Marine B SBS

by Ian Blake

  ‘They won’t find code-books in that wireless room,’ Barnesworth said. ‘They won’t find anything. There’s nothing left of it.’

  Instead of burying him, they noted the dead man’s name from the tags around his neck. Then they carried the damaged cockle under some nearby trees and fetched the machine-gun.

  ‘They’ll come by water if they come,’ Barnesworth said.

  ‘When they come,’ Tiller corrected him. They set the weapon up, using a tree as a makeshift support, so that it was trained down the creek. Then they spread out the camouflage netting, divided a bar of chocolate between them, and lay down.

  Tiller wondered where Larssen had died, and how. He had come to like and admire his skipper with his dreadful accent, his skill and enthusiasm for killing Germans, and his brilliant leadership.

  He slept, and the submerged face bobbed up and down. Somehow it had acquired two bullet holes in its forehead.

  He opened his eyes. Barnesworth was leaning over him and shaking his shoulder. ‘Stop hollering, Tiger, for Christ’s sake.’

  Tiller blinked. The first rays of the early-morning sun were spearing through the trees.

  ‘Who’s Mac, for Christ’s sake?’ Barnesworth asked.

  Tiller stood up and shook the sand from his clothing. ‘Mac?’

  ‘Yeah, Mac. You were shouting “Mac”.’

  Tiller stretched. He felt stiff and sore. Perhaps he was getting too old for this kind of lark, he thought. Perhaps he should get a cushy number somewhere as an instructor when they got back. Or perhaps he might be one of those blokes who drummed up recruits by standing up with all his gongs on his chest and saying, ever so modestly of course, how brave he had been and how worthwhile it all was. Perhaps that dreaded phrase ‘strong family ties’ was not the life sentence he had always thought it.

  ‘I don’t know. I used to work with a bloke called Matt. A pre-war Olympic canoeist, he was. Mad as a hatter.’

  ‘Matt, was it? Sounded like “Mac” to me. What happened to him?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Tiller. ‘Bought it on some op. What the fuck are we going to do with this cockle, Billy?’

  In the pale morning light they turned over the craft and inspected the damage. The canvas hull had been sliced neatly as if with a knife along half its length. So sharp was the object that they’d hit that it had also sliced clean through several of the cockle’s ribs, cracking and splintering them. For good measure it had ripped the buoyancy bags in the bows as well.

  ‘That’s a write-off,’ Tiller declared.

  ‘There’s plenty of material around,’ Barnesworth said doubtfully. ‘We could try and patch it up.’

  ‘It’s a write-off,’ Tiller repeated. ‘There’s no way we can fix that. Besides, we left the fucking repair kit behind, didn’t we?’

  ‘If we hadn’t been forced to carry so many limpets. They don’t care, do they? Don’t give a shit.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever sent us on this bloody lark. Sink this, sink that, and oh, while you’re at it, old boy, sink the fucking other as well.’

  Barnesworth’s rage visibly swelled his face and he kicked the cockle hard.

  ‘Steady on, Billy,’ Tiller said gently. ‘We’ll get out of this. Somehow.’

  The cockle was useless but he still didn’t like seeing it kicked. Billy’s rage seemed to subside but his eyes remained puffy with exhaustion.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he said, unconvinced. Suddenly there was a sound behind them. Tiller whipped out his pistol and cocked it. The sound came again, a sort of half-gasp, half-cough. Tiller gestured to Barnesworth to back away down the beach so that he could cover him.

  When Barnesworth was in position Tiller moved forward. Despite what the Killer School had taught him, he had always thought a pistol was a useless weapon and now he felt naked and vulnerable and just wished he had his Sten. Something else which had been left behind.

  Out of the corner of his eye he suddenly saw a slight movement under a bush ahead of him. He drew a bead on it and waited, but it did not move again. Whatever it was it was not very threatening. An animal perhaps?

  He kept his pistol pointing at the object, which looked, as he neared it, like a pile of old rags. Then he could see that it must be a survivor from the ML who had managed to drag himself off the beach and under cover.

  He hurried forward, and bent over the blackened figure. It was so disfigured and burnt that it took him some moments to recognize the survivor as the ML’s wireless operator. Tiller’s eyes travelled down the man’s body and he saw that one of his legs had been blown off below the knee. Somehow he had made a tourniquet, but the sand was soaked with blood.

  ‘Billy!’ Tiller shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Get the water and the first-aid kit. Quick.’

  The operator opened his eyes and tried to smile. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out except a croak.

  ‘You just keep quiet, mate,’ Tiller said. ‘You’ll be all right now, but we’ve got to do something about your leg.’

  He took off his shirt, ripped off one of its sleeves, cut it into two lengths, and replaced the blood-sodden strip of cloth the operator had used as a tourniquet.

  As he worked he remembered with a curse that the first-aid kit had been left behind as well. He found two sticks and twisted the strips of shirt around them so that the tourniquet was tight but not too tight.

  Barnesworth arrived with the water and Tiller cradled the wireless operator’s head and moistened his lips and tongue. The man coughed as the water reached his throat but it revived him and he opened his eyes. His lips moved and Tiller strained to hear what he was trying to say.

  ‘You got ... them?’

  Tiller nodded. ‘Yes, we got them.’

  It only then occurred to him that the Germans must have searched not only for them but for the ship which would pick them up. Kalimnos was an obvious place to rendezvous. It must have been simple to have pinpointed the most likely sites. Suddenly, Tiller felt that he was personally responsible for the disaster that had overwhelmed his detachment commander, the ML and its crew, and the dying man whose head he was cradling.

  What a fuck-up it all was.

  ‘We only got away with it because of the tip you gave us. You know: “Patrola, Brandenburger”. It worked.’

  A spasm crossed the man’s lips.

  ‘Are the code-books aboard, mate?’ Tiller asked urgently.

  The operator’s head moved fractionally sideways.

  ‘You managed to ditch them in the weighted bag?’

  Just a flutter of an eyelid acknowledged that the man had followed the correct procedure. He was trying to say something again, and Tiller leant forward.

  ‘ ... message through,’ the operator whispered.

  ‘You got a message through that you were being attacked?’

  The man’s eyelids flickered to say that he had.

  ‘Beirut acknowledged?’

  The eyelids flickered again.

  ‘And Beirut said they’d pass it on to Simi?’

  The man’s eyelids flickered for a third and final time before his eyes went blank and his head rolled sideways.

  Tiller felt the man’s jugular vein, lowered his head gently to the ground, and then closed the staring eyes. He made a note of his name from his tags and stood up.

  ‘So the caique will come and fetch us?’ Barnesworth asked.

  ‘If it can find its way in,’ said Tiller.

  They decided to sink the cockle. They weighted it with stones, then waded out into the creek carrying it above their heads. When the water reached their necks they let the cockle slide beneath the surface. Its drab colouring blended exactly with the bottom.

  They waded ashore, covered their tracks expertly, gathered the machine-gun and ammunition box, and the water can, and searched for a hiding-place among the cliffs which would also give them a good view of the creek. If the caique came it would come at night but the Germans could come at any ti
me. The sun was high in the sky before they found the right place: a small cave near the cliff top which was reached by a narrow strip of grass.

  ‘They deserve to find us if they come up here,’ Barnesworth said.

  They took turns to stay on watch, one hour on, one hour off. It was late afternoon before the Germans arrived. But they did not come by sea, as the SBS men had expected. Instead they came again from the sky, but this time it was their old friend the Blohm and Voss.

  It circled the remains of the ML and then landed in the bay. Two soldiers climbed out of the cockpit and on to the aircraft’s wings. They inflated a rubber dinghy, and paddled towards the remains of the ML and out of sight of the two SBS men hiding above them. The pilot threw out an anchor and then climbed on to the wing of the Blohm and Voss, and lay down.

  Barnesworth sucked his teeth. ‘He’s fucking confident, isn’t he?’

  Signs of overconfidence was something Larssen had taught them always to watch for in the enemy as well as in themselves. It was, he said, something that could always be exploited. They looked at each other and both knew that the other was thinking of Larssen and what he would have done in the same circumstances, and then they both said together: ‘Sink or swim.’

  Tiller chuckled. ‘Great minds think alike, Billy.’

  They knew exactly what they had to do and agreed on the plan with a few brief words. They kept well clear of the ML and the beach, where the soldiers would be concentrating their search, found a place inland where they could cross the creek, moved into the remains of the village and found the ruins of a house which gave them a clear view of the bay and where they could set up the machine-gun.

  They could see the rubber dinghy alongside the remains of the ML, but there was no sign of the soldiers. The pilot had stripped off his shirt. The co-pilot, they could see, had chosen to stay in the cockpit with a book. Tiller wondered idly what he could be reading.

  The sun had dipped below the trees behind the SBS men before the soldiers emerged from their search. They shouted something to the pilot and lowered themselves into the rubber dinghy. The pilot sat up, put his shirt back on, and waited on the wing to grab the dinghy’s painter when it was thrown to him.

  ‘The co-pilot first,’ whispered Tiller. ‘With any luck, we’ll get their wireless at the same time. Then the rubber dinghy. Then the pilot. And make bloody sure that ammunition belt isn’t twisted.’

  He flicked up the rear sight of the machine-gun. ‘Two hundred?’

  ‘I reckon so. Two-fifty, maybe. Don’t fucking miss. Those Krauts look well armed.’

  Tiller slid the rear sight up a notch, waited until the rubber dinghy was halfway to the seaplane and put a short burst into the cockpit. The co-pilot slumped sideways so that his head was out of the open door. Then Tiller switched to the rubber dinghy and gave its occupants a sustained burst. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the pilot running along the wing towards the open cockpit door. Coolly, he made sure that no one in the rubber dinghy had survived before switching back to the flying boat.

  Incongruously, the pilot was tucking in his shirt-tails as he scrambled along. Tiller felt almost sorry for him. He knew what it was like to feel exposed, to expect a bullet in the back at any moment, knowing there was nothing you could do about it – except pray. And Tiller wasn’t the praying sort. He wondered, as he squeezed the trigger, if the pilot was.

  When the bullets hit, the pilot’s arms flailed as if he had slipped on a banana. Then he fell head first into the water with a curious elegance that made Barnesworth comment: ‘He could have made a good diver with a bit more practice.’

  They watched the water and the flying boat warily. Nothing moved, except for the rubber dinghy, which bobbed up and down on the water as it rapidly deflated.

  ‘What about the flying boat?’

  ‘Leave it,’ said Tiller.

  They walked back along the beach, found two lengths of timber they could use as crude spades and after taking off their identity tags buried the wireless operator and the crewman in the sand. They marked the graves by binding pieces of stick into the shape of crosses. Then they walked along the path under the cliff, past the ML, and round the bend in the creek to find a position where they would have a clear view of the caique approaching.

  It arrived soon after midnight and Tiller flashed the prearranged signal with his shaded torch. They saw it swing towards them and their signal was acknowledged. It came to a stop about 100 yards from them and they could see someone climbing into a dinghy that it had in tow.

  ‘I’m bloody amazed they got into the creek,’ said Tiller as they watched the dinghy approaching. ‘That entrance is fucking hairy enough in daylight.’

  Barnesworth’s elbow dug into Tiller’s ribs. ‘I’ll give you just one guess who guided them in, Tiger. Just one guess.’

  Epilogue

  August 1953

  ‘We’ve got a few minutes left. Any questions?’

  The latest draft of National Service recruits to the Royal Marines at Eastney Barracks shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. They knew they were expected to ask questions on the lecture, but could not think of any.

  Then one, slightly older than the rest, and wiser in the ways of distracting a lecturer from the dull subject in hand, asked, as other members of earlier classes had asked before him: ‘Will you tell us what was it really like, sir?’

  ‘What was what like, lad?’

  ‘That Aegean campaign of yours, sir. When you were in the SBS.’

  ‘No different from many other operations. A right shambles.’

  ‘But weren’t the Eyeties on our side by then, sir?’ another recruit piped up.

  ‘What of it, lad?’

  ‘Well, weren’t they’ – the recruit hesitated – ‘yellow?’

  ‘No, lad, that was the Japanese.’

  The recruits sniggered politely.

  ‘You know what I mean, sir.’

  So Regimental Sergeant-Major ‘Tiger’ Tiller, DCM MM Royal Marines, told the class – as he had been inveigled into telling other classes before them – about Balbao and the last final dash of his MAS boat. And he told them too about Giovanni and his Mafia cousin.

  And when the recruit then asked, as recruits before him always had, what kind of fighters the Greeks were, Tiller simply said, as he always said: ‘They’re fierce. And stubborn. I should know. I’m married to one’, which delighted the class because they had been told that that was exactly what he would say.

  Finally they asked, as others before them always had, about Tiller’s legendary detachment commander, the Dane, a man without any military training who had won two Military Crosses. And Tiller told them about Larssen, and his genius for killing Germans, and what his favourite saying was.

  ‘“Work before women”, he always said, and he was bloody right. You idle lot of loafers just remember that. Now don’t waste my time any more. Get out of here and on to the parade ground. At the double. I’ll give you ninety seconds to get fell in. You’re in the Royal Marines, not some bleeding pussyfooting army regiment. And don’t you ever forget it.’

  OTHER AVAILABLE TITLES IN THIS SERIES

  MARINE A SBS: Terrorism on the North Sea

  MARINE C SBS: The Florida Run

  MARINE D SBS: Windswept

  MARINE E SBS: The Hong Kong Gambit

  MARINE F SBS: Royal Target

  MARINE G SBS: China Seas

  MARINE H SBS: The Burma Offensive

  MARINE I SBS: Escape From Azerbaijan

  MARINE J SBS: The East African Mission

  MARINE K SBS: Gold Rush

  MARINE L SBS: Raiders From The Sea

  OTHER TITLES IN SERIES FROM 22 BOOKS

  SOLDIER A SAS: Behind Iraqi Lines

  SOLDIER B SAS: Heroes of the South Atlantic

  SOLDIER C SAS: Secret War in Arabia

  SOLDIER D SAS: The Colombian Cocaine War

  SOLDIER E SAS: Sniper Fire in Belfast

  SOLDIER F SAS: Guerrillas
in the Jungle

  SOLDIER G SAS: The Desert Raiders

  SOLDIER H SAS: The Headhunters of Borneo

  SOLDIER I SAS: Eighteen Years in the Elite Force

  SOLDIER J SAS: Counter-insurgency in Aden

  SOLDIER K SAS: Mission to Argentina

  SOLDIER L SAS: The Embassy Siege

  SOLDIER M SAS: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

  SOLDIER N SAS: The Gambian Bluff

  SOLDIER O SAS: The Bosnian Inferno

  SOLDIER P SAS: Night Fighters in France

  SOLDIER Q SAS: Kidnap the Emperor!

  SOLDIER R SAS: Death on Gibraltar

  SOLDIER S SAS: The Samarkand Hijack

  SOLDIER T SAS: War on the Streets

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 1: Valin’s Raiders

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 2: The Korean Contract

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 3: The Vatican Assignment

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 4: Operation Nicaragua

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 5: Action in the Arctic

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 6: The Khmer Hit

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 7: Blue on Blue

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 8: Target the Death-dealer

  This electronic edition published in 2015 by Osprey Publishing Ltd

  First published in Great Britain in 1995 by 22 Books, Invicta House, Sir Thomas Longley Road, Rochester, Kent

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