Marine B SBS

by Ian Blake

  The German’s head went back, his knees buckled, and down he came, his forward momentum reversed by the impact of the bullet.

  ‘Timberrr!’ Tiller called softly from the stairs as the man pitched forward.

  ‘Christ,’ said Barnesworth with feeling. ‘I know how those big-game hunters feel now. That was close.’

  ‘Well-trained bugger, wasn’t he?’ said Larssen admiringly. ‘Taking his gun with him to have a pee. But next time shoot for the middle, Billy. The head is too small a target.’

  6

  They left it to Demetrios, to whom they awarded the German rations they found in the house, to explain to the locals what had happened. To avoid any possible reprisals, they were to clean up the house, dispose of the bodies, and to tell any other Germans who might appear that the first patrol had moved inland to find the Italian garrison. A battalion of men could vanish without trace in such wild country.

  Before leaving they threw all the Germans’ weapons into the harbour. To leave them would be too great a temptation for the locals, whose hatred of the Germans, so Demetrios told them, was matched only by their wholehearted contempt for the Italians. In the early-morning light they also looked to see if the launch was visible, but it lay safely out of sight in ten fathoms of murky water.

  The sun was well up as they got back to the bay. In their absence Christophou had moored the caique by a stern warp to a tree. Its bows were held from swinging on to the rocky shore by an anchor whose warp was strained and taut. Demetrios bade them an emotional farewell.

  The wind had freshened in the night and was now blowing strongly from the north-west and the water, even in the sheltered bay, was flecked with white.

  Christophou, who had always been quite imperturbable, seemed agitated. ‘This is a dangerous place when the meltemi blows. We must leave at once. There is a good anchorage at Alemnia for sheltering from a northerly gale.’

  Tiller listened to the wind as it shrieked through the rigging and watched the waves pounding the shore.

  ‘So this is the meltemi,’ he said to Barnesworth. ‘No wonder they didn’t want to tell us about it.’

  It seemed inconceivable to him that there could be gales in such tranquil waters, and when the sky was such a vivid blue, but there was a faint chill in the air and the boat moved uneasily under their feet. Giorgiou released the stern rope while Tiller hauled in on the anchor warp and Larssen and Barnesworth hoisted the sails. The mainsail canvas cracked noisily as it ran up the mast and the foresail slammed to and fro until its sheets were hauled tight and it filled with wind.

  Outside the bay the waves had begun to build. They ran with white crests off which the wind whipped spray that stung the eyes of those aboard the caique and soaked their clothing. The caique’s timbers groaned as it forged through the water and every now and again water slopped over the bows and ran down the scuppers.

  ‘Should we reef?’ Larssen asked.

  Christophou shook his head and pointed ahead. ‘Once we get beyond that headland we will be more sheltered.’

  He grinned at Barnesworth, who had gone very pale. ‘If you want to be sick, my friend, be sick over that side. Otherwise it all blows back into your face.’

  ‘I know how to be fucking sick on a fucking boat,’ said Barnesworth, and was.

  ‘I didn’t know you suffered from mal de mer, Billy,’ said Larssen with mock horror. ‘You should have stayed in the Guards.’

  ‘I like being in or under the bleeding water,’ said Barnesworth, ‘not on it. At least not in a tub like this.’

  The wind continued to rise, but once beyond the headland the caique moved more easily through the choppy water and, with the wind now on its quarter, it sailed close to its maximum speed of six or seven knots.

  Alemnia, at first an indistinct hump on the horizon, grew rapidly bigger and an hour after leaving Calchi they were entering the tiny island’s one good natural harbour. There were a scattering of cottages at the inner extreme of the large inlet, two churches, and a castle ruin atop a hill, but no sign of life.

  The beach shelved so steeply that Christophou was able to throw out a stern anchor and run the caique gently on to the sand. The SBS patrol, their Stens at the ready, jumped off the caique’s bow and looked around them. The door of one of the cottages banged in the wind. Nearby was a flag-pole with a tattered Italian flag fluttering halfway up it.

  They searched the houses. They were all empty except for one whose occupants lay dead on the earth floor. A horde of flies buzzed over the bodies. There was only one man – the rest were women or children. Larssen slammed the door shut, his face aflame with anger.

  Behind the last house was a crude stone wall, perhaps the beginning of some unfinished building. By it lay five bodies dressed in Italian army uniform. Their hands were tied behind their backs with wire. Larssen turned them face up with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Executed,’ he said. ‘They must have been propped against the wall and shot.’

  When they returned to the beach Christophou was talking to an old priest whose grey beard reached to his chest.

  ‘Does he know what happened?’ Larssen asked.

  ‘The Germans came,’ Christophou said with a shrug. Whatever the Germans did came as no surprise to him. ‘He hid in a tomb. He heard firing. The Germans searched the church but didn’t find him. He saw them go.’

  ‘How did they go?’ Larssen asked, his fury unabated. ‘What were they in? How many of them were there?’

  It took time for Christophou to extract the answers from the old priest, who was still visibly upset, but eventually Christophou was able to say: ‘He thinks there were ten of them. In a white launch. It had a flag at the back.’

  ‘If I’d known about this,’ said Barnesworth. ‘I’d have shot that bastard a lot lower down than his head.’

  ‘Tell the priest that justice has been done,’ Larssen told Christophou. ‘That they are all dead.’

  They found spades and a pickaxe and dug eleven graves by the beach. The two babies they laid to rest with their mothers. The priest said a few words over each of the graves and they found some driftwood and made crosses for each mound of earth.

  When they had finished they searched the area for arms or supplies. They found some Chianti, which they drank, but the Germans had destroyed or taken everything else. The priest wrung their hands and blessed them as they climbed aboard the caique from the beach. As they hauled in on the stern anchor and the caique’s bow slid off the sand he called out to them.

  ‘What’d he say?’ Tiller asked.

  ‘He says war is a terrible thing,’ said Christophou. ‘But you have behaved honourably. He says: Godspeed.’

  It was open water between Alemnia and Simi and Christophou took the precaution of reefing, but even with its sail area reduced the caique seemed to be more under the water than riding on it. The wind continued to rise and it chopped up the sea into vicious steep-sided waves that threatened to sweep the deck from stern to stem. Each time this looked inevitable the caique’s counter managed to lift itself above the foaming water at the last moment, the bow would dip, the old sail would shake itself like a dog, and the caique would plunge forward, spray cascading over the deck.

  Barnesworth retched occasionally over the side, and looked miserable. Giorgiou, impervious to the water cascading over him, sat propped against the mast, ready to lower the sail if necessary. He stropped his knife with quiet intensity. Larssen, brought up on the waters of the Skaggerak, was in his element.

  Tiller, experiencing the power of the wind and the sea at close quarters for the first time, was surprised at the noise the storm generated. The wind shrieked through the rigging, a loose halyard banged with fearful force against the mast, the hull shuddered and groaned like a dying man, and below in the hold something rolled and clanged. How everything held together was a miracle, but Christophou, who was having to use all his strength to control the caique with the long, curved tiller, seemed quite unconcerned.

&nbs
p; ‘The meltemi comes out of a clear sky,’ he shouted at the SBS men above the racket. ‘Brrm, just like that. This one is not too bad. By this evening it will be flat calm.’

  ‘Is there no warning?’

  ‘None. It blows from between north-east and north-west during the summer months. August is the worst month. If you are in harbour and it starts to blow hard you must stay there. If you are at sea run for shelter quickly. If there is no shelter make for open water, drop your sails, and run before the wind. If the storm is very bad you throw out warps to slow you down. I have known boats to be blown halfway to Cyprus by the meltemi.’

  Larssen noted this information; there might be a time when he would need it.

  As if on cue, the wind began to die as they approached Simi and its last puff bore them into the port as the sun dipped behind the mountainous interior.

  Warrington, like Barnesworth, a Special Boat Section survivor from the days of Roger Courtney and Stirling’s D Squadron, was on the quay to greet them.

  ‘The major was on the blower earlier today, skipper,’ he said to Larssen. ‘He asked that you stand by the set at 2000 hours.’

  ‘Thanks, Ted. All quiet here?’

  ‘Lieutenant Kristos has the locals under his thumb, but the Eyeties seem to blow hot and cold. No sign of any Krauts yet.’

  The garrison had begun to dig slit trenches and some food had been delivered to the village from the castle. But no fuel had been sent to the MAS boat, which was still moored at the far end of the quay.

  The radio in LS8 came to life at exactly 2000. ‘Sunray calling LS8. How do you hear me? Over.’

  ‘Strength 8, Sunray. Loud and clear,’ Griffiths replied and handed Larssen the microphone.

  ‘Sunray minor here. Over.’

  ‘I am on Epsilon, repeat Epsilon.’ Larssen glanced at the code-book on his knees which the SBS patrols had devised for communicating unimportant tactical information to one another. Alpha was Simi, Omega was Rhodes, Epsilon was Samos, north of the Dodecanese. What the hell was Jarrett doing there?

  ‘Roger, Sunray. Over.’

  ‘Beta, Gamma and Delta all secured, and will be replaced shortly. I am still negotiating here. Accolade going to plan, especially on Beta. Over.’

  That meant SBS patrols had established control on Kos, Kalimnos and Leros, and that they would be relieved by army units, probably the battalion of the Durham Light Infantry that had been dispatched from Malta. It also meant that the single airfield on Kos was fit to receive the seven South African Air Force Spitfires earmarked for the islands. That was a big bonus. Without any air cover the whole enterprise was in jeopardy.

  ‘Good going, Sunray. But why Epsilon?’

  ‘Our friends require our presence. We have reasons to believe that Epsilon may receive visitors. Any sign of them around you?’

  Larssen briefed Jarrett on the situation on Piscopi, Calchi and Alemnia, and expressed his doubts about the garrison on Simi. Jarrett advised further pressure on the Italians as ‘visitors’ had to be expected eventually.

  ‘Intelligence sources indicate preparations around Athens and on Crete. You can take it our friends will arrive. So you have my authority to use whatever persuasion you think best on our friends. Alpha is essential as a base for you. But minimum force. We have enough problems without creating more. Is that understood? Over.’

  Jarrett then said his operator was going to send a coded message by the one-time pad method, and Larssen handed the microphone back to Griffiths. Decipherment was Griffiths’s business, not his.

  Jarrett’s operator gave Griffiths the number of the top sheet of the one-time pad and then switched to Morse code. Griffiths took down the encoded message – a string of meaningless letters and numbers – and then translated these from the top sheet of the one-time pad. Then he ripped off the sheet from the pad and put a match to it before dropping the charred remains overboard. The one-time pad was the most secure method of transmitting signals in code. It was also very slow and laborious.

  Larssen waited with ill-disguised impatience while Griffiths went methodically about his task of decipherment. Eventually Griffiths handed Larssen the message on a piece of signals paper and logged that he had received it in his book. Jarrett’s message said that he had been ordered to send a patrol to Rhodes as quickly as possible to find out if the Germans were reinforcing the island. A co-ordinate was given where the patrol should land to reconnoitre Marizza airfield in the north-west corner, and the following evening the patrol would be met there by Andartes, who would hand over what they knew about German reinforcements elsewhere on the island.

  Larssen swore under his breath as he read the signal. He could hardly ask Christophou to go on such a potentially dangerous mission, the MAS boat still had no fuel, and the engine of LS8 was spread out on its deck.

  But then he read: ‘T-class submarine will be with you by midnight tomorrow. Acknowledge. Jarrett.’ Well, that settled who the patrol would consist of: it was a job for the cockle and its crew.

  Larssen decided that Jarrett’s orders gave him a free hand with the garrison. ‘Minimum force’ was, in the circumstances, a conveniently vague phrase. It was time to get some action from the Italians. But when Tiller and Barnesworth went with him next morning to confront them Larssen sensed that Salvini knew the Germans were going to try and pre-empt British occupation of the Dodecanese, for he was wary and certainly in no mood to be helpful. He said, through Perquesta, that the garrison had spared as much food as it could for the local population.

  ‘Crap,’ Larssen snapped. ‘There wasn’t even enough for the kids.’

  Salvini shrugged as Perquesta translated and Larssen’s quick temper nearly got the better of him. Instead he pointed at Salvini’s prominent stomach and said to Perquesta in as level a voice as he could manage: ‘Tell the captain that being so overweight is unhealthy. I am recommending a diet for him.’

  Perquesta nibbled at his moustache. ‘A diet, signore?’

  ‘That’s right. I shall make sure he eats only what the children eat.’

  ‘But how? ... ’

  ‘An enforced diet, if necessary. Do I make myself clear?’

  He did, and Salvini was quick to take the hint.

  ‘The captain says that the food that was delivered was only a first consignment. Naturally, more is being sent today.’

  ‘Naturally. Please congratulate the captain on his generosity and common sense. Now there is the little matter of fuel for the MAS boat.’

  Salvini appeared to consider himself on firmer ground with the fuel. It was, he said, regrettable that none had yet been delivered to the MAS boat but he had to have the permission of his superiors on Leros and so far he had been unable to contact them by radio.

  ‘So how long will it be?’ Larssen snapped.

  Not long, Salvini promised.

  ‘What do you reckon Salvini’s word is worth, skipper?’ Tiller asked as they made a quick tour of the garrison’s new defences with Perquesta.

  ‘Not a row of beans,’ said Larssen. ‘But I want food for those kids first. We don’t know for sure if Balbao will help us. We know the locals will. Remember the garrison outnumbers us by ten to one.’

  ‘Make it fifty to one and I’d still fancy our chances,’ said Barnesworth, looking at the men who were manning the slit trenches. He turned to Perquesta. ‘When did these men last see any action?’

  ‘Some fought in Abyssinia,’ Perquesta said.

  ‘Abyssinia!’ Larssen exploded. ‘Christ, that was eight years ago.’

  ‘They are middle-aged,’ Perquesta admitted, ‘and the fire has gone from their bellies. They are confused, too. Whose side are they meant to be on? They are in no man’s land and they are afraid they will be shot at from both sides. When are your reinforcements coming, Captain? What is needed is a show of strength.’

  ‘Soon,’ said Larssen. ‘In the meantime the garrison has an obligation to defend Italian soil. They must understand that.’

  Perquest
a shook his head. ‘They know it. They also know – because the population never lets them forget it – that these islands are not Italian.’

  The transport turned out to be one of the T-class submarines the British had handed over to the Royal Hellenic Navy. The Papankolis had been diverted at the last minute while on passage from Alexandria to its operational area off Salonika. Its recognition signal had been radioed to the SBS men an hour before it arrived and the Italians were warned of its arrival.

  Few submariners, Larssen knew from experience, liked being involved in clandestine operations. These were risky enough for those going on them, but they were even more risky for the submarine and its crew. Submarines needed deep water for safety, and depth was not to be had near any coastline. Caught on the surface, a submarine had little chance against air attack and was horribly vulnerable to fast surface forces. Coldly calculated, it meant risking a highly trained crew and a vessel worth God knows what to get two men ashore in a flimsy canvas contraption on a mission that could be, and often was, a wild-goose chase.

  Commanders-in-chief valued their submarines, and did not risk them lightly. When an admiral reluctantly agreed – and it was always reluctantly – to assign one to a clandestine mission his staff tended to choose one that had some connection with the operation it had been ordered to mount.

  However, the Greek CO of the Papankolis saw no connection at all. As far as he was concerned he was wasting valuable time and valuable fuel which he could have spent sinking German shipping off Salonika.

  He told Tiller and Barnesworth all this in no uncertain terms after they had paddled the cockle out to the submarine to where it lay off the port. They must understand, he said, that if they did not return to the rendezvous on time the following night he could not wait for them.

  They supervised the stowing of the cockle, watching to make sure the fragile craft was not damaged in any way. The sixteen-foot cockle they had brought with them from Castelrosso was of the collapsible kind, an improved version of the Mark II that Tiller had used on the Gironde raid the previous year. It had a plywood deck and bottom but canvas sides and by hinging forward the struts that kept the deck in place they were able to concertina the whole structure to a compact depth which enabled it to fit down the torpedo hatch.