Brooker woke Moody at 2.30 a.m. It was his turn for sentry duty. He pulled on his boots and coat and wondered if he should bother to take Horrie or not. The little terrier seemed to be asleep under a blanket but when Moody reached for his rifle and revolver, Horrie bounced into his path.
‘You want to go out in the cold?’ Moody asked.
Horrie circled him, his tail wagging.
‘Oh, you think it’s a late-night walkie, do you?’
On hearing the W word, Horrie growled his approval and followed the half-awake Moody. They trundled up the hill that had harboured the fires six hours earlier and found the allotted sentry duty point. He settled in under a tree near some rocks with a view up the hill about 60 metres from the battalion camp. Horrie, wearing his own bodystocking coat, seemed pleased with his involvement with this strange assignment. He licked Moody and crunched on a bone salvaged from the cook. The faithful little friend was good company on a black, quiet night, which was only disturbed by the sound of distant artillery from the approaching enemy, perhaps 150 to 200 kilometres from them.
Like everyone else, Moody was on edge for this most unenvied soldierly duty. The night, the encroaching enemy, the shock of those fires on the hill and the stark recent memories of the slaughter at Larissa that had hardly left his conscious or unconscious mind, all crowded in on his thoughts. As the minutes ticked by he was more than grateful for Horrie’s company. At just before 3 a.m. Horrie sat up from his lying position, where his head had rested on his paws. Those magnificent ears began to do their little dance as they focused on a shape out there. They tried to fix on something that was not quite right. Moody was snapped fully awake. Horrie growled. It was this throaty emission that had made him the hero of the battalion. He rarely wasted it and on most occasions it heralded unseen Stukas. But the little sentry was not gazing skyward. His eyes and ears were fixed further up the hill.
Horrie did not blink when Moody whispered to him. He was concentrating as hard as his exceptional faculties allowed him. Something out there had his undivided attention and this had readied Moody although he could not see or hear anything in the dark. His first thought was that it could be the ‘spies’ who had lit the fires earlier. Moody crouched close to Horrie, trying to sink low enough to be near the dog’s eye-line. Horrie bristled. Moody knew something living had to be out there but it could be anything: a sheep, a wild cat, a stray dog … Moody put his hand on Horrie’s back. He was shaking. The touch triggered the dog’s movement forward a few metres. Moody knew his body language. Horrie was not in ‘alert’ stance. This was his predator mode. He growled with more force. Moody followed him. Horrie seemed intent on what appeared to be just another rock. Moody was nervous. He whispered for Horrie to ‘stay’ where he was and slipped around to outflank the object of Horrie’s aggravation. But Horrie, as was his wont every now and again, did not obey his master. He rushed forward. The object took a human shape as a man stood. He wore traditional peasant’s garb, including a sheepskin coat. He was young, Moody guessed in his early twenties. The man’s hair was long. He spoke Greek and uttered friendly salutations. Yet, Moody wondered, what was he doing creeping so close to the gunners’ camp in the dead of night? Moody aimed his rifle and called for the man to ‘halt there.’ He commanded Horrie to back off, which the dog did, reluctantly. Moody ordered the man down to the camp, with Horrie trotting along at his heel, growling with menace and itching to make a dash at the man’s calf and ankle. Moody took him to the camp’s commanding officer, Captain H. ‘Syd’ Plummer, 36, a short, trim officer with a gaze that never left the detainee. He mumbled, ‘Well done,’ to Moody, who gave full credit to Horrie, which caused a brief smile to wash over Plummer’s serious expression. A Greek translator was summoned. Plummer questioned the peasant, whose manner flitted between extreme nervousness and attempts to be amiable. He claimed he was a local shepherd looking for lost sheep that often strayed over the hills at night. When questioned about the odd hours of his search, the peasant said he arose before dawn and often had to look for lost members of his flock. Plummer was calm in his interrogation, never raising his voice, but with enough pregnant pauses to make the detainee inclined to fill them.
‘I was surprised at the trucks [in the camp],’ the detainee said.
‘Captain, he could not have seen the trucks from where he was found,’ Moody interjected. Through the translator, Plummer challenged the man on this point. He seemed to fumble around, not giving a straight answer. It made Plummer suspicious. The detainee then blurted out that he had crouched down when he heard the dog growling. Again Moody disagreed. He suggested the man was already crouching before Horrie noticed him. The detainee said he had cowered and hidden when the dog came at him.
‘I was scared I would be seen as a …’ he began.
‘A fifth columnist?’ the translator asked in Greek.
The detainee answered, perhaps a little too quickly, that he agreed.
Apart from these unconvincing responses, there was no proof that he was other than that which he claimed. Plummer spoke to a guard. ‘Wait for an hour,’ he said looking at his watch. ‘It’s nearly 4 a.m… . then escort him right out of the area.’
Moody searched the hill at dawn. There was no sign of any man or sheep in the area, or, he reckoned, any clue that anything had trodden on it recently. Moody informed the Rebels at breakfast of Horrie’s further heroics. The dog received a round of sincere pats and cuddles of thanks that day from many battalion members once they heard about the events of the night. They believed that their mascot and honorary fellow member had saved them yet again.
The fifth columnists were growing in numbers as it became apparent that Greece would likely fall to the Germans. Most of them had been recruited by the ubiquitous Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, who used blackmail to gain assistance. The local agents were ordered to slow the Allied soldiers’ retreat as much as possible. Apart from the damage being done to all towns by the Stukas, agents and spies were ordered to blow up buildings that would fall across the roads through villages and make the convoys’ passage slower. The Allied truck movements were noted by spies and plans were made for locals to impede progress by pushing herds of cattle and sheep onto the road, or by laying concrete blocks. The truck drivers became irritated at having to stop and herd animals off the road, and soon they were ploughing right through them. But the more solid blocks had to be manually shoved or carried aside. The Greeks villagers rushed forward to help despite the fact that the former Allied ‘heroes’ were being pushed south.