Cotton's War

by Cotton's War (retail) (epub)

  Kennard said nothing. His mind was still on the boats and the men he’d lost at Aeos. The activity around him passed him by. The anxiety everyone felt, from the general down to the simplest gunner or ordinary seaman, was obvious. The Germans were coming but nobody knew which beach they were going to land on. Kennard tried to shove it out of his mind.

  ‘You still worrying about those chaps we sent to Aeos?’ Ponsonby asked.

  ‘Of course I am. I don’t like sending chaps out on a job and then abandoning ’em.’ Kennard turned back to the list he was perusing. The names on it were all familiar to him. ‘At Nauplia embarking troops – Phoebe, Stuart, Hyacinth, Ulster Prince, Gleneard. At Raftis embarking troops – Calcutta, Perth, Glengyle. On passage – Grimsby, Vendetta, Waterhen, Themani, Zealand—’

  The list went on for another two pages and showed pretty well every available ship in the Mediterranean. What had started as a relieving expedition to snatch Greece from the hands of the Italians had turned into another Dunkirk. Already, it was clear there was to be no orderly embarkation but another scratch job in small boats from open shores.

  As the ships came into Suda Bay, the weary, dusty men on board all told the same depressing story: shortages of aircraft, weapons, vehicles and petrol, with constant bombing and casualties, and behind it the threat of ultimate catastrophe. The unclouded sky and calm weather were a help and a hindrance at the same time. While they assisted in the evacuation, they also aided the Luftwaffe as they came over the mountains in the crystal-clear atmosphere that allowed the gaze to travel a hundred miles without interference from haze.

  Among the indented rocky coasts with their doll’s-house villages backed by the green of olive groves edging to deep blue waters clear for a hundred feet down, men were streaming south, searching for a safe place to embark. The situation was deteriorating hour by hour. With the Greek Epirus force laying down its weapons, the British army was clinging to its last ditch defences in a hopeless disarray of orders, counter-orders and lack of orders. Troops heading for the coast had no real idea where they were going and independent evacuations were starting everywhere in merchantmen, ferry-boats, caiques and yachts. Along the coast road, Dorniers, flying low over the sea, were shooting up the traffic so that the route was marked by burning vehicles.

  Things had been left too late as usual, and the navy, trying to carry on with its mass of routine duties – succouring the army in North Africa, helping besieged Tobruk, escorting convoys through the eastern Mediterranean, victualling, fuelling, ammunitioning – needed time to marshal its resources. Kennard was well aware that the chances of being able to send help to Aeos were pathetically slim.

  ‘I can’t see what else we can do,’ Ponsonby said.

  Neither could Kennard, but he was still hopeful of trying. It was just possible that they might get somebody to take his ship to Aeos to have a look in case there was anyone on one of the beaches waving and hoping still to be picked up. Kennard had already broached the subject to the admiral and got a firm ‘No’ for his trouble, but there were more light forces due from Alexandria in the next few days and he might just prevail on some ship’s captain. Kennard felt his responsibility keenly. He – and nobody else – had sent two boats into Aeos and he considered it his duty to make some effort to check whether the crews had survived. Two dozen men weren’t many in the mass that were being lifted from the Greek mainland but he still felt he ought to try.

  * * *

  Major Renatus von Boenigk Baldamus had just finished an excellent dinner and was in no mood to exert himself much.

  As he sat back the telephone rang. He picked it up, listened, then slammed it down again and looked up at Ehrhardt with a smile.

  ‘The Italian naval launch’s arrived, Ehrhardt,’ he said. ‘Armed to the teeth. I’ve become an admiral.’ He fished among the papers on his desk and tossed a flimsy at Ehrhardt.

  ‘Telephone message,’ he said. ‘Arrived this afternoon. Whoever it was, refused to identify themselves. It says there’s aviation spirit in Ay Yithion.’

  ‘Whose aviation spirit?’ Ehrhardt asked.

  ‘Have we lost any?’

  ‘I gather some’s been missed from the dump at Yanitsa. Klepsi-klepsi, the Greeks call it.’

  ‘Means scrounging,’ Baldamus said. ‘I think someone had better look into it.’

  ‘Who?’

  Baldamus moved a few papers about. ‘Well, we’ve got an SS unit now to look after security, haven’t we, and didn’t we get a couple of the leather-coated fraternity from the Gestapo today?’

  ‘That’s right. Investigating pilfering of rations.’

  Baldamus smiled. ‘Well, let them investigate this too,’ he said. ‘It’s right up their street. They’ll probably tear the balls off some poor devil to find out where it is but I expect they’ll end up with the petrol.’ He turned up the sheet of paper he was looking for and glanced at it. ‘Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge. He’s your man, Ehrhardt. Let him know, will you? I expect they’ll want to lay on an operation to murder everybody on the island.’

  Ehrhardt frowned. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the conscience to accept the sort of things those bastards do.’

  ‘It’s something we all have to live with, Ehrhardt,’ Baldamus said equably. ‘When we’ve won the war, we’ll all have to examine our consciences and find out if there isn’t some way we can run Germany without these gentry.’

  * * *

  Cotton was the first awake. It was the sound of aircraft that brought him to life. They were transports and he wondered yet again what they were doing on Aeos.

  Aware of being out of the mainstream of events and conscious of a feeling of not belonging, he watched the aeroplanes with a sick heart. Cotton was a man who needed other men about him and was at his best as part of a team. All his training had been devised to that end. It didn’t alter the situation that he was still running the show, however. It was a hard fact to face but Cotton was a stubborn man, with the stubbornness of a bull in a bull-ring. The more he was goaded by adverse conditions, the harder he fought, and climbing into the dinghy, he rowed about the narrow bay in the growing light, dropping the lead line over at intervals and noting the readings on a piece of paper torn from the log. When Loukia had entered the bay, she had smashed her screws and rudders on a rock and he had no intention that she should do the same as she left.

  They ate bully beef and biscuit for breakfast and were waiting on deck as the sun appeared. As its first glow came between tumultuous clouds, Cotton began to grow worried.

  ‘Where’s Varvara?’ he said.

  An hour later there was still no sign of the Greek caique and he felt he could wait no longer.

  ‘I’m going into Yithion,’ he announced. ‘I want to know where that petrol is and arrange to pick up the kid.’

  Taking one of the curtains from the captain’s cabin, he rolled Patullo’s revolver in it and pushed a few extra rounds into his trouser-pocket. The sky was dark with the possibility of rain as he set off up the slope. It was full of aircraft and he identified them as Junkers 87s and 88s, which could mean only one thing. The navy was copping it somewhere to the east.

  Ay Yithion stood out sharply like a group of white stones. Even the gulls looked like spectres against the darkness of the sky, and the colour of the apple and peach orchards bordered by ilex, walnut and mulberry shone against the pink spurs of oleander. The place was quiet and there seemed to be an atmosphere of nervousness about it.

  Annoula was almost the first person he saw. She was hurrying past the harbour, looking worried, and had more news of the German look-out post on Cape Kastamanitsa, set up to watch for Greeks trying to escape south.

  Cotton frowned. A look-out with a radio meant that they’d be unable to escape until after dark. In daylight the Messerschmitts would be down on them in a matter of minutes.

  ‘Where’s Varvara?’ he demanded.

  Her eyes were scared. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Somethin
g’s happening. They got a message from Kalani. But they’re going to bring the petrol as soon as they can. I was just coming to tell you. They’ve heard that the Germans are coming and they’ve been hiding it.’ She pointed beyond the harbour and Cotton saw the younger Varvara’s boat moored there. ‘Athanasios took his boat out,’ she said. ‘He thought it would be safer.’

  The uncertainty that seemed to hang over Ay Yithion affected Cotton and he looked about him nervously. ‘I’d better arrange to have the kid brought back to us,’ he said. Then I’ve got to see Varvara. I’m scared something’s going to go wrong because we’ve got to wait until dark before we can leave, and that’s twelve hours away.’

  As they headed into the village, they saw people lifting their heads and staring towards the north. At first Cotton thought it was aircraft they were listening to, then he realised it was the sound of lorry engines.

  ‘The Germans!’ The speaker was an old man who came hurrying down the flat steps of the main street. He looked terrified and was pointing over his shoulder. ‘I saw them from my window.’

  Immediately the place came to life and people began to hurry children indoors. The sponge fishermen, stuffing their work into sacks, vanished among the houses, and the old men mending nets for their sons packed up their twine and followed.

  ‘Not the cafe,’ Annoula said quickly. ‘The church of Ayia Triadha.’

  Tve got to get the kid.’ Cotton turned but she snatched at his hand and pulled him with her. He had just wrenched his hand away again to go and find Howard when a man yelled and he was caught up in a flurry of running people. Annoula’s fingers, thin but strong, grabbed his own again and this time, unwillingly, he allowed himself to be pulled into the church.

  It was a tumbledown place full of washed-out colours and insipid pictures, and the smell of incense, herbs, beeswax, candles and candle-smoke. Faded and pale, the two main ikons of our Lord and our Lady had been prominently placed and Annoula crossed herself and kissed them devoutly. Then she bought and lit a candle and Cotton did the same, aware of the irony of Patullo’s revolver clutched inside the curtain in his hand.

  Other people seemed to have had the same idea and the church was full. The priest, a big man with a fringe of black beard who looked like a farmer, was invoking the saints as they kneeled, intoning the service with the aid of a cantor.

  Outside, everything seemed to have become silent. Then they heard the grinding of the lorry engines.

  ‘This is my Body… This is my Blood. Thine of Thine Own we offer Thee…’

  The intoning voice droned on but, their ears tuned to what was going on outside, no one was listening. Lorry doors and tail-gates banged methodically and they heard the clump of nailed boots.

  ‘By the Holy Spirit…’

  ‘Amen, Amen, Amen—’

  The chant was cut across abruptly by a burst of machine-gun fire that jerked every head up as one. Frightened eyes stared towards the door.

  The priest, who had been preparing to offer Communion, was standing as if petrified, holding the bread and the wine and the spoon he used. His face was expressionless but from the way his eyes were working Cotton could see he was thinking fast.

  A man in front of Cotton rose to his feet and began to leave the church. As he did so, there was another long burst of machine-gun fire, then a scream, the harsh dry scream of a shocked woman, and a series of harsh shouts outside, and the man began to run. At once, other men rose and followed him, followed by the woman. The priest was still standing by the altar, motionless. As the church doors burst open and the congregation spilled outside, there were more shouts, then more shots and screams.

  Finally the priest moved, beckoning the few remaining people in the church towards him. Annoula seemed to be petrified with terror and Cotton dragged her to her feet, and they ran down the aisle towards the front of the church just as the priest disappeared. Pushing through the door beyond the altar where he had vanished, they found themselves in a small room full of varnished brown wood and pink-washed walls, the register open on a desk, alongside it the pair of down-at-heel boots the priest wore about the village. A picture of the Virgin Mary, its peeling tinfoil frame held in place by a piece of sticking plaster, stared at them. The priest opened a door and pointed to a narrow alley beyond.

  The few people who had been left in church crowded through after them and began to run, dispersing as they went. The shooting was coming more often now and the air was filled with despairing and agonised screaming and the shouts of men. The smell of smoke and the crackling of flames beyond the church grew stronger and, as they pushed past a line of nets and octopus drying in the sun, they caught a glimpse of German soldiers holding tommy-guns. They had dragged outside all the men who’d been in the cafe eating rolls and drinking their morning coffee and lined them up against the wall with their hands in the air. For a second they were fully occupied and Cotton snatched at Annoula’s hand and dived into a whitewashed alleyway that rose in front of them, shallow step by shallow step along the hillside. Above them, Cotton noticed, the rain clouds had receded and the sky was full of long rinsed lines fading through apricot to yellow; then they were running along a lifting alleyway topped with wet bougainvillaea and dripping strands of honeysuckle and cacti against a stark white wall.

  The shooting seemed to have intensified and kept coming in regular bursts now, and as they climbed they could see dark brown-yellow smoke lifting into the sky.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Annoula panted.

  As they climbed, they heard a shout and the clump of feet behind them and had to dive into another alley running along the side of the hill. There was a yard full of dust and crowded with chickens, and they ran through them, sending them flying in a squawking cloud of feathers. Pushing Annoula over a low wall, Cotton climbed after her to fall on top of her on the other side.

  They were on the outskirts of the village now, hidden from the road to Kalani, as it ran round the curve of the hill by a thick screen of aloes. Through the heavy spiked leaves he could see a blindfolded donkey, shaded by a walnut tree, plodding round a well, then he saw a German car moving slowly up the road with two civilians in it. There was a small scouting vehicle behind it and several men moving alongside. Grabbing Annoula round the waist, he pulled her down among the long stalks of dried grass.

  ‘Wo sind sie?’ The harsh voice was on the other side of the wall and, as the girl gasped with terror, he clapped a big square hand over her mouth and pulled her to him, enfolding her in his big arms to hold her still and quieten her terror. Her fingers clutched at his shirt and he could feel her shuddering in his grasp.

  The voices sounded nearer now but, as he removed his hand from her mouth to unwrap the revolver, he realised the footsteps beyond the wall had moved away and the voices were growing fainter. For a long time, they remained silent, clutching each other in the shadows beneath the aloes, hidden from the road by the long grass.

  ‘Why? Why, Cotton, why?’ The girl’s mouth was so close to his face he could feel her breath on his cheek. ‘What are they doing? They’re destroying the whole village.’

  Her arms went round his body in terror and he felt her shaking violently. He pulled her closer, holding her against the wall, her face against his, one hand round her under her breast, so that he could feel the beating of her heart through her thin yellow shirt.

  ‘Perhaps they found out that Varvara was helping us,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps they learned about the petrol.’

  ‘But how? How could they? Why should they do this to Yithion?’

  The shooting seemed to have died away now, and all they could hear was the wailing of women. Then they saw the German car in the distance move away and the soldiers on the road move back to their own vehicle and climb into it. It moved down the hill nearer to the village and soon afterwards they saw it parked and four men moving forward carrying a stretcher made from a torn-off door. Even at that distance, Cotton could see that one of them was carrying a khaki blouse and he kne
w the figure on the stretcher was Howard.

  ‘They’ve got the kid,’ he said.

  Her eyes probed the depths of his distress and, as he moved, almost as though he intended to dispute what was happening below them, she clung to him tighter, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arms. The lorry moved away and another half dozen vehicles, with soldiers sitting in them, upright like dummies, followed it. They seemed untouched, as though they had committed no crime, clean, wholesome-looking men, but they were sitting very still and not talking much.

  They watched the lorries disappear over the brow of the hill but they still didn’t move. The sun was hot now and the little hiding place against the wall was warm. Cotton, who had been peering at the road through the broad thick leaves of the aloes, turned. A pair of huge, frightened charcoal eyes were staring straight into his and for the first time he became aware of the warmth of Annoula’s body against his, and the soft flesh of her breast under his fingers. Abruptly he snatched his hand away and stood up, moving the palm guiltily against his trousers as if to wipe away the feelings of warmth and life. Her eyes followed him. She looked desperately small and frail.

  Tve got to get back,’ he said. I’ve got to get to the boat.’

  She seemed to come back to the present with a jerk. She pulled her skirt down where it had ridden up over her thighs and scrambled to her knees.

  ‘We’ve got to get away,’ Cotton said. It surprised him that he was able to make up his mind so easily, that he was able to abandon Howard without any agony of guilt. He supposed this was what ships’ captains, generals and leaders had to do all the time but he’d never supposed it would ever happen to him or that he’d be able to face up to it so easily. But the elementary facts were clear. There was nothing they could do for Howard. He was a prisoner and it was beyond their strength and resources to free him. The only thing he could do now was make sure everyone else who depended on him was safe.

  Annoula was staring towards the village and the smoke, her face desolate and wretched. ‘I must find Varvara,’ she said.