Jackals’ Revenge. Iain Gale
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what Nichols had said, the Germans were advancing from two directions now. He had no doubt that they would soon complete their bridge across the canal.
He turned to Smart. ‘Have another go at raising Battalion on the wireless, Smart, will you?’
“I tried an hour ago, sir. There’s just no signal in the mountains.’
‘Well, have another go. You never know, do you?’
There was a click in the darkness and then the familiar hum of the set in its blackout cover as Smart began to talk into the hand-piece. After ten minutes he gave up. ‘Nothing, sir. I told you, it’s the mountains.’
Lamb nodded and pushed himself deeper into the seat, his hands tucked under his armpits for warmth. The next thing he knew, he was lifting his head, aware that he must have fallen asleep. He quickly took in their surroundings as one vine-covered hillside succeeded another. He looked at his watch. For almost half an hour, it seemed, he had been drifting in and out of sleep. They were all exhausted, of course, but he knew that they would have to find that extra ounce of strength if they were to get away.
Here the road to Athens was no more than a tiny, winding, dusty track crammed with refugees and soldiers: Greeks, Brits, Kiwis, Australians. Most were on foot and only the lucky few, like the Jackals, in trucks. Lamb and his men, scarves over their mouths and noses against the dust, drove on without lights, as ordered, their road lit only by the stars and the moon. Even so, they could barely see thirty yards in front of them. After Bennett’s near miss with the cliff edge, they drove at a tortuously slow pace over the next few miles of curling roads and ragged hills.
Lamb swore. ‘Damn this. Switch on the lights, Sarnt-Major, or the Jerries’ll be on our tails before we ever get to Athens.’
‘You sure, sir? We were ordered to …’
‘I know what the orders were. Switch the damn things on. They’ll see us in the daylight soon enough.’
Bennett switched on the lights, bathing the road ahead in a white glow, and moments later they began to accelerate. Clearly the men in the vehicles in front had had the same idea and were now some distance ahead.
Bennett grinned. ‘That’s more like it, sir. Permission to put my foot down.’
‘Permission?’
The Bren carrier lurched forward into full speed, which, although only some 30 miles per hour, after the appalling slowness gave the impression to its occupants that they were on the racetrack at Broadlands. The trucks behind them followed suit. It took them just over another hour to manage the thirty miles to the outskirts of Athens, and as they left behind the final range of hills Lamb relaxed. The road flattened out quickly now and became straighter. He had kept the map before him and continued looking up to verify their position. But when he did so this time, he gasped. For the dawn was with them now and the sun’s pink and orange rays began to pierce the night sky, falling upon the ancient capital and glinting off the whiteness of the Parthenon.
3
Athens was in chaos. The streets and boulevards, which only a week ago had seen the well-heeled drinking cocktails at the hotel bars and cafés filled with the locals, were now thronged with a quite different type of visitor. Refugees had of course been arriving in the city for more than a year, from Smyrna, Rumania, Russia, even Poland. But now the place seemed to Lamb to have become the hub of the world, brimming over with every nationality, and there was no mistaking the mood of the newcomers. The place stank of fear. The local people, though, seemed strangely sanguine.
Driving more slowly now into the ancient city, the company were greeted by several Greek civilians with a thumbs-up sign. It seemed bizarre to Lamb and singularly inappropriate.
Valentine, who, as he spoke Greek of a sort had transferred to the lead vehicle, whispered to him. ‘Sir, they think it’s the way we always greet each other.’
Lamb suspected, though, from their smiling faces that they might be some of the Greek fascists about whom they had been told. The streets were daubed with anti-Italian slogans but he wondered whether these men hadn’t come out from hiding in the expectation that soon their friends the Germans would be among them.
Most of the Greeks, however, he knew to be a proud people, and President Metaxas himself had refused the ultimatum to submit to Italian occupation. Unanimously Greece had united against the Axis when it had seemed that only Britain stood against Hitler and Mussolini. And now, thought Lamb, this is what they get for all that faith and defiance. We were put in here as a political move, and now, when they need us most, we’re leaving them, abandoning them to their fate.
The little convoy made slow progress, hampered by the press of civilians as they smiled and waved. A pretty, dark-haired girl with brown eyes stepped up to the carrier and planted a kiss on Bennett’s cheek. He shied away as the others laughed. Mays joked, ‘Oi. Careful, miss. He’s a married man.’
Funny, thought Lamb, how it feels as if we’re being welcomed as liberators, when they know all too well that we’re about to abandon them. What sort of people could they be to have such strength of spirit?
While he and every one of his men knew that time was of the essence, they were glad at least that there was no apparent present danger on the rooftops and in the streets of the ancient capital. The danger from the skies, of course, was ever-present.
Lamb was not sure quite where he was aiming for, but it had occurred to him that, with so many Allied soldiers trying to find senior officers, the British Legation might be a good alternative starting point for discovering a means of escape. He clutched his tattered and spineless copy of Baedecker’s Greece and thanked God he had brought it with him.
The Legation, he knew, was in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, and according to the book that was in Constitution Square. Turning left, they found themselves beside the terrace of a large building, Italian in style and baked by two centuries of sun. On the terrace in front, among the carefully manicured gardens, some steamer chairs lay broken and surrounded by empty wine bottles. The army’s been here, he thought. He sniffed, and Valentine saw him do it. ‘It’s gum, sir, that smell. Sap from the pines. Nice, isn’t it.’
Lamb turned to him, bemused. ‘Uh yes, very pleasant.’
‘It always says “Greece” to me, sir, don’t you agree?’
‘You know Athens well?’
‘Didn’t I tell you, sir? A trip to study the antiquities, when I was up at university.’
Lamb shook his head. ‘Where haven’t you been, Valentine? In that case you can point us in the direction of the British Legation.’
A few blocks on they found what he had been looking for. The Hotel Grande Bretagne was a huge neo-classical building built a little like a wedding-cake, with a colonnade of Romanesque arches running the length of the front. Lamb told the men to wait and, jumping down, climbed the steps to the massive entrance doors. Inside the place was in uproar. The air was filled with the stench of burning papers. The few civil servants still remaining ran from room to room. He tried to stop one of them but was brushed aside. Looking around he saw a sign: the words ‘Billiard Room’ had been crossed out and ‘Information Office’ written in. Lamb walked towards it and found himself at the rear of the old hotel. There was a large mirror on one wall, and catching sight of himself he was momentarily horrified at his appearance. His brown, almost black hair, which in peacetime and on leave had been cut in a neat, military style by Truefit and Hill, had grown ragged in the month since the regimental barber had last had a go at it. The stubble to which he had grown accustomed, shaving just once every four days to save water, had grown almost beard-like, and the face that it hid was sallow and despite the tan somehow pale. But it was his eyes which most shocked Lamb. They seemed sunk into their sockets, as if all the misery he had seen in the past few weeks was hidden in their depths. He looked away and carried on. At the end of the corridor was a green-painted door.
He knocked and, not waiting for a reply, went in. A bespectacled man