Chapter Five
At the same time that the Luftlandesturmregiment’s gliders were swooping down on the Maleme Airfield, Oberst Heidrich’s Fallschirmjägerregiment 3 (FJR 3), the leading half of Gruppe Mitt (Codenamed ARIS) was beginning its drop into Prison Valley to the south west of Hania. This operation, also in the New Zealand Division’s area, would threaten Hania and the Base Area between that town and the port at Souda.
New Zealand Plans
In his appreciation, Brigadier Puttick identified the broad valley between Aghia (Agya) and Hania, as a potential approach to the vital base area of Hania and Souda. Known to the Commonwealth troops as Prison Valley, after the whitewashed prison buildings in the centre of the area, the valley, between two and five miles from the coast, was effectively in the rear of the New Zealand Division as it faced north to the coast and the expected amphibious landing. The immediate area of the enemy drop in the valley was held by Colonel Kippenberger’s ad hoc 10 New Zealand Brigade, initially known as Oakes Force. This formation consisted of miscellaneous composite units made up from artillerymen, who without guns who were acting as infantry, along with logistic troops who were in a similarly unfamiliar role. Kippenberger’s unlikely formation was completed by the allocation of three Greek Regiments.
NEW ZEALAND DIVISION 20 MAY 1941
Looking south-west down Prison Valley from Cemetery Hill.
Just to the east of 10 Brigade was Brigadier Inglis’s 4 New Zealand Brigade, which consisted of infantry units of a similar character and state as those of 5 Brigade at Maleme. They had been relieved of a part of their area so that they would be a ‘reserve’, as earmarked in orders dated 18 May, for ‘immediate attack on parachutists’. However, with defensive responsibilities for an area and a vulnerable coastline, they cannot be described as a true reserve, available for immediate deployment. The large area, the difficult ground and the paucity of troops and equipment, forced compromises on General Freyberg and Brigadier Puttick, which eventually and fatally, undermined their counter-attack plans.
The final positions that 10 NZ Brigade adopted were, per-force, far from ideal. Problems existed with this sector from the coast, through the Galatas Hills to Prison Valley, even after realignment of New Zealand units and negotiations that brought the Greek units under Kippenberger’s command.
Colonel Kippenberger.
Between 6 Greek Regiment and 8 Regiment lay a large gap. Puttick seems to have felt that, since he had no forces to put there, he must rely on the fact that the gap gave access only to very hilly country to the south-east, and that to the east an advance on Hania was barred by 2 Greek Regiment and the units of Souda Force.
Kippenberger had expressed his concern about the isolation of 8 Greek Regiment, so much so that ‘it was murder to leave such troops in such a position’. The response he received was that ‘in war murder sometimes has to be done’.
German Plans
A captured copy of Heidrich’s FJR 3 operation order, dated 18 May, gives the grouping and mission for the first wave of Gruppe Mitt.
Fallschirmjäger Regiment 3 [FJR 3], reinforced (less 8 Kompanie) with 1 Kompanie (Hauptmann ALTMANN) and 2 Kompanie (Leutnant GRENZ), Luftlandesturmregiment and 4 Kompanie, Fallschirmjäger AA MG Battalion attached will clear the area west of HANIA as far as Galatas. South of HANIA as far as the mountains, and eastward as far as the western point of SOUDA BAY, destroying the enemy forces there. It will then capture Hania and put the military and civil authorities out of action.
The operation order continued to give basic details of the regimental plan:
(a) 1 Kompanie LLSR, will land at Y-hours [0815 hours] on the high ground in the SW part of AKROTIRI Peninsula, east of Hania. 2 Kompanie LLSR [minus one platoon], will land at Y-hours in the area between the southern outskirts of HANIA and NE of PERVOLIA.
The two glider-borne companies’ objectives were the heavy (3-inch) antiaircraft sites that could engage the following flights of Ju 52s carrying the Fallschirmjäger. Leutnant Grenz would go on to attack a nearby radio site and a ‘Supply Dump SE of Hania’. The eventual aim was for 2 Kompanie to join Altmann’s company to form a kampfgruppe on the Akrotiri Peninsula. The plan for the Regiment’s main body was:
(b) Parachute descents (beginning at Y-Hours+15 minutes).
III Bn and 4 Kompanie, Fallschirmjäger AA MG Battalion, between the roads ALIKIANOU-HANIA and HANIA-GALATAS just east and NE of GALATAS foremost elements halting approximately 1 km before the road fork.
I Bn in the area adjoining the road ALIKIANOU-HANIA to the SE foremost elements level with the Supply Dump.
Regt HQ, Sigs Pl and 14 Kompanie [anti tanks and assault pioneers] to the NW of the adjoining road – opposite where I Bn has dropped.
II Bn with 13 Kompanie [Light Infantry guns] in the area of I Bn and Regt HQ. The decision is left with CO II Bn.
Time taken to complete the parachute drop, approximately one hour.
See map page 95
The tasks of Fallschirmjägerregiment’s three battalions can be summarised as follows. I Battalion was to drop south of the Aghia-Hania road and secure the drop zones for the remainder of the regiment. They would then advance east between the mountains and the road, towards Tsikalaria and Souda. III Battalion was to drop on the high ground between the sea and Prison Valley, to the west of Galatas, clear up Commonwealth troops in the area, including the ‘tented camp’ on the coast, before advancing on Hania. Major Derpa’s I Battalion was to be regimental reserve, dropping in the area of the Prison. 7 Fallschirmjäger Pioneer Battalion was to drop to the west of Gruppe Mitt and advance on Alikianos and the prisoner of war camps in the area or, if resistance was strong, adopt a defensive position covering the rear of the regiment.
The Glider Landings
With the warnings of the much greater than anticipated Commonwealth strength that they would be facing, no doubt at the forefront of their minds as they left the Tanagra airfield, Hauptmann Gustav Altmann and Leutnant Grenz led the Gruppe across the Sea of Crete, in a flight that totalled nearly three hours. Altmann’s pilots made a navigational error that sent them over twenty miles to the east. Consequently, it was Grenz and his company (minus a platoon), carried in nine DFS 230 gliders, who would be first in action, swooping down on a troop of 3-inch guns from 234 Heavy AA Battery to the south of Hania near the village of Mournies, as the dive bombers departed.
Grenz recalled that he was:
… over our objective on time; however, we were too high (+500 metres). We were obliged to circle over the enemy battery. When we arrived over the coast the AA guns shot at us and their fire became fiercer as we approached the south west of Hania. Two aircraft [gliders Nos. 3 and 6] crashed, shot down by the AA guns.
Miscalculating the height/distance necessary for the DFS 230 to glide directly into its objective had cost Grenz a quarter of his ninety-man force before the battle had even started. Further losses were sustained when Gliders 4 and 8 which came in to land, suffering a further thirteen casualties amongst crew and passengers. It is estimated that almost fifty men of 2/LLSR were about to take on about 180 gunners deployed around the gun pits, trenches, tented camp and buildings.
The gunners, armed only with a few rifles and pistols, were to do their best to hold off the elite German infantry, equipped with machine guns and machine pistols. Despite their losses, the Fallschirmjäger were quickly in action. The men in gliders 1 and 5, reinforced by survivors of 4 and 8, swept through the camp and attacked the guns, while the men from gliders 7 and 9 cleared positions to the north-west of the battery towards a crossroads.
One of Grenz’s gliders landed reasonably intact.
According to the Battery War Diary:
There were only eight rifles on the site, and when five [surviving] gliders came in all round the site, through the dust of the exploding ammunition, little resistance could be offered. The protective LMGs and Lewis guns were stalked and silenced with grenades, three of the gun pits were taken, and finally the command post surrendered when almost all the personnel had been either killed or wounded.
Other gliders were not so lucky. This glider suffered six dead.
The fight had been short but the Fallschirmjäger suffered further casualties, which now totalled three officers and twenty-three ORs killed and one officer and nineteen men wounded or missing. Very soon Grenz and his survivors were being counter-attacked by a force he estimated as numbering seventy men but ‘the attack by the English was stopped by Obergefreiter Fimberer with his machine pistol’. This was a reserve company of 9th King’s Royal Rifle Corps (1st Rangers), supported by the carrier platoon of 1st Welch (1 Welch).
Grenz’s force, now totalling twenty-four men rather than the seventy reported by the British, were pinned down and soon had to fight off ‘unending English attacks’. Towards 1600 hours, two platoons of Royal Marines and soldiers from 2 Greek Regiment attacked and recaptured the anti-aircraft position, releasing thirty-two prisoners, who soon had their guns operational again.
It had long been clear to Grenz that achieving his secondary missions was not a practical proposition as:
Progress towards our objective at the radio station was impossible, our losses were too heavy and the English were attacking non-stop. It was likewise impossible to approach Altmann’s Kompanie; Hania was occupied. Without any hope of overwhelming this position, I decided to joinFJR 3 to the south-west.
Having got away through olive groves, where he was joined by ten misdropped Fallschirmjäger, Grenz decided,
…to head towards the south was the best plan. We could not continue fighting, given the strength of the English forces and we abandoned our arms except machine pistols, grenades and pistols. For five kilometres we crawled in ditches towards the south. …our scouts came across a position occupied by an English unit’s HQ. Seeing the large number of sentries, we could not go around it and I decided to go through this position. If we were noticed, we would make them think we were English. Thanks to my knowledge of their language, I was able to speak to a sentry when we were challenged. While I talked, the Kompanie took advantage and disappeared discreetly.
After further lucky escapes from fire and pursuit based on Grenz’s bluffing the remains of 2/LLSR reached German positions in Prison Valley.
Meanwhile, thanks to the navigational errors and attempts to recover from it, Hauptmann Altmann’s company landed both badly delayed and badly dispersed on the Akrotiri Peninsula. It is clear from the initial reports from HQ CREFORCE that they thought that the dispersed landings were aimed at attacking their position rather than what transpired to be a dummy AA battery. The orders given to Hauptmann Altmann were that:
1 Kompanie LLSR, will destroy the enemy AA batteries and any other enemy positions on the high ground in the SW part of the AKROTIRI Peninsula, occupy the Royal Villa and hold the high ground. In the further course of action, the Company will prevent, by fire, enemy attacks from HANIA towards the SE and from SOUDA towards the West, as well as any enemy disembarkation in SOUDA BAY. Observation to be made of developments in the battle in and around SOUDA BAY. Recce to the eastern part of HANIA as far as the coast; optional recce Northward.
In the event, two of Altmann’s gliders were released early and landed well short of their objective, the remainder came under heavy anti-aircraft fire, while most of the others came to grief when landing on the Peninsula’s rocky hillside. None the less, the dummy position which had been bombed during the morning, was attacked and ‘captured’ by one of the scattered groups of Fallschirmjäger. The Germans had based their plans on air photographs taken on 30 April and in the succeeding three weeks, as further guns arrived and Freyberg reshaped the defences, new sites were chosen. The old site remained in use as a dummy.
Australian infantrymen from a composite battalion in the Souda area were amongst those sent to round up Grenz and his men.
Deployed on the Peninsula as a part of CREFORCE reserve, were the 200 men of the Northumberland Hussars, who were dismounted and operating as infantry. Amongst them was Trooper George Ashworth armed with a brand new SMLE rifle. His troop quickly pinned down the survivors of one crashed glider. Having fired a few rounds Ashworth was disconcerted to find streams of oil running down his arms, coming from his rifle. The heat of the firing had melted the protective layer of grease packed between the barrel and the SMLE’s wooden furniture. As his troop advanced on the enemy he could hear:
…a German repeatedly screaming ‘Shoot me! Shoot me!’ I found the source of the shouting in a little grassy hollow, a few yards from his comrades. I don’t know how he had got so far, for half his hip was shot away. He had been hit with a heavy calibre bullet of an anti-tank rifle …A short while before he had been a fine specimen of manhood …and now here he lay at my feet pleading with me to put an end to his horrible suffering and wasted life.
The real guns on the Akrotiri Peninsula were not destroyed and the survivors of Altmann’s Company were rounded up, their only positive contribution being that they served to add confusion in the area around Freyberg’s HQ.
The Drop of Fallschirmjägerregiment 3
Hauptmann von der Hydte, Commanding Officer of I/FJR 3, dozed in the Ju-52 leading a Gruppe of almost fifty aircraft carrying his battalion to battle.
I was roused by my adjutant and started awake, still drowsy, to hear the roar of engines growing louder and louder, as if coming from a great distance. It took me a moment or two to remember where I was and what lay before me.
As the Ju-52s approached the coast of Crete, von der Hydte stepped to the door. Flak greeted the aircraft fire, including from guns that Altmann should have destroyed.
Suddenly, a lot of little white clouds appeared from nowhere and stood poised in the air about us. They looked harmless enough, like puffs of cotton-wool, for the roar of the plane’s engines had drowned the sound of the ack-ack shells’ detonation.
With the command given, ‘Prepare to jump’, the Fallschirmjäger fastened their hooks on the static line. With the command ‘Go’, von der Hydte recalled:
I pushed with hands and feet, throwing my arms forward as if trying to clutch the black cross on the wing. And then the slipstream caught me, and I was swirling through space with the air roaring in my ears. A sudden jerk on the webbing, a pressure on the chest which knocked the breath out of my lungs. I looked upwards and saw, spread above me, the wide open, motley hood of my parachute. …It was like descending in a lift.
Hauptmann von der Hydte, a persistent thorn in the side of the Allies.
Fallschirmjäger jumping from a Ju 52.
His reverie did not last long, as it seemed that he was inexorably descending towards the Aghia Reservoir. But von der Hydte had no way of manoeuvring his parachute and he was left with ‘only fear’. ‘Then suddenly there came a rough jerk. The drifting, the falling had ceased. I was down to earth again – or at least I was connected to it.’ He had come to rest in a fig tree at the very edge of the reservoir. Others were not so lucky and were lost in the lake but unlike other units, I/3FJR had dropped into the gap in the centre of 10 NZ Brigade’s area and casualties were confined to jump injuries consistent with numerous tree landings. The Fallschirmjäger were, however, as usual, dispersed around the olive groves and crops in the valley.
All twelve men had to be out as quickly as possible to avoid dispersion on landing.
II/FJR 3 was not so lucky being dropped north of the area between the prison and Galatas. Their reception by Colonel Kippenberger’s men on the Galatas Heights was very hot. Oberfeldwebel Karl Neuhoff wrote:
The moment we left the planes we were met with extremely heavy small arms fire. From my aircraft we suffered particularly heavy casualties and only three men reached the ground unhurt. Those who had jumped first, nearer to Galatas, were practically all killed, either in the air or soon after landing. The survivors rallied to a position near the prison where we became organised, collected equipment, and formed up for an attack up the hill to the north near Galatas.
Meanwhile, III/Battalion was dropped on the heights around Galatas and Daratos, with a company jumping further north. This battalion landed amid the New Zealanders and was immediately, as we will see, in trouble. Having lost Generalleutnant Sussmann’s glider only the remains of Tactical HQ 7th Fliegerdivision made it to their LZ near the lake and suffered further casualties on landing. They were able to do little to influence events during the first five days of the battle.
I Battalion had several tasks around the area of the DZ:
I Battalion will immediately take possession of the Supply Dump on the road AGHYA-HANIA NE of the reservoir; if necessary it will clear the dropping zone of the Regiment on both sides of the road and cover the road AGHYA – HANIA approximately level with the reservoir against enemy attacks (with or without AFVs) from the SW.
This left Hauptmann von der Hydte to report to Regimental HQ for further tasking, principally protecting the Regiment’s flank east of the prison and to the south of the Agyha–Hania road. The Battalion was to be prepared to:
Move Eastward through the covered ground between the mountains and PERIVOLIA, with its main body (Schwerpunkt) to the right; there it will destroy any remaining enemy troops and wi1l press on up to the path leading NNW from TSIKALARIA. This line will be held by Recce as far as SOUDA BAY.
The battalion commander looking about him could see no one else although he had seen parachutes on every side during the drop,
I was now apparently alone, absolutely alone. I could see no soldiers anywhere, nor even any movement beyond the hundreds of parachutes still in the air.
He set off through the olive groves to a group of white houses on the Hania–Aghya road, which was the Battalion HQ’s RV and ‘supply dump’ mentioned in Regimental orders, which was the objective of 1 Kompanie.
Briefly I took my bearings and walked rapidly, as though fleeing from something incomprehensible, in the direction where I expected to find the road. A few hundred yards farther on I saw a hedge of cacti and agaves ahead of me, so I hurried forward, forced my way through the hedge, and found myself standing on a deserted, dusty white road. I could see a whitewashed wall showing through the trees a few hundred yards away. That, I reckoned, would be the prison …More like a tramp than a soldier at war I walked along the road towards the white wall before me. …Then suddenly, from the mountains behind me, there came a screech of engines – not the ponderous roar of a transport ‘plane, but a sound more like a siren – followed by a fierce crackle of machine-gun fire. Automatically I hurled myself into the ditch – a deep, concrete ditch bordering a large field of corn – and at that moment a German fighter with all guns blazing swept over within a few feet of where I lay. A stream of bullets threw up fountains of dust on the road, and ricochets sang away into the distance. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the apparition passed. The fighter pulled up high and disappeared over the olive groves in the direction of what I took to be Hania. So the first shots to be aimed at me during this attack had been fired by one of my own countrymen! No one could have thought of laying out identification signals so soon after landing, and the fighter-pilot, whose task it was to support our attack, had obviously never imagined that this lackadaisical figure wandering in such unmilitary fashion down the centre of the road could possibly have been the commanding officer of a German battalion.
The Prison in the 1940s. 10 NZ Brigade were dug in on the Galatas Heights beyond.
As he lay ‘breathless with fright’, in the ditch, ‘trying to pull myself together’ another terror revealed itself;
I heard, very close to where I lay, a rustling sound in the tall corn, as though someone were dragging himself along the ground. I held my breath and felt for the revolver in the pocket of my jumping-suit; but, before I could pull it out, a pair of brown gloves had parted the corn-plants a few yards away from me and, very cautiously, a German helmet made its appearance. Its owner was one of my sergeants, who also – but much more prudently than I – wished to make his way towards the white walls of the prison.
Reaching the prison, von der Hydte found the ‘iron gates open … and the machine gunners of my battalion covering the road’. They were in ‘the highest of spirits; the jump was over, the landing was a success and it seemed that the worst was already behind them’. Elsewhere, the drop of FJR 3 had not been nearly so successful.
III Battalion Fallschirmjäger Regiment 3
The drop of Major Heilman’s Battalion and the attached MG company, was into New Zealand positions that had not been identified by air recce. Consequently, it was a disaster. It had been intended to drop the battalion on a single DZ north of Galatas but in the event due to the same factors being at work here as at Maleme, namely the bombing, anti-aircraft fire and obscuration, the drop was scattered astride Galatas, less 11 Kompanie which was dropped south of the Prison.
The battalion was poorly placed to carry out its orders:
III Bn. will immediately make an attack on and occupy the enemy tent encampment West of HANIA immediately South of the 3 finger-like promontories [9 & 10 Kompanies]; will block to the East the roads HANIA-ALIKIANOU and HANIA-GALATAS at the road fork, so as to hinder an enemy attack, even with AFVs, from HANIA against the dropping zone of the Regiment.. To the West, GALATAS will be occupied [11 Kompanie] and an attack on the dropping zone of the Regiment by any enemy troops which may be around GALATAS is to be prevented. The coastal road to the West must immediately be closed and blocked.
In the battalion’s orders 12 Kompanie was tasked to clear Daratos and then move north to support the attack on the ‘tented camp’.
As far as the New Zealand defenders of III what was to be Battalion’s DZ, 19 NZ Battalion, were concerned the ‘air armada’, arrived ‘after a short period of ground strafing across Galatas’:
… a large flight of Ju 52s and gliders flew low over its front travelling east. Breakfast forgotten, there was a mad scramble for action positions. Simultaneously parachutists began to drop. The attack had come.
The first Fallschirmjäger, principally from 9 Kompanie, began to drop into 19 Battalion’s area at 0810 hours. Bombing and machine-gunning had stopped and ‘comparative quiet reigned’. The air was, however, ‘full of planes and floating figures’.
According to the battalion historian, every man was ‘galvanised into action’:
The awe-inspiring spectacle above was now reduced to terms of targets and the shooting was good. The paratroops jumped at heights varying between 200 and 500 feet; a few parachutes did not open, but the rest in their downward journey looked almost leisurely. Silhouetted against the sky, their leg and arm movements could be clearly seen. They stopped abruptly when a man was struck, and it is safe to say that a large percentage of those who landed in the unit’s area were dead when they reached the ground. One falling close to Battalion Headquarters had been hit no fewer than nineteen times. Clearly the 19th’s presence had been unsuspected.
Meanwhile, on Pink Hill Staff Sergeant Tom Alvis of the New Zealand Army Service Corps was among the ‘dismayed and hungry bystanders’, who ‘saw a dead parachutist fall gracefully on to the breakfast tin and send the only hot meal of the day flying’.
Parachutes hanging from trees in 18 NZ Battalion’s area.
The confusion of the first few minutes gave way to ‘exhilaration as the realisation dawned that we were having the best of the battle’. The Fallschirmjäger around the New Zealanders’ immediate area having been ‘disposed of’, the men started to ‘go out after those dropping out of range’, mainly 11 Kompanie, and ‘general forays’ that would have left the battalion’s position without coherent defence had to be discouraged. Consequently, ‘organised patrols were sent out to deal with dead ground and areas out of range.’ In a letter written in July 1941, Lieutenant Colonel Gray, CO 18 NZ Battalion, deployed to the north of its sister battalion, described the hunting down of the enemy in the area of his HQ:
I saw a parachute hanging in a tree and detected a movement around the left side of it. Fired quickly with my rifle – every officer in the battalion had a rifle. Then advancing very softly and quickly up to the parachute I looked round the side to see a Hun[German] lying on the ground beside a gaily coloured container fastened to a parachute. He moved, so I shot him at once to make sure, and then moved cautiously from cover to cover.
I shot another hiding behind a tree, and wounded him. He was very frightened, but I told him to lie still and he would be looked after. Took his pistol away and gave it to Dick Phillips who was just on my right. No sooner had I handed it to him than he was shot through the knee. Two Huns about 30 yards away hiding behind a tree were shooting at the two of us. Two careful ones immediately dispatched them both. There were plenty of bullets flying around but one had no time to bother about them. I saw George Andrews sitting on the ground taking careful aim at some cactus bushes behind us. ‘Steady on George,’ I said, ‘you will be shooting one of our own chaps.’ ‘No bloody fear, it’s a Hun,’ he said, and fired, ‘Got him.’
By 1000 hours, reports in the Battalion’s War Diary indicated that the position was clear of enemy. ‘Dead paratroops lay dotted all over the position: some, still in their harness, hung grotesquely from the olive trees. Due to a failure of recce and intelligence the majority of III FJR 3 was out of action almost immediately, losing 155 dead and nine prisoners in 19 NZ Battalion’s area alone.
The shocked and, to the New Zealanders, often surprisingly young and inexperienced prisoners were an immediate source of information on their intentions. Wounded officers were found in possession of FJR 3 and battalion operation orders, which once translated gave Commonwealth commanders much useful information. Driver Bill Carson on Pink Hill recalled other items taken from prisoners:
Our first prisoner had a pistol and three grenades in his hands when he landed. They climb out of these chutes like lightning. In their water bottles they carry very strong cold black coffee. They each had with them two days’ rations, which consisted of a poloney, wrapped bread which was remarkably fresh, dried fruit, and two cakes of milk-chocolate. They also had two cubes of ‘dope’, probably some sort of condensed vitamins, which bucked our chaps up no end when they tried it.
12 Kompanie had, meanwhile, been dropped with I Battalion near the prison and was consequently in good order. They, with the scattered remnants of III Battalion, did however, have some success. Covering Cemetery Hill, Prison Valley south-east across the Hania–Aghya road and on to the Turkish Fort, were the 1,400 men of 6th Greek Regiment, described by the official historian as:
…armed and although ammunition had arrived some days before and been distributed to companies, there is some doubt whether it had been issued to the men. Whether or not it had been issued, however, the length of the line and lack of training and weakness of armament sufficiently explain the disaster that quickly overtook the regiment.
Not constrained by the diplomacy necessary in an official history, others are more explicit with their views on the commander of the regiment. Captain Basset, Brigade Major of 10 NZ Brigade wrote:
Here I found hundreds of Greeks in flight, rallied and railed at them and turned them back down the valley; but they showed that they only had three rounds each which they blazed at high-flying planes. That bloody Colonel had not issued his ammunition, and his dump was captured at once.
Lieutenant Farran who, as we will see, deployed to the area in his light tank and came across ‘… Greeks in khaki uniform, who were pleading for ammunition. I gave them a belt of Vickers, but afterwards discovered that it was no good for the calibre of their rifles.’
The result was that, with I Battalion FJR 3 attacking east along the valley to the south, Cemetery Hill was seized from the Greek soldiers, who in addition to their lack of ammunition, had few bayonets and they fell back into Galatas in confusion. Occupying Cemetery Hill, the Germans had a foothold on the Galatas Heights and denied the Allied troops a position from which they could dominate the approach from Prison Valley to Hania. The Galatas and Cemetery Hill area became the focus of fighting throughout the day but, meanwhile, the final company of III Battalion was preparing to attack the ‘tented camp’.
The view from the Hania - Aghya road towards Cemetery Hill and the positions of 6th Greek Regiment.
7 General Hospital
10 Kompanie of III Battalion, jumping a little further north, in a gap between the various battalions, assembled in relatively good order and its company commander Leutnant Nagel, unaware of the fate of the remainder of the battalion set off, as ordered, to attack the ‘tented camp’. This tented camp, in the ‘Gunpowder Store’ area just to the west of Hania, was in fact 7 General Hospital and the collocated 6 Field Ambulance. The hospital had been set up using the few buildings in the area and numerous tents, a part of which had been sited under the pine trees that cover much of the area. This was not for camouflage but to make the most of the shade. The Hospital was also marked in accordance with the requirements of the Geneva Convention, with large Red Cross air marker panels. The German intelligence analysts were either overwhelmed by the preparation of the invasion in such a short time or coordination between Lohr’s and Student’s Headquarters was woefully poor.
The attack began with the Hospital being bombed and strafed for an hour and a half, killing or wounding both staff and patients. Assaulting the hospital and Field Ambulance positions at approximately 0930 hours, in two groups, Leutnant Nagel’s men believing they were attacking a legitimate objective, engaged targets amongst the tents, which tragically included Lieutenant Colonel Plimmet and his second in command, who attempted to remonstrate with the attackers in order to protect their patients. When the adrenalin ebbed from their muscles, the Fallschirmjägerrealised that they had attacked and captured a medical unit. Puzzled and straying from error into the realm of dubious action, they rounded up prisoners, including walking wounded, ‘although a number of bad cases were allowed to remain, the choice probably depending on the temper of the individual parachutist’.
Once the prisoners had been gathered together, a Fallschirmjäger officer addressed them in English. He informed them that:
… they were now ‘prisoners of the German Army’ which was master of Crete, that they must obey orders, and provided they did this would be well treated. He told them to take off their steel helmets, as by wearing these the prisoners might be taken for British fighting troops and theLuftwaffe, which was cleaning up the remnants of the defending army, would be liable to fire on them. He said that they would shortly be moved to the prison area where the headquarters of his particular group was being set up. The harangue concluded, he hurried off, taking some of his men with him.
There was then some delay while Leutnant Nagle pondered his next course of action. The New Zealand official historian wonders:
Whether they were able or not to communicate with the rest of their battalion, they must have realised that something was wrong. They were isolated and had probably already begun to feel pressure from 18 Battalion. They had a large body of sick and wounded prisoners on their hands. In this situation their best course was to try and make their way back to the main body near Galatas, taking their prisoners.
About midday, 10 Kompanie began to shepherd their prisoners towards Galatas. ‘But this was also the general direction of 19 Battalion’s right flank.’ It was, consequently not long before the column was fired on. To the New Zealand infantrymen it appeared that the prisoners, many in hospital pajamas, were being used as shields. In the exchange of fire, ‘One of the guards was wounded. Three members of 6 Field Ambulance staff were killed and one wounded.’ In the fighting that followed most of Nagle’s men were killed, wounded or taken prisoner and ‘A few patients were also wounded.’ By 1700 hours 10 Kompanie had been destroyed and the surviving prisoners were all rescued.
Meanwhile, by 1310 hours 16 NZ Battalion had swept through the Hospital area supported by Light Tanks of the 3rd Hussars. A replacement dressing station was soon established, using salvaged medical equipment, in a large culvert under the main coast road. The General Hospital was reestablished by medics who had avoided capture, in caves by the shore in the same area. Life-saving operations were carried out all night by two surgeons until the rest of the patients and staff returned. ‘By 23 May, faith in its protection had recovered sufficiently for a Red Cross to be displayed, and the enemy did not molest either ambulance or hospital any further.’
The hospital site clearly showing the large red cross.
Some of the medical staff and patients in pyjamas who escaped capture.
II Battalion – Galatas
Battalion HQ and 5 and 6 Kompanies and elements of the Regiment’s support companies assembled as planned near the prison. 7 Kompanie, as requested by its commander, Leutnant Neuhoff, had been dropped accurately on the lower slopes of Pink Hill, below the hilltop village of Galatas, which they were to take. 8 Kompanie did not drop due to insufficient aircraft but would cross the Sea of Crete in the convoy of fishing boats.
It is obvious that the Germans had not appreciated that the hills around Galatas had been put into a state of defence or that Pink Hill was held by the Petrol Company of the Composite Battalion. It was, therefore, a nasty shock for 7 Kompanie when they came under fire as they jumped. Driver Cyril Crosland was forward of the main position, a member of a patrol manning an outpost. He recalled the chaos when the Germans dropped into Prison Valley around 0815 hours:
On 20 May we were just finishing our breakfast. They were coming over with big Ju 52 planes with gliders on behind. They let the gliders go. A lot of paratroopers came down in the olive groves around us and were killed. They were in front of us, behind us, beside us. We didn’t know where they were. Nobody was telling us what to do. Information was only got by word of mouth. We were busy trying to stay alive, because you didn’t know where the Germans were. They were dropping all round us. A lot of them were hung up on trees – killed coming down.
Despite casualties, Leutnant Neuhoff’s determined Fallschirmjäger collected their weapons from containers and immediately began to advance up Pink Hill. Thus began one of New Zealand’s most remarkable stories of a tenacious defence by men who lacked all but the most basic infantry skills. The Petrol Company mainly consisted of soldiers of the Royal New Zealand Army Service Corps, occupying fire trenches hacked out of the rocky soil. Their positions ‘were more like bowels than the vertical sided slits described in the infantry training pamphlets’. Their heavy weapons consisted of a Lewis gun and a pair of Bren guns. A rudimentary barbed wire entanglement had been sited fifty yards downhill from the forward positions but no mines were available.
FJR 3 had the best of the drop zones suffering fewer jump casualties than any other regiment. Here a paratrooper retrieves a container filled with small arms.
The first Kiwis in action on Pink Hill were at the outpost mentioned above, under Corporal Trevelyan, forward of B Section’s area. Trevelyan later reported:
They landed on three sides of our position and within fifteen minutes were throwing hand grenades at our slit trench. We soon realised that it was useless to remain in this position and decided to retire to our own unit some 300 yards to the rear. If it had not been for the covering fire of Driver Eckersley’s Bren gun I am afraid very few if any of us would have come out alive. After reporting to Sergeant Hopley we took up positions with our own B Section.
The first attack on Pink Hill was eventually beaten off but during a pause before the next German attack, Lieutenant Farran of the 3rd Hussars drove into the battlefield with his troop of Mark IV Light Tanks, having ‘marched to the sound of the nearest guns’. Driving through Galatas, handing out ammunition to the Greek soldiers, he ‘passed several New Zealand positions who stood up and gave us the thumbs up sign with a grin’. Driving up to the saddle between Pink and Cemetery Hills, he wrote, ‘We found ourselves held up by a knife edge road block, barring us from the plain of Aghya’. He had arrived at the front of the battle.
As I was wondering whether I should get out of my tank to remove it, a Schmeiser fired at me from the cover of the olive trees. I looked around through the visor for a target, but could not see a living soul. And then another machine gun spattered bullets against the turret from the other side of the road. Indiscriminately we raked the trees with fire, pouring long bursts into the black shadows…
The Germans … renewed their fire from the olive groves. I felt that it was futile to stay where we were, since we could still see no sign of the enemy and he could obviously see us. I ordered the driver to turn round, but he was so excited by all that had happened that he pulled the tiller too hard, wrenching off a track.
It was fortunate that the lower part of the tank should be concealed by two high banks, so that we were able to repair the track under cover from their fire. But every time we raised our heads a sharp burst from a Schmeiser rattled against the turret. I think we must have broken all records for repairing a track. We almost fought for the hammer, scrambling over each other in our desire to hurry the matter and pulling off our fingernails in our frantic speed.
When at last we had got the tank into running order once more, we drove through the village back towards our leaguer, for I was beginning to have some qualms about my having left without orders.
Looking down to the cemetery from Cemetery Hill and the saddle in the ridge where Lieutenant Farran brought his tank into action.
Dropping at 0900 hours, it was immediately apparent to Oberst Richard Heidrich that the Regiment had landed in a broad valley rather than onto a plateau as expected and that the heights to the north echoed with the sounds of Leutnant Neuhoff’s battle. He realised that, confined to the valley, his command would be destroyed in detail. Consequently, he ordered a renewal of the attack on Pink Hill with the other two companies from Major Heilman’s III Battalion. Starting at 1000 hours, the attack was supported by the Regiment’s mortars firing from base plate locations near the Prison, along with 20mm anti-aircraft guns. With the additional support of fighter bombers, the attack made steady progress driving in the Petrol Company’s remaining outposts and pushing back their main positions. The situation was, however, stabilised by the intervention of the Greeks of 6th Regiment, who had earlier fled in panic from Cemetery Hill.
Oberst Richard Heidrich.
In Galatas the Greeks had earlier been rallied by New Zealander Captain Basset and a British officer attached to the Greek Military Mission, Captain Michael Forester, who ‘had come up to see what was happening’. Deciding to ‘stay for the party’, Forester was placed in command of the four hundred Greeks, who followed this inspirational officer in a timely counter-attack onto the saddle between Cemetery and Pink Hills. This bayonet attack has been variously described as ‘mad’, ‘wild’ and ‘hair raising’, with Forester leading it ‘tootling on a tin whistle like the Pied Piper’. Driver Pope wrote:
Out of the trees came Captain Forester of the Buffs, clad in shorts, a long yellow army jersey reaching down almost to the bottom of the shorts, brass polished and gleaming, … He was tall, thin-faced, fair-haired, with no tin hat – the very opposite of a soldier hero… He looked like … a Wodehouse character. It was a most inspiring sight. Forester was at the head of a crowd of disorderly Greeks, including women; one Greek had a shotgun with a serrated-edge bread knife tied on like a bayonet, others had ancient weapons — all sorts. Without hesitation this uncouth group, with Forester right out in front, went over the top of a parapet and headlong at the crest of the hill. The enemy fled.
Captain Michael Forester.
The arrival of a force, fired with the light of battle, on their flanks broke the German attack. The Fallschirmjäger ran back down the slopes, leaving the ground littered with their casualties. This spectacular attack plugged a gap that the loss of Cemetery Hill had created between Pink Hill and 19 NZ Battalion.
After an opposed drop, and the Greek counter-attack, 7 Kompanie had, by late morning, ceased to exist in any meaningful form.
By midday it was plain to Oberst Heidrich that he lacked sufficient combat power to overcome the enemy on the Galatas Heights and he signalled Student reporting this and requesting that FJR 2, the other half of Gruppe Mitt, be diverted from its afternoon drop at Rethymno into Prison Valley. This suggestion was rejected on the grounds that it would have caused confusion even if the orders could have been passed over the rudimentary mainland Greek telephone system.
Meanwhile, the battle settled down into a lull. During this pause the sniper came into his own. Driver Johnson was on the receiving end of this fire:
At approximately 1200 hrs on 20 May, Second Lieutenant Jackson was making his way back to the RAP with a shattered wrist. As he passed my trench which was in an exposed position he fell, and as he fell, a German sniper, who had been causing considerable damage, opened fire on him; although the bullets did not make a direct hit, being of an explosive nature, the shrapnel from same hit Mr Jackson about the right eye and temple. I managed to drag the Lieutenant to the comparative safety of my trench, where I bandaged his wounds and applied a tourniquet. I was not able to get Mr Jackson back to the RAP for some time as the enemy sniper wasn’t a new chum with a rifle, and any movement on my part was greeted with a stream of exploding bullets. At approximately 1530 hrs …we were able to get Mr Jackson out of my trench and on the way back to the RAP, I kept up a rapid fire on where I had reason to believe the sniper was, and managed to draw his fire till we were out of his range.
The deployment of the Composite Battalion around Galatas on 20 May 1941.
The direction of the attacks mounted by FJR 3 in Prison Valley. The view from Cemetery Hill looking south west over the prison.
The Afternoon Attack
Colonel Kippenberger had succeeded in clearing the majority of 10 Brigade’s area around Galatas but he lacked properly trained infantry to counter-attack Cemetery Hill or to take the battle to the enemy and destroy the Fallschirmjäger concentrated around the Prison in the valley below. Messages requesting troops to carry out these attacks were sent to Brigadier Puttick at the New Zealand Division’s HQ. Meanwhile, General Freyberg had already released 18th and 19th Battalions from 4 Brigade for deployment in the divisional area, presumably to deliver counter-attacks. The troops, however, remained in position, watching the battle from a distance, as Brigadier Puttick vetoed Kippenberger’s requests. It was only reports that the ‘Enemy are preparing what appears to be a landing ground 1000 yards to the west of the Prison’ that eventually propelled Puttick into action at 1840 hours; a subject to which we will return.
Meanwhile, during the lull in the battle, Oberst Heidrich was, even without reinforcement, not ready to concede defeat and set about organising a deliberate attack that was to be supported by the regiment’s heavy weapons and of course air strikes by von Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps. This air support was ad hoc and in competition with resource allocation for the afternoon drops at Rethymno and Iraklio.
The new attack opened in the middle of the afternoon with the enemy engaging the Galatas Heights with concentrations of mortar and machinegun fire. However, the 3-inch mortars of 19 Battalion replied doing ‘grand work and locating and destroying many of the enemy weapons’. Sergeant Clark recalled that,
Our men also used the Hun’s own mortars against him, but though these proved to have a greater range than our own, they were not nearly as accurate and required resetting after every round.
The New Zealanders’ supporting artillery, F Troop, 28 Battery also provided effective support, having earlier been ‘in the thick of the first parachute landing’. Their guns were now in action firing ‘over open sights against enemy concentrations across the valley and, despite all difficulties [lack of sights and equipment], gave valuable support to 19 Battalion and other units in the Galatas area’.
Despite the New Zealanders defensive fire, the Germans attacked towards Pink Hill, using the road to Galatas as their axis. The NZASC soldiers, who had reoccupied their original positions, watched the approaching Fallschirmjäger, with mixed feelings. ‘We had shown them what for in the morning but now they were coming again. This time I knew what to expect and wished I wasn’t there but no-one moved, so I stayed. For me, it was one of those moments … I never looked back again.’
Oberfeldbwebel Teichmann wrote of this attack:
In the afternoon between 1500 and 1600 hours we advanced to attack the hill of Galatas [Pink Hill]. We proceeded, without opposition, about halfway up the hill. Suddenly, we ran into heavy and very accurate rifle and machine-gun fire. The enemy had held their fire with great discipline and had allowed us to approach well within effective range before opening up. Our casualties were extremely heavy and we were forced to retire leaving many dead behind us. This first attack [sic] on Galatas had cost us approximately fifty percent casualties, about half of whom were killed.
Still lacking infantry under his command, although there was plenty available, Kippenberger was still unable to take this moment of German weakness to counter-attack the Fallschirmjäger.
Throughout the day in contrast to the remote Brigadier Hargest at Maleme, Colonel Kippenberger was active on the Galatas battlefield, not just as a cool, encouraging voice at the end of a telephone but as a presence amongst his men, armed with the Schmeiserof a Fallschirmjäger, that he had himself shot outside his headquarters. The difference in style of the two commanders and, arguably, the result of the day’s fighting could not be more explicit.
I Battalion’s Advance on Hania
Hauptmann von der Hydte’s orders were, it will be recalled, to advance north-east up Prison Valley towards Souda, with III Battalion advancing on his left to take Hania. However, with resistance far stronger than anticipated, his advance was to be more limited and circumspect than envisaged. One factor to I Battalion’s advantage was that 6th Greek Regiment had abandoned Cemetery Hill along with most of its blocking positions that had been established across Prison Valley.
The Valley, about a mile wide, was bisected by the Aghya–Hania Road, which for much of its course ran parallel and just to the north of the dry bed of the Galdiso Stream. The northern slope rose steeply up to Cemetery Hill and the Galatas Heights at an approximate elevation of 200 metres, while to the south, the ground rose more steadily through the foot hills to the White Mountains some fifteen miles distant. These rocky hills were, lower down, cloaked with the usual olive trees and citrus groves, broken up by small fields and paddocks around the small whitewashed hamlets that dotted the hillside. Further up, the slopes were barren and more open. Temperatures were climbing towards thirty centigrade and the Fallschirmjäger were wearing the same uniforms as they had used at Narvic, near the Arctic Circle, six weeks earlier.
Beginning their advance during the morning, Hauptmann von der Hydte ‘had not gone a hundred metres when a machine gun barked in front of us … Single rifle-shots whipped through the air around us. But still we could see nothing’. This was to be the nature of the battle; von der Hydte could see very little and when he was stationary long enough for his signallers to net-in their radios, reports from his companies were ‘contradictory and obscure’. During the course of the morning, however, his men established positions in the bottom of the Valley just to the east of Pink Hill, while to the right, the Fallschirmjäger fanned out up the slope to the south-east. Battalion HQ was established in the cover of the bed of the Galdiso Stream where a tributary joined it. While there was cover from fire, there was little shelter from the heat of the mid-day sun.
A German heavy mortar crew lending support to the attack.
According to von der Hydte, ‘The British seemed slowly to be establishing a line of defence … but now both sides were gradually organising themselves for battle’. Of concern to the I Battalion, however, was that it was apparent that there was a wide gap between his left flank, where III Battalion should have been, and the sound of fighting further left around Pink Hill.
In the advance, timed to coincide with the renewed attack on Pink Hill, 2 Kompanie, while following the Galadiso Stream, located a pair of British guns, in an olive-grove almost certainly belonging to 1st Light Troop, trained on the area of the prison. Von der Hydte wrote:
With the din of battle drowning the sound of their approach, the [Fallschirmjäger] scouts cautiously worked their way up a steep slope under cover of dense undergrowth until they found themselves overlooking the gun positions from the top of a rocky acclivity. They could hear the British soldiers talking loudly as they made preparations to start firing.
The leader of the scout-party blew his whistle, and his men rushed forward, hurling a couple of grenades as they went. Taken unawares, the crew of the nearest gun fled for cover, and the gun was captured.
The scouting party did not manage to reach the second gun. Its crew, suddenly realising the danger they were in, retaliated with rifles and Schmachineguns, forcing the Germans to take cover. While they fought desperately at such close quarters, a vehicle, ignoring the German fire, drove up. The gun-crew broke cover, rushed to the gun, hitched it up and hanging on to the back of it made good their escape. In their wake they left only two dead and a stack of ammunition.
Taking cover during the attack.
The Fallschirmjäger advanced farther, but had progressed only a short distance before they came under heavy fire from a solitary building, which in more peaceful times probably served as a roadhouse.
The captured gun! Some of the men hauled the gun-carriage round; a lance-corporal loaded it, sighted it on the house through the olive-trees, and fired. The shot was a near miss, and the British nest replied with rapid fire. The next shot hit the roof.
Shouting, the Fallschirmjäger stormed forward. Only in the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting and by suffering losses themselves they were able to over-come the resistance of the British [sic], and when finally the ruined house fell into their hands not one of the defenders remained unwounded.
The prisoners were about twenty Greek soldiers, the remnants of 6th Greek Regiment who had remained at their post. Some of them looked sullen, making no attempt to conceal their hatred for us; others seemed frightened, as though sure that their hour had come.
Meanwhile, 1 Kompanie were in trouble and was ‘… suffering losses and had apparently found itself in an unfavourable position opposite strong enemy elements’. This necessitated the intervention of the commanding officer who left Battalion HQ under the command of his Adjutant. Von der Hydte wrote:
I set off with my orderly to try to locate No. 1 Kompanie. … As we neared the firing line, ricocheting bullets sang past our heads and a burst of machine-gun fire caused a spurt of dust to rise from the dry ground barely ten yards ahead of us. Then we saw some soldiers belonging toNo. 1 Kompanie. They were strung out in a shallow ditch which ran along the edge of an olive grove facing an open field. We ran the last few yards, threw ourselves down behind some trees, and slipped like seals into the ditch.
The company’s position was far from satisfactory. Our men were pinned down by fire from at least two machine guns, none of which had yet been pin-pointed. The road to the left and the deep gully of the Gladiso were also obviously well covered by the British.
The mortar section, accompanied by the commander of No. 4 Kompanie, was not long in arriving, and while the two mortars were being got into position I crawled forward with the company commander to recce the target area.
We had no luck, vainly scanning the olive grove opposite us and the high ground to our left through our binoculars. The British, on the other hand, must have had better eyesight than we, for a shower of bullets spattered the ground immediately in front of us. We wasted no time in crawling back under cover.
Securely pinned down by the enemy and unable to catch a sight of him, the company was obviously in an untenable position. Casualties mounted. There were cries for assistance on all sides. Someone was calling for stretcher-bearers. A man close by suddenly slumped over his weapon and lay still. Another, with ashen face, dragged himself back under cover of the olive trees to apply a field dressing to his wound.
Suddenly there came a deafening explosion and a shower of earth rose close behind us. British guns were laying down an artillery barrage on our position — and yet we still could not see them.
Von der Hydte eventually spotted movement near an isolated whitewashed house and identified at least a pair of soldiers. 4 Kompanie’s mortars were promptly in action and the Commonwealth shelling ceased as their observers had probably been forced to move. Even though they had a successful engagement the initiative was beginning to slip away from I Battalion.
Despite the enemy’s fire, I had experienced no feeling of fear until now. I had been annoyed by the firing because it had pinned us down and stopped us advancing, but the thought that I might actually be hit had not struck me. Now, however, that I had seen one of my company commanders lying seriously wounded by the hedge and his second-in-command leaping with a blood-sodden sleeve across the road, I suddenly felt fear crawling into my heart. It literally crawled. I could feel it rising from my stomach towards my heart… In vain I set my teeth to try and steady myself. I clutched the earth, pressing my body against it…
And then the enemy artillery started up again. The shells were landing in the olive grove and shrapnel flew in all directions. I heard a voice behind me: ‘One of the mortars has had a direct hit, sir. There are two wounded.’
We were certainly in a spot.
Under effective artillery fire it was clear that I Battalion was not going to make progress directly down the valley. Meanwhile, however, 3 Kompanie were encountering less opposition on the right flank but before von der Hydte could exploit this opportunity:
‘Panzer!’ someone shouted, and the cry was passed from man to man. We could hear the clanking and the rattle of panzer tracks somewhere along the road in front of us. All eyes were strained. And then around the bend about 150 metres away, a small two-man tank cautiously nosed its way into view. Such was our first sight of the enemy. The machine guns which had pinned us down were still invisible to us, but the sight of this tank removed half the terror. The sound of its tracks while it had remained invisible had been infinitely more frightening than its appearance now that it had materialised. It attracted all our fire, like a tin roof under a hail storm; nevertheless it kept coming towards us. It had advanced to within fifty yards when there was a sudden, ear splitting detonation. The little tank swerved violently, pulled up with a jerk in front of a telephone pole, and remained there motionless. Our men continued to fire at it for a while, but slowly they came to realise that it had been knocked out by one of our 37mm shells.
‘Shouting, the Fallschirmjäger stormed forward.’
From the timing of around 1600 hours, it would appear that the ‘Panzer‘ was a part of Brigadier Inglis’s local counter-attack. It was a 3rd Hussar’s Light Tank or possibly one of two New Zealand carriers, which was described as being ‘knocked out by heavy machine gun fire, that probed down the valley’. Elements of 4 NZ Brigade had advanced down from the Galatas Heights into the valley and cleared scattered groups of Fallschirmjäger and outposts. However, coming up against a solid enemy position, with anti-tank guns and lacking sufficient combat power the force fell back. It had, however, deterred any further advance up Prison Valley to Hania. This is an example of a purely local initiative buying time and having an effect out of proportion to the numbers committed. It is a shame that such counter-attacks were not mounted in 5 Brigade’s area or across the boundary into Colonel Kippenbergers area.
Counter-Attack
The arrival of 2/7 and 2/8 Australian Battalion at the north east of Prison Valley from Souda, sealed a potentially dangerous gap in the defences protecting Hania at Perivolia. This finally removed the last reason for Brigadier Puttick not to take offensive action in the Prison Valley area, where it was apparent that his men had gained the upper hand.
At 1830 hours, orders arrived at 19 NZ Battalion for an attack from the west of Galatas to prevent the previously recorded airfield construction work in the bottom of the Valley.
1. Enemy are preparing what appears to be a landing ground 1000 yards to the west of the Prison 0553.
2. 19 Bn will counter attack this area forthwith, with
(1) [Whole] Bn if situation permits.
(2) Two Coys if Bn Comd considers that one coy should be left in present posn.
One tp 3 Hussars will come under comd 19 Bn for the operation.
After clearing the landing ground 19 Bn, with under comd 1 tp 3 Hussars will take up a defensive posn covering the landing ground but with bulk of forces north of rd HANIA-AGHYA 0352.
Time of signature 1820 hrs.
Lieutenant Farran and his troop of three Light Tanks, who were to support the attack, arrived at 19 Battalion’s HQ to find that they were not entirely popular, being blamed for attracting ‘the attentions of the hovering swarm of Messerschmitts’. Shortly afterwards, as reported in the battalion history: ‘While arrangements were being discussed, dive-bombers appeared and blitzed the battalion area’. Fortunately, the New Zealanders had worked out one of the enemy’s methods of air-to-ground target indication and:
Our troops confused the aircraft by firing Very light signals. Observation during the day had shown that a white light fired from the ground indicated to the plane the locations of German troops, while a red light fired obliquely showed the direction of our positions … by firing many Very lights simultaneously with theirs it was found that the blitzing lost its intensity owing to the pilots’ uncertainty.
Ordering a properly resourced significant counter-attack is easier said than done. The New Zealanders were beset by many ‘difficulties and objections that had to be surmounted before the counter-attack could be mounted’, against a tight timetable, as it ‘was already evening and there were a bare two hours of light left’. There was also a cross country move of about two miles to the objective to consider and, as the return of the attacking force was not envisaged, arrangements for water, rations, and ammunition would have to be made. The thinning out of 19 Battalion’s positions would leave an exposed flank in the Galatas defences and they needed replacements. These turned out to be Greeks. These difficulties led to the CO, Major Blackburn, deciding to attack with two companies.
With preparations under way, Lieutenant Farran had some difficulty in locating the Commanding Officer who was found ‘out in the forward defence lines potting at a sniper’.
I ran along to him with my head ducked, bullets whistling all round, until I noticed that dodging did not quite seem to be the fashion in this part of the world. With a tremendous effort I tried to appear brave and walked up to him. He muttered, ‘Just a moment,’ out the corner of his mouth, and only turned when he had brought the sniper tumbling from a neighbouring tree. He handed the rifle to his adjutant and said “Well, that’s that. That joker has been causing trouble all morning. Now, I suppose you command the tanks”.
The force would cross the start line at 1930 hours and Lieutenant Roy Farran’s Troop was to join up with the infantry at Galatas. On his way forward his troop was twice mortared in the gathering darkness.
The two 19 Battalion companies, under the command of Captain Pleasants, advanced together with their tanks for an advance of 1,000 yards west of Galatas, passing through the positions of 4 Field Regiment (infantry role in the Composite Battalion), pushed on to the first objective, the point where the force was to wheel south towards the Prison, Lieutenant Farran was leading the way along a track that formed the axis of advance:
The wire was supposed to have been cut for us, but when we arrived we found that a second tangle stretched across the track. We were already under fire by the time we reached it, so there was no turning back. I charged it head-on and got through; making a gap for the others, though the wire became so tangled up with my bogey wheels that I was to pay for it later. We went along a dark track between the trees, spraying on both sides [with MG fire] as we went. Some fire came back and we ran across a trip wire, which set off a flare. A shower of grenades rolled off our sides, causing no damage. Finally, the track petered out before we had reached our objective.
I had only been there a few moments when some New Zealanders arrived with bristling bayonets. We waited until they had formed up, intending to at least cover their advance with a barrage of bullets. It was very cold and we sat shivering in the turrets as the New Zealanders slipped like shadows into the ditches.
Three Mark IV light tanks of the type used by Lieutenant Farran and 3rd Hussars in Crete.
D Company, on the left, started their southerly advance and immediately ran into opposition. The company’s advance came to a halt in the darkness. Meanwhile, in wheeling south to join the battle, A Company on the right, lost contact with one of its platoons – No. 9. After an hour long battle that the battalion history, with studied understatement, described as a ‘troublesome engagement in the dark and at close quarters in the olive groves,’ the battle died down at 2200 hours, having been called off at about the same time by Colonel Kippenberger, under whom 19 NZ Battalion now came. Casualties had to be evacuated but two enemy 50mm mortars and crews and three machine gun positions were destroyed. Captain Pleasants:
…ordered a halt and the three tanks and the two companies laagered for the night. Arrangements were made to continue the attack at first light next morning. The force posted sentries and lay up in the olive groves approximately 800 – 1,000 yards from the prison.
In summary, Kippenberger who had been pressing for the attack for most of the day, finally got an attack but it was too little, too late. An attack by at least one of the two battalions released by Freyberg earlier may well have had a dramatic effect on the fortunes of the Germans. With the Fallschirmjäger established in Prison Valley and the New Zealander commanders unwilling to commit their troops in the open where they would suffer the depredations of the Luftwaffe, four days of what was described as ‘Sitskrieg’ began.
Oberst Heidrich had suffered 540 casualties on the first day of the operation but still had 1,200 men to face the counter-attack he confidently expected would come.
Armed Cretan civilians.
The Cretan Reaction
The reaction by the civilian population to the German invasion was not confined to areas where there were no Commonwealth soldiers; Ted Martin-Smith recounted:
A bit later on, it was a few days after the parachutists arrived, we used to see these old Cretans – most of the young fellas had gone, you see – these old fellas come along and pass through… “Which way are the Germans?” And they’d be out for a day’s shooting. Blunderbusses…Carbines, I suppose they could have been. And they’d go back home again at night…
As elsewhere, armed Cretan civilians were active around Galatas. According to the Petrol Company, three armed civilians were brought in for interrogation.
The different languages made questioning a difficult business … but a great grin spread over the face of the leader, and to ‘prove’ his absolute loyalty, the Cretan plunged a hand into a pocket and proudly produced a couple of ears with the statement “Germanos”.