For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

became the CSM with four sections under me. The section was comprised of infantry guys, drivers and gunners who had rifles and ASC men, and we moved backwards and forwards, laid wire in the area in sporadic attempts to make ourselves useful. I got friendly with an innkeeper in the village of Galatos. So we would “stand to” about 5 o’clock in the morning, keeping ourselves warm by having the odd liqueur.’

      Alexander Rodgers, Sapper, NZ Engineers, remembered everything being a proper shambles:

      ‘We had no ammunition, no guns, no nothing. Eventually we managed to pick up the odd rifle and the odd rounds of ammunition; some had a machine-gun. The artillery was not far away from us. We were at Maleme aerodrome.’

      From Canea, after a fair route march, Keith Newth, Corporal of Signals, had joined the encamped NZ 20th Battalion:

      ‘I picked my signal station and dug holes and put ourselves in. And then every morning we would “stand to”, I think it was just at daylight and until about an hour after daybreak, expecting the paratroopers which we knew were coming at any time, and then we would stand down. Colonel Kippenberger sent back to Egypt for entertainment for the troops, such things as cards, you know, and that type of thing. Cairo sent the New Zealand Band over. Well, those boys were giving a Sunday afternoon concert and all of a sudden this sweep of planes was coming across – “Oh, here’s our boys” – but it wasn’t and the next minute they started to scream down. It was a squadron of Stukas. As you can imagine, band instruments, they went one way, the men the other.

      That was our first real taste of what it was going to be like to be the actual targets for these Stuka bombers with their screamers on them. And that was a terrible noise to hear. Then we went to our main camp at Galatas; that was quite a big village, and I set up my signal station there and “Kippy” had the biggest house in the village. It was a big white house, so that was to be his Battalion Headquarters. And I remember in the basement of this place there were 20 or 30 huge wine casks – they would hold 600 or 700 litres at least, probably more. Well some of the boys got a little bit troublesome on wine, so Kippy had every one of them staked and they were smashed to let the stuff pour out, which was sacrilege as far as we were concerned, but it had to be done of course.’

       On 20 May 1941, after very heavy bombing, the Germans, who had complete mastery of the air, proceeded to land parachute and glider-borne troops in their thousands, on and around the airfields in Crete. In so doing they suffered severe losses.

      Captain George Brown recalled:

      ‘The morning of the invasion we had just finished breakfast, I think I was about to shave, when the first bombing planes came over. We had a few casualties. We took up positions but no parachutists landed in our area; they were really concentrating on Maleme aerodrome. There were three aerodromes on the island. The Australians further to the east were looking after two of them, and it was our job, New Zealand’s job mostly, to deny Maleme to the Germans. It was our 5th Brigade that was centred around Maleme aerodrome, and we must remember that we did not have the full three brigades, we only had two – the rest had gone direct from Greece to Egypt. The General had formed composite battalions of Cretans, Greeks, odds and sods. We lost our company commander and our second in command. The company commander went to a composite Greek Battalion – he was killed later – and the second in command went to another company of our battalion.

      Eventually we were told that we were to counter-attack Maleme aerodrome. There was a piece of land, a river valley, west of the aerodrome, that was practically undefended, and the Germans had landed there by troop carriers and parachutists almost ad lib. The slaughter of the Germans was terrible, so I believe. We were to be relieved from Division Reserve by a battalion of Australians; they, however, arrived late, and it was General Freyberg’s instructions that we were not to move until we were relieved. Out at sea we could see flashes of guns and searchlights and we knew that the Navy was dealing with the seaborne troops that the Germans were sending over and that General Freyberg was concerned would arrive and attack Division, hence our staying there.