Battle for Crete by John Hall Spencer

Author:John Hall Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781594667
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

Colonel Howard Kippenberger, a New Zealander of German descent, in command ot the composite 10th Brigade to the east, had argued that 8 Greek Battalion was only a circle on the map; that it was murder to leave it where it was.

He was told that in war sometimes murder had to be done. But in the event the Greek Battalion near Alikianou at the southwestern end of Prison Valley played a useful role. And the action of Brigadier E. Puttick, commanding the New Zealand Division, on leaving it where it was proved justified.

The weakness in the dispositions in this area between Maleme and Canea south of Galatas was the big gap of quite 4,000 yards between 6 and 8 Greek Regiments which extended for the length of Prison Valley.

Kippenberger himself was in his billet in Galatas that morning at dawn when the first German reconnaisance plane appeared. It was a fighter which flew up and down the main street of the village firing at anything it could see. Kippenberger before his death gave his own account of what followed:58

‘Nothing appeared imminent, so I finished dressing and went down for breakfast under the trees outside. The plane was still tearing up and down the street and maybe the cooks were bustled, for the porridge was mere 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 over our heads 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. . . .

‘When I reached the courtyard again the thunder had become deafening. 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 road to my Battalion Headquarters the parachutists were dropping out over the valley, hundreds of them and floating quickly down. Some were spilling out over our positions and there was a growing crackle of rifle fire. I pelted down the road, out-pacing 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 around the back and, in what seemed to me a nice bit of minor tactics, stalked him round the side 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.

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