The Battle for Crete

THE BATTLE FOR CRETE

AS TOLD BY Arthur John “Tassie” Cusick

then aged 20 YEARS, pictured in Alexandria

In 1939 before the war started, as a member of the Royal Australian Navy,(RAN)  I was one of a class of eight who had been selected to do the Sonar Submarine Detection Course in HMS OSPREY, Portland, England.

When war was declared against Germany, our then Prime Minister, Mr Robert.G.Menzies, told the Royal Navy that they could keep my class of Submarine Detector for the duration.  I suppose he could not imagine that the war would last for six years.

On completion of the course we were sent to various Royal Navy Destroyers after serving in the R.N. for one year.  I was returned to the R.A.N. when they built the N CLASS Destroyers.  I went to the first of them to be commissioned the Napier, there were eight in all.  I went aboard in Greenwich, Scotland.  The ship was in the middle of her trials when we got the all clear.  We had a few settling down jobs, like taking a convoy to Iceland, half way to Russia.

We were then ordered out to the Mediterranean theatre of the war.  The sailors were most enthusiastic about the move for it was bitterly cold in the North Sea and the thought of some warm sun on our backs was great.

We arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, on the fourth of May to take part in the evacuation of our troops in Greece.  We knew that Crete would be the German’s next target and we prepared ourselves for it but, at the time, we could not guess it would be a long drawn out battle for six days with our casualties – NAVY 1829 and ARMY 1742.  The Navy’s butcher’s bill (casualties) alone was twice the number killed in Vietnam over the ten years we participated there.

Much has been written about the Merry Month of May but, on May 19^th, the only ones doing a ‘happy jig’ were the Germans, they were sweeping all before them.  The Fuehrer threatened to wring Churchill’s neck like a chicken, to which Churchill replied “Some chicken, some neck”.

Hitler approved the attack on Crete on ANZAC DAY 1941 and gave the task to his airborne divisions (PARACHUTIST), supported by a massive fleet of planes (1300 of them).  This mass of aircraft had been released when Hitler gave up trying to subdue England by air power.

The German Paratroops were brought into Crete by 650 giant lumbering troop carriers and 60 giant gliders.  When the curtain of dust and high explosive fumes thinned, the skies rained kaleidoscope confetti of parachutes on the waiting defenders.  2000 German Paratroops were dead before their feet touched the ground.  Fierce struggles were fought out in vineyards and olive groves.  Some German Battalions had lost 90% in the first hour of the battle.

As the days passed, the Germans were able to get on top of the British, Australian and New Zealand defenders.  Slowly they pushed them back to the sea and our job in the NAVY was once again to get them out to fight another day.  The Italian NAVY as usual, showed no desire to fight and was seldom sighted.

The Napier did two trips back to Egypt with soldiers plucked from the beach.  Our pick up place was Sfakia, a shingled beach with no wharf.  Both times we went in at night.  The German planes were dropping flares along the coast, but did not do so at Sfakia, probably because there was no wharf.  Enemy ground troops were only a mile away, but were held in a rear guard action by Australia and New Zealand troops.

The boat’s crews, sent to take off the soldiers, showed superb discipline in an operation that was difficult and fraught with danger.  Napier’s boats brought back 244 exhausted men, mainly New Zealanders with a large number of Maori who had reverted to their tribal custom of cutting off the enemies ears as war trophies.

Some of the soldiers had very bad wounds and our ship surgeon, who had specialised in civilian life (delivering babies), did a wonderful job patching those men up.

As soon as we had landed our troops in Egypt, we were on our way back to Sfakia.  We got underway before noon and in the afternoon the Stukas found us.  They looked like bees high in the sky with their yellow painted nose, when they made their swoop to release their bomb you could see the pilot.

We were pressing on to Sfakia at 30 knots and nosed onto the beach at about midnight.  It was a hard job for our beach master to decide who to take, but it was all done in a most efficient way and took 109 troops back to our destroyer.

The sailors quickly set about preparing for the coming of the dawn because they knew that dawn would bring the Stukas.

From first light, the soldiers set up their machine guns.  When the attack commenced the Stukas met a wall of shells and small arms fire.

Both sailors and soldiers knew they were fighting for their lives as they blazed away at their tormentors with a desperation that was matched only by the German pilots’ determination to destroy them.  The Gunscrew’s eyes followed the ugly shape of the Stukas as they hurtled down in vertical dives.  They aimed at the yellow painted noses of the dive bombers and when they glimpsed the begoggled face of the pilot at the moment before pulling out of his dive, they altered their aim to the cockpit with hate twisted faces as they looked into the face of the enemy.

The Stukas were determined to get us and still kept coming at us, dropping bombs that you swore could not miss, but each time the ship slewed round at the last moment, and the bombs fell astern.

Finally a bomb skimmed over our side and exploded underneath us.  The skip lurched forward, quivered and raced on with no apparent damage.  Shortly after that, the Germans left to re-fuel and bomb up again at their base.  Just as well they did, for without warning we came to a grinding halt.  Our port propeller shaft had seized and only quick action by the Stoker P.O. in the boiler room saved an explosion.

Our Engineer Officer informed the Captain it would take half an hour to repair the damage.  We wallowed their wondering if we could get going again before the Stukas got back.

We were lucky;  the Stukas did come back, but were shot down by our fighter aircraft.

Right on half an hour and we were underway again, but could only do 23 knots now, but we made it and were to make a third trip back to Crete but we never went because of our damaged condition.

When the battle was over we had lost the Cruiser, York, Glouster, Fiji, Calcutta and the Destroyers; Greyhound, Juno Kelly Kashmir, Hereward and Imperial.  Severely damaged beyond repair in Egypt were the Battleship Warspite and Barham, Aircraft Carrier.  Formidable; Cruisers, Orion, Dido, Destroyers, Kelvin and Nubian.

In addition, the Cruiser, Perth, Naid, Carlisle and the Destroyers; Napier, Kipling, Decoy, were out of action for periods of up to 3 months.  Nizam, Havelock and Kingston were non-operational for 2 weeks. These losses would normally only occur during a major fleet action.

The Germans had won Crete, but the price they paid was high.  By the end of the first day their casualties were more than the total number of their soldiers killed for the war.  More than 4000 Paratroops lost their lives and Hitler told his generals not to use them again against determined British Empire troops.

The good part was, we, in Napier, each got a week’s leave, whilst our repairs were done.  My special mates and I had a hell of a time in Cairo.

On our return, we looked over the harbour, at the twisted ships and thought surely the Italian fleet will have a go now that we were so depleted.  But not even that could entice them to battle.

Had the Italian engaged our fleet in battle at this time, and been successful, it would have changed the course of the war.  If Mussolini had been able to command the Mediterranean Sea, it would have been hard to build up the weapons and men that Montey needed for his VICTORY in the desert against Rommel.

Arthur John “Tassie” Cusick at 36