Beach at the village of Sfakia: Evacuation of Allied troops from Sfakia

Simon Donnelly, Senior Interactor, IWM

Simon Donnelly

I've been asked to talk about the evacuation of Allied troops from Crete.

The story of what happened to cause the withdrawal from Maleme is complex and chaotic, a combination of wireless communication breakdown and poor appreciation of the true situation.

The action at 42nd Street and Galatas gave Commander in Chief of Creforce Bernard Freyberg valuable time.
But by the morning of the 27th May Freyberg was still without orders about evacuation. All he had received was the suggestion by Commander in Chief Middle East Wavell that he should retreat eastwards, a course which risked disaster.

In default of sensible orders from Cairo, Freyberg made his own preparations.

On the night of the 26th/27th May he met with Brigadier Laycock's commandos as they disembarked at Suda Bay.
He informed Laycock of his intentions to withdraw to Sfakia (Sfakion) and that 'Layforce' would help provide the rearguard.

At Creforce HQ secret papers began to be burned and preparations made for the move southwards.

Rumours of a withdrawal became widespread, many troops having seen this all before in Greece. The road into the mountains became crowded with leaderless men and deserters.
Many of these people made an already erratic communications system even worse by stealing dispatch riders motorcycles.

Unable to secure authorisation from Churchill at around 15.00 hours on the 27th May Wavell approved withdrawal to Sfakia (Sfakion) and informed London of his actions. Churchill finally bowing to the inevitable.

However, a withdrawal from an apparently winning situation as has seen from previous presentations, leading to a full-scale retreat, began. The route chosen from Maleme, which we have taken today, and from Rethymnon further down the coast, which we will be visiting later, was to here, to Sfakia. It was a fishing village, not a port, but the only place available given the vulnerability of northern ports to the Luftwaffe.

From Maleme to here, where it was proposed to lift the troops off over this open beach, was some 25 miles - as the crow flies, from Rethymnon, some 20 miles. But they weren't crows! Their path took them along the northern coast road and thence up and over the mountainous spine of Crete. The steep road, as we have experienced today, led them around hairpin bends flanked by precipitous gorges and ravines, all to be negotiated, with their wounded, in the blistering heat of Crete's early summer. The actual distance covered was probably 3 or 4 times 25 or 20 miles.

What transport they had quickly ran out of petrol and blocked their passage, having to be manhandled off the road and down into the gorges - mention if we see any. The route became littered with the debris of a retreating army. Rifles, helmets, gas masks, ration boxes, stores, ammunition boxes, uniforms and officer's suitcases were strewn along the way as the troops, exhausted from days of fighting, strove to reach Sfakia with its hope of rescue. Many Cretans saw this as an unexpected armoury as discarded equipment was their only source of weapons other than those items captured from German paratroopers.

In the heat it was water that became an obsession. There were few wells, and the men were tortured by thirst. A New Zealand soldier recalled this one scene on the road to Sfakion;

"Around the well were Greeks, Aussies, Tommies and N. Zeders all mad with thirst and I have never seen such a terrible and raving crazy mob. Rifle pullthroughs and anything in the shape of a string were joined together to make a rope upon which tins, tin hats or anything that would hold water was tied and used to drag water from the well."

If the men in this desperate plight could be called lucky it was that they were lightly pursued. General Julius Ringel, an old Austrian Nazi, who took over control of the battle from General Kurt Student, neglected the route south - he refused to believe that the enemy would try to escape through a small fishing village at the end of an unfinished mountain road - and as a result eased Freyberg's problems. As did the progressive reduction in strength of the Luftwaffe, which began their delayed move to Poland on the 27th May for their date with Barbarossa. This spared troops on the road to Sfakia from constant air attacks. This also meant that Ringel was not properly informed by air reconnaissance of the enemy movement southwards and never changed his priorities. Pressure was also coming from Berlin for a speedy conclusion to the Cretan campaign and that advances should be eastward to link up with German enclaves in Rethymnon and Heraklion.

My late Uncle Edmund, a Royal Marine, was taken prisoner in the retreat and narrowly escaped execution by German paratroopers. Still smarting from their terrible losses they were in no mood to let prisoners live. Edmund was wearing a discarded battledress carrying the Australian shoulder flash. Now, the Australians had given the paratroopers a hard time. Only the timely intervention of their officer, a German who had lived in Manchester pre-war saved him. Quizzing him on Manchester's Old Trafford football ground, home of Manchester United (a stones throw from IWMN), he pronounced him English. Edmund and his fellow marines had taken refuge in a church, hiding under the altar, hoping for a peaceful capture. It wasn't to be. His fellow marines wearing German paratroop boots to replace their tattered own, were taken behind the church and shot!
After serving on a burial detail, the contorted limbs of the dead having to be broken to enable them to be laid flat, Edmund helped build a memorial to the German dead before being shipped to Poland to work on a farm as a P.O.W. for the rest of the war.

His abiding memory, oddly, of that time was of the overpowering fragrance of the roadside spring flowers.

On the night of the 29th / 30th May German troops under the command of Colonel Utz, occupied the Askifou Plain - that Michael Winters (Canberra artist) talked about a little while ago - and soon after dawn pushed into the pass towards Sfakia (Sfakion). It was here that Utz's men met with a force of Australians & Marines fighting a rearguard action.

Utz's men, as a result, had to fight their way slowly forward around a series of demolitions and it was late in the afternoon of the 30th May before they reached the final defensive position covering the evacuation beach at Sfakia (Sfakion). From here they threatened to cut off the retreating troops at the head of the escarpment overlooking Sfakia.

2nd Lieutenant Charles Hazlitt Upham - a peacetime sheep farmer from New Zealands South Island - was sent out to deal with the threat. During the fighting one NZ soldier on the heights of the ravine was 'held by the legs so that he could lean over far enough to fire his bren'. The Germans, caught without cover, retreated. 2nd Lieutenant Upham was one of only three men to be awarded the VC twice. In fact, the only man to do so in the Second World War for acts of bravery on Crete and later near El Alamein.

Utz called for Stuka dive-bombers as well as artillery support but the Stukas never came, the culprit? Again, 'Barbarossa' which had always imposed its own priorities on the invasion of Crete, and the artillery support didn't reach Utz until the 31st May.

Whilst down here on the beach the troubles of the wretched, exhausted troops were far from over. As a fishing village it had scant facilities for embarking a retreating army.
In the caves along the sides of the nearby ravines there lurked hundreds of disorganised stragglers, mixed with Greek refugees; some carrying their most treasured possessions including cooking pots, blankets and even a green parrot in a brass cage.

Admiral Cunningham, in Egypt, well aware of the lack of air cover, nevertheless signalled the fleet "We cannot let them down" and sent a naval force (Force D) to affect a night rescue, hoping by this action to escape the worst attentions of the ubiquitous Stuka dive-bombers. He also sent a further naval force, Force B, to Heraklion also to attempt a night rescue for the garrison trapped there with no access to the road to Sfakia. This was an especially hazardous operation being so close to the Luftwaffe bases on mainland Greece and Dodecanese islands. The Royal Navy was to pay a fearful price in men and ships for this venture, which I expect Nick Hewitt (Temporary Exhibitions Officer, HMS Belfast) will speak of in more detail later.

Freyberg was ordered out by flying boat. He agonised over leaving his men, but he was given no choice. After all, he had the precious ULTRA secret, the Bletchley Park code-breaking system that had forewarned him of the impending airborne attack.
My father was at Bletchley Park and tells me they knew chapter and verse about the invasion, down to the German order of battle. The British were extremely anxious that their reading of German signals should not be compromised by Freyberg falling into German hands.

During the night evacuation of Sfakia a cordon of troops with fixed bayonets ringed the beach ready to use them on anyone who tried to rush for the boats, the whalers and lighters which ferried men out to the Navy vessels lying offshore.

As the troops filed down to the beach that night they kept their hand on the man in front so stragglers not on the regimental register couldn't break in between them. Some, thwarted in escaping by sea, in desperation took to the hills and sought sanctuary with Cretan peasants others fought on with Cretan partisans.
There were many injustices. The remains of the Greek Army were abandoned as were Cretans who resisted the invaders fiercely, also many ordinary service troops - non-combatants really - who had nevertheless fought bravely in the retreat. But priority had to be established to prevent this small beach being overrun by a disorganised mob.

Many survivors spoke warmly of their reception aboard the Navy's ships.

"For many of the troops, the ships seemed a paradise of discipline and order after the filth and chaos of the retreat."

But they still had to run the gauntlet of the Luftwaffe on their way to Egypt. It was Tedders (C-in-C RAF in Cairo) and indeed Wavell's lack of confidence in the whole Greek campaign, which contributed to the lack of air cover. They sent inferior equipment to Crete, reluctant to risk losing what scant resources they had then available to defend Egypt. The Luftwaffe had quickly shot obsolete Gloucester Gladiators and poorly performing Brewster Buffaloes out of the sky and reigned supreme.

Cunningham was asked to make a further rescue attempt at the urging of the Australian PM. He did, and it succeeded despite being attacked on route by JU88 bombers. Conceivably, due to the depletion of the Luftwaffe as they were recalled for the attack on Russia further rescue attempts may have succeeded but he wasn't to know then.

Colonel Utz's request for air support finally arrived and promptly began to strafe the beaches despite white flags being displayed.

Well, what of the human cost of this battle? During the battle for Crete over 1700 ANZAC and British troops were killed, a similar number wounded and nearly 12,000 taken prisoner. The cost to the Cretans was high. The occupying forces continued the campaign of retaliation and murder started by Student and Ringel earlier. 3474 Cretans fell before Nazi firing squads! The cost to Germany 3,352 dead.

The airfields won at such a terrible price in German lives were used briefly to stage supplies across to Rommel in 1942, but the main function for the Germans was to guard & close the Balkan flank.

This relatively brief campaign, lasting 9 or 10 days, had I believe a far-reaching effect on the course of the Second World War. Specifically its effective delay of Germany's invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, originally scheduled for the beginning of May, didn't begin until the end of June. Also its influence on the allies' future use and development of airborne forces. Perhaps these are areas for discussion in Garth Pratten's (Australian War Memorial PhD Scholar, Deakin University) forthcoming symposium tomorrow.

Unfortunately Mr Gotts, a veteran survivor of this retreat and evacuation, was unable to attend due to ill health and the fact that this is still a very emotional subject for him to talk about. Let us all wish him well for his recovery and thank Brad King (Acting Director, HMS Belfast) for recounting.