Operation Mercury Page 9

  Admiral Cunningham, whatever his reservations about the safety of his fleet exposed in open waters to an enemy with full control of the skies, had pulled together two ‘heavy’ flotillas and seven ‘light’. The battlecruisers with their massive 15-in guns stalked the western approaches to deter any intervention by the Italian Navy, while the squadrons prowled the coast ready to pounce on any invader. In total the fleet comprised four battleships, nineteen cruisers and forty-three destroyers. Such a concentration of sea power virtually doomed any attempted landing to certain destruction. Churchill, writing to Mr. Fraser in New Zealand felt the odds were now even:

  The Navy will certainly do their utmost to prevent a seaborne attack, and it is unlikely to succeed to any large scale. So far as airborne attack is concerned, this ought to suit the New Zealanders down to the ground, for they will be able to come to close quarters, man to man, with the enemy who will not have the advantage of tanks and artillery, on which he so largely relies. Should the enemy get a landing in Crete that will be the beginning, and not the end, of embarrassments for him. The island is mountainous and wooded, giving particular scope to the qualities of your troops.33

  This schoolboy romanticism has been dismissed as patronising but this is probably an injustice; it more reflects the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for a good clean fight, chivalric warfare with cold steel to the fore. In the event the New Zealanders more than justified his confidence in their martial spirit.

  Freyberg was faced with the reverse of the tactical dilemma which had earlier confronted Student. The coastline was long, the airstrips widely separated. Should he therefore protect each of his strategic assets in force, thus spreading his resources and exposing them to defeat in detail, or should he rather thin out the defenders and build up a strong reserve, available to be rushed to the contact in sufficient strength to re-take any bridgehead the enemy might win?

  Again, like his German opponent he opted for a compromise, splitting his troops into three principal contingents, each charged with the security of a vital sector but leaving the final deployment in each case to local commanders. Like their General many of the officers involved, brave and dedicated soldiers, were veterans of trench warfare and commenced ‘digging in’ and wiring their, predominantly linear, positions. This gave Freyberg great comfort and he wrote in a more confident frame to Wavell after his tour of inspection on 13/14 May.

  In the vulnerable west of the island, the Maleme/Galatos sector, he deployed the New Zealand Division; 4 Brigade under Brigadier Inglis comprising 18th, 19th and 20th (NZ) battalions and the 5th commanded by Hargest – 21st, 22nd, 23rd (NZ) and 28th (Maori) battalions. Brigadier Howard Kippenberger led the newly created 10 Brigade (NZ Divisional Cavalry Detachment and Composite Battalion).

  Weston remained in command of his MNBDO dug in around Souda and supported by a pair of composite Australian battalions, together with 2/2nd Field Artillery (deployed as infantry). Freyburg’s ‘Creforce’ HQ was near Chania, the administrative capital and the Force Reserve – 1st Royal Welch Fusiliers, (14 Brigade), 1st Ranger Battalion (9th Battalion KRRC) and the Northumberland Hussars (Noodles) was nearby.

  Moving eastwards along the long ribbon of the north coast, the Rethymnon/Georgioupolis sector was held by Brigadier Vasey’s 19 Australian Brigade. This comprised 2/1st, 2/7th, 2/8th and 2/11th Battalions, all infantry; three batteries of guns from 2/3rd Field Regiment together with units of field engineers and machine gunners.

  The 14 Brigade, commanded by Chappel, was deployed around Heraklion and his forces included the 2nd Black Watch, 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and the Australian 2/4th Infantry Battalion, (part of 19 Brigade).

  This left only the Greek contingents. There was a tendency to regard these as distinctly second rate formations; they were badly armed and equipped but they were to show that there was nothing lacking in their fighting spirit. They, together with ad hoc groups of local irregulars, would make a significant contribution to the defence. The Germans would be shocked and on numerous occasions discomfited by the ferocity of the local response, being accustomed to a more servile reception. It was easy to forget that the Cretans had a long and proud tradition of offering fierce and unbending resistance to the invader.

  General Freyberg, whatever his other failings, was quick to appreciate the fighting qualities of the Cretans; theirs was a spirit to which this lion of a man could respond – simple, courageous, fiercely independent and resolute. He realised that local bands of guerrillas or andartes could harass and decimate an invader; their lack of training and arms amply compensated by centuries of resistance, and intimate knowledge of the difficult terrain.

  There was a tendency amongst both British and dominion officers to write off all the Greek units as equally unreliable. This was grossly unjust. Many were indeed crammed with raw recruits and not all would perform well. Kippenberger was particularly dismissive and, in some units, morale was undoubtedly low. The erratic provision of arms, which was miserly and random, was hardly calculated to stiffen anyone’s resolve. The men drew their rifles from a central depot housed in Chania where they faced an eclectic choice of mainly outdated weapons with, at best, a few rounds apiece, frequently of the wrong calibre!

  Colonel, later Brigadier, Guy Salisbury-Jones was given the job of liaison officer with the Greeks, and their eight battalions comprised a total of some 9,000 effectives. Of these Freyberg now deployed the 1, 6 and 8 Regiments in the far, western sector, the 2 Regiment in Souda/Chania, with the 4th and 5th together with the paramilitary gendarmes in the Retymnon/Georgioupolis sector. The remainder, 3 and 7 Regiments and a Garrison Battalion remained at Heraklion.

  The New Zealand Division was under the command of Brigadier General Puttick who shared part of his sector with elements of the MNBDO under Weston, disgruntled at his replacement by Freyberg, but who had responsibility for some AA and coastal defence emplacements. Weston’s semi-independent fiefdom did not make for smooth coordination. Force Reserve was not under Freyberg’s direct command but was to be ‘administered by sector commanders’ – a rather woolly arrangement that was to have serious consequences.

  Defence of the vital Maleme sector was designated by Puttick to Hargest’s 5 Brigade; Kippenberger’s 10th (less the 20th Battalion) was guarding Galatos and Prison Valley. The 20th, based on the fringes of Chania, was kept in hand as a distinct divisional reserve, not to be deployed without Puttick’s acquiescence. Brigadier Hargest’s dispositions around Maleme itself were to be crucial to the outcome of the forthcoming battle.

  The 21st and 23rd were deployed on the high ground around Kondomari with his HQ further east at Platanias, some distance from the vital airstrip. A deep gully, the Sfakoriako, divided these units wired in positions from Maleme. His engineering battalion straddled the coast road by the bridge at Modhion and the crack Maoris further back at Platanias.

  The vital bastion of Hill 107, which overlooked the airfield, was to be defended by the 22nd battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Andrew VC, and itself dispersed to a degree that only a single rifle company occupied the summit. A major failing of the defensive enceinte was that no troops were stationed west of the dry Tavronitis riverbed and the iron bridge which spanned the arid watercourse remained unguarded. D Company’s extreme right lay against the banks as did the slit trenches of C Company’s No. 15 Platoon. The remaining platoons were dug in around the field itself. Worse, an improvised sprawl of tents and hutments, home to the RAF and other non-combatant personnel, crowded the line of fire.

  This was not the only shortcoming of the defence of Maleme; the lighter AA guns, manned by marines, were controlled by Weston, the heavier AA weapons took their orders from the Gun Control Room in Chania. Though Andrew made representations to Puttick about the lack of deployment west of the Tavronitis nothing was done and the ‘back door’ remained ajar. Moves were considered to move some of the Greeks at Kastelli further east but all that was finally done was to detail a single section from 21st Battalion to o
ccupy a single vantage as, to all intents and purposes, observers.

  Air Marshal Longmore, having inspected the Souda Bay area, concluded it could be kept clear of German bombers by a full squadron of Hurricanes, with 100 per cent replacement rate and reserve of pilots. This may have been optimistic but Freyberg hoped he would at least receive this complement of fighters. He was to be disappointed as the debate raged at the very highest level over how the supply of available planes and pilots was to be doled out. The RAF sought to shift the burden onto the Navy; Cunningham hedged in response.

  The final proposal was the worst of bad compromises. The island, it was felt, could not be adequately defended from the air given the heavy demands made by operations in the Western Desert but, and this was crucial, the air strips with their attendant personnel were to be kept at operational readiness. The idea was that, should the Germans invade from the sea, aircraft could then be dispatched from Egypt and based at these forward strips. For this reason the runways were not lighted.

  By mid May the few available aircraft, stationed on the island, had been steadily whittled down by attrition. By the 19th Beamish had convinced a reluctant Freyberg that the battered survivors should be withdrawn from what was becoming a hopeless fight. This must have been a bitter moment; the fearful scenario he had envisaged at the outset had become a reality, his forces were without air cover, exposed to the full fury of the Luftwaffe.

  There was, however, on Crete one officer whose preferred defence against parachutists was his trusty sword stick. John Pendlebury, a field archaeologist and Old Wykehamist in his mid-thirties, was one of those brilliant mavericks, in the vein of T. E Lawrence or Orde Wingate. He’d been curator of Arthur Evans museum collection at Knossos in the previous decade and knew the island and its people intimately. Military Intelligence had recruited him as early as 1938 to serve in what would become the Special Operations Executive (SOE); at that point Military Intelligence (Research) MI(R).

  First dispatched to Greece in the wake of the German onslaught on the Low Countries in 1940, his credentials overcame the Greeks’ suspicion of British clandestine operations on their soil; at this point Metaxas wished to avoid provoking the Axis. Pendlebury soon made his way to Crete where he had deep knowledge of the landscapes, gleaned in the course of his many walking trips around the island. In addition to his sword-cane he also sported a glass eye which he took to leaving on his desk when engaged in the field!

  His official role was that of Vice Consul in Heraklion but he was soon abroad, organising the Palikari – such was his charisma that he was soon able to report he had established the basis for an intelligence and, if needed, resistance network. As MI(R) began its complex transformation into SOE, Pendlebury was somehow overlooked and continued, unfettered by official constraint, on his own initiative. One of his concerns was the reluctance of the government to arm the Cretans, still fearful of their republican sympathies.

  Two of his intelligence colleagues, Terence Bruce Mitford and Jack Hamson, were sent in as support with a particular brief for potential sabotage operations against the Italian invaders on the mainland. However, with the Axis advance halting under way, Pendlebury was appointed as official liaison with the Greek army.

  Having neatly circumvented the territorial restrictions imposed by demarcations within the intelligence organisations, he was able to set up a school for saboteurs on Souda Island. Nonetheless the severe restrictions placed on the team’s remit by Cairo meant that by the time Greece had fallen and an invasion of Crete appeared imminent, frustratingly little had been achieved.

  The mainland debacle added a sudden jolt of real urgency and the SOE activity on Crete was geared up accordingly. It was now proposed to make the island a training ground and operational base for guerrilla activity throughout the Axis occupied Balkans. A new SOE HQ was established in a pleasant villa in Chania and Pendlebury’s brief, to recruit local resistance groups, was given fresh impetus.

  For a brief moment, the troops on Crete, despite the regular attentions of the Stukas, gained a respite. The island, largely untouched by the war, was lovely in the Mediterranean spring, the air heavy with the scent of thyme. Those early days in May were an opportunity to recover from the ordeal of Greece:

  I had a most heavenly bathe this evening with David Barnett. As I told you this is the most beautiful place and we found a lovely little sandy cove, surrounded by rocks, about three miles away. The water was crystal clear and just cool enough to be refreshing, with a pale blue tint. We sat on the rocks and dried in the evening sun, which doesn’t burn you here. It wasn’t like war at all.34

  As expectation lay heavy in the scented island air and the troops, battered by their ordeal in Greece, recuperating in the glorious warmth of the Cretan spring, basked in the delicious shade of the olive groves or swam in the revitalising waters, General Freyberg spent his days touring the defences. The presence of this great, bluff bear of a man brought heart to many young soldiers. His very obvious concern for their welfare, his legendary valour and his curt injunction just to ‘fix bayonets and go at them as hard as you can’ were reassuring.

  Some of his officers were a deal less sanguine, however. Their general’s preoccupation was with resisting a seaborne threat, his obsession with the business of ‘wiring in’ – straight from 1918. This appeared to be the antithesis of rapid reaction and relentless counter-attacks which was the accepted response to parachutists.

  Freyberg had, in his operational orders, placed reliance on the force reserves. These were considerable but their correct deployment remained dependant on a number of factors – sound communications, speed and cohesion of response. The plain fact was that the reserves were scattered along the ribbon of coast without sufficient transport and, above all, with poor communications.

  Here lay the nub of the problem. Many wireless sets had been lost in Greece, those which had been salvaged were few in number and, at best, indifferent in quality. Amazingly, Freyberg had not included radios in his ‘urgent’ list sent out on 7 May. Communications otherwise depended on field telephones, the wires strung precariously on poles along the length of the coast road.

  Field telephones had proved totally inadequate in the previous war and were particularly vulnerable to casual interdiction by paratroops. Even the signal lamps had no batteries or were of the wrong voltage requirement for the fitful mains. This ad hoc and grossly inadequate system of communications was a major and telling weakness.

  Due to strict adherence to Air Ministry requirements,the airstrips had not been mined or slighted and Freyberg’s vision of a descent from the sea rather than the air continued to blind him to the threat, should the Germans prove able to snatch one of the aerodromes intact. On 16th he sent a final, pre-invasion signal to Wavell in Cairo, the tone upbeat and confident:

  [I] have completed plan for the defence of Crete and have just returned from final tour of defences. I feel greatly encouraged by my visit. Everywhere all ranks are fit, and morale is high. All defences have been extended, and positions wired as much as possible. We have forty-five field guns placed, with adequate ammunition dumped. Two infantry tanks are at each aerodrome. Carriers and transport still being unloaded and delivered. 2nd Leicesters have arrived, and will make Heraklion stronger. I do not wish to be over-confident, but I feel that at least we will give excellent account of ourselves. With help of Royal Navy I trust Crete will be held.35

  This then was the state of the island’s defences on 19 May; time had now run out. Churchill was right to point out that the loss of Crete was indeed sad. It was to be, even on the most lenient of assessments, an avoidable defeat. Inertia, lack of organisation, lack of a coherent strategy for the defence, and the under use of resources, were to contribute as much as the lack of air support to the tragedy.

  Freyberg, a lion in battle, was not the man to lead this complex defensive action; his analytical failings, understandable as they were, contributed mightily. This poor strategy and lack of preparedness would combine
to frustrate the desperate and inspiring heroism of the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Greeks and Cretans who fought so hard and so well during the course of the battle.

  Chapter 4

  Fallen Flower Petals – Maleme, Chania and Rethymnon 20 May

  The screaming Junkers over the grey-green trees,

  Their cargoes feathering to earth.

  They might be wisps of white rose petal

  Caught in the keen, compelling twist of fate

  Faltering, aimless, in an aimless wind:

  Confetti, white and dirty white,

  Tossed out in scattered handfuls …

  And one man idle, leans against the open hatch,

  Through which the white horde poured

  And watches Crete whine past below,

  And in the mixed array of conquest

  His hearing does not catch the rifle snap,

  Sudden, faint his hands grasp deeply into nothingness,

  And in bewildered agony

  The dark soul drowns.

  He struggles as the troop plane banks;

  Unstruggling, falls in one slow turn -

  The horror dream personified -

  And the olives snatch him to their greenery.

  Our vague ears do not catch the death – weak cry,

  And someone blows the smoke shreds from his rifle mouth.1

  It was shortly after 8.00 a.m. on the morning of 20 May. As ever in the eastern Mediterranean in the middle of spring, the weather was fine and clear with the promise of a very warm day.

  Then from out to sea came a continuous, low roar. Above the horizon there appeared a long black line as of a flock of migrating birds. It was the first aerial invasion in history approaching. We looked spellbound.2