Jackals’ Revenge. Iain Gale
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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