Code of Combat Read online

  CODE OF COMBAT

  Michael Asher

  © Michael Asher 2014

  Michael Asher has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2014 by Penguin.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  To Marianonietta, Burton and Jake

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  They are the only people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally tempting. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of government. They create a desolation and call it peace.

  From the Germania by Cornelius Tacitus

  (ad 56–120)

  Thus shall we begin again, or at least some amongst us.

  Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS

  (From his diary, 1924)

  Chapter One

  Constantine, Algeria

  11 November 1943

  ‘You want to watch your step with this chap, love,’ the MP sergeant said. Went over to the Hun, see. ’Angin’s too good for ’im, I reckon.’

  He was facing Lieutenant Celia Blaney outside a heavy wooden door that might have belonged to a medieval dungeon: the tunnel it stood in smelt of dry rot and rats’ urine. The cells lay in the basement-complex of a half-ruined Algerian citadel that had once been bombed by the Allies, reached by a maze of stairs, walkways and corridors.

  Blaney’s rose-and-ivory cheeks flushed almost the shade of her flame-red hair. The sergeant was a spit-and-polish tyrant, she thought: razor-scraped cheeks, gleaming cap-badge, shiny brass buckles, mirror-like toecaps on his boots. She’d let him get away with ignoring her rank, addressing her as love, eyeing her boobs and crotch brazenly, all the way down here. Denigrating Tom Caine, though, was the last straw.

  The whole thing – the insolent treatment, this oppressive place, the creak of iron gates, the moans of prisoners, the stink of the stairways and tunnels and, most of all, her anxiety for Caine, riled her in a way she hadn’t been riled for a long time. She felt the urge to lash out, knock the MP’s cap off.

  ‘Captain Caine is one of the most highly decorated officers in the Eighth Army,’ she told him curtly. ‘So kindly keep your opinions to yourself.’

  The sergeant’s mouth fell open. He’d had Blaney down as the meek-and-mild type: the kind of bint who’d giggle if you pinched her bum and drop her knickers if you cooed in her ear. She was a cracker, all right, with that fiery hair, the pert lips, the knockers made for squeezing, the firm buttocks cradled in her BD. You didn’t often see crumpet like that in Algeria: in fact, you hardly saw any crumpet at all.

  He winked at her. ‘I know, love,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to be innocent till proved guilty. But they reckon . . .

  ‘I don’t care what they reckon, Sergeant. And don’t wink at me, call me love, or eye me up. I’m an Intelligence Corps officer, and as far as you’re concerned, my name is Ma’am.’

  The MP was so flabbergasted he took a step backwards. ‘I’m sorry . . . Ma’am . . . I . . .’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all.’

  *

  Tom Caine was standing in his cell, gazing into a broken mirror they hadn’t bothered to remove when they turned the place into a temporary prison: the quartz goat-eyes of a stranger stared back vacantly at him from dark hollows.

  ‘You ain’t Captain Caine, you’re the devil.’

  He thought of Corporal Mitch Mitcheson curled up in a huddle under the cemetery wall after the battle at Capo Murro di Porco, ranting to himself. He’d tried to help, found Mitch hadn’t got a scratch on him: the chap stared at him with eyes like saucers.

  ‘Stay away. Don’t touch me. I seen you on the battlefield. I know what you are. You ain’t Captain Caine, you’re the devil.’

  The medics hadn’t wanted to take Mitcheson to the aid post. They said he wasn’t wounded. ‘He’s wounded all right,’ Caine told them. ‘You just can’t see some wounds, that’s all.’

  Caine had lost count of the number of times he’d been wounded: the history of the war was written in his scars – on his legs, on his back, on his arms, chest, face: but the scars you couldn’t see went deeper. Betty Nolan lying in a coma with a bullet in her head; the demon faces of men infected with a germ-warfare agent; the Senussi boy shot in front of him; the men who’d died because of his orders, because of his mistakes, because of his impulses; the Germans, the Italians, the Senussi and others he himself had shot, maimed, stabbed, cut to pieces.

  ‘You ain’t Captain Caine, you’re the devil.’

  Then I must be in hell, he thought. He’d done all that killing, and maiming and mutilating: he’d caused the death, and torture and disfigurement of his own men, as well as the enemy, and if he was in hell, he deserved it. The war had changed him into something he hadn’t wanted to be – a killing machine, a monster. But maybe I was that to start with. Maybe the war just gave it the chance to come out. At sixteen, he’d broken both his stepfather’s arms. If it wasn’t in my nature, would I have done that? Yet hadn’t it taken years of beatings, of trying to like his stepfather, of enduring the sight of his sister and mother being molested, tormented, humiliated, before he’d gone berserk? Surely he’d never been like that when his real father was alive? He remembered happier days, casting horseshoes in the forge, trotting behind his dad’s bicycle down the Fen, dyking, haymaking, picking potatoes, laying trails for the foxhounds, and those precious occasions when they’d taken the old 4.10 shotgun wildfowling. Those things belonged to another world, a world stopped by the war, a world that could never come back.

  Caine heard the lock tumble, heard the door creak: he turned and stared into the face of Celia Blaney.

  For a moment he thought he must be dreaming. He hadn’t seen her in three months, and nobody had warned him she was coming. Now here she was, standing at his cell door in her man’s BD, with a flush on her cheeks, and her chip-bag cap perched on her red curls.

  He didn’t know whether to shake hands or kiss her.

  Blaney paused to watch the MP close the door, turned back to him. Then, without either knowing who’d made the first move, they were in each other’s arms. Caine pressed her tightly to him, felt
her thigh between his legs, felt the thrust of her pelvis, felt soft breasts through his shirt. He caressed her shoulders, touched her neck. He felt her quiver, saw her close her eyes, part her lips. He kissed her, sucked in the softness of her mouth. The kiss went on until Blaney pulled away.

  She took a step backwards, panting slightly, as if shocked by what she’d just done. They eyed each other, embarrassed, neither of them sure what had happened. Blaney guessed Caine was thinking about Betty Nolan, the girl who’d been wounded in Alexandria. As far as she knew, Nolan had never regained consciousness.

  Blaney and Caine had been friends in Egypt: she’d helped to nurse him back to health after the Nighthawk op. They’d never been lovers, though: she knew Caine was fond of her, but he’d been too devastated by the loss of Nolan to commit himself. She didn’t know if that had changed.

  A lot had happened since he’d left Cairo three months earlier. He’d served with Paddy Mayne’s Special Raiding Squadron in Italy, had been captured after the Termoli landing. He’d escaped, but something had gone wrong: he’d ended up being accused of treason. Blaney had read the Butterfield report, but whatever they’d accused him of, she knew it was impossible. Tom Caine was the most honest, most courageous man she’d ever known.

  She put out a hand: Caine took it, but didn’t pull her to him.

  ‘You’re looking good,’ he said.

  ‘You too. Considering you’re up for court-martial.’

  Caine flinched. He saw her flush deepen, noticed pricks of tears in her eyes. ‘Treason, Tom? Not you. I don’t believe it.’

  He frowned. ‘Funny things happen in war.’

  Blaney glanced around the cell, took in the small cot, the slop bucket in a corner, the washbasin, the crude wooden table with chairs, the broken mirror. The thought that Captain Thomas Caine, DCM, DSO, 1st SAS Regiment, who’d survived so many scrapes, seen so much death, struggled so hard, should end up in a place like this made her sick. She had to choke back tears. This isn’t right. It isn’t right at all.

  She resisted the urge to hold him again. ‘What funny things?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Celia.’

  Blaney moved over to the table, brought out a packet of Gold Flake cigarettes from a blouse-pocket, laid it on the top. She drew out a box of matches and a silver hip flask, set them next to the fags, unpinned her cap, put it down, then pulled back one of the chairs. She nodded at Caine.

  ‘Come on, Tom. I want to hear it.’

  Her voice was business-like: Caine studied her profile, the mass of fiery curls, the small, shapely ears, the way fine strands of bronze hair fell across the nape of her white neck. He realized suddenly that he’d missed her.

  He still didn’t know why she was here, though. Had she made a special visit to Algeria to see him? To wish him goodbye? He glanced at her cap on the table, noted the rose-and-laurel badge of the Intelligence Corps, with the Latin motto ‘Manui dat cognito vires’ – ‘Knowledge gives strength to the arm’. She was still with Field Security, then.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said with sudden ferocity. ‘I don’t have anything to say, all right?’

  Blaney stiffened. ‘Tom, you’re facing a court-martial tomorrow. If you’re convicted, it could mean a death sentence.’

  ‘I’ve been under a death sentence for a long time. Someone down there must have been saving me for this.’

  Blaney drew a long breath. She sat down in the chair, pressed both hands on the table, locked eyes with Caine.

  ‘I must know what happened, Tom.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m your appointed defence counsel. Major Mayne asked me to do it. All right, you deserve better. I’m not a qualified barrister or anything, but I was half a lawyer before the war. Mayne wanted to help you, and I want to help you, and I’m afraid I’m the best we could manage.’

  Caine paced over to the table, gripped the spare chair, leaned towards her. ‘I deserve a death sentence, Celia. I’ve betrayed Betty Nolan, betrayed my friends, my regiment, my country. I’ve even betrayed you.’

  Blaney swallowed, stared back at him unblinking. ‘I don’t believe it. You’ve been under a lot of pressure, Tom. Nighthawk was beastly, and you’d only just got over that when they sent you to Italy.’

  Caine said nothing: his face was drawn, his eyes heavy, uncertain. Blaney sniffed, brushed tears away, opened the pack of cigarettes. She took one, pointed it at the other chair.

  ‘Tom, sit down there. Have a drink, smoke this packet of fags. Tell me what went on in Italy. I’m not leaving till I know.’

  He hesitated. Slowly, he shifted the chair, sat down. He took a cigarette from the pack, stuck it in his mouth, lit both their fags, sat back. Blaney exhaled smoke, unscrewed the hip flask, offered it to him. ‘Scotch,’ she said. ‘Cairo’s finest.’

  Caine took it, gulped whisky.

  ‘Damn’ good stuff,’ he said.

  Chapter Two

  Termoli, Puglia, Italy

  4 October 1943

  They landed at Termoli shortly before sunrise: it had rained all night, but the rain stopped just as they went ashore. Caine was leading ‘A’ Section, No. 1 Troop: he was first off the boat. He stepped straight into six feet of seawater, carrying a ton of kit, took a mighty lungful before Harry Copeland pulled him out, spluttering. Caine no longer trusted water: it brought back disturbing memories.

  The Navy had landed them too late and too far out, but they struggled to the beach anyway, sodden through, but thankful that Fritz wasn’t shooting at them. The squadron assembled in troops and sections: Paddy Mayne was there, cool as a bayonet, the only man wearing an SAS beret. The rest of them were togged up in soup-bowl helmets, but Mayne wore his beret everywhere, even when the bullets were flying. Perhaps it is bulletproof, Caine thought.

  The landing was part of a bigger scheme – 3 Commando and 40 Royal Marine Commando were being put ashore to the south of them, to assault Termoli town. Paddy’s men were still part of 1st SAS Regiment, but for the invasion of Italy they’d been designated 1st Special Raiding Squadron, and deployed with the Commando Brigade. They still had their Who Dares Wins badges and wings, but for now their parachuting role had been nabbed by the Johnny-come-lately 2nd SAS, under Bill Stirling – David Stirling’s brother.

  Caine dropped his rucksack in the sand, mustered his ‘A’ Section lads, told them to clean weapons. His gunner, Trooper Spike Slocum, a titchy Cockney with a chest like an oildrum and bulldog features, stripped down the Bren on an empty sandbag: he and his No. 2, Trooper Lofty Wade, drained the seawater from the barrel and chamber, oiled the mechanism. Like many of Caine’s section, these men were desert vets: Wade, a fifteen-stone ex-Fusilier from Leeds, with a washleather face, dense-cropped hair, and slow, rheumy eyes, had won the MM on the Berka raid in Libya. Slocum had come through some of the worst desert fighting without a scratch: ‘If Spike was a horse, you’d have bet money on him,’ they used to say. He was so hot on the Bren that Caine was glad he was on their side. He was gobby about it, though, and sometimes Caine couldn’t help ribbing him.

  ‘What’s a short-arse like you doing with that pea-shooter, Spike? Shouldn’t it have gone to Lofty?’

  ‘Lofty?’ The scowl was indignant. ‘That clown couldn’t hit a belly-dancer’s bum with a ten-round burst, skipper. Not even if she was spreadin’ ’er cheeks in front of ’im, ’e couldn’t.’

  ‘’Ere.’ Wade squared his deep gorilla chest. ‘I’ll ’ave you know I was a champ shooter at Bisley.’

  ‘With what unit, the Brownies? Don’t bust me britches, mate. Now me, I’m a real marksman. I’ve bin known to put in a three-inch group at a thousand paces.’

  Wade snorted. ‘The only three inches you’ve put in anywhere is your flamin’ plonker, an’ that was prob’ly a knot in a pine tree.’

  The other men guffawed. ‘Save it for the Krauts,’ Ron Hardman said. ‘If we get through this, you can blow your trumpet.’

  Hardman was Caine’s sergeant – a
grizzled ex-Gunner from Brum who’d survived the Rommel Raid: solemn, six foot two, granite jaw and head like a chopping-block. Not a lot to say, but solid as a boulder. Next to him, medical orderly Lance-Jack Sam Smith was oiling the barrel of his carbine with a pull-through. He was a cherub-faced, curly-haired youth from Manchester, who swore he was twenty-one when Caine knew he was only seventeen. That was all right by Caine: he’d lied about his age too. Corporal Ted Dangerfield, the wireless op – a beanpole, specky fellow from Brighton with teeth like pegs and wire-framed glasses – was shaking his head over the No. 19 set.

  ‘U/S, skipper,’ he said. ‘Got half the flamin’ Adriatic in it.’

  ‘Just dump it.’

  ‘Can’t do it, sir. When it dries out it’ll probably be OK.’

  That was Caine’s HQ group: Hardman, Slocum, Wade, Dangerfield and Smith. There were three other sub-sections – about twenty men in all, plus a three-inch mortar team, attached to them from the support troop. There was also Harry Copeland, now a full lieutenant, who was Acting Squadron Adjutant. Mayne objected to having HQ staff in the field, so Cope had volunteered to tag along with Caine’s section.

  Caine was glad to have him: Copeland was bright and steady. He’d been with Caine in almost every scrap since he’d joined the commandos back in ’41. He was a world champion know-it-all, too, of course: six weeks out of OCTU, and sometimes you’d have thought he’d written the bloody manual. Glancing at Cope – cornstubble hair, sea-blue eyes, that ropy, runner’s build which always reminded Caine of a Fenland wading-bird – brought back memories of Fred Wallace and Taff Trubman, the mates they’d had to dump in Tunisia. That was six months previously, and they were still missing in action, presumed dead.

  Mayne pointed out ‘A’ Section’s objective to Caine on the map – a bridge on the Senarca river, slightly inland, and on the Termoli–Pescara road. ‘And try and hold on to it this time,’ he chuckled.

  Caine knew his CO meant it as a compliment: he was referring to the action at the el-Fayya bridge in Tunisia, when Caine’s seven-man patrol had fought off an entire SS Totenkopf battalion. But Caine had lost almost the whole section on that scheme, holding a position that didn’t need to be held, chasing a black box and a germ-warfare agent nobody believed existed: it wasn’t something he cared to boast about.