‘I’m sure it did. And this woman?’
‘Girl, sir. She’s not all that old.’
‘What relationship is she?’
‘Cousin, sir,’ Cotton said stoutly, staring the commander unflinchingly in the eye.
‘Is she now? It was a fortunate coincidence you found her, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Cotton said. ‘Very fortunate. But, then, I might have guessed. You know what these Mediterranean lot are like. Breed like rabbits.’
‘I hope you don’t, Cotton,’ Kennard said. ‘I don’t think I’d like to meet a regiment of Cottons. Very well, I’ll have a word with the padre. Under the circumstances, it’s the least we can do. In the meantime I’d better get over to headquarters because I’ve beard there are only fifty ack-ack guns on the island and thirty-odd obsolescent fighters. You’ll all be questioned by Intelligence, of course, and be expected to pass on everything to the admiral. To the army commander in charge here, too, for that matter. It looks like being Freyberg. Will that bother you?’
‘No, sir.’
Kennard looked at Cotton’s solid bulk and unemotional face. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I shouldn’t think it would.’
As Kennard departed, Varvara and his family appeared on deck. Annoula was with them. She seemed strained and exhausted and she looked at Cotton with a worried expression. He marched straight up to her and, taking her arm, drew her aside.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he announced. ‘You’ll be able to go to Egypt. They’ll look after you.’
She looked at him sadly. ‘I have nobody in Egypt.’
‘You have me.’
She gave him an unhappy look. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Egypt isn’t your country.’
‘It is at the moment. Alexandria’s our base. Or it will be when they chuck us out of here.’
‘But after that?’
It seemed to present no problem to Cotton. ‘You can go to England. They send wives and kids home via the Cape.’
‘I have nowhere to go in England.’
‘I can give you an address. My address.’ He wondered what his mother would say when she turned up. Probably fall on her neck and burst into tears of joy.
She shook her head. ‘Not now. Not after – not after what they did to me.’
Cotton frowned. ‘What bloody difference does that make?’ he snorted.
‘Nobody would want me after that.’
‘I’d have you.’
Cotton frowned as he spoke. He’d done it now, he decided. Here he was, in spite of everything he’d ever thought, bloody well opting for the one thing he’d always fought shy of – a Greek wife, Greek relations and Greek kids yelling in a foreign lingo and having their teeth knocked out by the other kids in the street because they were wops. Perhaps it’d be easier not to take his discharge in a hurry after the war. After all, there were Maltese wives in the navy and nobody minded them, and it would give everybody time to settle down a bit.
And perhaps the kids would be lucky enough to turn out as big as he was.
Annoula was looking up at him, her eyes filling with tears. To her Cotton represented security such as she’d forgotten existed. ‘You are a good man, Cotton,’ she said.
‘No, I’m not,’ he said bluntly. ‘My parents were Greek and, because it was sometimes uncomfortable having Greek parents in London, I ran away and joined the Marines. I even pretended I wasn’t Greek and never wrote to them much. I expect I’ll have to change if you’re there.’
‘Perhaps they won’t want me.’
‘I think they will. I think my ma will fall over herself to get you in the house. I’ll write and tell ’em you’re coming.’
She stared up at him, moisture sparkling on her lashes, and her face split in a smile that was trusting, happy, relieved and joyful all at the same time. Cotton’s stolid heart thumped as he realised how beautiful she could be when she tried. Then her face became grave again, meek almost, and dutiful.
‘Very well, Cotton,’ she said.
Jesus, he thought – and oddly enough for the first time it didn’t shock him – she sounds like Ma.
Epilogue
On 28 April 1941, only a few days after Loukia’s return, confirmation of Corporal Cotton’s opinion came when Winston Churchill signalled to General Wavell in North Africa to suggest that an airborne attack on Crete should be expected.
‘It seems clear from our information,’ he said, ‘that a heavy airborne attack by German troops and bombers will soon be made on Crete… It ought to be a fine opportunity for killing the parachute troops.’
Churchill’s view was not an unreasonable one but unfortunately the garrison was far from sufficiently equipped to meet the attack, which came on 20 May. The first parachutists and the first airborne troops in gliders were killed almost to a man, but more arrived and their final capture of Maleme airfield was the turning point of the struggle. A German attempt to follow up with caiques from Milos, however, met with disaster. Four British cruisers – one of them Caernarvon and four destroyers got among them, as Loukia had off Cape Kastamanitsa, and sank almost every one by gunfire or ramming, including the Italian destroyer which was escorting them. A second convoy was attacked on the same day and the Germans made no further attempt.
Because the attack on Crete had been expected, it cost the Germans one-third of their airborne invaders – 12,000 to 17,000 men – together with 170 troop-carrying aircraft. Never again did they risk their air division troops in so hazardous an operation. Their commanders had grown older and more cautious overnight because the cost of victory had proved too high, and in the end Hitler turned his parachute regiments into infantry. Although the British were thrown out of Crete, they had blunted one of Hitler’s most effective weapons, and it has always been believed that Crete delayed Hitler’s attack on Russia so long he was just too late to capture Moscow before the Russian winter set in. The following year the German decline began.
As for Cotton and Annoula Akoumianakis, their story perhaps supplied the happy ending that was not immediately obvious in Crete. After an exhausting journey through a variety of refugee camps in the Middle East and South Africa, Annoula finally reached London the following year, when, as Cotton had suspected, she was swept delightedly into the Cotonou home. Being Greek, she was literally held captive by Cotton’s mother until Cotton himself, wearing three stripes and a DSM for what he’d done on Aeos, returned from the Middle East to enjoy survivor’s leave after Caernarvon had been sunk by a German torpedo.
He remained in England as an instructor until the time came for the British to return to the Greek islands in 1944. Rather to his surprise he was commissioned because of his ability to speak Greek. He even managed to pick up an MC – ironically enough for leading the attack on Kalani when Aeos was reoccupied. A little startled by his unexpected success, he remained in the Marines until 1955, when – still considered to be a bit regimental – he retired as a captain. For a year or two he did various jobs. Then, in 1960 when the tourist boom got going, Bisset, whose languages had landed him a job with one of the larger British travel firms, got in touch with him and he found himself appointed as Greek representative with a base in Athens. So that, in the end, accepting his Greek origins with far less trouble than he had ever expected, he got the best of both worlds.
Next in The WWII Naval Thrillers:
North Strike
A searing tale of war and espionage from the edge of the world
Find out more
First published in the United Kingdom in 2001 by House of Stratus
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © John Harris, 2001
The moral right of John Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788636827
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cotton's War Page 28