3
Howard Kippenberger
Ajax made very quick time to Suda Bay and we were disembarking in great haste, bombers being expected by ten next morning, 28 April. We had come aboard with only what we could carry, less packs. At first I could get no orders and we streamed in a long hot straggling crowd to Canea – a dusty road and a hot morning. Some miles along the road we found that someone had organized food and drink, and we sat down very happily under the olive trees. We had no idea that it was only a matter of from frying-pan to fire.
1949, Infantry Brigadier
The Tale of Doom
Tune: The ‘Old Hundred’
‘Four Sappers’
Here we sit on the Isle of Crete
With sweaty socks and blistered feet;
Little wonder we’ve got the blues,
With feet encased in big canoes.
Khaki shorts instead of slacks,
Living like a tribe of blacks,
Except that blacks don’t sit and brood
And wait throughout the day for food.
It was just a month ago, not more,
We sailed to Greece to win the war;
We marched and groaned beneath our load
While Jerry bombed us off the road.
They chased us here, they chased us there,
The bastards chased us everywhere,
And while they dropped their loads of death
We cursed the ruddy R.A.F.
Yet the R.A.F. was there in force–
They left a few at home of course–
We saw the whole outfit one day–
A Hurricane, flying the other way,
Then we heard the wireless news,
Old bluff-artist Winston giving his views.
‘The R.A.F. is now in Greece
Fighting hard to win us peace.’
We scratched our heads when we heard that lot;
It smelled just like an army plot,
For if in Greece the Air Force be,
Where the ruddy hell are we?
Then at last we met the Hun,
At odds of 33 to one!
Though they made it pretty hot,
We gave the blighters all we’d got.
The bullets whizzed, the big guns roared,
We yelled for ships to get aboard!
At last they came and off we got
And hurried from that ticklish spot...
They landed us in Crete
And marched us off our poor old feet.,
The tucker was light, the water was crook,
I got fed-up and slung my hook–
Next day I copped a heavy fine
And got back that night – full of wine.
My pay book was behind to hell,
So when pay was called I felt quite ill.
They wouldn’t pay me, I was sure of that,
And when they did I smelled a rat.
The next day when rations came,
I realised their wily game,
For sooner than lie down and die
I spent my pay on food supply.
So now it looks like even bettin’
A man will soon become a Cretan
And spend his days in black-out gloom
On Adolph Hitler’s Isle of doom....
1959, The Songs We Sang
Chas M. Wheeler
Crete! What an extraordinary range of mental pictures the name can conjure up in the minds of the boys who were there. Island of loveliness; of calm hills; where a man might come to find the quiet within himself.
Island of horror and nerve-torture: of mass-murder; in its proudest modern guises.
There we languished while poor stumbling little Greece was smashed into an outward submission which ill-concealed the seething spirit ‘underground’. Not the latest and most brutal in a long history of conquests could quench that fire.
There we rested, bathed, found clothes and necessities of life, bargained with urchins for the largest and juiciest oranges I ever saw – at one penny for a tin hat full! We marched, walked, dug, dispersed – but never did we relax – always we watched and waited.
Crete for the few weeks grace afforded us should have been a Paradise of soothing to our tensed nerves. But, instead of easing, the tension grew. The shadow that was engulfing the Balkans hung over us and we ‘stood to’ without need for orders, gazing uneasily seaward for the first sign of the blow that would soon fall.
1946, Kalimera Kiwi
Howard Kippenberger
The companies [of 20 Battalion] had next morning for ‘interior economy’ and a thorough straightening up. In the afternoon I inspected them very carefully. Personal equipment and arms were very nearly complete ... There was scarcely any signalling gear and it was disappointing to find only thirty-seven Bren guns instead of fifty. The inspection, strictly carried out and undoubtedly helpful for morale, was only just finished when an order came for me to hand over command to Burrows and assume command of 4 Brigade. General Freyberg had accepted the difficult command of all the forces in Crete, Brigadier Puttick, in consequence, taking command of the New Zealand Division. I left that evening.
Some troops had gone direct from Greece to Egypt but 4 and 5 New Zealand Brigades were present together with a considerable number of gunners without guns, drivers without trucks, some sappers, and an army troops company. All for whom no rifles could be found were shipped off to Egypt and the remainder were told they were infantry.
The weather was perfect, the surroundings beautiful, and we had no doubt whatever that we would easily destroy the parachute landing of which there was some talk. The troops marched and drilled and dug and quickly got over their weariness and slackness. We had wonderful bathing in the sea or in the sparkling mountain streams, oranges by the armful, brilliant sunshine, and windless, balmy nights. For most it was a halcyon period. For the commanders and those who knew what was impending it was very different. Intelligence reports soon made it certain that a very strong attack by air-transported troops would shortly be made; and we were in poor condition to meet it.
1949, Infantry Brigadier
R.H. Thomson
It was dusty; it was hot. Every insect that stings and every plant that pricks seemed to overrun the country. The land stood on edge and the places we had to go were always somewhere higher up. We had ditched all our kit getting off Greece so the only clothes we had were the ones we were wearing. Then the British forces who had been in occupation around Suda Bay and Canea for some months, were not expecting us so we had to exist on half rations.
1964, Captive Kiwi
Howard Kippenberger
Hargest, with the four battalions of 5 Brigade, was holding the Maleme area, where was the only airfield, a minute one, in the western end of Crete ... On 30 April, 4 Brigade moved into position, its task being to cover Canea against attack from the west and to destroy any hostile troops who landed in Prison Valley. We were separated by some five miles and high ground from 5 Brigade at Maleme ... We set to work to dig in, handicapped by the shortage of digging tools, of which we never got more than six per company.
The first hint of the storm came on 2 May when there was a sharp Stuka raid on Suda Bay. We could not see what damage had been done but there were fires. General Freyberg came round and spoke to all officers and N.C.O.s and warned them that the attack was coming and that it would be tough going ... On the 6th I went to Kosimo Kastelli, the little port near the western end of Crete. Here Bedding of the Nineteenth, two other New Zealand officers and a dozen N.C.O.s were trying to get some order into 800 little Greeks, none more than 15 days a soldier. They made enough progress to put up an astonishingly good resistance when the attack came, and actually to destroy the whole of the first attacking party. On the way home we had tea with Hargest, who was welcoming Major Trousdale and fifty-one men of the Twenty-first just back from a fortnight’s wandering in the Aegean.
Image 12
The next few days passed quietly. The General gave a very good cocktail party in Canea, the account for which was duly paid in 1945–4 Brigade band arrived, and we visited one another and enjoyed life.
The Entertainment Unit
Terry Vaughan
With no sea or air protection, Creforce, commanded by General Freyberg, was a garrison of weary men, ill-equipped and desperately short of supplies. They had no cards, games or paperbacks to pass the time. A signal to Base Headquarters in Egypt asked for ‘amusements for the troops’.
‘Aha,’ said someone in Maadi, ‘amusements? Yes, we have the very thing. A new outfit, they’ve got a portable stage with lighting and a generator, costumes, instruments, piano, drums, the lot – the brand new Entertainment Unit! Just the job! Hang on! What about a brass band? We’ve got the two divisional bands here.’
On our second day in Crete we cleaned up a small, rubble-strewn theatre on the outskirts of Khanea [Canea] and set up the show. Tom Kirk-Burnnand, indefatigable as ever, had been found and reported to Creforce Headquarters. There he was told we would, like the bands, be attached to the 20th Battalion as an extra platoon, and we were settled in a field position guarding a crossroads and bridge just outside Khanea. The following afternoon, between air raids, we opened our first Mediterranean season. The soldier audience was only a handful, but they soon spread the news.
‘Saw the new Div Entertainment Unit this arvo.’
‘The what?’
‘The Div – it’s a concert party.’
‘A concert party! Here! Doing what?’
‘A show of course. What else?’
‘Don’t talk bullshit.’
Towards the end of the show that day General Freyberg arrived at the rickety little theatre, curious to see his concert party. Although the idea of forming it had been his, soon after we were pulled out of our units and assembled in Maadi to start rehearsing, the Division had moved to Greece. When the General came around afterwards he was obviously pleased and said he intended to bring the King of Greece the next day. It didn’t happen. We heard later that the King, the Greek George II, and entourage had been taken off by the Royal Navy that night.
Next afternoon we had a full house, but the violent strafing and bombing outside were making things difficult. One of the blackout sketches ran–
‘Hullo Steve, how’re things? Have a cigarette.’
‘No thanks, Jim. Tried it once, didn’t like it.’
‘OK, d’you feel like a drink?’
‘No thanks. Tried it once, didn’t like it.’
‘No? What about a game of billiards?’
On the second ‘Didn’t like it’, the tremendous thump of a 1000-pound bomb ploughing into a nearby building shook the flimsy theatre to its foundations; ‘Didn’t like that much either!’ Steve’s comment brought a roar of laughter and whistles. Through clouds of dust and falling plaster, Jim asked the lads if they wanted to call it a day. ‘No, no – keep going,’ they yelled, with more whistles and cheers. Everyone was having a good time, why stop?
Image 13
There was to be only one more performance in Crete. Afterwards, as we left the Olympia, none of us realised that we were saying goodbye to all our hard-come-by stage gear, costumes and musical instruments – some belonging to the boys themselves. No one knew that we would not be together for much longer; the group would soon be scattered, some gone for good.
1995, Whistle as You Go
10 Brigade
Howard Kippenberger
On the 14th air attacks started again, both on Suda Bay and Maleme, and on a heavier scale. It began to look like business. Inglis [Brigadier] arrived from Egypt and took over 4 Brigade, and I went to command the extemporized 10 Brigade. Dispositions were altered and 10 Brigade took over the Galatos position, 4 Brigade going into reserve near Canea. This formidable 10 Brigade was composed as follows:
My Brigade Major was Brian Bassett of the Twenty-third; the staff-captain was Geoff Fussell of the Eighteenth. Brigade Headquarters consisted of a dozen signallers with just enough telephones and wire to reach all battalions, but no replacements whatever, and of course no wireless.
The Composite Battalion was composed of good material but both officers and men were wholly untrained in infantry work. Though reliable at first in defence, they were wholly incapable of manœuvre or attack and gradually lost confidence in themselves. The Greeks were malaria-ridden little chaps from Macedonia with four weeks’ service. The Eighth Greeks had fired 10 rounds each from their ancient Steyers, Sixth Greeks none, and neither battalion could be said to have any military value. The Divisional Cavalry was untrained in infantry work but was a well-trained confident unit and easily adapted itself. Four of the six Vickers guns had tripods. There were two trucks for all purposes – supply, evacuation of wounded, and inter-communication ... I spent 15th and 16th May going round my units and particularly in trying to get the Greeks into reasonable positions. They had a strong tendency to dig in on the tops of hills; while the gunners of the Composite Battalion were usually satisfied with a ten yards’ field of fire.
1949, Infantry Brigadier
R.H. Thomson
It didn’t matter whether you had been artillery, transport, engineers or signals, you dug trenches and put up barbed wire as though you were real infantry. Later on you would be called upon to go into bayonet charges without the desirable training or the pertinent implement. It was all very disgruntling – some even said so.
Then there were the German planes. Thousands of them flew around unhindered for days and unretaliated-at by us, making annoying screaming noises and throwing all manner of harmful things at us, until at length they tossed out real live soldiers, firing at us as they swung down – thousands of them – right at breakfast time too.
1964, Captive Kiwi
Howard Kippenberger
The porridge was nothing but oatmeal and water. I was grumbling about this when someone gave an exclamation that might have been an oath or a prayer or both. Almost overhead were four gliders, the first we had ever seen, in their silence inexpressibly menacing and frightening. Northwards was a growing thunder. I shouted: ‘Stand to your arms!’ and ran upstairs for my rifle and binoculars. I noticed my diary lying open on the table. Four years later it was returned to me, having meanwhile been concealed by some Cretan girl.
Invasion from the Air
Geoffrey Cox
Tuesday, 20 May ... in the valley below, I saw the white of a parachute. I took it to be a pilot bailing out of a hit aircraft. Then other white shapes appeared, drifting in the air above the grey-green olive trees of Perivolia, like white scraps of paper in the wind, like white bursts of shrapnel, like white petals. Under the great yellow nosed Junkers 52s which moved in columns three abreast, from over the shoulder of the mountains, handful after handful of these white shapes were flung into the air.
‘Good God, look at that. Right into the olive trees,’ Purcell said quietly. Neither of us used the word parachutist, as if we still did not believe what we saw, as if we still did not quite accept that this was indeed the enemy landing in our midst. Then I shouted, ‘There’s a plane hit,’ as above Canea a dark aircraft was steadily losing height. But no smoke was pouring from it, and it was unlike the Junkers and Messerschmitts which still circled overhead. Its wings were much wider, and its body shorter, and silently it curved round and settled out of sight close to the radio masts, and we knew then what it was – a glider.
It all happened very swiftly. It took only a minute or so for the parachutists to sway down from the height of two or three hundred feet at which they were dropped. Very quickly they had gone from sight ... I had to jerk my mind into a realisation that this wide, tree-filled countryside was now a battlefield, that at any moment up the road from Canea might come grey uniformed patrols with their Tommy guns and grenades; that the invasion had begun. The thought welled up in my mind that even if I were dead by midnight, I had seen one of the most remarkable moments in history. I had witnessed the first airborne invasion of all time.
1987, Geoffrey Cox
He Learned...
C.K. Stead
That the entrance
of the bearers of death
can be beautiful
as a season of flowers
opening all at once
across a field of sky.
That the underworld
of the olives
is its own place
of red earth
and green lizards.
That wild daisies
can be midnight blue
and that the Anzac poppy
blooms also in Crete.
That birds will sing
between bomb blasts.
15 August 1998, Listener
Under Fire
Howard Kippenberger
Image 14
The troop-carriers were passing low overhead in every direction one looked, not more than 400 feet up, in scores. As I ran down the Prison Road to my battle headquarters the parachutists were dropping out over the valley, hundreds of them, and floating quietly down. Some were spilling out over our positions and there was a growing crackle of rifle-fire. I pelted down the road, outpacing the two signallers who had started with me, and scrambled up the steep track to the battle post, a pink house on a little knoll east of the road. As I panted through the gap in the cactus hedge there was a startling burst of fire fairly in my face, cutting the cactus on either side of me. I jumped sideways, twisted my ankle, and rolled down the bank. After whimpering a little, I crawled up the track and into the house, and saw my man through the window. Then I hopped out again, hopped round the back and, in what seemed to me a nice bit of minor tactics, stalked him round the back of the house and shot him cleanly through the head at ten yards. The silly fellow was still watching the gap in the hedge and evidently had not noticed me crawl into the house.
The signallers and Brian Bassett arrived and Brian and I surveyed the situation while the signallers tested the lines. The whole valley was covered with discarded parachutes, like huge mushrooms, mostly white, with different colours for those that had been dropped with supplies ... Our own front line, where the Divisional petrol company lay astride the road, was only a few hundred yards ahead, and we quickly found that we were in far too exposed a position. Bullets ripped through the cactus and so it was obvious we would not be able to stay here with any comfort ... We settled down at Composite Battalion Headquarters which consisted of a few holes in a hollow, but at least had a telephone. Everything was quiet south of Galatos...
About 10 o’clock a tremendous racket started on the Galatos–Prison road. The Germans had organized themselves and put in a fierce thrust through the trees on both sides of the road. The Petrol Company was forced back several hundred yards to behind our original headquarters and had thirty-five casualties. McDonagh, its commander, was killed, and Fussell, my staff-captain, was mortally wounded. Harold Rowe, my supply officer, took command of the situation, the men fought stubbornly, and after a while the fighting died down.
There was then time to take stock of the situation ... 19 Battalion told us that they had killed 155 parachutists and, rather apologetically, that they had taken nine prisoners. They also apologized for having shot my Greek colonel, who was creating a nuisance by throwing grenades at them ... At midday there was a short flare-up when patrols approached Cemetery Hill. The nearest Greeks set up a terrific yelling and about fifty of them charged. The patrols ran away smartly and all became quiet. Signals had by then got a line through to Division and I spoke cheerfully to General Puttick, who seemed decidedly pleased to hear me. I gathered from him that the position generally was thought to be in hand, there had been a big landing at Maleme and fighting was still going on.
1949, Infantry Brigadier
Wounded
Dan Davin
Image 15
Once again he climbed out of the gully in the pause of the battle. ‘For Christ’s sake be careful,’ called the CO, ‘we haven’t cleared that side yet, you know.’
‘She’ll be right, sir,’ he shouted back, still drunk with the excitement of the parachutists’ descent, the deadly crackle of the rifles, the droning overhead of the vast Junkers spilling out their white milt, the oblique fall of the parachutes and their dangling dolls, some of which by the time they slumped among the vineyards or crashed through the ironic olive branches were already dolls whose strings no false and subtle touch would ever manipulate again...
All morning drunk with this new draught he had moved among the danger, heeding the caress and stealthy whisper of the bullets only to grow in excitement and disdain of the improbable conjunction of the time and place required for them to bring him down.
‘Go with him, Kimball,’ called the Adj. And Kimball jumped from his box and followed.
Frank advanced cautiously on the long, cylindrical container. The barley had not long been cut and the stubble scrunched under his feet. He looked along each lane of olives and almonds. They were in quincunx formation and back to his memory from rubble of the past came Pope’s couplet:
‘And he, whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines,
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines.’
He reached the cylinder and crouched down over it on his haunches. He found the catches and opened it.
‘What’s in it sir?’ Kimball was a yard behind.
‘Grenades. Yes, egg grenades,’ said Frank. He turned his head half round. Yes, the gully was in throwing distance. If a parachutist got as far as the cylinder he could lob grenades in to Battalion HQ to his heart’s content.
‘We’d better get them back out of this. Here, take this back.’ Kimball went off with the bundle towards the gully
Frank went on foraging in the cylinder.
The sudden numbing pain in his thigh and hand was simultaneous with the sound of the burst. He was flat on the stubble before he realised he’d jumped so high. The stubble prickled and under it the rough earth crumbled against his cheek. The pain from his thigh rippled outwards in a dark whirl. He could see the red, bright blood swelling and oozing from two jagged, purple-ringed holes in his ring and middle fingers. His body had split up into separate zones of sensation. His ears took in the vicious hissing of bullets above his head, swift trains passing for a second through the lighted station of his mind. His eye saw the pistol lying just out of reach where it had jumped from the holster. His fingers were coming back swiftly from numbness and shock to pain, yet still isolated from the other pain which sent urgent messages from his thigh.
The pistol out of reach. Probably wouldn’t have been of much use anyhow. He raised his eyes to try and see where the firing was coming from. The sound echoing and crashing in the rocks on the other side of the gully gave no clue. But he had fallen below a slight ledge or terrace of earth, perhaps nine inches high, which made him a difficult target. Not able to hit back though. What about Kimball? He turned his head so that his other cheek now lay against the stubble and he could see the gully. The movement brought a fresh burst of fire. He hadn’t noticed it stop. A fresh magazine probably. It sounded like Schmeiser. Unless it was Spandau? There was no sign of Kimball.
Yes, there he was, coming out of the gully. The man must be mad. Suddenly he was drenched with anger.
‘Get back, you bloody fool.’
Kimball smiled and came on.
‘Get back. D’you hear me, get back.’
Kimball came on, still smiling.
‘I order you to get back.’
Kimball came on.
Disobedient, impudent bastard, what guts he had. He was five yards away now and in full view of the sniper, surely. There was a fresh burst and the bullets thudded into the olives beside Kimball. Kimball dropped down to Frank’s side.
‘Now, you silly little bugger, what good do you think you’ve done?’
Kimball just grinned.
The pain got worse and worse. Frank remembered a rabbit he had once shot. It crawled over the grass dragging its hind legs and broken back, its eye enormous with pain. He ran after it. It got down the hole before him to die slowly. If he got out of this jam he would never shoot a living thing again. Except of course, men, irony added.
His brain raced. What to do? The enemy was invisible. He must be behind the grey stone wall. He was firing single shots now.
‘He’s aiming them,’ said Kimball. The first had hit a stone in front and ricocheted above them, whining.
‘They’re coming,’ said Kimball. ‘The stretcher bearers.’
Two men appeared at the gully, head and shoulders showing. One began to scramble up and the other was handing him a stretcher.
‘Get back, you bloody fools. Stay down there and we’ll crawl over.’ They’d be out of the ledge’s slight protection then. But this was just crazy.
The stretcher bearers came up on to the lip of the gully.
Firing again but with a different sound. A Bren. And from the elbow of the gully, nearest the sniper’s left flank. He caught a glimpse of Grey’s unmoved face. A last war man. The parachutist was firing but the bullets were no longer coming this way. They must be making it hot for him.
The stretcher bearers stooped over him, rolled him on to the stretcher. Kimball watched solicitously. They were unhurried, careful. The stretcher lifted under him. He was above ground, above his ledge. He felt vulnerable. They crossed the culvert in full view of the sniper. Was everyone crazy?
‘What the hell are you going that way for?’
‘It’s not as rough as the gully.’
He gave up. They crossed the culvert and were then in the shelter of the gully. The CO and Bill, the adj., looked up He waved.
‘How is it?’ said the CO.
‘Not so bad,’ he said.
They shook their heads sympathetically.
‘Thanks Kimball,’ he called out as he saw Kimball return to his seat outside the HQ, waiting another job. Kimball grinned.
Ian, the MO, had changed from the man he’d seen in the morning when the first MEs came over with anti-personnel stuff and strafing ... Ian had been sitting in the gully then, a little way from the RAP. His head was in his hands and he didn’t see Frank pass. It had taken Frank and Curly a good quarter of an hour to get back. They seemed to have a couple of MEs each, especially detailed to see that they didn’t get back. And Ian was still there, head in hands. But there’d been no wounded then.
Now he dealt with his wounded, busy, but without haste, and showing the sharp cheerfulness of a man who had no time to be afraid. The best way of being brave.
‘Stuck your neck out too far this time, did you?’ Ian said. And to the orderlies: ‘Put him there.’
The boys had cut a sort of operating table in the clay bank. They rolled Frank on to it. Ian slit open the trouser leg and looked.
‘Good wounds. Nice and clean. Lucky about your fingers. Just missed the bones. Wouldn’t have believed it.’
The jab of the injection was nothing to the satisfaction of being in confident hands.
‘Shove him in ‘A’ Ward.’
They dropped Frank outside a hole cut in the bank of the gully. He crawled in, head towards the entrance so that he could watch the planes across the brief slab of sky and talk with the blokes who passed up and down the gully.
The long afternoon wore down like a candle stub. The shooting never entirely stopped, but grew and shrank fitfully. In the hole it sounded as if it was going on all around. And it probably was. Both sides were surrounded most of the time, or suspected they were, which comes to much the same thing.
Grey came past carrying a Spandau. ‘We got him, sir. He wasn’t worth bringing back. But this was. We’ve got more Jerry ammo now than we have of our own.
Jones stumbled down, helping a wounded PW.
‘I thought you were never going to take a PW, Jungle?’
‘This one’s a real nice chap. Showed me a photo of his wife and kiddies. And he’s such a little bloke. I didn’t have the heart.’
Ian had made headway against pain, for the moment he had no one fresh to attend to. He came along the gully towards Frank, his mouth tired, but his eyes pleased.
‘You all right, Frank? Like another shot?’
‘She’ll be Jake. Quiet as a baby. Wish I knew what was happening.’
‘I don’t suppose anyone knows. The phones are all cut, we’ve got no wirelesses and we’re more or less surrounded. But I don’t think it matters much. They’re not strong enough yet to hold us. And the boys have certainly done some killing.’
‘That’ll teach them to drop in on us without being invited. Right in the Battalion lines too.’
1947, For the Rest of Our Lives
In the Clearing
C.K. Stead
‘Face to face
at fifteen paces
both surprised–
he in grey with his rifle
I in khaki with mine.
‘Hit the deck?
Fire from the hip?
‘I waved him away.
It was an impulse
as if to say
“There’s no need...”
‘He grinned
waved back
and was gone
among the olives.’
15 August 1998, Listener
Image 16
Duck Shooting
Geoffrey Cox
From the moment the first parachutist jumped, the battle changed swiftly from one in which, by the use of bomber and fighter aircraft, the most deadly and up to date equipment was being brought to bear, into a battle being fought predominately with small arms, in which the skill of the rifleman was decisive in a way which had not prevailed since the Boer War. In the first few hours after the German troops were on the ground, their aircraft could not be used in their support, so tangled and interwoven was the fighting. Only days later, when clear lines had been established, could the Luftwaffe be employed in all its deadly force as a close support weapon, directed from above and on the spot.
These first minutes, hours, even days were battles of individual men against men. As such they were warfare of a type for which New Zealanders and Australians were particularly well fitted. Many of the men who rose from their slit trenches to give battle around Maleme had grown up in homes where a .22 rifle was part of the furnishings, a weapon used to shoot rabbits, one with which fathers gave their sons target practice even before they were in their teens. In the bush-covered hills of Otago and Southland deer, introduced from Britain, had bred so abundantly that they provide a natural target on which riflemen could train ... It is not surprising that the memoirs of the time carry many references to this being ‘just like duck shooting’.
In this very first phase, the advantage was very much with the defenders. Not only were the parachutists helpless targets as they swayed down, clearly visible against the sky. They had also to collect their weapons from weapon containers dropped separately, before they could function as a fighting force...
Bit by bit, as the morning progressed, information began to filter back to the quarry above Canea. Freyberg, his massive figure radiating a calm defiance, would turn from looking out across the parapet which ran along the front of the dugouts to study the situation map in the Operations dugout. Gradually the blue circles showing enemy positions covered more and more of the map.
1987, A Tale of Two Battles
Image 17
Soldiers All
H.G. Dyer
Corporal Kopu was not supposed to be a fighting man, but he could not help it. He was in charge of our Company stretcher-bearers in Crete. They were a brave little group who never failed to do their duty, but this corporal could combine two jobs in one. In the excitement of the aerial landing he pulled off his stretcher-armlet, seized his rifle, fired at whatever parachutists he could see. Then in some bamboos he discovered our cook hiding in terror. The cook, by the way, had only just come to us. Kopu told him to shoot.
Cook: ‘I can’t, I’ve never fired a rifle in my life.’
Kopu: ‘You bloody well shoot.’
The cook leans against the creek bank, aims at a parachutist crouching by his parachute about forty yards away, fires and misses.
Kopu: ‘You hit him this time, Hold that rifle firm and mind your trigger.’ The cook fires and hits. A broad grin spreads over his face.
Cook: ‘I’m all right now.’ And away they go up the creek bed looking for Germans.
Of all the old soldiers I think I liked ‘Old Horse’ the best ... He had two mates, two brothers, Iwihora Bill and Iwihora Harold. We were never very sure which was the surname, but that is what they answered to, in full. Old Horse was fairly thick-set and dark, while the two brothers were tall, thin and of lighter hue. However, they seemed to understand one another and stuck close together, both in action and in the orderly room. I think they are all three dead. I saw Iwihora Bill with a terrible hole in his upper arm in Crete and refusing to have it dressed. Harold, I know, was killed in Libya.
In our first action Old Horse and Iwihora Bill had a weapon pit just above the road, which was our front. They could look along a bend in it for thirty or forty yards. Just before the enemy rushed us – very good Austrian mountain troops – one of their scouts climbed out of the gorge and on to the road and started to examine what he could see of our posts. Iwihora Bill took careful aim and fired. Then, as the man fell on the road, he turned white and said to his mate, ‘Old Horse, I’ve killed a man.’
‘Oh don’t you worry about that,’ said Old Horse, ‘you and I will kill plenty more men.’ I believe they did, for they held their advanced trench throughout the action.
The spontaneous charge by the Maoris on the last evening at Maleme was the finest that I saw. For sheer inherent courage it was unsurpassed in the Middle East. The Maoris had been engaged continuously for two and a half days without rest and little or no food. The day at Maleme Village had been severe. Apart from spasmodic efforts from parties here and there and the consequent casualties, we had been lying under continuous mortar and machine-gun fire all day ... A few European soldiers collected in our area, which was a flat spur sloping to the right, almost completely covered with gnarled olive trees. I said to one, ‘What are you doing here Sergeant?’
‘These Maoris can fight, I’m staying here.’
As evening approached, the Germans, who had been steadily reinforced all day by troop-carrying planes, began to press us. I suppose they thought that we would turn and run. In front, just below the edge of a spur at a distance of about a hundred yards, they erected a banner such as you would see in a street procession – a broad strip of red cloth held up by a pole at each end. In the centre was a white circle and a large black swastika. Then, opening a concentrated fire, they came at us from the front and right. As a man the Maoris rose from where they lay, a scattered band of dark figures under the trees. And then with knees bent and leaning to the right they slowly advanced, firing at the hip. They did not haka, for this was not rehearsed. Instead there rose from their throats a deep shout ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’ as they advanced firing. Then, the cartridges in their magazines being exhausted, they broke into a run with bayonets levelled, and their shouts rising as they went. The ground shook with the heavy tramp of men, the air whistled and cracked with bullets. Men went down but still they charged, and the pride of the German Army turned and fled.
We did not catch many; a few here and there, but the rest ran down the gully in front among thick trees. The officers halted on the edge, yelling to their men to stop as we were now disorganised and there were many enemy ahead.
I stood on the edge of the ravine and smiled as I looked at the abandoned machine guns and mortars which had worried us all day, and then turned to walk back. In front of me lay two figures, a dark man on his side and a fair man sprawled out, both grey in the shadow of death. Old Horse and the Sergeant, equal in sacrifice and equal in death.
1953, Ma te Reinga/By Way of Reinga: The Way of the Maori Soldier
The Bayonet
C.K. Stead
‘...hiding in a well
or behind it
he fired at our backs.
“‘Get him” the major shouted
“Get the bastard.”
‘If I’d shot him
there would have been a bang
and silence.
‘Half a century
he’s been quiet on the hill.
Half a century
I’ve lived with the scream.’
15 August 1998, Listener
‘Stand...’
Howard Kippenberger
23 May was a quiet day for 10 Brigade, but we heard the bad news that 5 Brigade was leaving the Maleme area and moving into reserve behind us ... The morning of 24 May was ominously quiet. I managed to walk along the whole of the Composite Battalion’s line and get them into something like reasonable positions. I also tried to put a little heart into some of the officers, but too many felt that they had done their bit and should be relieved. It was only too clear that the unit had little fighting value left...
The next day brought hard and critical fighting all morning there were continuous air attacks and steadily increasing mortar and machine gun fire. Numerous parties of Germans moved into cover opposite 18 Battalion’s front and about midday a column about 1500 strong moved in threes to obvious assembly positions.
About 4 o’clock a dozen Stukas dive-bombed Galatos. We had no anti-aircraft defences and they must have enjoyed it ... Immediately after the bombing the main infantry attack started against the Eighteenth, and the crackle of musketry swelled to a roar, heavily punctuated by mortar bursts. Inglis rang and asked what all the noise was about and I could only say that things were getting warm. I estimated the mortar bursts at six a minute on one company sector alone...
After two hours of this John Gray [CO,18th] came back and said that his right company had been overwhelmed. I told him to counter-attack with his reserve and restore the situation. Brian Bassett went with him and later returned to say that the counter-attack had failed, though padre, clerks, batmen, everyone who could carry a rifle, had taken part. In the meantime two runners in succession had come direct to me from the company holding Wheat Hill asking permission to retire and had gone back with refusals.
I decided that the time had come to use the Twentieth and ordered it to move fast to the right of the Composite Battalion’s ridge. Fountaine and O’Callaghan, ran out, stooping under a stream of ‘overs’, and hung on grimly. For the rest of the evening it was a comfort to hear their fight going steadily on.
Matters were now looking grave, for John Russell [Div.Cav.] reported that he was being hard pressed, and a trickle of stragglers was coming back past me. I sent Brian on foot to tell Inglis the position and say that I must have help. There were nearly 200 wounded at the Regimental Aid Post, close to headquarters. Our two trucks worked incessantly, taking them down to the Advanced Dressing Station in loads like butcher’s meat.
Then the position worsened. Wheat Hill was abandoned without orders. This exposed Lynch’s company in the centre of the Eighteenth line and it fell back, still fighting savagely. Suddenly the trickle of stragglers turned to a stream, many of them on the verge of panic.
1949, Infantry Brigadier
Galatas
Les Cleveland
The young hate the old
Yet stumble after them.
Stand for New Zealand!
Yelled Kippenberger,
Country lawyer turned Brigade Commander
And conveyed ten thousand miles
To practice heroics
On a deadly Cretan Hillside.
Stand for New Zealand!
A jingoistic flourish
By a backblocks Coriolanus?
An appeal to the national ethos
For military historians to footnote?
Or wisdom of Minos
Pitted against catastrophe?
The rabble of cooks, bandsmen,
Rear-echelon stragglers
And remnants of infantry
Surviving yesterday’s lost battle
Clumped doubtfully down the road
Toward war-struck Galatas...
1979, The Iron Hand
Howard Kippenberger
I walked in among them shouting ‘Stand for New Zealand!’ and everything else I could think of. The R.S.M. of the Eighteenth, Andrews, came up and asked how he could help. With him and Johnny Sullivan, the Intelligence Sergeant of the Twentieth, we quickly got them organized under the nearest officers or N.C.O.s, in most cases the men responding with alacrity. I ordered them back across the next valley to line the ridge west of Daratos where a white church gleamed in the evening sun. There they would cover the right of the Nineteenth and have time and space to get their second wind. Andrews came to me and said quietly that he was afraid that he could not do any more. I asked why and he pulled up his shirt and showed a neat bullet hole in his stomach. I gave him a cigarette and expected never to see him again, but did, three years later in Italy. A completely empty stomach had saved him.
John Gray himself came back at about 7.30p.m., almost the last of his battalion, and looking twenty years older than three hours before. I told him to reorganize his battalion on the Daratos Ridge.
Les Cleveland
The front has crumbled; to stabilise it
Galatas must be seized, if only for an hour
To buy time on the beaches,
Time for commanders to mull over armchair errors
And arrange more deaths for future nights.
Farran’s tanks open rapid fire,
Smoke and fire flash from the first fortified house:
A wounded man’s screams signal the foot troops
That time is about to strap them
To its blood-spattered machinery
And crunch them into compliance
With its routine operations;
They lumber forward
Defying mortality with hysteria,
Howling and bellowing, advancing
Over the fraudulent field of death.
Forward for New Zealand!...
Howard Kippenberger
The Greeks had attempted a charge while the Eighteenth was rallying, but this time the men would not face the fire and they disappeared from the field. Fortunately Inglis had acted unhesitatingly and a steady stream of reinforcements was coming up the road; I set to work to build a new line.
The first to arrive was 4 Brigade band, which I put to line a stone wall a hundred yards in front of my headquarters. The Pioneer platoon of the Twentieth and the Kiwi Concert Party extended their right, and A. Company of the Twenty-third under Carl Watson carried it further towards the sea. Runners got through to the Twentieth with orders to come back to prolong the right of this company. O’Callaghan was never seen again after he had arranged with Fountaine how to carry out this order, but somehow the withdrawal was carried out. There were swarms of Germans about among the trees but their advance seemed to have lost its impetus and darkness was near,
Les Cleveland
You random assembly of farm labourers,
Clerks, rouseabouts, shearers, barmen,
Salesmen, commercial travellers, storemen,
Mechanics, musterers, drivers, factory hands,
And seasonal workers pressed into temporary khaki.
Many will not see New Zealand again:
Too briefly you will compare its felicities
With Europe’s murderous disorders;
Some will starve in prison camps
Or outlive the attentions of military surgeons
Only to mumble incomprehensibly
In peacetime suburban deserts populated by fools
Of wounds suffered on remote battlefields
Now visited nightly in the sweat of dreams...
We are infantry of mettle
Reputed for steadfastness in the attack
The highest produce of a country that
Breeds men with the animal virtue of blind courage
In the willing service of the herd.
Our lifestyle and instincts instruct us
More cogently than any military precepts.
Forward for New Zealand!...
Howard Kippenberger
Two ancient Mark VI Tanks of the 3rd Hussars came up the road. Farran stopped and spoke to me and I told him to go into the village and see what was there. He clattered off and we could hear him firing briskly, when two more companies of the Twenty-third arrived, each about eighty strong. They halted on the road near me. The men looked tired but fit to fight and resolute. It was no use trying to patch the line any more; obviously we must hit or everything must crumble away. I told the two company commanders they would have to retake Galatos with the help of the two tanks ... Stragglers and walking wounded were still streaming past. Some stopped to join in as did Carson and the last four of his party. The men fixed bayonets and waited grimly.
Farran came back with his two tanks and put his head out of the turret. ‘The place is stiff with Jerries’, he said. I told him that I had two companies of infantry; would he go in again with them? Certainly he would but he had a driver and a gunner wounded, could they be replaced? I turned to a party of sappers who had just arrived and asked for volunteers. Two men immediately volunteered, the wounded were dragged out, and they clambered aboard. I told Farran to take them down the road and give them a ten minute’s course of instruction and that we would attack as soon as he got back.
...Farran came rattling back. He stopped and we spoke for a moment. I said the infantry would follow him, and he was not to go further than the village square: ‘Now get going.’ He yelled to the second tank to follow him, pulled the turret lid down, and set off. The infantry followed at a walk, then broke into a run, started shouting – and running and shouting disappeared into the village.
Les Cleveland
Kippenberger tramples with his troops
Towards the walls of the village:
Rash collectivity amounts to much more
Than the sum of its uneasy parts;
What goes forward is a Frankenstein
Fashioned from the faithful ferocity of youthful hearts,
A monster that shoves its energies
Where the iron hand points.
Forward for New Zealand!
All scramble towards Galatas,
Immune to pain, terror or grief,
Charging over the fallen,
While King and Thomas roar mad execrations,
Dutton, Gallagher and Joyce screech
Demoniacally as they kill;
Seaton runs berserk; firing from the hip.
Kennedy bashes in a man’s brains
With one classic swing of the rifle butt;
All howl and rage at the paratroopers,
At the invader invaded,
Trapped forming up,
Trapped in Galatas Square
By a fury stabbing bayonets
Into throats and chests
As frail as straw.
Total New Zealand casualties on Crete, 3853
4400 German graves in Maleme and Galatas alone
The Germans retire:
C Company now down to 30,
With Thomas hit in leg and back,
Seaton dead,
Throw grenades into strongpoints
And flail at fleeing men
With rifles, pistols, fists;
Masters tonight,
But tomorrow again in retreat,
Skulking in the olive fields,
Dodging the dive bombers.
Kippenberger in a tarpaulin-covered trench,
By candlelight tallies his dead
And bends again, calculatingly
Over the labyrinth of Crete.
Retreat
Geoffrey Cox
It was late on Tuesday afternoon, as the battle entered its second week, that Freyberg and his senior officers drove south, by car and truck, to establish a new Creforce HQ near to Sphakia ... At eight that evening the rest of us at Force HQ paraded by the roadside overlooking Suda Bay, to begin the long climb up the dividing range.
The climb for us began immediately, as we had to cross a ridge to get to the main road south. When we reached it, and linked up with the main body of Force HQ troops, who had come on from Suda, it was already dark. Yet the white, dusty road was crowded as if with people coming away from a football match, long lines of troops taking advantage of the darkness to move free of air attack. Some were marching in organised units, but many were just streams of individuals, or small groups, trudging along in the darkness, or resting at the roadside, or curling up to sleep under the olive trees.
1987, A Tale of Two Battles
R.H. Thomson
We took a road that zig-zagged up and up and up and up, and then down and down and down, to the south coast near Sphakia ... We forced ourselves to cover fifty-five miles of rough steep going in two short summer nights, and we forced a determined passage through other forceful crowds and blocked convoys of trucks carrying wounded and what-have-you. There was no food issue and no peace during the long thirsty days. However, on the third night a guide arrived to lead us the last wee bit to the beach and the Navy. He led us adrift down the wrong precipice, and daylight found us in a steep-sided rocky gully, still a mile or so from the boats. And that’s as near as we got to getting off...
We just waited. Some had faith; some didn’t. We listened to the rumours; we listened to the assurances; we listened to the machine-gun fire a little way back, to the planes screaming overhead, to the mortar bombs dropping into the crowded valley – and we didn’t eat. For five days the men with me had eaten nothing. I still had my emergency ration so I took that out ... that small cake of concentrated chocolate fed ten men. I just managed to get myself on the end of the queue.
1964, Captive Kiwi
Geoffrey Cox
At Stylos, the first village we reached, we came upon a barn serving as a dressing station. Trucks used as ambulances, marked with crude white crosses of torn cloth stretched across grey blankets, were crowded with wounded men. Others, their white bandages showing in the dark, sat or lay on the edge of the narrow street. The barn was packed inside from wall to wall with men lying on stretchers or blankets or sacks. I felt I had seen it all before, somewhere. Colonel Thwigg, the New Zealand officer in charge later provided the comparison. ‘It was like the scene of the wounded at Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.’ And indeed it was – life imitating art with a vengeance.
Thwigg had another tale of Crete, which said much not only about New Zealand soldiers of that time, but about soldiers of all time. About the fifth day of the battle an artillery private drove up to Thwigg’s Advanced Dressing Station with a truck full of wounded. He said, ‘My unit’s all knocked to bits – can I stay with you and drive this truck as an ambulance?’ It turned out that he had a friend wounded in the leg, and he had scrounged the truck from somewhere to bring him to the ADS, and had picked up other wounded on the way.
He drove the truck right through the retreat, and though there were strict orders that only walking wounded were to be evacuated – all lying wounded being left to be taken prisoner – the man used to smuggle his friend aboard at each move. At this Stylos dressing station the Colonel said, ‘You had better keep an eye on your cobber because I’m not in charge here anymore and they may shift the wounded to a hospital at any time.’ The man replied, ‘I’ve thought of that. I’ve moved my mate to that house over there and I’ve changed his dressing and found him some rations.’ When they got down near the beach at Sphakia he put the wounded man in shelter in a cave, and then spent all day driving up and down the open road, despite the bombing and machine gunning, ferrying wounded down to places close to the beach.
Thwigg concluded, ‘He must have carried his friend all the way to the beach, because the next time I saw them they were drinking cocoa together on the mess deck of the ship which evacuated them. The man who had done it all, who could not have been more than twenty-five or so, looked suddenly fifty years old.’
R.H. Thompson
Came the dawn – Sunday, June the first and we were ordered up the hill to wave white flags, or anything white we had. No one near me bothered. There seemed to be enough waving going on without our help.
No one even spoke. I have since heard the Battle of Crete fought over hundreds of times, mostly acrimoniously, but at this moment everybody was too dispirited to be even abusive. We all knew we should not have been in this plight. Although we didn’t have nearly enough gear to match the Germans’ airborne equipment, we did have the human qualities to outlast any enemy soldiers, crack Austrian Alpine troops though they be. We hadn’t come ten thousand miles just to be discarded as obsolete; German High Command – for the use of – or misuse of. They just couldn’t do this to us. But they had.
I have never felt so terribly as I did at that moment. I don’t think that I had ever really felt at all till then. Any troubles I had had in the past were mere ripples compared with this tidal wave. I was disgusted; I was deeply disappointed; I felt frustrated and shamed – above all, ashamed. Here I was with a revolver and six bullets. I had fired a revolver at the enemy; I had fired a machine gun; I had even thrown a Mills bomb; but I had never fired that revolver in anger at anyone. And now it was too late ... All the heights around were held by enemy machine guns, low overhead were the Messerschmitts and Stukas, still firing cannon and dropping bombs, too, some of them.
The first German I saw among us, a young blond Austrian, came leaping down from crag to crag waving a huge red, black and white swastika at the steady stream of dive-bombing planes that didn’t seem able to see the splotches of fluttering white that almost obscured the landscape. He apologised all round by saying that Stuka pilots were very bad types, not worthy foes at all.
The Jerries moved quietly among us, with the oft repeated, annoying, precise English phrase, ‘For you the war is over.’ One picked up a discarded British Colt .45 revolver. He examined it, sneered, and insolently tossed it away. I tried to challenge him to a duel; that solid Colt versus his fancy Luger, but I couldn’t handle his guttural lingo, so I had to be content with sneering back silently. There were no theatricals, no heroics; nothing to lessen the gloom. So all there remained to do was to follow the crowd with as much dignity and contempt as one could muster.
We were herded onto a terrace and left unmolested for some hours. Nobody knew what would happen next; nobody knew what the correct procedure was; nobody knew anything. The day fretted itself on, and we became lulled into thinking that we were being left in peace there, and that our considerate captors were preparing costly viands to bring us, to alleviate our physical suffering. We were wrong.
Embarkation
Howard Kippenberger
Image 18
We had a tramp of some miles to the beach, the last part lined with men who had lost their units and were hoping for a place with us. Some begged and implored, most simply watched stonily, so that we felt bitterly ashamed. There was a cordon round the beach with orders to shoot any man who tried to break in. I had to count my men through. We were the last unit to pass.
We embarked on the Australian destroyer Napier and were at once led to great piles of bread and butter, jugs of cold water and urns of coffee. We ate and drank incredible quantities ... We sailed after midnight and made for Alexandria at full speed. I had been given the purser’s cabin and some pyjamas and slept profoundly. Late in the morning I was shaving when suddenly there was a stunning concussion, everything loose in the cabin crashed all ways and I found myself sitting on the floor in darkness. My first thought was that the cable announcing my safe arrival would not now be sent. Actually we had a near miss which reduced speed to some twenty knots. I went out and for some time sat with the others in the darkness waiting as calmly as possible to be drowned...
We came into Alexandria in style, standing to attention and saluting, and the Navy blowing pipes as we came to each ship. It looked like the graveyard of the Mediterranean fleet. Every ship showed damage and many were listing or down by the stern. We tied up and I went up to the bridge to thank the captain. While there I was very distressed to see R.S.M. Wilson hurrying down the gangway. Then he called for markers from Twentieth Battalion and I watched them with pride while he collected, dressed, and placed them, all as correctly and smartly as if at Maadi. The men filed down and it was good to see that every one was armed and every one was shaved. The R.S.M. fell them in, handed over to the adjutant with full routine, the Adjutant handed over to me – and we marched off, I stumping hatless and very proudly at the head and everyone on the wharf saluting.
1949, Infantry Brigadier
Grim Realities
Ted Lewis
After several days waiting, the wounded from the gallant, abortive campaign in Greece and Crete arrived at Tewfik and were brought aboard [Hospital Ship Maunganui]. The saddest cases were the chaps who had broken down under the stress of battle and the terrifying experiences they had undergone. They were placed in the care of special orderlies who had been training in psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand. Their quarters were at the stern of the ship – comfortable but barred off from other parts of the hospital. This was our first contact with the grim realities of war. Most of the other patients, even the badly wounded, were amazingly cheerful and glad to be returning home. We were soon settling them in to the wards.
The whole exercise went smoothly. We were now a functional hospital. All the months of preparation were over. As the propeller churned the waters of Tewfik Harbour, sending little shudders through the ship, we shared the joy of the wounded in their cots that realised that the moment they had dreamed about had arrived. The heat, sand, flies, the dangers and horrors were over. There was elation, traumas and pain temporarily forgotten in the sheer thrill of this moment. We were homeward bound, clearing the port quickly to reach the comparative safety of the Red Sea, the ship ablaze with lights, her large Red Cross signs floodlit in accordance with Geneva Convention regulations.
2001, I was no Soldier
Veterans, 1998
C.K. Stead
Climbing the hill
into Galatas Village
for the commemoration
I trudge behind them
the tall RAF-man
and the little brown Kiwi
Mr Edwards from Thames.
‘Your lot pulled out
before it really got started,’
says Mr Edwards.
‘Ay,’ says the other.
‘But by that time
we’d only one plane left
and a third of us were dead.’
15 August 1998, Listener
Names I Know
E.S. Allison
Once during the battle on Crete, while taking cover under the olive trees below Galatas village I had said to Spicer, ‘When this is all over I’d like to come back here.’
He made no immediate comment, having heard me pass the same comments in Egypt and Greece. The bombardment ceased, we emerged from the grove and Spicer addressed me with his usual touch of vivid realism. ‘You’re a good boy ‘Fox’, but you’ve no bloody brains. What? Come back here! You’ve got a mighty good chance of staying right now.’ He pointed to a dead paratrooper lying in the vines. The chances of ‘staying’ increased rapidly that night for both New Zealanders and Germans as they battled with rifle and bayonet, machine-gun and mortar in the flames and rubble of Galatas...
I reach Maleme easily ... a few scattered houses and a small aerodrome drowse beside the sea. A plane drones in from Athens twice a day to disturb the peace of this little forgotten field that once made headlines that are past history, forgotten now. The air support that never came. The infantrymen after weeks of fighting, starved of food and munitions attacking with rifle and bayonet the pride of the German army protected by their mighty air force – but I think of Melville taking a letter from his pocket, ‘a note from home. A few lines from Naomi, thought you’d like to read them...’ – and we talked and laughed of home in the hillside. Jimmy singing, ‘I want the moon to play with...’ – the last time I saw him. Harry sharing a brew of tea with me – probably the last he tasted. And I saw them go all away into the dark silent night before the dawn attack at Maleme. A bloody fight. Short-lived victory. Billy who bayoneted his way through a whole German section, resting under the trees at Galatas – with only a few hours to live. They rested under the trees at Galatas then went into the bloody inferno again.
And now the tall green bamboo bushes rustle in the sea breeze as they did that night, and I walk over to the terraced hillsides. Two youths from the meteorological office walk with me. One speaks English and points out that these terraces are wider and more even than usual. ‘Do you know that these are German graves?’ he says. ‘Well over a thousand here. Many thousands all over the place. We’ve destroyed them all. Planted wheat and vines on them. Much better that way. Do you think we are barbaric?’ ‘No.’ I reply, remembering the villages in flames and wondering if these two lads were amongst the kids cowering in the fields while their fathers were shot at Aya. They were...
An hour later I’m back in Suda Bay ... walking over arid land to the British cemetery laid below the hills. On the way I meet a party of German sailors. They are sweating and perplexed, and one says to me, ‘All day we look for the German Fallen, but can’t find them. You fought here in Crete – do you know where our fallen are buried?’ Decent chaps these and I have softened a good deal since 1941, but I just could not tell them why their quest was so difficult ... such an odd mixed up feeling in me. Germans and a New Zealander talking on a Cretan hillside, guzzling from a bottle of wine, saying ‘Stupid bloody war’ – but I keep silent on one thing, bid them good day and walk on past the rows of white stones bearing names I know, and ages that stopped at 20, 23, 29, 31, 19, 25–
1961, Kiwi at Large
Headstones, Suda Bay
C.K. Stead
The last parade is forever
and the drill perfect.
Pale-faced in the sun
rank on rank unflinching
they out-stare
the Aegean blue
and a white ship at anchor.
British
Australians
New Zealanders
each with name and rank
or the inscription
‘A soldier of
the 1939–1945
War
Known unto God.’
15 August 1998, Listener