23–25 MAY
When men of the New Zealand 5th Brigade were shaken awake by their NCOs early on the early morning of 23 May and told to prepare to withdraw, most refused to believe what they heard. Those not on sentry had dossed down the night before, certain that things were still going well. Even if they did not fully believe the rumour of the Germans pulling out, the New Zealanders still thought they had given them such a bloody nose that they could not prevail.
‘They all felt the same,’ wrote Sandy Thomas, a young platoon commander with the 23rd Battalion. ‘They had seen so many of the enemy dead that their morale was quite unshaken by the terrific air attacks by day. Man for man they considered that they could lick the German despite his superior weapons and equipment.’
Although less than five kilometres, the retreat from positions in front of Dhaskalania and Kondomari to Platanias was hard. Without any ambulances the wounded had to be brought back by tired men stumbling over rough ground. Some casualties were carried on doors, or crudely fashioned ladders found by farmhouses, others on improvised stretchers made out of a pair of rifles and two battledress jackets. Those too ill to move were left behind with the last medical officer in the brigade, Captain R.S. Stewart, and a chaplain to ensure that they were treated correctly by the enemy. Due to a growing shortage of ammunition on the island, ammunition boxes and spare grenades had to be taken as well as personal weapons and kit. Some companies had acquired a donkey to carry heavy equipment and weapons, but soldiers remained the main beasts of burden.
The Germans were quick to spot the retreat which was covered by a company of Maoris under Major H.G. Dyer. The Maoris could not have been a better choice. Their unconventional and alarming tactics of suddenly turning round for an unexpected bayonet charge would send the pursuing paratroopers back in a rush. Largely thanks to them, the withdrawal was completed that morning with very few casualties.
• • •
When Major General Ringel arrived, field command of all German troops passed to him. Ramcke’s paratroopers, the reconstituted Storm Regiment, pushed along the coast using to great effect the mobile Bofors guns captured at Maleme. Two battalions of the 100th Mountain Regiment advanced in the centre over the coastal hills between the Ayia valley and the sea, while a battalion of the 85th Mountain Regiment swung round on the right. This unit of mountain troops, commanded by Major Treck, was intended to encircle the New Zealand Division from the south through the foothills of the White Mountains. Instead it encountered fierce resistance from the undervalued 8th Greek Regiment and indefatigably brave Cretan irregulars. It is probably no exaggeration to say that their sacrifice saved the New Zealand Division.
The Germans, in their advance along the coast and along the coastal hills, came across sights and smells they would never forget. For much of the way the terraces of vineyards and olive groves retained their classic Mediterranean beauty, but periodically the advancing troops would find pockets fouled by military occupation – slit trenches, latrines, ration tins and empty ammunition boxes.
As the sun rose, it strengthened the stench from black and swollen corpses covered by swarms of blow-flies. Corpses of fellow paratroopers from the first day still hung from their olive tree gibbets, shockingly macabre in the dappled light under the leaves. Some bodies, free of their harnesses, appeared from single bullet wounds in the head to have been shot after surrender. In almost all cases, the pockets of jumpsuits had been ripped open in the search for papers, or items such as flat metal boxes of Dextrosan energy tablets. Finally, a passing Cretan might have stripped the body of useful apparel, especially the boots since leather was already in short supply on the island. The paratroopers, eager for revenge, pressed on.
Not long after Hargest’s 5th Brigade had established a new line west of Platanias, a duel of counter-battery fire broke out between the 95th Mountain Artillery Regiment and the surviving 75mm guns of various field troops, Australian, British and New Zealand. At the same time there were some fierce infantry skirmishes in the area of the Platanias bridge and north of the coast road along the beach where Ramcke’s paratroopers pushed forward at every opportunity.
During the afternoon four RAF bombers appeared overhead on their way to bomb Maleme airfield. This raised morale but the attack, according to German sources, did only slight damage. There had been little contact with the enemy to the south of the coast road until late afternoon when it became clear that the II Battalion of the 85th Mountain Regiment was outflanking the severely reduced New Zealand battalions to cut them off from the Galatas position behind. Hargest and Puttick, who had long expected this to happen, prepared to pull the exhausted 5th Brigade back that night into reserve beyond Galatas and Daratsos.
• • •
By the next morning, when the 5th Brigade had made their second consecutive night withdrawal, the front line ran from Galatas to the sea. The tired and demoralized Composite Battalion of drivers, gunners, cooks and service corps personnel who had been manning this sector since the first day also had to be pulled back into reserve.
The 18th Battalion from Inglis’s brigade took over the line. Kippenberger was heartened ‘to see them come in – looking very efficient and battle-worthy – in painful contrast’ to his ‘unfortunate quasi-infantry’. But the 18th, only four hundred strong, had a two-kilometre front to hold. Russell Force, the survivors of the Divisional Cavalry and a group of the Petrol Company, all under the engaging John Russell, still held the southern exit from Galatas facing down towards Ayia prison.
Prison Valley had been relatively peaceful on 23 May, but clearly the lull was not to last. On the New Zealand side Kippenberger found the morning of Saturday, 24 May, ‘ominously quiet’, while on the German side, Heydte found it ‘almost oppressive’. The men of his battalion were virtually out of ammunition, dehydrated – many suffering from dysentery – and severely under-nourished. ‘The faces of some of them had grown taut, almost shrunken, their eyes lay deep in their sockets, and their beards, unshaven now for five days, accentuated the hollowness of their cheeks.’ The members of one platoon, which had stood to arms when a sentry gave warning of noises in the bushes to their front, found themselves face to face with a stray donkey. The poor beast was shot as quickly as if it had been the enemy; its carcase was hauled in for butchering and roasting.
General Freyberg, meanwhile, learned from an Ultra signal that south of Maleme German motor-cycle detachments had advanced at least two-thirds of the way across the island. This force, the 55th Motor-Cycle Battalion armed with Spandau machine guns mounted on their side-cars, was advancing towards Paleokhora on the south coast to prevent reinforcements from Alexandria being landed there. An intercept reported them six miles north of Kandanos at midnight on 23 May, then the following day Ultra reported the same detachments held up by ‘increasing British resistance’. Since there were no British troops in the area, the resistance was purely Cretan, and presumably included Father Stylianos Frantzeskakis and those of his parishioners who were still alive after such savage fighting. They held this German force for two days; their success could be sadly measured later by the scale of reprisals at Kandanos.
Another German column, the 95th Mountain Engineer Battalion strengthened by a weak company of paratroopers, was sent on 24 May to Kastelli Kissamou where the unfortunate detachment of paratroopers under Lieutenant Mürbe had been dropped on the first day. The Germans could not possibly land their light tanks, a company from the 5th Panzer Division, anywhere along the Gulf of Canea, so Kastelli Kissamou, far from ideal because of the shallowness of the bay, offered the only hope.
Kastelli itself was defended by the 1st Greek Regiment and an advisory detachment of New Zealand officers and NCOs. They had wiped out Mürbe’s men, except for twenty-eight survivors who had been taken prisoner. But on 24 May a Stuka attack to soften up the town as the mountain engineers arrived enabled a number of these prisoners to escape and rearm themselves. After some confused and bloody fighting – the Germans were convinced that Mürbe’s men had been tortured and mutilated by civilians – the town was occupied by the following day. But the guerrilla resistance which continued was so fierce that tanks could not begin to land until 27 May. This delay of two days, achieved at a considerable cost in Cretan lives, was of inestimable help to Freyberg’s force during its subsequent withdrawal when it had barely any anti-tank weapons left.*
• • •
In the afternoon of 24 May, following that oppressive morning described both by Kippenberger and Heydte, squadrons of the VIII Air Corps in relentless rotation carpet-bombed Canea. This technique had been developed by the Condor Legion under Richthofen in the Spanish Civil War, first outside Oviedo, then for the destruction of Durango and Guernica. It had a dual objective – to terrorize soldier and civilian alike and to block the roads of a communications centre behind the front line with masonry and debris. In Canea only the harbour front was left unharmed, because it would soon be useful. Thirteen Venetian palaces from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were destroyed.
Stephanides saw villagers ‘gathered in stunned silence watching the holocaust, and I could sense that to them it was like the end of the world. Canea was the only town that many of them had ever known.’ ‘Like the end of the world’ was the same comparison made by eye-witnesses to the destruction of Guernica. Although the bombing of Canea lacked the nightmare images of frenzied livestock depicted in Picasso’s painting, it produced surreal sights of its own. Against a background of the blazing town, Geoffrey Cox observed a Cretan diving into the water of the harbour, then hurling to three women fish stunned by the bombs. He also saw a drunken Australian deserter magnanimously offering goods he had looted from shops.
The attack on Canea was perhaps Richthofen’s envoi before the VIII Air Corps withdrew to prepare to deploy for Operation Barbarossa. If the Cretans needed a memory to rekindle their anger when the German authorities later tried to make friends during the occupation, that afternoon had provided it. The population fled to the surrounding villages where, with true Cretan generosity, they were taken in and cared for without question.
A few hours after the departure of the bombers, Freyberg and his staff at Creforce Headquarters abandoned their quarry and moved round to the south side of Suda Bay. Everyone lent a hand. The Welch Regiment, still in immaculate order, directed traffic, and an Australian artillery colonel steered a fifteen-hundred-weight truck through the outskirts of the burning town.
• • •
Early on the morning of Sunday, 25 May, General Student landed at Maleme.* Those who knew him found him aged by the last week: his creation, the Parachute Division, had been half destroyed.
The same morning, with the stench of Canea’s burnt-out buildings in the air, the men of the 3rd Parachute Regiment in Prison Valley listened as Radio Berlin at last announced Germany’s invasion of Crete. For Heydte’s men, it was the first sign of official confidence in victory. As if to confirm this in the best style of historical drama, a runner arrived to say that contact had been made with a patrol of mountain troops advancing from Maleme. The patrol’s lieutenant possessed the rather improbable title of Count Bullion. He was, according to the keen genealogist Heydte, a descendant of ‘the Burgundian knight who had marched eastwards as a crusader some eight hundred and fifty years ago and received the crown of Jerusalem’.
The mountain troops were concentrating to assault Galatas from the southern as well as the western flank. On the western flank between Galatas and the sea, the New Zealand 18th Battalion came under mortar fire and strafing attacks from Messerschmitts. By midday German troops could be seen manoeuvring for attack, then at four in the afternoon a dozen Stukas began to dive-bomb Galatas. Soon afterwards, Ramcke’s paratroopers and part of Colonel Utz’s 100th Mountain Regiment suddenly attacked the 18th Battalion. The crackle of rifle-shots ‘swelled to a roar’. Mortar fire also increased, with up to six rounds a minute dropping on one company. All round the village spent bullets whipped through the leaves of the olive trees, bringing down twigs and small branches.
Kippenberger went forward to observe the battle: he seems to have been the only senior officer on Crete to have done so. ‘In a hollow, nearly covered by undergrowth,’ he wrote, ‘I came upon a party of women and children huddled together like little birds. They looked at me silently, with black, terrified eyes.’ Galatas was threatened from both directions. The attack on John Russell’s group on the south side of Galatas was also heavy, but the 18th Battalion’s line up to the coast was the first to crack. At about six o’clock, the right-hand company was overwhelmed by Colonel Ramcke’s men. A counter-attack with the battalion reserve – ‘padre, clerks, batmen, everyone who could carry a rifle’ – was led by their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gray, but it failed.
The Composite Battalion had meanwhile disintegrated in panic, although in the second line. ‘Back, back!’ some of its members shouted. ‘They’re coming through in thousands.’ Once again the wounded, two hundred of them this time, had to be carried back. A German breakthrough down the coast road to Canea was prevented by part of the 20th Battalion, fortunately sent forward by Inglis. But the collapse spread to the other end of the line. On Wheat Hill, the corner of the whole Galatas pocket, the company there broke after Kippenberger had refused two requests to withdraw. The 18th Battalion’s line then disintegrated along its whole length. Kippenberger strode round yelling ‘Stand for New Zealand!’ and seizing men who retreated through the village, but his efforts were in vain. The only hope of preventing a complete rout was to fall back to the hill between Galatas and Daratsos.
Brigadier Inglis, guessing the situation more by noise than from hard information, sent reinforcements forward. The 4th Brigade band arrived first, followed by a Pioneer platoon and the Kiwi concert party. They were distributed down a long dry-stone wall running north–south.
Not all the defenders had retreated. Russell Force remained cut off on the south-west corner of Galatas. Kippenberger, not wanting to abandon them, and convinced that the New Zealanders had to hit the Germans hard and unexpectedly to gain the respite they needed, decided to mount an immediate counter-attack. His basic force would be two companies of New Zealanders from the 23rd Battalion, ‘tired, but fit to fight and resolute.’
Pipe in mouth, he told the two company commanders that they were going to attack to knock the Germans back, otherwise the whole front would collapse. The two companies fixed bayonets and waited. The young subaltern Sandy Thomas eyed his platoon. ‘Everyone looked tense and grim and I wondered if they were feeling as afraid as I, whether their throats were as dry, their stomachs feeling now frozen, now fluid. I hoped, as I sensed the glances thrown in my direction, that I appeared as cool as they. It occurred to me suddenly that this was going to be the biggest moment of my life.’
‘There was Kip’, remembered another officer present, ‘walking up and down steadying everyone.’ By then dusk was falling fast. Two of the light tanks of the 3rd Hussars came up the road. Roy Farran, the troop leader, asked if they could help. Kippenberger welcomed their arrival and told him to go into Galatas to have a look round. The two antiquated and battered machines clattered off into the village, each spraying the windows on opposite sides of the street with machine-gun fire. On reaching the village square, dominated by an unusually tall church, the second tank was hit in the turret by an anti-tank rifle: its commander and driver were wounded.
The two tanks returned to Kippenberger. Farran’s head appeared out of the top of the turret. ‘The place is stiff with Jerries,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine. Kippenberger asked him if he would go in again leading the infantry. Farran agreed, but first he had to extricate the driver and the corporal who had been wounded in the second tank. Once this was done, two New Zealanders volunteered to take their place and Farran took them off down the road for some basic instruction.
Captain Michael Forrester, whose Greeks were by then dead or scattered, had taken a rifle and bayonet and, easily recognizable by his fair hair – he had lost his service dress cap on Pink Hill – joined the ranks of the 23rd. He noticed how Kippenberger’s force continued to increase. Men had begun to appear from nowhere as news spread of this come-as-you-are attack. Stragglers from a variety of units who had run away less than an hour before turned back, proving that bravery could be as infectious as fear. Walking wounded limped up requesting permission to join in as well. And the force would not have been complete without a group of those tireless fighters, the Maoris.
This most composite of composite units assembled behind the start-line, a track running roughly from north to south, with one company on each side of the road. Farran’s two tanks reappeared, the improvised crew ready to go. Kippenberger and Farran spoke together, then Farran yelled to the second tank to follow. He disappeared inside his turret and closed the hatch as his tank lurched forward. ‘The Maoris’, recorded Forrester, ‘began their harka war-chant and everyone took it up. The noise was incredible.’ Those who listened from a distance compared the sound to the baying of hounds. The remnants of the 18th Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Gray promptly joined in from another direction.
‘The effect was terrific,’ wrote Thomas. ‘One felt one’s blood rising swiftly above fear and uncertainty until only inexplicable exhilaration, quite beyond description, remained.’ They charged up the hill, a lane with one- and two-storey white houses either side, unable to keep pace with the tanks.
As they disappeared from view, there was an eruption of noise. Kippenberger recalled ‘scores of automatics and rifles being fired at once, the crunch of grenades, screams and yells – the uproar swelled and sank, swelled again to a terrifying crescendo.’ Women and children, finding their village a battlefield once again, fled down the road.
Almost as soon as Farran’s tank reached the village square on the summit of the hill, an anti-tank grenade struck the side. Having ensured that the others in his crew escaped, Farran, who was badly wounded, just managed to drag himself out. From the lee side, he shouted encouragement: ‘Come on New Zealand, clean them out!’
According to Sandy Thomas’s account, after Farran’s tank was hit the new commander of the second tank panicked and ordered the driver to turn round and drive out of the village. But a little way down the road his flight was blocked by Thomas’s platoon advancing to the village square. The commander screamed at them to let him through. Thomas refused and ordered the driver to turn back, which he did.
Their attack hardly delayed, the New Zealanders charged on up towards the square, their eighteen-inch bayonets fixed. Some threw grenades into the windows of the houses held by the Germans. Others rushed any defender who emerged. In the square, firing was still frenetic. Bullets ricocheted off the useless dented hulk of Farran’s ‘armoured perambulator’. To break the danger of immobility in the open, Thomas brought his men to charge across the square. Whether prompted by the sight of the bayonets or the desperation on the New Zealanders’ faces, most of the Germans in the houses opposite panicked and fled. Only one resolute group remained.
Several men, Farran amongst them, shouted a warning when the silhouette of a German helmet showed above the line of a roof. The German threw a grenade, and at the same time another opened fire with a Spandau. Thomas, his back lacerated with shrapnel from the grenade, was hit in the thigh. One of his men tried to bandage the wound, but the opening was too large for a field dressing.
Soon the order to withdraw arrived from Kippenberger. The attack had achieved its aim and he did not want to waste any men unnecessarily, for as soon as the Germans had retreated, their mortars began to shell the village. The more seriously wounded, Farran and Thomas among them, had to be left behind. One of Thomas’s soldiers, also badly hit in the leg, managed to pull him into a ditch which offered some protection. The mortar bomb explosions did not deter the women of the village. They slipped out of their cellars to bring water to the wounded. A 12-year-old girl appeared beside Sandy Thomas with a mug of fresh goat’s milk.
Kippenberger gave the order for withdrawal back to a line on Daratsos. Russell’s survivors from the Divisional Cavalry and Captain Rowe’s last members of the Petrol Company on Pink Hill had been able to extricate themselves. They were all that remained of Kippenberger’s 10th Brigade.
Those who took part in the counter-attack on Galatas will never forget the astonishing resurgence of spirit it engendered. Perhaps it is best explained as a gesture of anger at retreat – at the gut certainty that they should have won the whole battle. The New Zealanders had shown in a spectacular manner what could have been achieved had they been given the chance and the leadership at the crucial moment four days before.
Kippenberger, ‘more tired than ever before in my life, or since’, stumbled around in the dark trying to find Inglis’s make-shift command post, ‘a tarpaulin-covered hole in the ground’. Most of the battalion commanders were assembled there already. Inglis raised the subject of another counter-attack to gauge reactions. Then Colonel Gentry, Puttick’s chief of staff, and Colonel Dittmer, the commanding officer of the 28th (Maori) Battalion, arrived. Dittmer volunteered to attack again, but after discussion Inglis came to the conclusion that it was too late, and Dittmer’s battalion was one of the last New Zealand units to remain reasonably intact. There was no alternative but to fall back to a line linking up with Vasey’s two Australian battalions at the end of Prison Valley. Although nobody voiced the inevitability of defeat, they all knew that their escape would depend once again on the Royal Navy.