by Iain Gale
Hathaway suddenly broke into a run and gave another long blast on the whistle before dropping it from his mouth and letting it hang from his neck on a ribbon. The Greeks were hot on his heels, waving and shouting. Lamb yelled at his men. ‘Forward the Jackals. Up and at ’em.’ He put the whistle in his mouth and gave a blow. Four short blasts, four more, then again and again and then two short and a long.
As one, what was left of the three platoons of C Company, plus their Greek additions, ran to the left and slightly behind Hathaway’s battalion towards the German positions. Over on the far right he could see the long lines of the advancing New Zealand infantry of 19 Battalion.
Lamb let the whistle drop around his neck on its lanyard and began to yell – a long war cry, the sort he had been taught in training. It just seemed to come. And now he could hear it being taken up by the others. The Greeks were shouting too, as Hathaway had encouraged them to do, a short war cry he had taught them. They could see the Germans ahead now, some behind a low white stone wall which they were using as a defensive parapet. There was a burst of machine-gun fire from the wall and Lamb saw men go down to his left and on his right, among them several of the civilians. Women were falling as well, and for an instant he half thought that Anna might be among them. But Hathaway was still there, godlike at their head. He was walking forward now, firing his pistol as he went, deliberately, choosing his targets with care, oblivious it seemed to the bullets flying past his head.
Lamb scudded down the slope, sending clods of parched yellow earth flying, and when he was about fifty yards from the enemy he pointed the Schmeisser and gently squeezed the trigger. The gun fired, a stream of bullets shot out from the muzzle and cut into two of Germans behind the wall who had their rifles raised towards Lamb. He saw them fall, the shots ripping into them, and then he turned the gun slightly to the left and sprayed another burst with similar effect at an officer and a sergeant, ripping into them with staccato dots of lead and throwing them back like hideous marionettes. His men were hurling grenades now and he was aware of Hathaway’s group in the centre closing on the wall, ready for a mêlée. Christ, thought Lamb, this is going to get very messy. The men behind the wall seemed on closer inspection to be no more than boys, but they were still tall and fit and well trained. He did not give much for the Greeks’ chances.
And then the miracle happened.
In the centre of the enemy line, as he watched, awestruck, a green-grey form jumped up, turned and ran. After ten yards the man threw down his pack and, faster now, ran for his life. He was followed by another, and then another. The Germans were running away from them! The first of the New Zealanders had hit the parapet now, and other Germans were raising their hands in surrender. Now all along the line he could see men in grey running or surrendering. He called to his own men, who had now reached the wall.
‘Don’t shoot them, but be careful they don’t try anything. Sarnt-Major, leave the Greeks to guard them. And Hobdell and Corporal Stubbs, come on. Follow up, they’re running. Don’t let them get away.’
The men were whooping now, with the Greeks firing random bursts. Bennett yelled at the charging mass, ‘Hold your bloody fire. Save the ammo. Jesus Christ.’
It was of little use. Lamb knew that when the blood was up and your enemy in retreat, saving ammunition was the last thought on your mind.
He pulled up. Found Smart and Turner. ‘Corporal, take a message to Colonel Kippenberger. Cemetery Hill retaken. Enemy in retreat. That should do it.’
But Lamb knew as well as the next man that they could not remain in possession of the hill, exposed as it was in front of their lines. They might have helped push the enemy from its summit and brought about a respite from the shelling, but now they would have to retire back to Pink Hill. Perhaps further.
And then they would have to secure their position.
He was just wondering how on earth you did such a thing when your enemy was on all sides when Major Bassett appeared, with the repetitive predictability of the angel of death and looking just about as happy.
‘Captain Lamb.’
‘Sir?’
‘Well done back there, Lamb. Damn good show. I knew you had it in you. This is the battle, man. Well done.’
Lamb resented being addressed like some green second lieutenant, but said nothing. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Bassett’s face looked grave. ‘Right. Here’s the gen. 10th Brigade has effectively ceased to exist. We’re now 4th Brigade. Colonel Kippenberger still commands, but you are now under Major Russell, along with the Greeks and the Petrol Company. Take your orders directly from Major Russell.’
‘May I ask, sir, where Captain Hathaway might be?’
‘Hathaway’s in Galatas with his Greeks – on the eastern side at Colonel Kippenberger’s new HQ. He’s still brigaded with us, though. Good luck, Lamb.’
‘Yes, sir. I expect we might need it.’
Bennett had been standing just behind Lamb and had heard everything. ‘What now, sir?’
‘Now, Sarnt-Major, we sit here and await new orders from our new commander.’
So again they waited, and their patience was rewarded. It was a quiet morning. Well, as quiet as it could be with the bombers over Canea. As far as Lamb’s men were concerned there were no air-raids and the enemy only shelled them once. At 2 p.m. there was a signal from Major Russell, delivered by runner. Lamb read it to Eadie.
‘The Jerries have taken Ruin Hill. Seems they just walked up there and now it looks as though they can lay down fire on any of us. We’re to fall back on Galatas and hold a line across the west of the village. And we’re to expect an attack.’
Lamb had been here before. He had disobeyed an order from a superior and come damn near to being court-martialled. Then he had had a mission with the objective of saving thousands of men trapped in France. Now, though, he only needed to save one man. He knew it was vital, but something in him could not abandon his position. He had seen the faces of the men and knew what would happen if he withdrew his company, even though it might only be some thirty strong. The new order was the final decision-maker. He would stay and fight, and then and only then would he lead his men to find the King.
‘Sarnt-Major.’
‘Sir?’
‘You recall what I was saying to you earlier on about the King of Greece and his pieces of tin.’
‘Sir.’
‘Forget it. We stay. We’re going to hold this line and deny the village to the enemy. No Jerry’s going to sit down and put his feet up in my bloody café.’
Wilhelm Sussmann stopped in his tracks beneath the olive trees, threw himself to the ground and lay as still as he could manage. He could hear his heart pounding in his head and thought they must hear it too – the soldiers out there, in the vines. He heard them calling in their strange accent. Made out words: ‘Jerry’, ‘Para’ and others. He would lie here until they passed. They were yards away now, a group of them, spread out in line.
He had been able to recognise the terrain for the past half hour – the big hill to the right and, beyond it, the town of Canea. The road before him was as clear as day. He had finally made it to his objective.
Sussmann steadied himself and shuffled down the slope. He could see the house below and had heard the sound of gunfire. Ahead of him in the undergrowth he could make out moving shapes, helmeted figures, but the shapes of their helmets stopped his heart from racing. Slowly, not wishing to alarm them, Sussmann climbed down the hill until he was no more than a few paces away from their backs. He thought of the best word with which to announce his presence.
‘Sieg Heil.’
The two men turned, both with levelled machine-pistols. Then the bigger one spoke and pushed the barrel of his comrade’s weapon down towards the ground. ‘Christ, sir. I mean, General.’
‘Who are you?’
‘7th Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Fallschirmjäger, sir.’
‘You’re more than two kilometres off your drop zone. Has it taken you two da
ys to get here? Where are the rest of you?’
‘It was dreadful, sir. They shot us as we were coming down. Half the men were killed. They’re still hanging on the trees, sir. Some came down in flames. It was terrible, sir.’
Sussmann said nothing. Then, ‘Where are the enemy? How many of them are there?’
The other man spoke. ‘They’re everywhere, sir. More than we thought too. Much more.’
There was another noise from the left. Voices in German, and two more paratroops came through the vines. They stopped dead.
Sussmann smiled and spoke. ‘Major Derpa.’
‘Good God, General. Sir, we thought you were dead.’
Sussmann shrugged. ‘Yes, so did I – for a while.’
‘But your glider crashed, sir. The pilots saw it go down with everyone on board.’
‘Not quite everyone, Major. I am here now, am I not? Tell me, what’s your situation? I want everything. What’s the sitrep on the landings? How many men have you managed to collect? Do we have heavy weapons? What about the other containers?’
Derpa shook his head. ‘Not good, sir. Not good at all. It all hangs on that little pink hill and the heights above Galatas and the village.’
‘I know that. That was in the plans. What else?’
‘Lieutenant Neuhoff led an attack on the first day, but his company was wiped out. We didn’t take Maleme or Canea. That was the first day. We had no contact with Colonel Sturm at Rethymno, then yesterday they counter-attacked. Tanks too. We tried to take back the hill with the cemetery on it but every time we took it they just wiped us off it. We took a lot of casualties, sir. But then they just stopped, sir.’
‘What?’
‘They didn’t follow up. I don’t know why, but it saved our bacon.’
‘So how many do you have?’
‘I … I’m not quite certain, sir.’
‘Jesus, Derpa. You must have an idea.’
Derpa fidgeted and looked exasperated. The last thing he wanted at this moment was his commander-in-chief – whom he had thought dead – tearing him off a strip.
‘It’s very difficult to keep track of where anyone is here, sir. And at night the civilians sneak in and kill the sentries. We’ve lost two men every night. Throats cut. One of the men was beheaded.’
‘Beheaded?’
‘Yes, sir. They’re savages here. We really didn’t expect this.’
Sussmann bit his lip. No. Even he had not expected such stuff. Until they had received the last message from the agent on the island, last night. Then he had felt a fear in the pit of his stomach and had realised this would be a battle like no other the German war machine had fought to date. France had fallen, its people surrendering with war-weary readiness. The Greeks had put up a fight. He had known they would; Sussmann had studied the Classics and respected the ancient Greeks, the victors of Marathon and Salamis, and he saw no reason to suppose their descendants would be any less warlike. His brother officers, of course, had not agreed, but then they were Nazis for the most part and unlike him believed in the absolute superiority of the Aryan race. Sussmann was not so sure. Of course the German army was superb, probably the best in the world, but there was no room for complacency. And now it seemed his worst fears had been realised.
This was something new. Even the spy’s message had not warned them of such savagery.
‘Where’s Colonel Heidrich?’
‘His HQ is in the prison down there, sir. It’s a good defensive position, and the idiot Tommies didn’t even garrison it.’
‘And what now?’
‘We’re going to attack, sir. That’s the colonel’s plan at least. He’s formed a new battlegroup from 3 Battalion and the Engineers under Major Heilmann.’
Heidrich had responded well to his new responsibility.
‘Good. That’s no less than I’d have expected from him. Right. You two, find me a cup of coffee, for God’s sake. The real stuff. Good and strong.’
He waited until the others were busy and then turned back to the major.
‘Derpa, one thing. From what I can see it’s a fiasco. But what about the other thing? Where’s the King? And don’t tell me he’s got away. This is the Führer’s personal mission. Remember? Who’s down there in the villa?’
‘We don’t know, sir. We think the King has got away but we can’t be sure. He may still be there. There was a big fight there two days ago. We lost some men.’
Sussmann thought for a moment. ‘Right. First things first, Derpa. First we attack the hill and take the village, and then we get the King. It’s the Führer’s orders, but I’m a soldier first. We’re here to take this bloody island. We’re Fallschirmjäger. We have a reputation to defend. I don’t want Ringel and his damn mountain men to claim all the glory. That’s not to say my mission is compromised, but you know I really feel like killing some of those Tommies and those bastard Greeks who butchered my boys. We’ll make them pay, eh, Derpa? Now, where’s that coffee?’
On Pink Hill dusk came down fast, and Lamb’s men dug in for the night. For once Lamb managed to sleep, but towards dawn he was awoken by voices. He looked up, grabbing his gun in alarm, but saw that the noise was coming from groups of New Zealand infantry who were walking into the position from the west. Lamb climbed out of the trench which had been his bed and found one of their officers, a thin lieutenant who looked utterly done in.
‘What’s happening? Who are you? Where are you from?’
The man stared at him, hollow-eyed. ‘20th Battalion. We were up at Maleme. It was like bloody hell up there, sir. There’s thousands of Jerries up there, coming in by glider and transport. Guns too. Big stuff. Anti-tank. We’ve been pulled back. Whole of 5th Brigade has. Jerry’s taken the bloody airfield. Left the wounded and the chaplain. We’re heading for Canea, sir. Can you point me the right way?’
‘You’re going the right way, Lieutenant. Just keep walking along that road and you’ll find it.’
So that was it, thought Lamb. They’d taken Maleme.
Charles Eadie wandered up. ‘Who the devil are they, sir? They look all in, poor sods.’
Lamb spoke without turning. He just kept looking at the lines of dispirited soldiers shuffling along the road to Canea.
‘The Kiwis have pulled out from Maleme, Charles.’
‘That can’t be right, sir. They must have got it wrong. They wouldn’t. That would mean that the Jerries …’
‘… had taken the airfield. That’s precisely what it does mean.’
It confirmed what Lamb had been thinking over the past few weeks. What mattered to him, what was really important, were the men. It was all about the men you led in battle, the company and the regiment. Pendlebury could keep his special operations. He would never become involved in that. He’d already turned down the potential appointment to the much-lauded, top-secret ‘Section D’. Cloak-and-dagger stuff. If only they all knew. That was not for him. He was a soldier. There would be no covert missions for him. Lamb was a man who fought at the front. But now he had been coerced into helping to save the King of Greece.
Eadie brought him back to the present crisis. ‘Can’t we counter-attack, sir? Send reinforcements.’
‘From where? Freyberg doesn’t have them. Don’t you see? We can’t win now. They have an airfield, a bridgehead on to the island. Give them a few hours and they’ll have thousands of men in there. And what’s more, artillery. They’ve already got anti-tank guns. We’ve lost the bloody battle. All we can do now is work out a means of getting off this damned island with as many men as we can save. First, though, we’ve got another job to do. We’re going to stop them taking Galatas.’
13
It was 8 a.m. They had been awake for some hours now and still the steady stream of Kiwis had not stopped coming. Lamb and his men had struck camp and moved their position as directed a few hundred yards back in the direction of the village.
There was a familiar noise in the sky above them. Lamb didn’t need to look up. ‘Aircraft. Take c
over.’
Across the road and into the trees and vineyards men dived to the ground, not bothering to look where they might land. There were fewer trenches here but most of the men managed to find some sort of cover from the planes, which came in low from the west. That’s it, thought Lamb. The Luftwaffe are using Maleme already. The Stukas fell on them from out of the blue, whining down in their siren call and loosing their bombs almost directly into the slit-trenches. The skies were filled with aircraft and the sticks fell in staccato bursts now. Lamb kept his head down but sensed that above him the air was alive with whirring metal. Another sound now: rather than the whine of bombs, the whoosh of artillery shells. They were being fired on from the heights as well as from the air. He pressed himself still further into the trench and began to pray, the familiar soldiers’ prayer that simply asked for deliverance from present danger.
After half an hour it stopped. Lamb sat up and surveyed the carnage. The road to his left and the vineyards before him were littered with dead and wounded men and body parts. Blast craters pitted the ground. Men had been flung in weird, unnatural poses and hung over walls or shattered against the walls of houses. There was masonry and wood everywhere, and the smell of burning and death.
He called out, ‘Sarnt-Major, Sarnt-Major Bennett, over here.’
For a horrible moment he heard nothing, save the ringing in his ears. Then there was a familiar voice. ‘Sir. Yes, sir. I’m here.’
Bennett had been wounded, but not badly by the look of things. He was holding his left hand and it looked as if he had been hit by shrapnel on one of his fingers.
‘You’re hit.’
‘Not bad, sir. Hurt my bloody finger. That was horrible. Not many of our lads hit, though.’
‘Not many left to hit, Sarnt-Major. Seen Lieutenant Eadie?’
‘He’s fine, sir, though he got hit on the head by a piece of wood from the house he was in.’
