Corporal Cotton's Little War by John Harris Page B

telephone rang. The man sitting by the radio that had been set up answered it and handed the earpiece to the major.
    ‘Captain Ehrhardt, Herr Major,’ he said.
    The major took the telephone, sat down in the chair behind the desk and put it to his ear. As he listened, he looked like a businessman attending to the first call of the day.
    ‘Well done, Ehrhardt,’ he said.
    Replacing the telephone he clicked his fingers and, as the radioman handed him a signal pad, he began to write, addressing the message to General Ritsicz, 12th Army, Sofia.
    ‘Objective captured. No casualties. Await orders. Baldamus.’
    He signed it and handed it to the signaller with a smile. ‘I think this will startle the British,’ he said. ‘At least, it should discourage them from putting men ashore here.’

    This time it was Major Baldamus who was wrong, because Claudia was only waiting for dusk before pushing on with the next stage of her voyage.
    A sort of dread seemed to have settled over Iros. As the day advanced they began to hear the soft thud-thud of guns to the north and the distant hum of aircraft which never came close enough to be seen. Otherwise all was extraordinarily quiet, the islanders moving about in small silent groups as if in need of constant company. There were no voices, not even the voices of sea birds, and the women in the low fields by the shore seemed to speak in whispers, because it was impossible, even in the still air, to hear them.
    Occasionally, groups of prune-eyed children or old men came down the jetty to look at Claudia, moored among the caiques and disguised with blankets over her guns; but no one asked about her, or the purpose of her voyage. It was obvious the islanders suspected that no good could come of her visit and they were all holding their breath, wondering when nemesis was going to arrive in the shape of a prowling German aeroplane.
    Even the harbour wall was silent and deserted except for a man using a six-inch nail to splice an eye in a heavy wire hawser.
    ‘He’d do better with a spike,’ Shaw observed and Patullo smiled.
    ‘He’ll manage,’ he said. ‘It’s a habit of the Greeks to use things for multiple purposes. I once saw the fire brigade turn out in a suburb of Larisa, complete with engines and brass helmets, to water the flowers in the public gardens.’
    Gully pulled his concertina from under the dreadful heap of rubbish in the brown-paper parcel that he called his gear and tried a few notes. ‘I’m a flying fish, sailor, just ‘ome from ‘Ong Kong,’ he began.
    Docherty stopped him. ‘Gi’e us something proper,’ he said.
    ‘What sort of proper?’
    ‘Know”Ramona”?’
    ‘Oo’s she?’ Gully asked. ‘That bit that used to wait outside the docks at South Shields?’
    But he started to play the tune and Docherty sang in a breathy tenor, doing dance steps round the forecastle. ‘These bloody navy jobs,’ he complained. ‘They get me chocker. No room to move. If I’d built this scow for meself I’d have had a bar and a big double bed for the bints,’
    ‘Your mind runs on rails,’ Bisset said.
    Docherty grinned his mad grin. ‘It’s a short life, so you might as well make it a merry one. I was in Singapore before I come to the Med. The bints there were all right - one of coffee, two of milk, and red hot in bed.’
    At midday Bisset managed to pick up the BBC news again, and they listened with hearts that seemed to be clutched by cold fingers. The Axis troops were active again in North Africa and Tobruk was still besieged, while to the north in Greece the British army was as hard pressed as it seemed to have been everywhere since the war had wakened up the previous year.
    ‘The situation is grave,’ the announcer said in the smooth, cool tones of someone sitting out of the way in London. ‘The Greek government has left Athens and the whereabouts of the king are at present unknown. Australian and New Zealand troops are taking up positions -’
    ‘On