Operation Mercury (12 page)

Quite early in the confused and savage battle for Maleme, upon which the fate of the island garrison was to hinge, a spirited German attack from dead ground overran the Bofors, though the New Zealand infantry of C company held their ground and inflicted further, significant loss. D company's Brens riddled Braun's gliders, killing the major and many of his men. The survivors fell back toward the bridge where the lie of the ground afforded some cover. Here they were able to gain a lodgement and secure a precarious grip on the bridge itself. Some made it to the periphery of the airfield.

Koch's assault group fared no better. The gliders landed in two detachments straddling the opposing slopes but the fire of the defenders again accounted for many of them; those on the north eastern flank were also exposed to fire from 21st and 23rd Battalions. Koch too, became a casualty and was carried, dying, by the dazed survivors as they fell back behind the sheltering banks of the Tavronitis.

The 3rd Battalion transports swept in over the north coast in a roar of massed propellers, in the expectation the Bofors guns would have been taken. The aircraft were mercilessly raked, several shot down, many others damaged and the tight formation flying began to disperse. The parachutists, spewing in disorder over a four mile stretch of coast road, rock and scrub, landed directly on the positions held by 21st and 23rd Battalions, as Les Young laconically recorded:

Scherber himself was amongst the many dead that littered the ground. Lieutenant Colonel Leckie, the Battalion commander, personally accounted for five of the intruders. A vicious firefight spluttered on for a couple of hours but the
Fallschirmjäger
were decimated and ruined as an effective detachment. A few managed to fortify houses below Modhion and hang on, but the attack was broken.

For the parachutists this was the stuff of nightmares; it would be immediately obvious to even the most dim witted that their intelligence estimates were grievously flawed and that the number and mettle of the defenders was infinitely greater than had been promised. As the men, already parched and sweating profusely in their wool kit (no allowance for tropical issue had been made), scrabbled for their weapon containers many were shot down or bayoneted before they fired a round. The survivors, leaderless, took to whatever cover they could find, in handfuls and rally groups, huddling in dried up stream beds, disorientated in the horticultural jungle of endless olive groves.

Sergeant Bill Ritchie found his morning routine unexpectedly interrupted:

German intelligence had completely misread the strategic realities which obtained on Crete. They seemed to have come to the wholly erroneous conclusion that the Allies were in the process of pulling out and that the campaign would therefore be a ‘walkover'. Their awakening was to be most rude:

Moreover, their intelligence had also misled them over the sympathies of the natives who rushed out, armed with whatever they could, and set about the invaders with a fury. Nazi Germany's Aryan elite were, in some cases, hacked to death by fearless Cretan housewives or blasted by ancient shotguns. To add to their dismay a re-supply flight of Junkers, cruising in during the late morning, dropped significant quantities of arms and ammunition, including machine guns, most of which were gratefully received by the defenders.

Eugen Meindl was forty-nine; old for a paratrooper. Like Student he was the living embodiment of the paratrooper ideal – fearless, resolute and always at the forefront. The position in which he found himself as the morning wore on into the hot, dry afternoon of 20 May was one that would have daunted any commander. His detachments had failed to secure any of their key objectives, they were scattered over the sector in penny packets, casualties were obviously dire, the strength, will and skill of the defenders formidable.

One of Andrew's most exposed forward units was D Company, less than seventy-five riflemen, bolstered by a couple of machine guns. Undeterred by the awesome parade of transports, the Kiwis shot down all those who were unlucky enough to land within range. Those landing west of the river were, however, relatively safe.

Stenzler's men, west of the Tavronitis had been able to form up relatively undisturbed and these represented the only intact formation on the field. Meindl therefore began to consolidate what he had, exploiting the meagre gains to dig in on the perimeter of the airfield. To try and retain some element of the initiative he ordered Stenzler to detach 5th and 7th Companies, swing around to the south and storm Hill 107 from this direction. It was a bold move and a desperate one, but both Meindl and his adjutant, von Seelen, were shortly afterward disabled by wounds. Gericke now took command.

The 22nd New Zealand Battalion had so far borne the main brunt of the onslaught and had given a first-class account of themselves. Nonetheless, as the morning wore on into the afternoon, their position became increasingly uncertain. Waves of Stukas screamed down upon their hilltop trenches, the harsh clatter of machine guns heralded yet another strafing run from a cruising Me109. The men were suffering from the stifling heat, exacerbated by a dwindling water supply.

One of Andrew's difficulties was the large and rather disorderly RAF camp. This lay at the extremity of the line held by C Company. It contained several hundred men, many of whom were unarmed. The difficulties in coordinating operations with the RAF meant that the colonel had little direct influence over these personnel and no proper defence of the camp appears to have been organised. Many of the ground crew were militant in their insistence they were not combat troops. Events have a habit of disregarding such nice distinctions, especially in the fog of war.

The paratroops, having secured the iron bridge over the Tavronitis, were now able to nibble around the exposed flank and penetrate the camp itself. No serious resistance was offered by the startled RAF who dispersed before these heavily armed figures, driven like game through the maze of tents. The collapse of any coherent defence enabled the Germans to work around both C and D Companies and to mount the beginnings of an assault on Hill 107. By noon, however, this potentially dangerous gap had been plugged and the advance halted. The laconic Lofty Fellows had been on an escort detail to the west of the strip:

Even more ominously the New Zealanders' forward positions were being shelled by the German guns and mortars safely landed west of the Tavronitis. Ammunition was also running low as were the batteries for their radios, communications became difficult and Colonel Andrew lost contact with his forward companies.

He could, however, still communicate with Hargest at Platanias. The troops huddled in their inadequate trenches on the summit and flanks of Hill 107 could not fail to notice that the weight of the German pressure was increasing and that the enemy deployment west of the river was proceeding without interruption.

The HQ Company of the 22nd was posted in and around the village of Pirgos. Lofty Fellows, by now back with the defenders and manning a machine gun, found a unit of paratroops forming up, directly under his sights, apparently oblivious. He very soon made his presence felt. Still in need of a well-earned breakfast he also managed to acquire a 2-inch mortar which he utilised to suppress a further body of the enemy, bunkered in one of the houses. The deadly game of hide and seek continued through the morning till virtually all of the lodgements had been mopped up, save for the inevitable crop of sharpshooters.

Not entirely without hindrance, one detachment west of the iron bridge was in serious difficulties, Lieutenant Paul Muerbe and his seventy-four paratroopers who had been tasked to mop up the outpost at Kastelli. This was manned by the 1 Greek Regiment, nominally 1,000 strong but with barely sufficient arms and those of indeterminate quality for every other man and less than a handful of live rounds apiece.

These local recruits were stiffened by detachments of the gendarmerie, earlier animosities submerged, and led by Major T.G. Bedding with a small cadre of New Zealanders as instructors. The Major had divided his command into two weak battalions posted either side of the town. Muerbe's company were few but they were heavily armed and bolstered by the full, Aryan bravado of the
Fallschirmjäger
, they were scheduled for re-supply late morning and were not anticipating serious resistance. In this they were to be disappointed.

They lacked arms, ammunition and training but no one could say the men of Crete lacking fighting spirit, it coursed through their veins, they had not run from invaders in the past and they were not proposing simply to hand over their town, their homes and their honour. Muerbe's men dropped in two sticks, both to the east of Kastelli and they had jumped onto the bayonets of Bedding's first or ‘A' Battalion.

It is said many Germans were shot as they floated to earth,
¹⁴
others riddled as they attempted to fumble clear of their harness, still more stalked and sniped by the locals who knew every blade of grass and the lie of each dry bed and ditch. Each German killed yielded a cache of superior weapons. Bedding and his command group put their Brens to good effect.

Disorientated, the surviving Germans began shooting wildly, often into their own men. As they stumbled, dazed and leaderless, through the maze of olive groves, Cretan fighters, men and women, would rise like shrieking spectres from each fold of cover and set about them. This was warfare at its most crude and bloody, no quarter given, clubs and knives hacking down the pride of the Luftwaffe.

By mid morning the remnants of Muerbe's detachment were frantically fortifying a cluster of farm buildings as a last ditch defence. Having contained and emasculated the attack Bedding now wanted simply to surround and contain. This was too tame for the Cretans who launched a wild and desperate charge, pressing the attack home despite heavy loss and dealing with Muerbe's survivors. Few came out alive, those who did were incarcerated by Bedding in the town gaol, primarily to save them from the bloodlust.

The subsequent German report on the action concluded that:

The Cretans, with their long history of uncompromising resistance to the invader, were quick to adapt one of their traditional warrior songs: