Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (33 page)

Soon after dawn on 28 May, commanding officers were summoned to Brigadier Chappel's headquarters. There they heard that a squadron of the Royal Navy would take them off from Heraklion harbour that night. Secrecy must be preserved at all costs. Battalion orders groups were held at midday, but the men were not to be told until the last moment in case anyone in the forward positions or on patrol was taken prisoner. For Colonel Pitcairn of the Black Watch the news that morning was particularly bitter. One of his most popular company commanders, Major Alastair Hamilton, who had dramatically promised that 'the Black Watch leaves Crete when the snow leaves Mount Ida', was killed by a mortar bomb.

The feeling in the 14th Infantry Brigade's headquarters was that 'the other end had let the side down'.

They also felt that they had been forced to let down the Cretans who had fought with such astonishing bravery. On that last evening, Pendlebury's friend Satanas, the guerrilla kapitan from Kroussonas, suddenly appeared in the cave as soldiers destroyed equipment and officers burned documents. Word of the evacuation had somehow reached the guerrillas, but not Greek army units for whom, it was decided in Alexandria, there was not enough room on the warships.

The white-haired Satanas, a dramatic and impressive figure in his Cretan dress, was taken to Brigadier Chappel. Paddy Leigh Fermor described the scene years later: ' "My son," he said, placing his hand on the Brigadier's shoulder, "we know you are going away tonight. Never mind! You will come back when the right time comes. But leave us as many guns as you can, to carry on the fight till then." Deeply moved, the Brigadier told us to hand over all the arms we could collect.'

Platoon commanders in the York and Lancaster Regiment did not tell their men until eight o'clock in the evening, as instructed. The news caused an 'astonished silence as to them the whole battle of the last ten days had seemed to have been eminently successful'.

There was little time to prepare for the withdrawal. No heavy equipment could be taken on the ships.

Breech-blocks from the field guns and unspent ammunition had to be buried, vehicle engines were ruined by being run at full speed after sand had been put in their sumps, signals equipment was smashed and petrol poured into rum jars. The rest of the kit was booby-trapped with grenades, and explosive charges set for early the following morning were placed in the fuel dumps.

Officers in the Leicesters contributed to this denial of stores to the enemy by retiring to their mess in a cave where a farewell dinner had been prepared. Each was rationed to 'one glass of sherry, one whisky and one liqueur', then they smashed the remaining bottles and the crockery.

The withdrawal was carried out perfectly, largely due to the experience and competence of NCOs in these regular battalions. Colonel Bräuer's paratroopers had no idea of what was afoot. At 9.30 p.m., the two companies on the airfield moved in the dark along the road to the harbour. Officers could not help thinking of the burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna. The Black Watch's covering party, the platoon watching the gorge beyond the airfield, would have to run to the mole when their turn to pull out finally came at one in the morning.

'It was an eerie business', recorded one regimental account, 'trailing down in the darkness past the well-known landmarks: past the airfield, the Greek Barracks, and the Club, where many a good party had been enjoyed with the hospitable people of Heraklion.' But the darkness concealed the state of the city. After the air raids, parts of Heraklion were as badly wrecked as Canea. Sewers had burst, and there was a stench of unburied bodies which had attracted the attention of starving dogs.

When the troops lined up on the mole ready to embark, Paddy Leigh Fermor noticed a very small soldier in ill-fitting battledress and steel helmet tilted forward. He took a closer look. A nervous giggle revealed a Cretan girl illicitly trying to accompany a corporal to Egypt. He did not have the heart to give them away, so hurried on to where brigade headquarters had been told to assemble. She was not alone. That night, four women managed to get aboard HMS
Orion,
the flagship of the rescuing force, as well as twelve Greek soldiers and six civilians.

At 11.30 p.m. Rear Admiral Rawlings's force reached Heraklion with only two cruisers. Rawlings had ordered the
Ajax
to turn back to Alexandria after she suffered damage during a heavy air attack.

While the cruisers
Orion
and
Dido
remained offshore, their six accompanying destroyers ferried troops out to them from the mole of the New Harbour in pairs. One of these destroyers, HMS
Imperial,
had also suffered a near miss, but the extent of the damage to her steering gear did not emerge until later.

When the cruisers had been loaded with over a thousand men each, the destroyers then returned for their passengers. Finally, Brigadier Chappel, his headquarters and the rearguard went on board HMS

Kimberley
and HMS
Imperial.
Every man assembled had embarked — 3,486 in all — by the deadline of 2.45 a.m. on 29 May.

In retrospect, it seems almost as if the operation had gone too well. An hour and a half after the squadron sailed, the steering gear on HMS
Imperial
jammed. She slewed round, nearly ramming a caique with Mike Cumberlege and Nicholas Hammond on board; they were escaping in a similar direction.*
Hotspur
turned back on Admiral Rawlings's instruction to take off the crew and soldiers, a mixture mainly of Black Watch and Australians. Orders were given on the
Imperial
to line the side at once and jump from one ship to the other as the
Hotspur
came level. A group of Australian soldiers, semi-insensible from drink, had to be left below. As soon as everyone capable of jumping was aboard,
Hotspur
pulled away and fired torpedoes into
Imperial,
leaving her to sink. The Australians left on board went down with her.

* The engine of the
Dolphin
had failed completely, so Cumberlege and Hammond had pirated a replacement in Canea harbour just before the town fell to the Germans, then sailed her eastwards to Heraklion. Two days later in the Libyan Sea, a Messerschmitt attacked them. Cumberlege was wounded, his cousin Cle and Able Seaman Saunders were killed. On their landfall in the bay of Sollum, Hammond saw from puffs of smoke that they were heading for the front line, so, turning eastwards, they carried on to Mersa Matruh where they were fished by the Navy.

The rest of the force in the meantime had reduced speed to fifteen knots, waiting for the overloaded
Hotspur
to catch up. By then Rawlings's ships were over an hour late. They were still well short of the Kaso strait and the island of Skarpanto with its enemy airfield. 'So it was', wrote an officer on the flagship, 'that when daylight came we were still inside the Aegean, turning to the southward as the sun rose at six o'clock. Against the dawn was silhouetted the first wave of attackers.'

The bombing, which began with five Stukas, continued in waves for six hours. The
Hereward
was hit first. She had to turn in to try and beach on Crete. The
Orion
was attacked twice that morning. She received two direct hits and underwater damage from six or seven near misses. The two bombs penetrated three levels of decks where most of the thousand soldiers were crammed in conditions akin to the Black Hole of Calcutta. The devastation formed a vision of military hell: 260 men were killed and 280 seriously wounded. The NCOs who had elected to stay on deck, bravely manning eighteen Bren guns to increase the ship's anti-aircraft fire, had made a fortunate choice. 'Since I was a boy', wrote the same officer in the
Orion,
'I had always wondered what it must have felt like to take part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Now I know.'

Dido
was also singled out for attack. Two bombs fell in sequence, one destroying a gun turret and the other breaking right through to explode in the canteen packed with troops. Over a hundred soldiers were killed, either by the blast, or by burns, or by drowning when water had to be pumped in to prevent the fire spreading to the magazine.

As the severely damaged ships limped into Alexandria harbour that evening, a Black Watch piper lit by a searchlight played a lament from the bridge. Men wept unashamedly. Over a fifth of the force at Heraklion had been lost, the majority at sea, not in combat with the paratroopers.

Small groups out of contact, such as standing patrols, as well as the wounded lying in the military hospital at Knossos, had to be left behind. Some, hearing from Cretan irregulars of the withdrawal, arrived too late. Others crossed the island to join up with the rear party of the Argylls on the south coast.

Jack Hamson with his hundred men on the flank of Mount Ida first heard of defeat when stragglers from a Greek militia group posted near Knossos streamed past his position. Hamson did not believe them. On 30 May, a messenger arrived on the Plain of Nida exhausted from the climb: 'They've fled, the English, from Heraklion. They've gone. Ships came and took them off in the night, two nights ago.

The fighting's finished. You must go now.' The news was confirmed by Satanas, who also added that a large Italian force had landed at the eastern end of the island near Siteia on 28 May. Mussolini, true to form, had waited until the Germans had won the battle before sending troops from the Dodecanese to the eastern and least warlike part of the island. Italian torpedo bombers had taken part in a number of generally unsuccessful attacks on British warships over the previous week, and high-level bombers had raided the port of Hierapetra on 25 May.

At Rethymno, Colonel Campbell and his two Australian battalions had no idea of these events. The small landing craft sent from Suda with supplies reached them in the early morning of 28 May. The young naval officer commanding it, Lieutenant Haig, had not brought Freyberg's message with instructions for evacuation due to confusion at Suda and Creforce Headquarters on the night Layforce arrived. All Haig could tell Campbell was that he had been told to head for Sphakia on the south coast.

Campbell, burdened with a regular officer's consciousness of responsibility, would not contemplate abandoning his mission at Rethymno until officially relieved of it. Unfortunately, several attempts to drop messages by aircraft failed.

Haig had arrived a few hours after the Australians' two tanks had been finally destroyed in an attack on the German strongpoints round Perivolia. Both Campbell and Sandover finally had to accept that they could not break the German grip on the coast road. An idea to attack towards Suda was discarded, and Campbell insisted on continuing to deny the airfield to the enemy as ordered.

The same morning, General Ringel ordered the bulk of his force in their direction. Lieutenant Colonel Wittmann's 95th Mountain Artillery Regiment with the 5th Mountain Division's motor-cycle, reconnaissance and anti-tank detachments were to lead the way followed by the 85th and 141st Mountain Regiments. Tanks from the 31st Armoured Regiment, landing that day at Kastelli Kissamou having been delayed by guerrilla action, would be hurried forward to support them.

Wittmann's orders were 'to pursue the enemy eastwards through Rethymno to Heraklion without a pause. First objective Rethymno and the relief of the paratroops fighting there.' Although disastrous for Campbell's force, Ringel's misapprehension — German intelligence was still astonishingly inept

— resulted in his sending only the 100th Mountain Regiment southwards on the pursuit towards Sphakia. Thus the bulk of the British and Dominion forces on the island escaped.

On the evening of the following day, 29 May, a Greek officer warned Campbell that the British had left Heraklion and that a German force from there was advancing towards Rethymno from the east.

Meanwhile Ringel's mountain artillery advancing from the west had begun ranging and motor-cycle troops had entered Rethymno. Food and ammunition were in short supply. All that night Australian soldiers took turns on the beach flashing the morse letter 'A' seawards in case Royal Navy warships were coming to save them. Next morning, the Germans renewed their advance from Rethymno towards the airfield, which Campbell held with the survivors of the 2/1 st Battalion. Sandover's battalion, the 2/1 lth, soon spotted the procession of tanks and motor-cycles. The two commanders conferred by field telephone. Already the company on the coast road had been forced into leap-frog withdrawals, but accurate fire delayed the Germans very effectively. 'The game's up, Aussies!' the Germans yelled forward.

Severe warnings of reprisals against civilians if resistance continued had been dropped by German aircraft, and Campbell rightly rejected the idea of futile casualties. As a regular soldier, however, his view of the hopeless situation followed the rules of war to negotiated surrender. Sandover, an accountant and businessman, believed that every man should be given the chance to get away, and he proposed to lead those of his men who wanted to try their luck over the hills. The two men in this final conversation agreed to differ and wished each other luck. Campbell became a prisoner of war, while Sandover, with thirteen officers and thirty-nine NCOs and soldiers, escaped to Egypt by submarine after several months in the mountains.

The true measure of the Cretan spirit was its even greater generosity in defeat. On their departure, Ray Sandover received a message from one of the many volunteers who had helped them in the battle.

'Major, my greatest wish is that you will take a glass of wine in my house the day we are free. That is all I wish to live for.'

19

Surrender

31 May and 1 June

On the night of the large operation at Heraklion, the Royal Navy embarked the first thousand evacuees at Sphakia in four destroyers. Fear of being left behind was the best spur to the weary troops.

Feet burning, they slogged up the mountain road from Vrysses. One false ridge followed another as the route twisted up above the line at which the hardier vegetation gave way to grey shale. To the west, the view was dominated by the snow-capped peaks of the White Mountains, including Mount Venizelos.