ELEVENTH HOUR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20570, 2 June 1941, Page 5

ELEVENTH HOUR

DEFENDERS’ FIGHT INVADERS SURPRISED POWER OF RESISTANCE (Reed. June 2, 10 a.m.) LONDON, June 1. The Daily Mail’s Cairo correspondent yesterday described the fighting in Crete as the “eleventh hour.” The Empire troops were holding gullies and rocky riverbeds and throwing up ramparts of stones as hastily as they could to construct machine-gun nests. The German troops, protected by screaming dive-bombers, continued to surge against them. The New Zealanders were fighting on almost automatically. Their eyes were red with watching and their ears singing and half-deafened with constant bombing. British circles in Cairo pay tribute to the sterling work of the navy in bringing out the wounded and other troops from Crete in destroyers. All men were tired 'when picked up from small boats and creeks round Suda Bay. One gunner had walked 70 miles.

Captured German parachutists told us of the great shock our resistance in Crete gave them, says the Australian official war correspondent. All stressed that they had been told their task would be simple and all they had to do was to clear the ’dromes and make way for troop-carrying planes. They expected to return to Germany within a day.

i’heir corps was cut to pieces in the first big operation. They were unnerved and appalled at the slaughter. Their ages ranged from 18 to 21 years. The Germans allege that British troops captured a number of points in Crete wearing German uniforms and badges. One officer reported that a British soldier stood on a hilltop waving a Swastika. Germans ascended the hill, believing their own troops were in occupation, but they met a murderous fire from British troops lining the hilltop and the greater part of the Germans were killed.