Microsoft Word - Anthony Beevor - Crete. The battle and the resistance by Giannis

Author:Giannis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

Laycock's Commandos and Force Reserve

26 and 27 May

After the last deceptive flash of hope had died away at Galatas, General Freyberg knew that he must warn Wavell that Crete could no longer be held. He postponed writing his signal until the next morning, 26 May. It began 'I regret to have to report'. This must have been one of the most unpleasant duties he had ever faced.

The task cannot have been made easier by stirring exhortations still arriving from Churchill in London, or by the simplistic mathematics of military intelligence in Cairo which estimated that he still enjoyed numerical superiority. But this was partly his own fault: he had not clearly told Cairo or London how rapidly Maleme had fallen. A circuitous phrasing of reports gave the impression that the airfield was still hotly contested for some time after the Germans had established their air bridge.

Efforts were then made by GHQ Middle East to send Blenheims and Wellingtons to bomb the runway, but they were far too late and too few to make a difference. In spite of a short lift in morale caused by a raid on 25 May, the RAF had once again become a target for abuse with their initials converted to crude epithets.

During Monday, 26 May, the new line west of Canea held, albeit shakily and by a stroke of luck.

Shortly after 1 p.m., the Luftwaffe bombed and strafed a battalion of the 85th Mountain Regiment by mistake for fifty minutes; this severely demoralized German troops across the whole front and induced caution in their commanders. The unlucky battalion had been advancing in the foothills towards Perivolia where the 2nd Greek Regiment, Freyberg heard, was in the process of

disintegration. This was one of the factors which convinced him that Suda Bay would soon be under fire.

Next to the Greeks, and barring the end of Prison Valley, were the two Australian battalions, the 2/8th and the 2/7th, back under the command of Brigadier Vasey as the 19th Australian Brigade. Then, stretching to the coast, forming a line in front of Canea, were three reduced and semi-amalgamated New Zealand battalions starting with the Maoris west of Daratsos. Holding the enemy at this line was especially important to allow warships to land essential stores and reinforcements in Suda Bay that night.

Behind this insecure and scarcely dug-in force, the remnants of other battalions tried to recuperate and reorganize. Round Suda, the unarmed rear echelon, nearly twelve thousand men at the start of the battle, lay scattered in their makeshift camps: dock operating companies, ordnance corps fitters and supply personnel — what the fighting troops called the odds and sods and what Churchill called the

'bouches inutiles'.

Often unfairly derided and left in even greater ignorance of events than the average soldier, these

'base wallahs' had suffered from continual bombing without an esprit de corps to sustain them or the capacity to strike back at the enemy. A number of those who had been able to grab a rifle to stalk paratroopers in the

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