PARATROOPS SUFFER

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20571, 3 June 1941, Page 5

PARATROOPS SUFFER

SURPRISED BY DEFENCE SCORES KILLED IN AIR (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.) (Reed. June 3, 10.30 a.m.) CAIRO, June 2. Just out of sight of a cornfield on the northern coast of Crete, the New Zealanders have been fighting a mortar and machine-gun duel to-day with German parachute troops in the groves and vineyards carpeting the sunny valley. Patrols have been ceaselessly stalking isolated snipers and machine-gun nests and the German dead lie in swelling numbers among silken chutes and battered supply canisters which form the debi-is of this strangest of all wars. The first phase of the battle for Crete has been mainly fought, although the tendency towards mass attack and counter-attack is now growing. The element of surprise which normally is the strongest weapon of the parachute force proved to be the cause of the Germans’ first setbacks. It was they who were surprised—not only by the strength and spirit of the defending troops but also by the rapidity with which they found themselves fighting for their own lives, rather than concentrating on objectives. Every Man With Weapons

Hundreds of paratroops in the first landings floated down within immediate range of our infantry and because the front line of the parachute attack can be anywhere between the usual forward posts and the rearmost headquarters, the word infantry embraced cooks, drivers, sappers, batmen, clerks, mechanics and everyone else with weapons in their hands. Before their feet ever touched the ground, the parachutists were met by an angry hail of bullets. Scores died almost too soon to feel the red earth of Crete beneath their boots. Scores more fell as they slipped their harnesses and tried to assemble into organised parties. Our men rushed towards the billowing chutes firing around the trees and along rows of grapevines with boyish exuberance. The effect of these immediate spirited counter-attacks was to throw the Germans into a state of disruption which at times seemed almost, a panic. We heard them shouting excitedly to one another and saw them shooting wildly. In some ways the battle was thus started like a new form of sport, but within a few hours it had settled down to more deliberate hunting out of enemy troops. In this field of patrol work, mortar activity and countersniping where alertness, patience and cunning are prime factors, the New Zealanders again excelled. Even by the end of the first day, the enemy movements in their sectors, which stretched along the coast westward of the town of Canea seemed well under control. Swift Mopping Up The first swift mopping-up operations were so successful that the trouble centres were reduced to two and, while one of these remained the scene of spasmodic exchanges of fire and raids, the enemy dpring the past two days had been concentrating on supplies and reinforcements near the aerodrome of Malemi in the west. There he has been landing big transports laden with troops and armaments on and near the beach amid ever-increasing wreckage of his own machines.

Already, with the weeding out of isolated parachutists, the campaign has shown signs of developing into the more orthodox forms of opei’ation on a larger and more concentrated scale. But there is no change in the sky which the Luftwaffe never leaves from dawn to dusk. Bombers and fighters comb wide areas with undiminshed fury and persistence. Yet while the constant hammering is trying to the troops, it has not got them down. The Germans still must come down to earth and stay there if they , hope that Crete is to be theirs. i