Operation Mercury (30 page)

Quoted in Clark, op. cit., p93.

Quoted in Simpson, op. cit., p178.

Count von Blucher came from a long and distinguished line of soldiers, his most famous ancestor being Wellington's great ally at Waterloo. Two of his brothers also fell in the fight for Crete, (Simpson, op. cit., p215).

Bruno Brauer had served with distinction in the trenches winning the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class. He was appointed to the command of the 1 Parachute Regiment in 1938 and added the Knights Cross to his laurels during the battles in the Low Countries. He became overall governor of Crete in 1943 before being sent back to the Russian Front in the last, hopeless days of the war. His execution for war crimes took place on the sixth anniversary of the battle, though many considered the conviction to be politically motivated and unsound.

Simpson, op. cit., p176.

ibid., p176.

Garnet, op. cit., p14.

Major General Freyberg, quoted in Simpson, op. cit., p179.

Dr. H. Neumann quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p202.

OL 2170.

OL 2/302.

Beevor, op. cit., p91.

ibid., p91.

Gefechtbericht XI FL Korps – Einsatz Kreta
.

Beevor, op. cit., p91.

Keegan J., Intelligence in War, London, 2003, p196.

Simpson op. cit., p174.

Simpson, op. cit., p174.

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew had won his VC for outstanding gallantry during the First World War. A career soldier, he had risen from the ranks; like Hargest he was an officer of proven courage. It was like his superiors, his inability to grasp the concept of vertical envelopment that affected his decision making and, in the crucial fight for Hill 107, he was badly served by the chain of command above.

James Hargest was a native New Zealander. He served with distinction during the Great War and, between the wars, farmed and became involved in politics. Physically fearless, he looked very much the ruddy faced, solid farmer that he was. In his early fifties in 1941 it is not unlikely he was suffering from acute exhaustion at the time of the battle. He was killed on active service after D-Day in 1944.

Simpson, op. cit., p185.

ibid., p190.

ibid., p190.

Clark, op. cit., p72.

ibid., p74.

Major General K.L. Stewart CB DSO (at the time Brigadier CGS to NZ Division), quoted ibid., p78.

Report of the US Naval Observers and journalists to US Military Attache in Cairo quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p245.

Gerd Stamp a JU 88 pilot quoted ibid., p249.

Cunningham's own nephew was amongst the dead.

Oswald Janke quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p242.

Janke again quoted, ibid., p239. The British initially claimed to have inflicted 4,000 casualties but in fact many who were forced to abandon ship were later rescued and, due to the
Lupo
's heroic stand, only the leading elements of the flotilla were destroyed, the rest managed to disperse. The actual loss appears to be just over 300, though all of the heavy equipment went to the bottom and no succour reached the Germans on Crete by sea.

Ios, one of the most magical of the Greek Islands and said to be the spot where Homer died.

Cunningham records a final conversation with
Gloucester
's captain, H.A. Rowley, as she was preparing to leave Alexandria. He was very concerned about the condition of his crew, ground down by incessant action at sea. Cunningham never saw Rowley again, his body was washed ashore west of Mersa Matruh some four weeks after the battle, recognisable only by the uniform and documents in his pockets. ‘It was a long way round to come home.' See Clark op. cit., p117.

MacDonald op. cit., pp146-7.

Clark op. cit., p119.

ibid., p120.

General Freyberg quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p203.

Quoted in Simpson, op. cit., pp202-3.

Geoffrey Cox was not properly an IO – his main job, which he'd continued in spite of the invasion, was to produce the
Crete News
– he came upon the German order more or less by accident when he called in at Creforce HQ having previously assisted in the clashes on the Akrotiri Peninsula. He discovered the order lying in a pile awaiting dispatch to Cairo and began to translate; this he achieved with the aid of German pocket dictionary!

General Student quoted in Simpson, op. cit., p203.

Simpson, op. cit., p204.

ibid., p204.

Clark, op. cit., p107.

ibid., p107.

Simpson, op. cit., p205.

ibid., p205.

Clark op. cit., p123.

ibid., p123.

ibid., p122.

Simpson, op. cit., p214; Lieutenant Colonel Walker, before he left the meeting, briefed his second in command, Major Marshall, that the men would need to be ready to move by dusk (around 8 p.m.). Consequently he felt all the transport should be assembled at least three hours beforehand. This was no mean task; the constant attention of the Luftwaffe made movement of vehicles in daylight a highly fraught business. Many drivers had been so shaken they abandoned their trucks to take shelter at the first intimation. Nonetheless Marshall proved equal to the considerable challenge and succeeded in rounding up a good number of vehicles.

ibid., pp216-17.

ibid., p217.

ibid., pp217-18.

As recalled by Colonel Dittmer quoted in Clark, op. cit., p131.

ibid., p133 – the platoon officer in question was, in fact, Lieutenant Upham.

ibid., pp219-20 – W.O.L. Young.

ibid., pp219-20.

ibid., p220.

ibid., p221.

ibid., p222.

ibid., pp223-24 – R. Wenning.

ibid., p224 – ‘Lofty' Fellows.

ibid., p240.

ibid., p241.

ibid., p241.

ibid., p242.

ibid., p242.

ibid., p242.

ibid., p243.

Clark op. cit., p138.

Heidrich went on to command the re-named 1st Parachute Division in the Italian campaign, where he remained until captured by a patrol from the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards. A story is told that whilst under interrogation by the battalion IO, Nigel Nicolson, the pair began a discussion as to the merits of German and Allied small arms. Heidrich, ostensibly to make a point, asked the sentry to hand over his Thompson sub-machine gun. The soldier was about to oblige before Nicolson stopped him. Heidrich ‘merely smiled'.

Clark op. cit., p141.

Simpson op. cit., pp249-50 – Lieutenant N. Hart.

Clark, op. cit., p142.

ibid., p149.

ibid., p151.

Simpson, op. cit., p251.

ibid., p252.

ibid., p252.

ibid., p232 – Corporal T. McGee .

Clark, op. cit., p252

ibid., p145 (from the New Zealand Official History) .

ibid., pp156-7 – Lieutenant Thomas.

Garnett op. cit., pp62-3.

As the wounded Farran, crippled by a gangrenous knee injury, was awaiting transfer to Athens he was taunted and spat upon by a group of Italians, erstwhile prisoners of the Greeks. A German sentry, clearly outraged by this abuse of a helpless, stretcher bound casualty, set about the chief tormentor, giving the Italian ‘one of the most severe beatings I have ever seen administered in my life.' See MacDonald, op. cit., pp295-6.

ibid., p161.

Quoted in Clark, op. cit., p159.

ibid., p159.

So far Layforce had no reason to celebrate its stay in the Middle East theatre; a bewildering catalogue of operations had been proposed and then aborted. The commandos had earned the unhelpful nickname of ‘Belayforce' on the troopship
Glengyle
some wit had scrawled ‘never in the history of human endeavour have so few been buggered about by so many'. See Beevor A., op. cit. p195.

ibid., p195-6.

An attempt had been made to send the 2nd Battalion the Queen's Regiment, embarked on
Glenroy,
but aborted due to severe air attacks. Ten Hurricanes were dispatched to Heraklion, inevitably, too few and too late – the first half dozen were destroyed by friendly ground fire, two turned back and disappeared, the remaining pair did land but were shot up on the ground! It was also proposed to send a squadron of Bristol Beaufighters but the logistical difficulties and the realisation that this limited intervention could not hope to influence the outcome killed the notion. See Clark, op. cit., p164.

ibid., p164.

Captain Baker, quoted in Simpson, op. cit., p263.

This force was Advanced Guard Wittman and comprised: 95th Motorcycle Battalion; 95th Reconnaissance Unit; detachment from 95th Anti-Tank Battalion; elements of Motorised Artillery and Engineers.

Keith Elliot quoted in Simpson, op. cit., pp267-8.

ibid., pp268-9.

Antonis Grigorakis Satanas of Kroussonas, one of Pendlebury's resistance captains, a redoubtable fighter later evacuated by caique to Alexandria – he had developed symptoms of the cancer that would kill him.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, then serving as Chappel's IO, a noted Grecophile who had tramped overland across Europe before the war, was to prove a distinguished member of the cadre of British officers who assisted with the resistance and, with W. Stanley Moss, participated in the capture of General Kreipe (see Chapter 20). Since the end of the war he has become a distinguished writer and traveller; a swashbuckler in the Pendlebury mode.

Ajax,
damaged in the course of an earlier air attack, had limped back to Alexandria.

Beevor, op. cit., p209.

Private J. Renwick quoted in Simpson, op. cit., p260.

L. Lind quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p280.

ibid., p283.

Quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p285.

Bouches Inutiles
– literally ‘useless mouths' – the expression seems to date from medieval siege warfare when civilians, unable to contribute to the defence, were expelled from walled towns; in the case of the Hundred Years War the besiegers would often forbid the refugees to pass through the lines so they were left in the hostile limbo of no-man's-land.

Quoted in Simpson, op. cit., p289.

ibid., p290. Anthony Beevor records that on the first night of the evacuation
Napier
took off 36 officers, 260 other ranks, 3 women, 1 Greek, 1 Chinaman, 10 distressed merchant seamen, 2 children and 1 dog! See Beevor, op. cit., note. p216.

C.J. ‘Jack' Hamson was a member of Pendlebury's initial band and was captured with a detachment from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders near Tymbaki. He was particularly scathing about the ratio of senior officers evacuated (see Beevor, op. cit., p218). After the war he returned to the academic life and became Professor of Comparative Law at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Young's adjutant, Michael Borwick who, like his CO, had distinguished himself during the retreat, was overcome with emotion at having to give the order for surrender to the men under his command after all had fought so hard and come so far.

Anthony Beevor recounts the story of Colonel Walker's meeting with an officer of the 100 Mountain Regiment, an Austrian. ‘What are you doing here, Australia?' the officer enquired. ‘One might ask what are you doing here Austria?' Walker replied. ‘We are all Germans,' he was told.

A.H. Whitcombe quoted in MacDonald, op. cit., p293.

R. H. Thompson, ibid., p293.

ibid., p293.