Iain Gale - Jackals’ Revenge

To Patrick Barty

and

the people of Crete

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page IAIN GALE Jackals’ Revenge

Dedication Dedication To Patrick Barty and the people of Crete

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Historical Note

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dawn rose over the pass of Thermopylae as it had since the beginning of time. As it had on that day 2,000 years ago, when Leonidas’ Spartans had died to the last man holding this great natural strongpoint against the invading Persian hordes. This morning, though, something was different, for with the dawn came a new sound on the air, drowning out the bees and the birdsong and shattering the peace of an Attic morning. It was a high-pitched whine, descending earthwards out of the sky. The sound of modern war. The clarion call of a new and terrible barbarism which had laid claim to the civilised world.

Captain Peter Lamb heard the sound and looked up in alarm. He knew it only too well. Had become familiar with it in the fields and on the roads of France less than a year ago, and it made his blood run cold. Without a second glance he yelled across the pass to where his men were sitting pulling through their guns. They had been on stand-to all night, waiting for the German attack that was sure to come. Their faces were drawn with exhaustion, but for all their fatigue they had already heard the sound. The younger men, the new recruits and replacements, were still looking skywards, not certain what they heard, although it was not new to them. The old hands, though, were already on their feet as the words left Lamb’s lips.

‘Stukas. Take cover.’

The first bombs fell seconds later as the whine of the sirens fixed beneath the wings of the hated aircraft reached its crescendo. The men cowered in their funk holes and in any space they could find in the unforgiving rocky landscape, their hands over their ears and their tin hats, their mouths open to lessen the shock of the blast, their bodies tucked up into tight balls. As the bombs hit, their hammer-blow explosions dug deep into the baked white rock, sending lethal shards in all directions, and the men, even though they had not been hit, mouthed their oaths. They shut their eyes tight and two of the younger ones tried to push themselves into gaps in the rocks.

Tucked into his own tiny slit-trench, Company Sergeant-Major Jim Bennett saw them and ran across to them at a crouch, before speaking through the din, hard into their faces. ‘Now then, Dawlish, Carter, you don’t want the captain to see you hiding like that, do you?’

‘No, Sergeant-Major.’

‘No, Sergeant-Major. I should bloody well think not. Now bloody well brace yourselves and look like soldiers. They’ll be gone soon enough.’

Bennett swore quietly. It was bravado, of course. But sometimes, he thought, keeping up morale was more like being a wet-nurse. He thought of the old platoon, of the men they had left behind in the fields of France last year and the few they had led out and who were still with them, and he wished for the impossible. Bennett knew they would just have to make do with what they had. But he had confidence in Lamb. If any officer could lick them into shape he knew it would be his. Hadn’t most of them already come through Egypt together? He knew that some of them at least had the makings of good soldiers. Still, though, he longed for his fallen friends and prayed that these new lads would prove themselves capable of avenging them.

Bennett had been right about the raid. Within minutes it was over. Two bombs each, and that was it for the six-plane squadron. The dive-bombers veered away like hawks up into the azure sky and the men crawled out from their holes into the dusty air of the balmy April morning, coughing and cursing.

Lamb and his men, C Company, the North Kents, or the Black Jackals as they were known to the army, had been given simple orders. ‘Hold the pass. Do not allow the enemy through.’

His CO, Colonel George de Russet, had made it plain enough to them at the last Order Group. ‘Gentlemen, here we are and here we bloody well stay.’

Lamb knew that the Stukas had only been a taster and prepared himself for what he knew was to come. This would be as hard a battle as he had yet fought, and perhaps his last.

He shouted across to Bennett: ‘Sarnt-Major. Any casualties?’

‘Two, sir. One’s a goner. Spencer.’

Poor bugger, thought Lamb. He’s the first then. How many more today? He turned towards the young lieutenant in command of Number 1 platoon, Charles Eadie. ‘Charles, see if you can make those slit-trenches any deeper. This rock’s bloody stuff but we’ll have to do better than that before their big guns open up or we’ll all be goners.’

As the lieutenant scuttled away across the rocks, Lamb considered their position. He had led eighty men into Greece just under a month ago. Now he commanded something over half that number. They were still in their three platoons and of the three junior officers he had lost only one, the young lieutenant of Number 3 platoon, who had been replaced with a transfer from Battalion HQ. There were now forty-eight men plus himself. And, whatever their orders, whatever position they were told to hold, it was now his ultimate task to get them away and back to Alexandria. Two days ago the Greeks had surrendered, and now the British and Commonwealth troops who had been sent to defend them were on their own.

Lamb’s immediate orders were to cover the withdrawal of the New Zealand 6th Division. So now here they sat, the Jackals, in the pass of Thermopylae. The bloody rearguard. Again.

The Greek campaign had been a hard schooling, and of the casualties in his company two were now in hospital in Athens with nervous exhaustion, their minds as shattered as the bodies of those who had died. In a previous war – his father’s war – they would have been shot as cowards. Now Lamb thanked God, at least they were only labelled insane. It did not surprise him. Although they had seen action in Egypt, they had only caught the last of the fighting in Cyrenaica before the Italian surrender in February. Greece had been very different. They had seen and felt the full might of the German war machine. Worst of all, the Germans held the skies. There seemed to be no end of their planes. Surely they would just bomb Greece into submission?

Eadie was back with him now. ‘I’ve got all the platoon sergeants on the case, sir. I’ve told them to get the men to dig down another foot.’

‘They’ll be lucky if they manage six inches.’

Charles Eadie was a curious-looking man, with a large head sitting on huge, broad shoulders and a naturally nut-brown complexion which suggested that at some point one of his ancestors might have been born the wrong side of the counterpane, as his mother would have put it. His movements too seemed awkward, but strangely he managed to be quite dexterous and was always perfectly turned out, even now in this dustbowl. His green eyes shone like emeralds from the dark skin and as usual he was wearing a smile, but it did not disguise his nervousness.