Authors: Rick Stroud
For Captain P. A. Tomlinson, an Australian medical officer, the overriding image as they pulled out of Heraklion was ‘one large stench of decomposing dead, debris from destroyed dwelling places, roads were wet and running with burst water pipes, hungry dogs were scavenging among the dead. There was a stench of sulphur, smouldering fires and pollution of sewers. Conditions were set for a major epidemic.’
The troops embarked in the dead of night, without the Germans realising that they had left. Major Burckhardt of the
Luftwaffejäger
Brigade had fought a hard battle and endured many casualties: ‘I never expected such bitter fighting and we began to despair of ever gaining our objective or indeed of surviving at all . . . I had 80 men left of my 800, no food, little ammunition and was no nearer success.’ The next day, Burckhardt ‘received the biggest surprise of an astonishing battle, they had all gone in the night’. Brigadier Chappel left with a heavy heart, knowing that the ‘Greeks and the Cretans, after the gallant performance will be treated hard and will feel that we have left them in the lurch’.
The remaining troops in the north of the island, apart from small pockets of rearguard fighters, had to make their way south, across the White Mountains. The swarms of men heading south from Suda Bay looked like crowds leaving a football match. Some were in organised groups, others just individual soldiers trudging on up the steep sides of the mountain; all were short of food and water. They moved in the darkness, which gave them respite from the merciless attentions of the dive-bombers. During the night an enemy aircraft dropped an orange flare, casting a hideous light over the olive trees and farm houses, forcing the soldiers to scatter. Makeshift dressing stations were set up along the route, trucks hastily converted into ambulances, crude white crosses of torn cloth stretched across grey blankets.
By dawn the lines of retreating men stretched up the steep mountain side to the horizon. ‘The daylight gave faces and uniforms and bodies to the dark shapes of the night, revealing them as walking wounded with bloody bandages, one man with a bandaged stump of an amputated hand; as sailors of [a] boat in Suda; as airmen; as Cypriot muleteers; as detachments marching under officers or NCOs; as other men straggling in ragged lines or small groups,’ remembered one survivor. ‘Every few yards a figure lay on the roadside in the sleep of the utterly exhausted.’ Every ridge promised to be the summit and beyond every ridge, another ridge, another tortuous climb. Some men broke down in the embrace of the White Mountains and sat by the road shouting hysterically about dive-bombers.
Eventually the fleeing soldiers reached the top and were rewarded with the sight of the Askifou Plain, ‘set up like an oasis on the gaunt White Mountains’. Ahead were fields and white houses, the track led round the western edge to another ridge, the last one before the steep descent to Sfakia and rescue.
By the end of May,
1
6,
0
00 Allied soldiers had been taken off Crete, in what veterans later called ‘the forgotten Dunkirk’. There were about 30,000 British and Commonwealth troops on Crete when the invaders descended from the sky; by the end of the battle, over 4,000 of them were dead; 17,000 were prisoners of war, including 3,000 wounded.
John Pendlebury never made it to the rendezvous with the andartes at Krousonas. His precise movements after he left Heraklion are unclear. Not long into his journey, near German positions at Kaminia, he became involved with a company of Greeks who had been dive-bombed and who were under attack from paratroopers. Eyewitness Polybios Markatatos described what happened next: ‘Presently four parachutists appeared at close quarters and there was a hand-to-hand struggle in which the unknown soldier [Pendlebury] killed three with his revolver and I the fourth. Immediately afterwards he told me to direct covering fire towards the road.’ Markatatos recalled that Pendlebury went ahead and, whilst kneeling, taking cover at the corner of a cottage, was wounded in his right breast. ‘It was impossible to move the man and we were in a desperate position, so I went on firing at the Germans until my ammunition was exhausted, when we were taken prisoner.’ Pendlebury was left in the house of one of his ‘followers’, Giorgios Drosoulakis, whose wife Aristea took him in and laid him on a bed. All that could be made out in the Englishman’s delirious mutterings were ‘John, John’ and what sounded like ‘Bleberry’. Later another German patrol arrived with a doctor, who gave Pendlebury an injection and dressed his wounds; the doctor left, promising to return, but did not reappear.
The next day the battle resumed in earnest: more paratroopers descended, some of whom set up a field gun at positions close to the Drosoulakis house. Pendlebury remained inside for two days, before the paratroopers discovered him: a badly wounded man in a Greek shirt, who wore no uniform, had no dog tags and would not answer their questions. Eventually they took him outside, propped him up against a door and shouted a question at him. Three times Pendlebury was heard to say ‘No’. The soldiers lost their patience and shot him dead. Crete’s most devoted British friend fell to the ground.
John Pendlebury died somewhere in the first few days of the battle. He had done his best to prepare the islanders for occupation and in the end had given his life for them. The legend of this brave man lived on through the war and even the mention of his name came to torment the Germans. Nick Hammond later wrote of his friend: ‘It had always been his intention to stay in Crete and lead the resistance, he never talked as if any other course was possible . . . he felt himself a Cretan and in Crete he would stay until victory was won.’
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By 1 June, Crete was in German hands. The invading troops had paid dearly for their victory. Crete became known as the graveyard of the Fallschirmjäger: the German 11th Airborne Corps committed more than 24,000 troops to the battle and lost almost a fifth of that number, and a huge amount of materiel – 370 aircraft destroyed or damaged, including 143 Junkers 52s.
In July, Generalleutnant Student, whose brainchild Operation
Merkur
was, stood in front of his Führer to receive a Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. Hitler later told Student: ‘We shall never do another airborne operation. Crete proved that the days of the airborne corps are over. Airborne forces are a weapon of surprise. In the meantime the surprise factor has exhausted itself.’ Student wrote: ‘Those who fought on Crete have to be proud, attackers and defenders alike. The name of the island is connected with bitter memories. I admit I was wrong in several considerations when I proposed this attack. The result was, not only did I lose many paratroopers, whom I considered my children, but that the paratrooper formation which I created disappeared.’
The fog of war cleared, quiet settled over the island and the long night of occupation began. German soldiers had landed expecting that they would be welcomed with open arms and were outraged that the civilian population met them with force and violence. The Wehrmacht had a clear view of what was acceptable soldier-like behaviour and, for them, the Cretans had breached it. They were war criminals who had committed atrocities for which they must be punished.
The thirst for revenge was born even before the battle for Crete ended. On the morning of
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3 May, General Papa Ringel, commander of 5th Gebirgsjäger, issued the following notice to his men:
The murder of a German Airman on 22 May has proved that the Greek population, in civil or German uniforms, is taking part in the fighting. They are shooting or stabbing wounded to death and removing rings from them and also mutilating and robbing corpses. Any Greek civilian taken with a firearm in his hands is to be shot immediately, as is anyone caught attacking the wounded . . .
Hostages (men between 18 and 55) are to be taken from the villages at once, and the civilians are to be informed that if acts of hostility against the German army take place these will be shot immediately. The villagers in the area are to be informed that 10 Greeks will die for every German.
On 31 May, General Student, with the approval of Göring, issued an order calling for immediate reprisals:
It is certain the civilian population including men, women and boys have taken part in the fighting, committed sabotage, mutilated and killed wounded soldiers. It is therefore high time to combat all cases of this kind, to undertake reprisals and punitive expeditions which must be carried out with exemplary terror.
The harshest measures must be taken and I order the following: shooting for all cases of proven cruelty, and I wish this to be done by the same units who have suffered such atrocities. The following reprisals will be taken:
1. Shooting.
2
. Fines.
3
. Total destruction of villages by burning.
4
. Extermination of the male population of the entire region.
My authority will be necessary for measures under
3
and 4. All these measures must, however, be taken rapidly and omitting all formalities. In view of the circumstances the troops have a right to this and there is no need for military tribunals to judge beasts and murderers.
The victors needed no second bidding. On 2 June, twenty-five-year-old Oberleutnant Horst Trebes, who had grown up in the Hitler Youth, visited Wehrmacht photographer Franz-Peter Weixler telling him to expect to see ‘something interesting’ that afternoon. He was going to lead a punitive expedition to Kondomari, where the mutilated bodies of some German paratroopers had been found. Weixler immediately protested, saying that it would be no better than murder. Weixler later claimed that he asked to speak to a senior officer, to stop the cull, but was refused. He went back to Trebes and found him briefing the troops, telling them that the job was to be done with great speed: ‘In reprisal for our comrades who had been murdered.’
The expedition set off, four lorries of members of 111 Battalion
Luftlandesturme
Regiment, commanded by Trebes. With him were two lieutenants, an interpreter, about twenty-five paratroopers and Weixler. En route they stopped by the corpses of more comrades. One lay on the ground, his feet caught in the canopy of his parachute; another lay on his stomach, his parachute dangling on its lines above his body. Both men had died as they hit the ground, their bodies bloated; their faces black, crawling with flies; rotting and unrecognisable. Trebes made another speech about the Greek barbarians who had dared mutilate the men.
The lorries ground into Kondomari, disgorging angry paratroopers who stormed into the houses. The terrified inhabitants were forced out at gunpoint, by soldiers screaming and shoving them along the unmade up road towards the centre of the village. A woman asked one of the soldiers what they were doing; he ignored her, motioning her to join the others. Behind her a tough-looking elderly man in black pantaloons and pale jumper limped along, leaning on his stick. The houses and streets emptied, the grassy square filled. Some sat down, others stood, talking in low voices, eyeing the soldiers disbelievingly. A group of villagers stood round Oberleutnant Trebes listening while a German interpreter told them of their crimes. Some of the soldiers retrieved a Fallschirmjäger smock with a tear in it which appeared to have been made by a knife; Trebes ordered them to blow up the house where it was found. One villager came forward and confessed to the killing; another, a young man, began to argue with the interpreter.
Then the women were separated from the men, who sat on the edge of the road, waiting. For a while nothing happened, then the men were told to stand and were marched towards some trees, among the olive groves; behind the trees was a high dry stone wall, cutting off any chance of escape. There was no question of a trial. The soldiers bearing rifles and automatic weapons formed a ragged line, some kneeling some standing. The Cretan men huddled round and to the side of a gnarled old tree. Weixler again implored Trebes to call off the executions and return to base with the man who had confessed. Trebes refused and told the women that when the men had been shot, they would have two hours to bury them. Somehow Weixler helped a few of the villagers to escape. He photographed the entire proceedings with his
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5mm Leica. The surviving images have an aura of unreality. Clean-shaven young men in crisp white Greek shirts, black waistcoats, modern pullovers; some seemingly calm, others with arms crossed, wearing wry half-smiles; the stern, the moustachioed, the bespectacled; middle-aged men in straw summer hats; elderly men in traditional Cretan dress. Trebes shouted an order the Cretans could not understand; the soldiers raised their weapons. Another order and the quiet of the afternoon was broken by the crash of small-arms fire. Some men fell at once; others instinctively turned their backs, arms raised against the fusillade of bullets; some fell mid-flight, metres from their compatriots; none escaped. The men were reduced to a mass of corpses, huddled into each other and the ground, bodies twisted and misshapen.
The executions took about fifteen seconds. Dust hovered over the scene, kicked up by the bullets. The soldiers stopped firing, the dust slowly settled and the distraught wailing of the women filled the air, growing louder and more agonised as they tried to understand what the soldiers had just done to them. In the moments that followed Weixler photographed the bodies. He asked Trebes if he knew what he had done. The young Nazi replied that he had merely carried out Göring’s orders. The soldiers cleared their weapons and returned to the vehicles.