Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (16 page)

The Luftwaffe's superiority in fact restricted the movement of reserves to the hours of darkness, and any attack had to be completed by first light. That in itself should have cast doubt over the strategy of holding back a large proportion of the total force in a battle which was bound to be rapidly decided.

But Freyberg's eyes were fixed on the sea, not on the sky.

Creforce's weakest link was its ramshackle communications. Field telephones depended on wires run loosely along existing telegraph poles: they were vulnerable to bombardment and to paratroopers dropping between headquarters. The wireless sets available, mostly those brought back from Greece, were unreliable and in short supply. Nothing had been done to ship or fly in enough replacements in the three weeks before the invasion. Freyberg did not even mention radios in his list of urgent requirements sent to Cairo on 7 May. Signalling lamps had no batteries, and those capable of working off mains electricity were of the wrong voltage. The possibility of using heliograph between the Maleme sector and Creforce Headquarters was apparently never considered.

The last RAF fighters had been withdrawn, yet Creforce Headquarters rejected recommendations to mine or block the runways, either because the Air Ministry had demanded that landing grounds should be kept operational for a sudden deployment from Egypt, or because Freyberg feared compromising his secret intelligence. The historian Ian Stewart (the Welch Regiment's medical officer) has also suggested that because Freyberg believed that the troop-carriers would be able to crash-land almost anywhere, 'he was not according supreme importance to the airfields themselves.'

However, the validity of this argument is hard to judge. Freyberg should have realized the importance of the airfields to the Germans, if only because Ultra signal OL 2167 warned that they wanted to use the runways at Maleme and Heraklion for their dive-bombers and fighters. Whatever the case, he appears to have been most reluctant to take any initiative.

Freyberg, as Churchill observed, was not downcast by the impending airborne assault. His signal to Wavell on 16 May hardly strikes one as from a man imprisoned in a decision he knew to be wrong —

the failure to defend the ground to the west of Maleme airfield — in case such a redeployment betrayed his secret knowledge.

Have completed plan for defence of Crete and have just returned from final tour of defences. I feel greatly encouraged by my visit. Everywhere all ranks are fit and morale is high. All defences have been extended, and positions wired as much as possible. We have forty-five field guns placed, with adequate ammunition dumped. Two Infantry tanks are at each aerodrome. Carriers and transport still being unloaded and delivered. 2nd Leicesters have arrived, and will make Heraklion stronger. I do not wish to be over-confident, but I feel that at least we will give excellent account of ourselves. With help of Royal Navy I trust Crete will be held.

Maleme, although officially taken over by the RAF, was a Fleet Air Arm station with a collection of unserviceable Fulmar fighters and Brewsters grounded by lack of spare parts. The two services co-existed quite happily. A ship's bell serving as air-raid alarm hung outside the dispersal tent, while the deck-chairs belonged to RAF officers based there after the fall of Greece, when Maleme became the base for 30 Squadron's Blenheims patrolling over the Aegean. A slightly anti-military insouciance amongst RAF ground-crew — they apparently took little interest in weapon training lessons —

tended to exasperate the New Zealanders of the 22nd Battalion, especially after the surviving Blenheims and Hurricanes had left for Egypt.

In the Maleme sector, as elsewhere, troops dug their slit trenches as deep as the ground permitted.

They did not spend the night in them in case lizards fell on their faces. Instead they rolled themselves in blankets, and slept in groups round the trunk of the nearest tree. By day, the men in greatest danger were the Bofors gunners round the airfield and those who drove the ration lorry, as the cloud of dust raised on the dry dirt-roads soon attracted a Messerschmitt or two.

Churchill had been right when he said in his telegram to the New Zealand government that the men of its division were keen to 'come to close quarters' with the enemy. Well-rested in the idyllic shade of olive groves, and invigorated by the spring sunshine and by frequent swims in the jade and cobalt-blue waters of the Aegean, they had recovered entirely from the effects of the Greek campaign.

The key commanders in the coming battle had not recuperated so easily. Veterans of the First World War, they were much older — Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Andrew VC, commanding officer of the 22nd Battalion on Maleme airfield, and one of the very few regular officers from New Zealand; Brigadier James Hargest of the 5th Brigade, a round-faced politician with toothbrush moustache and a tubby frame usually clad in pullover and voluminous shorts; Brigadier Puttick, the new divisional commander, loquacious and instantly recognizable by his red hair and thick black eyebrows; and finally Freyberg himself. All of them were brave men, but not one of them was bold any more.

Several were apt to fuss over irrelevant details. Their notions of warfare had been formed by hard pounding in the trenches of Flanders. Yet the Battle of Crete, a revolutionary development in warfare, was to be a contest in which fast reactions, clear thinking and ruthless decisions counted most. The mentality of linear defence and holding on which lingered in some minds from the First World War was to prove a grave handicap. Of all the formation commanders, only Colonel Kippenberger of the 10th New Zealand Brigade and Brigadier Inglis of the 4th New Zealand Brigade, both lawyers, demonstrated a grasp of the essentials.

During the evacuation from Greece, Lieutenant Geoffrey Cox had been surprised to find Hargest, 'a man who presented himself as a blunt, no-nonsense farmer', reading
War and Peace.
Yet Hargest's interest in the book was not out of character. 'I've been reading about this fellow Koutouzow,' he said.

'He's the kind of general to study. He knew that in war steadiness and endurance are more important than any amount of strategic flair.'

Soon after nightfall on 19 May — the eve of battle — when flames from a burning tanker in Suda Bay lit an area far beyond the Malaxa escarpment, Hargest confided in Cox again. 'I don't know what lies ahead,' he said. 'I know only that it produces in me a sensation I never knew in the last war. It isn't fear.

It's something quite different, something which I can only describe as dread.

9

'A Fine Opportunity for Killing'

20 May

At one o'clock in the morning of 20 May, Colonel von Trettner, the chief staff officer for operations, ran up to General Student's bedroom in the Hotel Grande Bretagne to wake him. Trettner, clearly concerned, told him that strong British naval forces had been sighted south of Crete.* Might this not mean that the British knew of their plans, and were bringing up warships as anti-aircraft gun platforms to engage the slow-moving Junkers 52 troop-carriers? A decision had to be taken quickly.

The first aircraft were due to take off in three hours. Student, at first bemused, thought for a moment, then replied: 'That is not a good enough reason to change our plans, or to wake me up. Good-night.'

The thirteen parachute battalions camped near their different airfields in Attica, had by then been ferried with their equipment in columns of lorries to the waiting aeroplanes. In just under four weeks, the German military authorities had cleared, extended and, in some cases, constructed completely new runways with the ruthless use of forced labour.

* Admiral Cunningham had deployed a total of two battleships, five cruisers and sixteen destroyers to attack any troop convoys and block off the Italian fleet.

The night was hot and heavy, and the paratroopers sweated in their jumpsuits of grey camouflage, the same weight of clothing as used in the jump over Narvik the year before. Confusion was inevitable with so many men milling around in the dark. A number of weapon canisters were dropped and split open, orders were hard to hear against the roar of engines being tested — the fuel had only just arrived

— and dustclouds partially obscured the green-filtered torches used to marshal platoons and companies to assembly points for emplaning. Chaos was overcome mainly by the efforts and curses of sergeant majors.

When already lined up to board, officers in the Storm Regiment's glider group received a disquietening report. 'Contrary to previous assumption of enemy strength on the island, one will have to reckon not with about 12,000 but with about 48,000.'

The first aircraft taxied into position, then waited. When eventually these Junkers tri-motors lumbered forward, they bounced heavily along the runway of beaten earth, engines straining at full thtottle to lift full loads of up to a dozen paratroopers and their canisters.

The dust thrown up by their propellers obscured the view of pilots in the next wave; they had to wait until the cloud abated. Even then a film of terracotta powder remained on the cockpit windscreens.

This unforeseen complication — a surprising oversight — had disrupted the rhythm of take-off.

After each troop-carrier lifted from the ground with a last lurch, the streak of dawn on the eastern horizon became more visible to its pilot and passengers. In those aircraft which flew over Athens, young heads craned at windows to catch a glimpse of the pale Acropolis raised to the light above a hazy, grey city.

Inside the corrugated fuselage of the Junkers, the paratroopers in their life-jackets, high-collared doublets which appeared to be made of canvas sausages sewn together, welcomed the drop in temperature. Then, striving against the noise of the engines, a voice, almost instantly followed by others, broke into the
Fallschirmjäger
marching song,
'Rot scheint die Sonne'.

Red shines the sun, prepare yourselves! Who knows if it'll shine for us tomorrow? Fly on this day against the enemy! Into the 'planes, into the 'planes! Comrade, there is no going back!

For the seventy-odd gliders, each with ten men of the Storm Regiment, there was certainly no going back. As the first wave, they had set off soon after four o'clock in advance of the parachute troop-carriers. One company under Lieutenant Genz was to attack the antiaircraft guns and a wireless station south of Canea; another, led by Captain Altmann, was to tackle the battery on the neck of the Akrotiri behind Suda Bay; and three companies were to land across the Tavronitis from Maleme airfield.

Inside the claustrophobic gliders, alternatively wallowing and then jerking on the cable from their tow-plane, the curious motion produced a sensation unlikely to encourage martial ardour. Part of the Parachute Division's headquarters also set off this way, but the cable attached to the glider carrying its commander, General Siissmann, with members of his staff, snapped high over the island of Aegina.

Süssmann crashed to his death, a fate inevitably compared to that of Icarus.

The main fleet of troop-carriers, wave after wave of Junkers 52s, flew low over the Aegean, its surface glimmering in the oblique light of early morning. Eventually those in the cockpit caught sight of the peaks of the White Mountains above the horizon. Their silhouette, at first softened by distance, increased in size and definition. Then the coastline could be distinguished. Word was passed back.

The roaring throb of the engines, both hypnotic and disturbing, was altered by the rush of wind when the dispatcher opened the door in the side of the fuselage. On the command to prepare, the paratroopers stood up to go through the drill they had practised so often.

While they secured the chin-straps of their helmets — rimless, close-fitting versions of the Wehrmacht coal-scuttle — they held in their teeth the white plaited cord with safety clip to be fastened to the bar above their heads. Each man adjusted his knee pads and harness and checked his Schmeisser sub-machine gun, his only means of defence until he found a weapons canister after landing.

Some closed their eyes to compose themselves as they waited for the order to prepare to jump, others cracked nervous jokes and could not resist bending or twisting round for a glimpse of mountainside through the side windows or the cockpit windscreen. All of them could feel the aircraft vibrate as it gained altitude, then bank as it swung round on the approach to the dropping zone.

The dozen paratroopers, having fixed their lines to the metal bar, formed a queue down the inside of the fuselage. The klaxon sounded, and the dispatcher yelled 'Go!' The line of closely packed men jostled forward as, in rapid succession, they grabbed the vertical handrails on either side of the door to launch themselves into a flat, spread-eagle dive — 'the crucifix' — the next man's face momentarily behind the bootsoles of the one in front until the slipstream tore him away back towards the tailplane of the aircraft.

For the New Zealand infantry company and the RAF and Fleet Air Arm personnel stranded at Maleme airfield, dawn stand-to on 20 May had been little different from previous days. The early morning was quiet in its gentle haze. Cigarettes were cupped in hands below the parapets of slit trenches.

The airborne invasion predicted for 17 May had not materialized; many therefore convinced themselves that it would not take place at all. Yet over the last couple of days, the eight o'clock routine visit of the 'shufti-plane' — the reconnaissance Dornier known as the 'flying pencil' because of its long thin fuselage — had been followed by intense waves of air attack.

Stukas and Messerschmitts had concentrated on anti-aircraft positions. The heavier guns on Hill 107

just south of the coastal road were manned by General Weston's Royal Marines, while the ten Bofors crews round the airfield were either gunners from a Royal Artillery light battery, or Australians who mobbed the dispirited RAF ground crews. 'Where's the bloody Air Force, Poms?' they yelled across the runway.

Weston had insisted on controlling all anti-aircraft fire from a centre on the north side of Suda Bay.