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A lean-to shelter built by members of the
2/1st Field Regiment in the Suda Bay area,
Crete, April 1941.

[AWM 069901]

So now it looks like betting even
A man will soon become a Cretan
And spend his days in blackest gloom
On Adolf Hitler’s Isle of Doom

[From ‘Boff’ Ryan, ‘On Crete, Isle of Doom’, in Clift, War Dance, p.170]

Private Charles Robinson, 2/2nd Australian Field Ambulance, stepped ashore in Crete on 27 April 1941, one of those rescued by British destroyers during the sinking of the Costa Rica. He admired the ‘wonderful seamanship and courage’ of the men of the Royal Navy who had saved his life. As Robinson marched up the dusty road that climbed away from the harbour at Suda Bay, he could see that Crete was, in one respect, no safer than mainland Greece. The island was in range of the bombers of the Luftwaffe:

We looked back to the pall of black smoke from a burning ship and the cruiser York lying half submerged and beached on the far shore.

[Robinson, Journey to Captivity, pp.77–78]

Those of the British force who had been saved from possible captivity in Greece were undoubtedly grateful for their rescue. Brigadier George Vasey, the senior Australian officer on Crete, said to one of his chaplains:

‘You know Padre, those bastards might have beaten us. Without God’s help we would not be here. You had better offer thanks for us and arrange a service for everyone in the brigade tomorrow’.

[Vasey, quoted in Horner, Vasey’s War, p.114]

On 4 May 1941, church services were held all over Crete as a thanksgiving for the deliverance from Greece. At Kalives, the local public school building was filled three times for services conducted by Chaplain Youll. An Australian officer wrote of another service:

I’ve attended church services in many parts of the world and in outstanding buildings, but that little service under the olive trees in Crete will stand always in my mind as outstanding in its sincerity and impressive impact.

[Unidentified Australian officer, quoted in Horner, Vasey’s War, p.114]

There now began for Private Robinson, and many thousands of other Australian, New Zealand and British evacuees from the mainland, what he called three weeks of ‘gypsy life’. Many men had left nearly all their personal equipment behind at the evacuation:

I had a blanket and a greatcoat and for a week or more shared the blanket with three others. We would sleep in a row with greatcoats on and the blanket over our feet … I slipped into Canea [Hania] and bought a brush and a razor. Except for a table knife that was all my equipment.

[Unidentified Australian, quoted in Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, p.206]

From the army they received cold tinned food and biscuits. Many men had to eat without implements and the empty cans were used as mugs. The food, often herrings in tomato sauce, was christened ‘goldfish in blood’ and the nature of the army biscuits was summed up in the phrase ‘bathroom tiles’. Baths were taken in icy streams and clothes washing was done by local women. However, pay arrived and the local villagers soon responded to the needs of the thousands of soldiers who had so suddenly arrived among them. Fresh Greek bread was available from roadside ovens and a local taverna under a plane tree, near where Private Robinson was billeted, provided egg and chips, goat cheese and Krassi, a potent rough wine. Later, an old shepherd came through their lines with a goatskin of wine and filled any drinking vessel the soldiers offered:

Our little party had a gourd or calabash made from a scooped out marrow and this would be eagerly quaffed before bedding down in the hope of early oblivion, and surcease from the cold. Don [Private Don McCaskill] was a teetotaller but he, no doubt, obtained some warmth from the fumes exuded by the rest of us.

[Robinson, Journey to Captivity, pp.78–79]

Robinson’s most potent memory of those ‘gypsy’ weeks on Crete concerned an enterprising entrepreneur of Neo Khorion. Under the olive trees he erected a restaurant consisting of a camp stool, a board, a bag of eggs, a bottle of olive oil, a large frying pan, one plate and a knife and fork. Clients sat on the stool while the board was placed on their lap along with the plate and the knife and fork. The cook then threw olive twigs on the fire and proceeded to whisk up two eggs in olive oil until they had absorbed the oil. The cooked eggs, complemented by a slice of rough local bread, were then transferred to the plate. Afterwards the plate was wiped clean with a rag and the next customer took his place:

To this day my favourite winter breakfast is eggs scrambled Crete fashion.

[Robinson, Journey to Captivity, p.79]

But more desperate days lay ahead for the British force on Crete. In the evenings, Charles Robinson and his mates listened at the local taverna to the English language broadcasts from Germany of the infamous British traitor ‘Lord Haw-Haw’. Haw-Haw dubbed them the ‘Island of Doomed Men’ and boasted that there was a German ‘bomb for every olive tree’ and a ‘bullet for every blade of grass’ on Crete. The doom that the Germans were preparing was an airborne invasion of the island.

Even though his divisions had captured all of mainland Greece, Hitler was still concerned that long-range RAF bombers, operating from Crete, might threaten the vital Romanian oilfields. Seizure of Crete would prevent this and move the Luftwaffe much closer to British supply lines to the Middle East. On 21 April 1941, Hitler met with General Kurt Student, commander of the XI Fliegerkorps, who assured the Führer that his paratroopers, assisted by other airborne and naval units, could capture Crete. The next day, Hitler gave the order for ‘Operation Merkur’, the invasion of Crete. The German plan was to drop paratroopers near the three airfields on the north coast of Crete at Maleme, Rethymno and Heraklio. Once these had been taken reinforcements could be quickly brought in by air transports. Additional forces would be despatched from the mainland by sea. Throughout late April and the first three weeks in May 1941, the Germans assembled their airborne forces in Greece for what would be the greatest German parachute operation of World War II.

By 28 April the Greek government of Prime Minister Emmanuel Tsouderos, along with the King, George II, had established itself at Hania in Crete. They offered to place all Greek forces on the island under a British commander and Churchill cabled General Wavell in Cairo that ‘the island must be stubbornly defended’. Churchill had learned that the Germans were preparing an airborne landing and he thought that a stubborn resistance would be a ‘fine opportunity for killing the parachute troops’. Major General Bernard Freyberg, the commander of the 2nd New Zealand Division, was appointed as the British commander-in-chief of what became known as ‘Creforce’.

Creforce was basically a motley collection of units that had been evacuated from the Greek mainland, a small British force that had been on the island for a number of months, and local Greek forces. All in all it amounted to some 39 250 soldiers — 15 000 British, 7750 New Zealanders, 6500 Australians and 10 000 Greeks. Among the British forces, a considerable number were base troops, untrained for battle. Most of the Greek troops had had but five weeks training, their weapons were antiquated and most men had never fired a shot. The force had virtually no air cover and it lacked basic military equipment such as proper modern artillery pieces and tanks. Eventually, a small number of reinforcements along with a few tanks arrived on the island, but of 100 anticipated artillery pieces, Creforce received only 49 French and captured Italian field guns:

Sufficient to say that many did not arrive, others came without their instruments, some without their sights, some without ammunition, and some of the ammunition without fuses … The gunners … were either British Regular Army, Australians or New Zealanders; men of infinite resource and energy; they set to work and one lot made a sighting appliance out of wood and chewing gum … Nobody groused and everybody got on with the job.

[Freyberg, quoted in Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, p.216]

Freyberg allocated his men to the defence of the three airfields. These, he knew, were the key to a German airborne attack. If one of them fell then the enemy would be able to mount a sustained build-up which must lead to the likely defeat of Creforce.

As May wore on, the German air offensive on Crete intensified. On 16 May the 2/4th Battalion positions at Heraklio suffered a particularly heavy attack:

Rolfe [Captain Rolfe] and his two sigs [signallers] hugged the bottom of their dugout as they waited for the scream of the bombs … The bombs landed horribly close — ten feet away. Moses asked Rolfe if he was all right. Rolfe replied ‘Don’t wake me. I can hear angels singing’. There was a sudden burst of profanity from Warrant Officer [Harry] Watts which brought everyone back to reality. He had been airing his clothes alongside a box of hand grenades … A bomb splinter had sent the grenades off as well as Harry’s clothes. All he could find in the debris was his Rising Sun hat badge and his colour patch. The rest had just disappeared — with the grenades.

[White over Green, p.152]

At 6.45 am on 20 May 1941, General Freyberg and his staff stood watching as a massive German aerial bombardment hit positions round the Suda Bay area. The Germans were pinpointing the anti-aircraft guns and each gun was being attacked by up to three Stukas. Clouds of dust from the bomb bursts filled the air. This seemed to be more than the normal daily raid that the men of Creforce had become used to:

I stood on the hill … enthralled by the magnitude of the operation. While we were still watching the bombers, we suddenly became aware of a greater throbbing in the moments of comparative quiet, and, looking out to sea with the glasses, I picked out hundreds of planes tier on tier coming towards us — here were the huge, slow-moving troop carriers with the loads we were expecting.

[Freyberg, quoted in Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, p.221]

The German paratroopers were heading in towards Crete.