Blood of Honour

exhilaration.

2

Colour Sergeant-Major Jack Tanner had already watched the gun captains check and recheck their ready-use ammunition and fuses on the two rear 4.7-inch guns. He had also seen the gun layer on the Quick Firing 2-Pounder, or pompom as it was known, train and elevate his weapon to its full capacity, then more than once examine its ammunition feedrails. It had been good to see. Checking and cleaning his own weapon was the first thing Tanner did whenever he had a spare moment, and since, over the past forty-eight hours, he had had very little to do other than wait in Rafina to be evacuated, his rifle had received an especially large amount of attention.

It was slung over his back now as he leaned against the stern railing. Apart from a bit of darkening and wear and tear to the butt, the rifle looked almost as good as new, glistening with a sheen of oil. As a boy, he had learned the importance of looking after weapons. It had been drummed into him by his father, and ever since he had joined the army as a sixteen-year-old boy soldier, he had carried an oiler, rags and pull-through and, wherever possible, a small flask of gin – nothing, he had discovered, could compare with gin for cleaning the firing mechanism. The spirit never congealed in cold weather, and it helped the striker hit with a clear, sharp snick.

He and the rest of the 2nd Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers, were all aboard HMS Halberd. Most of the men had been bundled below decks, officers into the wardroom, ORs anywhere they could find a place to perch out of the way. Destroyers were not large vessels – in Halberd’s case, a little over three hundred feet long and thirty wide. Normally, she played home to just 145 officers and crew, but that had now swollen by more than seven hundred Rangers who, if not properly disciplined, could play havoc with their chances of making safe passage to Suda Bay. As the ship’s captain had told the Rangers officers before they had set sail, he was expecting plenty of attention from the Luftwaffe now that more than half of the journey would take place during daylight hours. He made it clear he did not want soldiers to get in the way of the crew.

The crossing would have been considerably less tense had they left at dusk the previous evening as planned. However, both Halberd and HMS Havock had been held up on their way to Greece, first dodging enemy air attacks and then helping to rescue men from another stricken vessel. By the time they had unloaded them back in Suda Bay, the two destroyers were badly behind schedule. Not until the early hours of that Monday morning did they finally reach Rafina, and when the last of the men had been lifted, it was just before 2 a.m., with only around four hours left before first light.

Because of this delay, the crew had been almost continually at Action Stations. A small number of Rangers – one section from each of the companies – had been detailed to help the crew damage-control and repair parties. Tanner could have been excused such duty, but the idea of being stuck away below decks, unable to see what was going on, did not appeal to him at all; if he had to go to sea – and he would really rather not – then he reckoned it was far better being out in the fresh air with something to look at. So Tanner, with Captain Peploe’s blessing, had joined Sergeant Sykes and the rest of Corporal McAllister’s section at the stern of the ship where they had taken their positions next to Y Gun, one of the ship’s four 4.7-inch guns, and the one furthest aft. In any case, Sykes’s platoon had lost their commander in Greece – and the entire battalion of nearly a hundred men – so Tanner had been keeping an especial eye on them until their new subaltern arrived. Not that Sykes couldn’t keep them in line on his own; he could, but Tanner liked Sykes, and McAllister for that matter, and furthermore, he recognized that Sykes’s optimism was good for him. God knew, he needed it at the moment.

Tanner had been smoking a cigarette and watching Havock, Halberd’s sister ship. Not more than five hundred yards away and just a nose in front, she had the last remaining men from the 1st Armoured Brigade aboard, some eight hundred soldiers from the 9th Royal Rifle Corps. Then suddenly there were shouts from the men behind him, and a split second later he had heard the faint buzz of aircraft. He quickly scanned the skies, but without his binoculars he could not spot them at first. Turning round he heard the gun layer relay the orders he had received over his headset from the gunnery officer in the Director Control Tower: ‘Nine high-level bombers bearing green 170.’

The gun crew were gathered around their 4.7-inch gun, dressed in navy denim overalls and wearing white cotton balaclavas beneath their helmets. Behind them were the damage-control parties, waiting expectantly, the Rangers among them. Tanner saw Sykes and McAllister scanning the skies, then looked upwards himself.

‘Bearing green 160,’ called the gun layer.

Tanner spotted them, then almost immediately lost them again as they disappeared in the glare of the sun. He cursed, having caught a glimpse of the sun’s rays and now finding his vision affected.

‘Looks like they’re buggering off,’ said one of the Rangers.

Tanner caught Sykes’s eye and saw his friend raise a sceptical eyebrow.

‘Ignorance is bliss, eh, sir?’ he said, joining Tanner. He leaned out over the rail. ‘And so close too – look.’

Tanner, also leaning out, now saw Crete, a dark, milky blue up ahead, lying like a sleeping maiden on the sea. He turned back, a hand shielding his eyes. The faint drone of aero engines could still be heard. ‘Sneaky bastards,’ he muttered.

‘Can’t say I blame ’em, though,’ said Sykes. ‘If you’ve got a bloody great blinding sun in the sky and not a cloud for dear money, you might as well make the most of it. And you have to admit, it’s a nice day for a swim.’

‘I bloody hate swimming.’ Tanner glanced back at the guns. ‘I hope those lads are good.’

The two stern guns, Y Gun and, behind it on the raised gun deck, X Gun, were now moving into position ready in response to orders from the DCT, clicking and ticking as they were elevated skywards. The sound of aircraft was louder now, then shouts could be heard. Tanner saw them again, high in the sky, now coming straight towards them from the east. There was something odd about them, though, and then he realized: there were now only six aircraft, not nine. Where the hell had the other three gone?

The engine pitch changed as the six Junkers dived towards the two destroyers. Tanner gripped the railings.

‘All guns, rapid salvoes,’ called the gun layer, which was then repeated and shouted by the gun captain. As one, the four guns opened fire, the shells hurtling into the sky with a deafening crash, while the pompom, in the centre of the iron deck, furiously pumped away, the only weapon to be able to fire independently at will. At the same time, the ship lurched suddenly as she changed course, so that Tanner nearly lost his footing. In moments, the bombers were almost upon them and dropping their loads. The whistle of the missiles could be heard amid the ear-shattering din of the guns. Then huge fountains of spume and spray erupted like sea-monsters into the sky. One bomb from the second aircraft hit the sea no more than fifty yards from the port side, spray lashing across the men on deck. Tanner ducked and cursed again, wiping the saltwater from his face and hands. He glanced back at the gunners, traversing and elevating their 120mm tube in response to orders from the DCT – one man gathering the shell, the loader placing it in the breech, and the layer giving the signal that the gun was ready to fire. When all four guns were ready, the out-of-sight gunnery officer in the DCT triggered each of the guns as one. A moment later, they fired once more, the breech recoiling, then the empty casing pulled out and piled on the metal deck behind. Tanner reckoned this process took around ten seconds; six rounds per minute was not bad if firing against another vessel but against Junkers 88 bombers speeding through the air at around 280 m.p.h., it was only ever going to be a chance hit that brought one down.

The ship swerved again, and Tanner glimpsed Havock between the fountains of spray, her guns firing every bit as furiously and also taking hurried evasive action. Smoke and cordite hung heavy in the air, while above, black puffs of flak now dotted the sky. More bombs fell, but miraculously, none appeared to have hit either ship, and now the Junkers were climbing away, curving behind them to the north. Some of the men cheered, but barely had they opened their mouths than another roar of aircraft thundered towards them. Almost before the men realized what was happening, three Junkers had appeared low from the east, straight out of the sun at no more than four hundred feet.

Tanner ducked again as the creamy pale blue undersides of the bombers sped over the ship, a stick of dark bombs tumbling out as they did so. The 4.7-inch guns banged off another round of shells and the pompom pounded