SBS, page 2
He’d rejoined his battalion for leave at Zahle, in the Bekaa, in Lebanon. The ‘city of wine and poetry’ they called it and that had suited him just fine.
And that was when he’d been ‘found’.
It turned out that, after Crete, Bob Laycock had put in a recommendation that Hunter might be suitable for one of the new special forces units that were forming. Hunter’s CO had agreed and that was that. He had recalled, too late, how back in ’39 barely a week into his basic training, a kindly old lag at Catterick had told him: ‘You don’t volunteer for anything in this army, son. Not never.’
Hunter had asked, ‘Why’s that, Corp?’
‘Because, my lad, them that volunteers don’t hardly ever come back.’
Well, it had all been out of his hands. He’d been volunteered. No question of refusing. And no more Black Watch. And, with that, he was Sergeant Hunter of the Special Boat Squadron.
That had been last September. A year ago. And now, here he was, listening to the cicadas again, surrounded by the enemy and getting ever closer to another date with destiny.
Suddenly, Hunter’s meandering thoughts were interrupted by a noise: the crunch of footfall on twig. Gently, instinctively, he reached for his Sten. Then a voice – Peter Woods: ‘Sorry, couldn’t sleep.’
Jenkins was on stag.
‘This is a rum do, Hunter. I hope to God Roy’s alright.’
Hunter raised himself up on an elbow. ‘I think he’s got a better chance than us. His guide seemed more clued up than our chap from the off. And he was an officer.’
Woods smiled. ‘Greek officer. Doesn’t count for much.’ He thought for a moment. Here perhaps was a rare chance to get something out of Hunter. ‘Though, now you come to mention it, you know that it’s you who should be out there, Hunter, leading that patrol. I really don’t understand why you keep refusing a commission.’
Hunter, sitting up now, scratched at his head and shrugged. ‘Can’t say, really, sir. Just doesn’t seem like me. Responsibility. Not sure I could handle it, sir, if you see what I mean.’
Woods shook his head. Same old response. But still a chance to push the point. ‘It’s our loss, I’d say. You might give it some thought, when we get back.’
*
The third day took them five more miles into the island. The ‘job’ had been set for the fourth night and by the time the sun rose on the fourth day Hunter too had tired of the Greek. As they moved, the man had cussed at every twist and turn of the path. By night he sat alone and grew increasingly morose. It was unsettling. Almost as if he was waiting for something to happen. It occurred to Hunter, as it had to Woods, that Zombanakis might have betrayed them, but then why would the enemy have waited so long? Perhaps his family was being held hostage. Who knew? Hunter prayed for the fourth night to come and eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, it did.
The airfield at Calato was their objective and they had spent the day hiding out in the mountainside, which overlooked the valley where it lay. Tree-lined slopes framed the area, although close to the airfield itself, the enemy troops who had first occupied the area had cut down swathes of cypress and olive trees to give a better view around the perimeter. Nevertheless, the valley still held its age-old appearance of bucolic charm, as vineyards crawled up the lower slopes, dotted with a few, now abandoned, whitewashed farmhouses.
Throughout the day Jenkins, Woods and Hunter had gazed intently at the target from their hidden vantage point, noting again and again the positions of all the buildings and, importantly, those of the bombers themselves, until both were imprinted on their minds. They had also noted the frequency of the movements of the perimeter guards, perhaps two dozen of them, although local knowledge had already given them the details. Thankfully these seemed to be correct.
At around five o’clock in the afternoon, much to the relief of the two others, Woods ordered Zombanakis to make himself scarce. His original instruction had been to send the Greek back to the RV with any spare stores, but in view of the man’s behaviour, Woods had decided to let him do what he pleased. The man thanked him and without a word to the other two men, sped off, faster than he had moved on any day on their march, back over the way they had gone. A couple of hours after he had gone and as night was falling, the rest of them edged down the hillside towards a dried-up riverbed, whose crusted banks were high enough to ensure that they would be concealed from the view of the aerodrome. The night came in very fast and as it did the rain began. Very soon it was pelting down, soaking them to the skin. Bloody unpleasant, thought Hunter, but a real help to their not being detected.
After about an hour, Woods crept towards the far side of the riverbed and peered over the top, through the grass towards the airfield. He signalled to Hunter who joined him. There, around two hundred yards away from them, in the dim yellow light of one of the camp’s tall streetlamps, stood a Savoia-Marchetti bomber and beside it stood an Italian sentry. To its right stood two more bombers, but thankfully no more guards. Woods motioned to Hunter with his hand indicating that in fifteen minutes the man was due to move off. Sure enough, as Hunter’s watch read midnight, the soldier walked away towards the guardroom, on his regular round.
Woods crept up and out of the ditch then at a crouch, ran – head down – towards the aircraft. Hunter followed five yards behind and behind him at the same distance came Jenkins. Reaching the first bomber, Woods slipped the heavy haversack from around his neck and pulled out two of the precious bombs. He laid one on the wing and attached the other to the front of the aircraft, close to the engine. Hunter, reaching the second plane, did exactly the same, as they had rehearsed time and again back in Egypt, and then moved on to his second target. With Woods to his left and Jenkins on the right, he crossed an anti-tank ditch and slipped over a strip of low barbed wire, emerging on to a rough stone pathway that ran between several wooden accommodation buildings and the main area of the landing strip.
Suddenly, directly in front of him, an Italian sentry walked out from between two buildings, buttoning up his trouser flies. That hadn’t been in the script. Not wanting trouble, Hunter dodged into the shadows beneath the eaves of a building and flattened himself against it, holding his breath. The man paused for a moment and then took his time to extract a packet of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit it before taking a long drag. Hunter prayed for silence and the sentry looked straight in his direction. And then he was gone.
Hunter let out his breath and, after waiting for a few seconds, padded on again, down the path. Veering off to his right, as he remembered from Woods’s sketch map, he found the officer. He had located the petrol dump and, wearing a beaming smile, was dotting it with the remaining bombs from his haversack. Hunter followed suit, but kept a couple of the bombs back. Then, moving as carefully as they had come, the two men made their way back towards the riverbed. As they reached the bombers, Hunter headed quickly left, much to Woods’s alarm. Quickly, he placed the two bombs on the wheels of one of the Savoia-Marchettis and ran back towards the officer who hissed at him as they ran on: ‘You bloody fool. You’ll get us all killed.’
Hunter grinned, panting: ‘Just making sure of it, sir.’
Ahead of them they saw Jenkins, his head down, heading for the same place.
Reaching the edge, they hurled themselves into the ditch and just as they did so, the first bomb exploded. The night sky was suddenly lit by an intense red-yellow glow. Two more bombs went off, followed by the cacophony of the others laid on the planes by Hunter. He grinned at Woods. ‘Bloody hell, sir. We did it.’
Woods smiled back and then looked back to the airfield. It was a scene of blind panic as the guards ran in all directions, some towards the fires; others, in terror, away from them.
More bombs were exploding now in a glorious symphony of destruction. The ones in the fuel dump, Hunter reckoned. And as the fires began to spread to other parts of the camp, so they took hold in ammo dumps and petrol lorries and most impressively among the bombs destined for the planes, one of which exploded with a huge roar, obliterating a neighbouring barrack hut and sending wood and debris and huge chunks of burning metal high into the night sky.
The more courageous of the Italian guards were manning searchlights now, sweeping their yellow-white beams across the surrounding hillsides, searching in vain for the saboteurs.
The three men crouched in their riverbed until, giving silent signal, Woods indicated that they should move. They crept from the rear lip of the trench and crawling, disappeared into the undergrowth of the hillside. After they had gone a hundred yards, Woods raised himself into a crouch and began to run. The searchlights were arcing across another area as he did so and, followed by the others, he was soon lost behind another fold in the landscape.
With the crump of the last explosions growing quieter as they moved away from the airfield, they heard a new noise cut through the night. The distinct sound of automatic weapon fire came from the north-west, answered quickly by the unmistakable rattle of a Thompson submachine gun. Again they heard it. And then silence. Hunter looked at his watch. It was approaching three in the morning. He stared at Woods and found a mirror of his own ashen gaze. Both men knew that it could mean one of two things. Either B Party had been taken prisoner, or they were now all dead.
They said nothing and carried on moving as fast as they could over the difficult terrain, in the direction of the rendezvous. But when they reached it, as both had predicted, they found no one. Jenkins spoke for them all. ‘Bugger it.’
Woods spoke: ‘That’s it then. We’re done for.’
‘They won’t talk, sir.’
Woods shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure. The Greek might and I’m not certain of Zombanakis. Not with the SS on hand.’
‘Let’s just hope they’re dead then, sir.’
Woods looked at him. Christ, he thought, Hunter really was a strange one. Wished them dead? Nobody wanted that. It was true though he supposed. It wasn’t that Hunter was callous exactly, just matter-of-fact. He paused. ‘Yes. You’re right. Let’s hope they are. For our own sakes.’
Although their instinct now was to make as fast as they could for the coast and the hope of deliverance, they had one more task. At first light, leaving Jenkins at the RV, Woods and Hunter climbed back across the hills to a pre-marked vantage point high above the airfield. Woods took a pair of field glasses from his sack and scoured the area below them. Across the airstrip the wreckage of the burnt-out planes lay like so many dead birds. So many black, useless piles of steel. Around the site he could make out the ruins of the ammo and petrol dumps. Smiling, he handed the glasses to Hunter. ‘Well, what d’you make of that?’
Hunter scanned the charred camp. ‘Yes, I would say we’d done our job, sir. Wouldn’t you?’
As he watched, a transport aircraft came into land on a runway that had been cleared of debris. As they watched an Italian officer emerged, a general judging from the amount of brass on his uniform.
Woods spoke. ‘Come to tally up his losses. Poor bugger.’
‘Il Duce’s not going to like this at all.’
Woods took back the field glass and swung his gaze away from the airfield, further along the plain where more activity caught his eye. He swore to himself. He could see lorries, transports, moving with some speed along one of the major roads. He passed them back to Hunter.
‘Now we’re in trouble. Look at that lot.’
Hunter took the glasses and, focusing them once more, looked towards Woods’s pointing finger. He saw the trucks. And knew that they would be filled with Italian troops. And perhaps Germans too. He counted twelve, sixteen, maybe more.
‘Christ, sir. We’d better get weaving.’
Moving swiftly away from their vantage point and down the hill, they reached the RV and collected Jenkins before making for the coast and the point that had been chosen with some care, from which they would be able to look out for their means of escape.
Woods spoke softly: ‘We know they know we’re here somewhere. God knows what happened to Roy’s lot, but if any of them are still alive, and not POWs, we can’t have them running into the enemy. They’ll have to come through the pass that runs into that valley.’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve got to warn Percival.’
Hunter looked at him, momentarily incredulous. ‘What do you suggest, sir? We can’t go back and we can’t move down the valley. We’d just be captured ourselves.’
Woods mulled it over. The man had a point. ‘You’re right. Like you said, Hunter, let’s just hope they didn’t make it.’
They moved off again, away from the enemy and away from whatever might be left of B Party and by early the following day had reached the lying-up area, from where they could observe the beach below.
Jenkins was on point, leading the way, moving cautiously through the undergrowth. Suddenly he stopped and dropped flat to the ground. The others followed suit. Jenkins waved an arm, urging them to stay down.
Peering through the long grass, breathing deeply the scent of the wild grasses and rich earthy soil, Hunter managed to catch sight of what had startled Jenkins. Up ahead of them, perhaps six hundred yards away, advancing steadily through the scrub, right in the direction of their objective, were two dozen Italian soldiers, their arms levelled and at the ready. And more worryingly, they were accompanied by five Greek civilians. Woods crept forward to Jenkins and tapped him on the ankle, making him turn round, then indicated that they should move off up the hillside to their left.
They ran at a crouch, as fast as they could, and eventually stopped higher up the mountain, on a sort of ledge cut into the hillside, behind which lay what appeared to be an ancient well. They lay there for some time, not daring to peer down at the enemy moving below, but all the time hearing voices and becoming increasingly aware of the danger.
They heard a command being given in Italian and then another, more staccato, and – this time – in German.
A second party had appeared now; Germans in their distinctive feldgrau uniforms, Schmeisser machine-pistols slung over their shoulders. They were moving in what was clearly a pincer movement, intended to take anyone who might be hiding in the exact position of their lying-up area.
At once it became clear to Hunter what had happened. One of B Party, or more likely one of the guides, must have spoken. Perhaps Zombanakis’s fears had been right. Perhaps he had returned to find his family held hostage. Perhaps he had been tortured. They would probably never know. And right now, lying here, awaiting at any moment the bullet or the bayonet, it was of no importance.
For what seemed like much more than the two hours it actually was, they lay as still as they possibly could, acutely aware that the slightest movement might alert either of the two search parties to their presence.
No more than ten or eleven feet below their ledge, the Italian party was now combing the undergrowth, their keenness to succeed and impress their German masters all too evident from the growing noise and urgency of their shouts. Luckily, however, they confined their searching to the slopes below the three men. Perhaps, thought Hunter, they could not conceive that their prey might have managed to climb so high and so fast. Never, ever, he smiled, underestimate your enemy. It had been one of the first tenets drummed into him by the instructors at special training school.
From time to time they took it in turns to peer over the lip of the ledge and report back. As Hunter took his turn, his eye was drawn away from their pursuers towards the sea beyond and a small boat making its way along the coast from the direction of Lindos. Unable to use field glasses, for fear of reflection, he peered at it and eventually decided that it was an Italian motor torpedo boat. He could just discern a group of men gathered on deck and surmised that they might be about to make landfall. He shinned back from the edge and whispered to Woods, ‘Italian MTB, sir. Looks like they’re landing. Reckon that’s our Carley boats in the bag.’
Together the two men moved up to the lip. The boat had disappeared, but after a few minutes, as they watched, she came into view again, this time towing the distinct black shapes of their three landing craft.
Woods swore: ‘Damn.’
Quick-witted, Woods was able to grasp their situation in a moment. And it was not good. Their rations had almost run out. And now they were effectively cut off from any submarine that might be sent to collect them. They were surrounded by the enemy, who in all probability were also in possession of any stretch of beach that might have allowed them to be picked up. Their friends in B Party were either dead or POWs and they were running dangerously low on ammunition. All that they had, apart from what they carried, were the life jackets and signal torches that they’d had the foresight to conceal in a cave on the beach. Although it occurred to him that even these might have been discovered by the enemy. Hunter, he knew, would also have summed up the severity of their position.
To both men there was now only one option open. They would have to resume the initiative.
Hunter turned to Woods. ‘Sir, do you think we might be best to try to make our way down to the beach?’
The officer nodded. ‘Yes, my thoughts too. It’s the only way now. Otherwise we’re just waiting here till they find us. And I don’t want to think about what happens next. We’ll go at nightfall.’
As the dusk came down, they made ready for the journey down to the beach. Anything that might hamper them was left behind, including their haversacks. Hunter put a grenade into each of his breast pockets and his last few clips of ammunition into the pockets of his shorts. He made sure that his water bottle and pistol in holster were secured to his belt and his fighting knife in its scabbard, strapped to his left leg.
When it had become sufficiently dark, they began to edge down the slope. Small dots of light, either from campfires or cigarettes, alerted them to the positions of the enemy sentries and, moving slowly, they were able to weave a path to avoid them. It was hard going and certainly not the path that any of them would have chosen, even if it had still been daylight. But there was no alternative if they were to avoid the sentries. Their route took them deep into an ancient olive grove where the ground became rocky, with small anthills and dozens of unseen tree roots. Their progress was agonisingly slow and it took them a good four hours to cover ground that in daylight would have taken half the time.
