Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (23 page)

For the wounded, darkness brought little relief except from the sun. All suffered from a choking thirst as they lay on the hard and still warm ground. A group of Greek soldiers, who lay wounded in an isolated house hit by a bomb, were discovered only by chance three days later, tortured by pain and thirst. An RAF squadron leader near Maleme, with both his forearms shattered, tried to shoot himself with his pistol, but his fingers had not even the strength to pull the trigger and thus release him from his agony. For the Germans fear increased as Cretan irregulars stalked the battlefield for arms. All they could do was to crawl under bushes to hide.

In the lingering warmth of that first evening the thyme-scented air was still pure: on subsequent days it became increasingly corrupted by the stench of decomposing flesh.

At ten o'clock, Freyberg signalled to Cairo: 'Today has been a hard one. We have been hard pressed.

So far, I believe, we hold aerodromes at Retimo [Rethymno], Heraklion and Maleme and the two harbours. Margin by which we hold them is a bare one, and it would be wrong of me to paint optimistic picture. Fighting has been heavy and we have killed large numbers of Germans.

Communications are most difficult.'

He then added to his signal, 'A German operation order with most ambitious objectives, all of which failed, has just been captured.' Geoffrey Cox, one of his intelligence officers, had discovered this document when sifting through papers collected from dead and captured members of the 3rd Parachute Regiment. Cox's rapid translation showed that the Germans had expected to take the airfields and the ports in the course of the first day's fighting. Freyberg was elated by this news. He did not know that the margin by which they held Maleme was disappearing at that very moment.

That night, most Germans believed that they were beaten because the British would launch a counter-attack. Such large numbers from their ranks had been killed that, according to Weiksler, the war correspondent with them, only fifty-seven men remained capable of fighting in the area of the Tavronitis bridge and airfield. The loss of platoon and company commanders was the most disastrous.

Major Stentzler and Captain Gericke were the Storm Regiment's only battalion commanders still on their feet.

The web of misunderstanding which led to the loss of Maleme, and ultimately the whole island, was partly due to the 'most difficult' communications: the defenders on the airfield had no wireless set, and Colonel Andrew's command post, which did, could not see the airfield. But muddled thinking before the invasion, compounded by fatigue and confusion once the battle started, contributed still more.

Colonel Andrew had told Brigadier Hargest shortly before nightfall that after the failure of the attack with the tanks, he would have to withdraw. Hargest's reply — 'If you must, you must' — was accompanied by a promise to send two companies to reinforce him.

Dismay at their non-appearance, on top of Hargest's very unhelpful reaction in a critical situation, inevitably had a disorientating effect on Colonel Andrew. His superior officers had emphasized the importance of counter-attacking the enemy, yet now seemed inexplicably reluctant to act. Combined with the order of Creforce Headquarters before the battle that the runway should be left intact and the mines laid on the airfield should be left unprimed, that would make any commanding officer wonder whether a fundamental change in priority had been decided without his knowledge.

Out of contact with his forward companies, convinced that the Germans had broken through on to the airfield from the bridge and overrun the platoons on the west side of Hill 107, and finally threatened by the probing attacks of Stentzler's companies which had swung round to attack his rear, Andrew felt that without support he must extricate his men before dawn brought the return of the Messerschmitts.

Not long after nine o'clock, he warned Hargest by wireless that he was withdrawing to the subsidiary ridge to the southeast of Hill 107. Hargest does not seem to have felt that a reaction was required to this news, though it signified an end to any effective control over Maleme airfield. Hargest even informed divisional headquarters that the situation was 'quite satisfactory'.

Andrew sent out runners to his companies to warn them of the move, but the runners sent to C

Company on the west of the airfield, D Company on the Tavronitis slope of Hill 107 and HQ

Company by the village of Pirgos did not get through. Meanwhile, the two companies eventually sent by Hargest to reinforce the defenders — one from the 28th (Maori) Battalion and the other from the adjacent 23rd Battalion — had no contact with each other. The Maoris reached the airfield in the dark, and proceeded carefully on hearing German voices. Afterwards, it was estimated that they had got to within two hundred metres of C Company's command post when they decided that the defenders must have been overrun and turned back.

The other company, from the 23rd Battalion, eventually found Colonel Andrew's new position, but after a certain amount of confusion and indecision, Andrew concluded that this rear ridge was also too isolated and exposed to hold. He would take his surviving companies another kilometre east to join up with the 23rd and 21st Battalions. There was barely a hint of
reculer pour mieux sauter,
in any case the worst possible strategy in the face of a paratroop attempt to capture an airfield. Following this course, the only hope of preventing the Germans from landing reinforcements on Maleme airfield would have been either a counter-attack by night, a risky venture for even the best trained troops, or an advance in full daylight facing the far greater perils of enemy air superiority. But the cruellest twist of Andrew's decision did not become apparent until after the war when it transpired that a single platoon, even a single Bren gun left in place on the airfield, could have swung the course of the whole battle.

The forward companies, not reached by runners, had no idea of Andrew's order to withdraw.

Conditions varied from one platoon to another. Some had suffered heavily and were short of ammunition, others remained virtually intact. Battered but unbeaten, with their morale sustained by the far heavier losses they had inflicted on the enemy, they were mainly dismayed by the length of time the 5th Brigade was taking to put in its counter-attack and sweep the remnants of the Storm Regiment back beyond the Tavronitis.

Before midnight, Captain Campbell of D Company on the Tavronitis slope of Hill 107 heard from a straggler, a marine gunner, that the rest of the battalion had withdrawn: he refused to believe him.

Thirst was their main problem, so Campbell and his company sergeant major crept off into the night festooned with felt-covered water-bottles. They were shocked to discover that the marine had been right. Battalion headquarters had left Hill 107. Not surprisingly, spirits fell as soon as this news spread in the company. Campbell felt that he had no alternative but to fall back as well.

A German propaganda myth grew out of this withdrawal from Hill 107 making a national hero out of the Storm Regiment's senior medical officer, Dr Heinrich Neumann. Neumann, a notorious disciplinarian in steel-rimmed spectacles, was a frustrated warrior of intense seriousness. He had flown twenty missions in Spain as a rear gunner in Heinkel bi-planes of the Condor Legion until told to stick to his duties as a doctor. After the slaughter of the Storm Regiment's officers, Neumann decided that his moment of destiny on the field of battle had come. He told his assistants in the regimental aid post to carry on without him, then assembled a force of twenty-odd paratroopers and, to the bemusement of combat officers, sent a dramatic note announcing his intention to capture Hill 107.

Neumann's group set off and eventually encountered a company commanded by Lieutenant Horst Trebes. A couple of accidental clashes in the dark, resulting in the death of one German sergeant, were later woven into a story of savage battle and heroic conquest by an unconventional leader, later presented with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Whatever the ludicrous aspect to this episode, the Germans were in possession of Hill 107 by dawn.

On the airfield, C Company stayed alert in their trenches listening to German voices in the surrounding darkness. Fortunately for them, the paratroopers' lack of enthusiasm for fighting at night became clear: most were so exhausted that they fell asleep as soon as the shooting stopped. Captain Johnson, the company commander, did not find out about Andrew's decision to withdraw until the early hours of the morning. One of the patrols he sent out returned with news that the Germans now occupied the battalion command post on the rear slope of Hill 107.

Johnson's dilemma was not an enviable one. He knew that if his men remained on the airfield their fire could prevent troop-carriers landing. But soon after dawn, they would be the focus for attack by the remainder of the Storm Regiment and the mass of Stukas and Messerschmitts, now that their positions were identified.

He knew nothing about the reasons for Colonel Andrew's withdrawal, and doubted whether a counter-attack by the rest of the brigade would be mounted in daylight. His men could not possibly survive another twenty-four hours unless resupplied and reinforced. At 4.20 a.m., he told them to take off their boots and tie the laces to hang them round their necks, then they moved as cautiously and as silently as possible, circumnavigating the snoring groups of German paratroopers on the airfield.

Finally, after sheltering in trees during the early morning blitz, they joined up with the 21st Battalion.

By dawn on 21 May, no New Zealand troops remained within the airfield perimeter. From their new positions direct fire was only possible on the eastern end of the runway. Maleme airfield was lost before the second day of the battle had started.

Both Puttick and Freyberg were gravely misled by Hargest's message that the situation at Maleme was 'quite satisfactory'. But considering their reluctance to devote sufficient forces to retake Maleme even after German troop-carriers began to land, it is unlikely that Hargest's failure made much difference. Hargest almost certainly had not wanted to move the 23rd Battalion, the one earmarked for a counterattack on the airfield, because of its responsibility for coastal defence. This only emphasizes the impression that the whole operational plan had been fatally muddled by Freyberg's misunderstanding over the enemy's seaborne reinforcements.

Kippenberger, on the other hand, had begun within a few hours of the first parachute drop to ask for the 20th Battalion, the divisional reserve, to launch a counter-attack on Prison Valley. Brigadier Inglis was equally frustrated. His 4th Brigade, which Freyberg had released to Puttick from Force Reserve, had waited expectantly with nothing to do after the initial flurry of fighting after breakfast. Inglis wanted to use the whole of his brigade to attack Prison Valley to clear it of Heidrich's 3rd Parachute Regiment, then swing north-westwards on Maleme.

Colonel Stewart, Freyberg's brigadier general staff, and Colonel Gentry, Puttick's own chief of staff, added their voices to urge action. But Puttick, backed by Freyberg, set his face against all pleas to counter-attack, despite the emphasis on such a course in operational orders. After the war Puttick argued that an attack on Prison Valley would have left troops exposed to enemy aircraft at dawn, but one can only conclude that he and Freyberg were in fact so preoccupied by the seaborne reinforcements that they did not want to move any units from their coastal positions.

Colonel Stewart also pointed out after the war that 'A striking feature of the battle was the tendency for senior officers to stay in their headquarters. In subsequent campaigns it was the accepted practice in the Division for commanders to be well forward ... In Crete where communications were always bad and often non-existent, it was more important than ever that commanders should have gone forward.'

Even if he had disagreed with Puttick's decision, Freyberg would have been loath to override it. He was afraid of stepping on the toes of his senior officers, especially since he sensed that New Zealand officers had not yet entirely accepted him back as one of their own. However, rather more was at stake than the susceptibilities of a handful of officers, and a lack of firm direction could only be justified if formation commanders were absolutely clear about priorities and capable of initiative.

Throughout that first night of the battle, the officers of the XI Air Corps in the Hotel Grande Bretagne had been under far too much strain to sleep. General Student, his second in command, Brigadier Schlemm, and the chief staff officer for operations, Colonel von Trettner, seldom left the ballroom.

'On the wall, in semi-darkness', wrote Captain von der Heydte basing his description on the accounts of fellow officers, 'was the large map of Crete dotted with little paper flags . . . On the broad table in the centre of the room, which was illuminated with unnecessary brilliance, stood three field-telephones amid a confusion of wires, a stack of papers, two black files, and, in the centre, a large ash-tray piled high with stubs and the remains of half-finished cigarettes . . . Qrderlies come and go ... telephones ring, teleprinters rattle.'