Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (17 page)

Unlike at Heraklion, the ill-concealed Bofors crews were not allowed to play possum and wait for the most important and the easiest targets of all: the troop-carriers. As a result, the relentless air attacks had knocked them about so much that none of the survivors were in a state to engage the enemy at the crucial moment.

On Tuesday, 20 May, the raids along the coastal plain westwards from Suda Bay began soon after six o'clock, earlier than usual. Just before their arrival, the 22nd Battalion war diary recorded: 'Usual Mediterranean summer day. Cloudless sky, no wind, extreme visibility: e.g. details on mountains 20

miles to south-east easily discernible.'

The first air raid was similar to those of previous days, then there was a respite at about 7.30 a.m. and the defenders were told they could stand down. Freyberg, to protect his secret information, did not tell anyone that the Germans had postponed the operation scheduled for 17 May: few people therefore regarded the morning's events as significant.

'So accustomed', continued the war diary of the 22nd Battalion, 'were the troops to the daily "hate", that as soon as the planes disappeared out to sea the men began to move to breakfast which had been cooking during the raid.' Many of the RAF fitters at Maleme did not bother to take their rifles with them.

The New Zealanders responsible for turning them into temporary infantrymen had in any case enjoyed little success: the only point on which both parties agreed was that they should have been evacuated when the last aircraft were ordered back to Egypt a few days before.

Just before eight o'clock the sound of heavy engines was heard: 'an angry throb'. Communications were so ineffectual that warning of this enemy force, which had been picked up well in advance by the radar station on a hill a few kilometres to the rear of Maleme, had not arrived from Weston's air defence centre at Suda Bay. The ship's bell hanging outside the dispersal tent was now rung vigorously again to sound the alarm.

This second wave from Richthofen's VIII Air Corps consisted of twin-engined bombers, Dornier 17s and Junkers 88s, followed by strafing fighters. There was a mad rush for slit trenches under tamarisk and olive trees on the edge of the airfield. Once again the Bofors gun pits were the main target. Their crews were so badly shaken by these attacks that only one gun returned fire, and then inaccurately.

With conspicuous bravery, a medical team drove an ambulance across the runway at the height of the attack to the aid of a badly wounded group.

The shock-waves from each exploding bomb could be felt like a muffled blow to the stomach, and heads began to ache from the relentless percussion. Much has been written of the effect of the Stuka dive-bomber, whose siren was designed to increase the fear of its victims. Yet for many on Crete, the heart-stopping scream of a Messerschmitt fighter appearing from nowhere at tree-top level was far more terrifying.

Just after the raid finished — one sergeant described the brief silence as 'eerie, acrid and ominous' —

strangely shaped aircraft with long tapering wings swept low over the airfield. Those New Zealanders of the 22nd Battalion who saw them through the cloud of smoke and dust yelled 'Gliders!' virtually in unison.

As these gliders crossed their field of vision, most of them sweeping in to land on the stoney river-bed of the Tavronitis, the infantrymen in their slit trenches opened up with small arms of every sort. This produced a noise like a mass of fire-crackers set off simultaneously. Several gliders smashed on the stones of the broad, almost dry river-bed, injuring many of their occupants. One bounced off the bridge itself. In a couple of cases, the New Zealanders succeeded in hitting the pilot. One glider, whose pilot was shot, crashed nose up with the belly striking a rock. This broke the fuselage in half.

The only man to survive was a war correspondent and veteran of the Western Front, Franz-Peter Weixler, who had been in the tailplane section.

Altogether about forty landed at the mouth of the Tavronitis and further up the river-bed. They contained the rest of I Battalion, the Storm Regiment, commanded by Major Koch who had led the attack on Eben Emael the year before; regimental headquarters; and part of the III Battalion.

Soon there came a louder throbbing of engines, almost too slow to be those of aircraft. These were the Junkers 52s, nicknamed 'the trams' during their inexorable bombing shuttles over Madrid five years before.

At Creforce Headquarters above Canea, the atmosphere was one of business as usual when Monty Woodhouse arrived before eight to deliver a message to Freyberg. The General invited him to stay to eat.

'It was not a luxurious breakfast,' Woodhouse recalled, 'but it was better than I had had for some time.'

Half-way through, he 'looked up and saw the blue sky full of German aircraft . . . The General continued quietly eating his breakfast. What should I do? It seemed impolite, not to say insubordinate, to interrupt.'

When Woodhouse finally plucked up the courage to speak, Freyberg raised his head and grunted, then looked at his watch. They're dead on time!' he said. 'He seemed mildly surprised at German punctuality, then returned to his breakfast.'

Freyberg's sang-froid at the sighting of an enemy armada was in the best British tradition. 'His attitude', wrote Woodhouse, 'was that he had already made all the necessary dispositions on the basis of his information, and there was now nothing more for him to do except leave his subordinates to fight the battle.'

This unflappability had been admirable during the sudden panics of the Greek withdrawal, but a relaxed manner on the morning of an airborne invasion perhaps did not convey the proper sense of urgency when the battle's outcome would be decided by each side's speed of reaction to events. For some reason, word of the long-awaited assault was not passed to the forces at Heraklion, where until after two o'clock in the afternoon the 14th Infantry Brigade was to remain in complete ignorance of the fighting round Canea.

Freyberg's staff officers were more demonstrative when they spotted some of the glider force, released at a high altitude out over the sea, circle in over the coast.

A dozen swept low over the Creforce quarry with a swish of wings to land on the rocky terrain of the Akrotiri less than a mile to their north. Six came down next to the tomb of Venizelos at Profitilias and the regimental headquarters of the Northumberland Hussars. Another four landed by a dummy battery of anti-aircraft guns only a quarter of a mile from the quarry.

Although severely understrength and ill-equipped, B Squadron of the dismounted Northumberland Hussars engaged Captain Altmann's company without delay. One glider was set alight in mid-air and crashed; the three men who emerged miraculously from the flames were shot down immediately.

Another glider exploded after a lucky shot hit a case of grenades inside. A ten-man crew surrendered after a quick charge led by an ordnance corps fitter. Another section was also shot down mercilessly after one of the Germans waved a white flag and others then opened fire. Altmann's body was never identified.

Some of the surviving paratroopers escaped into an olive grove behind Venizelos's tomb, and later in the morning they had to be flushed out by very cautious drives. Before crossing one dry-stone wall, the second-in-command, Major David Barnett, raised his helmet on a stick as a precaution before emerging. There was no reaction. As he raised himself to peer over the wall, a bullet struck him through the forehead and he died instantly.

The paratroopers nearest to Creforce Headquarters went to ground in the wired and sandbagged positions of the dummy antiaircraft battery. The Northumberland Hussars lost several men attempting to attack; without hand-grenades they could not hope to dislodge the well-armed Germans. Their other squadrons were spread around the peninsula, mainly guarding other gun positions, so assistance eventually had to be sought from the Welch Regiment beyond Creforce Headquarters.

While the action against the glider troops was beginning on the top of the hill above the Creforce quarry, Freyberg's staff officers observed the panoramic view over the coastal plain with a mixture of astonishment, dread and professional fascination. The air fleet approached over the sea, and 'the heavens shook with the roar of their engines'. When they first saw the stream of black shapes coming out behind the troop-carriers, several observers thought for a moment that the aircraft were trailing smoke after being hit, but the shapes separated and sprouted canopies with a jerk, white for paratroopers, and red, green or yellow for weapon canisters, equipment or supplies. David Hunt, standing next to Group Captain Beamish, heard him murmur 'What a remarkable sight! Looks like the end of the world.'

Within a matter of minutes, the outburst of firing up and down the coastal strip transformed the tranquil Mediterranean vista into a disturbingly ill-defined battlefield. Through their binoculars, Hunt and Beamish could see puffs of smoke rising above the olive groves and the odd patch of white where a parachute had caught in a tree or snagged on a telegraph pole.

While senior officers thought of H.G.Weils and feared the chaos of warfare without lines, younger officers and soldiers were much less awed. They recovered their aplomb and set.to killing paratroopers as if it were a dangerous and exhilarating fairground sport.

New Zealand officers told their men to aim at the boots of the paratroopers since their descent was deceptively rapid. This seems to have worked well to judge by the number who jerked, dangled limply, then crumpled on hitting the ground. They were covered by their own parachutes as by instant shrouds.

The design of the German parachute harness does not seem to have helped. Lines were attached centrally to a webbing yoke across the shoulder-blades, so each soldier was suspended, 'like a kitten held by the scruff of the neck'. And although their hands were left free to fire their Schmeissers — or in one case to sound a bugle call — they had little control over their descent. Yet their fate depended more than anything on where they fell: on to undefended ground, or on to the muzzles of the New Zealand infantry waiting in the Maleme and Galatas sectors.

For most parachutists, the idea of jumping from the air and then floating down to attack their enemy gave a sensation of invincibility. To find themselves so vulnerable instead was the most disorientating shock of all. That the defenders should shoot at them when helpless struck many of them as an outrageous violation of the rules of war.

At Maleme, the attacking aircraft had avoided the runway on purpose. The dispersal tent with deck-chairs outside had been slashed and riddled by the bullets of strafing fighters, and the perimeter had been bombed, leaving large clouds of dust hanging in the still air. This prevented many of the New Zealanders in trenches round the airfield from seeing the gliders sweep over to land in and around the bed of the Tavronitis.

Some members of the RAF ground-crew, still sheltering from the air attack, did not even look up when the troop-carriers thundered overhead in threes discharging their loads. Those who did saw the

'brollies', as they called them, open at about 300 feet. One or two parachutes opened so soon that they snagged on the tailplane, and a few soldiers jumping from the lead aircraft of the V formation were even hit by the next plane behind.

In the first few minutes of the battle, C Company of the New Zealand 22nd Battalion, its three platoons north, west and south of the runway, engaged any targets which came their way. The platoon on the western edge next to the Tavronitis river-bed had to switch their fire to the groups advancing from the gliders which had landed close to the beach. In the course of the next hour, they killed the company commander, Lieutenant von Plessen, and a dozen of his men.

Already the German plan was clear: they were trying to drop their forces beyond the Tavronitis, and then use the dead ground of the river-bed as the start line for their attacks on the airfield. Major Stentzler's II Battalion and Captain Gericke's IV Battalion dropped by parachute well beyond and out of sight of Colonel Andrews's command post of Hill 107.

Brigadier Eugen Meindl, the commander of the Storm Regiment, jumped just behind Gericke. Meindl had refused to accompany his own staff in their glider. He insisted on jumping to prove himself as fit as any young subaltern.

The New Zealanders of D Company on the west side of Hill 107 overlooking the river-bed kept up a rapid and accurate fire which caused considerable slaughter amongst Major Koch's glider troops. The company commander's suggestion that the two 4-inch coastal defence guns on Hill 107 should be used against the glider landing zone round the Tavronitis bridge was refused because this battery was

'sited for targets at sea'.

The other artillery pieces to the east of the hill — most of the forty-nine guns shipped to the island from Egypt were captured Italian 75s without sights — could not help since their view was limited to little more than the beach.

Soon Major Braun of the Storm Regiment's headquarters staff managed to infiltrate men across the river-bed either side of the bridge. The New Zealand platoon responsible for that sector had a limited field of fire, and the chaos of the RAF camp immediately behind them did not help. Brigadier Meindl grasped the situation with impressive speed. He deduced that whatever aerial reconnaissance might have reported, the bulk of the enemy's unexpected strength lay between Maleme and Canea. For some extraordinary reason they had not reinforced the line of the Tavronitis. The airfield was the key to German reinforcement and survival, and Hill 107 was the key to the airfield. So while Braun's men kept pushing at the airfield flank, he sent Stentzler's II Battalion round on a right-flanking movement to take Hill 107 from the rear.

But Meindl, within an hour of landing, was wounded twice, lightly the first time, then in the chest.

And at about the same time, Major Koch was struck down with a severe head wound in the unsuccessful attempts to attack Hill 107 from the Tavronitis river-bed. The Storm Regiment had begun to lose most of its commanders: Koch's battalion alone was to lose sixteen officers killed and seven wounded. Yet the comforting theory of British officers that German troops went to pieces when things did not go according to plan was soon proved wrong.