by John Harris
Cotton hadn’t reached that point yet. He was a painstaking man who tackled problems painstakingly and he hadn’t yet considered that difficulty. All the same, he remembered all that Patullo and the other two men in Retimo had told him when he’d first been dragooned into joining the expedition, and it seemed to him he ought to do something about it. He was known in the Marines’ mess as stubborn, dim and regimental, but they were qualities that sometimes made a good Royal.
‘There’s supposed to be some other fellers on the island,’ he said.
‘What sort of fellers?’
‘From the other boat – Loukia. Patullo told me. They sent a Blenheim over to do a recce and it reported seeing ’em on the beach by the wreck, waving. If they’re still there, it’s up to us to take ’em off, isn’t it? Any case, we can’t just sit here and wait for the Germans to come and take us prisoners, can we?’
That seemed to make Docherty think. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘We can’t.’
‘Can’t we pinch a boat or somefing?’ Gully asked. ‘All this about repairing this one’s a lot of bloody balls. You might as well try to manure a forty-acre field with a fart. You’ve only to look at ’er. You’ve only to think twice. We ought to pinch one of them Greek boats?’
‘How?’ Bisset asked.
‘Christ!’ Gully grinned unexpectedly. ‘How do you go about pinching anything? You walk up to it, put out your dirty little mitt, then grab it and run. Think we could make it back? It took us two days to get here.’
‘Where are we, anyway?’
‘This is the island of Aeos,’ Cotton said. ‘This is Kharasso Bay.’
For a long time, they stood on the beach staring at the stranded Claudia. Now that they were beneath her, on the sand, she seemed enormous.
‘Only wants a few winkles and it’d be like Bridlington ’arbour,’ Gully observed heavily.
‘We might get the bent prop off and straighten it,’ Bisset said.
‘Then what?’ Docherty asked.
Cotton’s expression was murderous. ‘I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you,’ he said icily, ‘that it might be useful on the other boat. They’re sister ships. Same engines. Same props. Perhaps she’s in better shape than this one.’
‘She didn’t look it to me.’
‘We haven’t examined her yet. And if she is, we might be able to get her going with bits from this boat.’
This obviously made Docherty think again but he didn’t give up easily. He was a product of the back streets, wary, cautious and unyielding. Everything he’d had in life had been acquired by craft, wiliness or nerve, but he’d never done anything without thinking it out first.
‘She looked a mess to me,’ he said slowly.
‘We’re not going to go full belt.’
‘Suppose she’s got a bent rudder like this one? How’re you going to manoeuvre?’
‘We only want to go home,’ Cotton said. ‘Creep home, if you like. So long as we don’t stay here. Couldn’t we rig a jury rudder or something? Gully could make one, and we could change the props and so on. We’ve got a diving suit.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Docherty said. He seemed to find Cotton trying.
‘If you won’t do it,’ Cotton said savagely, ‘I will.’
Docherty’s voice rose. ‘What about petrol?’
‘Christ–’ In his frustration, Cotton was shouting, too, now ‘–we’ve got a boat full of petrol! Shaw was going to fill up from these drums when we arrived, for the journey back. We’ve got about five hundred gallons. That’s fifty miles or more – more still if we stretch it out.’
‘What’s fifty miles?’
‘It’s fifty miles away from here,’ Cotton snapped. ‘And that’s halfway back to Suda.’
Docherty glared at him. If Cotton had been an officer, he’d have done as he was told without arguing because that was how he’d been trained. But Cotton was only a junior NCO and a Joey into the bargain, and that gave Docherty the right as a Stoker, RN, to state his view of the case.
‘Ask a bloody mud-crusher how to do things,’ he said, ‘and he’ll give you all the answers – the wrong ones. Okay, you daft Marine twit, so we’ve got the petrol. But you haven’t seen the other boat yet.’
‘We can soon organise that.’
‘And, in any case, you’re asking us to do something that would take a fully-equipped marine workshop and a boatbuilder’s yard to do.’
‘We can try, can’t we? There must be villagers. Perhaps they’d help.’
‘How do you know there are villagers? I’ve not seen any.’
‘We saw houses as we were coming in. Patullo said it was called Ay Yithion.’
‘Hi who?’
‘It’s a village.’
‘It’s a bloody funny name for a village.’
While they’d been talking, Gully had been wading round the fore part of the boat, studying the holes.
‘Can it be repaired?’ Cotton asked. ‘We’ve got planks aboard.’
Gully shrugged. ‘Not enough for this lot,’ he said. ‘Ribs is gone. And, Jesus, we’re high and bloody dry!’
‘We’ll get the planks ashore, all the same,’ Cotton decided.
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
Bisset managed a twisted grin. ‘Can’t we wait?’
‘What if the Germans come?’ Cotton said.
‘They might not.’
‘We hit an aeroplane, didn’t we?’ Cotton pointed out patiently. ‘I saw a bit fall off. When he got home, he must have reported what happened. If he didn’t get home, then his pals would. That’s why that second one came to have a dekko. It won’t have taken him a minute to do a bit of the old dot-dash on the buzzer, will it? The Germans are going to start looking for us.’
‘Perhaps there aren’t any Germans here yet.’ Gully, like Docherty, seemed to be determined to be argumentative.
‘Patullo said there were. It was on the radio. Anyway, it won’t be long before there are, will it? We ought to hide.’
‘Where?’ Bisset asked.
Cotton stared about him. It was a good question but it seemed best to shelve it for the time being.
‘Okay,’ he said, ignoring Bisset. ‘We’ll get the dinghy and the rubber raft ashore and hide ’em. Then, if they do come, they’ll think we’ve tried to row away.’
Bisset stared at Cotton. ‘Well, that’s not a bad idea,’ he admitted.
‘We’ve got plenty of grub,’ Cotton went on. ‘Apart from normal ship’s stores, we took extra rations aboard.’
‘It’s worth a try.’
Docherty considered it for a while. In the end, even he couldn’t find much wrong with the idea. ‘What about them lot?’ he asked, indicating the bodies lying in the shade of the trees at the side of the beach.
‘We can leave them for a bit. Let’s get the petrol drums ashore.’ Gully grinned nervously. ‘He thinks he’s bloody Nelson or something,’ he said.
‘We’re in the bloody war to fight,’ Cotton growled. ‘What’s wrong with trying to?’
‘Who?’ Gully flapped a hand in a deprecatory gesture. ‘You, me and us two? You after a Victoria Cross or something?’
Cotton glared at him. Discipline was what counted, he thought. Morale. What the sergeant at Eastney Barracks had called es pritty corpse. ‘Behaving like a sick headache don’t help, does it?’ he rumbled, and picking up one of the mooring ropes, he began to make a parbuckle.
Between them, they lowered the drums of petrol from the boat to the beach and Bisset and Gully rolled them up among the trees and covered them with foliage and stones. Cotton followed them, sweeping the marks from the sand with a dead branch he found among the rocks.
‘What you think you are?’ Gully asked. ‘General Custer fighting the Indians?’
‘Can’t you think of anything bloody better to do?’ Cotton snapped. ‘Except find fault?’
Gully flexed his muscles. ‘I’ll have you know, mate, now that them lot–’he gestured towards the sile
nt shapes up the beach, then stopped. Cotton waited. For all his bounce, Gully wasn’t a man of deep moral fibre.
‘The bloody thing won’t run! It’s broke!’ Gully’s voice rose to a shriek and he seemed to lose his nerve for a moment in his despair. ‘The engine’s broke! The propeller’s broke! The bloody bottom’s broke! It’s full of holes! Them three–’ he gestured again helplessly ‘–they’re full of holes!’ He seemed to find Cotton wearying. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he moaned.
Cotton remained quite unmoved by the outburst. ‘We’d better get the dinghy and the raft and the Carley float ashore next,’ he said. ‘Then the blankets and anything else we can salvage.’ He looked up. The thudding of the distant guns that they’d heard ever since they’d left Suda Bay was still with them. ‘We’d better have the tinned food ashore too,’ he went on. ‘And then we’d better start rationing it out.’
‘Proper Robinson Bloody Crusoe, aren’t you?’
Cotton ignored the jibe and got them throwing down to the beach the tins of bully beef, peaches, sweetened milk and biscuit.
The planks and timbers they’d carried, Gully’s big tool box, Docherty’s smaller one, and the wooden box containing the diving gear followed.
‘There are a lot of rocks and big stones up there,’ Cotton said. ‘We can stick ’em among ’em somewhere and pile things on top of ’em.’
‘It’ll take all day!’
‘Okay,’ Cotton said. ‘We’ll take all day.’
‘What about the kid?’ Bisset reminded him.
‘Let’s go and see him,’ Cotton said wearily.
They climbed back on board. Somehow, now that they’d moved everything movable, Claudia looked a worse wreck than ever. The blood on the sloping, splintered deck was drying, black and ugly in the increasing heat of the morning. The flies had already found it and were buzzing loudly in the wheelhouse.
Howard was moaning, his head swinging from side to side in his agony, his skin grey and dead-looking.
‘Oh, Christ,’ Gully mumbled. ‘Can’t you do somefing for ’im?’
‘What?’ Cotton snapped.
‘Well, Christ–!’ the wounded boy moaned again and Gully’s eyes rolled like a frightened foal’s ‘–Jesus, it gets up my wick!’
‘It probably gets up his a bit, too,’ Cotton growled. ‘Shut your trap and be thankful it wasn’t you.’
Bisset was bending over the boy now, his face strained.
‘He wants a drink,’ Gully said. ‘That’s what you give ’em when they’re wounded.’
‘Not with stomach wounds,’ Bisset said. ‘It’d kill him. I think I’m going to use some more of the morphia to try to sew up that wound in his thigh. He’s losing blood and it might stop it.’
‘Know how to do it?’ Cotton asked.
‘Not really.’ Bisset gave a twisted smile. ‘But I once saw my little brother’s eyebrow sewn up by a doctor when he split it. It’s just like sewing a tear in your uniform. There’s some gut and needles.’
They gave Howard another shot of morphine and Bisset started to sew, with Cotton holding the lips of the wound together. They were both startled at the toughness of the flesh and Bisset was sweating as he worked. The wound looked better when he’d finished but was still by no means pretty. As they bandaged it up again, Bisset gave Cotton another smile.
‘Might work,’ he said. ‘But he needs to be where he can be looked after.’
They spent a wretched night in the wrecked launch, with Howard moaning and crying out in his pain. Cotton was unable to sleep and after a while he went to the boy. To his surprise he found Bisset there, giving him another injection.
‘It’ll help,’ he said. ‘But it’s almost all gone now. We shall have to get him to a doctor.’
When he’d assumed command, the agony of wounded men hadn’t occurred to Cotton any more than the responsibility of getting treatment, and he frowned.
‘Think he’ll be all right till tomorrow?’
‘I suppose so.’ Bisset seemed dubious. ‘I don’t really know.’ As they helplessly watched the boy gasping, Gully appeared with Docherty.
‘How is he?’
‘Bad,’ Bisset said and Cotton crossed himself. Seeing him, Docherty did the same.
Gully drew a deep breath. ‘I wish I was back in Crete,’ he said heavily.
As soon as it was daylight, Cotton made up his mind. Something had to be done about Howard. His torment was getting on top of them. Nobody could do anything for listening to his tortured breathing, which had seemed to echo round the whole boat all night.
As soon as they’d swallowed a cup of tea and a hard biscuit, they began to construct a stretcher made of two poles with blankets lashed across it. It was crude but it worked and they started to get the boy out of the cabin. His agony was unbearable and once he screamed as they manoeuvred him up the lopsided steps, in a way that echoed round the boat and shocked them all.
‘How the Christ are we going to get him ashore?’ Gully muttered.
But Cotton had thought of that and they lashed the boy to the stretcher and lowered it over the side to the sand where Gully and Docherty were waiting.
‘Get him under the trees,’ Cotton said. ‘It’s cooler there.’
His mind was stiff with the problems that filled it. There was just too much to think about and he began to realise just how much Captain Troughton, of Caernarvon, had supported on his shoulders. Captain Troughton had two decorations, a lot of gold braid and a considerably bigger salary than Corporal Cotton. Suddenly aware of what he had to carry around with him in a ship of 8000 tons and a complement of 500 men and conscious of his own small load, Cotton felt he was more than welcome to them.
They carried the boy up to the trees, where the other bodies were still lying.
‘Oughtn’t we to bury ’em?’ Bisset asked.
‘We’ll get the rest of the stuff ashore first,’ Cotton said. ‘The boat and the rafts. Just in case the Germans come.’
They lowered the dinghy and hid it behind the beach in the rocks with the rest of what they’d salvaged. Howard’s cheeks had fallen in when they went to the stretcher and Cotton peered anxiously at him. The party had been halved and somehow it bothered him that Howard was hurt. He had no wish to lose any more by death.
‘Is he dead?’ Gully asked.
‘No,’ Bisset said. ‘In fact, he’s breathing easier. If we could get him to a quack, he might pull round.’
‘We’ll try,’ Cotton said. He drew a deep breath. ‘We ought to go over to the other boat now,’ he went on. ‘To see what we can find. We can probably take him to the village while we’re at it. We’ve got to look for the other boat some time. They might have seen us coming in and be waiting for us.’
As he spoke, he saw Gully staring over his shoulder, his eyes wide, his jaw dropped, and he whirled round, expecting to see that the Germans had arrived. Instead, standing in the shallow water by the rocks at the other end of the beach, he saw two men and a girl. They were all young and wearing civilian clothes, and the men were both armed.
Three
For a long time the two groups stood motionless, staring at each other. Cotton’s first thought was that the two men were survivors from Loukia, but then he saw they weren’t British and they certainly weren’t servicemen.
The warmth in the narrow bay suddenly seemed oppressive and the thud of the guns to the north seemed nearer. The newcomers appeared to have materialised from nowhere, and Cotton realised they must have climbed down to the beach from among the rocks. There were plenty of these, towering above him in strange mysterious shapes, the burden of stone like battered forts and castles, each joined by bastions and buttresses of gritty earth and clumps of genista, brambles and oleander. His eyes swung back from the tangle of stony sentinels to the civilians and it occurred to him then that if they could descend the hillside without being seen, they must know a footpath, and a footpath was what he, Docherty, Bisset and Gully needed just then.
‘You’d better get talki
ng,’ Bisset pointed out softly. ‘They look as if they aren’t very keen on us.’
The strangers had begun to move forward now. The men had unslung their weapons – a tommy-gun, Cotton noticed at once, and a Lee-Enfield rifle – and they were moving along the beach, their feet in the shallow water, holding the weapons in front of them as if they suspected a trick. They stopped a few yards away. The man in front was thin and brilliant-eyed like a gypsy, with a heavy moustache and a feverish fanatic look. The other man was little more than a boy. The girl was roughly the same age as the younger man; not one of the plump lovelies Cotton had seen in Crete or on Iros, but a slimmer girl with natural grace and charm, her face like a waxen mask. She was bare-armed and bare-legged in a one-piece dark dress, her hair like a dark wave on her shoulders. She had charcoal-black eyes and an attractive mouth which looked as though at other times it might smile easily. Though she was not beautiful in the accepted sense, there was a serene quality about her that indicated she hadn’t always been in the habit of accompanying armed men.
The older of the Greeks, the thin man with the feverish fanatic eyes, said something which Cotton didn’t catch, and the girl spoke in English, her voice low, addressing Docherty who was standing to one side.
‘This is your boat?’
Cotton answered in Greek and three pairs of black eyes switched from Docherty’s face to his.
‘Whose side are you on?’ the thin-faced man demanded sharply, with a marked aggressive hostility.
‘Whose side?’
‘Are you for ELAS?’
‘What’s ELAS?’
‘ELAS is the Greek Communist party,’ the girl explained.
‘I’m not Greek,’ Cotton said stiffly, irritated as he always was if someone suggested he was anything but a pure-bred Englishman able to trace his ancestry back to Anglo-Saxon darkness. ‘I can speak some Greek,’ he added.
The man gestured at Claudia. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘We were coming to the island to look for a boat.’ Cotton pointed towards the cape. ‘It’s over there. In the next bay. We saw it. But we were seen by Messerschmitts and they shot us up.’ He gestured behind him and the newcomers stared solemnly at the three silent shapes wrapped in blankets.
