As they left the port area they turned into the main road that led from Canea. They drove without lights. The sky was clear and full of stars. They could see a fair way and as far as they could see and as far as they went the road was densely filled with walking men interspersed with motor-vehicles of all kinds, lightless also, moving at walking pace. Some of the men were in short columns of threes, fully equipped, some were wounded, supporting one another, some wandered without arms. The lorry moved against all this traffic, clearing a passage. Occasionally a man would shout at them. One said: “Wrong way, mate.” Most of the men did not look up. Some walked straight into the bonnet and mudguards. For some miles the flow of men never changed. Then they turned up a lane and a sentry halted them. The driver opened the bonnet and began to work on the engine with a flash-lamp.
“Put out that light,” said the sentry.
“What are you doing?” asked Major Hound.
“Taking the distributor. We don’t want this truck pinched.”
The guide led them into a peaceful vineyard. They were challenged again and at length reached some dark buildings. Guy looked at his watch. Half past two.
The batmen sat down outside. Guy and Major Hound pushed back the two blankets which hung over the door of a peasant’s two-roomed house. Inside a storm lantern and maps lay on the table. Two men were asleep, sitting on chairs, their heads in their arms on the table. Major Hound saluted. One of the men raised his head.
“Yes?”
“Brigade Headquarters, Hookforce, reporting, sir, with orders from C.-in-C. M.E.”
“What? Who?” The face of the B.G.S. was blank with weariness. “The G.O.C. is not to be disturbed. We’re moving in an hour. Just leave whatever it is you’ve got. I’ll attend to it.”
G.S.O. I slowly sat up.
“Did you say ‘Hookforce’? The G.O.C. has been waiting for a report from you all day.”
“It’s very urgent I should see him.”
“Yes, yes, of course. But not just now. He can’t see anyone now. This is the first sleep he’s had for two days and we’ve got to make our move before dawn. Is Colonel Blackhouse with you?”
Major Hound began to explain the situation, to put B.G.S. and G.S.O. I in the picture. It was plain to Guy that they understood nothing. For Major Hound it was enough that the words should be spoken, the correct sounds made even into the void of their utter weariness.
“… Based on Canea… Raiding tasks on enemy L. of C. in conjunction with S.N.O….”
“Yes,” said B.G.S. “Thank you. Leave it here. The G.O.C. shall see it. Ask Colonel Blackhouse to report at eight.”
He pointed to the map on the talc cover of which the new headquarters were neatly marked in chalk. It was conveniently near the place chosen by Major Hound, Guy noticed, on the forward slopes just off the road where it turned inland for the mountains and the south coast.
They returned to the lorry and as they drove into the main road, going with the stream now, a New Zealand officer stopped them. “Can you take on some wounded?”
“Oh. Where do they want to go?”
“Anywhere.”
“We’re only going three miles.”
“That’ll be some help.”
The wounded men began climbing and pulling one another up until the lorry was full.
“Thanks,” said the New Zealander.
“Where are you going yourself?”
“Sphakia, if I can make it.”
Presently they came to a part of the road where the walking and marching men had somehow been directed into the side and there was a clear way ahead. They began bumping along at a fair speed, the wounded men often groaning as they were thrown about.
They reached the high ground where Major Hound had sited his headquarters. All was in order here. A signaler stood at the side of the road as sentry and guide. As they stopped, stragglers gathered round. “Room for another, mate?”
“Get out. Everyone out,” said Major Hound.
Uncomplaining, unquestioning, the wounded men managed their descent and silently limped off among the moving crowd.
The lorry was driven off the road among the boulders and trees; its distributor was again removed, its camouflage-net correctly spread.
Corporal-Major Ludovic appeared in the glimmer.
“Everything in order, corporal-major?”
“Sir.”
“The headquarters’ officers here?”
“They went in the truck to look for rations.”
“Good. All-round defense posted?”
“Sir.”
“Well, I think I’ll turn in. It’ll be light in an hour. Then we shall know better how we stand.”
Whatever strange tides were flowing round him, Major Hound still kept afloat, like Noah, sure in his own righteousness. But he did not sleep.
And quarter of a mile distant on the road to the mountains the silent men stumbled and the blind cars rattled.
*
Major Hound had eaten nothing since he put to sea. His first thought, as headquarters came to life at dawn, was of food.
“Time we were brewing-up, corporal-major.”
“The headquarters ration-party have not returned, sir.”
“No tea?”
“No tea, sir. No water except what’s in our bottles. I was advised not to light a fire, sir, on account of the hostile aircraft.”
Major Hound’s second thought was of his personal appearance. He opened his haversack, propped a looking-glass against a boulder, smeared his face with sticky matter from a tube and began to shave.
“Crouchback, are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got a conference this morning.”
“Yes.”
“Better spruce up a bit. Have you any shaving-cream?”
“Never use it.”
“I can lend you some of mine. You don’t need much.”
“Thanks awfully, I’ll wait for hot water. From what I could see last night there isn’t a great deal of shaving done on this island.”
Major Hound wiped his face and razor, and handed it and his towel to his batman. He studied the crowded road through his binoculars.
“I can’t think what’s happened to the others?”
“While we were waiting last night, sir,” said Corporal-Major Ludovic, “I got into conversation with an Australian sergeant. Apparently in the last day or two there have been many cases of men shooting officers and stealing their motor-vehicles. In fact, he suggested that he and I should adopt the practice, sir.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, corporal-major.”
“I rejected the suggestion, sir, with scorn.”
Major Hound looked hard at Ludovic, then he rose and strolled slowly towards the risen sun.
“Crouchback,” he called. “Would you come over here a minute?”
Guy joined him and walked behind up the little white goat-track until they were out of earshot, when Major Hound said:
“Does Ludovic strike you as peculiar?”
“He always has.”
“Was he trying to be insolent just now?”
“I think perhaps he was trying to be funny.”
“It’s going to be awkward if he cracks up.”
“Very.”
They stood silent among a little group of umbrella pines watching the procession on the road. It had thinned now, no longer the solid block of the hours of darkness; men trudged along apart in pairs and clusters. One lorry only was in sight, slowly climbing the slope towards them.
Hound said rather quickly as though he had been rehearsing the question: “I say, do you mind if I call you ‘Guy’?”
“Not particularly.”
“My friends usually call me ‘Fido.’ ”
“Philo?”
“Fido.”
“Oh. Yes. I see.”
A pause.
“I don’t altogether like the look of things, Guy.”
“Neither do I, Fido.”
??
?What’s more, I’m damned hungry.”
“So am I.”
“You don’t really think they can have murdered the staff-captain and gone off with our lorry?”
“No.”
As they spoke in low confidential tones there came to them from the bright morning sky the faint, crescent hum of an aeroplane and with it a nearer, louder, more doleful, scarcely more human sound, echoed from man to man along the dusty road: “Aircraft. Take cover. Take cover. Take cover. Aircraft.”
At once the whole aspect was transformed. All the men stumbled off the road, flung themselves down face forward and totally disappeared among the scrub and rock. The dust subsided behind them. The lorry drove straight to the cover of the pines where Guy and Fido stood, stopped when it could go no deeper. A dozen men climbed out and ran from it, falling flat among the tactically dispersed elements of Hookforce headquarters.
“This won’t do,” said Fido.
He walked towards them.
“Look here, you men, this is Brigade Headquarters area.”
“Aircraft,” they said. “Take cover.”
The little, leisurely reconnaissance plane grew from a glint of silver to a recognizable machine. It flew low above the road, dwindled, turned, grew again, turned its attention to the lorry and fired a burst, wide by twenty yards, circled, mounted and at length disappeared seawards into the silent quattrocento heaven.
Guy and Fido had lain down when the bullets fell. They stood up and grinned at one another, accomplices in indignity.
“You’d better move on now,” said Fido to the men from the truck.
None of them answered.
“Who’s in command of this party?” asked Fido. “You, sergeant?”
The man addressed said sulkily, “Not exactly, sir.”
“Well, you’d better take command and move on.”
“You can’t move on, not in daytime. There’s Jerries over all the time. We’ve had a week of it.”
All round now heads were bobbing up in the bushes but no one moved on the road. The sergeant swung his pack forward and took out a tin of biscuits and a tin of bully beef. He hacked the meat open with his bayonet and began carefully dividing it.
Fido watched. He craved. Not Guy nor the ragged, unshaven sergeant, not Fido himself who was dizzy with hunger and lack of sleep, nor anyone on that fragrant hillside could know that this was the moment of probation. Fido stood at the parting of the ways. Behind him lay a life of blameless professional progress; before him the proverbial alternatives: the steep path of duty and the heady precipice of sensual appetite. It was the first great temptation of Fido’s life. He fell.
“I say, sergeant,” he said in an altered tone, “have you any of that to spare?”
“Not to spare. Our last tin.”
Then one of the other men spoke, also gently:
“You don’t happen to have a smoke on you, sir?”
Fido felt in his pocket, opened his cigarette case and counted.
“I might be able to spare a couple,” he said.
“Make it four and you can have my bully. I’m queer in the stomach.”
“And two biscuits.”
“No, I can eat biscuit. It’s bully I never have fancied.”
“One biscuit.”
“Five fags.”
The deal was done. Fido took his price of shame in his hand, the little lump of the flaky, fatty meat and his single biscuit. He did not look at Guy, but went away out of sight to eat. It took a bare minute. Then he returned to the center of his groups and sat silent with his map and his lost soul.
The “tactical dispersal” of Hookforce headquarters, modified by the defection of the ration-party and the incursion of various extraneous elements, had an appearance of being haphazard. The “all-round defense” comprised four signalers outlying with rifles at the points of the compass. Under their guard little groups rested among scrub and boulder. The brigade major sat alone in the center, Guy some distance away. The warmth of the early sun comforted them all.
Guy’s servant approached with a mess-tin containing cold baked beans, biscuits and jam.
“All I could scrounge, sir.”
“Splendid. Where did it come from?”
“Our section, sir. We had a look round on the quay last night.”
Guy joined his men who were eating with caution, out of sight of the improvident clerks and signalers. They greeted him cheerfully. This was their picnic, he their guest; it was not for him officiously to order a general distribution of their private spoils.
“I don’t see any immediate intelligence task,” he said. “The best thing we can do is to make a recce for water. There ought to be a spring in one of these gullies.”
The sergeant handed round cigarettes.
“Go carefully with those,” said Guy. “We may find them valuable for barter.”
“I got ten tins off the navy, sir.”
Guy sent two men to look for water. He marked his map. He noted on his pad: “28/6/41. Adv. Bde. H.Q. established on track west of road 346208 0500 hrs. Enemy recce plane 0610.” It occurred to him on that morning of uncertainty that he was behaving pretty much as a Halberdier should. He wished that Colonel Tickeridge could be there to see him, and even as he cherished this remote whim, Colonel Tickeridge, in fact, appeared.
Not recognizably at first; a mere speck in the empty road, then, as he drew nearer, two specks. In the words of the Manual of Small Arms, at 600 yards the heads were dots, the bodies tapered; at 300 yards the faces were blurred; at 200 yards all parts of the body were distinctly seen; his old commander’s great mustache was unmistakable.
“Hi,” Guy shouted, hastening towards the road. “Colonel Tickeridge, sir. Hi.”
The two Halberdiers halted. They were as clean-shaven as Fido, all their equipment in place, just as they had appeared during battalion exercises at Penkirk.
“Uncle. Well, I’ll be damned! What are you up to? You aren’t Creforce headquarters by any happy chance?”
It was no time for detailed reminiscence. They exchanged some essential military information. The Second Halberdiers had come out of Greece without firing a shot and lived in billets between Retino and Suda, waiting for orders. At last Colonel Tickeridge had been summoned to headquarters. He was in complete ignorance of the progress of the battle. Nor had he yet heard of the loss of Ben Ritchie-Hook.
Fido was not yet so sunk in dishonor that he could bear to see a junior officer speak to a senior without intervening. He bustled up and saluted.
“You’re looking for Force Headquarters, sir? They should be on the reverse slope. I’m reporting there at eight myself.”
“I was called for eight but I’m going while things are quiet. The Germans work a strict time-table. At eight o’clock sharp they start throwing things. They knock off for lunch, then carry on until sunset. Never varies. What’s the G.O.C. doing back here? Who are all these frightful-looking fellows I see all over the shop? What’s going on?”
“They say it’s sauve qui peut now,” said Fido.
“Don’t know the expression,” said Colonel Tickeridge.
It was twenty past seven.
“I’m pushing on. They never by any chance hit anyone with their damned bombs, but they make me nervous.”
“We’ll come too,” said Fido.
No one else moved over the roads. The men who had tramped all night lay deep in the scrub, feeling the sun, and more than sun the thorns, breathing the spicy air, hungry and thirsty and dirty, waiting for the long dangerous day to bring another laborious night.
Punctually at eight the sky filled with aeroplanes. The G.O.C.’s conference was just beginning. A dozen officers squatted round him in a booth of blankets and boughs and camouflage-net. Some of them, who had been heavily bombed in the last week, hunched their shoulders and, as a machine approached, seemed deaf to other sounds. No bombs or bullets came near them.
“I regret to inform you, gentlemen,” said the G.O.C., “that the decision
has been taken to abandon the island.” He proceeded to give a summary of the situation… “This brigade and that brigade have borne the brunt of the fighting and are severely mauled… I have therefore withdrawn them from the action and ordered them to embarkation points on the south coast.” That was the rabble of the previous night, Guy thought; those are the drowsy, footsore men in the bushes… “I have withdrawn them from the action…”
The general proceeded to the details of a rear-guard. Hookforce and the Second Halberdiers, it appeared, were the only units now capable of fighting. The general indicated lines to be held.
“Is this a last-man, last-round defense?” asked Colonel Tickeridge cheerfully.
“No. No. A planned withdrawal…” So-and-so was to fall back through such-and-such… This bridge and that were to be blown behind the last sub-unit.
“I don’t seem to have much on my flanks,” said Colonel Tickeridge presently.
“You needn’t worry about them. The Germans never work off the roads.”
At length he said: “It must be accepted that administration has to some extent broken down… Dumps of ammunition and rations will be established at various points on the road… It is hoped that more may be flown in tonight… Some improvisation may be necessary… I will move my headquarters tonight to Imbros… Traffic to present headquarters must be kept to a minimum. You will leave singly, avoiding making tracks…”
By nine o’clock Guy and Fido were back where they had started. Twice on the return journey they took cover as an aeroplane swooped low over their heads. Once or twice as they walked the open road voices from the bush admonished them: “Keep down, can’t you,” but mostly they moved through a land seemingly devoid of human life. When they reached their headquarters Fido busied himself in transcribing the general’s orders. Then he said:
“Guy, do you think the unit commanders will turn up at my conference?”
“No.”
“It’s their own fault if they don’t.” He looked hopelessly about him with his keen eyes. “No one moving anywhere. I think you’d better take the truck and distribute orders personally.”
“Where?”
“Here,” said the brigade major, pointing to the chalk marks on his map, “and here, and here. Or somewhere,” he added in blank despair.