‘He won’t tell,’ Pendlebury observed. ‘Come on, this way.’ He led them down the steps into a dark cellar, and switched on his electric torch. From the far side, further steps descended into a series of chambers deep under the town.
‘This should be safe enough for the time being,’ said Pendlebury. It was cold down there, the air musty. He swung his torch over the vaulted ceilings. ‘Byzantine.’ He grinned at Vaughan. ‘Some fourteen hundred years old. Our little secret, eh?’
*
The Stukas had left Heraklion, but they were not the only marauding Luftwaffe aircraft that morning. A little more than a hundred miles away to the north-west a Staffel of nine Junkers 88 twin-engine bombers were searching for British ships heading away from Greece. It had been just three weeks since the Germans had invaded the mainland and, as in Poland, Norway, the Low Countries and France, their enemies had soon been in full retreat. For many Greek soldiers there had been nowhere to run, but for the British, defeat had meant yet another evacuation, this time across the two hundred and more miles to Suda Bay in the north-west corner of Crete. The Luftwaffe had found rich pickings, repeatedly hammering the Royal Navy as it tried to get the mixed force of British, Australian and New Zealand troops away to safety.
‘Aussehen! Zwei britische Schiffe!’ said the Staffel Kapitan, Hans Brühle, over the R/T, as ahead of him, just visible, he spotted two ships, their wakes vividly white against the deep, dark blue sea. Then he added, ‘Bereiten Sie anzugreifen.’ Prepare to attack.
The Junkers 88 had been designed with dive-bombing capabilities, and while unable to plummet down on its target with the kind of eighty-degree angle that the Stuka could perform, it could still dive both quickly and steeply. Brühle now brought his Staffel down to around three thousand metres. The two ships were still some way to the south, but he could tell now, by the wake and the speed with which they were travelling, that they must be destroyers.
The sun, already rising high in the east, dazzled across Brühle’s cockpit, glinting blindingly over the perspex. He spoke into his radio once more. They were going to head east on a bearing of ninety degrees, then loop around in a wide arc, so that the sun was behind them. Two Ketten – six machines – under Leutnant Keller would dive down and bomb the ships in quick succession, while he would lead the remaining Kette into a shallow dive without brakes, levelling off at two hundred metres and swooping in low for their attack. Timing was the key. It was imperative that his three low-level planes strike out of the sun just after the other six and at a time when the British destroyers were distracted. Dive-bombers were designed for accuracy, but as Brühle was well aware, hitting a small and fast-moving target like a destroyer was no easy task. Low-level passes offered the best chance of success. At only a few hundred metres above the sea, however, the risks were considerable.
‘Keller,’ he said, ‘beginnen Sie Ihren Tauchgang, bis ich den Auftrag dazu erteilen.’ Wait until I give you the word to dive.
‘Jawohl, Herr Kapitan,’ Keller replied.
Brühle’s mouth felt suddenly dry. He licked his lips and swallowed, then glanced at his navigator. As he pushed the control column forward, his heart was already quickening. It was always the same – nausea, but also exhilaration.
2
Colour Sergeant-Major Jack Tanner had already watched the gun captains check and recheck their ready-use ammunition and fuses on the two rear 4.7-inch guns. He had also seen the gun layer on the Quick Firing 2-Pounder, or pompom as it was known, train and elevate his weapon to its full capacity, then more than once examine its ammunition feedrails. It had been good to see. Checking and cleaning his own weapon was the first thing Tanner did whenever he had a spare moment, and since, over the past forty-eight hours, he had had very little to do other than wait in Rafina to be evacuated, his rifle had received an especially large amount of attention.
It was slung over his back now as he leaned against the stern railing. Apart from a bit of darkening and wear and tear to the butt, the rifle looked almost as good as new, glistening with a sheen of oil. As a boy, he had learned the importance of looking after weapons. It had been drummed into him by his father, and ever since he had joined the army as a sixteen-year-old boy soldier, he had carried an oiler, rags and pull-through and, wherever possible, a small flask of gin – nothing, he had discovered, could compare with gin for cleaning the firing mechanism. The spirit never congealed in cold weather, and it helped the striker hit with a clear, sharp snick.
He and the rest of the 2nd Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers, were all aboard HMS Halberd. Most of the men had been bundled below decks, officers into the wardroom, ORs anywhere they could find a place to perch out of the way. Destroyers were not large vessels – in Halberd’s case, a little over three hundred feet long and thirty wide. Normally, she played home to just 145 officers and crew, but that had now swollen by more than seven hundred Rangers who, if not properly disciplined, could play havoc with their chances of making safe passage to Suda Bay. As the ship’s captain had told the Rangers officers before they had set sail, he was expecting plenty of attention from the Luftwaffe now that more than half of the journey would take place during daylight hours. He made it clear he did not want soldiers to get in the way of the crew.
The crossing would have been considerably less tense had they left at dusk the previous evening as planned. However, both Halberd and HMS Havock had been held up on their way to Greece, first dodging enemy air attacks and then helping to rescue men from another stricken vessel. By the time they had unloaded them back in Suda Bay, the two destroyers were badly behind schedule. Not until the early hours of that Monday morning did they finally reach Rafina, and when the last of the men had been lifted, it was just before 2 a.m., with only around four hours left before first light.
Because of this delay, the crew had been almost continually at Action Stations. A small number of Rangers – one section from each of the companies – had been detailed to help the crew damage-control and repair parties. Tanner could have been excused such duty, but the idea of being stuck away below decks, unable to see what was going on, did not appeal to him at all; if he had to go to sea – and he would really rather not – then he reckoned it was far better being out in the fresh air with something to look at. So Tanner, with Captain Peploe’s blessing, had joined Sergeant Sykes and the rest of Corporal McAllister’s section at the stern of the ship where they had taken their positions next to Y Gun, one of the ship’s four 4.7-inch guns, and the one furthest aft. In any case, Sykes’s platoon had lost their commander in Greece – and the entire battalion of nearly a hundred men – so Tanner had been keeping an especial eye on them until their new subaltern arrived. Not that Sykes couldn’t keep them in line on his own; he could, but Tanner liked Sykes, and McAllister for that matter, and furthermore, he recognized that Sykes’s optimism was good for him. God knew, he needed it at the moment.
Tanner had been smoking a cigarette and watching Havock, Halberd’s sister ship. Not more than five hundred yards away and just a nose in front, she had the last remaining men from the 1st Armoured Brigade aboard, some eight hundred soldiers from the 9th Royal Rifle Corps. Then suddenly there were shouts from the men behind him, and a split second later he had heard the faint buzz of aircraft. He quickly scanned the skies, but without his binoculars he could not spot them at first. Turning round he heard the gun layer relay the orders he had received over his headset from the gunnery officer in the Director Control Tower: ‘Nine high-level bombers bearing green 170.’
The gun crew were gathered around their 4.7-inch gun, dressed in navy denim overalls and wearing white cotton balaclavas beneath their helmets. Behind them were the damage-control parties, waiting expectantly, the Rangers among them. Tanner saw Sykes and McAllister scanning the skies, then looked upwards himself.
‘Bearing green 160,’ called the gun layer.
Tanner spotted them, then almost immediately lost them again as they disappeared in the glare of the sun. He cu
rsed, having caught a glimpse of the sun’s rays and now finding his vision affected.
‘Looks like they’re buggering off,’ said one of the Rangers.
Tanner caught Sykes’s eye and saw his friend raise a sceptical eyebrow.
‘Ignorance is bliss, eh, sir?’ he said, joining Tanner. He leaned out over the rail. ‘And so close too – look.’
Tanner, also leaning out, now saw Crete, a dark, milky blue up ahead, lying like a sleeping maiden on the sea. He turned back, a hand shielding his eyes. The faint drone of aero engines could still be heard. ‘Sneaky bastards,’ he muttered.
‘Can’t say I blame ’em, though,’ said Sykes. ‘If you’ve got a bloody great blinding sun in the sky and not a cloud for dear money, you might as well make the most of it. And you have to admit, it’s a nice day for a swim.’
‘I bloody hate swimming.’ Tanner glanced back at the guns. ‘I hope those lads are good.’
The two stern guns, Y Gun and, behind it on the raised gun deck, X Gun, were now moving into position ready in response to orders from the DCT, clicking and ticking as they were elevated skywards. The sound of aircraft was louder now, then shouts could be heard. Tanner saw them again, high in the sky, now coming straight towards them from the east. There was something odd about them, though, and then he realized: there were now only six aircraft, not nine. Where the hell had the other three gone?
The engine pitch changed as the six Junkers dived towards the two destroyers. Tanner gripped the railings.
‘All guns, rapid salvoes,’ called the gun layer, which was then repeated and shouted by the gun captain. As one, the four guns opened fire, the shells hurtling into the sky with a deafening crash, while the pompom, in the centre of the iron deck, furiously pumped away, the only weapon to be able to fire independently at will. At the same time, the ship lurched suddenly as she changed course, so that Tanner nearly lost his footing. In moments, the bombers were almost upon them and dropping their loads. The whistle of the missiles could be heard amid the ear-shattering din of the guns. Then huge fountains of spume and spray erupted like sea-monsters into the sky. One bomb from the second aircraft hit the sea no more than fifty yards from the port side, spray lashing across the men on deck. Tanner ducked and cursed again, wiping the saltwater from his face and hands. He glanced back at the gunners, traversing and elevating their 120mm tube in response to orders from the DCT – one man gathering the shell, the loader placing it in the breech, and the layer giving the signal that the gun was ready to fire. When all four guns were ready, the out-of-sight gunnery officer in the DCT triggered each of the guns as one. A moment later, they fired once more, the breech recoiling, then the empty casing pulled out and piled on the metal deck behind. Tanner reckoned this process took around ten seconds; six rounds per minute was not bad if firing against another vessel but against Junkers 88 bombers speeding through the air at around 280 m.p.h., it was only ever going to be a chance hit that brought one down.
The ship swerved again, and Tanner glimpsed Havock between the fountains of spray, her guns firing every bit as furiously and also taking hurried evasive action. Smoke and cordite hung heavy in the air, while above, black puffs of flak now dotted the sky. More bombs fell, but miraculously, none appeared to have hit either ship, and now the Junkers were climbing away, curving behind them to the north. Some of the men cheered, but barely had they opened their mouths than another roar of aircraft thundered towards them. Almost before the men realized what was happening, three Junkers had appeared low from the east, straight out of the sun at no more than four hundred feet.
Tanner ducked again as the creamy pale blue undersides of the bombers sped over the ship, a stick of dark bombs tumbling out as they did so. The 4.7-inch guns banged off another round of shells and the pompom pounded again but the elevation was wrong, their firing late on the targets, and in seconds the bombs were exploding, one landing in the centre of the ship between the port-side derrick and the pompom gun deck. Tanner turned his back and shielded his face from the blast, but even so a piece of flying shrapnel nicked his temple. Putting a finger to the wound briefly, he looked across at the other Rangers and the damage-control parties and saw most were still on the ground, only slowly raising their dazed heads.
Beneath the pompom, a large hole had been ripped out of the deck and upper side of the ship. The remains of a lifeboat, its timbers splintered and splayed, hung limply from the contorted and twisted frame of the derrick. Of the men who had been waiting there moments before there was now no sign. Nor was the pompom firing, yet between the din of the guns he could hear aircraft still circling, then spotted one banking in a wide arc in front of them.
Uncontrollable rage welled within him, and he now ran along the deck, slipped on some blood, tripped, fell, cursed and scrambled up again. Several body parts and globs of flesh lay splattered against the torpedo tube mount, the pompom mount, and across the shredded iron top deck. Through the smoke, Tanner heard the screams of dying men, pushed his way past a staggering sailor, and scrambled up the still intact metal ladder on the starboard side of the pompom deck. Heaving himself up, he took a rapid glance at the gun position. The port side was badly damaged from the blast, while the cabouche to the front was shattered. Behind the canvas lay two dead men.
The gunner still sat in his seat at his weapon, his head lolled back and groaning. Tanner hurried to him and grabbed his shoulders, then saw that half of the man’s face had been blown away, while his right arm was nothing more than a bloody mess of sinew and bone. Tanner clasped his arms around the gunner’s chest and pulled him out of the seat. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he muttered, as the man gasped. Tanner laid him on the deck beside the gun mounting and clambered onto the seat.
Wiping blood from his face, he looked at the weapon. It seemed to be undamaged, despite some obvious shrapnel nicks; steel was tougher than flesh and bone. ‘How do you fire this bloody thing?’ he mouthed to himself. Either side were two large ammunition feedrails still full of two-pound cannon shells. There were hand wheels either side too. Tanner turned one to his left – ah, elevation – and then another on his right – traverse – as the barrels rose and the weapon swivelled on its mount. Beside the breech on his left there was a crank – the firing handle? He glanced out as the smoke cleared. Approaching from the east were two Junkers coming around for another attack, but this time they were below the level of the sun and he now saw them clearly before they crossed the blinding brightness. He was no longer aware of any sound apart from a ringing in his ears; the din of the guns, the shouts and screams of wounded and dying men had gone. Traversing the gun so that it pointed directly out to sea, he turned the crank and, to his relief, a volley of shells punched from each of the four barrels. Smiling grimly to himself, he watched the two aircraft approach. One, he now saw, was heading straight for Halberd, the other for Havock.
On his own, he could not fire and change the elevation of the gun at the same time; it meant he had just one chance. Like shooting a pheasant, he told himself. Carefully he lined his aim on the first aircraft. The ship was still moving, but he could traverse the gun. Aim off a generous amount, he decided, open fire, and let that Jerry bastard fly straight into it. The two aircraft roared towards them – eight hundred yards, six hundred, four hundred, two hundred – now! Tanner turned the crank, the barrels pumped out their shells but immediately he saw his aim was wide. He swore – there was no time to traverse again – but then the ship lurched to port and the lead Junkers flew directly into his line of fire. Cannon shells tore into the cockpit and fuselage just a hundred yards from the port side of the ship. A puff of smoke, then flame.
Inside the plane, Oberleutnant Brühle had a brief moment of realization, the controls slipped from his hands and then, as the Junkers hurtled over Halberd, first a fuel tank and then the bomb bay exploded, the aircraft erupting into a mass of tumbling flame that scorched an arced path across the sky before plunging with a hiss of smoke and steam into the sea.
Tanner wiped t
he blood from his face once more. ‘Got you,’ he said.
*
HMS Halberd had safely docked at Suda just under two hours later, while Havock continued on her way to Alexandria. The remaining Junkers had turned for home after their Staffel Kapitan had been killed, and the ships had not been troubled again. Even so it was ironic that Havock, which had somehow come through the attack entirely unscathed, should be full of troops destined for Egypt, while Halberd, in desperate need of a lengthy stint under repair at Alexandria, should have to go to Crete first. Furthermore, at Suda, her crew learned that they would be taking their cargo of troops on to Heraklion where, it had been decided, the Yorks Rangers would be joining 14th Infantry Brigade in the defence of the port and airfield there.
Twelve sailors and two Rangers had been killed by the bomb on the iron deck. A further fourteen men had been wounded, of whom two were thought unlikely to live. Having safely unloaded their injured, the rest of the Rangers had trooped off, each company marching to an assembly area away from the quayside where they had been fed and given tea, while Halberd’s crew tidied their ship. In the afternoon, Suda was attacked by more bombers. This time, there were a number of anti-aircraft guns to help repel the intruders, both around the harbour and on the long ridge between the bay and the open sea. But although Halberd was not struck this time, a number of half-sunken wrecks in the bay showed that the Luftwaffe had had their fair share of success. As it was, some stores were hit and part of the quay was damaged, and after they had gone, a great column of smoke from the burning warehouse rose slowly into the sky, filling the air with the rich and biting stench of burning rubber.
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