Crete: The Battle and the Resistance by Beevor Antony

Author:Beevor, Antony [Beevor, Antony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, War, History
ISBN: 9780813320809
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1991-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

One of his men tried to bandage the wound, but the opening was too large for a field dressing.

Soon the order to withdraw arrived from Kippenberger. The attack had achieved its aim and he did not want to waste any men unnecessarily, for as soon as the Germans had retreated, their mortars began to shell the village. The more seriously wounded, Farran and Thomas among them, had to be left behind. One of Thomas's soldiers, also badly hit in the leg, managed to pull him into a ditch which offered some protection. The mortar bomb explosions did not deter the women of the village. They slipped out of their cellars to bring water to the wounded. A 12-year-old girl appeared beside Sandy Thomas with a mug of fresh goat's milk.

Kippenberger gave the order for withdrawal back to a line on Daratsos. Russell's survivors from the Divisional Cavalry and Captain Rowe's last members of the Petrol Company on Pink Hill had been able to extricate themselves. They were all that remained of Kippenberger's 10th Brigade.

Those who took part in the counter-attack on Galatas will never forget the astonishing resurgence of spirit it engendered. Perhaps it is best explained as a gesture of anger at retreat — at the gut certainty that they should have won the whole battle. The New Zealanders had shown in a spectacular manner what could have been achieved had they been given the chance and the leadership at the crucial moment four days before.

Kippenberger, 'more tired than ever before in my life, or since', stumbled around in the dark trying to find Inglis's make-shift command post, 'a tarpaulin-covered hole in the ground'. Most of the battalion commanders were assembled there already. Inglis raised the subject of another counter-attack to gauge reactions. Then Colonel Gentry, Puttick's chief of staff, and Colonel Dittmer, the commanding officer of the 28th (Maori) Battalion, arrived. Dittmer volunteered to attack again, but after discussion Inglis came to the conclusion that it was too late, and Dittmer's battalion was one of the last New Zealand units to remain reasonably intact. There was no alternative but to fall back to a line linking up with Vasey's two Australian battalions at the end of Prison Valley. Although nobody voiced the inevitability of defeat, they all knew that their escape would depend once again on the Royal Navy.

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