‘We need to plan for them. We must get them out.’
‘How?’
‘We are going to organize a boat. It will arrive tomorrow night. You must arrange for men to help carry everything down to the harbour.’
‘And you plan to sail back to safety before daylight?’
‘What else can we do? The town is now almost surrounded. A man can creep through, but not a truck or a cart. We have no choice. Better that it should end up at the bottom of the sea than in the hands of those scum.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘You must warn the port that the boat is coming. There must be no trouble. It will reach you when the German fliers have gone home, and the stores must be ready.’
‘What if it’s late? I don’t want to have to wait on the quayside with a large stash of arms and explosives. You remember the trouble we had getting it in the first place. If Brigade gets a whiff of it they’ll take it all back in a trice. Look, I’ll have men and a cart ready, but the boat has to be here before I move it from its safe place.’
Alopex stroked his moustache a moment. ‘All right. So long as you are ready and waiting.’ He finished his raki, then stood up. ‘You are a good fellow, Alex. I know I can count on you. And you will talk to your brigadier?’
‘Yes. I’ll do all I can.’
Alopex embraced Vaughan, picked up his rifle and stepped out into the dark of the night.
The men of the 2nd Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers, had also seen the paratroop drop to the south that afternoon. Tanner had wasted no time in hurrying to his rocky perch above their positions and, with his rifle and scope, taking shots as they descended, while the rest of the company had also fired furiously as this latest batch of invaders drifted down. Most had fallen a good four or five hundred yards away and more. How many had been killed or wounded was anyone’s guess, but there was no doubting this had been the heaviest drop since that first day. Tanner was not alone in thinking the stranglehold they had had over the enemy was slipping away.
‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ he had heard McAllister grumble. ‘We could have finished this lot off for good the other day but we let ’em get away with it. And now look.’
Tanner had watched the other men in the section gaze up at the sky to the south, filled with falling parachutes. ‘Defeatist talk, Mac?’ Tanner had asked.
‘No, sir. Just pissed-off talk, that’s all.’
‘Well, perhaps tonight we can go after them,’ Tanner had said. ‘Jerry doesn’t much like the dark. Stir up a bit of trouble for all those disoriented paratroopers. Mac, we could get you a lovely pair of boots like mine.’ The men had laughed at that, but when Tanner had gone to talk to Captain Peploe about sending out several fighting patrols, he had been told that orders had just arrived from the colonel, who in turn was passing on instructions from Brigade, that it was essential ammunition be preserved as far as possible and that any counter-attacks or active patrol work was to be forbidden. For what possible reason were they to preserve ammunition? That was what Tanner wanted to know. It seemed crazy, completely illogical. What was the brigadier thinking? That it was better to let the enemy slowly but surely build up his strength while they sat back and watched?
Incensed, Tanner had gone to find Sykes, a man to whom he knew he could always gripe and groan about the brass.
‘We could send out a few forward pickets, Jack,’ Sykes suggested, as they sat beneath a large plane tree brewing char.
‘Quite a long way forward.’ Tanner grinned.
‘And if they happened to bump into the enemy – well, a man’s got to defend himself, hasn’t he?’
‘He has, really,’ chuckled Tanner.
So, Tanner had later suggested this to Peploe. ‘I know we’re not allowed to actively engage the enemy, sir,’ he said, as he stood in the doorway of Company Headquarters, ‘but I’d like to set up some forward pickets.’
‘Just how far forward were you thinking?’ Peploe asked.
‘Four hundred yards or so. There are a few wells and old buildings I marked up before the invasion. I was going to take the men there. Good cover.’
‘And precisely the place disoriented paratroopers would head for.’
Tanner smiled. ‘Well, yes, there is that, sir.’
Peploe agreed, so Tanner took Hepworth’s section and Sykes.
‘But, sir,’ complained Hepworth, ‘we’re not on duty tonight. We’re supposed to be getting our heads down.’
‘What do you think this is, Hep?’ Tanner retorted. ‘A summer camp? A whole load of Jerries dropped down over there in case you hadn’t noticed. Now shift your arse and stop complaining.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Hepworth.
Tanner had known him for more than a year now and they had served together almost continually, apart from the couple of months after Hepworth had been wounded at Dunkirk. A lean-faced lad from Bradford, with a slightly hunched look about him, Hepworth had been a Territorial before the war, as a means of eking out a few extra pennies every week. But the Territorial 5th Battalion had been destroyed in Norway. Hepworth, along with Sykes, McAllister, Chambers and Bell, had followed Tanner into the 1st Battalion and had been sent to France, and then, when France had been lost, overseas to join the 2nd Battalion – the unit of the Yorks Rangers Tanner had first joined as a boy soldier all those years before in India. Tanner trusted these men although, in truth, most were barely out of their teens – hardly men at all, and even though, Hepworth especially, they grumbled and complained whenever there was the opportunity. It was why, given the choice, he preferred to have them beside him whenever there was a fight rather than others in the company whom he knew less well.
As they reached their forward positions, Tanner was met by Lieutenant Liddell. The two had been largely successful in avoiding each other the past two days, but now Tanner looked up at him, a challenging expression on his face.
‘Where do you think you’re all going?’
‘Forward pickets,’ growled Tanner.
‘But these men are off watch.’
‘That’s what I told him, sir,’ said Hepworth.
‘Shut it, Hep,’ snapped Tanner. ‘Captain Peploe’s orders, sir.’
Liddell looked at the men and then at Tanner. ‘Very well, then.’
‘Password is “yorker”,’ said Tanner. ‘Perhaps you’d tell the rest of the men, sir.’
Liddell nodded, and Tanner slung his rifle onto his shoulder, his MP40 clutched in his hand. ‘Iggery, then, lads. Follow me.’
He led them forward, walking freely at first and then, as they moved further, crouching through the fields and groves. The light was fading fast. Occasional shots rang out, a dog barked, while from the trees came the ever- present sound of cicadas and crickets. Reaching an old goat shed, Tanner gathered the men around him. ‘Hep, you and two others stay here.’ He pointed to a well, around seventy yards to their right. ‘Three more over there by that well, and the rest, I want you to make your way to that stone wall over there.’ He pointed to a crumbled barn and a drystone wall around a hundred yards further to the west. ‘Get behind that and keep a watch out to the south. There’s still some moon and it’s another clear night so there’ll be light from the stars. As it gets dark, your eyes should adjust. But use your ears too. My guess is some Jerries might just come looking for shelter and water. If they do, give it to ’em.’
‘I thought we’re supposed to be preserving ammunition, sir,’ said Hepworth.
‘You’ve got to defend yourselves, Hep.’ He looked at the Schmeisser Hepworth carried – one of the twelve to have been given out. ‘In any case, that’s not our ammo you’re using – it’s Jerry’s.’ He grinned at Hepworth and gave him a pat on his shoulder, then glanced around at the others. ‘Keep your helmets on – it’ll help with identification. And the password – don’t forget it.’
‘Where will you be, sir?’ asked Hepworth.
‘There’s something Sergeant Sykes and I need to have a quick look at.’ He winked at Sykes. ‘Then we’ll be back to keep an eye on you lot. So stay put until I tell you otherwise.’
Tanner watched the men hurry off towards their posts, then turned to Sykes and said, ‘Follow me.’ He led him off the low ridge and down in the direction of the Knossos road.
