Crete 1941 by Antony Beevor

Author:Antony Beevor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

18

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South from Suda Bay

28–30 MAY

After Freyberg’s departure to Sphakia, command of the withdrawal was left to General Weston. But Weston’s unreliable leadership, not helped by false rumours and bad communications, prompted Hargest and Vasey to formulate their own orders. Having seen mountain troops moving round to their south, well beyond the Malaxa escarpment, they withdrew their New Zealanders and Australians from the 42nd Street line on the evening of 27 May. They marched through the night to Stylos, which lay to the south-east on the route to Sphakia. Fortunately, the mountain troops stopped for the night, and only resumed their eastward advance shortly before dawn.

Hargest’s men reached Stylos just in time. At daybreak on 28 May, two companies of the 23rd Battalion were roused from where they had lain down to sleep. Two of their officers, on a tour of inspection before lying down themselves, had spotted the renewed advance of the 85th Mountain Regiment. The exhausted New Zealanders rushed forward to a dry-stone wall curving over the top of a hill. The leading Germans, advancing up the other side, were within twenty metres when the New Zealanders’ helmets appeared above them. Sergeant Hulme, who sat on the wall firing, won a Victoria Cross in the brief but highly successful action which followed.

To the north of them at Megala Khorion above the turn-off from the Canea–Rethymno road, a troop of Spanish Republicans from George Young’s battalion became engaged in Layforce’s first rearguard action. Laycock had rightly objected that it was a bad position to defend, but he was overruled. They were joined by two companies of Maoris. Soon an impressive procession of vehicles led by motor-cycle troops came in view advancing east from Suda towards Rethymno. Only a small proportion of this force turned south to attack and, in the scrub and broken terrain, the Maoris managed to delay them until midday.

Most of the Spanish Republicans, regarding their mission as unnecessarily suicidal when everyone was in retreat, fell back to Babali Hani where the rest of George Young’s battalion had been sent ahead to prepare another stop line. Meanwhile Colonel Colvin’s battalion of commandos, left behind to delay the enemy at Suda, was in some disarray after two confused engagements in which many men were captured. Waugh describes Colvin’s conduct in scathing terms in his memorandum on Layforce; in fact he had started to crack up so obviously that Laycock relieved him of his command and amalgamated the two battalions under George Young.

Laycock and his brigade major, Freddy Graham, were nearly captured by mountain troops who had cut the road between Stylos and Babali Hani. The arrival of two of the Matilda tanks brought round from Heraklion saved them. These tanks also helped stiffen the resistance at Babali Hani where George Young’s battalion backed by the remainder of the Australian 2/8th Battalion faced two battalions of mountain troops later that day. Laycock set up his brigade headquarters in a house on the edge of the village so that he could stay close to the fighting.

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