Operation Mercury (15 page)

Those who were dropped near the airstrip, literally under the guns of Sandover's defenders, were massacred. Many landed as lifeless, bloodied bundles. Sturm himself survived, being lucky enough to come down in some dead ground, but most of his men were killed or scattered, the defenders' Vickers machine guns firing till the barrels overheated and jammed. Such was the confusion in the air that sticks of paratroopers were being dropped at intervals over ground already carpeted with dead, particularly on the eastern flank of 2/1st's positions astride Hill A. That night Sandover led his men forward to clear the field. Eighty-eight shocked and wounded captives were rounded up, together with quantities of equipment. Sturm was taken the next day.

Despite their appalling losses the sheer weight of numbers dropped around the airstrip enabled the Germans to maintain their attack on Hill A which, after stiff fighting and with the Vickers all out of action, was taken. As much of the heavier arsenal had been dropped here, the paratroops were well equipped with mortars and anti-tank rifles. A counter-attack was put in at dusk on that first day with the tanks going in on the left flank but both became bogged down. The infantry was held up by determined fire from the attackers who had now infiltrated the western slopes and established positions in the olive groves on that flank of the connecting spur.

This was the only serious foothold. Kroh's companies further east were dispersed and depleted, being driven back almost to the beach, digging in as best they could in the dunes. Those who'd managed to establish positions at the base of Hill B were dislodged at dusk by counter-attacks and driven into the network of vineyards around Perivolia. Many were captured and, from a dead officer, Campbell's men salvaged a copy of the Germans' signal code. This was put to good effect the next morning when, once Major Sandover had translated, the defenders summoned up a re-supply of small arms and ammunition. With typical efficiency the Luftwaffe obliged.

At the end of the confused and bloody afternoon's fighting the only German gain was the seizure of Hill A, which Campbell was determined to re-take. Kroh, having gathered such additional survivors as he could during the balmy Mediterranean night, was equally bent upon pushing out across the spur, his patrols having driven in some of the Australian picquets.

In the thinning light of dawn, as the defenders massed and advanced, they ran into the attackers coming the other way. With their telling superiority in automatic weapons the Germans quickly gained fire supremacy and inflicted casualties on the Australians. As the firefight developed groups of parachutists began to nibble around the flanks of Campbell's attackers. Captain Moriarty who commanded the reserve of infantry and supporting Bren carriers, reported that the situation had become critical.

Realising the crisis of the battle was at hand Campbell threw in his final reserves who were able to approach unseen along the dry bed of the Bardia stream. Moriarty was ordered to resume the attack with his swollen force which he divided into four and, avoiding the main German concentration dug in on the summit of Hill A, began to filter around from the north, making full use of the cover afforded by the maze of gullies. Apparently under fire from all sides and duped into thinking Campbell's forces were considerably more numerous than was in fact the case, Kroh's resolution began to waver. Being murderously strafed by his own air support that killed nearly a score of men, clearly did not help faltering morale.

By noon the fight was effectively over; a significant number of paratroops surrendered with the loss of much additional matériel. Some were taken while attempting to disguise themselves as Greeks and the haul included Major Sturm himself, captured without ever having been able to influence the course of the battle.

Kroh was not yet done. He and those who had avoided the Australians' round up, retreated to a substantially built olive oil plant at Stavromenos to the east which was already occupied by the heavy weapons contingent. With determined effort and the genius of the German soldier for constructing detailed scratch defences, the factory was turned into a fortress. This was not just a last ditch action but a means of containing the victorious defenders who, without heavy artillery, were at a severe disadvantage in what would amount to a siege.

On the western flank the surviving paratroops had made no effort to influence the fight for Hill A, preferring to consolidate their own precarious position by digging in amongst the houses of Perivolia and turning St George's church into a second fortress. On the 22nd the 2/11th drove into the German outposts and began clearing the houses. Using their captured signals they galled the defenders by arranging for Stukas to dive bomb the village but the bastion of St George's Church, which commanded an all round field of fire and provided, from the tower, excellent observation, proved a very tough nut indeed.

The attackers' toehold in Perivolia had the same effect to the west as their tenure of the olive plant provided in the east. Though the airborne assault had completely failed to attain any of its specified targets, the hard pressed and much depleted survivors were effectively able to contain the garrison on both flanks.

Campbell remained determined to see the intruders off altogether and, on the morning of the 22nd, he'd ordered an attack on the redoubt at Stavromenos. The 75-mm guns however, proved utterly unable to penetrate the thick stone walls and the valiant Moriarty was shot dead by a sniper. An infantry assault was planned for the evening when it was intended that the Australian attack from the west would be supported by 200 Greeks coming up from the south. In the event the latter did not appear and the defenders were able to hold their ground. With their superior firepower and Kroh's incisive leadership the defenders were strongly placed; the fight was far from over.

As the main battle for the island raged in the west, Campbell, despite his limited resources, kept a relentless pressure on the German positions. A brace of captured anti-tank guns was turned against the stout walls of St George's, armour-piercing rounds smashing into the crumbling masonry. By the 27th, after Freyberg had decided to throw in the towel, the ruins were taken by assault and the tanks brought up to support the final assault on the remaining German positions in Perivolia. The ageing Matildas proved unequal to the task, proving chronically unreliable, but the fight was continued with vigour:

The day before, the factory at Stavromenos had finally been taken after the 75s were brought up to fire at point blank range. The sheer grit and determination shown by these Australians, well and decisively led, ensured that Rethymnon did not become a second Maleme. That the island was eventually ceded in defeat does not detract from their success. The example of Rethymnon also shows how a vigorous and well coordinated defence, with immediate local counter-attacks being pushed home with skill and determination, could achieve against paratroops.

In a detailed study of the fight I.M.G. Stewart observes:

There is no escaping the conclusion that an injection of the same urgency and dash could have turned the tide at Maleme and thus altered the entire course of the battle. That, perhaps more than anything else, represents the tragedy of Crete.

Although Chania remained the administrative centre, Heraklion, roughly half way along the north coast, was the largest town with the best docking facilities. Like the other coastal townships it was Venetian in character and, just inland, lay the Bronze Age Palace complex of Knossos, made famous by Sir Arthur Evans, whose partial reconstruction continues to divide academic opinion.

Like Campbell at Rethymnon, Brigadier Chappel at Heraklion had taken the wise decision to concentrate the bulk of his available forces around the airstrip, the largest of the three. In terms of men he was better placed than Campbell but shared the same deficiencies in heavy guns and mortars.

As well as two Australian battalions, the 2/4th and 7th Medium Regiment, (deployed as footsoldiers) and three Greek formations he commanded three battalions of British regulars – 2nd Black Watch, 2nd Yorks and Lancs, 2nd Leicesters. Like Rethymnon the airfield and port beyond were covered by a pair of shallow hills just over half a mile inland from the coast road, known to the Allied defenders as East Hill and the Charlies.

The guns that were available – a dozen Bofors, were dug in around the periphery of the runways, nine 100-mm and four 75s were well sited; the field pieces beneath the slopes of the Charlies. A Matilda tank was present on each flank of the airfield and the light Vickers were grouped below East Hill to spearhead any counter-attack. Like his opposite number at Rethymnon, Chappel was not inclined to allow the enemy any foothold. The Brigadier also ordered that, however tempting the target, his men were not to give away their positions by opening fire until the enemy were actually on the ground and thus at their most dispersed and vulnerable.

For reasons which remain unclear Freyberg did not seem to have any great confidence in Chappel, even though he was an experienced regular officer. He perhaps lacked the charisma of someone like Kippenberger but he was to give a good account of himself in the ensuing action. Heraklion was the most easterly of the main Allied concentrations, some 75 kilometres from Rethymnon and this meant that the brigadier's command was almost an independent fiefdom. Like the Creforce base, 14 Brigade HQ was tucked into a handy quarry, with Patrick Leigh Fermor attached as an intelligence officer. He had previously passed a pleasant three days at Prince Peter's comfortable coastal billet north of Galatas in the company of the Prince and Captain Michael Forrester of the Buffs who, like Leigh Fermor, had been attached to the military mission in Greece. Forrester, as piratical and swashbuckling as his companion, had been liaison officer for Brigadier A.G. Salisbury-Jones, reporting on the needs and readiness of the Greek units.

The two friends were reunited at Heraklion when Forrester inspected the local forces holding the town. They decided to dine together on the evening of 18 May; it would be the last such civilised recreation for some time. A third charismatic irregular present at this time was Pendlebury himself, fast becoming a legend amongst the fighters he was recruiting; a man whose empathy with, and understanding of, the Cretans surpassed generally by a very wide margin, that of his fellow officers.

For the airborne assault Major Bruno Brauer had three battalions of the 1 Parachute Regiment under his command, supported by engineers, artillery, machine gun, anti-tank and medical units. Despite the ferocity of the fighting unleashed by the morning's drops to the west, the defenders at Heraklion were blissfully unaware that an invasion was in progress. Their day so far was sufficiently leisurely that a number of officers had ventured into the town in search of a hot bath.

Around 4.00 p.m. however, by which time news of the other attacks had filtered through, the Stukas appeared along with Me109s, in sufficient numbers to clearly indicate that they presaged more than the daily aerial harassment. Despite the ferocity of the bombing the defenders' positions were sufficiently well hidden so as to avoid any casualties. Though the psychological effect of being shot up from the air is nerve-racking, troops well dug in amid mountainous terrain generally escaped serious loss.

An hour later the first of the transports began to roar in from the north-east along the coast. Immediately the Bofors guns opened up, the raucous concert joined by naval guns and Oerlikons manned by the marines. The slaughter amongst the slow moving juggernauts was great, the languid afternoon air rent by the quick firing clatter of the guns blowing chunks off the Ju52s and decimating their passengers. As many as fifteen planes came down in flames and another 200 paratroops were accounted for as they either sought to jump clear or scrabbled for their weapons on the ground.

One of the gunners, furiously hammering the German armada, recalled:

The attempt at a two-stage invasion had already placed a severe strain on men and machines; many aircraft had been lost, more were damaged. Added to this were those which crash-landed on return, got bogged in the mire and dust of the mainland airstrips or simply broke down. Numbers of troops had therefore simply been left behind and others were now dropped at extended intervals. At Heraklion a portion of Brauer's 2nd Battalion (Burckhardt) was dropped from under 200 metres directly onto the bayonets of the Highlanders on East Hill. Virtually all the officers became casualties, including the commander, Captain Dunz.

An eyewitness remembered one luckless parachutist drifting toward a cornfield where no less than eight British arose with fixed bayonets and dispatched their screaming victim like the English billmen of the Hundred Years War.

If this were not hardship enough the remainder of the battalion came down onto an open meadow, known as Buttercup Field, just west of the aerodrome and precisely into the sights of the Australians. A massacre ensued as the defenders opened up and the light tanks charged into the struggling knots of Germans who were shot down or crushed in droves. Only a handful of survivors escaped and these were obliged to take to the water and swim around to link up with the other survivors, grouped under Captain Burckhardt, on East Beach.

Brauer jumped to the east with 1st Battalion – too far east to offer any support to their comrades being cut down by the defenders' fire around the airfield. The drop was scattered over distance and time, darkness had fallen by the time Brauer was able to round up the majority. As the 1st Battalion advanced westwards, expecting to link up with the 2nd, they were stopped dead by well directed fire from the 2nd Black Watch. The darkness did however shield the infiltration of Count Blucher's platoon
³
which slid around the swell of East Hill to come within reach of the landing strip.

To the west the landing of the 3rd Battalion (Schulz) had also been widely dispersed, though they did succeed in putting in an attack against the walled town where the Greek garrison stood fast. Despite his fearful losses Brauer
⁴
was not the man to abandon the attempt. He ordered Schulz to desist from attacking the town and move in from the west (this order appears never to have been received).

Faced with the resolute defence of East Hill by the Black Watch, Brauer sent his companies into the attack piecemeal, convinced the effects of delay would be more serious than the lack of air cover available during daylight. This bold approach was thwarted by the Highlanders, who soon saw off their assailants, and obliged Brauer to withdraw to some high ground to the east, there to regroup and await the Stukas. Meanwhile Chappel sent his Matildas against Blucher's intruders, who were cut down to a man.

Schulz had received a signal from the Luftwaffe to the effect that the town was to be bombed next morning, the 21st, and so hung on, delaying a renewed assault until the defenders had been ‘softened up' by the aerial bombardment. Despite the weight of bombs, the siren scream of the Stukas and the murderous hail of machine-gun fire, Schulz, advancing his battalions in twin columns, found the defenders still full of fight.

Becker's column was to strike through the North Gate with the objective of seizing the harbour. Despite stiff resistance the paratroopers blasted their way into the streets and succeeded in capturing the Old Venetian Fort guarding the harbour. The second column, under Egger, went in through the West Gate where the armed citizens gave them a warm reception; so hot was the welcome, the locals armed with captured German arms, that Egger's survivors were soon pinned up against the fort taken by their comrades.

German sources claim that a representative of the garrison offered to surrender at this point but that the British arrived in numbers to stiffen the defence. In fact this reinforcement consisted of nothing more than two platoons, drawn respectively from the Leicesters and the York & Lancs. Depleted, exhausted and with their ammunition all but spent, the surviving paratroops slipped away that night, back to their start lines.

To all intents and purposes this marked the end of the active stage of the Battle for Heraklion – the German assault had failed on all counts. The Luftwaffe continued to pound the town twice daily and the
Fallschirmjäger
vented their impotent fury on all those suspected of partisan activity in the areas they occupied; poor compensation for such meagre gains.

One of those to feel the fury of German frustrations was John Pendlebury. On 20 May he enjoyed a customary lunchtime drink in the basement bar of the Knossos Hotel. Nearby a bomb had blasted a supply truck and its cargo of fresh eggs had been miraculously converted into the biggest omelette in Europe. Even the most dismissive of his contemporaries, and there were indeed many ready to denigrate the fighting quality of the Greek nation, wrongly so, would have had to concede that Pendlebury had created the nucleus of a most efficient guerrilla network. He was, like Leigh Fermor and Forrester, a hugely romantic figure in the tradition of Byron, Sir Richard Burton or T.E. Lawrence. His partisans, men like the impressively moustachioed Manoli Babdouvas, the lean, hawk-faced Petrakegeorgis and the soon to be legendary Antonis Grigorakis, better known as ‘Satanas', were formidable guerrillas. The history and topography of Crete, coupled with the fierce traditions of its proud people, would always ensure resistance to the invader. The casual German assessments that the locals would be, at worst, passive, were swiftly to be confounded.

Mike Cumberlege had been dispatched in his armed caique, now HMS
Dolphin
, to the eastern tip of the island, the Venetian port of Ierapetra, to see if any arms could be recovered from a hulk sunk in the harbour. With the irregular's genius for improvisation, Cumberlege recruited a diver from the local Greek garrison. Pendlebury had given the crew a send-off dinner in Heraklion where the buccaneers discussed a possible raid on the Italian held island of Kasos, scheduled for the night of 20 May. Events, however, would move to frustrate this pleasant prospect.

With both of his other junior officers, C.J. Hanson and T. Bruce-Mitford dispatched into the mountains to mobilise resistance, Pendlebury had abided by his orders to remain in the city. His movements, during that fateful day, are unclear but it would have been entirely out of character had he not been involved in the fight to hold the ancient walls. The next day he made a characteristic attempt to slip away into the surrounding hills and reach his beloved partisans.

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).