Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (30 page)

Brigadier Inglis, guessing the situation more by noise than from hard information, sent reinforcements forward. The 4th Brigade band arrived first, followed by a Pioneer platoon and the Kiwi concert party. They were distributed down a long dry-stone wall running north—south.

Not all the defenders had retreated. Russell Force remained cut off on the south-west corner of Galatas. Kippenberger, not wanting to abandon them, and convinced that the New Zealanders had to hit the Germans hard and unexpectedly to gain the respite they needed, decided to mount an immediate counter-attack. His basic force would be two companies of New Zealanders from the 23rd Battalion, 'tired, but fit to fight and resolute.'

Pipe in mouth, he told the two company commanders that they were going to attack to knock the Germans back, otherwise the whole front would collapse. The two companies fixed bayonets and waited. The young subaltern Sandy Thomas eyed his platoon. 'Everyone looked tense and grim and I wondered if they were feeling as afraid as I, whether their throats were as dry, their stomachs feeling now frozen, now fluid. I hoped, as I sensed the glances thrown in my direction, that I appeared as cool as they. It occurred to me suddenly that this was going to be the biggest moment of my life.'

'There was Kip', remembered another officer present, 'walking up and down steadying everyone.' By then dusk was falling fast. Two of the light tanks of the 3rd Hussars came up the road. Roy Farran, the troop leader, asked if they could help. Kippenberger welcomed their arrival and told him to go into Galatas to have a look round. The two antiquated and battered machines clattered off into the village, each spraying the windows on opposite sides of the street with machine-gun fire. On reaching the village square, dominated by an unusually tall church, the second tank was hit in the turret by an anti-tank rifle: its commander and driver were wounded.

The two tanks returned to Kippenberger. Farran's head appeared out of the top of the turret. 'The place is stiff with Jerries,' he shouted over the noise of the engine. Kippenberger asked him if he would go in again leading the infantry. Farran agreed, but first he had to extricate the driver and the corporal who had been wounded in the second tank. Once this was done, two New Zealanders volunteered to take their place and Farran took them off down the road for some basic instruction.

Captain Michael Forrester, whose Greeks were by then dead or scattered, had taken a rifle and bayonet and, easily recognizable by his fair hair — he had lost his service dress cap on Pink Hill —

joined the ranks of the 23rd. He noticed how Kippenberger's force continued to increase. Men had begun to appear from nowhere as news spread of this come-as-you-are attack. Stragglers from a variety of units who had run away less than an hour before turned back, proving that bravery could be as infectious as fear. Walking wounded limped up requesting permission to join in as well. And the force would not have been complete without a group of those tireless fighters, the Maoris.

This most composite of composite units assembled behind the start-line, a track running roughly from north to south, with one company on each side of the road. Farran's two tanks reappeared, the improvised crew ready to go. Kippenberger and Farran spoke together, then Farran yelled to the second tank to follow. He disappeared inside his turret and closed the hatch as his tank lurched forward. 'The Maoris', recorded Forrester, 'began their harka war-chant and everyone took it up. The noise was incredible.' Those who listened from a distance compared the sound to the baying of hounds. The remnants of the 18th Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Gray promptly joined in from another direction.

'The effect was terrific,' wrote Thomas. 'One felt one's blood rising swiftly above fear and uncertainty until only inexplicable exhilaration, quite beyond description, remained.' They charged up the hill, a lane with one- and two-storey white houses either side, unable to keep pace with the tanks.

As they disappeared from view, there was an eruption of noise. Kippenberger recalled 'scores of automatics and rifles being fired at once, the crunch of grenades, screams and yells — the uproar swelled and sank, swelled again to a terrifying crescendo.' Women and children, finding their village a battlefield once again, fled down the road.

Almost as soon as Farran's tank reached the village square on the summit of the hill, an anti-tank grenade struck the side. Having ensured that the others in his crew escaped, Farran, who was badly wounded, just managed to drag himself out. From the lee side, he shouted encouragement: 'Come on New Zealand, clean them out!'

According to Sandy Thomas's account, after Farran's tank was hit the new commander of the second tank panicked and ordered the driver to turn round and drive out of the village. But a little way down the road his flight was blocked by Thomas's platoon advancing to the village square. The commander screamed at them to let him through. Thomas refused and ordered the driver to turn back, which he did.

Their attack hardly delayed, the New Zealanders charged on up towards the square, their eighteen-inch bayonets fixed. Some threw grenades into the windows of the houses held by the Germans. Others rushed any defender who emerged. In the square, firing was still frenetic. Bullets ricocheted off the useless dented hulk of Farran's 'armoured perambulator'. To break the danger of immobility in the open, Thomas brought his men to charge across the square. Whether prompted by the sight of the bayonets or the desperation on the New Zealanders' faces, most of the Germans in the houses opposite panicked and fled. Only one resolute group remained.

Several men, Farran amongst them, shouted a warning when the silhouette of a German helmet showed above the line of a roof. The German threw a grenade, and at the same time another opened fire with a Spandau. Thomas, his back lacerated with shrapnel from the grenade, was hit in the thigh.

One of his men tried to bandage the wound, but the opening was too large for a field dressing.

Soon the order to withdraw arrived from Kippenberger. The attack had achieved its aim and he did not want to waste any men unnecessarily, for as soon as the Germans had retreated, their mortars began to shell the village. The more seriously wounded, Farran and Thomas among them, had to be left behind. One of Thomas's soldiers, also badly hit in the leg, managed to pull him into a ditch which offered some protection. The mortar bomb explosions did not deter the women of the village. They slipped out of their cellars to bring water to the wounded. A 12-year-old girl appeared beside Sandy Thomas with a mug of fresh goat's milk.

Kippenberger gave the order for withdrawal back to a line on Daratsos. Russell's survivors from the Divisional Cavalry and Captain Rowe's last members of the Petrol Company on Pink Hill had been able to extricate themselves. They were all that remained of Kippenberger's 10th Brigade.

Those who took part in the counter-attack on Galatas will never forget the astonishing resurgence of spirit it engendered. Perhaps it is best explained as a gesture of anger at retreat — at the gut certainty that they should have won the whole battle. The New Zealanders had shown in a spectacular manner what could have been achieved had they been given the chance and the leadership at the crucial moment four days before.

Kippenberger, 'more tired than ever before in my life, or since', stumbled around in the dark trying to find Inglis's make-shift command post, 'a tarpaulin-covered hole in the ground'. Most of the battalion commanders were assembled there already. Inglis raised the subject of another counter-attack to gauge reactions. Then Colonel Gentry, Puttick's chief of staff, and Colonel Dittmer, the commanding officer of the 28th (Maori) Battalion, arrived. Dittmer volunteered to attack again, but after discussion Inglis came to the conclusion that it was too late, and Dittmer's battalion was one of the last New Zealand units to remain reasonably intact. There was no alternative but to fall back to a line linking up with Vasey's two Australian battalions at the end of Prison Valley. Although nobody voiced the inevitability of defeat, they all knew that their escape would depend once again on the Royal Navy.

17

Laycock's Commandos and Force Reserve

26 and 27 May

After the last deceptive flash of hope had died away at Galatas, General Freyberg knew that he must warn Wavell that Crete could no longer be held. He postponed writing his signal until the next morning, 26 May. It began 'I regret to have to report'. This must have been one of the most unpleasant duties he had ever faced.

The task cannot have been made easier by stirring exhortations still arriving from Churchill in London, or by the simplistic mathematics of military intelligence in Cairo which estimated that he still enjoyed numerical superiority. But this was partly his own fault: he had not clearly told Cairo or London how rapidly Maleme had fallen. A circuitous phrasing of reports gave the impression that the airfield was still hotly contested for some time after the Germans had established their air bridge.

Efforts were then made by GHQ Middle East to send Blenheims and Wellingtons to bomb the runway, but they were far too late and too few to make a difference. In spite of a short lift in morale caused by a raid on 25 May, the RAF had once again become a target for abuse with their initials converted to crude epithets.

During Monday, 26 May, the new line west of Canea held, albeit shakily and by a stroke of luck.

Shortly after 1 p.m., the Luftwaffe bombed and strafed a battalion of the 85th Mountain Regiment by mistake for fifty minutes; this severely demoralized German troops across the whole front and induced caution in their commanders. The unlucky battalion had been advancing in the foothills towards Perivolia where the 2nd Greek Regiment, Freyberg heard, was in the process of disintegration. This was one of the factors which convinced him that Suda Bay would soon be under fire.

Next to the Greeks, and barring the end of Prison Valley, were the two Australian battalions, the 2/8th and the 2/7th, back under the command of Brigadier Vasey as the 19th Australian Brigade. Then, stretching to the coast, forming a line in front of Canea, were three reduced and semi-amalgamated New Zealand battalions starting with the Maoris west of Daratsos. Holding the enemy at this line was especially important to allow warships to land essential stores and reinforcements in Suda Bay that night.

Behind this insecure and scarcely dug-in force, the remnants of other battalions tried to recuperate and reorganize. Round Suda, the unarmed rear echelon, nearly twelve thousand men at the start of the battle, lay scattered in their makeshift camps: dock operating companies, ordnance corps fitters and supply personnel — what the fighting troops called the odds and sods and what Churchill called the

'bouches inutiles'.

Often unfairly derided and left in even greater ignorance of events than the average soldier, these

'base wallahs' had suffered from continual bombing without an
esprit de corps
to sustain them or the capacity to strike back at the enemy. A number of those who had been able to grab a rifle to stalk paratroopers in the olive groves proved themselves natural guerrilla fighters, despite or perhaps because of their lack of formal infantry training. But the nerves of the majority were badly strained by air attack. When someone dropped his tin mug with a clatter in Stephanides's casualty clearing station, everyone threw themselves on the floor, including the man who had dropped it.

Many of the rear echelon had been evacuated just before the battle in ships bringing supplies and equipment to the island. But now no merchantman stood a chance of running the gauntlet of Stuka attacks through the Kaso strait. And after the disasters at sea of 22 May, Admiral Cunningham would allow only the fastest warships to make the round trip from Alexandria, restricting their presence in the dangerous waters of the Aegean to the hours of darkness. He had, contrary to Admiralty instructions, ordered a convoy bringing a battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment to return to Alexandria. And an attempt to land commando reinforcements at Paleokhora in the south-west by destroyer to attack the German flank had to be aborted because of heavy seas. If they had managed to land, they would soon have come up against the German 55th Motor-Cycle Battalion, which had by then begun to break through the brave Cretan defenders round Kandanos.

A party of two hundred men from this commando force had, however, arrived in Suda Bay on the night of 24 May by the fast minelaying cruiser, HMS
Abdiel.
The main body, having returned to Alexandria after failing to land at Paleokhora, finally reached Suda Bay two nights later in the destroyers
Hero
and
Nizam
and the
Abdiel
on its second run.

These two commando battalions, lightly armed and only five hundred strong, were commanded by Colonel Robert Laycock, an officer from the Royal Horse Guards with considerable qualities of leadership and the face of a gentleman boxer. His brigade major was Freddie Graham, and his intelligence officer Captain Evelyn Waugh. 'A' Battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J.B.

Colvin of the West Yorks, who had already arrived with the advance party, and 'D' Battalion by Lieutenant Colonel George Young of the Royal Engineers, the sapper officer who had originally been flown out in 1939 by MI(R) to sabotage the Ploesti oilfields.

Also on the quay at Suda that night was Peter Wilkinson of SOE who had gone there earlier in the evening to see if some sabotage equipment had arrived for Bill Barbrook. 'We were busy', Wilkinson reported to Gubbins, 'burning 25 German uniforms which DH/A [Ian Pirie] had brought with him from Greece at a time when the nearest parachutist was only about 300 yards away. The inefficiency and lack of preparedness in DH/A's office was not too good!' But a surprise awaited him. Captain Morse, the Naval Officer-in-Charge, had received a 'Top Secret — Decode Yourself from the Admiralty ordering him to get Wilkinson off the island. Somebody in London had wrongly assumed that he knew all about 'most secret sources', and the capture of anyone who was 'Ultra-indoctrinated'