Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (24 page)

News of a disaster on Crete had spread rapidly both in the Wehrmacht from Field Marshal von List's XII Army Headquarters and in the High Command in Germany as well as in the Luftwaffe via Richthofen's VIII Air Corps.

The losses had been so great and the gains so small that Student was under heavy pressure to abort the whole operation. Although casualty figures were not yet available, he had a fairly accurate idea of the scale of the slaughter. The total of 1,863 killed on the first day over the four sectors happened to match the number of men landed in the Maleme—Tavronitis area.

At nightfall on 20 May, none of the objectives of Operation Mercury had been met. Colonel Sturm's force at Rethymno was out of wireless contact, while Bräuer's now appeared far too weak to overcome the entrenched battalions of the 14th Infantry Brigade. Heidrich's 3rd Parachute Regiment in Prison Valley was thwarted by the defence of Galatas. Only the Storm Regiment at Maleme was close to taking an airfield, but it was not in a strong enough state to hold the perimeter and protect the landing of the 5th Mountain Division. Above all, it lacked both ammunition and leadership.

Major General Süssmann had been killed, Brigadier Meindl seriously wounded, Major Scherber killed and Major Koch wounded. The losses amongst company commanders had been equally disastrous. Student immediately decided to send Colonel Ramcke, that Freikorps veteran and leader of crude vigour, with reinforcements to re-form the Storm Regiment as an effective fighting unit. To get enough men together — his level of reserves had been perilously low in the first place — he would send all those held back from Colonel Bräuer's force at Heraklion due to the shortage of aircraft. Fearing that the operation would be halted in the next few hours, Student does not appear to have told his superior, General Löhr, of his final gamble.

Even with Ramcke and the reinforcements, General Student knew that unless he could land and deploy the fresh troops of the Mountain Division by the second evening of the battle, he would have lost: the seaborne force which Freyberg feared so much had been delayed. Careful study of the contours on the map combined with air reports on the New Zealand positions suggested that with Hill 107 in German hands the Tavronitis end of the airfield might be out of the line of direct fire. Two Junkers had tried to land on the airfield during the afternoon of 20 May, but vigorous fire from the New Zealand company had forced them to sheer off out to sea again. Everything therefore depended on whether the original defenders were still dug in on the western perimeter. There was only one way to find out.

Student summoned Captain Kleye, an intrepid aviator on his staff, to the ballroom in the Hotel Grande Bretagne. He explained the problem and asked Kleye to attempt a touch-down and take-off at first light on the western edge of the airfield. Captain Kleye set off in the early hours and carried out his test landing. Although light artillery fired on his aircraft, he could confirm that the western edge at least was not covered by direct fire. The last of the defenders had withdrawn from both the airfield and Hill 107.

Another Junkers 52 also took off alone early that morning. Having heard a wireless message from the Tavronitis that the Storm Regiment survivors were virtually out of ammunition and that Brigadier Meindl would die without hospital treatment, two pilots, Koenitz and Steinweg, loaded their aircraft and, without asking permission, flew south across the Aegean. They managed to land on the beach west of the river-bed. Paratroopers ran out to the aeroplane and offloaded the ammunition. Then, once the already delirious Brigadier Meindl and seven other stretcher-cases were on board, and volunteers had cleared boulders from the very improvised runway, Koenitz just managed to take off again.

On receiving Kleye's encouraging news, General Student sent orders to General Ringel's 5th Mountain Division. A first battalion of mountain troops must be ready to fly to Crete at a moment's notice from Tanagra airfield. First, another wave of troop-carriers would take off with Colonel Ramcke and the paratroop reserves. But Student made a serious mistake in his plan aimed for mid-afternoon. While Ramcke and two and a half companies were to be dropped west of the Tavronitis where their landing would be protected by the survivors of the Storm Regiment, two more companies from the 2nd Parachute Regiment were to be dropped east of the airfield. Curiously, he does not seem to have imagined that they might be massacred like Major Scherber's battalion the day before.

The New Zealand 5th Brigade spent the morning of 21 May sorting itself out. Colonel Andrew's survivors were reorganized in two companies, one each attached to the 21st and 23rd Battalions.

Hargest allowed the three commanding officers to carry on as they felt best. He made no attempt to go forward from his headquarters at Platanias to see for himself, and did not urge them to mount a counter-attack on the airfield.

The New Zealanders in the front line, now behind the road which led from the coast up to the village of Xamoudohori and the destroyed radar station, could not at first see the Storm Regiment's cautious advance as far as the hamlet of Maleme.

At about three in the afternoon, the Luftwaffe began bombing and strafing. This was a prelude to the attack of the Storm Regiment due to coincide with the parachute drop. As soon as the air raid stopped, detachments of the Storm Regiment advanced towards Pirgos, but they were repulsed after ferocious fighting in which the New Zealanders used some captured Spandau machine guns to great effect.

Three kilometres behind the New Zealand lines, twenty-four troop-carriers in their now familiar trios came over dropping the two parachute companies. But the area Student had chosen straddled the positions of the New Zealand Engineer Detachment and the 28th (Maori) Battalion. Those who were not killed in the air were just as likely to be shot before they struggled free of their harnesses. 'At one stage', recalled a captain, 'I stopped for a moment to see how things were going and a Hun dropped not ten feet away. I had my pistol in my hand and without really knowing what I was doing I let him have it while he was still on the ground. I had hardly got over the shock when another came down almost on top of me and I plugged him too while he was untangling himself. Not cricket, I know, but there it is.'

The Maoris fixed bayonets and went straight in at the paratroopers dropping in their area. One of their officers described the scene. 'As we got to him [a German playing dead] I told the Maori to bayonet him. As he did so, he turned his head away not bearing the sight. We rushed out among the Germans scattered every 15 or 20 yds. One at about 15 yds instead of firing his tommy gun started to lie down to fire. I took a snap shot with a German Mauser. It grazed his behind and missed between his legs.

My back hair lifted, but the Maori got him (I had no bayonet). We rushed on ... Some tried to crawl away. A giant of a man jumped up with his hands up like a gorilla, shouting "Hants Oop!" I said:

"Shoot the bastard" and the Maori shot him. That was because many others were firing at us.' Every German officer and NCO from that company was killed. Only eighty men out of the two paratroop companies — a third of the whole force — survived, mostly by hiding, then slipping back westwards along the beach after dusk.

Although both attacks had been failures, the perimeter of Maleme airfield remained in German hands and at about five o'clock, the first troop-carriers with the II Battalion of Colonel Utz's 100th Mountain Regiment arrived from Tanagra. They landed, stopped to disgorge with their engines still running, then immediately took off again. But many aircraft did not survive. Maleme airfield came under random artillery fire from the sightless 75s in the 5th Brigade area. The nine field guns, mostly Italian pieces without sights which had been taken in Libya, opened up on the runway — a 'gunner's dream'

— with some success, but not enough to stop the shuttle of Junkers 52s coming round over Cape Spatha on the western horizon.

For the mountain troops who felt the shock waves of bursting shells while still inside the Junkers fuselage, it was a nightmarish and disorientating experience. Even before the aircraft had come to a halt they were leaping on to the dusty red runway — General Student likened it to a clay tennis-court

— holding on to Mauser rifle and steel helmet. They usually preferred their peaked caps with the silver badge of an edelweiss on the side, and only wore the coal-scuttle helmets when under bombardment.

Platoons and sections became mixed up, as they hurried to the side to escape the shell-fire. One company was immediately pushed forward to strengthen the Storm Regiment. The others, once assembled, moved to take up positions to defend the airfield from any counter-attack on the south and south-west flank.

About twenty troop-carriers were hit or crashed. But with a ruthless single-mindedness and energy which the British would never have contemplated, the Germans kept the runway open. They used captured Bren gun carriers to tow crashed aircraft out of the way and dragooned prisoners of war at gunpoint as work parties to fill in craters: several are said to have been shot out of hand for refusing to comply with this flagrant breach of the Geneva Convention.

There is a story on the German side that General von Richthofen's nephew, a Stuka ace, also landed on the western corner of the airfield, then ran up Hill 107 with a pair of strong binoculars, identified the artillery batteries firing on Maleme, and took off again to lead his group to dive-bomb them.

Ramcke's paratroopers also engaged British batteries with the mobile Bofors guns they had captured at Maleme, using them like German 88s against targets on the ground.

That afternoon a German bomb hit a petrol and ammunition dump. A huge pall of smoke blotted out the sky and the surrounding olive groves began to burn. The shuttle rhythm of aircraft landing and taking off appeared alarmingly impressive to staff officers watching through binoculars from the Creforce quarry. Freyberg's artillery commander, an Australian colonel, timed them. 'Seventy seconds to land and clear its men and gear,' he observed.

The need for a counter-attack on Maleme was at last accepted by those senior officers who had been so reluctant to react. Hargest had first discussed the subject by field telephone with Puttick during the morning. He strongly recommended that it take place at night to avoid air attack. Puttick agreed. But the inadequate force they were prepared to devote to it undermined the operation before it began. That prescription of too little too late was once again disastrously adopted. Two battalions, the Maoris and the 20th, with Lieutenant Farran's three 'armoured perambulators', were expected to defeat a fresh battalion of mountain troops and the re-formed and well-armed Storm Regiment in a few hours after a long march at night.

Hargest, Puttick and Freyberg all accepted the principle of counter-attack, yet showed little enthusiasm for the enterprise. A more disastrous state of mind for commanders preparing such an operation is hard to imagine. Without action to prevent a German build-up and attack from Maleme, a German victory became inevitable. But the official New Zealand history points out that for Puttick and Freyberg, 'the impression prevailed that the sea attack was the one most to be feared'. And yet Freyberg had some 6,000 formed troops in the Canea—Suda area in addition to the New Zealand Division in the Maleme and Galatas sectors.

Not only was the force allocated to the counter-attack on Maleme perilously small, a fateful condition was also imposed. The remaining Australian reserves at Georgioupolis had to be brought round to take the place of the 20th Battalion before the advance could begin.

13

The Seaborne Invasion'

Night, 21 May

'Our attention in the quarry', wrote one of Freyberg's staff officers, 'in this counter-attack was overshadowed by an impending event closer at hand. The seaborne invasion was under way.'

Freyberg's
id£e fixe
had retained its grip to such an extent that he misread a crucial Ultra signal on the morning of 21 May and believed that an enemy fleet was heading straight for Canea. This signal, like all the other intercepts, was for his eyes only, so he could not discuss it with anyone. In any case he does not appear to have been in a mood to listen. Freyberg would not accept the assurances of Captain Morse RN, the Naval Officer-in-Charge at Suda Bay, that the Mediterranean Fleet was indeed capable of dealing with any seaborne threat.

The only description of this threat in Ultra messages — 'Fourthly. Arrival of the seaborne contingent consisting of anti-aircraft batteries as well as of more troops and supplies' — did not suggest a beach-storming operation with tanks. And apart from the confusion, described in Chapter 8, over the number of troops involved, no hint of an invasion fleet had been made in Ultra signals — the only specific reference had been to 'sea transport'. Finally, there had been no indication from any intelligence source that the Germans or the Italians possessed assault ships or landing craft. Wavell, as has already been pointed out, informed the War Office on 1 May: 'Our information points insufficient sea-going shipping left Aegean for large-scale sea-borne operations.' Leaving aside the question of the unsuitable coastline round Canea, it should have been hard to imagine an enemy risking an opposed landing when he could bring ashore reinforcements and stores behind his own lines.

On the first night of the battle, Freyberg had been most excited when Geoffrey Cox had discovered amongst a mass of papers taken from enemy dead the 3rd Parachute Regiment's operation order. This revealed their objectives and added that the Light Ships' Group would land west of Maleme. But he must have pushed this from his mind when on 21 May, the following signal, OL 15/389, reached Crete:*

Personal for General Freyberg

Most Immediate

On continuation of attack Colorado [Crete], reliably reported that among operations planned for Twenty-first May is air landing two mountain battalions and attack Canea. Landing from echelon of small ships depending on situation at sea.

Freyberg appears to have confused the two sentences. One can only suppose that it did not occur to him that