Colin Forbes: The Heights of Zervos

The slope seemed like a living thing as it seethed and rolled towards the lake far below, a whole mountain erupting sideways, the wave curling at the crest, the snow-slide roaring down, the rumble a tremendous sound in their dazed ears, a sound like the eruption of a major volcano, blowing its lava flow up from the interior of the earth. The Alpenkorps tried to scatter at the last moment – some skiing downhill, some whipping across the slope, all trying to race the wave which bore down on them and for a brief moment in time they were like a disturbed nest of ants scurrying away from catastrophe. Then the wave arrived, swept over the broken line, engulfing them, burying them, carrying them down the slope and over the bluff face where it cascaded down the precipice like a vast waterfall and washed away the men still ascending it before it plunged down into the depths of the lake. Prentice shouted his frantic warning as the wave reached the bluff's brink – the leading skier, not yet overwhelmed by the avalanche, had stopped, unlooped his rifle from his back, was taking aim at the roof of the tower. Macomber, his gaze fixed on the bluff, heard the shout too late. He was dropping to the floor when the bullet thudded into him and he was unconscious before he sprawled over the stones.

The Australian doctor had underestimated Macomber's vitality, so he came out of the drugged state at the wrong moment, the moment when they started to take him down the nose of Cape Zervos, strapped to a stretcher, powerless to move, but conscious enough to think, to remember, to experience to the full the unnerving ordeal of being transported in the prone position down a track a mule might jib at. The track, no more than a rather broad path, was the route from the cliff summit to the base of the cape where the Allied troops had landed. It was a fine morning, the sun was shining, there was not a trace of sea mist, so his downward view was unobscured as his life balanced in four hands – two holding the rear of the stretcher, two supporting the front. The stretcher tilted downwards at an angle of forty-five degrees as the two men carrying him found the way increasingly dangerous – ascending a precipitous zigzag can be difficult, descending it may prove impossible. The Scot thought the unobscured view was impressive – a sheer drop seaward to the ruffled waters of the Aegean far below, a glimpse of a lower level of the zigzag, perched on another brink. And in his invalid state, Macomber had lost his head for heights.

He watched the uncertain gait of the man in front through half-closed eyes, half-closed because he was determined they shouldn't realize he had come awake – even a small surprise like that at the wrong moment could make a foot stumble, a hand lose its grip, could cause the stretcher to leave them and send him vertically down to his grave as the stretcher turned over and over in mid-air before it mercifully reached the sea and the waves closed over him. Cursing his over-vivid imagination, he tore his mesmerized gaze away from the trembling distant waters and tried to concentrate his mind on what had happened, on what Prentice had told him when he first recovered consciousness. 'He got you in the shoulder… the bullet's out now

… the quack says you'll be all right… they'll be taking you to Athens.'

Macomber wasn't sure what day it was as he went on staring at the back of the man below him, but he remembered other things the lieutenant had told him. The Australians had come up this hellish track like demons. With the New Zealanders. They had dragged up dismantled twenty-five-pounder guns by brute strength, had reassembled them on the heights, were now in full command of Zervos. The blowing up of the Hydra had warned them something was seriously wrong; the great cloud of black smoke rising over Katyra had forced a quick decision – the sending of a destroyer laden with troops. I wish I had one of those bloody German cigars, Macomber thought as the man behind him tripped and the stretcher wobbled uneasily. They should have let Grapos take the rear. But at least the bearer had held on firmly, had regained his balance quickly. They went slowly down another section, then another, poised over sheer drops, the only sound a slithering of boots over the treacherous ground. Time stopped for the Scot, went into a state of suspension, so that it seemed to go on for ever. They were close to the half-ruined jetty at the base of Cape Zervos, but still a hundred feet above the sea, when the man in front stumbled over a hidden rock, fell sideways onto the track, saving himself by cannoning against a boulder and completely losing his grip on the stretcher. Macomber's legs hit the earth with a bump. He braced himself for the long spiralling fall.

The rear of the stretcher sagged a foot, then steadied and was held there by two hands only until the other man climbed to his feet, started to apologize, then stopped as he saw the look in the eyes of the man holding Macomber. He lifted the stretcher again and they went on down the track to where the launch moored by the jetty waited to transport the Scot to the destroyer anchored farther out. Macomber delayed his official awakening until he was rested on the jetty wall, then he twisted his head round to say thank you. Grapos' whiskered face stared down at him. 'I come with you,' he said simply. 'Now they take me in the Greek army. Yes?'