The Girl Under the Olive Tree (15 page)

‘The British have retreated and their presence is weak – no more than 5,000 troops at the most. Most of them have gone to Egypt. They are exhausted, defeated and badly equipped. Morale is low. And as for the Cretans, we are assured they will be passive, even welcoming in places. Their hospitality is legendary.’

Rainer was puzzled. Were they talking about the same nation that had battled the Turks for their freedom, whose brigades had fought with such distinction in the Albanian campaign? It was not his place to argue with official intelligence on the ground, though, so he sat in silence.

He’d met swarthy hard-drinking Cretans on his travels, men quick to flare up, who held grudges into the next generations and whose idea of a wedding was to abduct their brides. A classical education had taught him much about the Greek peoples, and the Cretans were a race apart.

Once the briefing was over, Rainer went outside, blinking into the afternoon sunshine. Operation Mercury, as it was called, must be kept top secret from his men until the last possible minute. Young boys could be careless in their cups and overenthusiastic in their boasting. They were excited, raring to be in action after so many months in preparation. He was proud of their progress, these volunteers, hand-picked for courage, fitness and leadership.

After a stroll around the National Garden in its springtime glory – purple blossom still hanging on the avenue of trees, the roses, wild lilies and herbs sprouting even among the bombed, charred ruins, reminding him that nature was tougher than man – he sat sipping ouzo, watching the wary looks on the faces of passers-by as they noticed his uniform.

The street urchins hovered, hands outstretched. He liked to throw them coins and watch them scrabble like monkeys, scrapping amongst themselves. Life would be tough for them now; only the fittest would survive. This thought reminded him he must return to the tented camp at Topolia and make sure all their supplies were accounted for. They must be ready at a few hours’ notice.

As he drove towards the base, catching glimpses of the blue sea, Rainer reflected that just 160 miles of sea separated them from their targets. The diving eagle clutching a swastika, on his sleeve, was a badge hard won with physical endurance, courage to leap from a plane and land with accuracy on a marked target. Many applied but few were chosen, and those who protested at the hardship were soon dismissed. He had left a cavalry regiment, volunteering for service, pitting his courage against his fears. Taking risks made him feel alive. He looked for the same traits in his men. Some were hardened from years in the Hitler Youth, hotheads, quick to flare up. He favoured the oddballs, the adventurers who loved to take risks, who led from the front. For all his twenty-five years he felt old compared to these boys of barely eighteen: students, farmers’ boys and some sons of the old aristocracy.

Who would not be proud of this unit, with its distinctive uniform, a magnet for pretty girls? Not that it had done him much good. He was shy with girls. He was looking for an equal, not a
Hausfrau
, someone with intelligent eyes and keen wit, but so far he’d had no luck. Just as well since this mission was dangerous. Better to wait and see who would turn up when the war was won and he could return to his academic studies.

No more daydreaming, no more sunbathing; their brief holiday was now ending. It was forty degrees and late afternoon, his men were lounging in the shade of the olive groves, curious now about the preparations beginning in earnest.

It was time to check the wooden containers to be parachuted down with them. They had tried to think of everything: fresh bread, sausages, chocolate, caffeine tablets, cigarettes, sulphur tablets and glucose, medical packs in their own containers, a silk handkerchief with a map of the island imprinted on it. Each crate was coloured to denote its contents. Then there were the parachutes packed into plump bundles, two per man, in the hope that the second would speed them on their way eastwards towards Cyprus, once Crete was settled.

‘Sir, is it Crete? asked his sergeant. ‘We’ve taken bets it’s Cyprus or Crete.’

Rainer smiled. It was too soon to tell them what he’d heard at HQ. ‘You just make sure your parachute is fixed and ready, and call in the platoon commanders.’

He gathered his maps and aerial reconnaissance photographs, and placed them on a wooden crate.

His most trusted leaders, Schulze and Genz, squatted down beside him, staring at the pictures on the table. They looked at the map, then at Rainer. ‘So it’s true then?’

The night before the mission began the quartermaster issued extra beer and brandy, and as the boys relaxed over campfires, Rainer heard their mouth organs playing their battle hymn, ‘Red shines the sun’. He found it hard to sleep, knowing that they would be taking off tomorrow.

In the morning he made everyone strip down his gun. A paratrooper was useless without his armaments.

He watched their faces, eager to please, excited and hopeful, and for a second his heart shivered. None of them knew what lay in store once they had landed. He wished they could be certain of a welcome from the Cretans.

Then before take-off came the last task. Each of them crated his own private belongings and effects, along with a will and a last letter home. Rainer filled his crate with his books: Plato, Thoreau, the plays of William Shakespeare and poems of Goethe. There were souvenirs he’d gathered for his brother’s children, some lace for his mother and sister, Katerina, cigars for his father and that last letter home. Should he not return, this would all be sent to comfort them.

He thought then of the commandments of the regiment: be calm and prudent, strong and resolute in valour and enthusiasm. Be of an offensive spirit and this will cause you to prevail in battle. Would that it would be so easy? They were flying onto a fortressed island and God only knew how many of them would be flying back. It was his duty to keep his men as safe as possible, to lead the best way he knew. He prayed he would be up to the task.

He’d seen enough now to know that the emblem ‘God with Us’ was a joke. There was nothing of God in this war, but that was something he must keep to himself.

Early in the morning, he watched the first of the Junkers taking off on the dusty runway, blinding the planes behind them with sand. The sight of the wooden gliders being towed behind them filled him with unease, knowing a dozen men were strapped into these flimsy crates packed with equipment, chutes, and life jackets in case they should ditch into the sea.

Then a runner brought an order already two days old, which he read with disbelief.

Rainer felt an icy chill running through his body. They were sending 4,000 of their finest troops, lightly armed, against an army entrenched and fortified with artillery pointing in their direction. He felt sick at the thought that if this information was true he was sending himself and half his men to certain death.

The flight from London was straightforward and we’d spent a night in the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Constitution Square. How busy it all looked. The last time I was here there was a gun emplacement outside and queues of Brits hollering for papers and transit advice, keen to flee the city that had given them such a wonderful life.

I kept gazing out at the planes heading into Athens, silver birds full of happy tourists. How could I not think of the black hawks that dived down, spewing fire over our heads in those last days nursing in 1940? How had I survived such danger?

Then I recalled that very last time I had seen Athens. It had lain in ruins, as I did too, broken, a city reduced to rubble and filth, fit only for rats and cockroaches. I didn’t want to think of that time. How lovely to see it now, risen from those ashes. But the past can’t be ignored. What I experienced there made me who I am today, a survivor. Our ferry was waiting in Piraeus harbour, full of both tourists and locals: students in shorts plugged into phones and personal stereos, Cretan families returning from shopping trips. No one could miss those strong dark, almond eyes, babies nursed by
yiayia
s with cropped hair in shades of ebony and aubergine, widows in dark-spotted Crimplene suits, playing cards and chattering in that thick guttural accent I half-remembered.

There was a party of old British soldiers in blazers with regimental badges, reliving old times, no doubt, en route to the coming ceremony. Were their memories like mine – sepia snaps, faded and foxed with age? Already old images were beginning to rise in my mind.

It was hard to sleep with all the strange noises: the ship’s engines, the rattle of pipework, children racing in the corridor. Better to rise early before the ship docked in Souda Bay.

I stood on deck, warmly wrapped as the midnight of the dark sea slowly merged into the rich turquoise in the shallows, the sun rising on the snow-capped outlines of the White Mountains, tingeing them like golden highlights on greying hair. Oh, yes, I felt my lungs opening to the scented air, seeing small cubic houses on the shoreline. I smiled. It was all coming back to me: the colours of Crete, which have shaded my dreams for years.

At first light the island slowly took shape out of the mist rising between sea and sky, a range of snow-capped mountain peaks and rocks falling down to the sea, as the
Amalia
limped past artillery batteries high on a fort jutting out into the bay. The sun rose, capping the mountain tops with a lemony light. Ahead was a harbour with a jetty hard-pressed on every side by warships and boats and yachts: a sorry flotilla of wounded vessels from the north carrying in the remnants of the British armies, the men hanging over the sides, staring blankly with tired faces. All around was the smell of smoke, burning rubber and cordite, evidence of recent bombing raids.

The children on their caïque were subdued, still shocked from their ordeal. The women huddled together, not knowing what to expect. The sea was calm but grey and muddied, echoing this picture of retreat and defeat.

‘You will stay with us in Chania,’ Judy Harrington insisted. ‘You need a rest and the children respond to you. Gordon’s made arrangements for us to stay in a villa. Thank God he went on ahead. Poor Angela is distraught losing Edmund like that and not able to bring his body . . .’

‘I must stay with the patients, see to them first.’ Penny didn’t want to commit herself until she knew the score. She was betwixt and between, neither an official army nurse nor orderly, but someone might want her services.

‘Is there a hospital?’ she asked Bruce as they sipped mugs of welcome tea, shoved into their hands on embarkation. There was a mêlée of troops, dockers, local men, ambulances, carts, trucks. Judy fell into her husband’s arms with relief, glad their ordeal was finally over. Angela hung back, gathering her children, white-faced. Her ordeal had only just begun, Penny feared.

‘The field hospital’s out west of the town on the shore. It’s pretty busy. Not a place for a young girl,’ said Judy’s husband, Gordon, looking her up and down.

‘Darling, she was Florence Nightingale out there. Half these men would be dead without her,’ Judy rallied to her defence.

‘I can be useful there. These men need attention,’ Penny replied.

‘You’re not an army nurse,’ Gordon continued. ‘They’ll be shipping them out soon.’

‘I rather think I am now, Gordon. Do you think they’ll refuse another pair of hands?’

‘Is she being awkward again?’ Bruce interrupted, walking over. ‘Evadne will be furious if we don’t get her out in one piece.’

‘I’m not a child. Don’t order me about like one of your minions. I will take these men for treatment and see you all later.’ Penny stormed off.

‘But you don’t know where we’ll be . . . I’ll pick you up later and that’s an order,’ Bruce yelled back, but she wasn’t listening.

They’d been glad enough of her services on the boat. She was not going to lounge in some villa, drinking cocktails, waiting for some ship to take them to Egypt when there was work to be done.

She jumped into the ambulance truck, looking out from the rear at the organized chaos in the port. There were exhausted men unloading crates, barefoot and shirtless in the sunshine. She felt filthy and sweaty, desperate for a bath, but her charges needed dressings checked and temps taken, first. She was sure two of them had infections. Being mucked up was one of the hazards of any nurse’s life. Daily baths and changes of clothes at least twice a day were a luxury from the past, no longer a priority, but she could still dream of them at a time like this.

The nurse driving the truck was an Aussie in battledress, who knew her way around the winding narrow streets of Chania. Penny checked her carpetbag of possessions and clutched her cloak with affection. It had been, in turn, a screen, a blanket, a makeshift shroud, a uniform and a shield, and she didn’t want to be parted from it.

She felt a strange sense of freedom driving through this foreign town, so different from Athens. It sprawled from Souda in the east in a straight line following the shore. The squat cube houses with flat roofs, by the side of dusty tracks, were shuttered against the heat, the lines of buildings broken by lush groves of oranges and lemons and olive trees. The streets were shaded by tall avenues of plane trees, and others she didn’t recognize.

They crawled in a convoy behind donkey carts and mules laden with panniers. Everywhere cheery faces smiled at them – women in black headscarves, barefoot children running alongside them – and barking dogs snarled at the wheels. As they drew into the centre of the town, larger houses rose up, stuccoed, with balconies and painted shutters, smarter residences in classical style with elegant windows and wrought-iron gates. Then they swung left and climbed out of the main streets towards a high promontory, then down towards a rocky shoreline where huts and tents with a Union flag flying high announced their destination was close.