CRETE CAMPAIGN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 1942, Page 4

CRETE CAMPAIGN

AS SEEN BY NEW ZEALAND SOLDIER PRIVATE M. C. HILL-RENNIE’S STORY. LANDING OF THE PARACHUTISTS. An account by the late Private Melville C. Hill-Ren-nie of the German attack on Crete, in the northern spring of 1941, t given to an American correspondent, Allan A. Michie, was published in Harper’s Magazine and is reprinted beloiv. Prior to his enlistment in 1940, Private Hill-Rennie was a member of the advertising staff of the ‘ ‘ Wairarapa Tim es-Age. ’ ’ He received his baptism of fire in Greece and served from first to last in the Crete campaign, but was. killed in the later British offensive in Libya. Following is a first instalment of Private Hill-Rennie’s lucid and informative narrative of the Crete campaign:—

After our evacuation from Greece we were landed on Crete and took up positions on the hills above Canea, the main town. Before the Greek campaign there had been only three battalions on the island, but with our arrival the defending force was raised to around twenty-seven thousand men. Most of them belonged to scratch outfits, however, hurriedly thrown together, and they didn’t have the valuable experience of working alongside one another under fire. It was a pleasant little island, very much like the Greek countryside, with rocky brown hillsides and fields covered with ripening oats and green olive trees. We had air raids virtually every day on the few small harbours round the island, but they didn’t bother us up on the hills, and in the evenings my pals and I would walk into the quiet villages and drink country wine with the natives.

About four days before the invasion started on May 20th things began to get hot —planes were coming over more or less continuously, but they left us alone and went for the three makeshift airdromes on the island. We learned later that they managed to knock out on the ground the few Hurricanes and Brewster Buffaloes which the R.A.F. had there, so that on the day of the invasion not one British plane was fit to leave the ground. With this intensified attention from Jerry we thought that something was about to happen so we took the precaution of digging slit trenches about three or four feet deep all through the hills overlooking Canea.

We turned in as usual at about ninethirty on the night of May 19th. Lying in my blankets under the olive trees in the bright starlight, I remember hearing a chap with a beautiful voice singing “Empty Saddles in the Old Corral” off in the distance before I dropped off to sleep. HUNDREDS OF PLANES.

The next morning after breakfast our platoon, as duty platoon for the day, began to climb up to the hilltops to take up guard duty against parachute landings. Suddenly one of the boys said, “Listen.” We all stopped and cocked our ears. Off in the distance, but growing louder every second, we could hear the drone of a large formation, of planes; then the planes themselves appeared. There were literally hundreds of them, stringing back out along the sky on their way over from Greece, and I could see that the planes in front were losing height rapidly to come down to work on us. Just as I dropped into a slit trench I counted eight bombs tumbling out of the belly of the leading plane, a Dorniei’ Do 17, and with a sickening sensation I saw them go crashing down below us into the middle of my company’s bivouac area which we had just left. \ No sooner had we put our heads down in the trenches than the Messerschmitt fighters swooped down with their machine-guns rattling. After them came the Stukas, the dive bombers, and every now and then when I dared look upward I could see their bombs peel away from the planes at the bottom of their dives. We didn’t dare look up often, however, because the ’schmitter pilots could spot our faces and would let us have it.

As it was they were coming down to forty or fifty feet above the ground to fire their cannon and guns. They were hedgehopping across the olive trees, firing intermittent bursts, and I lay hugging the ground at the bottom of my trench wondering if the next burst would get me. This initial strafing went on for one long hour and by the end of that time we knew that this was no ordinary air raid. Jerry was trying to keep our noses in the ground, and we knew that this was his way of preparing for parachute landings. Wave after wave of planes came over us—Messerschmitts, Stukas, then Dorniers—as regular as clockwork. No sooner had the sound of the engines of one wave passed over than a second wave appeared. Jerry used everything he had to demoralise us —screaming bombs, whistlers, even sirens on the planes themselves. The noise was terrific, but we had surprisingly few casualties at. the end of that hour, largely because most of us had sense enough to hug the ground and not stand up and offer ourselves as targets.

GLIDERS APPEAR. There was a distinct lull as the last wave of planes disappeared in the distance and I scrambled up to the hilltop observation post to stand guard against parachutists. As I was looking out to sea I heard a new, whirring noise directly behind me. Turning round, I saw a big black machine coming directly overhead. It was a glider. It passed down the hill and pancaked into the ground where our troops were stationed. The pilot’s leg was broken as he landed his glider, which was packed with machine-guns, ammunition, and medical supplies. He turned out to be an unarmed youngster of fifteen. He said that he had left Vienna only four weeks before. The German officers had told him that he would be quite safe on Crete, with experienced soldiers to protect him and only a few badly armed Greeks and Cretans as-op-position. We didn’t have much time to waste on him. Shortly after he landed, a large formation of Junker Ju 525, 'troop

transports, appeared above us, circled round and picked out positions on which to land their troops. They were only a few hundred feet above the ground. One by one we could see black shapes plummet out of the planes, then jerk upward again as their chutes opened. There were about fifteen men from each plane. Other chutes came down bearing canisters and large boxes carrying supplies, guns and ammunition. They floated down just out of range and went out of sight behind a hill half a mile away. - In an instant there came the sound of rapid, concentrated firing. Most of the Jerries were wiped out before their feet hit the ground. The others were picked off as they struggled out of their chute harness and tried to organise into parties for their defence. Our boys skipped aoout from tree to tree, firing from the hip as they ran, and in a few minutes not a single Jerry out of this first lot remained alive.

NAZIS SURPRISED.

There was no f doubt that the Nazis were surprised at the reception they got. As we checked later from captured Jerries, they thought that Crete was defended only by Greeks and Cretans. Their intelligence had not told them of the arrival of strong British units after the Greek evacuation. As they jumped from their planes they expected to have plenty of time in which to organise their attacks on the island strong points. Instead they found themselves immediately on the defensive, fighting for their lives even before their feet touched the red earth of Crete. Admittedly their expedition was well-organised, planned down to the last detail . The chutes they used were of different colours—the noncom in charge of each party used a brown-and-white chute and the idea was that all the others were to make for his chute as soon as they landed. Chutes carrying ammo were red; medical supplies, pink; food white-and-blue, etc. Every day‘‘these colours were changed.

All over the island landings were taking place at the same time. These first landings continued for half an hour, although no more were dropped in our area. I saw one plane head up into a dried-up river valley about half a mile away. The pilot must have misjudged his height. Anyway I counted thirty-five bodies drop from the plane —and not one parachute opened before the men hit the ground! A few minutes later a big Junker on its way back to Greece skimmed about fifty feet over my head. Its side doors wore still open and I could see one parachute caught on the door. Trailing out on the harness along the fuselage was the body of a Jerry. Probably he was still alive.

REINFORCEMENTS LANDED. About three thousand Nazis in all were landed that morning. Small par-' ties which landed at Heraklion and Retimo were beaten off immediately and those areas were never threatened again. Larger parties which landed at Canea, where we were, and at Maleme airdrome were killed outright, but a few score managed to hole up in a dry river bed next to the drome, where our guns couldn’t reach them. They managed to hold out until late in the afternoon, when hundreds more were dropped to reinforce them. As it turned out later, it was the resistance of this pocket which really enabled the Nazis to take the island; it was these Nazis who took and held Maleme drome, enabling the Germans to land strong reinforcements after their divebombers had driven us off it.