Operation Mercury Page 14
In the confused fighting and withdrawal of the surviving parachutists, Pendlebury, armed and in uniform, accompanied by his driver and a squad of armed locals, drove through the Canea Gate. Having then parted from the escorting andartes he pushed on toward Chania. This was reckless, even for so noted a swashbuckler, as the area was thick with enemy. At Kamina, barely a kilometre further on, the vehicle ran into a blocking patrol and a fierce firefight broke out. Pendlebury, having accounted for a number of his opponents ,was severely wounded.
His captors, inclined towards mercy and carried the wounded man to a nearby house where two Cretan women administered first aid. That evening, he was attended by a German doctor who treated his wounds. On the following day, however, more German soldiers arrived, dragged the helpless officer outside and shot him on the spot. It is possible that, having been recognised as an SOE officer, he was singled out for execution.
Given the weakness of the Axis intelligence this is perhaps unlikely. More plausible is a further version which insists Pendlebury had been wearing a civilian shirt – as the doctor had, quite properly cut away the uniform tunic and the second party of Germans mistook their captive for a saboteur. Given the prevailing terror being experienced by the invaders, harried by soldiers and locals alike, this may offer a more realistic perspective.
Pendlebury’s death was not the end of civilian resistance; quite the reverse. His killing is, however, clear evidence of the level of savagery the Germans would unhesitatingly employ against anyone suspected of partisan activity. The code of the paratrooper required chivalrous treatment of a uniformed enemy but no quarter to those who came from the shadows (see Appendix 2).
Meanwhile the Australians, in this sector, had captured a quantity of German flares and, having broken their signals code, were able to confuse the planes trying to bomb and strafe their positions, besides which they buried some 1,300 dead. Their own losses had not topped fifty. But that was it. The large garrison, having beaten off initial attacks, did nothing more, there was no determined onslaught to drive the survivors of Brauer’s drop into the sea. Creforce HQ seems to have overlooked the potential of these substantial and victorious forces.
Without contrary orders Brigadier Chappel remained true to his original instructions which were to defend the town and airfield. An opportunity to drive westwards toward Rethymnon and link up with Campbell was therefore lost. It was not until the night of 26th /27th that Chappel approached his commander-in-chief, through signals routed through Cairo, to enquire if he should make aggressive moves in that direction.
By then, of course, it was far too late.
In Athens, any early optimism of the part of General Student and his officers was quickly dissipated. By 2.00 p.m. he knew the attack on Chania had been seen off with loss. The news from Maleme was equally dispiriting; using an ad hoc radio, cobbled together from spares and salvage, the paratroops reported more heavy losses and very limited gains. As a consequence the General wisely took the decision to postpone the afternoon’s assaults on Rethymnon and Heraklion. These orders, nonetheless, did not all get through to the dustbowl airstrips, where confusion already reigned.
The choking dust in fact accounted for as many German transports as the ack ack fire they’d just come through. The planes were forced to land virtually blind in the great engulfing cloud, or circle for hours with their tanks running on empty. The net effect was that the bombers and fighter escort, supporting the second wave, took off in good time but the lumbering transports were significantly delayed. This provided a golden opportunity for the defenders to prepare an appropriate reception. The Germans’ own report gave a bleak assessment of the results:
The formations started in incorrect tactical sequence, and arrived
over their target areas between 1600 and 1800 hours, not closed up but in successive formations and at the most by squadrons. As the fighters, for reasons of range, could only remain over the landing targets till 1615 hours the bulk of the forces had to land without fighter protection. The bomber attacks started shortly before 1500 hours and had not destroyed the enemy but only kept him under cover for the time being. As a result of casualties to aircraft in connection with the first sortie the total battle strength at Heraklion alone was 600 men less than was intended.5
Major Rheinhard Wenning, who had taken off at the correct time expected, as he flew over the island, to meet the first wave as they turned for the mainland:
If everything had gone as planned we should have met the first planes on the way back but there was nothing … a right turn then we fly parallel to the coast, signal the drop and the plane jerks as the parachutists jump out and float downwards. As far as I can see from the cabin of the plane there are no paratroopers on the ground even though those we have just dropped are supposed to be a reserve battalion. Now they will be facing an enemy superior in numbers on their own.6
It was only on his return journey that the Major observed the aircraft, which should have preceded him, approaching the coast! The ‘fog’ of war is not merely a literary phrase, it is certainly real and the more complex the operation, the greater the margin for confusion. Student’s plan was visionary in concept, hugely ambitious in scale and marred by bad intelligence and, to a lesser extent, the petty jealousies of colleagues. Military undertakings are inevitably always fraught with difficulties; the plan subject to so many factors beyond the control of its creator:
It is not easy for the critic, strolling along an English country road in the pleasant and quiet darkness of a spring night to understand how difficult is to move bodies of troops even a few miles on a night of battle.7
By the evening of this long and bloody first day, General Freyburg was inclined to send a cautiously optimistic signal detailing the consequences of the day’s actions:
Today has been a hard one. We have been hard pressed. So far, I believe, we hold aerodromes at Retimo [Rethymnon], Heraklion and Maleme, and the two harbours. Margin by which we hold them is a bare one, and it would be wrong of me to paint an optimistic picture. Fighting has been heavy and we have killed large numbers of Germans. Communications are most difficult. Scale of air attacks upon Canea [Chania] has been severe. Everybody here realises how vital the issue and we will fight it out.8
What is unclear at this stage is whether the General thought that the main thrust was still to come and that it would arrive by sea. The strategy of defence was totally hamstrung by this perceived imperative. Freyburg understood, quite clearly, that the airfields were important, even vital, but did he yet realise that they, and particularly Maleme, were to be the fulcrum upon which the outcome of the entire campaign would hinge?
The German view was less sanguine. The attackers, bloodied, depleted, scattered and stunned, were clinging to their broken hillsides, awaiting what they considered the inevitable series of counter-attacks with the clear conviction that these would quickly prove decisive: ‘We should have had to fight them off with stones and sheath knives.’9
We have seen that the isolated companies of Andrew’s 22nd New Zealand Battalion were coming under increasing pressure from the Germans who had landed, largely unscathed, west of the Tavronitis. As the long, hot afternoon wore on these had consolidated their gains, meagre as they appeared, and brought up their heavier weapons.
The Luftwaffe maintained the relentless aerial bombardment of Andrew’s forward positions. The situation was not critical but it was deteriorating. Having secured the iron bridge over the dry river bed and established a bare toehold on the perimeter of the airfield, the Germans could yet gain control. This would be a disaster.
Whilst considering the chain of events which arose during the evening and night of 20 May and criticising the decisions taken, we must have an insight into the intelligence gathering which was informing Freyberg’s reactions. ULTRA was Britain’s great trump, to be guarded at all costs (see Appendix 3 The Intelligence War).
Freyberg himself was not a party to the exact source of the intelligence. As a result of
this and also as a consequence of the manner in which the core data, the decrypts, were processed, the picture he was given, though highly accurate in detail, was also misleading. Freyberg was of the opinion that the airborne landings were merely the advance guard; the harbingers of a secondary but larger seaborne invasion.
The signals suggested this, as did military logic; Crete was an island, past invasions came by sea. The paratroop landings in the Low Countries in 1940 had preceded a sustained ground assault by conventional forces. As the Luftwaffe controlled the skies they had no need to fear the RAF, and their abundant air power effectively neutralised Britain’s naval supremacy.
Freyberg, a soldier’s soldier, blunt, brave, resolute, still thought, as did some of his officers, especially those who had served on the Western Front in the Great War, in terms of Great War tactics, linear battles of attrition where giving ground was less vital than conserving unit strength. They did not think of strategy in terms of revolutionary concepts such as vertical envelopment – indeed why should they? Such a battle had not so far been attempted and the ULTRA intelligence had been read to imply that the main thrust would come from the sea.
There is the unresolved matter of the extent of Freyberg’s inclusion in the tight knit circle that guarded ULTRA. That such secrecy was vital cannot, of course, be denied. ULTRA was Britain’s trump. Jumbo Wilson, during the retreat through Greece, was able to utilise the intelligence to consistently evade the threat of encirclement.
When the first serious indication of German numbers to be thrown into the invasion, was received on 6 May (see appendix 3), this suggested a force comprising two airborne divisions with supporting elements. So far so good, but what then muddled the issue was the German decision to retain a portion of the parachute troops in the Balkans and send in the Alpine division under Ringel.
A subsequent ULTRA signal instructed that: ‘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’. This fresh intelligence appears to have confused London into believing that three mountain regiments were now to be deployed and that, crucially, these would come by sea.
Wavell was sceptical that the Axis could scrape together sufficient ships to create such an armada. A subsequent signal, dispatched next day from the Air Ministry,10 gave a far more accurate analysis and stated the maritime element would be of only minor significance. Yet, on 13 May, yet another signal11 reverted to the importance of the threat from the sea and, as a consequence, Freyberg was advised that he could expect to face 30, 000 or 35,000 enemy soldiers. Of these, 12,000 would be paratroops and at least 10,000 would be landed from ships.
The General’s great strengths were in his steadfast courage and ability to lead men; intellectually and in terms of his analytical capacity he was less well endowed. In fairness ULTRA was both new and secret. His son, Lord Freyberg, has suggested that it was only relatively late in the day that his father was included within the ULTRA cabal. As a result he did not move troops to the airfields as this would have compromised the source.
This does not ring true. It seems far more likely that Freyberg was confused and misled. His obsession with an attack from the sea is palpable throughout and he does not appear to have awoken to the threat from the German possession of Maleme until 22nd, by which time the grip was too tight to be broken.
Churchill, usually quick to condemn, never lost his respect and liking for the battle-scarred hero, though recognising that Freyberg’s type of warrior was out of his depth in the fine web of a modern intelligence-led war:
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.12
As the General himself subsequently conceded: ‘We for our part were mostly preoccupied by seaborne landings, not by the threat of air landings.’13 It was this misunderstanding and Freyberg’s lack of analytical ability that doomed the defenders. On 20 May he had the upper hand, even if he did not fully understand the depth of the Germans’ weakness. Determined action, ruthless and vigorous counter-attacks would have finished the battle on that day.
There is a supreme irony in this intelligence failure. On the one hand an army which has a complete knowledge of its enemy’s intentions, an enemy whose own assessments are grossly inaccurate, misreads this gift to the extent that it saves the unprepared enemy from disaster. On the other hand, in the longer term, the defenders’ failure helps to preserve the all important secret. As the German after battle report14 concludes:
One thing stands out from all the information gleaned from the enemy (prisoner’s 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 the bulk of the invasion forces would come by sea.15
It is perhaps significant that it was younger men, such as Kippenberger, who immediately understood the nature of the battle that was being fought and the means to win it. Counter-attack relentlessly, sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed to deny the enemy his prime objective which was to capture a viable airstrip intact.
Once the decision to retreat from Hill 107 was taken, the potential for final defeat was established, once Student’s battalions, however mauled and depleted, took and could hold a single airstrip, the question of a seaborne attack became irrelevant. Once German reinforcements could be flown in then the balance swung in their favour.
Though the garrison, with a total strength of 42,460, outnumbered the total of the attackers at 22,04016 by nearly 2 to 1, numbers would cease to count once the Germans began to build up reserves and heavy weapons. From a secure base in the west, and facilitated by air superiority, they could begin to roll up the defenders from west to east.
There were serious and ultimately fatal errors of judgement made by Allied commanders, particularly at the higher brigade and divisional levels, but these were failures of perception rather than nerve. The men concerned were never faint-hearted, quite the reverse; extreme bravery was a characteristic shared by all of them. It was strategic insight that was lacking.
Andrew’s forward companies would hang on in the expectation that, once the sheltering dusk excluded the further attentions of the Luftwaffe, they could expect that a strong counter-attack might be put in. This was entirely reasonable for Allen’s 21st and Leckie’s 23rd Battalion had previously been ordered to hold themselves in readiness for just such a deployment.
The beleaguered Andrew was regularly sending up distress flares but these seem to have gone unnoticed. Major Thomason, at 23rd battalion HQ did not recall seeing any. Both worried and frustrated, Andrew decided he had no option but to make his representations in person. He was normally a calm and utterly imperturbable officer but, as Thomason records:
Colonel Andrew came to our Battalion headquarters in person and asked for help. He was at first guided to me by one of our men, I knew Les Andrew well, he and I were good friends. He was very shaken and disturbed and I personally took him down to Battalion headquarters. I don’t know the outcome of his visit except that his request was not granted. This took place fairly early in the afternoon. I cannot state the exact time.17
This refusal was in spite of the fact a platoon sized patrol from the 21st had reported the Germans had a strong lodgement on Andrew’s southern flank at Vlakherontissa. Yet nobody moved. Both battalions concentrated on holding their own positions while reporting back to brigade that all was quiet in their respective sectors.
Brigadier Hargest confirmed that nothing further would be required of them ‘unless position very serious’.18 In fact the position was quickly becoming very serious indeed and Andrew’s19 messages to brigade were anything but relaxed. He reported that he’d lost contact with his forward companies, dug in on the western flank of Hill 107, that his positions were being bombed relentlessly and that t
he German strength was growing with a corresponding increase in their deployment of heavier weapons.
These messages became increasingly desperate as the day progressed. Andrew reported that his HQ company had been penetrated, that the left flank of his battalion was giving way. At 5.00 p.m. he bluntly demanded to know when he might expect reinforcement; when would the 23rd appear?
Hargest did not immediately respond but when he did it was to advise that the 23rd was already fully committed – this was entirely fallacious. Having seen off Scherber’s attack the battalion had scarcely fired a shot. Inevitably Brigadier Hargest’s conduct has been much criticised. However, such criticism must always be considered in the light of the prevailing fears of an invasion from the sea. Paratroop landings, in this context, were no more than either a diversion or an overture. Hargest was certainly a very brave man, an eyewitness at Thermopylae remembered the General:
… standing in the centre of a group among some olive trees and saying, with tears running down his cheeks, ‘I have in the past had to retreat when I have been driven out of a position, but this is the first time I’ve had to retreat without a fight’. My second picture of him is at Sidi Azziz on the morning of 27th November 1941. We had been attacked by a force of German tanks, artillery and motorised infantry and the guns of E Troop, 5th Field regiment had been knocked out one by one. Before that the anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns had been knocked out and we were obviously losing the battle … Hargest stood a little to the right of the line of fire of our 25 pounders, and in front of them, wearing his red cap and with his hands in the pocket of his coat. He did not take cover at any time. We were firing over open sights at tanks, and when the last of our guns was out of action and our ammunition truck caught fire, Hargest put his hands up and walked towards the German tanks.20