Kidnap in Crete Read online

  At airfields in Topolia, Aliartos Megara and Elefsina, Luftwaffe groundcrews opened the bomb-bay doors of Junkers 52 transport aircraft and heaved in huge aerial-delivery containers full of equipment and weapons, to be dropped with the paratroopers and their comrades in the assault glider units. The men were given strips of cloth to be laid out on the drop zones in prearranged patterns to coordinate air support and supply drops. The outside of each supply canister was painted with coloured stripes and dots to indicate its contents: K.98k rifles, MP38 and MP40 sub-machine guns, MG 34 light machine guns; 75mm recoilless wheel-mounted guns, dismantled and packed into two drop containers. Other containers carried specialised equipment, optical sights, communications equipment and ammunition. Once on the ground, unloading their combat kit from the containers was a paratrooper’s top priority.

  That evening the paratroopers finished the beer, and sang nostalgic songs of home to the music of a scratch band. For some of the men the jump on to Crete would be the first time they had parachuted into action. Jäger Pöppel, however, was an old hand, having already hurled himself out of aircraft into the battles of Holland and Norway.

  In the dead of night, the men of the first wave were driven to the airfields. A lorry stopped by each plane; the troops climbed out and the vehicles went back to ferry more men. The paratroopers piled their parachutes and kit on to the ground, their blue-grey, steel parachute helmets balanced on top. They sat shivering in the cold, suddenly grateful for the uniforms that had originally been issued for the attack on Norway and icy conditions. Some chatted and smoked, others sat, silent. More lorries rolled on to the field, carrying aircrew who swung into the cockpits. Engines fired and propellers turned, blowing choking clouds of dust over the troops.

  The order came to get ready. The troops clambered to their feet and pulled on their equipment, shrugging on pouches full of ammunition. Then they draped long cloth bandoliers with more ammunition round their necks, securing them to their belts by loops. Some of the paratroopers had more ammunition pouches strapped round their calves, secured with ties to the top of their jump boots. Everyone carried a special gravity knife in a compartment in the right-hand thigh pocket of their woollen jump trousers. The knife had a retractable blade which was released and locked by a catch on the top of the handle. Some men carried a second, folding knife, with a clip along the scabbard, secured in the top of one of their jump boots or belt. Other pockets were used to hold stick grenades.

  They had enough iron rations for two days: processed cheese and meat, ersatz instant coffee, rusk-style biscuits or crackers, dextrose tablets to quench thirst and a small water bottle. To cook they carried the standard German Army folding tiny ‘Esbit’ stove and solid fuel tablets. Once all the equipment was buckled on, the paratroopers had to step into their jump smocks, long tunics designed to go over all the equipment and webbing and stop it from snagging the parachute lines. Each smock had a 9mm semi-automatic Luger pistol sewn into a pouch on the back and was fastened at the front with heavy-duty brass zips. Next the men struggled into their parachute harnesses, helping one another secure the straps. Finally, weighed down by their kit and ammunition, they put on their special rimless parachute helmets, padded with foam and secured with three leather straps at the side and back. Fully kitted up, each man carried around ninety pounds of equipment.

  The first rays of dawn appeared on the horizon, revealing the huge number of transport aircraft waiting to take them to Crete: over 500 Junkers and 80 gliders for over 15,000 troops. When the airborne men had seized their objectives another 7,000 comrades would arrive by sea.

  The order came to board. Each man held his parachute release cord, from which dangled a steel hook. To stop it snagging on the steps into the aircraft steps he looped the cord and gripped the end between his teeth, leaving his hands free to haul himself up into the fuselage.

  The assault gliders carried nine men, plus the pilot, to be towed then dropped in a simultaneous glider-borne assault. The glider men sat in a line down the centre of the aircraft, with the last four men facing the rear ready to open the only door. Along the sides were breakaway panels that could be kicked clear to allow escape. The glider’s wheels were jettisoned after takeoff. The troops sat and waited; the temperature inside the planes started to rise. The pilots began to check the magnetos, running up the engines in a deafening roar, making communication possible only by sign language. At last, each great, yellow-nosed Ju 52 shuddered, the engines revving hard in one unified sound. The planes moved forward, rumbling towards the end of the runway. As the aircraft accelerated, nothing could be seen through the portholes, only swirling dust which soon rose 3,000 feet into the air. One by one they lifted, the sweating paratroopers silent, listening to the heavy clunk of the undercarriage retracting. Feldwebel Wilhelm Plieschen took out his camera and photographed his friends as they removed their heavy, rimless parachute helmets and settled back against the plane’s uncomfortable fuselage.

  The aircraft banked, turning south. Suddenly, they broke out of the dust clouds into a dazzlingly clear sky: below was the Acropolis, topped by the beautiful structure of the Parthenon, and ahead, vivid blue sea. Aircraft and gliders stretched to the horizon, protected by fighters and fighter bombers: Stukas, Junkers 88s, Dorniers, Heinkels, Messerschmitt 109s and Messerschmitt 110s. In a leading glider sat Generalleutnant Wilhelm Süssmann, commander of 7 Flieger Division; with him were his divisional staff. The pilot of the tug, Sergeant Hausser, saw an aircraft flying across his path which he recognised as a He 111 bomber. The Heinkel’s take-off from southern Greece had been delayed by engine trouble, and its pilot Oberfeldwebel Paul Gerfehr was racing to catch up, unaware that he was flying into the flight pattern of the glider-borne troops. Hausser did the only thing he could – he pushed his joystick forward and put his huge Ju 52 ‘Iron Annie’ and the glider it was towing into a dive. At the same time Gerfehr pulled his stick back and began to climb. The two planes missed each other, Hausser’s plane and its glider returned to level flight, but turbulence from the slipstream of the bomber made the tow-rope vibrate like a violin string, putting it under great strain. It snapped. The glider containing Süssmann and his divisional staff lurched and soared up, banking left, heading for the island of Aegina. Hausser watched in horror as the glider’s starboard wing broke off, and the fusel­age fell, tumbling over and over towards the ground, hitting the island in a puff of smoke. Süssmann and his staff were the first casualties of Operation Mercury.

  Although Crete is not much more than a hundred miles from the Greek mainland, the flying time for the invaders was more than two hours, and many of the paratroopers fell asleep. They were woken by the shrill sounds of klaxons and the pilot’s voice giving the ‘Prepare to Jump’ order. From the Plexiglas cockpits the aviators could see the mountains looming up from the sea. The soldiers leapt to their feet and hooked their static lines to the steel cables running the length of each aircraft. The planes descended to 200 feet, the load of paratroopers shuffled forward. At the door each man grabbed the bars on either side of the hatch and pulled himself forward and out of the aircraft, diving into space, spread-eagled and battered by the slipstream. Each plane emptied in just under ten seconds. The paratroopers tumbled in space, the roar of the Junkers’ engines replaced by silence and the swish of their bodies falling through the air. The static cords jerked, opening the parachute packs, and deploying the shroud lines. Hundreds of canopies blossomed in the sky – white, yellow, red and green. The sickly smell of aviation fuel was replaced by the rich, luxurious scents of thyme, rosemary and pine as the chutes carrying men and equipment canisters floated down towards the scrubby fields and gentle olive groves of northern Crete.

  On the terrace of his Italianate villa, high above Creforce headquarters at Chania, Bernard Freyberg sat eating his breakfast. He watched as the sky above his head filled with aircraft, descending gliders and paratroopers. Then he looked at his watch, said ‘They’re dead on time,’ and went on to finish his boiled eggs. />
  See Notes to Chapter 3

  4

  The Battle of Crete

  At Maleme airfield, a key German objective on the north coast, gliders swooped through the thick dust cloud thrown up by the bombing earlier in the day. In one glider travelled Major Walter Koch and the battalion staff of 1 Luftlandesturm (Airborne Assault) Regiment. At seven minutes past seven his pilot began the descent, travelling at 240 feet per second, heading for the Tavronitis valley next to a ridge called Hill 107, looking out over Maleme airfield. Blinded by the sun, the pilot could not see the landing area, or accurately judge his height. When he finally saw the objective he realised he was still about 600 feet above the earth: much too high. He put the nose hard down and glided in, unable to slow down. All around the other pilots were doing the same. The speed and chaos made the gliders more widely dispersed than planned.

  As Koch’s transport landed, the barbed-wire-covered skid, designed to slow down the landing, tore off. The violence of the impact knocked him and his men to the floor of the fragile craft, tearing a hole in its side. Some men died on impact, others were injured; many had broken bones. Those who could scrambled out, running for the cover of the stunted gorse bushes that grew all around, or dived into the scrub, blinded by smoke, and immediately came under fire. Koch fell, shot in the head. All around more gliders were plummeting to earth, disappearing into the unexpectedly hilly landscape. Some crash-landed hard, splintering apart, throwing occupants on to the rocks. The air filled with the cries of dying and badly wounded men. To the west and east of Maleme hundreds of paratroopers floated down to earth; some hanging limp in the harnesses. Parachute canopies bobbed across the ground like jellyfish.

  Later, Freyberg ‘stood on a hill watching the attack over Maleme enthralled by the magnitude of the operation’. While watching the bombers he had ‘suddenly became aware of a greater throbbing, or overtone, during the moments of comparative quiet’. Looking to sea he saw hundreds of planes, tier upon tier, coming toward him. They were huge, slow-moving troop carriers with more airborne troops. They circled counter-clockwise over Maleme airdrome and then, only 300 feet above the ground, as if by magic white specks suddenly appeared beneath the planes. ‘Coloured clouds of parachutists floated slowly to earth.’

  As far away as Paleochora, on the south coast, the church bells rang a warning, sounded by Father Stylianos, who set about raising a force to march north towards Kandanos. Another priest, Father Frantzeskakis, strode at the head of his band, rifle in hand. At the northern port of Heraklion all was calm. The bombing of the last few days had stopped. Private Reg Spurr was enjoying a beer in a taverna with men from the Royal Engineers and the Black Watch, oblivious to the fact that twenty-five miles to the west the invasion had started. Far off they heard a bugler sounding the alarm, followed by three ‘G’ notes, the signal for paratroopers.

  A swarm of Ju 52s appeared low over Heraklion, and hundreds of parachutes flowered in the sky. Spurr and his mates dashed into the street; a dead paratrooper crashed to the ground, splayed like a doll in front of them; within seconds a Cretan was stripping the man of his weapons. Ahead three more paratroopers arrived, two hit the road, already dead; the third landed on a wall struggling to get out of the harness trailing behind him. Suddenly it looked as though an unseen hand was pulling on his lines from the other side of the wall. He lost his balance and disappeared. An agonised scream tore through the air. Spurr burst through a gate in the wall to find a middle-aged woman, in traditional Cretan dress, shouting angrily. In her hand was a vicious-looking carving knife; at her feet lay the dying parachutist, his throat cut wide open, blood pumping on to his chest. The woman slashed at the parachute cords, hacking open his smock, looking for weapons.

  Spurr dashed off in search of his unit. He was soon surrounded by a crowd of running people. In the group were British, Greek and Cretan soldiers, civilian men, women and children. Most of them were armed with anything that could be used to inflict an injury, including hammers, saws and garden implements. Many of the women carried knives. The group ran to the West Gate out of Heraklion. Spurr found himself alongside a young Cretan couple: the woman brandished a large knife, and twisted to show him that she had a shotgun concealed in her skirts. The man motioned to the top of the massive arch that formed the gate shouting: ‘We are going up there where the German parachutes are.’ Spurr saw armed civilians and soldiers, all roaring at the paratroopers descending from the air. A Greek, Captain Kalaphotakis, appeared, trying to take charge. Spurr shouted to a British sergeant: ‘By the look of this lot they don’t need us do they?’

  ‘No,’ the NCO replied. ‘I think we had better get back to our own mobs.’

  The crowd started jeering at a bedraggled unit of confused paratroopers, doubling up the road towards the gate. The civilians opened fire, though some of the weapons were so old they would not work. A hail of bullets hit the German troops, who tumbled dead to the ground. Once more Reg Spurr tried to leave and get back to his unit. The shouting crowd surged forward, charging another unit of invaders. Small-arms fire crackled, echoing off the buildings; bullets ricocheted everywhere. The people gave a loud cheer. Smoke and the smell of cordite drifted through the air. More soldiers lay dead and bleeding round the gate. The defenders reloaded their weapons.

  That afternoon Spurr passed the site of a skirmish and found six or seven Germans lying dead in a dried-up creek. Close by were some houses where Spurr found two civilians, one, an old man slumped on his knees, his head forward and his hands clasped behind him. He had been shot in the back of the head and his corpse riddled with bullets. Next to him was a woman, still alive, writhing in agony. She was pregnant and had been bayoneted several times in the stomach. She died before Spurr could help her. He stumbled out of the house and vomited.

  The casualties on both sides mounted very quickly. The 7th British General Hospital, situated between the sea and the Maleme Road, was right in the path of shellfire and bombs. Staff tried to move the sick and wounded to the safety of caves on the beaches. They established three caves for the casualties and a fourth for the exhausted medical teams. Soon the caves were overflowing with injured Allied soldiers. As the hours wore on a new category of wounded man began to appear: German parachutists.

  Later in the day the German 10th Parachute Company landed in the vicinity of the hospital. Lieutenant Colonel Plimmer, a New Zealander and the commanding officer of a field ambulance company, was forced at gunpoint to surrender. As he climbed from his slit trench with his arms above his head he was shot dead. Twenty-six miles away to the west of Chania, at the small, almost derelict port of Kissamos Kasteli, lay an unfinished airstrip guarded by the 1st Greek Regiment under the command of Colonel Papadimitrakopoulos and a British major, T. G. Bedding, a former PT instructor. The regiment had been flung together using a thousand volunteers from the town and the surrounding villages. They were badly equipped and had only 600 rifles and two ancient machine guns, together with about 1,800 rounds of ammunition some of which was the wrong calibre. For three weeks they had been trained by a handful of New Zealand officers and NCOs who had managed to scrounge two Bren guns and a few more boxes of ammunition. Kissamos Kasteli was not very high on General Freyberg’s list of battle priorities.

  The battalion fought on with anything it could lay its hands on: ancient shotguns, old flintlocks, axes, knives, even nail bombs improvised from plastic explosives. One of the villagers, Dr Stylianos Koundouros, found his father digging up an old Turkish rifle, hidden during an arms requisition years before; he made his father hand it over, and then ran off to join the regiment, heading for the noise of battle, the rifle in one hand, his medical kit in the other. ‘The Germans had never seen something like this in Europe,’ recalled George Bikoyiannakis, from the village of Galatas near Chania. ‘These people were fighting with farming tools. Even broomsticks. They would tie kitchen knives to them and use them as spears.’

  The rag-tag force took on a formation of seventy-two Fallschirmjäger, mo
stly teenagers, under the command of Oberleutnant Peter Muerbe. Apart from Muerbe himself, and a couple of senior NCOs, none of the youths had seen combat. They were armed with rifles, Schmeisser sub-machine guns, long-barrelled Mausers (some equipped with telescopic sights), heavy machine guns, mortars and thousands of rounds of ammunition. It was planned to drop more supplies to them later in the morning and prearranged recognition signals had already been set up. The paratroopers had been told ‘only a token show of resistance is to be expected from irregulars among the inhabitants . . . they have no heavy equipment’.

  At 08:14 hours, the first parachutists flung themselves out of the Junkers, arms outstretched in the starfish position. They dropped in two groups; many were hit and died before they reached the ground. The survivors were hunted through the vine and almond groves by Cretans who had grown up among the culverts, stone walls and gulleys that surrounded the town; every rock and bush was a familiar landmark. The hidden areas of dead ground quickly became killing zones. The defenders crawled on their stomachs, creeping behind the parachutists and slaughtering them. The villagers took the arms and ammunition from the dead soldiers. Bewildered young Germans heard the sound of their own weapons being fired against them and returned fire in panic, killing their own comrades.

  Just over an hour later the surviving invaders of Kissamos Kasteli had been surrounded and trapped in a group of farm buildings. Major Bedding ordered his men to mount a siege. He knew that the Germans would soon run out of ammunition and water. The temperature was climbing towards fifty degrees. With nothing to fire and nothing to drink, the elite troops would have to surrender. Inside one of the stone buildings, in a hot, dark room, were four terrified civilians, members of the Vlahakis family: old Spiro the father, his elderly wife and their two grandchildren. Spiro’s son was outside fighting. By now the German commander, Muerbe, was dead and Gefreiter Walter Schuster had taken command.