Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (8 page)

Forbes and Hunt returned to Athens, killed time at Forbes's apartment, then drove down that evening to the Piraeus through streets in which people stood around uncertainly. At the quayside, they joined the
Kalanthe,
a steam yacht originally requisitioned by the Greek navy from its English owner, and now assigned to the British Legation. The Naval Attache acted as captain, and the passengers also numbered Harold and Nancy Caccia, their children, dogs and Chinese amah; Colonel Jasper Blunt's wife, Doreen; various members of the Military Mission including Charles Mott-Radclyffe; and a number of prominent Greeks. The most surprising passenger was the Communist leader, Miltiades Porphyroyennis, whom Harold Caccia allowed to accompany them to save him from the Germans.

Caccia, who dubbed this Communist with the curious name 'old Born-in-the-purple', encountered him again across a negotiating table during the Greek civil war.

Peter Fleming's Yak Mission, having loaded their remaining weapons and explosives, were to defend the
Kalanthe
in the event of air attack, with an officer and his soldier servant operating each of the four Lewis guns. Several very dubious allegations were made against Fleming at this time. According to one story, Colonel Blunt and Fleming had a row the day before the
Kalanthe
sailed, with Blunt insisting that since Yak Mission had come to Greece as a stay-behind force, Fleming would be a deserter if he left. Another claimed that Fleming fastened a bandage unnecessarily to his head on arrival in Egypt and tried to wangle himself a DSO. Fleming, it must be remembered, had stirred up a considerable measure of righteous jealousy with his string-pulling in London and Cairo, so these accounts should be treated with corresponding caution.

There was no doubt about the dispute in which General Heywood, the head of the Military Mission, became involved. Having received urgent orders from Cairo to destroy the RAF's fuel tanks containing over 30,000 tons of petrol and aviation spirit, a valuable prize for the Luftwaffe, Heywood took a party of sappers down to carry out the task at night, but found the site guarded by Greek troops posted there to prevent just such an attempt. Since they were prepared to open fire, Heywood withdrew, not wanting to precipitate a battle between allies. This decision was later severely condemned by GHQ Middle East, and Heywood's career suffered. The possibility that this was a way of punishing him for his earlier failures, without embarrassment, cannot be discounted. Heywood died in an air crash in India two years later.

Nick Hammond, leading a team of four sappers, had also been engaged on scorched-earth missions during the retreat. While Fleming's band enjoyed themselves blowing up rolling stock and ramming locomotives into one another, he had concentrated on industries useful to the German war effort. On his last day, he destroyed the stockpiles of cotton at Haliartus, then returned to Athens, where he rejoined Ian Pirie and Nicki Demertzi. They prepared their escape, having destroyed the last traces of MI(R) and Section D activity, and packed up any useful material. Pirie and Barbrook left behind two radio sets — one with a Venizelist group, whose activities soon petered out, and one with a radical republican, Colonel (later General) Bakirdzis who, under the code-name of 'Prometheus', became SOE Cairo's first contact in Greece.

Before his departure, the King had requested General Wilson to look after Prince Peter; Admiral Sakellariou, the Minister of Marine; and Maniadakis, the Minister of National Security. So, after a final meeting with General Papagos on 25 April, Wilson and his party drove down from Athens to the Peloponnese in a convoy of motor cars; one of them was the limousine left behind by Prince Paul, the
ci-devant
Regent of Jugoslavia, on his journey into exile. Although they did not suffer the same dangerous indignity as Colonel Salisbury-Jones and Captain Forrester, whose staff car was shot at by discontented Australian infantrymen, bombed buildings and craters slowed their progress to such an extent that they finally crossed the bridge over the Corinth canal two hours before dawn the next morning. They were only just in time.

Shortly after daybreak on 26 April, German paratroopers landed on the south side and stormed the bridge, which was guarded by some light tanks of the 4th Hussars and New Zealanders manning Bofors guns. The fighting was chaotic. A convoy with two hundred walking wounded commanded by Captain Guy May from Force Headquarters had just crossed on its way to Nauplia and became caught up in the battle.

The Germans swiftly crushed all opposition, but the two officers who had prepared the bridge for demolition apparently crept back to the canal bank and managed to detonate the charges by rifle shots.

This feat (so beloved of scriptwriters) was afterwards challenged as impossible, but the bridge was destroyed with many Germans on it, and Wilson awarded the two officers the Military Cross.

The 4th New Zealand Brigade, on its way to the Peloponnese to embark, was extremely fortunate at a time when communications had almost collapsed. The Middlesex Yeomanry signal squadron with the 1st Armoured Brigade headquarters managed to pass on a message warning them about the capture of the Corinth isthmus by German paratroopers. Brigadier Inglis promptly turned his brigade round and the New Zealanders made their way to the eastern coast of Attica. They destroyed their vehicles and heavy equipment, and formed perimeters for defence at Porto Rafti and Rafina under perfect spring skies. At nightfall, the troops made their way to the port or beach, taking only their personal weapons and packs. There they waited anxiously for dark shapes to appear offshore.

Ferrying them out to the cruisers, destroyers and requisitioned merchantmen took a long time — far too long for the Royal Navy captains who knew their likely fate from dive-bombers if the ships were not well under way, and out of dangerous waters before first light. The 1st Armoured Brigade, which to its disgust had been held back as a 'Base Sub Area' and rearguard, was the last to arrive at the beach at Rafina. After a slow embarkation, mainly by rowing boats, nearly a thousand men were left stranded. When the beachmaster suggested to Brigadier Rollie Charrington that he could get him aboard before the rest, Charrington exploded with anger: 'Who do you take me for?' He would be the last to leave, and Dick Hobson, the brigade major, the second from last.

Charrington and his men withdrew into the woods to hide. There were remarkably few complaints. At brigade headquarters, Hobson was 'just about to throw myself down onto the ground where I stood, when Sgt Blythe, our mess sergeant, popped up and said "Whisky and soda, sir?" I said, "Sgt Blythe, I don't believe it." "Well, sir," he said, "it's not soda; only water." He then produced a bottle sized flask of whisky and a water bottle. I don't think I have ever enjoyed or needed such a drink before —

or since. Sgt Blythe, an ex-12th Lancer who had been butler to Willoughby Norrie* before rejoining was rather special.'

Attempts to find a way to the other embarkation beach at Porto Rafti failed. The Germans had reached the coast in between. That night Charrington and his men had resigned themselves to the fate of prison camp, and most of them fell into an exhausted sleep. But at about one in the morning, they were shaken awake to be told that a ship had appeared offshore. It was the destroyer, HMS
Havoc,
sent on to help them by the last of the 4th New Zealand Brigade at Porto Rafti.

On board, the sailors handed out the Navy's standard panacea in the wake of disaster: cocoa, bully beef sandwiches and blankets. Throughout the evacuation, the Army's gratitude and praise was well-deserved. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, had committed six cruisers and nineteen destroyers to the task, almost all his ships of that size.

While most of the formed troops left by warship, other parties of officers and soldiers left in smaller boats. On 22 April, a party from the British Military Mission including Paddy Leigh Fermor and some signallers had pushed their truck over the cliff at Cape Sunion. They had arranged to take over the
Ayia Varvara,
a caique converted into a handsome yacht, which they armed with Lewis guns. Their mission was to sail it round to Myli in the Gulf of Argos to evacuate General Wilson and his entourage in case other means failed.

* Later General Lord Norrie and Governor-General of New Zealand. Joined the 11th Hussars, commanded the 10th Hussars, and subsequently the 1st Armoured Brigade, 1938-1940.

To avoid the ubiquitous Luftwaffe, they could only move safely at night. On the morning of 26 April, the party reached Myli and searched for Peter Smith-Dorrien who had come down from Athens with General Wilson and Prince Peter. They could see the line of abandoned military vehicles stretching back several miles from the small harbour. Jumbo Wilson was at the end of the mole sitting on his bed-roll chewing the end of his stick. He was waiting for a Sunderland flying-boat. Somebody asked him what he intended to do, and Jumbo Wilson jovially replied: 'I'm going to do what many a good general has done before — I'm going to sit on my luggage.' In the end he did leave by Sunderland that evening. His luggage — to which he seemed greatly attached, to judge by the attention it received in his memoirs — together with his driver and several members of his staff, including Smith-Dorrien bearing several bottles of champagne, and Wilson's second ADC, Philip Scott of the 60th Rifles, decided to go with the
Ayia Varvara.
At least the General's belongings did not include another large American car, one of Jumbo Wilson's most surprising weaknesses. In any event, the caique was sunk the next day off Leonidion with the loss of all kit, but fortunately no hands.

Amongst the last to leave Athens — only a few hours before the Germans raised their flag over the Acropolis — had been Nicholas Hammond, Ian Pirie and Nicki Demertzi. To ensure Nicki's safe-conduct in the face of British officialdom, the couple had hurriedly married. Leaving Athens at dawn, they drove to the yacht harbour of Tourkolimono. Their load included a large batch of German uniforms, which Pirie had been hoarding, and the remains of Hammond's plastic explosive.

After Attica's rapid occupation by the Germans, evacuation continued during the last nights of April from the ports and beaches of the Peloponnese. Every form of transport available was pressed into service: destroyers and cruisers of the Royal Navy, requisitioned merchant vessels, caiques and aircraft. Blenheims ran a shuttle service to Crete with men packed in dreadful discomfort into the bomb-bays and turrets of each aircraft, while Sunderlands took them off the beaches in the Gulf of Argos and round Kalamata. One somehow managed to take off from the Gulf of Argos with eighty-four men on board, nearly three times the maximum permitted on its civilian equivalent, the Imperial Airways flying-boat. But vessels hired and requisitioned by the British were barred to Greek troops, including Cretans from V Division, who longed to return home to continue the fight. Such officious rigidity caused astonishment and dismay after all the acts of spontaneous generosity displayed by the Greeks.

The last stage of the evacuation became chaotic. The road between Argos and Nauplia was a solid jam of abandoned military vehicles. And nearly two thousand RAF ground crew and administration personnel concentrated at Argos were 'getting out of hand' as their hope of escape diminished and German air attacks increased. Most of their officers had already left by air, and the RAF later complained that they had not even been on the distribution list of evacuation instructions. The mass of disconsolate airmen was diverted to Kalamata, but so were 8,000 men of the Australian Division, joined by 1,500 dispirited Jugoslavs.

No defence was organized. During the day, the demoralized and exhausted troops stayed under cover in olive groves outside the town to avoid the bombing. They were outflanked by a small German force, which had crossed the Gulf of Corinth and the whole Peloponnese undetected and had slipped in to capture the port under their noses. Although counter-attacks led by some determined officers and NCOs eventually succeeded — Sergeant Hinton, a New Zealander, won a Victoria Cross — the Navy held back in the belief that the Germans were still a threat, and very few men were taken off during that last night.

Air attacks during the voyage to Crete were for many even more harrowing than their experiences on the mainland. The
Julia,
like the
Elsi
carrying the Luftwaffe prisoners, was one of the luckier ships.

This 1,500-ton collier had departed before two in the morning on 23 April soon after the
Elsi.
Her time of departure was just inside the Royal Navy's guidelines for clearing dangerous waters before daylight, but the
Julia
was capable of no more than seven knots. They were only thirty miles down the coast of Attica when dawn broke, revealing a calm sea and a clear sky. Shouts announced the first Stuka attack which came almost immediately from the north-east — seven black specks 'grouped in two V's of three planes each with a solitary plane a little distance ahead'. In a chaotic rush, Pioneer NCOs with rifles, the only weapons on board, took up position.

The Stukas, according to Theo Stephanides, 'formed themselves in a line and as each plane arrived nearly overhead it flipped over on its side and then on its nose and seemed to fall vertically down on us. [They] made a most terrific screaming sound as they dived and, what with the banging of our thirty rifles, the din was deafening. When each plane had swooped down to about one thousand feet, one saw a black speck detach itself from the undercarriage and plummet towards us with a fiendish whistling.' Each bomb — all fortunately were near misses — sent up a huge column of spray, 'and each time the whole vessel reeled and there was a shock and a curious metallic clang caused by the compression wave hitting the side'. The Stukas then went through the same cab-rank circuit to drop their second bomb, and finally strafed the ship with machine-gun fire before turning for base to replenish. There were surprisingly few casualties for Stephanides to treat; one was an Australian sergeant whose watch had been smashed into his wrist by a bullet.