SBS, page 18
It was soon obvious that they had not seen anything suspicious up in the direction of the chapel, but had merely encountered each other on the narrow goat track that ran below the hills. Fletcher had been right to alert him, though, and Hunter put them all on a heightened state of readiness until the two men had parted and ridden off in different directions. Hunter stood the men down and they all went back to what they had been doing. But the episode was enough to remind them all of their purpose and to jerk them back to reality.
*
Zero hour crept ever closer and soon the atmosphere was noticeably charged with nervous agitation. At this point Hunter decided to play his trump card. They were all in the church, save Phelps, who was on sentry duty. He looked at his watch. It was two minutes away from 1800. An hour before they would have to leave. He stood up and walked to the altar. It seemed appropriate. ‘Listen up, all of you. I have an important announcement to make.’
The men looked up and gathered round him. Woods looked quizzical. ‘Hunter?’
‘It’s alright, Peter, this is my shout.’ He paused, for effect. ‘Right, there are two bottles of white wine in my valise. At Waterloo the men had gin, on the Somme it was rum. Well, we can go one better. And it’s the good stuff. Enough for a good mug each. Shall we, gentlemen?’
There was a restrained, ragged cheer from the men, as Hunter unbuckled the canvas valise and brought out two bottles that he had specifically asked Grigori to find for him. There were also three bars of Greek chocolate. He looked at Woods, who was shaking his head and smiling.
The men, Grigori among them, found their mugs and gathered round Hunter, who dispensed the wine as if he were a priest serving at communion. It was just enough. Too little to get anyone drunk, but sufficient to cheer you on your way and make the world seem somehow better. Hunter called Fletcher over to him. ‘Bryn, go and stand in for Phelps, will you. Mustn’t leave him out of it.’
‘Sir.’
Fletcher left, clutching the mug with the remains of his own wine. This, thought Hunter, this was the way it should be. Comrades, together. Soldiers, united against a barbarian enemy and united in friendship. This was an unbreakable bond. Truly, he thought, they were a band of brothers. Phelps entered the church and stopped, looking at the others, gathered about the altar. Hunter saw him.
‘Ah, Sid, there you are. Well done. There’s wine. We saved you some. Find your mug. It’s really very good.’
Phelps fumbled in his kitbag and drew out the tin mug, which, hesitantly, he handed to Hunter. ‘I’m… I’m not sure, sir. Might blunt the senses. Wouldn’t want to cock anything up. You know.’
‘For heaven’s sake, man. I’m not trying to get you rotten. It’s just a mug of wine. Something before we go. And we don’t go for another hour. And no one’s going to cock anything up. Alright? Here.’
He pressed the mug of warm white wine into Phelps’s hand and noticed that it was trembling. ‘You alright?’
Phelps pulled away. ‘Yes, sir. I’m fine. No problem. Just got a bit, cold out there.’
‘Well. Get that down your neck. It’ll warm you up. And stop bloody worrying.’
Phelps sipped at the wine and smiled. ‘Thank you, sir. I… I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.’
‘No matter, Phelps. Don’t worry. And remember what I said before. I’m here. I’m always here.’
The others had finished their wine and were chatting among themselves. Woods wandered over to Hunter. ‘I saw that. That was a very clever thing you did just now.’
Hunter was surprised at the praise. Given their strained relationship, it had been the last thing he had been expecting from Woods. He played it down. ‘Clever? Really, Peter? I wouldn’t call it clever. It just sort of felt, well, right. The right thing to do.’
‘Are you really worried about Phelps?’
‘A little, yes. But he’s just a bit windy. That’s all. He’ll be fine.’
‘Really? Will he be fine? Are you quite sure? Not better to send White or Fletcher in his place?’ Woods’s tone had changed now. There was no doubt in his voice that he was the superior officer.
Hunter responded with equal candour, ‘Wouldn’t work. The others don’t have his skills. And besides they don’t even speak German.’
‘Neither does Martin.’
‘Yes, but he’s the codebreaker. No. I think we have to take Phelps but we just have to keep a very close watch on him.’
Woods shook his head. ‘Well, it’s a mistake, if you ask me. You’ll regret it. And if I could, I’d order him to stand down.’
Hunter shook his head, thinking to himself, But you can’t, can you. You may be my superior officer, but this is my show, and you know it.
Woods seemed to sense his mood. He turned away and left Hunter to check his weapons.
*
And so they remained for the following hour, chatting and snoozing, until at length, Hunter looked at his watch and got to his feet.
‘Righto. That’s it. Time to go. Come on, chaps.’
The others rose and found their few pieces of equipment, strapping on webbing and belts.
Slowly, they left the church and bade adieu (not goodbye) to Woods, White and Fletcher who watched them go. They moved off down the hill, Hunter at the front, just behind Grigori, with behind him Russell, Phelps, Martin, Knox and Duffy, in a loose single file, which made them harder to see against the landscape.
They continued downhill, through the olive groves, skirting the small villages and farms on their way until after they arrived at a small hill just beyond the southern perimeter of the airfield. Grigori looked at Hunter. ‘Alright, sir?’
Hunter nodded. Said nothing. For the briefest of moments he froze.
He was experiencing a strange feeling of déjà vu. Hunter had been here before, of course. That was one of the reasons he had been sent. But what he hadn’t counted on was the fact that he had been to exactly this place before. Their approach to the airfield was precisely what had been his own route in and out of the camp in those halcyon days before the German airborne invasion. Here he had strolled down the track from this hill, sometimes arm in arm with one of the local girls, more than often after a few glasses of raki, dodging around the huts to reach the camp unnoticed.
And now here he was again, once again attempting to remain concealed. But the difference was that before there had been no real danger, other than a reprimand from the RSM and possibly a punishment. Now the odds were very different. Now they were all risking captivity, torture and death.
Snapping out of his musing, Hunter looked around. The Greek was talking: ‘Alright, sir. I must go now.’
‘Eh? Yes, Grigori. Sorry. Yes, of course.’
Grigori slipped away, back the way they had come, and vanished quickly into the night. Hunter tapped Russell on the shoulder and, needing no second command, the man crawled forward towards the wire.
Then Russell stopped and watched. For a good ten minutes he sat there in cover, some way forward from the others and at a little distance from the camp, with his eyes firmly fixed on their objective. ‘Casing the joint’, as he always put it, until the time was good. They had learnt of the guards’ regular movements from Leigh Fermor’s close briefing, but, like any good burglar, Russell just wanted to make sure of it.
Eventually, as satisfied as he would ever be, and moving nimble-footed, with all the ferret-like agility of a seasoned housebreaker, relishing every second, he insinuated himself further and further down the hill, right up to the perimeter wire and then, choosing his moment with care, he half stood up and cut a slit in the perimeter wire, six foot high. In width it was barely more than a few inches. Just enough to fold back with gloved hands. Just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, without snagging his clothing on the barbs. Having created their entrance, Russell then lay down as flat as he could, hugged the ground and waited.
For five minutes the wire lay open and Russell felt horribly exposed, knowing that if it were to be seen by a single passing sentry then the whole game would be up.
Never before had he felt so vulnerable. He began to imagine it unfolding in his mind. The sentry spotting the cut wire. The flashlight blinding him, shining on his face. The shout in German and then the burst of semi-automatic fire and the sickening pain as the bullets ripped open his abdomen. He was sweating hard now. He tried to move his mind away from it. But the image kept coming to him. He clasped his hands together and thought of home. Of Soho. Of the old time. Of Olga and the girls. He looked at the wire again. How could they miss it? How could they?
But no one saw it and, before Russell knew it, at the given time, the others were down there with him.
Hunter was first to arrive and Russell heard him padding down the hillside, and felt a sudden wave of relief sweep over him. Quickly, he turned to see him. Neither man spoke. Hunter nodded, pointed to the gap in the wire and gave him a thumbs up.
The others were close behind him. Hunter motioned them, silently to follow him through the gap, and this they now did. One by one, with Hunter leading the way, followed by Duffy and then the three privates – Russell, Phelps and Martin – along with Sergeant Knox. Once the last man was through, still watching for anyone who might have seen them, they carefully folded the wire behind them and walked nonchalantly towards one of the accommodation blocks.
Once again, Hunter led the way, walking with Duffy and talking quite clearly in his finest German, so as to be fully audible to anyone they passed. This he knew was the most audacious of all moments. His heart was thumping in his chest as they approached an area where several of the German garrison were chatting to each other and handing round cigarettes. One of them looked round and raised an eyebrow before giving them a curious stare.
For a moment, Hunter was unsure as to what to do. Then it happened. The man looking at him, a grizzled private, wearing an Afrika Korps uniform suddenly realised that Hunter was an officer and snapped to attention, throwing his cigarette to the ground, his arms rigid at his sides, before his right hand snapped up in the traditional Wehrmacht salute. The others, seeing him, followed suit. Hunter returned their salute, hand to head, in the old style and breathed an inward sigh of relief as Duffy did exactly the same. He was thankful too that the man hadn’t used the Nazi stiff-arm salute. No SS here, perhaps, he thought.
The Germans remained rigid until the two ‘officers’ had passed and then relaxed, offering each other more cigarettes and not noticing the other saboteurs following on behind Hunter and Duffy.
As they neared the group, Hunter and Duffy split from the others, who now acted as if they had a task to carry out and moved off with purpose towards the administration block.
Hunter and Duffy meanwhile began a rehearsed conversation, in full sight of the group of German soldiers. It was of course all quite intentional. For one thing, the two ‘officers’ spoke the best German and for another, if they were ever to be suspected then they would have to disassociate themselves from the others. There was also of course the obvious bluff in the fact that the men were carrying out the actual mission while their superiors were providing the diversion.
However it was intended to work, it seemed to do the trick, for soon the Germans who had been looking over at them returned to their own jokes and chatter. Hunter and Duffy slowly walked on, heading in the direction of the accommodation blocks where they knew the officers’ mess to be located. This was the dangerous stuff. The last thing that they wanted to do was to get into a conversation with genuine enemy officers. Nevertheless, if they were to look like the real thing, they had to behave as if they were. Leigh Fermor, with his intense SOE training in deception, had stressed the importance of this moment when explaining the layout of the camp to them.
It had been agreed that once sufficiently far inside the camp, the team would split into two. While there was a ninety per cent chance of the file being in the commandant’s office, as Leigh Fermor’s source had suggested, there was still an outside possibility that it might still be in the signals office, part of which had apparently been heavily repaired with a new internal wall, having suffered badly in last year’s fighting. It was located in an adjacent block to the commandant’s and so, while four of the men would search the commandant’s hut, the others would take the other option. If the file was in the signals office it would not be in a safe, so Knox as safe-cracker, was detailed to the commandant’s hut, along with Phelps and Martin. Russell headed for the signals office, knowing that he would soon be followed by Duffy.
For the present time though, Hunter and Duffy continued their bogus conversation. Then, just a few moments later, Hunter glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, the welcome sight of Phelps, Martin and Knox, now on their own, heading for their target. He looked at Duffy and spoke in a barely audible whisper: ‘Right. Looks like we’re on. They’ve split up. Which means they weren’t rumbled. You go and find Russell and get to the signals office. I’m off to help the others in the CO’s hut.’
Duffy nodded, still in character, as if he might be smiling at a make-believe joke. Then he threw down his cigarette, ground it beneath the heel of his jackboot and walked slowly away from Hunter, looking at once terribly alone.
Hunter too felt isolated. This was another critical time, when the group was as fragmented as it ever would be. Being careful not to look behind or act at all suspiciously, he began to walk slowly towards the commandant’s office.
As he approached the doorway, which was illuminated by a single bulb hanging in the porch, he was alarmed to hear voices. They were coming from inside the hut and they were emphatically German. His first thought was of Phelps, Martin and Knox. He wondered, with horror, if the three men were already inside. Had they been discovered? He tried to detect whether the German voices might be going in or coming out.
His second question was answered first as into the lamplight stepped two genuine German officers. One was wearing the uniform of the Wehrmacht, with a feldmutz and baggy riding breeches over boots. The other man though was dressed in black from head to foot, his uniform highlighted by silver trimmings and topped off with a peaked officer’s service cap. He wore the ribbon of a Knight’s Cross and on his collar he bore two distinctive silver lightning flashes. The central badge on his cap was a silver death’s head. Good God, he was SS. Hunter hadn’t been told by anyone about the possibility of an SS presence on the island, although he had suspected that there surely might be one. They knew that apart from the German garrison of fifteen to twenty thousand, there were also as many Italian troops on the island, who were entrusted with menial tasks and unimportant garrison duties.
Of the German presence though, they had been assured that the elite alpine troops who had taken the island had been replaced entirely with the sort of Wehrmacht infantrymen he had just encountered and a number of Luftwaffe ground troops who manned the large number of anti-aircraft guns that had made the island so impregnable to air attack. But SS? Surely Leigh Fermor would have known about them? He wondered how many there might be. A battalion? A brigade? He prayed not. Or could this officer be on his own? On a solitary mission, whatever that might be?
Hunter stayed as much as he could in the shadows, determined to avoid being seen by either officer. He decided that to back away would be conspicuous and so slowly turned round and started to stroll towards another of the huts. He could hear the two officers laughing behind him and presumed that he must have got away with it when from his right he heard a voice: ‘Sir. Over here.’
Moving just his eyes, he caught sight of three familiar figures – Martin, Phelps and Knox. They were standing in a narrow gap between two huts. And were completely hidden in shadow.
Hunter winked at them, and signalling them with his hand to wait it out, continued to walk past them, retracing his steps until he reached the end of a hut and turned left. He stopped and breathed freely again, recovering his composure. There was no one around him now and he took the opportunity to quickly evaluate the situation. He could still hear the two German officers talking and laughing, back from the way he had just come. They must, he thought have left the commandant’s office by now, as their voices were becoming distinctly more faint. And if they were gone then the coast must surely almost now be clear for Martin, Phelps and Knox. There would be just one man to come and join the commandant and that would be his aide-de-camp a Captain Finck, so their intelligence briefing had informed them.
Leigh Fermor’s detailed intelligence had also stated that once the commandant had left his office at this same time every night, and headed for the mess and his customary pre-dinner cocktails, the door of the office would be closed behind him and only reopened after half an hour, when his ADC would return there, having had a single drink with his boss in the mess, and tidy away the affairs of the day, before locking the office for the night. This half hour was to be their only window of opportunity. They had just half an hour in which to get into the office, open the safe, find the file, wherever it was hidden, and anything else of use. They would then photograph anything extra of value, take the vital document and then close the safe, leaving it apparently just as it had been, beforehand, ready for the arrival of the ADC.
What happened after then would be up to Wilson and his men. When 8 Commando got here the whole place could be blown to blazes. What was vital was that, when he arrived, the commandant’s ADC would not suspect that anything was missing or that anything had been tampered with. The idea being that in the likelihood of his surviving the raid, he would not report that a previous commando team had broken in and removed any intelligence. They had to leave the office exactly as it had been.
Hunter waited in the shadows, just to the left of the commandant’s hut and a couple of minutes later saw a figure emerge and close the door behind him. Hunter watched carefully. He did not lock it. A German captain stepped into the light of the porch.That would be Finck. Having brushed himself down and straightened his service cap, the ADC walked away in the direction taken by the commandant, towards the officers’ mess. Waiting until the man was almost out of sight, Hunter walked back towards where the three men were hiding and motioned to them to follow him. Then, one by one the four of them made their way to the door of the commandant’s office. Martin went first, opening it slowly before moving quickly inside. The others waited.
