Unconquerable Crete: An Epic Poem Read online

Unconquerable Crete: An Epic Poem

  by David Pratt

  Copyright 2012 by David Pratt

  Published by the author

  Visit David Pratt’s web site at Davidpratt.ca

  ISBN: 978-0-9880351-0-2

  UNCONQUERABLE CRETE

  When breezes blow down from the hills they bring

  the sound of goat bells and the scent of thyme,

  wild thyme, over the rows of plain white graves.

  Set in an olive grove at Souda Bay,

  meticulously kept beside the sea,

  roses among the stones, the cemetery

  is final home to fifteen hundred men

  from Britain, New Zealand, and Australia,

  who died in Crete in 1941.

  The isle of Crete! Birthplace of mighty Zeus,

  King Minos and Queen Pasiphae, her son

  the Minotaur, and Ariadne; scene

  of the deeds of Theseus and Dedalus,

  a land of gods and heroes, snow on her

  mountains, her lowlands rich with vines and flowers.

  When shown the plans, Hitler was sceptical.

  The prospects of success are slim, he said,

  moreover, we will lose too many men.

  But Goering spoke persuasively: with Crete

  in German hands we can protect the oil

  fields of Romania. The battle, he believed,

  would be a triumph for the Luftwaffe.

  And General Student brimmed with confidence,

  his paratroops, elite of the elite,

  were keen, superbly trained, and battle-fit.

  On Crete the general, Freyberg, had his doubts.

  I do not think the island can be held,

  he said to General Wavell, C in C

  the Middle East; we should review the plan.

  He had in all some forty thousand troops,

  Allied and Greek, but problematically

  some thirty thousand were evacuees

  just shipped from the catastrophe in Greece,

  disorganized, demoralized, without their guns.

  The Crete Division there had been wiped out.

  But Churchill wouldn’t budge: Crete must be held.

  So Freyberg made his dispositions, troops

  placed to protect the airfields and the coast.

  From Ultra intercepts the general knew

  the German plan, but he could not betray

  this information by his strategy;

  better that Crete be lost than Ultra blown.

  There was one factor Freyburg overlooked,

  as did the Germans, whose Intelligence

  had told them that the Cretan populace

  would welcome them. For several centuries

  Cretans had fought their Turkish overlords,

  defying torture, durance vile, and death

  and the Venetians centuries before.

  (A Cretan boy, training in Palestine

  with paratroops, was fumbling with his straps;

  the British sergeant asked if he was scared.

  ‘You ask a Cretan if he is afraid?’

  the boy replied, threw off his parachute

  and leapt out of the plane.)

  For weeks, the German bombers came at dawn

  pounding Rethymno and Iraklion,

  the capital, Haniá, the naval base

  at Souda Bay, the three airfields on Crete.

  Stukas flew in, dive-bombed the AA guns

  and Messerschmitts strafed anything that moved.

  The dozen planes held by the RAF,

  vastly outgunned, withdrew across the sea.

  On May the twentieth, after the big

  but usual early morning raid, the crews

  of AA guns stood down and went for chow.

  Soon they began to hear a hum like hives

  of angry bees, that then became a roar

  as German transports, Junker 52s

  came in across the coast, flying too low

  for antiaircraft guns to bring them down.

  Some planes were towing gliders, each of which

  contained a dozen men. They landed on

  the beach west of Haniá, in vineyards, and

  in open spaces and in river beds.

  They aimed to take the Maleme airfield

  and Hill 107 overlooking it.

  Some gliders fell into the sea, and some

  were shot out of the air. Some crashed and killed

  their occupants, or met with heavy fire

  as soon as German paratroops emerged.

  The German general in command was killed

  together with his staff when turbulence

  ruptured the tow-line of his glider near

  the island of Aegina south of Greece.

  Then came the parachutes, across the sky,

  white for the men, blue for the officers,

  and yellow for the medical supplies.

  The paratroops, who dived from transport planes

  about four hundred feet above the ground,

  armed with their lethal Schmeisser tommy guns

  were vulnerable for fifteen seconds as

  they hung beneath their floating parachutes.

  Aim at their boots, the Kiwi sergeants said;

  many were dead before they hit the ground.

  A few of the defenders aimed their guns

  at the jump hatches. The Germans were in strings

  attached to static lines; when the first man

  was hit, he dragged the rest out of the plane,

  unable to deploy their parachutes.

  The men that made it to the ground were rushed

  by the defence. A squad of paratroops

  dropped near a centre for field punishment;

  the commandant released the prisoners

  and distributed guns; they soon shot down

  a hundred paratroops. Another squad

  came down close to an army hospital.

  They forced the CO to surrender, then

  they shot him and killed several wounded men,

  then used the other patients as a screen

  in their advance. But they were soon cut off,

  forced to surrender, or shot down.

  When Germans came down near the villages

  the Cretans were awaiting them. Their guns

  had all been seized by the authorities

  after a brief revolt two years before.

  With axes, spades, clubs, knives, stones, and bare hands

  women and men fell on the enemy

  before they could release their parachutes.

  A farmer, Nicholas Manolakakis,

  came back to his small house at breakfast time.

  He heard a plane go over, flying low;

  he saw his son come running for the house,

  there was a shot, the boy fell on his face.

  His mother ran to help the boy, was shot

  and fell beside him. Then the paratroop

  landed close by. Nick grabbed his pruning hook

  and charged. He struck the German in the neck.

  Another parachute came down behind

  the house. Manolakakis ran, and as

  the German drew his gun, he slashed upward

  with the sickle and cut the German’s throat.

  Another paratrooper from the stick

  came down to earth some fifty feet away

  and raised his gun, but he had not unclipped

  his chute; a gust of wind unbalanced him,

  the shot went wide and Manolakakis

  was upon him. He seized the German’s gun

&nb
sp; fired at three paratroopers, killing them,

  dashed to the south field of the farm, where five

  more troops had landed, killed them all,

  then saw the two last members of the squad

  come drifting down; he shot them in mid-air

  and when the wind, blowing their parachutes,

  dragged their dead bodies through the grass

  Manolakakis ran fast after them

  firing madly until the clip was spent.

  He had despatched a squad of thirteen men,

  and so came home, and placed his wife and son

  upon the bed, an icon in between,

  and at their heads he set a holy light.

  That afternoon, a second wave arrived

  outside Rethymno and Iraklion

  endeavouring to seize the airfields there.

  Australian and British troops met them,

  killed hundreds of them, captured hundreds more,

  and forced the remnant of them to dig in.

  As evening came, the German paratroops

  had not accomplished any of their goals;

  the three airfields remained in Allied hands.

  The ground was strewn with bodies of the dead

  and many foe were cut off in vineyards

  or olive groves. Deprived of water, food,

  and sweating in their winter uniforms,

  most of them fell asleep when darkness came.

  New Zealanders still held Hill 107

  and also held the east perimeter

  of the contested field at Maleme.

  Now only on the airfield’s western side

  a scattering of Germans, lightly armed

  and short of ammunition, stayed in place.

  These paratroopers thought the battle lost,

  one vigorous attack would wipe them out.

  And General Student, in his main HQ

  in Athens, in the Hotel Grande Bretagne,

  retained his pistol by his side all night,

  in the event the worst came to the worst.

  On the New Zealand side, inadequate

  communications made the officers

  uncertain of the strength of the defence;

  appeals from the commanding officer

  for reinforcements on Hill 107

  had no result. At midnight, thinking that

  the airfield defences had been overrun

  the colonel in command made a withdrawal.

  The airfield