Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (14 page)

Only strong air cover could protect shipping, and Middle East command did not have enough Hurricane squadrons to allow them to be destroyed on pathetically vulnerable airfields. Nobody doubted the bravery of the RAF pilots. Soldiers watched in anguish at the odds they faced. One of the last Hurricanes at Maleme rose into the sky alone against a swarm of Messerschmitts which fell on it, in the words of a Bofors gunner, 'like a horde of hawks on a single sparrow'. But tardy and half-hearted attempts to construct fighter pens and satellite airfields protected by the mountains attracted fierce criticism. 'The attitude of the RAF beggars description,' Wilkinson continued in his report to Gubbins. 'Their excuses are not borne out by fact, and if the Germans can improvise aerodromes from which Junkers can take off six hours after landing, one feels something might have been done in six months of peaceful occupation. Because whatever the results of the Greek Campaign it must have been obvious to a schoolboy that Crete was the natural half-way house.'

Similarly, the courage of Royal Navy and Merchant Navy crews was not matched by administrative will-power on land. 'There was no foam fire fighting apparatus in Suda Bay,' Wilkinson continued,

'although it had been a so-called naval base for six months.'

Freyberg, understandably concerned to discover the true state of affairs, sent a signal to Wavell in Cairo. 'Forces at my disposal are totally inadequate to meet attack envisaged. Unless fighter aircraft are greatly increased and naval forces made available to deal with seaborne attack I cannot hope to hold out with land forces alone, which as a result of campaign in Greece are now devoid of any artillery, have insufficient tools for digging, very little transport, and inadequate war reserves of equipment and ammunition. Force here can and will fight, but without full support from Navy and Air Force cannot hope to repel invasion.' On the same day he sent his own government a similar message:

'There is no evidence of naval forces capable of guaranteeing us against seaborne invasion and air force in island consists 6 Hurricanes and 17 obsolete aircraft.'

The use of phrases such as 'seaborne invasion' assumed that the enemy intended to mount a beach-storming operation, rather than reinforce his airborne troops by sea on a part of the coast he had already captured. They were, of course, very different matters. So different were they in the context of the Battle of Crete, that this misunderstanding completely distorted General Freyberg's view of enemy intentions to the point that he misread an Ultra signal on the second day of the battle with disastrous, and almost certainly decisive, consequences.

Wavell, with Admiral Cunningham's assurance, replied that the Navy would support him and that even if the decision to hold Crete were reversed, there was little time left to evacuate the island. To judge by his signal to London of 1 May — 'our information points insufficient sea-going shipping left Aegean for large-scale sea-borne operations' — Wavell clearly did not share Freyberg's concern with the sea. Churchill's view of the threat was also different from Freyberg's, as his signal to the Prime Minister of New Zealand on 3 May shows: 'Our information points to an airborne attack being delivered in the near future, with possibly an attempt at seaborne attack. The Navy will certainly do their utmost to prevent the latter, and it is unlikely to succeed on any large scale. So far as airborne attack is concerned, this ought to suit the New Zealanders down to the ground, for they will be able to come to close quarters, man to man, with the enemy, who will not have the advantage of tanks and artillery, on which he so largely relies.'

As Wavell's ADC, Peter Coats, observed, Freyberg was 'a man of quickly changing moods, easily depressed and as easily elated.' Only four days after his very pessimistic messages to Wavell and the New Zealand government, Freyberg signalled to London: 'Cannot understand nervousness; am not in the least anxious about airborne attack; have made my dispositions and feel can cope adequately with the troops at my disposal. Combination of seaborne and airborne attack is different. If that comes before I can get the guns and transport here the situation will be difficult. Even so, provided Navy can help, trust all will be well.'

The Chiefs of Staff in London appear to have been disconcerted by Freyberg's back-to-front analysis of the enemy threat. The following day this signal was sent to Cairo: 'Please enquire from General Freyberg whether he is receiving Orange Leonard [Ultra] information from Cairo if not please arrange to pass relevant OL information maintaining utmost security.'*

* The text of relevant Ultra messages will be found in Appendix C.

Since Freyberg's misreading of Ultra at the crucial moment of the battle has never before been fully explored, it is important to look closely at how it happened.

The invasion of Crete represented the first major test of Ultra in operational conditions. The possibility that the Germans were considering a Mediterranean island as a target for a major parachute assault was understood from signals intercepted in mid-April during the Allied retreat in Greece. An indication that the target was Crete came on 25 April, a few hours before Hitler's headquarters issued the Führer Directive for Operation Mercury. Over the next few days, the enemy intention to invade from the air became increasingly clear: Mercury was a Luftwaffe operation and the Luftwaffe's lax cypher discipline greatly helped Hut 3 at Bletchley. On 28 April, London arranged to send a resume of relevant Ultra intercepts to the senior RAF officer on the island, Group Captain George Beamish, and then to Freyberg when he took command of Creforce two days later.

In the course of the meeting of 30 April, Wavell briefed Freyberg on 'most secret sources' or 'most reliable sources', as Ultra intelligence was euphemistically termed, but did not disclose exactly what this source was. He gave Freyberg the impression that the information came from a well-placed spy of the Secret Intelligence Service. Freyberg never doubted this cover story and failed to guess from the nature and presentation of the transcripts that the information came from signals intercepts.

(Although Freyberg believed that the OL or 'Orange Leonard' information he received came from this mythical agent, it will always be known as Ultra material here.) The rules governing the use of Ultra material were unclear. For maritime intelligence, a reconnaissance aircraft had to be sent over an enemy fleet before engagement to divert attention from the possibility of signals interception. In the case of land battles, this kind of diversion was less easy.

How much guidance or reassurance Freyberg received from Wavell is hard to estimate. On Churchill's orders, a staff officer was flown to Crete on 11 May to brief Freyberg on the accumulated intelligence, but we cannot be sure that he passed on the robust view of the Chiefs of Staff in their signal of 9 May — 'So complete is our information that it appears to present heaven sent opportunity of dealing enemy heavy blow.'

For Freyberg, the prospect of receiving such secret information was very unsettling, especially since he loved to share confidential information. One of his staff officers recounted how he could not resist taking individuals aside, to say 'Are you discreet? Can you keep a secret?' and then tell them. In Crete he did not discuss Ultra information with anybody, not even with Beamish who had been the designated Ultra recipient for three days.

His confusion about the relative strengths of the airborne and seaborne forces began at that first meeting with Wavell on 30 April. The figure of 'five to six thousand airborne troops plus a possible sea attack' appears to have been Wavell's conservative reading of a Joint Intelligence Committee report of 27 April which stated: 'The Germans could transport up to 3,000 parachute or airborne troops in the first sortie or possibly 4,000 if gliders are used. Two or possibly three sorties per day could be made from Greece.' Neither Wavell nor Freyberg grasped the point that this estimate of the Germans' air transport capacity was merely for the first day. Wavell should have had a clearer idea since the first report on the airborne force initially allocated to the operation — the 7th Parachute Division and the 22nd Airlanding Division — reached Cairo on 26 April.

The first formal estimate arrived from London in Ultra signal OL 2167 on 6 May (see Appendix C). It gave the proposed invasion date of 17 May, and an enemy airlanding strength of two divisions plus corps troops and added elements. This was an accurate forecast. Confusion then arose from the Twelfth Army's decision to keep the 22nd Division in Roumania and send Major General Ringel's 5th Mountain Division instead. And because of their heavy losses in the fighting at the Rupel Pass, part of a mountain regiment from another division was added to Ringel's two regiments. Later the same day, a correcting signal, OL 2168, was sent to Cairo and Crete. 'Flak units further troops and supplies mentioned our 2167 are to proceed by sea to Crete. Also three mountain regiments thought more likely than third mountain regiment.'

Somehow, this signal seems to have given the Directorate of Military Intelligence two wrong ideas: first, that three mountain regiments were now coming in addition to the 7th Parachute Division and the 22nd Airlanding Division; and second, that three mountain regiments were coming by sea.

Wavell's signal doubting the enemy's ability to assemble sufficient ships does not appear to have had much effect. And the possibility of an airbridge by Junkers 52, like the one which brought General Franco's Army of Africa from Morocco to Seville in 1936, does not seem to have been considered.

A much more detailed signal sent the next day, an accurate analysis by the Air Ministry (OL 2170), clearly indicated that the seaborne contingent represented a very minor element of the whole operation. But the damage was revived by a subsequent signal, OL 2/302 on 13 May, in which the compiler again assumed that both the 22nd Airlanding Division and the 5th Mountain Division were taking part. As a result Freyberg was told that the 'invading force . . . will consist of some thirty to thirty-five thousand men, of which some twelve thousand will be the parachute landing contingent, and ten thousand will be transported by sea.' As a comparison of the signals (in Appendix C) will show, this was a case of rearranging figures to fit a hypothesis. Little differentiation was made between speculation and hard intelligence.

Freyberg, the commander on the ground, did not spot that anything was wrong. Although he possessed an excellent memory (a useful talent since the messages were supposed to be burnt after reading) he lacked the analytical intellect and the scepticism necessary to identify inconsistencies.

The notion of a seaborne invasion became fixed in his mind even though the information he received pointed only to the transport of reinforcements. Such was his preoccupation that he came to regard a maritime operation as a greater threat than all the airborne troops who, even in the figures of the mistaken report, represented a far more immediate and much greater threat.

Apart from the confusion over the 22nd Airlanding Division, few commanders in history had enjoyed such precise intelligence on their opponent's intentions, timing and objectives. Churchill's comment after the war, although magnanimous, is clear: 'Freyberg was undaunted. He did not readily believe the scale of air attack would be so gigantic. His fear was of powerful organised invasion from the sea.

This we hoped the Navy would prevent in spite of our air weaknesses.' And Freyberg himself later acknowledged: 'We for our part were mostly preoccupied by seaborne landings, not by the threat of air landings.'

Freyberg, having been misled a certain distance in one direction, was unable to see things in proportion. He firmly seized the stick by the wrong end and, as later events showed, he could not let go. His .obstinacy and lack of comprehension were something of a joke amongst his fellow generals.

General Sir Brian Horrocks, later Freyberg's corps commander in the desert, told a friend that he used to put a couple of obvious but unimportant points into his orders which he knew Freyberg would contest, and which he could concede.

The revisionist theory of events propagated by the present Lord Freyberg — that his father was deeply shocked to discover the true nature of the airborne threat a few days later, but could not move any troops to reinforce Maleme airfield in case such a change in deployment betrayed the secret of Ultra — would be easier to accept if General Freyberg's subsequent behaviour supported this assertion. But his continuing preoccupation with invasion from the sea, his calamitous misreading of what turned out to be the most important signal of the battle, and his relative lack of interest in Maleme until the morning of 22 May (two days after the invasion, by which time the Germans had captured the airfield and landed reinforcements) do not suggest a man who had recognized the enemy's intention, but found himself frustrated by security precautions.

Most ironically of all, Freyberg appears to have helped preserve the secret of Ultra better by having misunderstood the contents than by his painstaking preservation of secrecy. The German report on the Battle of Crete,
Gefechtbericht XI FlKorps - Einsatz Kreta,
later recorded: 'One thing stands out from all the information gleaned from the enemy (prisoners' statements, diaries and captured documents) that they were on the whole very well informed about German intentions, thanks to an excellent espionage network, but expected that the bulk of the invasion forces would come by sea.'

General Freyberg's misreading of the threat inevitably produced a damaging compromise both in the disposition of his troops and in his operational orders, which confused priorities. Brigadier Tidbury's plan — to combat airborne assaults on the three north coast airfields of Heraklion, Rethymno and Maleme, and in the Ayia valley south-west of Canea — was adapted in the Maleme and Canea sectors to face an assault from the sea.

At Heraklion, Freyberg had Brigadier Chappel's 14th Infantry Brigade with regular battalions of the Black Watch and the York and Lancaster Regiment reinforced by an Australian battalion, and a Greek regiment of three battalions. They were joined at the last moment by the 2nd Leicesters and, finally, by the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who were landed on the south coast at Tymbaki (see Appendix B for full order of battle).