New Zealand site on battle for Crete....

check it out and it's photo galleries. some great stories....

www.nzhistory.net.nz/gallery/crete/index.htm

~E

 

excellent site Erich. Great find. especially like the article on the debate on whose fault the lose of Melame.

 

This is, I think, the best 'Crete' website.

The Maleme controversy is well-covered by ,for instance, Beevor. It's rather like reading about the Suvla Bay debacle in WW1, you're almost shouting 'Noooooo - don't do that !!' as you read on....

I read in one account that at the crucial time, it is conceivable that one well-placed Bren on the airfield could have made the difference. A classic case of the soldiers - in this case the New Zealanders - fighting with tremendous courage and skill, but some of the officers showing, as Montgomery would have put it, ' a lack of grip '.

 

Cheak out www.nzetc.org/ it has New Zealands Official history of the battle for Crete written by Dan Davin who served on Crete with the New Zealanders.

I have Antony Beevors book and The official history by Dan Davin blows it away the book is excellent becuase it is not a bias book it gives praise where it is due but also lays blame where it is due and there was plenty to go around.

My grandfather was at malame with the 22nd battalion headquarters company he was in transport but fighting as an infantry man in and around Pirgos.

It,s sickening to read about the battle and what happened not one of the rifle companies in fifth brigade was defeated in battle in the first 24 hours we tore the germans up every where our soldiers did everything that was asked of them and we had the germans beaten they have admitted they would not have got through the first 24 hours if we had counter attacked and we had orders to counter attack and they were not carried out the brigade suffered complete command failure in the first twenty four hours it wasn,t just the 22nd battalion commander who pulled off hill 107 against orders who is at fault the battalion commanders of the 21st and 23rd who were close by did nothing to correct the mistake when they had ample time and manpower at that stage of the battle to do so and the Brigade Commander hargest was a disaster he put in the worst performance of a New Zealand brigade commander in WW2.

It,s all there to read and i reccommend you also read the individual battalion histories which are also available on the site as they also give additional valuable information as well as other units because they were all fighting as infantry.

18th battalion
19th battalion
20th battalion
21st battalion
22nd battalion
23rd battalion
28th Maori Battalion
27th Machine gun Battalion

Divisional Cavalry
Petrol company- these guys held Galatas for 6 days repulsing repeated attacks by third parachute regiment and they didn,t have any infantry training and no mortar,artillary support a great effort.

Engineer unit that fought as infantry
artillary units that fought as infantry

Take the time to read all this stuff and you will get such an understanding of what happened.

Forget Antony Beevors book it doesn,t compare.

 

Our officers on Crete were to old they were all WW1 veterans brave men but really didn,t understand modern war in WW1 things change by the month in an airbourne attack they change by the hour and you have to react quick they were just to old and slow.

A lot of people can,t believe what happened on Crete and they look for the answer on the battle field but if you want to understand you need to look off it to the years between WW1 and WW2 when war broke out in WW2 the New Zealand army was not only tiny only about 1 battalion with about 1500 reserves but the army had not conducted a brigade sized exercise since 1919 and officers were not allowed to go overseas and train with other armies until 1934 so the result was when war broke out our officers were made up of old men from WW1 with no knowledge of modern war and we had no equipment the germans were rampaging across Europe fighting with combined arms and our guys are standing on the parade ground with broom handles because they didn,t have rifles.

Before our forces headed to Greece our senior commanders knew there were problems i have a book and it has a quote "the weakness is in the battalion commanders there is going to have to been cleanout".

I am trying to find the book but anyway there was nothing our commanders could do there just wasn,t time we were going to Greece and just had to make do with what we had and hope the problems didn,t bite us and we could fix things when we go back but sadly the problems did bite and bite hard.

At the end of the day when you take everything into account we were not prepared for what we were getting into and it was a certainty that at some point in the early going while we were finding our feet we were going to suffer a disaster and Crete was it.