piles of rope and chain, the rush along the mole came to a stop. Hockold joined them unwillingly, his mind seething as he saw the whole plan for Cut-Price falling apart.

  ‘Mr Rabbitt,’ he said. ‘See if you can get over the wall and on to the rocks, and settle the 47 before it stops the tanks. We’re going to need them!’

  ‘Right, sir!’ Rabbitt signed to the men alongside him, and with a rush they scrambled over the shelter wall. Two were hit but the others hung down by their hands above the rocks and dropped into the darkness. Two more men had to be left among the rocks with twisted ankles, but the rest began to work their way towards the slip. Then, spotted by machine-gunners near the 75 at Mas el Bub, they had to dive for cover again.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Rabbitt snarled. ‘Where are those bloody tanks?’

  Hockold and his party were still struggling to reach the shelter of the stone store-sheds at the end of the mole from where they might run for the buildings near the mosque. From there they could work their way to the Roman arch at the Bab al Gawla. They could actually see the arch now, dark against the whitewashed stone of the Boujaffar Hotel. There was a searchlight near the harbour wall and Hockold gestured towards it.

  A Bren stuttered and, as the searchlight went out, the firing slackened momentarily so that they were able to make their dash to the sheds, threading through them in ones and twos until they could see the buildings at the end of the mole. But the crew of the 75 at Mas el Bub, using spades, sandbags and wedges, had managed to bring their gun to bear. As it began to blow chunks off the stonework about them, they had to edge back the way they’d come to put the debris between them and the sheds they could safely occupy.

  The 75 above the POW compound was firing at short range towards Umberto now, tearing her upperworks to ribbons, and the 47 by the palace was firing across the harbour past the bow of Cassandra to add to the damage being done by the 75.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Amos yelled above the barked orders and the stammer of weapons to add his plea to Sergeant-Major Rabbitt’s. ‘Where are the tanks?’

  Gleeson’s tank was a blazing wreck and Meinertz, who had been violently sick, was still wiping his mouth and trying to make up his mind what to do as Murdoch, Cobbe and Captain Cadish roared up the beach in the old Humber brake and skidded to a stop alongside him in the shelter of the cliffs.

  ‘We’ll get round the back!’ Murdoch shouted up. ‘We’ll pin ‘em down so you can get up the slip!’

  ‘No, hang on!’ Meinertz’s brains were temporarily addled by shock and nausea, and he was fighting to clear the fog.

  A group of men were behind the blazing landing craft and another behind the beached freighter, crouched half in the water waiting for the machine-gunners on the landward end of the mole to be silenced, while the rest had dashed for the cliffs where they couldn’t be touched.

  Meinertz stared round him. The gun up above him was something they hadn’t bargained for, its shells pinning down the men on Horambeb and Umberto.

  It seemed to be up to him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  They were still in darkness, though the harbour and the slip were a blaze of light from the loading clusters. There was no longer any point in regarding the black-out, and Hochstatter had switched on everything he could find.

  As they reached the bottom of the slipway, Meinertz saw that it was narrower than he’d expected; only just wide enough for the Honey to get up it. Here was a job that seemed to call for care and precision, but at the top a 47 was waiting for them, and on the cliffs above the bigger weapon which it was also clearly his job to knock out.

  ‘Up the slip, driver,’ he said. ‘And go like the clappers!’

  The gears crashed and the driver, knowing well what would happen if he missed his aim and the outside track crumbled the edge to topple them upside down to the sand, stared with wide eyes as the slip drew nearer. The tracks were throwing up the sand behind them in showers now and the men round the brake watched with grim fascination.

  There was a violent clang as the tank lurched on to the stones; then it was clattering up the uneven slope, swinging and rolling on the heavy boulders that made up the surface. Its bogeys rattling, its springs creaking, as it reached the level ground at the top it seemed to leap into the air, its tracks spinning wildly; then its nose banged down and it disappeared from sight.

  The driver had kept his eyes on the edge of the slip every inch of the way, but there wasn’t time to think much before they arrived with a crash by the harbourside, sending a native felucca, parked there for repairs, reeling away, its mast whipping like a riding crop as the tank barged against it. As it rolled over, its planks splintered, and crashed to the beach, Meinertz realized that the 47 he’d been expecting was just beyond where it had stood and was waiting for them to appear, its barrel trained towards the top of the slip.

  ‘Keep going!’ he shouted. ‘Keep going!’

  There was a tremendous bang and a screech of metal as the gun fired, tearing off the Honey’s starboard track and slewing it completely round so that it was almost facing the other way. But the gun was a wreck too, beneath them, and its crew were dead underneath it.

  As the tank came to a stop, Meinertz, his nose bleeding where he’d banged it on the butt of the machine-gun, became aware that the whole inside of the tank - radio, ammunition racks, every nut and bolt and rivet -- was now sharp and clear in an icy white light. They’d been picked up by the searchlight on the cliff near the other gun.

  Dazzled, he tried to pull himself together and swing his own searchlight, but it was a puny affair compared with the one on the cliff and he knew that beyond the glare the crew of the gun would be struggling to bring the barrel to bear on him.

  ‘Get that bloody light,’ he yelled. ‘Driver, bring her round!’

  The screech of the gears told him they were stuck.

  ‘Gunner.’ He screamed. ‘Traverse right! Get that light, for Christ’s sake!’

  Caught by the overspill of the light, he saw the end of a gun barrel, dropping lower as the crew fought to depress it further. The flash and the crash against the outside of the tank came together. Fragments of metal flew through the air and for a moment Meinertz thought he was dead. But, as he realized that the shell had actually missed them and exploded on the concrete alongside, he began to yell again.

  ‘Get that light!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, sir, the turret’s given up!’

  As the gunner, his eye to the hot rubber of the sight, fought with the traverse handle, shouting despairingly, ‘It won’t bear! It won’t bear,’ Meinertz yelled again.

  ‘Driver! You’ve still got one good track! Use it!’

  As the outside track jerked, the old Honey lurched another foot to the right and the gunner’s voice cracked with his excitement. ‘Got her, sir!’

  The gun roared, deafening them, and Meinertz saw the flash as the shell hit the emplacement below the big grey barrel. Living up to expectations, Meinertz’s gunner had missed the searchlight completely but, with a shot as lucky as that which had destroyed Umberto’s popgun, he had placed his shell right in front of the 75.

  ‘Give ‘em another while their heads are ringing!’ Meinertz screamed.

  The crew of the gun were as stupefied by the explosion as the crew of the Honey had been, but they were slower to react so that Me
inertz’s gunner got his next shell in first and they saw the gun barrel lift and swing in a dipping half-circle as if it were free of its moorings.

  ‘Got the bastard,’ Meinertz said with satisfaction. ‘Now the searchlight, gunner!’

  The gun banged again and this time Meinertz’s gunner hit what he was aiming at. The shell struck even as the crew were hurriedly switching off for safety, and the dying red glow was lost in the glare of the explosion.

  For a brief moment there was a silence that seemed to smother even the sounds of battle from the harbour behind them, Then, as Meinertz and his crew dropped to the ground beside the wrecked Honey, Murdoch came roaring up the slip in Hockold’s old brake to shoot past them, unnoticed by the Germans in the houses at the bottom of the Shariah Jedid, and disappear among the trees by the mosque, followed by the rest of the group from the landing craft, running as fast as they could go.

  7

  The POW compound and a lorry park were attacked.

  Sergeant-Major Rabbitt’s party had watched Meinertz’s little battle from the rocks just below the slip.

  ‘Jesus,’ one of the Stooges said. ‘These cavalry boys certainly do things in style.’

  With the destruction of the guns, the machine-gunners at the end of the mole where isolated and, as Rabbitt’s party dashed to the slip and tossed a couple of Mills bombs over the top, the survivors threw down their weapons and raised their hands.

  As they did so, Hockold lifted his head. To his surprise he was still alive, and it seemed a good idea to utilize what little time he had left in securing the centre of the town and organizing a defence. Though a lot of the loading clusters and harbour lights had been shot out, the searchlights at Ibrahimiya probing the sky for de Berry’s isolated groups of aeroplanes were destroying any pretence at darkness.

  There was wire beyond the sheds, stretching from Meinertz’s wrecked Honey to the mud at the other side. A soldier flung himself down across it, and Hockold used his body as a stepping stone and dived for the shelter of the buildings at the end of the mole. As he vanished, a machine-gun near the Shariah Jedid came to life and the man following him was caught by a slicing burst which spun him round and flung him into the wire. Its barbs snatched at his uniform and held him half-upright, one arm outstretched, the hand dangling crazily every time the wire moved.