The battle for Crete was almost exclusively an infantry affair often fought at very close quarters, with hand-to-hand combat taking place quite frequently. The Allied troops on the island had lost much of their heavier weaponry in the campaign for Greece, and while this did not leave them completely without artillery support, it was, in the main, in the form of anti-aircraft guns and coastal artillery units. This meant the Allies had to aim to defeat an enemy invasion before it gained a foothold, rather than overcoming it in a conventional battle. Nine Matilda ‘I’ tanks from ‘B’ Squadron, 7th Royal Tank Regiment were present on the island, but despite being heavily armoured, they had only armour-piercing rounds for their 2-pdr guns, a serious handicap when engaging infantry. There were also the 16 Mk VIB tanks of ‘C’ Squadron, the King’s Own Hussars, armed with machine guns. These had seen heavy service in North Africa and were thus prone to mechanical breakdown. The lack of trucks or Bren gun carriers made it difficult to form a proper mobile reserve.
Almost the only conventional artillery on the island were the 34 Italian 75mm field guns captured by the Greeks, and four 2-pdr antitank guns. The anti-aircraft and coastal artillery was also somewhat meagre, with 14 coastal defence guns (3 and 4in.), 20 heavy anti-aircraft guns (3.7in.) and 36 light anti-aircraft guns (40mm).
The German forces were hardly better off, however. The lightly armed airborne troops were supposed to be reinforced by sea, but of the three flotillas conveying most of the artillery and a company from the 5th Panzer Division, the first was badly mauled by the Royal Navy and the other two aborted. At that point (22 May), the airfield at Maleme was so cratered and littered with wreckage that only a small number of 75mm and 105mm recoilless guns, 37mm and 50mm anti-tank guns and 20mm anti-aircraft guns ever reached the German troops. Where the German forces did have a major advantage over the Allies was the high proportion of automatic weapons that both the paratroopers and mountain troops carried. These weapons, such as the 7.92mm MG34 and 9mm MP40 sub-machine gun, the latter being carried by one in four paratroopers, proved to be very useful in the close-quarter fighting that developed. The majority of men on both sides however, were armed with conventional bolt-action rifles, such as the .303in. Short Magazine Lee Enfield (SMLE) or 7.92mm Mauser Kar98k, which had broadly similar characteristics. These were supplemented by hand grenades and pistols, such as the 9mm Browning, .38 Smith & Wesson and 9mm P08 Luger. The Greek units were in as bad a state, or perhaps even worse, as many of them had lost their personal weapons, as well as their helmets and in some cases even their boots. In any case, their principal small arm was the outdated 6.5mm Mannlicher-Schönauer M1903.
A photograph by A.H. Thomas showing a soldier outside the 7th General Hospital, near Galatos, shortly before the German invasion. Despite the large Red Cross symbol, the hospital suffered some damage from air attack during the invasion but treated large numbers of wounded from both sides during the battle. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-11712)
By the time of Operation Merkur, Great Britain had been at war for some 20 months. Nevertheless, many of the troops on Crete still lacked any combat experience. Although many men had gone to the recruiting offices immediately after Britain’s ultimatum to Germany ran out on 3 September 1939, a number had been told to wait for their official call-up papers. Some had gained experience in the fighting in Norway, Belgium, France, as well as North Africa and Greece, and there still existed a cadre of reservists and professional pre-war regulars, particularly among the NCOs. The fact remained, however, that a substantial number of the troops on Crete, including those serving in the infantry, were ‘hostilities only’ conscripts who had waited with mixed feelings for the papers to land on their doormat. Some of their junior officers were just as inexperienced, fresh out of Sandhurst and armed with textbook knowledge and a mixture of enthusiasm and apprehension.
A staff officer and some of the 51 nurses from the New Zealand Army Nursing Service with the 1st General Hospital in Souda Bay shortly before their embarkation for Egypt, 29 April 1941. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-12253)
A photograph showing Lieutenant Roy Farran’s destroyed light tank on the outskirts of Galatos, from the book Gebirgsjäger auf Kreta by Major Flecker and prepared by Sepp Dobiasch – one of the first published histories of the Crete campaign. (Willhelm Limpert-Verlag, Berlin; 1942). (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-12645)
Both the world wars were something of an aberration for Britain. For the last two centuries, she had maintained a small but highly professional army designed for colonial warfare and the defence of the empire. Both global conflicts required Britain to rapidly expand her armed forces and fight a continental power with large, capable and well-equipped armed forces that directly threatened the security of the home islands themselves. This expansion meant that for a period of time, the infantry could generally be described as ‘enthusiastic amateurs’. This was less applicable to the technical trades, who had the first choice of the better educated conscripts and those with a professional trade, such as mechanical or electrical engineering, who could serve as engineers, signallers, gunners or drivers. The infantry were drawn from every walk of life except the ‘reserved’ occupations (such as shipyard workers), including clerks and shop assistants, and were often weak and physically unfit as a result of chronic malnutrition and lack of outdoor exercise, a fact highlighted by the Boer War. Psychologically, they were unprepared not only for the confusion of the battlefield, but also for the complex routine of army life, and tended to be contemptuous of both officers and regulations. Beyond that however, they proved remarkably adaptable and by 1945 had been moulded into a formidable fighting force.
The basic fighting unit in most of the armies of this period was the infantry battalion, which in the British case nominally consisted of 22 officers and 757 NCOs and other ranks. It consisted of a headquarters, a support company and four rifle companies, each rifle company including an HQ, three platoons and a support section with Bren guns. Each platoon was made up of an HQ and three sections, each of 10 men. The battalions, part of an infantry regiment in peacetime, were generally amalgamated into three-battalion brigades for operational use; each part of a three-brigade division. There was no British divisional organisational structure on Crete, merely various artillery units, a couple of armoured formations and Brigadier Chappel’s 14th Infantry Brigade. This originally consisted of the 2nd Battalion, the York & Lancaster Regiment; 2nd Battalion, the Black Watch; and 1st Battalion, the Welch Regiment. They were joined by the 1st Ranger Battalion (actually the 9th Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps) in April and by the 2nd Battalion, the Leicestershire Regiment, and the 1st Battalion, the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders in May. Unfortunately, Chappel’s brigade lacked much of the support usually associated with a formation of this size and was very weak in organic transport, but the troops that were on the island before the Greek campaign were acclimatised, rested and well dug in.
Major General Eric Weston’s Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation (MNBDO) 1, better known later in the war in Burma as ‘Viper Force’, was a new wartime formation created for the purpose of providing ground defence for naval installations overseas. It consisted of a coastal defence brigade, two anti-aircraft regiments, a searchlight regiment, construction engineers and a battalion of infantry. They left Britain in February 1941 but were forced to take the long route via the Cape of Good Hope and Suez Canal as a result of the build-up of the Luftwaffe in the Mediterranean theatre. Due to an administrative error, most of their heavy equipment was offloaded in Palestine instead of Egypt and all Major General Weston could bring to Crete’s defence was some 2,000 men and a few extra 4in. coastal guns and 3.7in. anti-aircraft guns. Weston was given temporary command of the island garrison when he flew to Crete in March ahead of his men, but the command was transferred to the more experienced Major General Bernard Freyberg, VC, Commanding Officer of the New Zealand Division, at the end of April.
Apart from the British, the infantry on the island was drawn from three main contingents – the Australians, New Zealanders and Greeks. The Australians differed from the British in being an all-volunteer force and combat veterans, as well as much better fed, physically fit and used to an outdoor life. While they were even more contemptuous of authority than their British counterparts, often addressing officers as ‘mate’ rather than ‘sir’, they were remarkably disciplined in battle. Similarly to Britain, Australia had only a small pre-war regular army, but a very large militia, the Citizen Military Force. Political constraints limited the use of these troops to home defence duties only, but in September 1939 the government called for volunteers to form an Australian Imperial Force to serve overseas. The response was tremendous, and eventually resulted in the creation of the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Infantry Divisions and a short-lived 1st Armoured Division. The 2nd AIF (the 1st having been formed during the First World War) began deploying to the Middle East in January 1940, the first formation to move being the 6th Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey. As a result of the German invasion of the Low Countries in May 1940, the 18th Brigade was diverted to Britain to assist in its defence and eventually became part of the 7th Division instead. The remaining two brigades, the 16th and 17th, were initially modelled on the quad-battalion structure of the First World War, but Blamey remodelled them on the British triangular pattern. The two spare battalions formed the nucleus of a 19th Brigade, which was filled out by another battalion from the 18th Brigade.
Supporting these brigades were the 2/1st, 2/2nd and 2/3rd Field Artillery Regiments, 2/1st Anti-tank Regiment, 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion and 2/1st – 2/3rd Combat Engineer Companies (the ‘2’ representing 2 AIF). Only the 7th Light Battery of the division’s antiaircraft brigade arrived before the campaign started, and so it was an incomplete 6th Australian Division that went to war, first in General O’Connor’s triumphant campaign against the Italians in Cyrenaica, and then as part of ‘W’ Force in Greece. Blamey was then appointed as corps commander and Major General Mackay took command of the division. After the Balkan campaign, just over half of the 14,157 Australians who were evacuated went to Egypt, along with Blamey and Mackay, while the remainder went to Crete, leaving Brigadier Alan Vasey, commander of the 19th Brigade defending the Rethymnon–Georgioupolis sector, as the senior Australian officer.
The New Zealand infantrymen were in some ways similar to their Australian counterparts, being generally better fed and more physically fit than their British equivalent and used to an outdoor life. They differed in their outlook and psychology to some extent, as New Zealand had never been a penal colony. All however, shared the proud traditions of the ANZAC Corps at Gallipoli during the First World War. As in Australia, there had only been a small standing army in New Zealand prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, but this was backed up by a large militia, known as the Territorial Force. Once again its members were precluded from serving overseas, but here too, the government called for volunteers to form a 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force (the 1st again being raised during the First World War). One result was that the New Zealand Division (its correct title) is frequently referred to as the 2nd New Zealand Infantry Division. The New Zealand infantry were highly motivated and although lacking the truculence of the Australians, loathed parade ground ‘stiffness’ and would on occasion, literally ‘go on strike’ if they felt they were being treated unfairly. But, like the Australians, once in battle they were superbly disciplined and masters of the bayonet charge, especially the Maoris in Hargest’s 5th Brigade.
New Zealand troops from the 6th Brigade aboard the SS Thurland Castle during the evacuation of ‘W’ Force from Greece. The ship, along with the SS Comliebank, transferred the brigade from Crete to Egypt on 29 April 1941. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-03763)
Members of the 5th New Zealand Field Regiment having a rest near Wheat Hill after a march while on Crete. These artillerymen acted as infantry during the battle, being part of the 3rd Company, New Zealand Composite Battalion, 10th New Zealand Brigade. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-11070)
The expeditionary force began forming in September 1939 and soon consisted of three infantry battalions (18th–20th), which, along with the 4th Artillery Regiment, a company from both the 27th Machine Gun Battalion and 7th Anti-tank Regiment, two companies of engineers and two squadrons of cavalry, formed the 4th Brigade under Brigadier Edward Puttick. Thus elements of the division began deploying to the Middle East in January 1940, but it did not unite as a formation in Egypt until March 1941, still lacking its anti-aircraft regiment. Brigadier James Hargest’s 5th Brigade was diverted to Britain, along with the Australian 18th Brigade, and Brigadier A.S. Falconer’s 6th Brigade’s departure was delayed until August 1940. It arrived just in time for the Greek campaign, and losses during the evacuations to Egypt Freyberg was left with just over 7,000 troops from the division on Crete by the time of Operation Merkur. On taking command of the garrison, Freyberg promoted the 4th Brigade’s commanding officer, Puttick, to command the division, while Brigadier L.M. Inglis took over 4th Brigade.
The Second World War started for Greece on 28 October 1940, when it was invaded by the Italians, and ended its first phase with the capitulation to the Germans on 24 April 1941. The Greeks, proud of their hard-won independence from the Turks in the 1820s, have a fierce determination to preserve it. The course of the campaign demonstrated that the Greek soldier was, in general terms, slightly physically and mentally tougher, somewhat better trained, marginally better equipped, much better led and far more motivated than his Italian counterpart. This helps to explain the spectacular reversal of fortunes after the Italian invasion. However, they faced a completely different enemy in the Germans, who were not only better prepared mentally and physically than the Italians, but had far better training, organisation, leadership and equipment.
A Fallschirmjäger wearing a knee-length camouflage smock, although the majority of those worn in Crete were plain. The large pockets would contain ammunition, maps, message pad, talc, map case and compass. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-12631)
Greece in the 1930s and 1940s was not a wealthy country and could not afford to maintain its entire 430,000-man army on alert, despite the provocations from Mussolini. Thus it did not begin full mobilisation until after the Italian invasion. The majority of the army moved against the invading forces while some 70,000 men stayed to defend the Metaxas Line in case Bulgaria or Germany initiated a secondary attack. Three battalions of the 5th ‘Kríti’ Division were left on Crete, along with the 800-strong Gendarmerie and the Heraklion Garrison Battalion. After the Greek surrender, King George II of the Hellenes was evacuated to Crete along with the remnants of the Greek 12th and 20th Infantry Divisions that had continued to fight alongside ‘W’ Force. No precise figures are available for the number of men that were reorganised, alongside the existing infantry battalions, into a number of ‘regiments’ by a British liaison officer, Colonel Guy Salisbury-Jones, but they numbered somewhere in the region of 9,000 troops.
The Royal Navy was both feared by the Italians and respected by the Germans who had very few naval forces of their own in the Mediterranean. Following the fall of France, the Admiralty reorganised and reinforced its forces in the theatre into eastern and western fleets based in Alexandria and Gibraltar respectively, the boundary between the two being the strategically important island of Malta. By May 1941, Admiral Cunningham’s eastern Mediterranean fleet had already been depleted by the loss of two destroyers during the evacuation of ‘W’ Force from Greece, but this was merely a taste of what was to come. Cunningham reported that his ships had expended almost half their anti-aircraft ammunition and that with the available stocks would only be able to replenish them to three quarters capacity. The Luftwaffe’s Fliegerkorps VIII was now operational from airfields in southern Greece and daylight naval operations were increasingly hazardous, especially during Operation Merkur, due to the lack of friendly air cover. The last of the RAF’s fighters had been evacuated the day before the invasion began and attrition of the aircraft from the carrier HMS Formidable soon undermined their effectiveness. During the battle and the evacuation, Cunningham lost three cruisers and another six destroyers, with three battleships, Formidable, six cruisers and seven destroyers damaged. The only consolation was that the German reinforcement convoys were turned back and some 17,000 Allied servicemen were evacuated.
The men of the 7th Flieger Division who spearheaded the assault on Crete were all volunteers. Professionals, tough, physically fit, well trained and with excellent officers at every level, they were highly disciplined and motivated and encouraged to use their initiative whenever possible. They rightly considered themselves an elite corps and the majority were now combat veterans from the campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and Greece. While conscription was largely loathed in Britain, it was actually welcomed in Germany as signifying the end of the restrictions of the hated Versailles Treaty, signed at the end of the First World War. Loyalty to the Nazi regime amongst the younger generation had been encouraged by a steady stream of Nazi propaganda and many had served in the paramilitary Hitler Youth. Even in the dark inter-war years, the German armed forces had maintained a cadre of high-quality officers and NCOs. This allowed the military to expand rapidly once the terms of the Versailles Treaty had been repudiated. In the early years of the war, before the pernicious effects of the horrific losses on the Eastern Front were felt, the standard of German training, discipline and morale in the armed forces was first rate.
A group of German mountain troops from the 5th Gebirgs Division line up for a photograph while waiting to embark on their Ju-52 transport aircraft, which will take them to Maleme airfield. Their faces betray something of the nervousness they must have felt as the Gebirgsjäger were being airlifted into battle for the first time. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-01315)
The call for volunteers to form the first Fallschirmjäger battalion had gone out in 1936 with a paratrooper training school established at Stendal-Bostel airfield outside Berlin. The CO of the new battalion was a certain Bruno Bräuer. By the outbreak of war, having consolidated control of the parachute, glider and air transport forces, the Luftwaffe had enough men to form the nucleus of an airborne division under the command of Generalmajor Kurt Student, based at Tempelhof airfield, near Berlin. By 1941, it had grown into a full division, commanded by Generalleutnant Willhelm Süssmann, consisting of three parachute regiments (Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1, 2 and 3 under the command of Bräuer, Sturm and Heidrich) and a semi-autonomous air assault regiment (Luftlande Sturmregiment under the command of Generalmajor Eugen Meindl), supported by artillery, anti-tank, machine gun and combat engineer battalions. The three parachute regiments had three parachute battalions apiece, while the air assault regiment had three parachute battalions and a glider battalion (under the command of Major Walter Koch). The strength of each parachute battalion averaged around 700 men and comprised three infantry companies, a headquarters company, a support company and a signals section. The entire battalion, along with all its heavy equipment including radios, heavy weapons, ammunition, medical supplies and rations, was airdropped. The equipment was dropped in lightweight containers. Neither the paratroopers nor the containers could be controlled while they descended, as the majority of parachutes used were still the older RZ16 that lacked the lift webs or ‘risers’ of American and British designs.
A paratrooper takes a swig of his water bottle as his squad prepares to move on. In this regard he is lucky as the hot climate made water a precious commodity, especially for the paratroopers who had been cut off from regular supply around Heraklion and Rethymnon. (B.L. Davis Collection)
A group of German troops including Fallschirmjäger and men of the motorcycle battalion, part of the 5th Gebirgs Division. These troops are probably from the 95th Motor Cycle Battalion, which formed part of the Wittmann Advanced Guard, tasked with the initial pursuit of the Allied forces to the east and relieving the paratroopers around Heraklion and Rethymnon. (B.L. Davis Collection)
Instead of the 22nd Luftlande Division (which was guarding the Ploesti oilfields in Romania), the paratroopers would be reinforced by the 5th Gebirgs Division under the command of Generalmajor Julius ‘Papa’ Ringel. The majority of troops in this division were volunteers and had combat experience, having come from a number of other divisions that had seen service in the Low Countries and Norway before the 5th had started forming in Salzburg in October 1940. The majority of the soldiers were recruited from Austria and the alpine region of southern Germany and were tough, physically fit and highly motivated.
The division was organised along similar lines to a conventional infantry division, although it had only two rifle regiments (85th and 100th Gebirgsjäger Regiments), each with three battalions, and the 95th Gebirgsartillerie Regiment with two artillery battalions along with signals, reconnaissance, anti-tank and engineer battalions. With just under 14,000 men, it was weaker in manpower than a standard infantry division. However, for the Crete campaign, it was reinforced with the 141st Gebirgsjäger Regiment from the 6th Gebirgs Division. Each battalion had the usual three rifle companies, headquarters company and support elements. Neither Ringel nor his men expected their sudden transfer to Student’s Fliegerkorps XI as none of them had any experience in airborne warfare, but their contribution to the outcome of the battle cannot be underestimated.
Two paratroopers greet each other, providing an excellent close up of their personal equipment. The Allied troops were impressed with the lavish scale of equipment carried by German paratroopers. Also, given the high casualty rate on Crete, finding a familiar face would have been a welcome sight indeed. (B.L. Davis Collection)
Despite the fact that a large share of the credit can be given to Student’s Fliegerkorps XI for victory in the campaign on Crete, some credit is due to the airmen of the other main component of Luftflotte IV, Fliegerkorps VIII, commanded by General Freiherr Wolfram von Richthofen. They proved highly effective in wearing down Allied ground forces and limiting the impact of the Royal Navy on Allied operations. Fliegerkorps VIII comprised seven Geschwader, the equivalent of an RAF Group. Three of these were equipped with Ju-87R Stuka dive bombers (Sturzkampfgeschwader 1, 2 and 77), one with Dornier Do-17Z twin-engine bombers (Kampfgeschwader 2), one with a mixture of Ju-88A and Heinkel He-111H twin engine bombers (Lehrgeschwader 1), one with Messerschmit Bf 110C and D twin-engine fighter-bombers (Zerstörergeschwader 26) and one with Messerschmidt Bf 109E single-seat fighters (Jagdgeschwader 77). In addition, Luftflotte IV contained reconnaissance and air-sea rescue units that saved many lives after the Royal Navy intercepted the first of the reinforcement convoys. Fliegerkorps XI itself could also deploy three Geschwader of Junkers Ju-52/3 transports (KGzbV 1–3) and an airlanding group of DFS 230 gliders. It must be remembered that coming so soon after the Balkan campaign, a large number of aircraft were awaiting servicing and a number of aircrew had been killed or injured, limiting the number of aircraft available for Operation Merkur.