SBS, page 22
*
Just as Russell was finishing off covering the German’s body with branches and brushwood, down in the airfield camp the situation had begun to develop and things were not looking any more promising for Hunter and Phelps. In fact, Hunter had to admit it to himself, it was hard to remember a time when things had looked bleaker.
He and Phelps had been marched through the compound, to the commandant’s hut, and back into the very room where they had broken into the safe, what now seemed an age ago. The floor was still covered with the broken picture glass, although someone had picked up the photograph and placed it against the swastika paperweight on the commandant’s desk. The commandant himself was not yet there and they were being held in a small anteroom by two armed guards who had made them stand against opposite walls with their hands behind their heads.
Hunter turned his head to look at Phelps. ‘Phelps, you alright?’
There was no reply.
He tried again: ‘Phelps?’
One of the guards pushed Hunter in the small of the back, painfully. ‘Shut up. No talking.’
Phelps spoke: ‘Fine, sir. I’m fine.’
The guards struck Phelps on the shoulders, making him groan. ‘I said no talking. Bastard.’
Neither man spoke again as they stood there for the next ten minutes. Their position against the wall was by now becoming quite uncomfortable and Hunter had begun to wish that what he knew to be the inevitable would come sooner rather than later. As if in answer to his prayer, at that moment the door opened and the commandant entered. Both of the guards snapped to attention. Colonel Hans Kellner walked towards Hunter and stood directly behind him.
‘So. What have we here? English commandos in the uniforms of the Third Reich. This is not something we see every day, is it, Hauptman Finck?’
The ADC had also entered the room. ‘No, Herr Colonel. Most unusual.’
‘You. You are an officer. Perhaps you are. What is your name?’
Hunter said nothing. Kellner asked again, ‘Your name, Englishman. Even by the Geneva Convention, you must give me your name. And your rank.’
‘Lieutenant James Hunter, Herr Colonel.’
‘Ah. You are a polite man, Lieutenant Hunter. And also a clever man, I think.’
He moved across to Phelps. ‘And you? Are you an officer, or just the ordinary man you pretend to be?’
Phelps said nothing. Kellner spoke again: ‘Please. Don’t make this difficult.’
Hunter said, ‘His name is Phelps, Herr Colonel. Private Sidney Phelps.’
‘Is he dumb? Can’t speak?’
‘No. He’s just in shock.’
‘In shock, eh? I’m not surprised. I would be in shock too, if I were in your position. I am puzzled, Lieutenant. Very puzzled indeed. You see, I am at a loss to see why you should risk your lives. In fact condemn yourself and your men to certain death, for no apparent reason.’
Kellner’s English was very polished and his accent smooth and cultured. What the Germans called ‘gepflegt’.
‘You break into the camp and into my office. You smash a picture of my son and his family and then you leave, without doing anything else. You do not destroy anything, no planes, no ammunition dumps, no fuel dumps, as I would have expected. In fact you do not blow anything up at all. You do not set any charges. So why are you here? That is what intrigues me. That is what I need to know. That is what you will tell me.’
He paused for a moment and stared at the floor, before looking Hunter in the eyes. ‘What were you doing here?’
Hunter said nothing.
Kellner bit his lip and closed his eyes. After a few moments he reopened them. ‘I advise you to tell me.’
He looked at one of the guards, a large, well-built man, and motioned him to put down his gun. Kellner called him over. ‘Corporal, show the lieutenant why he needs to talk to me.’
Saying nothing, the man turned his back on Hunter and took a pace away, then turned and delivered a running uppercut to the right side of Hunter’s face. Hunter reeled away and staggered, then clutched at his jaw, checking that it wasn’t broken. It felt intact but his hands came away covered in blood.
But the guard hadn’t finished. He followed up before Hunter could avoid him and dealt him a blow to the solar plexus that sent him to the floor.
Finck watched with interest and turned to Kellner. ‘Sir, would you mind?’
‘No, please, go ahead.’
Finck walked over to Hunter who was kneeling on the floor spitting out blood and kicked him hard in the small of the back with his heavy jackboot. Taken completely by surprise, Hunter fell forward, his head hitting the floor. Blood began to pool around him and for a moment, Finck thought that he might have gone too far. That he had broken the man’s skull. But Hunter started to push himself up on his hands and Finck could see that the gash in his head was not that big. It always surprised him that any head wound could produce quite so much blood.
Hunter was kneeling again and felt his head, sizing up the scale of the damage as he peered through the blood and wiped it away from his right eye. Kellner spoke: ‘That’s enough. Enough for now. So, Lieutenant, are you ready to talk to me?’
Hunter, both unable and unwilling to speak, simply shook his head.
‘Oh dear. That is such a pity. We will have to continue our conversation at a later time.’
He turned to Finck. ‘Eric, I think we might need to find a dressing for the lieutenant’s head. He appears to have slipped on the floor and cut it open. See to it please.’
Finck detailed the corporal to find someone attend to the first aid. They couldn’t have a prisoner bleeding everywhere. It was so very, messy. He knew though that it would take a lot more than their level of questioning to make these men talk. Eric Finck loved his work. But he really didn’t like the sight of blood. He realised, however, that there was a simple way around this. He turned to Kellner. ‘Herr Oberst, I think that this might be the time for us to hand them over to Oberst Hilmann. Don’t you, sir?’
Kellner mused for a moment. ‘Yes, Eric. Yes, I think you might be right. I don’t think I will be able to get anything more out of these two using my simple methods. I think it is time for someone who has more persuasive ways to ask them questions.’
Hunter grimaced. This was what he had feared. They were going to be handed over to the SS colonel.
*
In the low-lying hills to the south-west of Heraklion airfield, Captain Sandy Wilson lay and watched in disbelief. For two hours he had waited here. His two other teams had hit Tymbaki and Kastelli at the appointed hour, shortly after 2200. That was half an hour after Hunter’s men were meant to have come out of Heraklion allowing Wilson’s men to go in. But something had clearly gone wrong. From the intelligence he had received on his field radio, the other raids had gone well, with blazing planes, numerous enemy dead and wholesale carnage. But just as he had been about to get his team into Heraklion airfield, the place had come alive. Sirens had sounded and searchlights had suddenly come on, lighting the place up like bloody Blackpool Illuminations. It could only mean one thing. Hunter had been discovered. The game was up.
A career soldier who had commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in ’38, Wilson had been through Dunkirk and survived. Just. A stomach wound had very nearly finished him. But Wilson was a fighter. In every way. The moment he had been passed fit, he had volunteered and in the year since he had joined the newly formed special forces, Wilson had seen much and learnt a great deal and one of the major lessons was that there was always a way out. You didn’t wait for opportunities to come to you, you had to create them yourself. You had to see the moment when it came and act on your own initiative. And now was one of those moments. Wilson had a down-to-earth attitude perfectly suited to an officer who commanded men whose role was destruction. Raiding was what he was good at and he had absorbed the lessons of Dieppe, Vaagso and all the other commando failures. Wilson was good at his job. The best some said. And he knew it. But above all he was a pragmatist.
Wilson remained in position for ten minutes, watching the enemy running in all directions. Knowing that soon they would send out patrols to hunt for any other raiders. Such was the delay that the Germans would have had reports of the other attacks by now.
There was nothing to do but call off the mission. Wilson’s initial frustration had turned to fury. He not only felt let down by Hunter, he also felt compromised. Exposed. And all for the sake of some documents.
The priority now was to get off the island. He wondered if any of them had managed to escape capture and get back to Woods. Whether Woods would even be aware of what had happened. He was about to set off for the church when one of his men came running up. It was signaller Maggs, the radio operator. He looked terrified. ‘Sir. Message from the boat, sir. It’s under attack. The Jerries must have hooked on to Sarn’t Dobbie’s team. Followed them back. They’ve all been shot up, sir. What the hell are we going to do?’
‘Have you still got them on the 38?’
‘Yes, sir. I think so.’
He knelt down beside Wilson and spoke into the mike: ‘Hello, Ocean One, this is Sunray. Over.’
There was a pause. He tried again: ‘Ocean One. This is Sunray. Come in.’
Suddenly the headset crackled into life. ‘Got them, sir.’
Maggs gave the headset to Wilson, along with the mike. Holding one of the phones next to his ear, Wilson spoke into the mike: ‘Hello, Bertie. Sandy here. What the hell’s going on?’
A faint, panicked voice came on the headset. ‘Sandy. Thank God. No use here. All fucked up.’
In the background Wilson could hear the sound of submachine gun fire and explosions. The voice spoke again: ‘Get yourselves out of it. Get back to the other boat. Get off the bloody island. We’re goners.’
There was a crackle, then silence. Wilson handed the headset and mike back to Maggs. ‘Anything?’
The signaller held one of the headphones to his ear. ‘No, sir. It’s gone dead.’
‘Damn. Well, right then. We’ll have to make for the other boat. Woods’s caique. It’s our only hope. Where’s that Greek, the guide fella? Find him, quick. We need to get to Captain Woods.’
*
The cell block lay on the north side of Heraklion airfield, close to the sea. Inside there were six small cells, each one measuring just six by five feet, and with a single barred window to the rear. A wooden bed and a bucket that served as a latrine were all the furniture and it was in one of these spartan rooms that Hunter and Phelps now found themselves. They were sitting on two wooden chairs, which had been placed against one of the walls, opposite the bed and set about four feet apart from each other. They had been here for the last half an hour and during that time had come to know the SS Colonel who they had first seen earlier that evening.
He had entered, accompanied by two black-uniformed SS guards, both carrying Schmeissers. Oberst Gustav Hilmann had introduced himself to them as if they had all been at a cocktail party and the false friendliness made the encounter all the more terrifying. He had begun with the usual simple questions: name, rank and unit. Unit had proved a sticking point. Both men had given their original regiment, Black Watch and Royal Corps of Signals. But Hilmann wasn’t having any of it.
‘You are commandos. That much we know. You no longer belong to those units. Do you think we are stupid? We know all about you commandos. How they hand-pick their men from your traditional regiments. You know very well that what I want to know is what your new unit is called and what is its purpose.’
Hunter spoke: ‘I told you, we’re reconnaissance. Our unit has no name.’
Hilmann nodded to the guards. Both of them approached Hunter and Phelps and each dealt one of them a hard slap across the face. Phelps was knocked from his chair and hit his head on the floor. For a moment Hunter thought he might have knocked himself out, but he crawled to his feet and sat down on the chair.
Suddenly, Hunter was back in the cell in Athilt with the two ‘Nazis’, naked and bleeding. He had survived that and he would damn well survive this. And so would Phelps. Hilmann was speaking again. ‘You see, it really would be much easier to cooperate. And so much less painful.’
Neither man said anything.
Hilmann tried again: ‘Let’s try another question. What did you come for? Why were you in the office?’
Silence. Again Hilmann nodded at the guards and again they stepped forward. This time though only one of them acted, kicking over Hunter’s chair so that he fell sprawling on the floor while the man stamped hard down upon the fingers of his left hand. Hunter screamed in agony as the German ground the heel of his jackboot against his knuckles, pushing them hard into the stone floor until they bled. Hunter writhed in agony but managed to control his voice to produce rather than a scream, merely a whimper. Phelps watched him, his eyes staring wide.
Hilmann walked across to him. ‘So, what have you to say now? Your lieutenant is in pain now. Next time my man will make sure to stamp upon the same wound. Again and again and again until his fingers have become a pulp and he has no hand. Have you anything to say?’
But Phelps said nothing. Hunter was trying to get to his feet now, holding his bleeding hand and managed to sit back down in the chair. Hilmann nodded to the other guard. The man walked up to Phelps and kicked the chair from beneath him. Phelps had hardly hit the floor when the same guard dealt him a savage blow with his boot, high in the pelvis. Phelps howled with animal agony that hit Hunter worse than any blow. He watched, nursing his fingers, as Phelps contorted his body on the ground, doubling up with the searing, unthinkable pain.
Phelps spoke, the words gushing from his mouth as fast as he could get them out. ‘Alright, Colonel. I’ll tell you what you need to know. Only don’t hurt us any more. Please. You can shoot us, but don’t hurt us. Please!’
Hunter looked at him, unsure as to what to think. Either Sid Phelps had at last recovered his senses and this was part of a great act, or he was being genuine and was about to give the whole game away. Everything.
Colonel Hilmann looked at Hunter. ‘Lieutenant, your man here is being very, very sensible. He knows how a man should die. Not in the sort of horrid, slow and painful ways we might have had planned for you both. But swiftly and cleanly. With a single shot. He is very clever.’
He walked over to Phelps. ‘Right. You may begin. Tell me firstly, who you are.’
Phelps spoke quickly, nervously, desperately. ‘We’re not spies. And we’re not commandos. They’re coming later. We’re just reconnaissance. We’re scouts, not spies. That’s what we are. Recce. Our orders were to come in and find out how many men were here and the layout of the field. Everything. And then one of us went too far. But he’s dead now. Private Duffy. You shot him. He went too far and broke into the commandant’s office and wanted to steal some papers, but he couldn’t break into your safe. And then we heard someone and we rushed out and Duffy knocked over the picture. That’s it. That’s all.’
The colonel looked Phelps hard in the face. Then he walked away across to the other side of the room. After a while, he spoke: ‘I have no reason to doubt what you say. But somehow I don’t think that you have told me the whole truth. There is still something not right here. Something smells bad. You’re lying.’
Phelps sounded panicked. ‘No, you’re wrong, sir. That’s it. That’s all, sir. I’ve told you everything. That’s why we’re here. You’ve got to believe me.’
Hunter, still nursing his battered hand, snarled at Phelps, his face a mask of anger. ‘Oh, shut up, you snivelling little coward. Can’t you see you’ve told him what he wants to know. You told him the commandos are coming. Now they’ll be waiting for them. It’ll be a bloody massacre.’
Hilmann looked at Hunter. Then he looked away and said nothing. Hunter spoke again: ‘My God, Phelps, if I could get my hands on you I’d beat you to a bloody pulp. You’re a coward and a traitor and you deserve to die. You know what you’ve done? You’ve condemned twenty good men to death. Here. Our men. How could you do it, man?’
The colonel had still said nothing. Now he turned back to Hunter. ‘Lieutenant, you seem genuinely upset. I’m touched. But you speak of good men. These are not good men who are going to die. They’re commandos. The men our dear Führer calls gangsters and has classified as criminals, to be shot on sight.’
Hunter said nothing. Hilmann continued, ‘I think in fact that your friend here may not be lying. I am inclined to believe him.’
He moved over to Phelps. ‘How will they come? Are they here on the island already? Where are they?’
Phelps shook his head frantically. ‘No, sir. They’re not here yet. Only our party. They’re coming tomorrow night. By plane. By parachute. They’ll land a few miles away. There’s a dropping zone and then they walk in here with a Greek guide.’
The colonel smiled at him. ‘You’re certainly very obliging. Thank you. So we shall be waiting for your friends when they come tomorrow. Waiting with all our might. We will let them get very near to the camp. Let them think that we have no idea that they are coming. And then…’
Moving fast, he punched Phelps hard in the pelvis. ‘We strike.’
Phelps folded up and screamed at the unbelievable pain, as the blow had hit him just above the genitals, exactly where he had been kicked by one of the guards, just a few minutes earlier.
Hunter snarled, ‘You bastard. They’ll never fall for it.’
Hilmann shook his head. ‘Oh but they will, Lieutenant. That’s where you’re wrong. They’ll fall for it because you’re going to tell them that the coast is clear. You’re going to radio to them and tell them what our strengths are and our weaknesses. You are going to tell them everything about the camp that you have discovered and it will all be false.’
‘I won’t do it.’
‘Oh, I think you will, Lieutenant. When you hear your friend cry out in agony and see what we do to him to make him cry. When he begs us to stop and begs us to kill him. You will do whatever we ask of you.’
