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
; 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