Marine B SBS

by Ian Blake

  Larssen, however, remained quite unmoved. ‘It’s no bloody use to us, is it?’

  Tiller looked with fascination at the sleek craft with its long, curved counter and pointed bow, and asked: ‘How fast did you say, Bill?’

  ‘I reckon fifty knots. In flat water, that is. If it went at that speed in any kind of a sea it would sink like a stone. It beats me why the Krauts brought it along.’

  ‘For reconnoitring the island, perhaps,’ said Larssen. ‘Get rid of it.’

  ‘Eh, wait a tick, skipper,’ Tiller interjected. ‘You never know. It might come in handy.’

  Larssen shrugged. ‘All right, but get it out of sight. I suspect from now on we’ll be attracting the attention of the Stukas.’

  Many of the local people had vanished before the Germans had even landed. Now they began returning to the port.

  ‘How did the locals know?’ Larssen asked Angelika when he and Tiller visited the taverna.

  ‘It was an instinct,’ she answered. ‘The people here have lived with the war for a long time. They have learnt what to do to avoid being killed.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘Into the mountains. There is water there, and some food has been stored in a safe place. It is a way of avoiding reprisals. They did it for centuries when the Turks ruled the islands. The Turks sent out search parties but they never found anyone. Nor did the Italians. How could you find anyone in those mountains? Impossible!’

  ‘There are Andartes up there?’ Larssen asked casually.

  Angelika hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  The girl’s face was expressionless.

  ‘ELAS or EDES? Which ones?’ said Larssen.

  Angelika wiped the palms of her hands on her apron. ‘Perhaps I can find out for you,’ she said quietly. ‘Now please excuse me. There are other customers I must serve.’

  ‘When the Germans come again,’ Larssen said, ’they will come in strength. We will need all the help we can get.’

  Angelika inclined her head. ‘I understand.’

  ‘We want to know how many of them there are and whether they need arms or ammunition,’ Larssen said urgently, putting his hand on the girl’s sleeve. ‘Above all, we need to know if they are prepared to help us. Or if they only care about who is in power after the war. Are they politicians or fighting men, Angelika?’

  The girl did not attempt to pull back from him, but for a moment, when her eyes met Larssen’s, Tiller felt that perhaps the Dane had met his match. Then, just as quickly, the flash of anger at Larssen touching her was gone and she dropped her gaze.

  ‘Please. I must go,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll try and find out for you.’

  Larssen removed his hand. She glanced at Tiller and then turned on her heel and disappeared behind the black curtain.

  Larssen gave a grunt of disgust and reached for his glass. ‘I sometimes wonder if your little navigator has not got other allegiances, Tiger. I see what her father meant by being stubborn. She has quite a temper, yes?’

  ‘She’s a looker,’ said Barnesworth admiringly. ‘I’d never really noticed her before. Bloody good navigator, though,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘Perhaps we didn’t tackle her the right way,’ said Tiller. ‘You know how touchy the Greeks can be.’

  Larssen grunted again. ‘You better see what you can get out of her,’ he said to Tiller.

  ‘Me?’ said Tiller, alarmed. ‘She’s like a clam with me. Doesn’t even want to pass the time of day.’

  ‘See what you can do, Tiger. It’s important. I think maybe somewhere she has a soft spot for you.’

  The fall of Kos drove a wedge into the British presence on the islands, isolating the garrisons of Leros and Samos. It brought an end to any Allied fighter presence and the Luftwaffe now turned its attention to softening up the British garrison on Leros and preventing supplies from reaching it. Five weeks later it fell too, isolating the last and strongest British garrison, on Samos.

  German air patrols were now so effective and so frequent that it became virtually impossible for the larger British warships to pass north-westwards between Rhodes and the Turkish mainland. But coastal forces, and the Flotilla’s caiques, were still managing to get through to Simi and Samos with supplies by hugging the Turkish coastline and lying up under camouflage nets during the day.

  ‘I’ve just heard the boss and his team are now on Samos,’ Larssen told his patrol after Leros fell. ‘But he told me the situation is serious. The bigwigs are determined to hold on because they still want Rhodes. Badly. Everyone else seems to think our position is untenable. Our job is to show them that it’s not. The Krauts know we’re here now, but they’re too busy further north to do anything much about us – except to send in Stukas occasionally. For the time being we stay here. But we may soon have to move, perhaps to the Turkish mainland.’

  There was a murmur of surprise.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Larssen said after a pause. ‘Naval intelligence has just reported that the two destroyers which were seen making in this direction last month are in Rhodes port. They can’t do much damage there but they may be planning to move to Portolago now that Leros is in German hands. At the moment they are not fully operational and Rhodes has no proper dockyard for them. Portolago, as you know, was the Italians’ main base in the area. It has all the facilities the destroyers need. I don’t need to tell you the serious implications it would have if two such comparatively powerful vessels were at large in the area.’

  ‘Reckon Griffiths’s Solothurn wouldn’t make much impression on them,’ Barnesworth remarked lugubriously. Tiller noticed he had lately taken to sucking his teeth, an irritating habit.

  ‘You’re right there, Billy,’ said Maygan. ‘And frankly, the navy’s now got nothing in the area that could touch them, especially once they’ve had their boilers cleaned and are fully fuelled and armed.’

  There was a moment’s silence as everyone digested this. Then Larssen, in his casual way, dropped his bombshell. ‘We’re being asked if there is anything we can do about them.’

  ‘Jeesus!’ Tiller groaned.

  ‘What the hell are we supposed to do, skipper?’ said Barnesworth. ‘Motor out in the caique and wave them down when they pass here, and ask them to let us scuttle them?’

  Larssen grinned his boyish grin. ‘I hope we can think of something better than that, Billy. RAF Akrotiri managed to get some air reconnaissance photographs for us of where they are lying in Rhodes port. One of their air-sea rescue launches will deliver them to us after dark tonight.’

  ‘There’s the MAS boat,’ Tiller said doubtfully. ‘But what chance would that have against two destroyers even if they aren’t fully operational.’

  ‘None,’ Maygan confirmed. ‘But I have no doubt our Italian friends would have a go if asked.’

  ‘Our best chance is to get them when they’re in harbour,’ said Larssen. ‘We can’t risk waiting until they arrive in Leros. Anyway, they may not even go there. We’ve got to try and get them before they leave.’

  ‘Do we know when they’re leaving, skipper?’ Tiller asked.

  ‘Intelligence reckons we’ve got a minimum of forty-eight hours, perhaps seventy-two. But no more.’

  The air reconnaissance photographs arrived that night, as promised. Larssen spread them out on the table. The vertical shots clearly showed the layout of the port’s three harbours. Looking from seaward Mandraki, the smallest, was the right-hand one. Behind it lay the modern town. Next was Emborikos, where the two destroyers were moored. Behind it lay the old walled city of Rhodes, with the castle in one corner. Next to Emborikos was Akandia, the commercial harbour, with its long pier. In peacetime it was used by local ferries as well as merchant ships. The deep waters of Emborikos harbour showed up clearly on the photographs in contrast to the shallows of Akandia harbour, inshore from the pier.

  Larssen arranged the relevant shots of Emborikos harbour together and began scrutinizing th
em closely with stereoscopic magnifiers. ‘Whoever took these deserves a medal,’ he said. ‘Just have a look at that.’

  He passed the magnifiers and photographs to Maygan, who peered at them with the viewing device. Every detail of the harbour leapt out at him with amazing three-dimensional clarity.

  ‘How the hell do you chaps do it?’ he asked the flight sergeant who had brought the photographs from Cyprus.

  ‘It’s simple enough, sir. The camera is set automatically to take a succession of photographs which each have a sixty per cent overlap with the previous print. Because of the forward movement of the aircraft each photograph is taken at a slightly difficult angle from its predecessor. As you can see, if you put two successive ones together, and view the overlap through the magnifiers, a three-dimensional effect is achieved. It usually shows up the details on the photograph with great clarity.’

  ‘It certainly does,’ said Maygan.

  Even objects on the decks of the two destroyers, which were tied up alongside one another at the central quay, were crystal-clear. A man on the bridge of one could be seen shading his eyes as he looked up at the passing aircraft. Half a dozen more men had been frozen by the camera as they scrambled for what must have been the destroyer’s anti-aircraft armament placed either side of its after funnel.

  ‘The oblique ones might be more useful to you, sir,’ said the flight sergeant, handing Larssen another bundle.

  ‘How the hell did the pilot get away with it?’ Larssen wondered aloud as he viewed the oblique photographs. ‘He must have come in at about a hundred feet to get these.’

  ‘The Yanks have lent us a couple of photo-recce P-38s, sir. They go like the clappers.’

  Lightnings, Tiller knew, lived up to their name. Even so, he thought as he viewed the entrance to the harbour through the magnifiers, the pilot must have had tremendous guts to get that low.

  The obliques were even more impressive than the vertical shots, for the harbour entrance was shown more or less as it would appear to anyone approaching from the sea. The outline of the outboard destroyer was plainly visible, though only part of the bow of the inboard one could be seen. Both had their identity numbers on their bows.

  Tiller read them out: ‘TA-14 and TA-17.’ He looked enquiringly at the flight sergeant.

  ‘TA is the designation the Krauts have given to destroyers they have taken over from other navies,’ said the flight sergeant. ‘As you know, these were Italian.’

  ‘Do we know anything about them?’ Larssen asked.

  The flight sergeant handed him a sheet of paper.

  ‘It’s all on there, sir.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I should go now. My skipper’s not too keen to be around here at daylight. He doesn’t want a Kraut bomb to spoil his deck.’

  ‘Neither of them is new,’ said Larssen, scanning the sheet of paper after the flight sergeant had left. ‘The smaller one is the San Martino, one of the Generali class. She was built in 1920. Zoelly turbines, maximum thirty-two knots, crew of 105. The other is the Turbine, the first of the Turbine class. Slightly bigger and more powerful. She was built in 1927. Crew of 142, maximum speed of thirty-six knots. Both of them are around 1000 tons displacement.’

  These statistics were digested in silence. Then Maygan broke it. ‘And their armaments?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘The main armament of the Turbine is four 4.7-inch guns. She also has four 37mm and two 13mm AA guns. The San Martino has four four-inch and two three-inch guns, and some anti-aircraft machine-guns. And they both have torpedo tubes, of course.’

  Outside they could hear the growl of the air-sea rescue launch’s engines as it pulled away from the quay. The group listened to them fade away before anyone spoke.

  ‘Shit,’ said Maygan half under his breath.

  Larssen scanned their despondent faces and said cheerfully: ‘Now we stop arseholing around. We have a proper job to do. Tiger?’

  Tiller studied the photographs carefully through the stereoscopic magnifiers once more before replying: ‘There are two obvious ways of approaching the targets, by sea and by land.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Larssen. ‘We must consider both. Perhaps we should try both.’

  ‘It would take longer overland, skipper,’ said Tiller. ‘If we landed where we did before it is about a twenty-mile trek.’

  ‘Can’t we land closer to the port?’

  ‘Probably, but we don’t know, do we? And we have no way of reconnoitring first.’

  Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted, Tiller reminded himself. If only they had known, he and Barnesworth could have recced the area when they had landed on Rhodes.

  ‘And by sea?’

  Tiller bent over the oblique photographs with the magnifiers.

  ‘There doesn’t appear to be a boom,’ he said, ‘but the entrance is very narrow. No more than a couple of hundred yards, I’d say. I don’t see how we could get into the harbour without being spotted. Look, you can see there are observation posts on the end of the quay on the left and on the sea wall jutting out towards the quay from the right. There also seems to be quite a high wall round the harbour. It is bound to be patrolled and anyone looking down on the harbour must have a good chance of seeing anything moving. If the destroyers were berthed on the left side, or even anchored behind the sea wall, it might be worth trying. But where they are now means we would have to go right into the harbour. Virtually impossible to do it undetected, I’d say.’

  He handed Larssen the photographs and the magnifiers. Larssen’s fingers drummed on the table as he studied the harbour. ‘So,’ he said finally. ‘We must go overland, and to save time we must land close by. Six of us will go, working in independent teams of two. The MAS boat can take us and we can be ferried ashore in its dinghy.’

  ‘How will it pick us up, skipper?’ Warrington asked. ‘It’s short of fuel, isn’t it?’

  Larssen grinned. ‘It won’t, Ted. We’ll have to make our own way back.’

  No one seemed to find that a particularly daunting prospect.

  ‘But to make such an operation viable we need to know two things,’ said Larssen. ‘Where it is possible to land, and if there is someone who can guide us through the town and down to the port.’

  ‘The Andartes,’ said Tiller immediately.

  ‘Exactly. But only Cairo has contact with them and there may not be time. I’ll go and talk to Balbao. Tiger, you go and find our little navigator.’

  Tiller nodded reluctantly. He had not seen Angelika or her father since Larssen had asked for information about the local Andartes. They had simply vanished and Tiller had to admit to himself that he had not made any effort to find out what had happened to them.

  ‘She has to be found,’ said Larssen. ‘She is the only person who may help or will know anyone locally who could. Billy, you start getting the gear together. Two limpet mines and a silent Sten for each team. Swimmer’s suits under fatigues for everyone. We might not sink the sods but we can blow some holes in them and make them stay in harbour. Tiger, meet me on the MAS boat in half an hour. We do not have much time.’

  10

  Tiller found Larssen with Balbao in the cramped ward-room of the MAS boat. Between them was a half-empty bottle of Chianti. Both were looking grim.

  ‘Cairo is out of contact with the Andartes,’ Larssen said. ‘I hope you’ve had better luck.’

  Tiller shook his head.

  The locals had told Kristos that Angelika’s father had taken her away, no one could say where. When pressed by Tiller for an explanation Kristos added that Christophou had apparently removed his daughter ‘to safety’. Because they feared air raids? Tiller had asked. Kristos had said no. Then was it because of collaborators? But Kristos had said there were no collaborators on Simi, which came as a surprise to Tiller after what Angelika had said and he realized later that he should have left it at that. Instead he pressed Kristos to tell him the reason the locals had given. The Greeks, Kristos had explained with a laugh,
always guarded their womenfolk closely, and he had given Tiller a friendly, knowing slap on the back. Tiller had got the message.

  ‘I think her father’s taken her into the mountains,’ he said.

  ‘Many think we will be bombed soon,’ Balbao commented. Tiller said nothing.

  ‘And Rhodes?’

  ‘Kristos talked to Dimitri, the mayor. But no one knows that coast, apparently. Kristos said he might just as well have been talking about China.’

  Larssen slammed down his empty glass. ‘There’s no way we can rely on an overland attack, then. We must attack from the sea. But how?’

  Balbao pushed the Chianti bottle towards Tiller, but Tiller shook his head. He was going to need to think clearly. In the ensuing gloomy silence an idea suddenly sparked in Tiller’s mind.

  ‘The torpedoes, skipper, the MAS boat’s torpedoes! They would run through the harbour entrance and Emborikos is deeper than the other two harbours. Deep enough for a torpedo to run right up to the quay.’

  Why hadn’t he thought of it before! He reached for the Chianti, poured himself a glass, downed it in one go, and reached for the bottle again.

  ‘Yes, have another, Tiger,’ said Larssen quietly, ‘you’re going to need it.’

  Tiller’s hand stayed on the bottle. ‘Why’s that, skipper?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Balbao. ‘But when the armistice was announced the admiral made us neutralize all offensive weapons. All our torpedoes had their propellers and gyros removed at Leros before we came here. Our guns we kept so that we could defend ourselves if necessary. But our torpedoes are no good.’

  Larssen slipped the bottle from Tiller’s unresisting hand and stood up. ‘I think we go and tell the others that we must find another way.’

  They walked back around the bay and past the speedboat which was hidden in a small creek. Suddenly Tiller stopped and grasped Larssen’s arm.

  ‘The MAS boat’s torpedoes, skipper. It’s still got them?’

  ‘Why? Nothing can be done with them, Tiger.’

  ‘Hold it there, skipper.’ Tiller returned to the MAS boat and asked Balbao if the nineteen-inch Fiume torpedoes were still in their tubes. Balbao said they were.