Operation Mercury Read online

  One of Andrew’s difficulties was the large and rather disorderly RAF camp. This lay at the extremity of the line held by C Company. It contained several hundred men, many of whom were unarmed. The difficulties in coordinating operations with the RAF meant that the colonel had little direct influence over these personnel and no proper defence of the camp appears to have been organised. Many of the ground crew were militant in their insistence they were not combat troops. Events have a habit of disregarding such nice distinctions, especially in the fog of war.

  The paratroops, having secured the iron bridge over the Tavronitis, were now able to nibble around the exposed flank and penetrate the camp itself. No serious resistance was offered by the startled RAF who dispersed before these heavily armed figures, driven like game through the maze of tents. The collapse of any coherent defence enabled the Germans to work around both C and D Companies and to mount the beginnings of an assault on Hill 107. By noon, however, this potentially dangerous gap had been plugged and the advance halted. The laconic Lofty Fellows had been on an escort detail to the west of the strip:

  … when the planes started to arrive so I decided to get down the bank in amongst some bamboo and I sat there and meditated about the comings and goings of aeroplanes and things – bombs went off at frequent intervals all around the place – dust and al that sort of thing – I thought, well, I wish they’d hurry up, because it was fairly early in the morning, and I can go and get some breakfast. But, they persisted in this damn bombing and unfortunately for me they dropped one fairly close and in the excitement I swallowed my cigarette and ended up topsy-turvy with a bit of shrapnel in my leg and the bamboo blasted apart, and I looked up saw all these bods dropping down in parachutes.

  Then I saw a glider crash land on a hill and I could see they were in force and I decided discretion would be the better part of valour and I should find some company, so I crept along through the bamboo and found a culvert and skipped through like a crab to the other side, and then dashing from cover to cover I arrived at a little machine-gun post underneath an old building. There was a Corporal Hosey. He didn’t know what was going on, and I had no voice. I don’t know if I was scared to death or swallowing the cigarette had done it, and I was gesticulating and trying to point, and of course once he caught on and looked around he got a little dry in the throat too.13

  Even more ominously the New Zealanders’ forward positions were being shelled by the German guns and mortars safely landed west of the Tavronitis. Ammunition was also running low as were the batteries for their radios, communications became difficult and Colonel Andrew lost contact with his forward companies.

  He could, however, still communicate with Hargest at Platanias. The troops huddled in their inadequate trenches on the summit and flanks of Hill 107 could not fail to notice that the weight of the German pressure was increasing and that the enemy deployment west of the river was proceeding without interruption.

  The HQ Company of the 22nd was posted in and around the village of Pirgos. Lofty Fellows, by now back with the defenders and manning a machine gun, found a unit of paratroops forming up, directly under his sights, apparently oblivious. He very soon made his presence felt. Still in need of a well-earned breakfast he also managed to acquire a 2-inch mortar which he utilised to suppress a further body of the enemy, bunkered in one of the houses. The deadly game of hide and seek continued through the morning till virtually all of the lodgements had been mopped up, save for the inevitable crop of sharpshooters.

  Not entirely without hindrance, one detachment west of the iron bridge was in serious difficulties, Lieutenant Paul Muerbe and his seventy-four paratroopers who had been tasked to mop up the outpost at Kastelli. This was manned by the 1 Greek Regiment, nominally 1,000 strong but with barely sufficient arms and those of indeterminate quality for every other man and less than a handful of live rounds apiece.

  These local recruits were stiffened by detachments of the gendarmerie, earlier animosities submerged, and led by Major T.G. Bedding with a small cadre of New Zealanders as instructors. The Major had divided his command into two weak battalions posted either side of the town. Muerbe’s company were few but they were heavily armed and bolstered by the full, Aryan bravado of the Fallschirmjäger, they were scheduled for re-supply late morning and were not anticipating serious resistance. In this they were to be disappointed.

  They lacked arms, ammunition and training but no one could say the men of Crete lacking fighting spirit, it coursed through their veins, they had not run from invaders in the past and they were not proposing simply to hand over their town, their homes and their honour. Muerbe’s men dropped in two sticks, both to the east of Kastelli and they had jumped onto the bayonets of Bedding’s first or ‘A’ Battalion.

  It is said many Germans were shot as they floated to earth,14 others riddled as they attempted to fumble clear of their harness, still more stalked and sniped by the locals who knew every blade of grass and the lie of each dry bed and ditch. Each German killed yielded a cache of superior weapons. Bedding and his command group put their Brens to good effect.

  Disorientated, the surviving Germans began shooting wildly, often into their own men. As they stumbled, dazed and leaderless, through the maze of olive groves, Cretan fighters, men and women, would rise like shrieking spectres from each fold of cover and set about them. This was warfare at its most crude and bloody, no quarter given, clubs and knives hacking down the pride of the Luftwaffe.

  By mid morning the remnants of Muerbe’s detachment were frantically fortifying a cluster of farm buildings as a last ditch defence. Having contained and emasculated the attack Bedding now wanted simply to surround and contain. This was too tame for the Cretans who launched a wild and desperate charge, pressing the attack home despite heavy loss and dealing with Muerbe’s survivors. Few came out alive, those who did were incarcerated by Bedding in the town gaol, primarily to save them from the bloodlust.

  The subsequent German report on the action concluded that:

  The platoon commanded by Lieutenant Muerbe which was put down east of Kastelli immediately became involved with strong guerrilla bands and Greek troops, strength about a battalion, under British commanders, and was mopped up in the course of the fighting. Of seventy-three men, twenty wounded were liberated later. Lieutenant Muerbe and fifty-two men were killed. The majority were found to have been grievously mutilated.15

  The Cretans, with their long history of uncompromising resistance to the invader, were quick to adapt one of their traditional warrior songs:

  Where is February’s starry sky

  That I may take my gun, my beautiful mistress,

  And go down to Maleme’s airfield

  To capture and kill the Germans.16

  Whilst some of the German dead may have been cut up by the locals, it would appear more likely that damage to the bodies was simply the work of predators. Such assertions, however, would serve to fuel resentment against the indigenous population and be employed as a rationale for the savagery of reprisal.

  Colonel Leckie, commander of 23rd Battalion, found himself sharing the experience of having Germans landing, in his case, almost literally, on top of him. The Colonel immediately brought his Thompson into use, to good effect. His adjutant, otherwise immersed in regimental business, accounted for a pair of the intruders without being constrained to rise from his improvised desk. His experiences were similar to those of the 21st and 28th who accounted for most of the intruders in their respective sectors. The consequences for the parachutists were grim, Major W.D. Philip, a gunner in charge of an artillery unit recorded:

  The troop riflemen are still below ground and so we raise them and organise them along the front edge of our position. After the first excitement one Hun is only about 25 yards away among grape vines. A few rounds are fired but he may be lying ‘doggo’. Gnr McDonald sets our anxiety to rest by coming up from the opposite direction, walking straight up to him and saying, ‘You’d look at me like that, you bastard, would
you?’ with appropriate action. Another poor devil gets his on the wing. His ‘chute catches in an olive tree and he finishes up by leaning on a rock wall head on hands as if he had been meditating by the wall when death caught up with him. Dead Germans everywhere.17

  In the centre the attack toward Chania was in difficulties before Crete was ever sighted. General Sussman, together with his HQ staff, was killed when his glider folded, not long after take-off, and smashed into the rock strewn hillsides of Aegina. The baton of command thus passed to Major Richard Heidrich, commanding 3 Parachute Regiment. The plan for a pincer movement from dropping zones on the flanks was to be supported by glider-borne attacks on the defenders’ AA batteries.

  An Allied officer in Chania later recalled:

  All over the town everyone was letting loose at the planes, throwing at them everything we had got. In the house next to us a section responsible for the repair of light ack acks, assembled a Lewis that was in for treatment and were firing it hard from their attic window. Out in the open on a terrace below the house was a major with his tin hat on the back of his head using a rifle for which he’d raised some rounds of tracer ammunition. You can see that way, he pointed out, by how much you are missing the things. Their technique was quite interesting. They put over a big bomber flying very low, dropping a stick which made us keep down and another plane followed behind us in a matter of seconds and dropped the parachutists where the bombs had dropped.18

  A sapper from the New Zealand Field Park Engineers looked on as the circling gliders found out just how tough their reception would prove:

  … several gliders heading in our direction and one in particular was making for the town below me and I began to wonder where he intended to land as the only open area was where the underground shelters had been made. In a wonderful piece of flying the pilot dropped the glider down right on it – it was a drastic finish for his passengers who did not last long, but they sure had guts to try a stunt like that … one glider was about to land on top of us when the pilot must have seen the posts carrying the grapevines and flew on another two hundred yards, where he crash landed on a rocky area at the head of our gully. The glider went up in smoke and the crew suffered the same fate as the other poor devils.19

  Although the defenders, well versed in the techniques of opposing an airborne assault, reacted with ruthless vigour it was difficult not to admire the bravery of the Fallschirmjäger who pressed on to certain death with such élan. The men who had earned such a formidable reputation were undergoing their greatest test. In the main they would not be found wanting.

  Captain Altman’s northern detachment, fifteen gliders of 3 Parachute Regiment, were tasked to silence the guns on the Akrotiri Peninsula; despite losses some of the group attained their target only to find the guns, reputedly sited near the Venizelos tombs, were dummies.

  The Northumberland Hussars, the ‘Noodles’, were dug in around Profitilias on the Akrotiri Peninsula, (or as dug in as the surface rock would allow). Sir Lawrence Pumphrey had landed at Souda after the regiment was evacuated from Greece. He was part of C and D squadrons (A & B had been taken directly to North Africa).

  Since arriving on the island the Hussars had enjoyed the warm Mediterranean spring. Sir Lawrence, with his brother John, also serving in the regiment, spent many hours walking over the broad expanse of the Peninsula, visiting the small villages and the ancient monasteries that seemed to grow from the living rock. Nonetheless their positions were so well constructed as to be almost invisible from the air and German aerial reconnaissance had failed to detect their presence. Both sides received a substantial shock on the morning of 20 May:

  The [Germans] were dressed in grey boiler suits, rubber soled boots and brimless steel helmets, and were wonderfully equipped. They were armed with Tommy guns, chiefly, though some carried telescopic-sighted snipers’ rifles and machine pistols. Each glider had a large quantity of hand and stick grenades…. On this day the armament of the Northumberland Hussars on the Isthmus comprised either a .303 English or .300 American rifle to each man, but no bayonets; fourteen Bren guns; and .38 revolvers for the six officers … .20

  There was no armoured or artillery support and the battalion possessed only one grenade, though this was put to good use. The Hussars, originally a Yeomanry regiment, had been deployed in Greece in an anti-tank role, where the Duke of Northumberland served as a troop commander. Despite fighting a series of successful rearguard actions, most of their heavier equipment had had to be abandoned in the evacuation.

  Six German gliders came down, virtually in a line, in front of the olive groves where the HQ company occupied prepared positions; a further quartet of the intruders landed on or around the dummy AA position. (Although the deception succeeded, the sandbagged emplacements left behind enabled the paratroops to establish themselves and, for a while at least, hold out.)

  Of the half dozen, virtually all were accounted for on landing; a number of parachutists were captured, many more killed. Those who did land and get out were swiftly counter-attacked. One glider, the second, blew up when rounds detonated the grenade locker. Only the crew of the third or ‘C’ glider managed to get free and dig in. The fight to destroy their foothold was bloody, costing the Noodles a number of casualties. Major David Barnett, the second in command, leading a probe in the thicket of olive groves, creeping up to a low wall, carefully raised his helmet on a stick to draw fire. None came, but the instant he lifted his head he was drilled by a sniper.

  Private Arnold Ashworth was one of those who took part in this fight; he used his new Lee-Enfield, still in its protective daubing of grease, to good effect. Advancing over the dense ground he heard a wounded German crying out for someone to end his agony. He found the casualty in ‘a little grassy hollow, a few yards from his comrades. I don’t know he had got so far, for half his hip was shot away. He had been hit with the heavy calibre bullet of an anti-tank rifle … A short while before he had been a fine specimen of manhood … and now here he lay at my feet pleading with me to put and end to his horrible suffering and wasted life.’21

  In such circumstances it was impossible not to feel pity for such a desperately wounded foe, the dead enemy lying broken and bloodied amongst the pathetic remains of their personal effects and family photographs. Such a sight tends to evaporate the demonic quality of even the most fanatical opponent and Ashworth, like so many others in similar positions, was bound to wonder if someone soon might be viewing his remains in a similar situation.22

  The survivors of ‘F’ glider also managed to gain a brief lodgement but the single cherished hand grenade was thrown in a dynamic counter-attack which resulted in the death or capture of all the parachutists. Altman’s attack, had it achieved success, could have threatened Creforce HQ, destroying command and communications structures.

  The AA guns sited a mile or so south of Chania, at a crossroads on the Chania Mournies Road, were to be attacked by Lieutenant Alfred Genz and his company landing in nine gliders. Genz was already a worried man. Just as his glider began to move on take-off he received a belated intelligence message that intimated the garrison he and his comrades were about to attack was at least three times greater in numbers than had been anticipated. This was scarcely an auspicious beginning. As the descent began his worst fears were realised when two of his gliders crashed over Chania and another exploded when anti-aircraft fire detonated a box of hand grenades.

  The remainder were able to land close to the battery manned by a single troop from the 234th Heavy AA Battery operating four 3.7-in guns. Despite a spirited resistance Genz and his men successfully overran the position; few of the gunners survived. Glider-borne troops possessed the inestimable advantage of having all their weapons, including MG 34s, with them and could thus swing fully into action immediately on landing.

  He now proceeded to his second objective – the nearby wireless station – but was repulsed by other elements of Force Reserve, 1st Ranger Battalion and more Bren Carriers of the 1 Royal Welch Fus
iliers. Isolated and without support Genz clung briefly to his gains but wisely opted to break off and attempt to break out toward the rest of his regiment. Luck, cunning and their commander’s excellent English got them through.

  The bulk of Sussman’s troops were to be landed in the dead ground of Prison Valley whilst Heilman’s 3rd Battalion 3 Paratroop Regiment was to drop at Karatsos and secure the coast road. The two forces would then converge on the capital, the main body on the Alikianou – Chania axis and the lesser along the axis from Platanias. The plan began to unravel when the transports, sailing majestically over the Akrotiri Peninsula, were filleted by heavy AA fire; the surviving parachutists scattered over a wide area, several battalions became hopelessly intermingled:

  The moment we left the planes we were met with extremely heavy small arms fire. From my aircraft we suffered particularly heavy casualties and only three men reached the ground unhurt. Those who had jumped first, nearer to Galatas, were practically all killed, either in the air or soon after landing … approximately 350 men of my battalion survived the initial landing and organising period.23

  These tough, young German Fallschirmjäger proved, in some cases, to be far from their heroic best in these chaotic conditions. Whilst many fought stubbornly in small groups and refused all quarter, others gave up without a fight and in the bloody scrum of the mêlée it was the New Zealanders and their Greek comrades who fared best. The paratroops were trained to form up swiftly on landing, follow their officers and fight hard to secure an identifiable objective.

  As was often the case on Crete, officers and NCOs were missing or dead, the drop zones so scattered that it was nigh on impossible to determine where the actual objective lay and the quality of the opposition exceeded all expectation. The men who dropped on Eben Emael were anticipating a hard and desperate fight, their objective was impossible to miss, whereas here they’d been promised a walkover. The reception they received must have come as a very unpleasant shock: