‘I thought we’re supposed to be preserving ammunition, sir,’ said Hepworth.
‘You’ve got to defend yourselves, Hep.’ He looked at the Schmeisser Hepworth carried – one of the twelve to have been given out. ‘In any case, that’s not our ammo you’re using – it’s Jerry’s.’ He grinned at Hepworth and gave him a pat on his shoulder, then glanced around at the others. ‘Keep your helmets on – it’ll help with identification. And the password – don’t forget it.’
‘Where will you be, sir?’ asked Hepworth.
‘There’s something Sergeant Sykes and I need to have a quick look at.’ He winked at Sykes. ‘Then we’ll be back to keep an eye on you lot. So stay put until I tell you otherwise.’
Tanner watched the men hurry off towards their posts, then turned to Sykes and said, ‘Follow me.’ He led him off the low ridge and down in the direction of the Knossos road.
‘Where are we heading, Jack?’ Sykes asked.
Ahead of them, just off the road, stood a house surrounded by a garden filled with plane trees, palms and shrubs. ‘There,’ said Tanner, pointing. ‘It’s the villa Pendlebury used to live in before the war.’
‘Very nice too,’ whispered Sykes. ‘But what are we looking for?’
‘I’ll show you in a minute.’
Passing through a series of vineyards, they reached the rear of the grounds of the house. Tanner paused and listened. The place seemed quiet. Both Knossos and the villa lay in no man’s land – too far south to be of use to the British and not yet discovered by the newly arrived Germans. There was no sound coming from the ridge to their right either. Good, thought Tanner. The lads are still all right.
‘What a place,’ whispered Sykes. ‘Not a bad little basha if you ask me. But, Jack, what’s here?’
‘Stop jabbering, Stan, and I’ll show you.’
Shadows from the protective canopy of the trees streaked across the villa, giving it a cold, deserted appearance. Insects whistled and clicked but the air felt suddenly close, every sound accentuated. Tanner led Sykes around the front of the house, past the steps that led up to its entrance and around to the side, where, tucked away, hidden by trees and bushes, there was a shed.
‘Here,’ said Tanner.
‘It’s a shed, Jack.’
‘It’s a lock-up of Pendlebury’s. A secret arms stash. Heavily padlocked, as you can see, but I’m assuming nothing that would trouble you, Stan.’
Sykes grinned, then delved into his pack and brought out a set of short metal wires. Leaning against the door, he inserted one into the keyhole, manoeuvred it carefully and grinned as the padlock opened with a click.
‘Stan, you’re a genius,’ said Tanner. The door creaked, the sound making him wince. Inside, he took out his torch, a small rectangular German one, carefully placed a blue perspex lens over the light and switched it on.
At the far end of the shed, a tarpaulin covered a mound. Tanner pulled it back to reveal a number of wooden boxes, perhaps a dozen in all. The top two were a little over a foot long and about eight inches wide, painted green and with ‘14 SLABS DEMOLITION TNT MK 1’ stencilled on the side. ‘Now you’re talking.’ Sykes grinned, moving the box onto the floor. ‘Shine the torch a sec, Jack. I want to see what else we’ve got here.’ He moved a couple more boxes, then said, ‘Eureka!’ He pulled out a metal tin, slightly larger than the boxes, and furiously opened it. ‘Recognize these beauties?’ he said, pulling out a smaller tin.
Tanner grinned. ‘Pull switches, Stan.’
‘Too bloody right.’ He tugged out another, smaller wooden box, which was filled with reels of fuse and tins of detonators. ‘Blimey,’ he said, ‘this is a regular bloody Aladdin’s cave!’
‘You know I always try to keep you happy, Stan.’
‘But we can’t carry this lot,’ said Sykes, standing up and looking thoughtful.
‘Take what we can now – enough to have some fun tonight, at any rate, and perhaps we can come back here tomorrow.’
‘But who’s it all for?’
‘Pendlebury’s Cretan andartes, but it is ours. This is British stuff. And I can’t see them using it. After all, how are they going to get to it?’
Suddenly, behind them, the door swung open. Tanner and Sykes froze.
‘Like this,’ said a voice, in heavily accented English. ‘Two thieves caught red-handed.’
‘You!’ hissed Tanner. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’
14
Alopex stood framed in the doorway, two of his andartes behind him. ‘We have come to check on our supplies – supplies we will need when you have run away again.’
‘I’m not going bloody anywhere.’
‘I hope not. We still have a score to settle. Two scores to settle now. You let Pendlebury get killed.’
‘He got himself killed with that hare-brained plan of his,’ growled Tanner. ‘As you know full bloody well. You should have persuaded him to go with you.’ Tanner shone his torch in Alopex’s face. ‘You had no problems getting through, then? Or have you been skulking here ever since?’
Alopex laughed, then lunged forward and flung a fist into Tanner’s stomach. He doubled up, gasped, and staggered backwards.
‘Hey, hey, easy, mate!’ said Sykes, moving between them.
‘Listen, you son of a whore,’ hissed Alopex, spitting at Tanner. ‘We came back down from the mountains, as we have been doing every night – killing Germans. I had some business to see to in town – and I was not stopped once, not on the way in or back out again. Your men are by the Jesus Bastion, I seem to remember.’
Tanner, recovering his breath, clenched his fists.
‘Easy, Jack,’ said Sykes, then turned back to Alopex. ‘Listen, mate, you’ve got a whole load of explosives here. Do you lot know how to use ’em?’
Alopex glared at him.
‘Only I do,’ said Sykes. ‘Me and Tanner here, we’ve blown up a lot of Jerries since this war began and we’re fully intending to blow up some more. Let us take a few bits and pieces and, trust us, we’ll make good use of them.’
Alopex eyed him suspiciously. ‘What will you do?’
‘I haven’t exactly worked it out, but we’ve got here fuse, explosives and pull switches, an’ that means we can make some booby traps, see? There are some wells up there and old sheds and that, the kind of places Jerry’s going to make a beeline for. We go up there now and arrange a few trip wires for them, and then when they’re looking for shelter or a little drink to ease their thirst, they get a nasty shock instead. See?’ He put two tins of pull switches into the deep inside pockets of his battle blouse.
Alopex thought for a moment. ‘All right. But we’ll come with you.’
‘And you and Tanner will stop trying to kill each other?’
Alopex laughed. ‘For tonight, yes.’
‘Sir?’ said Sykes, turning to Tanner.
Tanner glared at Alopex. He was about to speak, to warn him never to lay another finger on him, but then he saw Sykes shake his head. He took a deep breath, pulled out his bayonet and yanked open a box of explosives.
‘You should listen to your friend more often,’ said Alopex.
‘Says the man with the biggest gob in Crete. Just shut up, Alopex, and let’s get on with it.’
They took a box load of TNT between them, fourteen one-pound rectangular blocks, wrapped in foil and covered with light yellow paper, along with tins of both safety and instantaneous fuse.
‘There are a lot of Germans maybe five hundred metres ahead,’ said Alopex. ‘There is an old river escarpment they are sheltering behind. But there are others closer to hand.’
As they made their way through a vineyard, the ground rose gently. Suddenly it dropped away into the valley beyond Knossos. Alopex stopped them and pointed out two buildings, silhouetted darkly against the faint glow of the sky. ‘The house over there is deserted, abandoned,’ he said. ‘The other is a store. It has a well beside it.’
Just then they heard a wounde
d paratrooper cry out nearby. ‘Helfen Sie mir!’ came the desperate plea. ‘Helfen Sie mir!’
‘Poor bugger,’ said Sykes. ‘I almost feel sorry for him.’
Alopex glanced at him, then hurried forward with his two andartes. Sykes and Tanner followed. They soon found the German. He had cut free his parachute, but had clearly broken a leg or ankle on landing. He looked up at the men now around him, eyes wide with fear. Alopex crouched over him and pulled out a knife.
‘Nein, nein!’ cried the man. ‘Bitte …’
Alopex grabbed the man by his collar, yanked him up and thrust the knife into his side. The man gasped, then Alopex dropped him, and glared again at Sykes.
Tanner crouched beside the dead man, closed his staring eyes, then rifled for magazines in his pockets. ‘Probably been unconscious,’ whispered Tanner to Sykes. ‘Imagine waking up, in pain, and it’s dark, and then a sodding great Cretan comes along and shoves a knife into you. Jesus. Who’d be a paratrooper?’
A few shots rang out nearby, the enemy alerted by the alarmed cries of their comrade.
They waited a few moments, then moved on, reaching the ruined house. Sykes worked quickly, putting a small length of instantaneous fuse into a block of TNT and attaching the other end to the fuse adaptor at the end of the switch. He then tied the block of explosive to an old hinge at the bottom of the doorway, using safety fuse as wire. Another length was tied through the eye of the pin on the pull switch, which he then ran across to the other side of the doorway, where he found an old nail to tie it to. Checking the pin would release easily and that the length of fuse was taut, he hurried round the other side of the building to the well. This time he hid the explosive behind a large stone, which he placed at the base of the wall around the well, then ran the fuse back to the house, through the grass just a few inches off the ground. Only around two pounds of pressure were needed – easily created by someone getting their foot caught in the trip wire. The pin would be pulled out from the switch, which in turn released a spring that had been holding the firing pin in place. This knocked forward a striker rod, which caused the end of the fuse to spark and, with it, the TNT to explode.
They scurried on to the old store house, and set another booby trap. Alopex was delighted. ‘We could do with a man like you,’ he said, clutching Sykes’s shoulder. ‘We shall enjoy watching these blow up.’ He translated for his comrades, who chuckled in agreement.
‘We need to get back to the others,’ muttered Tanner, in a low whisper.
‘And we need to kill a few more Germans,’ said Alopex, ‘then get back to the mountains.’ He looked at Tanner and Sykes. ‘But if you steal any more of my supplies, I’ll know where to find you. I like your little friend here,’ he said, ‘but not that much.’ He pinched Sykes’s cheek and left them.
‘That man,’ muttered Tanner, as they scampered back in a wide arc towards the others. ‘I can’t bloody shake him off.’
‘A useful bloke to have on our side, though. You’ve got to admit he’s a bloody good fighter. Damn useful local knowledge, too.’
‘That’s as may be, Stan, but he bloody gets on my nerves. I swear that’s the last time I’m going to let someone punch me in the guts and not give them a kicking in return.’
To the south, a man screamed. Alopex, thought Tanner. Sykes was right – he was an effective and utterly ruthless fighter. No wonder Pendlebury had sought to help men like him and Satanas. If the Germans did seize the island, they would certainly have a difficult time so long as men like them were alive. It hardly made him feel better, though. Alopex had taunted them about the British leaving the island, and it had struck a nerve. A few days before he would have thought an evacuation impossible, but he sensed the balance was shifting. An ammunition shortage already! Good God, he wished they’d used up every last round three days earlier – if they had, there would not be any Germans left on this part of the island. Yet now every day the German situation was improving while theirs was slowly but surely getting worse. If something was not done about it soon, the time would come when the scales tipped against them for good. And then they would be falling back yet again, dependent on the navy to extricate them from the latest débâcle. Jesus, he thought, please don’t let it be so.
The pickets had seen nothing.
‘Where’ve you been, sir?’ asked Hepworth.
‘Never you mind, Hep. Now move back out of the way. Sergeant Sykes needs a bit of space.’
‘Why, sir, what’s going on?’ He watched Sykes. ‘Oh, I get it. Where d’you find them, sir?’
‘All these questions, Hep. Let’s just say we discovered a secret source, all right?’
They moved on to the well, calling ‘yorker’ in loud whispers, and then, once Sykes had set another booby trap, they carefully made their way over to the stone wall where the remainder of Hepworth’s section were still keeping watch.
‘See anything?’ Tanner asked.
‘We heard something, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘Jerries screaming. Was that you, sir?’
‘No. Our Cretan allies,’ said Tanner. He looked at his watch. ‘That’ll do. Come on, let’s head back.’
As they gave out the password and crossed back to their positions at the edge of the town, Lieutenant Liddell was there to meet them.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘We didn’t hear anything. All quiet out there?’
‘Very quiet, sir,’ said Hepworth.
But at that moment one of the booby traps exploded, a shocking, jarring blast that flashed briefly and lit the horizon with a bright orange glow. Liddell flinched.
‘God almighty!’ he exclaimed. ‘What was that?’
‘A nasty shock for some Jerry, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Tanner, calmly lighting a cigarette. The others laughed. ‘Right, then, boys, go and get some kip.’ He paused and turned to Liddell. ‘It’s your sergeant, sir. Very handy with explosives, he is.’ He chuckled, then headed on in the direction of Company Headquarters.
Sunday, 25 May, a little after 9 a.m. Tanner sat on his rocky outcrop, peering through his German binoculars. It was another glorious early summer’s day, the sky clear blue save for a few white puffs hovering over the mountains. Little seemed to be stirring ahead – and why would it? Those paratroopers would be below the ridgeline, stuck under the escarpment that Alopex had mentioned. No, he doubted they would see much movement that day. A few parachutes were still caught up in the groves, but otherwise there was little sign that there had been such a large air drop the day before.
He had heard only three explosions during the night, which left another three – those closest to their own positions – still untouched. Ah, well, he thought. There was always another night, and he felt little concern that any locals might disturb them in the meantime – he’d not seen a single person tending the land ahead of them since the invasion had begun.
But now he heard a faint rumble from the north, and quickly swivelled round to scan the sky. The noise was rapidly increasing and then he spotted them – more than twenty enemy aircraft approaching. The sound of aero-engines had risen to a thunderous roar as they flew almost past the town. The ack-ack had once again begun pounding, the heavy guns booming dully, black puffs of smoke bursting out over the sky, when the lead plane flipped over and began its dive. Even before the sirens began wailing, Tanner recognized them as Stukas. One after another they were screaming directly towards the town.
Tanner hurriedly put on his tin helmet as bombs began detonating. Light ack-ack guns were pumping shells towards them but the first dozen planes completed their dives successfully. Huge rolling clouds of dust and smoke were lazily rising into the air, shrouding the town. The noise was deafening but above the whine of aircraft, the thunder of the guns and the blast of exploding bombs came the crash of falling masonry as buildings crumpled.
Having dropped their loads, the Stukas disappeared but almost immediately another wave of bombers arrived, this time Junkers 88s, more than two dozen, racing in along the coast from the west and dropp
ing a seemingly endless number of bombs. Heraklion had completely disappeared under the pall of smoke and dust. Tanner watched mesmerized, the shock of exploding bombs shaking the ground on which he sat. Shells continued to be pumped into the air, but the gunners were now firing blind. Suddenly, a Junkers emerged, an engine alight. The men cheered as it spluttered overhead, so low the oil streaks could be seen across its underside, the black crosses clear and distinct. The great machine banked and headed north again, hidden once more by the dust and smoke.
Tanner guessed it must have crashed into the sea, but then found himself ducking as he heard the whistle of a falling bomb nearby, which exploded on some houses a hundred yards to the west. Once again, the ground seemed to tremble, and now the dust pall was rolling over their positions too. Taking his water bottle, he wetted his handkerchief and placed it over his mouth, then clambered down as another set of bombs whistled towards them. This time they were closer and Tanner flung himself onto the ground as a building just yards from Company HQ received a direct hit. With an ear-splitting crash, the building collapsed, a cascading mass of tile, stone and wood. Shards were blasted into the air and Tanner felt them raining down on him, clattering against his helmet. Men were coughing and spluttering and shouting curses. His throat felt raw despite the wet handkerchief.
And then the bombers were gone. Spectral figures stood up, emerging through the haze, coughing, staggering, numbed by the noise and weight of the attack. Tanner drank from his bottle, the already warm water as soothing as ice. Captain Peploe appeared from the direction of Company Headquarters, his face, uniform and hair covered with dust. ‘The bastards,’ he said, then began coughing violently.
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