BRUTAL SAVAGERY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 154, 2 June 1941, Page 5

BRUTAL SAVAGERY

AMAZING REVELATION. BY MAORI SERGEANT. (United Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, June 1. A 19-year-old Maori Sergeant who, with a companion escaped from Crete after being' badly wounded, gave a detailed story of the nightmare battles and the brutal German savagery. An Australian destroyer brought the pair

to a Middle East port. The sergeant was shot through the chest and had had an ankle smashed by shrapnel. His companion was severely wounded in a thigh and they had trekked for three days in the snow-covered mountains without, food before the destroyer found them. The sergeant said: "If we had had air support victory in Crete would have been achieved in a matter of only hours. Our bayonets terrified the Germans. We asked no quarter, and we received none. AVe lay all day at the mercy of hundreds of dive-bombers. "When night fell we fixed bayonets and charged. We fought each night, to dawn, in the bloodiest and most inhuman of battles. The Maori Battalion and another New Zealand battalion formed a thin line from the sea to the hills to check the German thrust toward Canea.

"We lay on open ground, watching until our eyes ached, seeing shower on shower of parachutists floating down. We lay among rocks, in drains—anything giving shelter from the relentless hail ot bombs and bullets. We had to keep our bayonets sheathed and lie motionless while the sun wa.s up so as not to betray our posoitions. We shouted a haka as we charged in the dark.

"Our main obstacle on the first night was n solid line of machine-guns, but we quickly overran it and annihilated practically every German within reach, hilt at daylight the next day waves of German troop-carriers arrived.

"One hundred and thirty troop-car-riers landed under an escort of clouds of fighters and 200 dive-bombers attacked us. _ The Germans established themselves in positions we had cleared during the night. CUT TO PIECES.

"With the return of darkness we again fixed bayonets and charged, and again cut the enemy to pieces. ' This went on for four days and nights. Parachutists were dropped behind our lines and we had to give ground bit by bit and take up fresh' positions. Eventually, during an attack against enemy machine-gun posts, just before dusk one evening, my Company Commander was shot dead in front' of me. I carried on, but wa.s shot by a tommygun and crawled to the base, where I underwent an operation on the diningroom table in a shattered Greek house. "I had no anaesthetic, since that was being reserved for major operations. When the doctors bad finished I had a drink of water and led a party of marines to positions after dark but was again wounded in an ankle.

"The next day my wounded companion and I made ior the hills and reached cover in a ravine overlooking Canea. AVe then began a painful three days' march to the coast. "It was impossible to walk more than three yards in the bnttle area without stepping on dead Germans. Clusters of their dead were even up in the mountains where the Greeks had killed them. Such slaughter must l>c seen io be believed; Dead parachutists swung from branches of trees, strangled by their own parachute cords.

"The bestiality of the enemy knew no bounds. They butchered the crippled and dying with tommy-guns. J saw it myself. The Luftwaffe dropped pamphlets over our lines, saying that, owing to the alleged ill-treatment of German prisoners in Greece the German High Command had ordered that every human being in Crete, whether man, woman, or child, should l>e killed.

"The Germans stopped at nothing to terrorise us. Capturing a hospital on the outskirts of Canea, they dragged all the wounded who were able to walk from their beds and made thein stumble ahead of their advancing troops as' a protection. I saw our wounded men approaching and we went forward to greet them, but could not understand why they ware shooting at us. Then one wounded officer escaj>cd and revealed the Nazi ruse, whereupon we carried out a flanking movement and killed every German in that detachment. COMMANDER SAFE,

The War Office states, with reference to a German statement alleging the death of Major-General Freyberg. General Officer commanding the British Forces in Crete: "We are glad to he able to announce that he is alive and with his troops." An earlier cablegram stated that, according to the Berlin radio. MajorGeneral freyberg was killed in a plane crash en route to Alexandria from Crete.