The first intimation that events of unprecedented proportions were stirring was a drumming sound, faint and far away, but very powerful, which this correspondent heard in his sleep shortly after dawn on May 20. It was at first impossible to discern the cause of the steady purring drumming, like hundreds of bees imprisoned under the eaves of the roof. Except for old women, who went each morning at four to the deserted stalls of the public market in old Athens in hopes the German quartermasters had allowed a few vegetables to get through to the starving city, no one was stirring. The Greeks are early risers, but in occupied countries people cling to sleep as their narcotic against hunger.
Hearing the many motors, Athens collectively turned its face to the wall and this, too, was my first impulse. But the noise persisted, different from the motors of Messerschmitt-109s and 110s, which regularly crossed the center of Athens for propaganda effect upon their bombing missions. It sounded steadier, more extensive.
Then from the terrace I looked eastward, and saw what it was. Lengthwise, over the hump of Hymettos, a long line of black-winged creatures was flying south. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I was at first doubtful that it was not birds. For planes, they were flying in the most peculiar and contradictory formation—a long cavalcade, like camels crossing the desert. They were so far away—the Germans were taking this precaution against any Athenian with a secret radio informing the British what was afoot—that they could be seen only from high upon Lycabettos and were invisible to the hungry, sleeping thousands below.
What puzzled me was that their formation seemed composed of big and little planes in equal numbers. Every big plane had a little plane directly behind it. The whole procession was moving very slowly. This indicated that the big planes must be transports, probably the slow “Auntie Jus,” the Junkers-52s. What then could be the little planes following so closely behind, with the unsubstantial bodies of fighters? Perhaps the Germans were trying a new protective idea for fighters to follow tightly upon a transport's tail. But why experiment on such an enormous scale?
Furthermore, the Junkers were creeping along at hardly 110 miles an hour. What kind of fighters were these which were able to throttle down to that pace and follow their lumbering Aunties at a fixed distance?
The Germans had taken Corinth airdrome and bridge by parachutists and earlier used skymen in piercing Rupel Pass on the Yugoslav border, but nothing had indicated that they contemplated an experiment upon so vast a scale.
Actually, the general prediction that big events were in the making had been formulated by Major Nicolas Crawe, American air attaché at Athens, a veteran of many RAF raids and co-designer of the first Flying Fortress. Crawe had formulated his views in a report to the War Department, but it was not transmitted because the Nazis cut off all communications even between the United States legation and Berlin and Rome, to say nothing of Washington.
Once the magnitude of the operation began to be understood, other things began to fall into place. One understood why scores of trucks bearing license plates WL for the Wehrmacht-Luftwaffe (German army air force) had gone purring through the boulevards from the city barracks late the night before, laden with thin-faced youths wearing the mountaineer's edelweiss upon their shoulders. Around eleven that morning the Junkers began streaming back, diminished by about one in five. Their “fighter planes” no longer were tailing them. Still the Greeks knew nothing of what was happening.
Not until a BBC broadcast the next day did the word seep through. But at two o'clock another long procession of Junkers moved southward, but gliderless. From a rooftop above the office of a friendly dentist, I counted 53 planes, but some were Messerschmitts and Dorniers. Our hopes increased because this seemed to mean that the gliders were exhausted and Crete's resistance was stiffening enough to require new bombardments by “Flying Pencils” and “Schmitters.”
There are times when one can unmistakably see the future written upon the visage of the present. This correspondent had such a view as he saw the long line of big and little aircraft filing slowly away, laden with hundreds of men, disappearing into the southern blue. The historical moment transcended any fact of whether the planes were German, British or American. The door upon the future opened slightly and one caught a quick but unmistakable glimpse of what the war was becoming and would be by the time the United States became a participant.
“Only one thing was constant in the battle between German parachutists and ourselves for possession of Malemi Airdrome,” said an Australian officer who took a leading part in the defense of Crete. “That was the sound of bells.”
The officer was attached to the anti-aircraft unit defending Malemi, which consisted of four 40-mm Bofors guns manned by English troops, and six of the same caliber served by Australians. A brigade of three shrunken battalions of New Zealanders and Maoris was the force defending Malemi against land attack.
“Only a few hundred yards west of the red patch of dust we called Malemi was a monastery named Mongonia. It was built solidly, like a fortress. From the field, the monks could often be seen moving about outside with their tall stovepipe hats, stroking their beards as they walked and murmuring their meditations.
“As the Messerschmitts and Stukas began to rain bombs upon us, parachutists floated down. While the still-unsunk British cruisers in Suda Bay threw shells at them, the monks disappeared behind the ramparts of the cloister. But the chimes remained constant. Each time we heard them we asked ourselves whether we would live to hear them the next time.
“The bells went on pealing every quarter hour, day and night, through three days of fighting during which we not only battled parachutists but watched the German invasion convoy wiped out by our destroyers. Even before the screams of the sinking Germans, the bark of guns and the blast of bombs, the bells of Mongonia Monastery went on chiming. I suppose they are still chiming today.”
In dispatches describing an isolated Anglo-Greek nurse, the heroine of the 7th General Hospital on the shore between Suda Bay and Malemi, this correspondent told ten months ago how Nazi planes carefully reconnoitered and photographed every inch of ground beforehand.
The Australian officer confirmed the carefulness of the German preparation. “Almost every chutist had a small mapcase showing in a three-dimensional drawing, relief and profile, what he would see upon landing. He was able to orient himself immediately for attack.
“During the ten-day period when they tried to bomb us into submission, I saw one of the most gallant deeds I ever hope to witness. Eighty Messerschmitt 109s, which are fighters as well as bombers, came over. The whole remaining Royal Air Force, consisting of three Hurricanes and two Gladiator biplanes, went up to challenge them. There could be but one result, but it was gallant beyond description.”
The little force of Anzac [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps] defenders had almost no intimation that the invasion was coming except the general warning that “something is expected.” The customary morning bombing by Messerschmitts, which probably came from Melos or Rhodes, as well as Corinth, Argos and the three Athenian airdromes, seemed heavier than usual.
“But my first real idea that the parachutists were upon us was when I looked up and saw a pair of wheels belonging to a mortar sailing down as though it possessed wings.”
The Australian guns began to speak immediately. The Junkers came over in three lines of three planes, each towing a glider. Each group of chutists, stepping out of the nine-plane, nine-glider formation, also dropped a mortar and several machine guns. Stories about three or four gliders being towed together were false; one was the maximum.
“Our fire began to take effect. One glider was loosed and began to sidle downward. We shot off the nose. You could see men falling to their deaths from the open nose, like peas falling from a pod.”
On the airdrome, the 5th Regiment of New Zealanders and Maoris grappled immediately with the first batch of 300 chutists and wiped them out, securing badly needed tommy guns and pistols from their bodies. But the parachutists
kept coming. The Germans dropped officers with walkie-talkies in the less accessible hills to the south, above the airdrome. They communicated directly with the pilots of the planes which came over in waves. They helped the parachutists by bombing our anti-aircraft guns, which were able to sweep the airdrome as well as overhead.
“We could hear these parachute observers in our radios, taking over the direction of the air bombardment from the bombardiers and giving unciphered directions to the planes. They worked exactly like front-range artillery observers, speaking corrections for each new run and giving landmarks to the pilots as guidance to camouflaged positions. It was naturally difficult to ferret them out, with our positions bombed and dive-bombed simultaneously.”
While the parachute convoys were coming from Athens and possibly also Rhodes, the Stukas which intensively dive-bombed Australian positions were based on the airdrome on Kythera Island within full view of Malemi.
“It was a simple matter for the Stukas to get a load of bombs, gain height and descend upon us. The whole operation required hardly half an hour for the round trip. Lacking reconnaissance aircraft for nearly a week, we had no way of knowing that the Nazis had established a Stuka airdrome, toolshed and bomb dump within full view of Crete.”
Junkers with gliders kept coming between ground-directed bombings, shellings and machine-gunnings of British positions.
“I looked toward Peloponnesus and as far as I could see there were two continuous black lines of aircraft moving in opposite directions like two flights of locusts. One was coming toward Malemi with parachutists and bombs, the other was going north empty to get more.”
These transport planes were taking heavy losses, too. Forty-three planes and gliders were downed by smoking guns that the Stukas and Schmitters tried to destroy.
“I never shall forget the bravery of one English sergeant who had his arm shot away at the shoulder by a shell. He propped himself against the Bofors and kept on directing the fire until he fainted and fell. And every now and then would come the uncanny, slow pealing of the bells from Mongonia Monastery.”
Englishmen, Australians, New Zealanders and Maoris, fighting desperately to hold Malemi Airdrome against Nazi parachutists, knew that they were guinea pigs in a rehearsal of the hoped-for Nazi air invasion of England. But they had little time for reflection as they fought for their lives under the merciless sun of Crete.
Directing their Stuka attack by walkie-talkie radios, in the hands of observers dropped by parachute, the Nazis slowly, and at a terrific cost in men, began to make gains in their effort to silence the Bofors guns buried in pits around the red rectangle of Malemi. Their losses in men and aircraft were heavy. The Cretan airdromes became so glutted with smashed Junkers, Messerschmitts and gliders that it was impossible for the troop-carrying Junkers to land.
Then the Germans were commanded to land anywhere, regardless of cost. The only place left was a narrow strip of rocky beach between Malemi and Suda. They landed there, aided somewhat by the Junkers' low-landing speed, but often crashed. Every hundred yards there was a crushed, emptied troop carrier.
What really decided the battle for Malemi Airdrome was a tactical maneuver by German parachutists upon the ground (never mentioned in previous accounts) that became the turning point due to their daily reconnaissance and photographic knowledge of the terrain. Malemi is a long, clay-dust air field running parallel with the rocky southern Cretan shore. Northward, bordering the airdrome, lie ranges of stony hills and mountains, out of which comes the Tavaritos river that winds past the western end of the air field, where its stony course enters the sea.
The builders of the airdrome, to keep the sudden heavy rains that rush down the hills from washing away the air field, had devised a big masonry drainage ditch twelve feet deep. The month being May, when rains are unknown, the channel had only a few inches of water in the bottom. Learning their lesson from the annihilation of the first parachutists, the Germans dropped succeeding batches at the eastern (open) end and the western (river) end of the long, deep drain. Instead of attacking the New Zealanders or English and Australian anti-aircraft immediately up the rocky hills or across the fire-swept runway, the Nazis dropped into the bottom of the culvert and remained there while British positions were dive-bombed.
Even after the severest pounding the anti-aircraft guns were still unsilenced. At times they played dead, withholding fire. The Nazis were uncertain whether the crews were killed or not.
“At this point Jerry did something I never expected to see again,” said an Australian officer. “He sent down a two-motored Messerschmitt 110 to test whether we were really silenced. First he ‘dragged’ the field at ever-descending heights. We held our fire. Then he flew directly over without firing a shot, at a 15-to-20-foot height, practically begging us to give away our situation. Still we held fire.
“Finally, he came down and landed amid wrecked gliders and Junkers on the field. Like a mother partridge he taxied back and forth, up and down, over and over again. Ten times. Then he cut loose. He gunned his motors and his wheels were just lifting from the runway when we hit him. He crashed into the sea.”
Attacks by Stukas and 109s based on the islet at Kythera became ferocious. Of the eighty-two men who had manned the original positions, only sixteen escaped. Mortars and artillerymen dropped by parachute combined their fire with Stuka bombs and rendered the guns useless. There began a game of hide-and-seek in the stony hills. The Anzacs had by no means given up hope of recovering the airdrome. Although cut off, they were encouraged by seeing the Navy chop to pieces a German convoy of Greek fishing boats and small steamers when they tried to land.
But the Nazis not only dropped elite parachute troops upon Malemi. Giving great depth to their operations, they continued dropping many Bavarian mountain troops in the hills. Besides, loads of ordinary Reichswehr landed in crashed Junkers along the beachfront. The entire operation was thus conceived: shock troops—seventeen-and eighteen-year-old parachutists—followed by mountaineer regulars using parachutes as conveyance, and finally airborne regular troops for reserve.
Three days later the New Zealanders were still maneuvering to recapture the field and had a good position for attack. The Nazi commander, knowing this, sent a message by a prisoner to the New Zealand commander, Colonel Allen, saying: “Surrender or we shall send more Stukas to dive-bomb you out of existence.”
The message had an ironical side because the Stukas were already dive-bombing intensively. Colonel Allen, who was later killed in the western desert, wrote carefully in pencil at the bottom of the Nazi warning: You can go to hell.
The German master-plan, in taking Crete wholly by airborne troops and parachutists, is of particular importance because the Nazis, having failed to invade England by sea, may drive a preceding wedge of air troops into some remote corner of the British Isles (such as southern Ireland or northern Scotland) in an attempt to divert British aircraft there while invading elsewhere.
In reckoning the possibilities, it must be kept in mind that in taking Crete, Germany had only one small warship—a single Italian destroyer which was blasted when trying to bring in an armada of German-laden Greek schooners.
Everything else, from the opening bomb to the last Red Cross packet, was carried by air. Even the daylight aspect of the seaborne convoy had Messerschmitt protection. After the British fleet got among the mosquito fleet of Greek coastal boats, the latter simply did not exist. When the few survivors returned to Piraeus, this correspondent there ascertained that the terrified crews had deserted, leaving the Nazis without sea conveyance. Yet the invasion went on anyway, by air.
The Germans were discreet about the number of troops carried by air to Crete because of its bearing on a possible mass invasion of England. But at least 20,000 men were carried in a week of constant shuttling by Junkers. On the first day alone in the neighborhood of Herakleion, General Freyburg estimated, Junkers averaged sixty landings hourly for ten uninterrupted hours.
Have Americans gra
sped the idea that once air domination is obtained over an area of 500 miles, any number of troops up to and including a full division can be transported there with full equipment?
Malemi yielded much more slowly than the Nazis expected. The original plan called for 500 parachutists, 5000 paratroops and 15,000 seaborne troops. The parachutists were supposed to get Malemi in two hours. Actually, it required more than 1000 chutists to obtain mastery in three days. And three days later the Nazis were still being pounded at a range of about 4000 yards from the village of Galata to the east by New Zealand gunners. Even on the second day the Maoris, shouting war dance songs, were able to make a two-mile charge with fixed bayonets directly into the teeth of the rapid-firing guns of the Nazis in the culvert north of Malemi. Furthermore, at Herakleion not a single parachutist was left alive from the scores dropped within the city.
“We kept everything within the city's perimeter absolutely clean,” said one anti-aircraft officer, who after his gun was destroyed escaped the Nazi dive-bombing in a small rowboat from the end of Herakleion's jetty. Picked up by the cruiser Hobart, he witnessed the destruction of nineteen German schooners in three days.
The layman may ask, where were the British aircraft while English, Australian, New Zealand, Maori, Black Watch, Argylls and Royal Marines were suffering punishment from the air? Another officer, who was at the RAF field in Libya when Hurricanes left for Crete, spoke with admiration of the pilots. Few returned.
Why, it may be asked, did Britain not send transport planes laden with her own parachute troops, from Africa to Crete? The answer is that Britain was simply not prepared, either by training or in quantity of planes. Germany was transporting troops from Athens, a distance equal to that from Cairo to Crete, but Germany was wealthy in Junkers and had obtained fighter domination over Crete through bombing attacks from Kythera and Rhodes.
Weller's War Page 9
