by Iain Gale
Valentine, who was beside Lamb, shook his head. ‘There you are, sir. I told you we should have killed the King when we still had the chance.’
As one of the Gebirgsjäger poked him back with the muzzle of a rifle, Lamb spoke again. ‘Shut up, Valentine. How’s your German?’
‘Fine, sir.’
‘Well then, use it. Tell them Bandouvas has them covered.’
Valentine called to Sussmann, who laughed and shook his head. ‘You must think me very stupid, Captain. I know that all the kapitan’s men are with you.’
He scanned the group and then looked concerned, for he found himself unable to spot the big kapitan. ‘All right, Captain. Where is he?’
Lamb muttered to Valentine, ‘Don’t say anything, just point up the hill.’
Valentine raised his arm and pointed as Lamb had directed, and from instinct Sussmann shifted his gaze for a moment, to follow the line. It was enough.
Lamb snatched the rifle from the German nearest to him, swung it into his jaw with a thud that sent him to the ground and then, tucking it into his own shoulder, aimed at Comberwell. Moving it ten degrees right, Lamb squeezed the trigger and a bullet hit Sussmann in the shin, knocking him off his feet.
Comberwell turned and loosened his grip for a second, and as he did Lamb moved the rifle. The second shot hit Comberwell in the centre of the forehead and for a moment he seemed to stand there, frozen in time. Then his body fell limp to the ground, his dead fingers dropping the knife.
One of the Germans fired, hitting Bunce in the stomach, but then the rest of Lamb’s men and the andartes were on the Gebirgsjäger with their fists, snatching rifles away and using them as clubs. It was over quickly, the remaining Gebirgsjäger raising their hands in surrender.
King George put his hands to his throat. ‘Thank you. Thank you, Captain.’
As he spoke Lamb was aware of Sussmann rising from the ground, picking up the Luger. He raised his rifle just as the general took aim at the King. Too late. There was a crack, and the gun flew from his hand. As Sussmann yelled in pain, Lamb looked for the smoking gun and saw Anna lower her rifle from her shoulder.
He walked over to her. ‘You know you could have killed him with that shot.’
‘But I wasn’t aiming to kill him, Peter.’
‘If we take the general to Egypt you know what it’ll mean for you? Bandouvas told me.’
‘I know there will be more reprisals. More deaths. I know that you are condemning us all to death, but I know too that you must take him. He must go for all of us, as a symbol of our defiance. A message from the people of Crete to the world.’
Lamb shook his head. Messages, symbols, when all he wanted to do was save lives. Her life. Here it was tenfold, twenty times over, that nightmare of his again, of killing innocent people. But there was no choice. ‘I can’t leave you to that. You can’t make me do that.’
She smiled. ‘I can, Peter. Because I love you.’
Bandouvas had been watching them. He reached up and put his hand on Lamb’s shoulder. ‘Now you must leave, but we will carry on the fight till you return, Captain Lamb, “Arni”. My friend. May God go with you. Be sure to come back to us soon.’
Anna looked at him, smiled and said nothing. Then she took him by the hand and led him down the hillside and he saw that there, beyond the beach, riding the tide, lay a British destroyer.
Cursing the wound in his arm, Lamb pulled himself up the rope scrambling net that swung against the side of the ship. Above him he was aware of Prince Peter being helped aboard with the Hartleys and below, being helped out of the bobbing launch, Eadie, Bennett and what remained of the men of his company. Then, as he reached the deck he heard the last notes of the boatswain’s call, piping aboard the King and the Prince.
Lamb steadied himself on the deck as the ship’s captain saluted him and he returned the gesture. The officer was smiling and speaking to him now, but Lamb, oblivious to the words, turned his head to look back at the coast, trying in vain in the twilight to make out the last remaining traces of the olive groves, the vineyards and the cypresses. Even as he watched, the night grew darker, and soon all he could see of Crete was the great mass of the island rising high above the shimmering water, as immovable and steadfast as the people who were proud to call it their home.
HISTORICAL NOTE
The battle of Crete was without doubt one of the most disastrous debacles engaged in by the British and Commonwealth forces during World War II. It was also a conflict which produced some of the most heroic actions and acts of individual bravery, seen not only in that war, but in all military history.
Poorly provisioned and equipped and suffering from disease and exhaustion, the Allied force which put up such a staunch defence of the island for those few days at the end of May 1941 deserves to be remembered in history in the same breath as Leonidas’ Spartans at Thermopylae and Macdonell’s Guards at Hougoumont. As a consequence of this tenacious performance, the German Fallschirmjäger suffered incredible and unforeseen casualties and it was as a direct result of what happened in Crete that Hitler declared that never again would the German army undertake a large scale airborne operation.
As before, I have set Lamb’s story against a background of real events, following the withdrawal of the Allies from mainland Greece, just as it happened. Most of the characters in the early chapters are invented, although the units are genuine, save for Lamb’s own. The civilians encountered in Athens are also an invention, although many British and other foreign nationals did join in the retreat and land up on Crete or in Egypt.
The plot surrounding the King of Greece is based on truth. King George was indeed evacuated from Athens to Crete with his core government and stayed on the island until the German invasion, at which point his bodyguard, led by Lt W H Ryan managed to get him down to the south coast, from where he was evacuated to Egypt.
Naturally I have taken some licence with the actual characters involved in the King’s escape, not least that of the great Cretan kapitan Manoli Bandouvas (sometimes spelt Badouvas) whom, as far as I am aware, did not actually take part in the escape. Bandouvas was though one of the most important of the many Cretan kapitans whose actions did so much to confound the German operations in the Mediterranean, ensuring that even after the Allies had been forced to leave the island, the Germans would be compelled to tie up many thousands of men on Crete whom would otherwise have certainly been used to greater effect elsewhere.
The little village of Galatas which saw one of the fiercest battles of the campaign is today a site of pilgrimage for New Zealanders and boasts a wonderful war memorial and a fascinating museum of the battle. By sheer concidence, a café now stands in the exact place in which I put Anna’s kafeneio in the book and is run by a husband and wife team. Interestingly she is originally from England. Their café is filled with books and mementoes of the battle. Parts of the armour plating from Roy Farran’s tank were later made into garden gates by an enterprising villager and are still performing that function today. I have taken more than a little licence with the character of General Wilhelm Sussmann. It is well known that Sussmann perished with all of the occupants including his staff, when his glider crashed on the island of Aegina after exactly the incident described in the book. I have merely allowed him to live and conjectured what might have happened had he indeed had orders from the Führer to find the King.
King George had indeed been declared an enemy of his own people by Hitler and there is some evidence to suggest that the Germans did have orders to find him. We also know that the battle was heavily dependent upon intelligence on both sides. Freyburg was privy to the intelligence gleaned from British enigma decoders and, as he ate breakfast watching the first enemy paratroops descend, he famously looked at his watch and declared that they were ‘dead on time’. Comberwell, while an apparently unlikely character, also has his basis in fact and can be seen as a distillation of the many fifth columnists in Greece at the time. While he may also seem like a caricature, t
he character of John Pendlebury is entirely real. Of course, I do not know whether Pendlebury would have spoken exactly as he does in my book, but I hope that I have allowed him to live again with some degree of reality. An extraordinary man, he was undoubtedly immensely brave and his death on Crete at the height of the battle was an incalculable loss. While I have used real names for many of the characters, and as ever have endeavoured to be faithful to their memories, I must make two further confessions. Lieutenant Ryan, who commanded the King’s bodyguard as he does in the book, did indeed do all that he could to get His Majesty to safety and succeeded triumphantly. Although I have taken the liberty of using his name, his conduct, from the encounter with Lamb to the end of the book, is entirely fictitious.
Secondly, some readers may discern that the character of Hathaway appears to be based on that of Captain (later Major General) Michael Forrester CB, CBE, DSO, MC, who, among his other feats, famously led a charge by Greek soldiers and civilians which forced the Fallschirmjäger to abandon their positions on Pink Hill.
Certainly, Hathaway’s character was suggested by Forrester’s extraordinarily brave action and his appearance mimics that of the real man. But there the resemblance ends. Hathaway’s questionable conduct thereafter is entirely of my own invention and I would hate to think that the descendants of the estimable Captain Forrester might suppose that the two are in any way related. What I wanted to do and what I hope I have succeeded in doing was simply to conjure the flavour of the battle and to deliver some sense of the extraordinary cast of characters who took part in it.
Thus, while I have included the character of Evelyn Waugh, who took part in the battle, he is there not merely as a literary joke, but also because I wished to convey the cosmopolitan nature of the Allied forces, among which not the least bohemian unit was Bob Laycock’s commandos. I would refer anyone and everyone who reads my book, not only to the histories of the battle by Anthony Beevor, George Forty and Alan Clark, but also back to Waugh’s masterwork on the Cretan debacle, Officers and Gentlemen, the second volume of the Sword of Honour trilogy.
One thing which became abundantly clear to me in the course of the writing of this book and during my hugely enjoyable and rewarding visit to Crete to research it, was the extraordinary bravery of the Cretan people. The best and only way in which I can pay tribute to their sacrifice is to dedicate it to them.
By the same author
Four Days in June
Man of Honour
Rules of War
Brothers in Arms
Alamein
The Black Jackals
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
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Copyright © Iain Gale 2012
Iain Gale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 978 0 00 741580 9
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