He swerved and almost lost his balance as a soldier appeared directly in his path. He vaguely realised that the man was fully equipped and wearing his helmet, and that he had a bayoneted rifle aimed and steady. A sentry perhaps, grateful only a few seconds earlier that he had been excused from the working party.
Something seemed to scream at him. What does it matter! He’s the bloody enemy!
He saw the rifle buck, and imagined he heard the bullet ripping past him. He levelled his Sten but someone else was there, Sergeant Welland, perfectly balanced on both feet as he parried the German’s blade, like an instructor with a raw recruit. The blades clashed, and the soldier lost his footing. Mere seconds, but they were all Welland needed. He drove his bayonet into the man’s armpit, and as the soldier fell, gasping, he wrenched out the blade and kicked him aside and ran on after his section.
More shots, and then he saw Archer pause to scoop up a German grenade, the familiar ‘potato masher’, and fling it beyond some rocks where it exploded instantly. Another second . . . He waved the Sten and yelled, ‘Good lad! Keep at it!’
There were only a few shots now, and as he followed two of his men up a makeshift ramp and through the torn canvas screen, he knew they had done it. The equipment was right here, two men standing on either side, hands in the air, knowing that just one stupid move would be their last.
There was another hide right behind this place, with more equipment and some camp beds. His hand steadied the Sten as he saw a further opening to the rear. Someone had escaped, might even now be running for a field telephone or wireless; the torn canvas flapped slightly as if to drive the point home.
He should have known. It had happened often enough. Nobody had escaped. He swung round, but fell to his knees as he took the full weight of the attacker on his shoulders. The oldest trick in the world . . . He struck out, but the Sten had been knocked or torn from his hands.
Like living a nightmare, but this was real. The man was strong, and was grappling at his throat, choking him.
Instinct, training, fear, it was all and none of them. He allowed himself to fall, fingers dragging at his commando dagger. In a moment he would black out completely. The blood was roaring in his head, and he could feel the man’s saliva on his upturned face.
It was like hearing the instructor all over again.
Thumb on the blade, sir, and stab upwards!
He felt the blade jar against leather and metal, then the great shudder as the soldier arched his back, the agony too great, too instant even for a final cry.
Hands were lifting him, pulling the dead weight from his body. Despard was here, hard-eyed, ready for another trick. But there was nothing.
Archer helped him to his feet. ‘Nice one!’ He studied him searchingly. ‘All right, sir?’
Blackwood picked up his helmet and looked at his attacker. A contorted face, eyes bulging, but only a man after all.
He replaced his dagger, and said, ‘Let’s get on with it.’
He did not glance at the men who had surrendered. ‘We’ll take them back with us.’ He saw Welland’s bayonet move slightly, and said with greater emphasis, ‘I mean it.’
Despite the drifting smoke the air seemed clean outside. It was over.
He saw Gaillard reloading his revolver, three marines being dragged away from the collapsed hide. Two were dead; the third would not live much longer.
Gaillard shaded his eyes as if it were still bright sunshine, although dusk came quickly here, and parts of the ridge were already in shadow.
Blackwood said, ‘Set the charges, and round up any prisoners.’ He knew Gaillard was watching him, but he said nothing.
Despard called, ‘Mr Robyns has caught one, sir!’
It was not over.
Two marines were holding the lieutenant on the ground, another was trying to bind a dressing around his leg. There did not appear to be much of it left.
Despard said, ‘Booby-trap, sir.’ He gestured angrily to the wire. ‘He should have known.’ He sounded bitter, as if he were blaming himself.
One of the marines held up something in his filthy hand. It was an Iron Cross, probably from a body close to the barbed wire. Just one touch. It was all it needed.
Gaillard said tersely, ‘Fetch a stretcher for this officer. The prisoners can carry him. Keep them out of mischief!’
Blackwood knelt and waited for Robyns to open his eyes. He looked very young, and suddenly helpless.
Blackwood stared over him and saw the sea. The Strait was marked in shadows, each slow movement like breathing. Their ships would be able to move in safety from now on, until the final retreat. It had been worth it. It had to be.
Robyns clenched his teeth until blood ran from his lip as the first agonising pain lanced through him.
Blackwood stood and walked away, unable to watch. It had to be worth it . . .
‘Ready with the fuses, sir!’ He almost expected the man to salute. He sounded alert and confident; discipline was already replacing the wild urge to kill.
Robyns screamed as the Germans lifted the stretcher, and Gaillard snapped, ‘Keep him quiet! We’ve got fifteen miles to cover, remember!’
But Despard was shaking his head. Blackwood said quietly, ‘Put the officer down,’ and accompanied it with gestures. They lowered the stretcher, almost fearfully, he thought. Then he thrust his hand into Robyns’s shirt, and remembered him grinning from the deck of the M.G.B. after the raid.
‘He’ll not make any more noise, sir.’ He walked towards his men with their fuses and detonators, unable to conceal his contempt. ‘Ever!’
They made the German wounded as comfortable as they could, simple acts carried out in a wary silence. Help would come for them tomorrow.
They moved from the ridge even as the charges began to explode, all perfectly timed.
Blackwood watched the marines forming into sections for the return march. They had lost five killed, but as they headed away from the sea once again, he could not shake the feeling that they were still all together. Once he felt himself touching his commando knife, and knew it was not the time to reason, to question. This was today.
It was enough.
Lieutenant David Falconer stood wedged in one corner of his tiny bridge and swung his night-glasses in a slow arc. A veteran of Light Coastal Forces, if there could be such a creature in this fast-moving war, he was more used to darkness than the daylight which could leave them so vulnerable, easy prey for anything more powerful. M.G.B. 49 had been at action stations for most of the night, with only quick, stealthy gulps of glutinous cocoa, ki, and sandwiches so thick you could hardly get your teeth around them. Falconer’s small company were used to it, as they were to one another; and he had come to know every one of them as so much more than mere names and ratings.
Crouched over the wheel was his petty officer coxswain, the core of any small warship. On parade or being visited by the brass, everything was always pusser and formal, but here, in the cramped, box-like bridge, he was a reliable friend. Most of the others were like that now. Only the first lieutenant seemed unable to cross the plank, not completely.
He said, ‘They’re bloody late! I thought it was too good to last!’
The coxswain glanced over at him. ‘Quiet enough, though. No signs of an alarm.’
Falconer grunted. He had not even realised he had spoken his thoughts aloud. Getting past it.
He moved the glasses again. Imagination, or was the undulating water already lighter? The dawn would be sudden, and they would have the sun dead astern. A perfect target. He could not see their consort, the other M.G.B. That was some comfort, but not much.
Maybe the F-lighter had broken down. He pictured the base engineering officer and decided against it; nothing got past his eagle eye.
And when the Germans eventually did pull out of North Africa, what then? Another flotilla, or some other special group. At least they were more co-ordinated now. At the beginning it had been almost impossible to know who was doing
what. He heard someone curse as the boat dipped and rolled uncomfortably in the offshore swell. It would be nothing in a destroyer, or the ‘big ships’ which they always viewed with a sort of proud contempt. But in the motor gunboat, with her engines stopped, it was enough to turn the strongest stomach.
He felt Sub-Lieutenant Balfour hovering near one of the machine gunners.
Falconer said, ‘Check our position, Number One.’
‘I did, sir.’
Falconer restrained the sudden anger. It was not Balfour’s fault. It was just . . . He said quietly, ‘Do it again.’
He heard Balfour lurching down the ladder to the privacy of the chart space. Thinks I’m a real shit.
Aloud he said, ‘I could move further inshore. If the Royals have knocked out the radar we’ll be safe enough. If not, we can still offer a good turn of speed to get us out of it!’
The coxswain felt the wheel bucking slightly in his hands. The skipper was right. She could go like bloody hell when the throttles were opened. He listened to the boat’s distinctive noises, and the sluice of water beneath her flared hull, the persistent rattle of signal halliards, the restless sounds of her company. Good men and skivers, and those who would have spent most of their time at the defaulters’ table in any other kind of vessel. He glanced at the lieutenant’s broad shadow in the dimness. Or maybe with any other sort of C.O.
Falconer was thinking of the commandos, and in particular of Mike Blackwood. Not the sort of marine he had been used to, more like someone who was doing the job only because it was expected of him, and there had never been either doubt or choice. A regular, too. He considered his own previous life as a schoolmaster. He had never wanted anything but to get to sea. What war offered to one, it had seemed to take away from another.
A seaman called, ‘Boat at Green four-five, sir!’
He grunted an acknowledgment. You must never show relief, not to those who were relying on your every action, your every gesture. But it was good to know that the other M.G.B. was still on station. If this were the North Sea or the English Channel, with their swift and perverse currents and tides, you might have been anywhere. In the Med you had some consolation in . . .
He froze, his mind clicking into place like a breechblock.
‘Engines, sir!’
The coxswain had swivelled round. He did not need to say anything. The engines were fast-moving. And from astern. The wrong bearing.
Falconer said, ‘How many, Dick?’
‘Two. Maybe three.’ His Tyneside accent seemed more pronounced; it always did when danger was near. ‘Not bothered about the bloody din!’
Falconer said nothing. Maybe the attack had been tumbled. Or maybe Blackwood was lying out there somewhere with his men, like all the others he had seen. He tried to concentrate, to remember who the F-lighter’s skipper was, but nothing formed.
He knew Balfour was on the bridge again, intent, afraid to intrude. He said, ‘Company, Number One.’
He felt him nod. He would do his best, he had proved that. But there was never enough time to learn in this bloody game.
He said, ‘We can stay put. Make off when those buggers have passed. They’re not looking for us. They have other fish to fry.’
Why bother? He felt the anger again. Because it mattered. Especially to someone who might be dead before he saw the sun again.
Balfour said, ‘The lighter might have been delayed. In that case . . .’
Falconer gripped his arm, and realised that he still had his unlit pipe jammed between his teeth. It was a wonder he had not bitten right through the stem.
‘In that case, John Balfour, they’ll be needing us after all!’ He found he could listen to the distant engines without anxiety. Thrum-thrum-thrum. E-Boats, bigger, and better armed than any of ours.
But he could see the swaying shape of the compass card, like something floating in darkness.
He said, ‘Pass the word and tell Sparks to be ready to make the signal!’ He touched the coxswain’s oilskinned shoulder. ‘At least the bastards will have the sun behind them!’
Balfour stared past him and saw the faint hint of dawn, where there had been only night. The guns were swinging round, belts of ammunition like snakes against the grey steel.
He almost ran the last few feet to his action station by the Oerlikon cannon.
He gripped the safety rail and held his breath. He could hear the enemy engines, and yet, above it, there was also the gentle sound of the seaman whistling to himself, strapped in his harness, waiting to begin.
Balfour wanted to remember the skipper’s rough confidence, the way the small group which were this gunboat’s crew looked up to him. But all he could think of was the girl he wrote to whenever he could. The smile, in the only photograph he had of her.
‘Oh God, help me!’
But the Rolls-Royce engines roared into life and the deck tilted over to the thrust of rudder and power, and his plea went unheard.
‘Over here, sir!’
Blackwood recognised Sergeant Paget’s voice and quickened his pace to join him. The silence and utter desolation only added to the unreality, he thought. After the fury of the attack, the forced march back to the rendezvous had seemed an even greater strain.
The marines sat or squatted in small groups, clutching their weapons, snatching this brief rest while they could. Blackwood had already noticed that the pickets were in place, nothing left to chance.
Paget said quietly, ‘It’s Corporal Sharp, sir. Taking it badly.’
The man in question had been wounded in the leg by a bullet, and his shin bone had been shattered. Unable to walk, he had been carried by the German prisoners and his own marines. He must have been in great pain, but had not complained.
When someone had asked him how he was managing, Blackwood had heard the corporal gasp, ‘Just get me to the bloody sea, chum! I can make it then!’
He stared at the stars, paler now, or so they appeared. But they were on course. The sea could not be more than a mile or two away. He thought of the corporal’s words. Still more sailor than soldier, no matter what the Corps said about it.
He knelt beside the wounded man and his bearers. Even in the gloom, he could see the Nazi eagle on the tunic of one of them.
‘It’s the Cap’n, Ernie.’ Paget sounded on edge.
Blackwood unclipped his flask and handed it to the corporal. ‘Drink this.’ He heard the German’s stomach rumbling. Thirsty, or fearful, it did not seem to matter out here. There were no sounds or reflections of distant battle, only the sky and the land.
Sharp muttered, ‘Much further, sir?’
Blackwood laid his hand on the man’s chest, feeling the anguished breathing, the despair. Like Robyns.
‘A mile or so. You’ll make it.’ With prompt treatment, the leg could be saved.
Sharp tried to raise himself. ‘Nothing to it, sir!’ The effort made him fall back against the German.
Archer, who had been standing behind him, said, ‘Major’s comin’, sir.’
Blackwood tested the bandages, the wounded leg bound to the sound one. The dressing was damp. Perhaps the bleeding had stopped.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Gaillard leaned over them. ‘I said a short break, not a bloody banyan party!’
Blackwood stood, and felt the throb in his own wound.
‘We’re ready to move again now, sir. Corporal Sharp is doing his best.’
He felt Gaillard drag at his sleeve, drawing him away from the others.
‘We’ll have to leave him. Slowing us down. Make him understand. Can’t risk the whole mission at this stage!’
‘Is that an order, sir?’
Gaillard had begun to turn away, but stopped dead as if he had misheard.
‘It is. Do you question it?’
‘You know what will happen to him if we leave him, don’t you?’
Gaillard smiled thinly.
‘You’re a good hand, Mike, but don’t rely on your luck. Not with me, right?’<
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Blackwood nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Gaillard strode away. ‘Ready to move! Jump about!’
Blackwood let out a deep breath, and when his hand brushed against his commando dagger he felt suddenly nauseated. He thought of the blade catching on the soldier’s belt and equipment, and then driving into his flesh. Today I killed a man. Not some hazy target, but a living human being.
Sergeant Paget said, ‘Pick him up, lads!’ He touched the makeshift stretcher. ‘Easy, Ernie, this is going to cost you a tot when we get back!’
But he was looking at Blackwood, and Archer, waiting a little apart from him. The watchdog.
Captain Blackwood had been about to disobey an order. On active service, even from a Corps family like his, it would have meant disaster. And yet somehow Gaillard had realised it, and had changed his mind.
Paget was like Archer in one thing; he had served many kinds of officer. But Gaillard was different from all of them. He was dangerous.
Training, discipline and loyalty seemed to join as one, and scream, stay out of it. As on board ship, wardroom and messdeck don’t mix.
He fell into step beside the stretcher, his rifle slung on one shoulder. He couldn’t stay out of it now, even if he wanted to. He knew what had happened in Burma. He touched Sharp’s arm, and heard him murmur something. And it could have happened to you, Ernie.
And Blackwood knew it also.
The lighter was turning, preparing to leave in the last, lingering shadows before dawn, when the weary marines with their wounded and ten German prisoners waded through the lapping water, and were hauled aboard without further delay.
Gaillard went straight to the bridge, and waited while the lieutenant in command laid his awkward vessel on course and increased speed.
Despard found Blackwood with the wounded, as the lighter’s two sickberth attendants examined and changed dressings with the skill of any surgeon.
Men laughed again, and somebody was busy pouring tea from a pot the size of a watering can.
Despard chose his words with care. ‘Heard about Corporal Sharp, sir.’
Blackwood turned quickly, like a cat. ‘What did you hear?’
Not the proper way. Despard tried again, with greater caution. ‘I thought he wasn’t going to make it back there.’
Dust on the Sea (1999) Page 18
