The Second World War (33 page)

Freyberg was even more dejected when he discovered the lack of air cover available, and he feared that the Royal Navy would not be able to provide protection against a ‘
seaborne invasion
’. He appears to have seized the wrong end of the stick right from the start. He could not imagine Crete being taken in an airborne attack, so he put increasing emphasis on a seaborne threat. Wavell, however, was perfectly clear in his own mind, as his signals to London showed, that the Axis simply did not have the naval strength to come by sea. This fundamental misunderstanding on Freyberg’s part influenced both the original disposition of his forces and his conduct of the battle at the critical moment.

The Allied troops on the island under Freyberg’s command became known as Creforce. Heraklion airfield to the east was defended by the
British 14th Infantry Brigade and an Australian battalion. Rethymno airfield was covered by two battalions of Australians and two Greek regiments. But Maleme airfield in the west, the Germans’ main objective, had only a single New Zealand battalion to defend it. This was because Frey-berg believed that an amphibious assault would come on the coast just west of Chania. As a result he concentrated the bulk of his division along that stretch, with the Welch Regiment and another New Zealand battalion as reserve. No forces at all were positioned on the far side of Maleme.

On 6 May, an Ultra decrypt showed that the Germans were planning to land two divisions by air, more than double the number of men that Wavell had first indicated. Further confirmation and details of the German plan arrived, making it absolutely clear that the main effort was an airborne assault. Unfortunately, the Directorate of Military Intelligence in London had mistakenly increased the number of reserves being transported by sea on the second day. Yet Freyberg went much further, imagining the possibility of ‘
a beach landing with tanks
’, which had never been mentioned. After the battle, he admitted: ‘
We for our part
were mostly preoccupied by seaborne landings, not by the threat of air landings.’ Churchill, on the other hand, was exultant at the detail offered in the Ultra decrypts about the airborne invasion. It was a rare chance in war to know the exact timing and the primary objectives of an enemy attack. ‘
It ought to be a fine
opportunity for killing the parachute troops,’ he had signalled to Wavell.

While the Allied defenders had a huge advantage in their information, German military intelligence was extraordinarily inept, perhaps due to over-confidence after all Germany’s easy victories. A summary on 19 May, the eve of the attack, estimated that there were only 5,000 Allied troops on the island, with just 400 at Heraklion. Photo-reconnaissance flights by Dornier aircraft had failed to spot the well-camouflaged British and Dominion positions. Most astonishing of all, the briefing claimed that the Cretans would welcome the German invaders.

Because of delays in the delivery of aviation fuel, the operation was postponed from 17 May until the 20th. And during the last days before the attack, the onslaught from Richthofen’s Stukas and Messerschmitts increased dramatically. Their main target was anti-aircraft gun positions. The Bofors gunners had a terrible time, except at Heraklion airfield, where they were told to abandon their guns and make them appear to have been destroyed. Very wisely, 14th Infantry Brigade wanted to hold them in readiness for when the transports arrived with the paratroopers. But in an another example of confused thinking, Freyberg, although warned by Ultra intercepts that the Germans did not want to damage the airfields as they intended to use them immediately, failed to sabotage the runways with craters.

At dawn stand-to on 20 May, the sky was clear. It was to be another beautiful and hot Mediterranean day. The usual air attacks began at 06.00 hours and lasted an hour and a half. Once they were over, soldiers climbed out of their slit-trenches and brewed up for breakfast. Many thought that the airborne invasion, which they had been warned would come on 17 May, might never come at all. Freyberg, even though he knew it was now scheduled for that morning, had decided not to pass on the information.

Just before 08.00 hours, the sound of a different sort of aero-engine could be heard as Junkers 52 transports approached the island. Men grabbed their rifles and ran back to their positions. At Maleme and on the Akrotiri Peninsula near Freyberg’s headquarters, strangely shaped aircraft with long, tapering wings swished low overhead. The shout of ‘Gliders!’ went up. Rifles, Bren guns and machine guns opened fire. At Maleme forty gliders were seen to sweep over the airfield and land beyond the western perimeter in the dead ground of the Tavronitis riverbed and on the far side. A number of the gliders crashed, several were hit by ground-fire. Freyberg’s failure to position troops west of Maleme became immediately apparent. The gliders carried I Battalion of the Fallschirmjäger Storm Regiment, commanded by Major Koch, who had led the assault on the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael the year before. Very soon afterwards an even greater sound of aero-engines heralded the arrival of the main force of paratroopers.

To the surprise of more junior officers at Creforce headquarters, General Freyberg, on hearing the sound, carried on with his breakfast. He glanced up, simply remarking: ‘
They’re dead on time
.’ His imperturbable attitude was both impressive and worrying to some of those present. His staff watched through binoculars as the waves of Junkers transports dropped paratroopers and the battle erupted up and down the coastal strip. Several of the younger officers joined the hunt for glider crews which had crashed just to the north of the quarry in which Creforce headquarters was established.

The New Zealanders set to killing the paratroopers with gusto as they descended. Officers told their men to aim at their boots as they came down to allow for the speed of descent. At Maleme, two more German battalions dropped beyond the Tavronitis. The New Zealand 22nd Battalion responsible for the airfield had positioned only a company around the airfield, with a single platoon on the vulnerable western side. Just south of the airfield was a rocky feature known as Hill 107 where Lieutenant Colonel L. W. Andrew had sited his command post. The company commander on the west side of the hill directed his men’s fire to great effect, but when he suggested that the two coastal guns should also be brought into action,
he received the reply that they were for use only against targets at sea. Freyberg’s obsession with a ‘seaborne invasion’ made him refuse to use his artillery and deploy his reserves, a profound error since the wisest tactical response was to launch an immediate counter-attack before enemy para-troopers had a chance to organize.

Many of the Germans dropping south-west of Chania into what was known as Prison Valley faced a massacre as they fell right on to well-camouflaged positions. One group dropped on to the 23rd Battalion’s headquarters. The commanding officer shot five and his adjutant shot two from where he was sitting. Cries of ‘Got the bastard!’ could be heard in all directions. Very few prisoners were taken in the heat of the fighting.

None were more merciless in their determination to defend the island than the Cretans themselves. Old men, women and boys, using shotguns, old rifles, spades and kitchen knives, went into action against German para troopers in the open and those caught in olive trees by their chutes. Father Stylianos Frantzeskakis, hearing of the invasion, ran to the church and sounded the bell. Taking a rifle himself, he led his parishioners north from Paleochora to fight the enemy. The Germans, who had a Prussian hatred of
francs-tireurs
, ripped shirts or dresses from the shoulders of civilians. If any showed marks from the recoil of a gun or were found with a knife, they were executed on the spot, whatever their age or sex.

Creforce was hampered by bad communications due to a shortage of wireless sets, since none had been shipped out from Egypt in the three weeks before the attack. As a result, the Australians at Rethymno and the British 14th Infantry Brigade at Heraklion had no idea until 14.30 hours that the invasion had begun in the west of the island.

Fortunately for the British, problems in refuelling on the airfields in Greece had delayed the departure of Oberst Bruno Bräuer’s 1st Fall-schirmjäger Regiment. This meant that the preliminary attack by Stukas and Messerschmitts was well over before the wave of Junkers 52 transports began to arrive. Buglers sounded the General Alarm just before 17.30 hours. Soldiers threw themselves into their well-camouflaged positions. The Bofors gun crews, which had again avoided reacting during the air raid, now traversed their barrels, ready to take on the lumbering transport planes. They were able to shoot down fifteen of them in the next two hours.

Bräuer, misled by the bad intelligence, had decided to spread his drops, with the III Battalion dropping south-west of Heraklion, the II Battalion landing on the airfield to the east of the city, and the I Battalion around the village of Gournes even further to the east. Hauptmann Burckhardt’s
II Battalion faced a massacre. The highlanders of the Black Watch opened a murderous fire. The few survivors were then crushed in a counter-attack with a troop of the 3rd Hussars in Whippet tanks running over and gunning down any who tried to flee.

Major Schulz’s III Battalion, having dropped into maize fields and vineyards, fought its way into Heraklion despite a fierce defence of the old Venetian city walls by Greek troops and Cretan irregulars. The mayor surrendered the city, but then the York and Lancaster Regiment and the Leicestershire Regiment counter-attacked, and forced the German para-troopers back out. By nightfall, Oberst Bräuer realized that his operation had gone drastically wrong.

At Rethymno, between Heraklion and Chania, part of Oberst Alfred Sturm’s 2nd Fallschirmjäger Regiment also dropped into a trap. Lieutenant Colonel Ian Campbell had spread his two Australian battalions on the high ground overlooking the coast road and the airfield, with the ill-armed Greek troops in between. As the Junkers flew along parallel to the sea, the defenders opened a withering fire. Seven aircraft were shot down. Others, trying to escape, dropped their paratroopers into the sea where a number drowned, smothered by their chutes. Some paratroopers dropped on rocky ground and were injured, and several suffered a terrible death by dropping into cane breaks where they were impaled on the bamboo. Both Australian battalions launched counter-attacks. The German survivors had to escape eastwards where they took up position in an olive-oil factory. And another group which had dropped closer to Rethymno withdrew into the village of Perivolia to defend itself when attacked by Cretan gendarmerie and irregulars from the town.

As night fell rapidly on Crete, troops on both sides collapsed in exhaustion. Firing died away. German paratroopers suffered agonies of thirst. Their uniforms were designed for northern climates and many experienced severe dehydration. Cretan irregulars laid ambushes for them near wells and continued to stalk them all night. A large number of German officers, including the commander of the 7th Fallschirmjäger Division, had been killed.

In Athens, news of the disaster spread. General Student stared at the giant map of the island on the wall of the ballroom in the Hotel Grande Bretagne. Although his headquarters lacked detailed figures, they knew that casualties had been very heavy and that none of the three airfields had been secured. Only Maleme still seemed possible, but the Storm Regiment in the Tavronitis Valley was almost out of ammunition. Generalfeldmarschall List’s Twelfth Army headquarters and Richthofen’s VIII Fliegerkorps
were convinced that Operation Mercury had to be aborted, even if that meant abandoning the paratroopers on the island. One captured officer had even acknowledged to an Australian battalion commander: ‘
We do not reinforce failure
.’

General Freyberg, meanwhile, signalled to Cairo at 22.00 hours to say that as far as he knew his troops still held the three airfields and the two harbours. He was woefully misinformed, however, about the situation at Maleme. Colonel Andrew’s battered battalion had fought as well as it possibly could, but his requests for a counter-attack on the airfield were effectively ignored. Andrew’s superior Brigadier James Hargest, presumably influenced by Freyberg’s emphasis on a threat from the sea, did not send help. When Andrew warned him that he would have to withdraw if he did not receive support, Hargest replied: ‘If you must, you must.’ Maleme and Hill 107 were thus abandoned during the night.

General Student, determined not to give up, came to a decision without warning Generalfeldmarschall List. He sent for Hauptmann Kleye, the most experienced pilot in his command, and asked him to make a test landing on the airfield at first light. Kleye returned to report that he had not come under direct fire. Another Junkers was also despatched to take ammunition to the Storm Regiment and evacuate some of its wounded. Student immediately ordered Generalmajor Julius Ringel’s 5th Mountain Division to prepare to be flown out, but first he sent every available reserve from the 7th Fallschirmjäger Division under the command of Oberst Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke to be dropped near Maleme. With the airfield secured, the first troop carriers began landing at 17.00 hours with part of the 100th Mountain Regiment.

Freyberg, still expecting an invasion fleet, refused to allow any of his other reserves to be used in a counter-attack apart from the 20th New Zealand Battalion. The Welch Regiment, his largest and best-equipped unit, was to be held back because he still feared a ‘
seaborne attack
in area Canea [Chania]’. Yet one of his own staff officers had told him from captured German plans that the
Light Ships Group
, bringing reinforcements and supplies, was heading for a point west of Maleme, some twenty kilometres from Chania. Freyberg had also refused to listen to the assurance of the senior naval officer on the island that the Royal Navy was perfectly capable of dealing with the small boats coming by sea.

At dusk, once the Luftwaffe had disappeared from the Aegean, three Royal Navy task forces returned at full steam round both ends of the island. Thanks to Ultra intercepts, they knew the course of their prey. Force D, with three cruisers and four destroyers using radar, ambushed the flotilla of caiques escorted by an Italian light destroyer. The searchlights
flashed on and the massacre began. Only one caique escaped their net and made it to shore.