Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (22 page)

On the other hand, Chappel's forces wasted no time in counterattacking. The two Matildas of the Royal Tank Regiment and the six Whippets of the 3rd Hussars were unleashed almost immediately: the Germans never had a chance to recover. Lieutenant G.D. Petherick, the troop leader of the 3rd Hussars at Heraklion, claimed that at least thirty paratroopers had been dealt with at close quarters 'by the revolvers of his tank commanders, and many others were killed by running over them.'

Neither Campbell's Australians at Rethymno nor the 14th Infantry Brigade at Heraklion suffered from Jhat fateful indecision over the commitment of reserves which was so disastrous at both Maleme and Galatas. Chappel saw that the outcome of the battle would be decided in the first couple of hours and sent in his reserve battalion seventy-five minutes after the first troop-carriers were sighted.

The Black Watch, the Australians and the Leicesters were so successfully occupied with the destruction of Burckhardt's battalion — over 300 killed, more than 100 wounded and several dozen prisoners — that they did not have a chance to take note of the other landings outside their area.

At Gournes, Bräuer dropped to join Major Walther's battalion, already depleted by the numbers left behind on the mainland. He found that no wireless contact had been established with the other groups: Burckhardt on the airfield; the half battalion from the 2nd Regiment dropped as a blocking force well to the west; or Major Karl-Lothar Schulz's III Battalion which had landed to the west and south of Heraklion with the objective of taking both the city and the port.

Bräuer now realized that to have sent single battalions on such missions was far too ambitious.

Although still lacking definite news, he sensed that the operation had run into serious difficulties.

Misinformed about enemy strength, General Student had dispersed his forces dangerously. And Group East's sector was the most widespread of all with four dropping zones along nearly twenty kilometres of coast.

At nightfall, Colonel Bräuer decided to move westwards to join up with Burckhardt and see the battle round the town of Heraklion for himself. As escort, Walther gave him the platoon commanded by Lieutenant Count Wolfgang von Blücher, who had won the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in the drop on Holland. Around midnight, after a rapid march, Bliicher's point section sighted troops ahead on the hill to the south-east of the airfield. Optimistically convinced that they had encountered pickets thrown out by the II Battalion of their regiment, they called forward the password
'Reichsmarschall'

only to receive a ragged volley in reply. Blücher's platoon, which had outstripped Colonel Bräuer, found itself well inside the Black Watch perimeter. Coming under fire from other positions, they had no alternative but to go to ground.

Black Watch officers were particularly pleased with their tally, which continued to mount after dark.

According to one regimental account: 'Mungo Stirling, the Adjutant, and Andrew Campbell, the Intelligence officer, wandered down to call on one of the companies and shot a couple on the way.'

Shooting parlance permeated a running joke that became increasingly laboured and unattractive. The morning after 'the shoot' was referred to as 'the pick-up'. Officers in different companies discussed their bags over the field telephone. One recorded the following snatch of a conversation: 'I nearly came along and offered myself as an extra loader. What did you get — 20 brace? And did you lay them all out on the road afterwards? And did they come over nice and high? And did you send your keeper after the runners?'

For the scattered survivors of Burckhardt's battalion, many of them wounded and almost all desperate from thirst, it was a grim night. The British heard them whistling and hooting to each other to establish contact. In return they were made to listen to Pipe Major Roy's bagpipes. To judge by German accounts, the wailing pipes seem to have been a very effective form of psychological warfare.

Major Schulz's battalion dropped round the west and south side of Heraklion on to maize fields and vineyards just outside the huge Venetian ramparts. Schulz's habitual insistence on jumping at the head of his men saved his life. The moment after he threw himself out in the crucifix position, the troop-carrier exploded in flames behind him after a direct hit on a fuel tank from an anti-aircraft gun.

His scattered companies had great difficulty collecting themselves. A number were killed on landing by Greek soldiers from the garrison of three large but ill-armed regiments, and by Cretan civilians, some of whom knifed paratroopers caught in the trees, rather as Henry V's Welshmen cut the throats of dismounted French knights at Agincourt. The battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment was positioned further round on the south-east edge of the town and the 64th Medium Regiment —

gunners serving as infantry — between them and the port.

The part played by Cretan 'unrecruited civilians' in this battle was as great as that in the province of Canea. A German report stated that 'south and west of the town, considerable fighting against
francs-tireurs
took place: these fought in groups of 7 to 8 men, one of which was led by a Pope
[sic]

who was subsequently shot'. Perhaps this was the priest with a rifle down his trousers, whom Gordon Hope-Morley met just before the battle.

Schulz, having collected as many of his men as possible, divided his force into two. He took one half against the Canea Gate while Captain Count von der Schulenburg swung round to the left with the other to find another less obvious opening. Schulz's force soon became embroiled in a form of warfare which many participants later compared to wars long past. A furious battle took place at the Canea Gate, where civilians, Greek soldiers and Cretan gendarmerie under Captain Kalaphotakis lined the massive Venetian city walls. Both Schulz's and Schulenburg's groups managed to fight their way in, but along the narrow streets an equally bitter guerrilla battle harried them at every turn.

John Pendlebury, although the senior SOE officer at Heraklion, had had as little warning of the invasion as the commanding officer of the Leicesters. At lunchtime, he had a drink with friends at his favourite meeting place — the basement bar of the Hotel Knossos — just round the corner from where a German bomb had hit a British ration truck with several thousand eggs on board thus creating

'the biggest omelette in Europe'.

In many ways it is surprising that he stayed in the town with the paratroop drop expected any day, but from Jack Hamson's account Pendlebury had received orders to remain, having sent his two lieutenants — Hamson and Bruce-Mitford — up into the hills on 16 May to hold strategic points with Cretan volunteers. Perhaps he also felt the most urgent battle would be in Heraklion: Satanas too was in the town that day with some of his
andartes.

No doubt Pendlebury and Satanas were with the defenders in that battle at the Canea Gate, reminiscent of a Renaissance siege, and took part in the street-fighting against Schulz's III Battalion.

The paratroopers fought their way well into the town; some even reached the quayside of the old Venetian harbour at about 10.30 that night.

If one pieces together the various accounts of Pendlebury's last movements (often having to take an average of those which do not match) he appears to have slipped back through the fighting to his office the next morning. Although the battle in the town had not yet finished, he wanted to leave Heraklion to co-ordinate the bands of
andartes
in the surrounding hills.

Major Schulz, who had earlier taken the surrender of the city from a Greek major and the Mayor, an elderly man in a linen suit and boater, was furious to find himself under renewed attack when reinforcements arrived from the Leicesters and the York and Lancaster Regiment. Since his men were very short of ammunition, he would have to withdraw. He called back the Mayor to warn him that as soon as his men had pulled out of the city, he would call on the Luftwaffe to destroy it. Then the two now intermingled groups of paratroopers fought a rearguard action out beyond the ramparts, and remained more or less concealed to the south and west.

Armed with a rifle and, according to most versions, wearing uniform, Pendlebury left through the Canea Gate in the afternoon, not far behind Schulz's men. He was accompanied by his driver and a small group led by Satanas, the guerrilla kapitan from Kroussonas on the eastern flank of Mount Ida.

Outside, he said goodbye to Satanas, having arranged to join forces later. He set off by car with his driver down the road towards Canea, an inexplicably rash move since paratroopers were known to be all over the area. Almost immediately they ran into a section of Germans at Kaminia, less than a kilometre from the city walls. In the fight that ensued, Pendlebury is said to have killed three of the enemy before being wounded high in the chest. The Germans took him, bleeding heavily, to a house beside the road and left him there in the care of two women. A German doctor arrived that evening and bound his wounds.

Next day, 22 May, another group of paratroopers came to the house. They are said to have recognized Pendlebury by his glass eye. (This is unlikely: Pendlebury's lack of discretion has to be weighed against the poverty of German military intelligence.) The two women were taken to a temporary internment camp and Pendlebury was hauled out and shot against the wall of the house. Another version says that the second group of parachutists shot him out of hand as a
franc-tireur
because they found him in a civilian shirt, probably one given him by the women because his uniform was soaked in blood.

To confuse matters further, the part of the German report of December 1942 dealing with 'Captain Pendleburg
[sic]'
said: 'Seriously wounded in the fighting on May 20 near HERAKLION, he died two days later and was buried there.' For Pendlebury to have attempted to leave the town just after the paratroop drop on the afternoon of 20 May, but before Schulz's battalion stormed the town, would have been more logical, but this course of events conflicts with eye-witness accounts.

Pendlebury acknowledged in his diaries — later found by the Germans — that his preparation of armed resistance by the civilian population was presumably against international law. And Hamson wrote soon after the event: 'He knew that for him there was no issue but success or death.' Whether or not the paratroopers who shot Pendlebury knew who he was, the German military authorities took great pains afterwards to identify the corpse for certain. His body is said to have been dug up a couple of times to check the glass eye and once to cut a sample of material from the shirt, presumably to prove that he had not been in uniform.

The number of Cretans claiming to be the last person to have seen Pendlebury alive is bewilderingly impressive. Tom Dunbabin, an archaeologist and friend, and from 1942 the senior British liaison officer with the Cretan resistance, wrote after the war: 'Many wild tales circulated at the time and later, and the story of his last days has inevitably been worked, in Cretan belief, into something like saga.'

So strong was the myth of Pendlebury that Brigadier Shearer, the chief of military intelligence in Cairo, reported to Churchill on 28 August, three months after the battle was over: 'We also tried to drop a wireless set by parachute to Pendlebury, who at the moment is largely controlling the guerrilla activities in the Crete hills.'

On 21 May, while fighting still continued in the city, Mike Cumberlege and Nick Hammond reached Heraklion in the
Dolphin
on their return from Hierapetra. They had tried to telephone Pendlebury from Sitia — at their last dinner together they had planned to raid Kasos on the night of 20 May — but could not get through.

On being fired at from the dockside, Cumberlege put in alongside the extreme end of the mole which formed the new harbour outside the Venetian port. His cousin Cle and Nick Hammond jumped ashore, each armed with a Mauser pistol. They approached until the sight of the swastika flag flying from the power station gave the impression that the enemy controlled most of the town. Clearly the
Dolphin
and her crew could do little to help — all the approaches seemed to be covered by machine-gun fire

— so Cumberlege turned her round and sailed out north-east to the island of Dia.

The next morning, preoccupied by the fate of Pendlebury and other friends in the fighting, they continued on along the north coast, waving to any German aircraft which flew close to investigate. At the entrance to Suda Bay, Cumberlege anchored near the island on which stood the ruins of a Venetian castle. From there, they engaged Stukas coming out of their dive after attacking ships in the harbour. It was a good position. The
Dolphin
claimed five confirmed kills and a number of 'probables'

in addition. Cumberlege and his crew were not to know that their guns would have been even more welcome at Heraklion when the bombers of Richthofen's VIII Air Corps returned to destroy the city.

12

First Night and Second Day

20 and 21 May

Night seemed to fall more rapidly than usual. Columns of smoke from bombed shipping in Suda Bay gave the impression of storm clouds blacking out an evening sky. But exhaustion as much as a lack of visibility brought the fighting to a close. Men in the firing line sank to the ground or to the bottom of their slit trenches in numb relief, their skin taut from dried sweat and dust. Others, whether defenders cut off or paratroopers scattered in drops over strongly held positions, crept out of their hiding places to rejoin their own side.

Danger made the sense of hearing acute in the dark. Every now and then a Very light shot upwards with a muffled crack and then a hiss as it slowed into its dazzling shaky parabola of magnesium white or green, casting a ghostly glare over the countryside. There were outbreaks of shooting started by nervous sentries, and occasionally the elegant curve of tracer rounds would appear in the distance followed by the rattle of the machine gun which fired them.

Those out in the unmapped no-man's land slipped past each other avoiding a fight by instinctive consent, like different species of animal after a fire or flood. Also reminiscent of the wild were curious jungle noises, rustling in bushes, or whistles, hoots and calls, as isolated paratroopers tried to mate contact.