Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (26 page)

The final decision on the counter-attack was taken at about six o'clock in the evening. Nobody appears to have argued that two battalions were now insufficient against an enemy reinforced with troop-carriers landing every few minutes. Nor did anyone question the timetable or Freyberg's insistence that the 20th Battalion must not be allowed to move forward until the whole of the Australian battalion had arrived.

Vasey, the Australian brigade commander from Georgioupolis, was taken aback since he had planned to use the battalion to clear the road to Rethymno and join up with Campbell's force there. However, he felt he had no alternative but to obey the order, and said nothing either of the difficulty of assembling sufficient lorries in daylight under the eyes of enemy pilots, or of the hazards of a night move. The commanding officer of the 2/7th Battalion voiced his concern after the meeting, but Brigadier Inglis dismissed it with the ill-considered remark that 'a well-trained battalion could carry out such a relief in an hour.'

General Puttick returned to his divisional headquarters and, deciding that he should stay there ready for the seaborne assault on Canea, sent his chief of staff, Colonel Gentry, to brief Hargest at his headquarters. On the way Gentry collected Major Peck, who commanded the squadron from the 3rd Hussars, and Lieutenant Roy Farran, whose troop was also to take part in the action.

They reached the 5th Brigade's headquarters, a peasant farmhouse on the edge of Platanias. Farran later described Hargest as 'a red, open-faced man, who looked like a country farmer: it was obvious that he was suffering from acute fatigue. He asked us to wait half an hour while he had some sleep.

Disgusted, intolerant, we sat on the steps until he was ready.'

Gentry recorded later that 'no doubts were expressed about the plan ... It was clearly recognised that success depended on the attack being carried out under the mantle of darkness.' Yet though Creforce Headquarters had fixed the start of the advance for one o'clock in the morning, the attack was not due to begin until four. This left less than three hours of darkness in which to defeat a superior enemy force. If the Australians arrived late to replace the 20th Battalion, then the mantle of darkness would be scanty indeed.

Meanwhile, observation posts from 4th Brigade headquarters continued to watch seawards and detachments from the 18th and 20th Battalions continued to patrol the beaches to the west of Canea.

The commanding officer of the 20th, understandably anxious about the delay to the counter-attack and having seen the convoy engaged by the Royal Navy at sea, rang twice to see if he had to wait any longer, but was firmly told to stay until the whole of the Australian battalion was in position before his men moved out.

The Australians made great efforts: their lead company drove along the twisting and badly maintained road from Georgioupolis as fast as possible while trying to' ignore the Messerschmitts.

Subsequent companies, however, had to wait longer for their vehicles to assemble, and they seem to have had less adventurous drivers. Confusion when trying to cross Canea led to long delays. The result was that the 20th Battalion was not finally relieved until after 11.30 p.m., when the battle at sea commenced. As a result, the 20th Battalion did not begin to join the Maoris on the start-line just beyond Platanias until nearly three o'clock in the morning. The advance from Platanias finally began at 3.30 a.m., two and a half hours late. The attack on Pirgos and the airfield could not now start until after dawn. This not only exposed them to air attack, it also lost them another advantage: throughout the battle the Germans had shown a marked dislike of night operations.

With the 20th Battalion spread between the coast road and the sea, Farran's tanks on the road itself and the 28th (Maori) Battalion to the left of the road, the main attack consisted of an advance up the coastal strip towards the airfield. (Farran later commented that Hargest's plan had 'the merits of simplicity if nothing else'.) At the same time, the 21st Battalion south-west of Kondomari was trying to punch round behind Hill 107.

However simple the plan, the advance was soon held up on the right when the 20th Battalion encountered in vineyards and isolated farmhouses pockets of paratroopers left over from the drop of the day before. To save time, and avoid further confusion in the dark, the New Zealanders charged head-on. Lieutenant Charles Upham, who won the first of his two Victoria Crosses during the battle, observed: 'The amount of MG fire was never equalled. Fortunately a lot of it was high and the tracer bullets enabled us to pick our way up and throw in grenades. We had heavy casualties but the Germans had much heavier. They were unprepared. Some were without trousers, some had no boots on.'

The Maoris on the left met less resistance to begin with, but then they ran into strongly held positions.

Soon two of Farran's light tanks were out of action, one hit by a captured Bofors, the other with a broken sprocket. Farran refused to let the third one go on alone. It was by then after dawn and German fighters had already appeared to strafe the attackers. Except along the right-hand side closest to the beach, where D Company of the 20th Battalion pushed on, the attack ground to a halt in bitter fighting round Pirgos, two kilometres short of the airfield.

D Company, now commanded by Lieutenant Maxwell, the only unscathed subaltern, reached the eastern corner of the airfield. One private, frustrated at having carried an anti-tank rifle for such a distance without a chance to use it, fired twice at one of the damaged Junkers which littered the perimeter. But with Colonel Ramcke's paratroopers concentrating their mortars and machine guns on his exposed survivors, Maxwell pulled them back into one of the cane-brakes of fifteen-foot high bamboo which swayed in the slipstream of strafing Messerschmitts. However, the limited cover gave too little protection and, misunderstanding a message brought by runner, Maxwell ordered his men all the way back to the start-line.

While the 20th Battalion and the Maori 28th Battalion were blocked, even after magnificently brave fighting, the 21st Battalion on the extreme southern flank made some headway against the mountain troops during the course of the morning, but it could not continue alone. By afternoon, failure had become all too clear. The New Zealanders were exhausted by their efforts.

The Germans, clearing wrecked Junkers 52 troop-carriers from the runway with frenetic energy, managed to land another two fresh battalions of mountain troops on the airfield at a rate of twenty troop-carriers an hour.*

Brigadier Hargest demonstrated an astonishing capacity for self-delusion, reporting to divisional headquarters: 'Steady flow of enemy planes landing and taking off. May be trying to take troops off.

Investigating.' He then followed later with: 'From general quietness and because eleven fires have been lit on drome it appears as though enemy might be preparing evacuation.' These extraordinary reports, just the sort of rumour which soldiers long to believe after a heavy fight, slipped out. The New Zealanders would be cruelly undeceived.

* The next day Ultra signal OL 20/424 reported, 'Yesterday, Thursday, one unit lost 14 aircraft out of 46. Another had at least 37 aircraft unserviceable out of 46'.

The day also brought disaster at sea for the Royal Navy. Admiral Cunningham in Alexandria was still determined that no troop-transports should reach Crete. Well before dawn, Rear Admiral King's Force C steamed into the dangerous waters of the Aegean from the east through the Kaso strait.

Cunningham was prepared to take this risk because signals intelligence had revealed the departure of the second flotilla from Milos, delayed by the late arrival of their escort, the
Sagittario.

King's squadron of three cruisers and four destroyers first made for Heraklion, then turned north-north-east for Milos along the second flotilla's intended course. Soon after 8.30 a.m., a caique was sighted with German soldiers on board. (How it had become entirely detached from the rest of the convoy is still not clear.) The Australian cruiser
Perth
sank the caique, temporarily saving itself from air attack. The pilots of the Junkers 88s overhead could not risk near misses which would kill German soldiers in the water with shock-waves. The cruiser HMS
Naiad
attracted their attention instead, but once the
Perth
was well clear of the swimmers, the bombers changed their aim again.

The cruiser
Calcutta
sighted a small merchant vessel half an hour later. After this had been dealt with by the destroyers, King's squadron steamed on towards Milos. Soon after ten o'clock, and less than twenty-five miles from the island, the
Sagittario
was sighted with a brood of caiques. They turned to escape and the
Sagittario
laid a smoke-screen. But King at this point came to the difficult decision to withdraw, not pursue. His ships were already low on anti-aircraft ammunition, they were under constant attack from the air, and the enemy had been scared off from the attempt to land troops.

Cunningham, having taken the risk, was exasperated by this missed opportunity. He later insisted that the safest place during an air attack would have been in among the flotilla of caiques. But this safety, as the
Perth
had discovered, was only temporary. A rash commander might well have led the whole squadron to disaster.

Despite Admiral King's caution, the squadron suffered.
Naiad
was damaged by near misses, her speed reduced to sixteen knots, and the cruiser
Carlisle
was hit. Force C, after three and half hours of attack, eventually met Rear Admiral Rawlings's Force Al, with the battleships
Warspite
and
Valiant,
coming through the Kithera channel to its assistance. This attempt to serve 'a useful purpose by attracting enemy aircraft' was gallant but ill-advised. A bomb struck
Warspite,
then fifty minutes later the destroyer
Greyhound,
which had just sunk a large caique, went down after a heavy air attack.

Admiral King, now the senior officer in the area, ordered
Kandahar
and
Kingston
to pick up survivors.

He then sent the cruisers
Gloucester
and
Fiji
to give them anti-aircraft support without realizing that they were very short of ammunition.

Such a concentration of virtually stationary ships brought wave after wave of German bombers and fighters whose pilots did not shrink from machine-gunning survivors in lifeboats or in the water. King, told of the shortage of ammunition, instructed the two cruisers to withdraw. On their way back,
Gloucester
was hit by several bombs within view of
Warspite.
On fire, with her superstructure twisted into grotesque shapes,
Gloucester
was doomed. King and Rawlings in
Warspite
agreed that the battle-fleet should not be put at risk any longer.
Fiji
too was forced to accept that she must leave
Gloucester,
which the Luftwaffe did not allow to sink in peace. Her crew was also machine-gunned and bombed in the water. Altogether 722 officers and ratings from the ship lost their lives.

Air attacks continued as Force C and Force Al withdrew to the south-west. Two bombs hit the battleship
Valiant,
in which Sub-Lieutenant Prince Philip of Greece was serving. Then, two hours later, at 6.45 p.m., a Messerschmitt 110 suddenly appeared out of a cloud and dropped its bomb on
Fiji.
The damage brought the cruiser to a halt. Thirty minutes later at last light another aircraft appeared, a Junkers 88 flown by Lieutenant Gerhard Brenner on his fourth mission of the day.

Brenner, who had taken part in the attack on the
Perth
south-east of Milos and, after skirting the
Warspite,
in an unsuccessful attack on the
Fiji,
had set out alone on her trail once more. He dropped three bombs and the
Fiji
capsized. Over five hundred of her crew, most of them clinging to life-rafts, spent several hours in the water that night. Eventually, two large shapes appeared,
Kandahar
and
Kingston,
and survivors were hauled aboard on scramble-nets.

In the course of a day, the Mediterranean Fleet had suffered two cruisers and one destroyer sunk, and two battleships, two cruisers and several destroyers damaged. Just after dark, Rawlings was ordered to dispatch two of his remaining destroyers,
Decoy
and
Hero,
to the south coast of Crete on a special mission.

The remark of General Wavell's ADC, Peter Coats, that King George of the Hellenes escaped from Crete 'like Jesus Christ, on a donkey though wearing a tin hat', was not strictly accurate. In full service dress with medal ribbons, Sam Browne and highly polished riding boots, but without a steel helmet, he had ridden a mule for much of the way across the mountains. Rather embarrassingly, his mule attracted the amorous interest of another, which caused some alarm since its abnormally pale coat risked catching the eye of a German pilot.

As the party toiled high into the White Mountains, out of touch with events while bombs and guns still detonated in the distance, the King's cheerful stoicism impressed both the New Zealanders guarding him and also his entourage — Prince Peter, Tsouderos and Levidis, whose city shoes were ill-suited to the journey.

On their first night, 20 May, the royal party had slept at Therisso, ironically Venizelos's headquarters in the revolt of 1905. Colonel Blunt had found a telephone line working to Suda Bay, and heard from the naval staff there that the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean would arrange for a destroyer to collect the King's party and senior members of the British Legation from Ay Roumeli. (The King was given the rather obvious code-name of Timon.)

The night of 21 May, their second in the mountains, was very cold. They were above the snowline when dusk fell and only through sheer good luck found a shepherd's hut. The shepherd and his wife killed a sheep and milked some ewes for them, enough to sustain them during the freezing night which followed. The descent to Samaria the next day — the third of their journey — was hazardous, and they reached the village with relief. There, a boy handed them a note from Sir Michael Palairet, who was waiting for them five miles along the coast at Ay Roumeli. The young messenger returned at top speed to the Legation party, clearly relishing his role in the drama. 'The King is coming! The King is coming!' he cried out. Lady Palairet promptly organized a meal of potatoes.