by Ian Blake
Tiller saw that the quay of the naval base jutted out slightly into the water so that they were able to manoeuvre the cockle under it and then pull themselves towards the destroyer by pushing on the wooden beams that supported the quay. It would have been possible to get right up to the destroyer in this manner except that they soon gathered there were several men on sentry duty by the destroyer’s stern. They stamped their feet and swore in German and one sent a jet of urine almost into the cockle.
Tiller backed off slightly until he felt a tap on his shoulder and he knew Barnesworth was ready. He steadied the craft while his partner slid from his cockpit and into the water. Then he handed him two limpets on their retaining plate and Barnesworth clipped them to the line. He then handed one end of the line to Tiller and slid away silently into the bay.
The limpets and the line sank beneath the surface but most of their weight was supported by Tiller. Above him he could hear the scuff of the sentries’ boots on the quay and the murmur of their conversation, but the destroyer was shrouded in darkness and silence.
After twenty minutes there was a tug on the line and Tiller began slowly and carefully hauling it in. Moments later Barnesworth’s head surfaced by the cockle. He gave the thumbs up and indicated that Tiller should back off down the quay while he hung on to the cockle’s bow.
Once they were far enough away from the sentries, Tiller turned the cockle and Barnesworth levered himself back into it.
‘A cinch,’ he whispered triumphantly. ‘I put one close to its depth-charge rack. It should make an almighty bang.’
‘Good man,’ Tiller replied. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ He glanced at his watch. They had been in the harbour exactly two hours. It seemed like two weeks.
‘What about the supply ship and the F-lighter?’ Barnesworth asked.
‘What about them? They only said ‘if possible’. If we hang around any longer the sentry on that first destroyer might find out the Brandenburgers don’t have a harbour patrol.’
Barnesworth didn’t argue. They dumped the remaining mines and the compass compensator overboard and once across the boom and out of the bay Tiller set a course of one-three-five on the compass grid.
13
Away from the shelter of the bay the sea and the wind increased, and the cockle encountered short, steep waves which threatened to swamp it. Water cascaded over the deck and began finding its way into the craft. It swilled about their feet, and they took it in turns to try and bail it out.
To add to the miserable conditions it started to drizzle and this cut visibility to such an extent that Tiller was concerned about making the passage across the straits between the two islands. The compass seemed to be behaving itself, but compasses, he knew, were never wholly reliable. After half an hour he told Barnesworth to keep the cockle heading into the waves while he consulted the chart with his shaded torch. He stared into the darkness to port and decided, from the vague shape of the land, that he must be opposite the headland where Denvers had told him to alter course. He moved the compass grid to one-one-zero.
‘It could be bumpy across the strait,’ he shouted over his shoulder. He heard Barnesworth grunt an acknowledgement.
Turning the cockle even slightly side on to the wind and waves made it dip and swing alarmingly. After a quarter of an hour on the new compass bearing the veil of rain lifted momentarily. Kalimnos should now be directly ahead of them but he could not see it, could see nothing but a black void.
Tiller dug in his blades with increased fury, but he was now feeling the extreme fatigue, a reaction that always followed the elation of a mission safely accomplished. And fatigue, he knew, brought with it hallucinations, cramped lower limbs, and intense, irrational anger with the other member of the team.
‘We’ll rest,’ he shouted back to Barnesworth.
‘We’d better keep going,’ Barnesworth said. ‘It’ll be light soon.’
‘I said we’ll rest,’ Tiller snapped.
‘Eh, take it easy, Tiger.’ Tiller felt the friendly pressure of his companion’s hand on his shoulder.
He glanced at his watch. He knew Billy was right and that irritated him even more. He also knew that they also had to find a safe hiding-place before the limpets exploded. Once they went off, the whole area – land, sea and air – would be saturated with search parties and if the cockle was caught in daylight in the open sea Tiller knew they would be dead meat.
After five minutes they started again. Pain began to course through Tiller’s arms as he dug in his paddles. His legs and thighs started to lose any feeling, and then he felt the first tingling agony of cramp.
The rain started again, heavier than ever, but the sea as they came under the lee of the northern headland of Kalimnos became smoother and the tops of the waves, though breaking occasionally with an alarming hiss, were no longer being whipped off by the wind. But the rain was being driven straight into their faces and Tiller could see nothing but blackness ahead.
It was like the nightmare, paddling into nothingness, going nowhere.
Each stroke was agony now. He kept being aware that his eyes were shut and he forced himself to keep them open by looking at the compass. But after a while the luminous numbers began to spin before his eyes like a roulette wheel. It took a superhuman effort of concentration for him to confirm that they were still on the correct course and not paddling round in circles.
Tiller’s mind wandered. He tried to quote Barrack-Room Ballads to himself. But its words and rhythm were a jumble and would not come out straight.
‘’E isn’t one o’ the regular Line, nor ’e isn’t a kind of giddy Harumfrodite – soldier an’ sailor, too ... ’
He gave up and his mind wandered back to Barnesworth and why he insisted on making comments in the middle of the operation, but now, when it was safe to shout at the top of their voices, the cat seemed to have got his tongue.
Why didn’t he go to the dentist?
Was that Sydney Harbour bridge ahead? Now that was a run ashore he wouldn’t forget. What was her name?
He started humming the regimental march, repeating the words a line at a time with each stroke of the paddle:
‘A Life on the Ocean Wave,
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scatter’d waters rave
And the winds their revels keep.’
But he couldn’t remember any more so he kept repeating the first four lines, hoping the next four would come into his mind. But they didn’t come and the compass spun before his eyes. What was Billy saying, why did he keep interrupting?
Barnesworth hit Tiller in his back with his fist and screamed: ‘For fuck’s sake, Tiger. That’s land ahead, you silly sod. What do you want to do, end up halfway up a cliff?’
Tiller jerked awake and struggled to refocus his mind and eyes.
Land it was, and very near, so near he could see the waves breaking at the bottom of a cliff face. But it was indistinct, too, blurred by the rain and his own utter weariness. He stopped paddling and watched the cliff get nearer. Like the nightmare there was nothing he could do.
‘Back off! Move left!’ Barnesworth bawled in his ear. ‘Paddle, you bastard, paddle!’
Sluggishly Tiller’s mind and muscles responded. He back-paddled and slowly the craft slewed away from the cliff face. A wave slopped across them and the rain hammered down. They must be in some kind of local current, Tiller thought, for something was drawing the cockle towards the shore like a magnet. Ahead he thought he saw the first glimmer of dawn in the sky and then he heard the distant boom of an explosion.
‘The limpets,’ he shouted exultantly. ‘Did you hear the bang?’
‘It’s the fucking waves hitting the fucking cliffs.’ Barnesworth’s fury penetrated Tiller’s fuddled mind. ‘Keep paddling, you silly sod, or we’ll hit them, too.’
Resentment welled up in Tiller that he had made a mistake. He thought vaguely that Barnesworth was having him on, but he had no strength to start an argument. His
back ached, and the cramp in his water-soaked legs was gnawing into him. With his last remaining strength he dug his paddles into the water and tried to maintain some kind of rhythm for Barnesworth to follow. His body, accustomed to years of rigorous discipline, responded automatically to what Barnesworth was now yelling in his ear. ‘In, out, in, out. Count your strokes, Tiger. Keep it steady. In, out, in, out. We’re nearly out of trouble. Just a dozen more strokes. In, out, in, out.’
But his mind kept wandering so that his body seemed a machine quite apart from it. He half saw, half felt the looming presence of the land above him, and the violence of the water around the cockle, and the spray in his face, and heard Barnesworth bawling: ‘In, out, in, out, dig deep, you sod.’
Then quite suddenly the water was calm, the cockle upright.
‘There’s a beach,’ Barnesworth shouted. ‘We’ll go for it. Turn right, Tiger. Right.’ The cockle swung, tipped, went too far to the right, then was straightened by Barnesworth. Seconds later they were in shallow water and Barnesworth half fell, half scrambled out of his cockpit. He grabbed the cockle’s stern and ran it gently ashore. Tiller dropped his paddle and it floated in the water secured to his wrist by a short piece of line.
Tiller tried to pull himself out of the cockpit but the pain in his legs was excruciating and had seemingly locked them tight.
‘Cramp,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Fucking cramp.’
Barnesworth hauled the cockle’s bow on to the sand and then swung it broadside on to the beach. Then he tipped it sideways and dragged Tiller out of his cockpit. He took a bottle of salt tablets from a pocket in the craft and handed them to Tiller with the can of water. Tiller swilled them down and struggled to his feet. He banged the calves of his legs with his hands and jigged up and down.
‘Come on,’ said Barnesworth. ‘It’ll be light soon. We’ve got to get under cover.’
They drained the cockle of water, picked it up and carried it up the beach. On their right was the rocky cliff top which they had just managed to avoid, but ahead and to their left the land was much lower and flatter. The beach ended in a field of olive trees. They laid the cockle down and began searching for a hiding-place.
There was no shelter around the beach, but when they moved inland they found part of a stone wall which was overhung by an olive tree. They carried the cockle there, covered it with camouflage netting and then went back to the beach to obliterate their footmarks with branches from one of the trees.
It was beginning to get light now. It was a grey, windy morning, but the rain had stopped though the clouds above them were leaden with it. They unearthed the small primus, stewed some tea in the tin mugs they used for bailing, and broke open one of the two ration packs. They devoured the biscuits and then heated a tin of stew in one of the mugs. The stew didn’t seem to taste of anything but it was hot and stopped their gnawing hunger. They decided to keep the bar of chocolate until later.
‘Fucking cramp,’ said Barnesworth sympathetically as Tiller massaged his legs. ‘It’s the one thing that scares me when I’m swimming. You get stomach cramp at the wrong moment, and you sink like a stone. It’s happened to me once, and I tell you, mate, I wouldn’t want it to happen again.’
‘Dehydration, I should think,’ Tiller said. He looked at his watch. ‘Those limpets should be going off soon.’
‘The wind’s in the wrong direction,’ said Barnesworth doubtfully. ‘We might not hear them.’
‘We’ll hear them,’ Tiller promised. ‘Especially if that ammunition ship goes up.’
When they came the explosions were like distant thunder, the last one much louder and longer than the other two.
‘She went up all right,’ said Tiller.
The two men shook hands.
‘Got the sods,’ Tiller said. ‘Now let’s get some shut-eye. I’ll take the first watch.’
Barnesworth grinned at him. ‘You must be joking. You wouldn’t last ninety seconds. You were kipping in the cockle. The Krauts aren’t going to find us here. No way. Let’s get our heads down while we can.’
Tiller raised himself above the wall and scanned the interior of the island. It was bare and brown and without life of any kind. Kalimnos, they had been told, did not have a garrison and the population had deserted it long ago. Only the local fishermen and the occasional German sea patrol visited it now.
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
They took out their pistols, took them apart, and dried and oiled them. Then they removed the backrests from the cockle to use as pillows, lay down under the lee of the wall, and pulled part of the camouflage netting over themselves.
The next thing Tiller knew was Barnesworth shaking him vigorously.
‘There’s a hell of a rumpus going on over there,’ he said pointing eastwards across the island. Tiller levered himself up and peered over the wall. There was nothing to see but he could hear the crump of bombs exploding and the steady thump, thump, thump of a heavy automatic weapon. They both knew what was in each other’s minds.
‘The ML?’ Barnesworth queried eventually. Tiller shook his head with a confidence he did not feel. ‘More likely they found an MTB sneaking along the Turkish coast.’
The firing and bombing went on for about twenty minutes and then suddenly stopped. It was late afternoon now and the sun had come out. They opened the second ration pack and ate everything in it without bothering to heat it, and when dusk came they carried the cockle down to the water, and launched it. The weather looked as if it was going to remain fine. But it was quite cold, and Tiller was looking forward to a proper meal aboard the ML.
They rounded the north-east tip of Kalimnos without trouble and by midnight were beyond the promontory where Vathi lay. They paddled close to the land but still almost missed the entrance to the bay, so narrow was the entrance. They turned in, narrowly missed two large rocks, and passed into the inlet. Denvers had been right. Without local knowledge it was a dangerous place.
Once inside the water opened up. Along the southern edge was a beach but the rocky shore came right down to the water on the northern side. There, lurking somewhere in the shadows, they hoped the ML would be waiting for them and eventually, around a bend in the bay, they came upon her right under a shallow, overhanging cliff.
‘Shit,’ said Tiller quietly. The ML had received a direct hit which had broken her in two and she lay in two distinct pieces in the shallows under the cliff.
A wreath of smoke still curled up from the tangled, blackened wreckage that had been her bridge and the barrel of the three-pounder was skewed at an improbable angle as if some giant hand had seized and bent it. The only visible part of the stern section was a half-submerged mangle of twisted steel.
They moved slowly forward through the flotsam and jetsam of any marine casualty of war: life-jackets, charred bits of wood, gratings, books, mattresses, clothes, the shredded remains of the curtains from the tiny ward-room.
Unthinkingly, Tiller poked with his paddle at a floating life-jacket and the body that he suddenly saw was attached to it rolled on to its back. The scorched, unidentifiable face stared up at him out of the dark water with wide-open, reproachful eyes. Tiller withdrew his paddle and the face, with what seemed deliberate slowness, bobbed a moment before turning over and disappearing beneath the surface. The accusing eyes, even under the water, seemed fixed on his face.
‘Shit.’
They paddled up to the remains of the ML. Close to, they could smell the stench of burning and heard the gentle hiss of steam escaping from a fractured pipe.
‘Nobody could survive that,’ said Barnesworth. ‘The bomb must have detonated her fuel and spare ammunition.’
They went alongside cautiously and climbed on to the charred and warped deck. They could only recognize Denvers, who lay on the remains of his bridge, from the two intertwined stripes of gold braid on the shoulder of a strip of shirt still attached to the grotesque bundle that had once been a human being.
Under the bridge the wireless room had b
een crushed almost flat. One of the crew of the three-pounder lay slumped across the breech of the gun, the other two on the deck near it. There was no need to confirm that they were dead.
Larssen and the other crew members, Tiller supposed, must have been caught below or had been blown into the water as there were no other bodies visible. Only one of the .5-inch machine-guns, with its belt of ammunition folded neatly into a box, had miraculously remained untouched by the ferocious blast that had torn the vessel apart.
Tiller worked its cocking mechanism and squinted down the barrel. ‘This could be useful.’
‘Too heavy to take on the cockle,’ Barnesworth observed. They carried it between them and got the weapon and the ammunition box ashore. Then they returned to their craft and paddled in silence to the end of the bay, where the chart had showed them was a beach and a few scattered houses.
Some yards from it the cockle collided with what later they decided must have been a piece of debris from the ML. Tiller felt the cockle lurch and slow as it skewered itself on the half-sunken wreckage, and water began gushing in.
They paddled free of the obstruction and then leapt out as the bow began to dip beneath the surface, and pulled the cockle to the beach and on to the sand. Barnesworth began rolling it over but Tiller said: ‘Leave it. There’s no point in fiddling around in the dark. More important to see if there are any survivors.’
They searched the length of the beach and the deserted houses beyond. The water’s edge was littered with fragments from the ML, but they found no survivors, only one body lying face down at the far end of the beach. His fingers had dug into the sand, showing that he must have been alive when he had reached the shore.
‘We’d better bury him,’ said Barnesworth, but Tiller said: ‘We’d better not. You know how thorough the Krauts are. They’re bound to send a patrol to try and find the ML’s code-books. We mustn’t show we’ve been here.’
