Jackals’ Revenge
He walked over to the truck and lifted the bonnet. A man beside him muttered something in Greek and Lamb smiled at him and shrugged. Then, propping open the bonnet, he removed his battledress top, tucked his tie into his shirt and rolled up his shirtsleeves before getting to work.
The Greeks stood staring, fascinated, as this British officer worked away at the engine. After a few minutes Lamb raised his head from inside the bonnet and yelled at Bennett. ‘Sarnt-Major, turn her over, will you.’
Bennett climbed into the cab and, finding the starter, switched it on. There was a deep roar, a thump and a chug and the Greeks gave a cheer. But after three revolutions the noise stopped. Lamb swore and dived back into the oily mess that was the engine.
Half an hour and two further attempts later, despairing, Lamb again raised his head. ‘Right, Bennett. One more time.’ The Sergeant-Major, patient as ever, turned the starter and the machine burst into life. The Greeks, who had not stopped watching, reserved their applause this time, but now the motor continued to turn over and after a few minutes they began to cheer. Lamb emerged from the bonnet wearing a huge grin, his face covered in grime and his hands caked in oil and grease. One of the Greeks offered him a torn sheet and he wiped himself down gratefully. ‘I thought we’d never get it,’ he said to no one in particular. A priest standing close by nodded and smiled at him and several of the men clapped him on the back. ‘Whose truck is it, anyway?’ asked Lamb, gesticulating. But, to judge from the shrugs, no one knew. Perhaps, he thought, the owner had given up and abandoned it. He called to Turner. ‘Get it moving. Get as many on board as it’ll take.’ Returning the handshakes of the Greeks, Lamb smiled and accompanied by Bennett made his way back to the carrier.
‘You know, sir, you could just have ditched it. Pushed it off the edge, like.’
‘Yes. But did you see them? How could I do that? It would have been like a death sentence.’
Bennett nodded and said nothing. He knew that Lamb was haunted by something that had happened in France. A bridge that they had been ordered to demolish with high explosive. A bridge that had been packed not just with the advancing enemy, but with Belgian and French civilians – men, women and children. And he knew that Lamb would never forgive himself and would take any chance to atone.
They reached the carrier. ‘Smart, see if you can raise Battalion on that crystal set. Tell them we’ve been held up. Get their direction, can you.’
While the radio operator began to tinker with the unreliable field wireless, Bennett started up the carrier. Ahead of them the convoy was beginning to move.
After a few miles they reached a junction in the road and were soon caught up in a massive column. While the refugees remained in front, they were no longer the bulk of the column. From a road to their left, the road from Thermopylae by way of the coast, lorries were filtering on to the main highway, filled to bursting with British, Greek and Commonwealth troops. Lamb looked at the men in the trucks. He saw grim, unshaven faces, tattered uniforms, and noticed the shortage of weapons. This is an army in retreat, he thought. The same army, in fact in many cases the same soldiers that he had witnessed pulling back in France almost exactly a year ago. A year that seemed a lifetime away.
It took them another five hours to get to the outskirts of Thebes. Lamb looked down at his watch. It was close to 4 p.m. As they drove on, he looked to either side of the road and saw that they were in a bivouac area, bounded on either side by slit-trenches and laagers of trucks covered in camouflage netting. To the right on a slight rise in the ground stood a lone 25-pounder. Everywhere, in the olive groves that lined the road, men were sitting, shattered by exhaustion. Most of them were asleep, quite oblivious to the cacophony of the column pouring past their billets. He wondered which enlightened officer would have chosen to make camp there. It was not a position that he would have chosen – open, exposed and with little natural cover. He was wondering where they should stop when there was a cry from the roadside. ‘Aircraft. Take cover.’ Instantly, Bennett killed the motor on the carrier and the other drivers followed suit. The men slapped open the tailboards and, jumping down, ran to the sides of the road and threw themselves forward into the foliage, disappearing amid the scrub. Lamb followed them and landed hard on his back, reawakening the pain from the old wound. Sitting up he found himself beside two New Zealanders, their heads buried in their hands. One of them spoke, without bothering to see if he was addressing an officer. ‘Hide yer face, fer Chrissake, mate. The Jerries can spot anything down here.’
Lamb silently ignored the man’s lack of deference, took the advice and pushed his head between his knees. As he did so, he heard the whine of engines in the sky and waited for the bombs.
2
There was nothing at first, just the shrill noise of a single-engined aircraft. Lamb did not dare to look up. Spotter plane, he thought. Then he heard it wheeling away and a few seconds later it was replaced by the deeper drone that he had dreaded. The bombers came in low and dropped their sticks in no particular way on the road. He heard the bombs fall almost rhythmically and thought, There really is no point in worrying. If one of them has my name on it then that’s it. This is war. Random and unforgiving. There was a huge explosion and then another and another as the stick of bombs fell in their orderly row along the road. Another, different explosion told him that one of them had found a target, a truck of some sort. He prayed that there had been no men left inside. They were so powerless here, utterly unable to fight back. Perhaps the politicians had been right after all before the war. Perhaps the battle for the skies was what would win. Hadn’t the Battle of Britain proved that? But from where he was sitting this was an infantry war as well. These rocks, these hills, he knew would never be taken until the Wehrmacht had pushed the last Allied soldier back into the sea. And even then, when the Germans were in Athens, he knew the Greeks would not give up their country. Another stick of bombs crashed through the earth and Lamb, pushing his tin hat down on his head, heard the big New Zealander next to him let out an oath and sensed the man pushing himself into the ground. He thought of Bennett and knew that his thoughts must be going out to his wife as she sat cowering, as they were now, beneath the stairs in the Sergeant-Major’s house in Islington. And just as he waited for the next bombs to fall, Lamb heard the engines fading.
As the planes wheeled away he raised his head and turned to the New Zealanders. ‘Who are you?’
‘20th Battalion, 5th Brigade, sir. We’ve come down from Molos. Never seen anything like it, sir.’
His mate joined in, stony-faced. ‘Hundreds of our lads were killed. Hundreds of them, some in a bayonet charge. We was shelled all morning and as we were pulling out too, shells everywhere. Didn’t even know if we’d get out or not.’
Lamb said nothing but shook his head, hoping that would be enough. He stood up and looked for the company. Called out. ‘Sarnt-Major, Lieutenant Eadie, Mister Whitworth, Mister Sugden. To me. Sarnt-Major, casualty report.’
‘Sir.’
‘Gentlemen, I think that we had better get on before Jerry makes the road impassable. Get your men together and mount up. We leave in ten, casualties notwithstanding.’ He turned away and raised his voice. ‘Sarnt-Major, casualties?’
‘None, sir. It’s a bloody miracle.’
‘Well, saddle up then. Ten minutes.’
Leaving the New Zealanders to manage as best they could down the pot-holed road, they carried on. Thebes itself was deserted. The German bombers had done their work here. It was hard for the untutored eye to tell what was an ancient ruin and what more recent damage. Through the town they began to gain height as they went until the sides of the hills became steeper and they entered a pass, thickly wooded on both flanks.
Lamb turned to Bennett. ‘Keep your wits about you, Sarnt-Major. If the Jerries have managed to get round the flank this would be the perfect spot for an ambush. Smart, have you managed to raise Battalion on that thing yet?’
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘Don’t worry, not your fault. I just wish we knew where they were.’
He looked at the tattered map that he had taken from the canvas map case at his feet. ‘Once we get through this pass there’s a village and then a fork in the road. We take the right, towards Corinth. Once we get over the bridge there we are in the Peloponnese. Then it’s a straight run to the sea.’
Bennett smiled. ‘I do like to be beside the seaside.’
‘Home in time for tea, sir?’
‘Not quite, Turner. But we’ll give it a try.’
The mood of optimism was short lived. As they drove on, the pass became ever narrower. Lamb scanned right and left. ‘Be alert. Keep your eyes open.’
They rounded a bend in the road and Bennett slammed on both brakes, bringing the carrier to an abrupt halt. Lamb jolted forward, knocking his chest against the front of the carrier and dropping the map. ‘Christ, Bennett, have a care …’ Then he saw that ahead of them to the left lay a defensive barrier of stones made into a chest-high wall – a sangar, which was matched on the opposite side of the road by another, leaving a narrow gap only just wide enough for a lorry to negotiate. The top of each wall was lined with Lewis guns and riflemen, while a heavy machine-gun had been set up in the middle of the road. As they looked on a sergeant appeared from behind the right-hand sangar, his Thompson gun held at waist level and fixed directly on Bennett.
The man spoke in a broad New Zealand accent. ‘Who goes there?’
‘Friend,’ said Lamb, quickly. ‘North Kents. We’re trying to get to Corinth.’
The sergeant whistled and within seconds they were surrounded by his men, rifles at the ready. The sergeant advanced to the carrier and peered at Lamb. ‘North Kents? What the bloody blazes are you lot doing here? We thought you were Jerries. Almost let you have it.’ He paused. ‘Maybe you are Jerries …’
Lamb shook his head. ‘Good God, not again. Listen, Sergeant, I went through all this in France a year ago. How many times? I don’t know. What d’you want to know? Who won the Cup last year? The length of Don Bradman’s inside leg? The name of the King’s dog? Where Winston Churchill gets his bloody cigars?’
The sergeant peered at him. ‘Nah, sir. You’re kosher. No bloody fifth columnist would ever have said that. Sorry, sir, can’t be too careful. We’re the rearguard, see. Jerry can’t be far behind you. Haven’t you heard, sir? They’ve taken Corinth. Yesterday. Only took them two hours. Paratroops. We blew the bridge, though.’
Lamb felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. If the Germans had taken the Corinth canal then that meant the whole of the Peloponnese was cut off. He was aware that the New Zealand sergeant was still talking. ‘… I said why don’t you go through there, sir. The pass broadens out again there, sir. You’ll find yourself a billet if you need one.’
Thanking the sergeant, they drove on and Bennett summed up Lamb’s thoughts. ‘I wonder if the battalion got across before the Jerries took it.’
‘Well one thing’s for sure, Sarnt-Major. If they did, we can’t follow them now. There’s only one way out for us and that’s through Athens.’
There was no point in trying to make Athens by nightfall, and if they carried on along the road in daylight they would just be more sitting targets for the Luftwaffe. Better to stand here and set off again in the early hours of the morning under cover of darkness. ‘We’ll stop here, Sarnt-Major. Pull up over there.’
They parked the trucks and Lamb walked across to one of a number of the sangars which dotted the area. The pass, as the sergeant had told them, had broadened out and given way to olive groves and a landscape of cultivated fields and vineyards. He found a corporal. ‘Is your officer anywhere?’
A voice spoke from behind a wall of rocks. ‘Actually I’m over here. Who wants to know?’ A tall New Zealand captain walked forward. ‘Captain Nichols. And you are?’
‘Lamb. North Kents.’
‘The Jackals. Didn’t know you were here.’
‘I’m trying to get my company through to Corinth, but there’s no hope of that now.’
‘You heard, then. About Corinth.’
‘Yes. Paratroops.’
‘Well, we knew they’d do it one day. So what now?’
Lamb shrugged. ‘Well, I reckon that the battalion must have got through, but wherever they are it’s Athens for us.’
The captain nodded. ‘Yes. Look, I’d get your heads down, if I were you. No point in leaving till the morning, before sun-up, of course, or you’ll be strafed to bits by Jerry. You’ll find a free olive grove over there somewhere, near my boys. Help yourself. And you’re welcome to join the mess, Captain, what there is of it. Boiled eggs and sardines last time I looked – by the crateful. And the CO’s still got a bottle of whisky, if the old man hasn’t drunk it all already. Reckon you could use a glass. Your men can scrounge a bit of bully off our cook if they like. I think we’ve got enough to go round. Found a wrecked rations convoy back in the pass.’
Lamb smiled at the unexpected generosity. ‘Thanks. I’ll see that they’re fed.’
Nichols explained the position to him. ‘The road here twists its way up a gorge, with a wonderful view down towards Kriekouki. That’s the road Jerry will take. D Company’s over on the left, then A Company, and C Company’s over there, away out on the right. They’re right up on a knoll, with a sort of ravine between them and A. They’re all linked in to Battalion headquarters by lines. The Aussies did that for us this morning. Not that it’ll do anyone much good at the moment, of course. Complete wireless silence. Not a peep, or Jerry’ll throw the lot at us. Worst thing is that if we get bombed there’s bugger all we can do but sit it out. Those Aussie gunners have been told not to fire at any planes unless they see us.’
‘But if we’re getting bombed they’ll have seen us anyway, won’t they?’
Nichols shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me, I just know the orders. I don’t have to make them, thank God.’ He smiled, indicating an opinion of the High Command, and then carried on. ‘So the Bren carriers from 20 Battalion are on the left flank, and the others and the machine-gun company are out on the right, just in case Jerry decides to drop any more paratroops. Oh, and we’ve got part of an Aussie field ambulance unit in the village. You might need them.’
Lamb nodded and looked across to the left flank, where the Bren carriers were, but saw nothing. Their camouflage was good. The ground too was in their favour. The lower slopes of the mountain were covered with a sort of short scrub, rather like broom; then farther up was bare rock. As far as Lamb could see most of the hills on the north side were wooded, right down to the edge of the valley. It was dense cover: pine, holly and oaks. On the whole he felt more secure here than he had at Thermopylae.
Eadie, Wentworth and Sugden saw to the men before handing over to their sergeants and joining Lamb at the ‘mess’, which consisted of two groundsheets and some camouflage netting slung between some olive trees. An orderly had managed to find enough crates to act as a table, so there it was that they sat, sipping warm beer that the quartermaster sergeant had found in a taverna in Levadia, while Lamb accepted a measure of the colonel’s precious scotch.
The New Zealand captain talked to Lamb about the Greek landscape. ‘Terrible country here, you know. God knows how they farm it. Nothing but blasted rock. The only thing that’ll grow are blasted olive trees. Hardly surprising there’s nothing but bloody goats. Christ, who the hell would farm bloody goats? Now you want to come and see New Zealand, old man. You haven’t seen grass till you see our fields. And our farms. I’ll show you what real farming is. Honestly, Lamb. If you want a new start after this is all over, come and see me. I’m not kidding.’
Lamb smiled. He had never contemplated emigrating. Never would. What, he reasoned, could he possibly find on the other side of the world that he could not have in England? He respected the New Zealanders and the Aussies. Had fought alongside them in the desert. They were good fighters, tough as they came, and they made his own men, most of them, seem puny with their physique. But he would never get used to the extraordinary relationship both nationalities had with their officers. Never. Of course his own relationship with Bennett, and even with the unfathomable Valentine, come to that, was something special, but about the Antipodeans there was a lack of respect, a lack of deference that would never be part of what Lamb knew to be at the heart of the British army. So he smiled sweetly at Captain Nichols and raised his glass. ‘Love to, old man. After all this.’
He was just wondering whether the colonel might offer them another whisky when there was a commotion from the sentries. No shots, just raised voices, one of which sounded to Lamb distinctly patrician. The colonel looked around and nodded at one of the junior officers. ‘Frank. Be a good chap and see what that’s all about, will you.’ He paused and smiled, weakly, like a man resigned to his fate. ‘The rest of you might like another. We’d better make the most of it, don’t you think? God knows where we’ll be tomorrow, after Jerry gets here.’
The mess steward, a hairy former sheep-shearer from Auckland, moved around silently through the group of officers dispensing from the whisky bottle until it was drained and then, as the soda water followed from a syphon that bizarrely had made it to Greece across 8,000 miles of ocean, there was a roar from the road and as they watched, still clutching their drinks, a long black limousine, a Citroën, Lamb thought, sped past their improvised mess, along the road, in the direction of Athens.
It was preceded by two exhausted-looking motorcyclists and followed by several other vehicles, brimming with troops.
Lamb looked at the occupants and recognised General ‘Jumbo’ Wilson, commander of the Allied forces in Greece, in the front seat beside the driver. Behind him, alongside a woman wearing an elaborate hat, was a tanned and callow youth wearing the uniform of a general in the Greek army, his face set in a stern expression. The vehicles drove past them throwing up dust and rock. Lamb turned to the Kiwi CO, Colonel Robertson. ‘Was that who I think it was, sir?’
The colonel nodded. ‘Yes, I think it was.’ He called to the gawky lieutenant, who had come hurrying back from the sentries. ‘Frank, who the devil was that?’
‘The Prince of Greece, sir, Prince Peter, and General Wilson.’
Captain Nichols spoke. ‘Blimey, sir. Jumbo himself. They weren’t half in a hurry. Didn’t even stop for a drink.’
There was laughter from the officers. Colonel Robertson smiled. ‘They’re on their way to the sea. Getting away. And I daresay that’s where we should be headed now ourselves, gentlemen. But for the moment we’ve got to stay here and fight.’
It was the signal for the end of their little party, and Lamb returned to the men. He found Bennett. ‘Sarnt-Major, get the men together. I need to talk to them.’
They assembled quickly. He would not say much, he thought. No ‘St Crispin’s Day’ oratory. Just a few words to steady their nerves. Lamb climbed on to a rock to address them; looked around and saw some familiar faces, those few of the men who had come with him out of France the year before, and many more of those whom he had led through Egypt and into Greece. Men whom he knew he would now trust with his life. He coughed and smiled.
‘Good evening. I hope that you’ve been fed and that the Sarnt-Major has looked after you all.’ There was laughter and someone called out, ‘Like me own mother, sir.’
Lamb nodded and went on. ‘You know what we’ve got to do. We came here to stop the Jerries taking Greece and we haven’t quite managed it. It’s no fault of yours. But now we’ve got a different job to do. If we can’t save Greece then at least we can save our own men and let them get away to Egypt. The command don’t expect the Kiwis here to hold this place. What they have got to do is slow Jerry up and give him a bloody nose. And we’re going to help them.’
One of the men spoke. One of the new ones, Hay, a good-looking East End lad on whom Lamb was keeping his eye for a future NCO. ‘Like the Guards at Dunkirk did, sir. Didn’t they?’
‘Yes, Smith. Just like the Guards did at Dunkirk.’
The boy can’t have been long out of school when that happened, he thought. But they all knew about Dunkirk, about the miracle, Churchill’s miracle. They didn’t know, of course, about the other evacuation, down in Normandy, at a place called St Valery, where Lamb and his few survivors had got away. That had been no miracle. Far from it, and not spoken of now. Nor were the 8,000 men of the Highland Division whom they had had to abandon there to be taken prisoner with their general. And Lamb knew that for the present, at least, that must stay in the past. There was another battle to fight now and the enemy were pressing ever closer. He spoke again.
‘You’ve met the Kiwis here. They’re good men. Good fighters. There’s a battery of 25-pounders up on that ridge to our right. Aussies. So while the gunners fire at the tanks and trucks, it’s our job to take out the advancing infantry who’ll be following on behind. Some of you have fought with me before. You lucky few.’ More laughter. ‘The others will have heard all about that and they will know as well as you veterans do that I’m not a man to give up. So we’ll stand here with the Kiwis and do what we can, and then when we’re given our orders we’ll make our escape. And one more thing. I don’t want to leave anyone behind. Got that? Now, get what rest you can and good luck.’
There were a few murmurs of ‘Good luck to you, sir’, and the men drifted away to find shelter in the olive grove.
Lamb stepped down from the stone. One of the men had hung back. Spencer.
‘Sir, just one thing.’
‘Yes, Spencer.’
‘Sir, what exactly are we doing here? I mean, sir, I know what you just told us, about saving the Greeks and all that, but why are we here?’
‘We’re sent here, Spencer. By the generals. To try to stop Hitler. And to try to stop him without getting ourselves killed. That’s all you need to know, lad. Now off you go.’
Lamb himself wondered what they were doing in Greece. What relevance it had to Britain. France he could see. That was obvious. But he was sure they were in Greece for purely political reasons and he wondered if that was a good enough reason to die. The more he saw of those reasons in this war, the less he liked it.
Two of the lieutenants were standing beside him, and a short distance away the old lags of the company including Bennett, Valentine and Mays.
Wentworth spoke. ‘Must seem a bit strange for you, sir. A year after we get out of France we’re doing the same thing again. Retreating, I mean.’
Lamb shrugged. ‘Well, yes, you’re right, Hugh. I didn’t expect to be doing this again, not so soon. But the main thing is that, whatever happens in war, you must never stop believing. The trouble with the Jerries out there is they believe they can’t be beaten. But I tell you they can. We can beat them, and we will. If not here, then we’ll beat them soon enough.’
‘We can’t really beat them here, though, sir, can we?’
‘No, if you want me to be honest. But as I told the men, as far as I can see all that we can do is hold up the German advance and then get away with whatever we can.’ He looked across to Bennett and Valentine. ‘Sarnt-Major, come and tell the lieutenant how easy it is to beat the Nazis.’
Bennett grinned and walked over.
‘Tell Lieutenant Wentworth what we did to the enemy in France, Sarnt-Major.’
‘Well, sir. Gave him a right bloody nose. Blew up an air base, we did, and captured a colonel. Had them chasing around all over after us. And then we got all those men away off the beach, sir, didn’t we. And before that, up north, Mister Lamb – sorry, the Captain – well, he just walked out with a sack of grenades and took out two enemy positions and …’