Corporal Cotton's Little War

by John Harris

  ‘There’s an airstrip, sir.’

  ‘Civil.’ Ritsicz gestured airily. ‘Chiefly used by wealthy Greeks from the Piraeus flying in to their island homes. Spiro Panyioti for example. He built it and he was the major user. He has a home at Xinthos nearby, where he went when the cares of business became too pressing.’

  ‘Poor chap!’

  The general’s expression didn’t slip. ‘It’s supposed to be a country house,’ he explained. ‘But, in fact, it’s more like a palace. You will keep an eye on it.’

  ‘Perhaps I can billet myself there,’ Baldamus smiled.

  ‘You can not billet yourself there,’ the general said sharply, beginning to wonder if Baldamus’ light-heartedness was an indication of a flippant nature. He had heard that Baldamus had done well in France, but so far he hadn’t given much indication of any ability. ‘There will be no troops in Panyioti’s place,’ he went on. ‘For the simple reason that it may well be needed later for something else. I had not failed to notice its existence or its value. But it’s been earmarked for a special purpose and you will do no more than look it over and keep an eye on it. You will be informed by signal when to use it, and when you are informed you will immediately realise why.’

  ‘I see, sir.’ Baldamus rose. ‘I think that covers everything.’

  ‘You have your men?’

  ‘I have, sir. Engineers, pioneers and lines-of-supply troops. I think there will be more than enough.’

  The general eyed him shrewdly. For the first time Baldamus was beginning to behave like a commander.

  ‘I have also a good second-in-command,’ Baldamus continued. ‘He was with me through France and I can trust him implicitly.’

  ‘Can he keep his mouth shut?’

  ‘Like an oyster, sir.’ Baldamus paused near the door. ‘When do we leave, sir?’

  ‘At once.’

  ‘Embarking where, sir?’

  The general indicated the envelope Baldamus held. ‘It’s all in there,’ he said shortly. ‘It will be made clear as soon as you read your orders.’

  ‘Of course, sir. I was merely thinking of earmarking the ship.’

  The general smiled. ‘You will not be going by ship,’ he said.

  Baldamus’ eyebrows rose in surprise and Ritsicz smiled at his expression. There was something engaging, he saw now, about this young man when he allowed it to emerge, and he began to feel reassured. ‘You will be going by air. Everything has been laid on at the Italian airfield of Lushnje in the plain west of Tirana in Albania. Aircraft of Fliegerkorps IX are awaiting you and your men there at this very moment.’

  ‘Let’s hope the Italians haven’t been driven out of it before we arrive,’ Baldamus said mildly. ‘After all, it’s only about a hundred and fifty kilometres from the Greek frontier and the way the Greeks behave to them they might well.’

  Ritsicz’s smile widened. ‘I think the Greeks are a spent force,’ he said, ‘and this time the Italians will not give way. Indeed, they had better not or the Führer will want to know why. The Junkers 53s you will use have a range of 900 kilometres – though I believe wise pilots prefer to regard it as considerably less – which gives you plenty spare to reach Aeos. Our friends on the island have provided fuel for the return journey.’

  ‘It should be interesting,’ Baldamus observed mildly.

  ‘It should certainly be quicker,’ Ritsicz said.

  Quite unaware of Major Baldamus and what he had been instructed to do, Corporal Cotton stood staring at Claudia lying alongside a sleeper-built jetty in Suda Bay. The water round her was dark, oil-slicked and drab, and on the slipway nearby scum and rubbish had collected in the form of sticks, bits of paper and orange peel. The smell was one of brine, oil and rotting wood.

  Across the water, the harbour was almost empty, with only a few odd destroyers and oilers and one charred wreck nearly out of sight. It was a mellow evening and Crete looked superb. The mountains inland shone with a soft lustre as the setting sun caught each succeeding ridge. On the slopes were scrub bushes and grass, and a few flowers. In the rifts, there were cypress and olive trees and little cultivated patches, and occasionally an almond tree in full blossom.

  Claudia was a handsome-looking boat. Freshly painted in the pale blue-grey of the Mediterranean fleet, she had sweet, clean lines running from a yacht-like bow down to a blunt square stern.

  ‘Seventy-three feet long, nineteen-foot beam, fifty tons displacement, double diagonal ma’ogany planing hull, with hard chine.’ Duff, the chief engine-room artificer who’d been sent from the motor launch flotilla to accompany them, was a long lean, gloomy individual with a laconic manner. ‘They’re adapting ’em as MTBs for the navy at home, with three Packard V12 supercharged 1250-horse engines. We’ve only got two – millionaire’s bloody meanness, I suppose. That’s how they get to be millionaires. It gives us less power, but as we don’t carry as much all-up weight as a fully-armed torpedo boat, the maximum speed ends up roughly the same – thirty-five to forty knots.’

  Cotton nodded and continued his inspection. The foredeck, complete with a small hand winch, was broad and swept back to a large varnished wheelhouse, with doors on either side opening like hatches. Inside the wheelhouse was the bridge, the commanding officer’s cabin once occupied by Panyioti himself lush with civilian blankets and even curtains; and opposite another cabin once occupied by the boat’s skipper but now filled with radio equipment. Beyond that, still under the wheelhouse deckhead, was the engine room containing the two huge Packard engines. From this a door opened on to a large well-deck, part of which had been built over just forward of the after hatch and mounted with the captured 20mm Italian cannon. On either side of the wheelhouse, almost jamming up the gangway, was a Lewis gun on a stand, and at the rear end of the well there was a canister containing chloro-sulphonic acid for making smoke, below it the tanks containing the 100-octane petrol that gave the boat a range of around one hundred and forty miles at a speed of twenty-five knots.

  Cotton fingered the wheel. The boat had originally been fitted with hydraulic steering for fingertip control so that her millionaire owner would not have to exert himself too much when he wished to turn to port or starboard, but this had been replaced by the navy with a direct wire system. The deck seemed to be unbelievably cluttered up with drums of petrol and oil, ropes, water casks, guns, fenders, Carley float and crash nets. Lashed along the starboard side, where a small rubber-covered hand line was threaded through low lightweight stanchions, were planks. Heavier timbers were stuffed underneath the cannon platform and below deck were two rifles, a tommy-gun, and a large wooden box with two handles containing a closed-circuit re-breather diving equipment consisting of a flexible breathing bag, tube and canister of CO2 absorbent, a helmet vaguely like a gas-mask with goggles and mouthpiece, gas cylinders, weights and boots to which lead had been attached. It looked remarkably old-fashioned and well worn and Cotton wondered where in God’s name it had been dug up.

  There was a thump of feet on the black wooden piles of the jetty as Patullo appeared with Lieutenant Shaw, a thin-faced dedicated-looking officer who didn’t seem to be relishing the job he’d been given. Like Cotton, like everybody else, he wore a white submarine sweater.

  Patullo introduced Cotton with a smile. ‘This is our Ulysses,’ he said. ‘Corporal Cotton, Michael Anthony, Royal Marines. He speaks Greek as well as I do. Perhaps better. He ought to prove useful.’

  Shaw’s eyes were bleak. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. ‘I gather the Germans have already reached Rhodes, which’ll make this place rotten uncomfortable if they use it for their Stukas. And I gather this bloody boat’s already had her share of bad luck. Old Panyioti’s brother-in-law was shot dead aboard her by his wife a couple of years back when she found him in bed with her maid. Panyioti’s money fixed the law, of course, but there was another bit of shooting, too, before they left the mainland. Several members of the family, who thought they ought to have a chance to leave as well, put their point a bit forc
ibly, and a man was killed and another wounded.’

  He sounded disgusted and disillusioned by the whole business, and Cotton frowned. Like all seafaring men he was intensely superstitious. Women on boats, like death and sailing on a Friday, were bad, and this boat had seen more than its fair share of women and death, it seemed.

  As the two officers disappeared into the wheelhouse, Cotton began to loosen the bow rope. One of the RASC men waited quietly by the stern.

  There was a dull explosion as the engines leapt to life one after the other and Claudia began to surge forward for a second at the creep of the propellers. Lieutenant Shaw reappeared, his head through the starboard hatch, his cap on the back of his head. He glanced round him and nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let go springs.’

  As the springs were taken in, he spoke to Patullo inside the cabin, then turned to the soldier on the stern.

  ‘Let go aft!’

  ‘All gone aft, sir!’

  ‘Let go forrard!’

  ‘All gone forrard.’

  Standing alongside the winch, Cotton thrust gently at the wharf with his foot and Claudia edged away and began to glide slowly across the basin towards the sea. From inside the radio cabin, the cheeps of the wireless set began abruptly.

  The sun was already disappearing behind the mountains and the dark water looked like black silk. The crews of tugs, oilers, transports and naval vessels watched them in silence as they slipped past, the white ensign trailing limply from the mast. There was no cheering, no interest even. They were just a very small launch moving out on to the dark sea.

  ‘We should be well on our way before nightfall,’ Cotton heard Patullo say as Claudia headed towards the entrance to the harbour. ‘We should be able to do most of the trip in darkness, and, one thing, there are plenty of islands and they’re not far apart. We ought to be able to slip from one to the other without being seen too much.’

  He called to Cotton. ‘Get the crew’s names, Corporal,’ he said.

  Cotton set about the job carefully. He regarded it as his right. He was senior man on board after the officers and Duff. He had a record sheet unstained by black marks and a good, if unimaginative character. He made out the list on canteen notepaper in his neat hand.

  Lieutenant Shaw, in command.

  Lieutenant Patullo, i/c operation.

  Chief ERA Duff, engine room.

  Corporal Cotton, Royal Marines.

  Stoker Docherty.

  Pte Howard, RASC.

  Pte Coward, RASC.

  LAC/WOp Bisset, RAF.

  Mr Gully, carpenter–boat builder, civilian.

  Gully was a pink-faced, foul-mouthed man in his late thirties, fat and unhealthy from too much boozing, with greying hair that looked as though it had been cut by placing a basin on his head and snipping round it. He wore false teeth that looked as though they’d been rifled from a corpse, all dingy grey-green molars and bright-red vulcanite gums, and his jacket and trousers were of a standard of cleanliness that Cotton wouldn’t have been seen dead in. He carried a boxful of tools, a concertina and a brown-paper parcel containing his belongings. ‘One of these days,’ he had said as he climbed aboard, ‘I’ll make meself a kitbag.’ Over one ear he wore a cap with a broken peak, so that Cotton – his own cap top-dead-centre, like Cotton himself, straightforward, squared away and no nonsense – considered him the scruffiest thing he’d ever seen and felt he ought to identify him firmly on his list so that nobody could blame the navy.

  He’d been carpenter on one of the Glen Line vessels which were being used as assault ships by the army and, at least, he didn’t appear to be put off by the nature of what he’d undertaken.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re in for,’ Cotton said.

  ‘Sure I do.’ Gully’s dreadful teeth flashed in a grin. ‘I’ve lived off burgoo and bloody Ticklers all me life.’

  ‘In case of emergency, naval discipline. Okay?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, hark at him.’ Gully grinned again. ‘I was too young to be in the last war, me old flower. I’m going to enjoy this one. I’m a bloody good chippy – best there is – and I ain’t got nothing to worry about.’

  Only the Germans, Cotton thought.

  Howard and Coward, the RASC men, were both young and – except for the position of the spots from which they both suffered – surprisingly alike even to their names. Anonymously blond, blue-eyed and with cheeks that looked bare of beard, they were like cherubs and were already known as the Heavenly Twins. Leading Aircraftman Bisset, of the RAF, was a Jerseyman, tall, thin-faced and intelligent-looking. Because of his accent, Cotton assumed he was a Hostilities Only and was startled to find he was a Regular like himself; a sort of gentleman-ranker out on the spree, he decided, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had a shady history and wouldn’t be much cop in a tight comer. He’d been working naval frequencies for a long time, however, and knew what to do, though his ability was largely hidden from view by a sleepy-eyed manner and a smile of enormous charm that only served to make Cotton, on the look-out for dodgers, all the more wary.

  ‘Jimmy Bisset,’ he’d introduced himself. ‘LAC/WOp, RAF. Sounds like a chemical formula, doesn’t it?’

  Apart from the officers, Cotton had found them all living in an aeroplane packing case on the wooden wharf where Claudia lay. They’d made themselves comfortable with a stolen stove to which they’d attached as a chimney an old cast-iron drain-pipe from God alone knew where, and Cotton didn’t expect any problems with any of them save Stoker Docherty.

  In all ships, merchant service or Royal Navy, the black gang were considered to be tough guys and troublemakers, and it seemed Docherty’s ambition was to be the toughest and most troublesome of them all. Cotton suspected he’d been chivvied into the job because the ML flotilla he’d come from had had enough of him, but that he wasn’t half as tough as he liked to pretend, and was more than a little mad, with his slicked-down, greasy hair, crazy eyes, permanent grin and twisted sense of humour. His head was full of thoughts of women, singing and dancing, in that order, and he was irresponsible, uproarious, rebellious and noisy. His arms tattooed with a tombstone bearing the legend ‘Mother’, clasped hands, and ‘Home Sweet Home’ on a length of ribbon, his reputation had arrived ahead of him through Chief ERA Duff, who knew him well.

  ‘Nickname’s “Rammer”,’ he said. ‘For obvious reasons. Only one bloody thought in his mind. He can’t keep it in his trousers. He’s supposed to have taken a diving course for inspecting underwater gear.’ He didn’t seem very impressed by Docherty.

  The stoker had spent his first day aboard Claudia pinning up the most salacious set of pin-up pictures Cotton had seen – and in the navy Cotton had seen a few – all button-hard nipples and thrust-out rumps.

  ‘You sex-mad?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘Yeh.’ Docherty’s grin was unabashed. ‘It’s dead smashing. I’m a connoisseur of tits, legs and bums.’

  He stacked up a row of what he called his ‘dirt books’, white-jacketed paperbacks each bearing a picture of an undressed girl in the last stages of torture or rape. Cooped up with him in a small boat seventy-three feet long, with a forecastle no more than fifteen feet across at its widest point, smelling of dust and old fag-ends, and shared with everybody else on board, Cotton wasn’t sure how they’d cope.

  They had taken on the extra drums of petrol that afternoon so they could fill up before entering Xiloparissia Bay and be able to leave – in a hurry if they had to – with full tanks. Other odds and ends – including a couple of unhappy-looking pigeons – had also been loaded on board, together with extra ammunition for the 303S and the 20mm.

  ‘Which,’ Docherty said gaily, ‘will probably tear itself out of the fucking mounting when we fire it.’

  Altogether, Cotton decided, Operation Long John Silver, which was the fancy code-name Ponsonby had thought up for the affair, looked like being a pretty dicey do. Although the navy was watching out towards the north, the Germans already se
emed to hold almost everything in that direction and there was the possibility that the Italian fleet, despite the pounding it had suffered at Taranto, might also rouse itself sufficiently to join in.

  Cotton climbed on to the gangway alongside the wheelhouse to remove the covers from the Lewises. Since he was supposed to be an expert on weaponry, it was his job to maintain them in sufficiently good order that the two pongos – who, being RASC, couldn’t be expected to know anything about guns – would only have to press the trigger and point them in the right direction if they were attacked. In action, it would be Cotton’s job to fire the 20mm, with Stoker Docherty standing by with the full drums of ammunition.

  As they edged along the coast of Crete and began to turn north past Canea, Cotton could see small vineyards, olive groves, paddocks and half-acre plots for oats, barley, lentils and broad beans. They could smell the land, the dry breath of rock, dust and rotting driftwood. There were two white caiques anchored just in front of them, which, but for the Italians and the Germans, would have been sponge-fishing deep inside the Adriatic. Otherwise, there seemed to be nothing else in sight, not a mast or a sail, just the spill of the wine-dark sea the wind was freshening into little waves, a brown-blue island on the horizon and a windmill just visible over the top of a small hill.

  Cotton stared round him stolidly. He wasn’t afraid. In the past when people had dropped bombs on him he hadn’t panicked – not even when Caernarvon had been hit and temporarily put out of action. He’d always assumed this was because he wasn’t very well endowed with brains, but at least he was immovable and didn’t flap, and was sufficiently well trained to know what to do in emergencies. Besides, he was a dedicated serving soldier. He’d joined the Marines before the war because he’d watched his father return home every night, grey-faced and exhausted from his job as a waiter, to shout at his mother, who, short, fat and dark-eyed, had never ever answered back. ‘Yes, Cotonou,’ she’d said. ‘No, Cotonou. Three bags full, Cotonou.’ Unknowing in his youth the fears, the needs and the worries that held together two middle-aged people no longer attractive to look at when they seemed unable to be civil to each other, to Cotton she’d seemed to be everlastingly pliable and far from being the wife Cotton wanted when he finally got around to getting hitched himself.