CRETE CAMPAIGN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1942, Page 4

CRETE CAMPAIGN

AS SEON BY NEW ZEALAND SOLDIER PRIVATE M. C. HILL-RENNIE’S STORY. HOT RECEPTION FOR NAZIS. An account by the.late Private' Melville C. Hill-Ben-nie of the German attack on Crete, in the northern spring of 1941, given to an American correspondent, Allan A. ' Michie, was published in Harper’s Magazine and is reprinted below. Prior to his enlistment in 1940, Private Hill-Rennie was a member of the advertising staff of the “Wairarapa Times-Age.” He received his baptism of fire in Greece and served from first to last in the Crete campaign, but was killed in the later British offensive in Libya. Following is the second instalment of Private Hill-Rennie’s narrative. The first appeared yesterday. On the afternoon of the 20th our company was withdrawn from the hills to guard divisional headquarters and we stayed there all that night and the next day. There we managed to get most of the news as it came through. There was no doubt that Jerry was getting a hot reception all over the island. As we discoveredjater, the Germans did not. issue details of the Crete fighting for the first five days, a sure sign that it was touch and go for them. On the night of the 21st we were told to be ready to move in ten minutes, and finally about 10 p.m. the whole battalion climbed into trucks and we drove off. We debussed along a line about three miles from Maleme airdrome and were told that we were io attack at dawn against the chutists who held- it. WAITING FOR ATTACK. For half an hour or so we squatted about on the ground in the darkness, not able to smoke in case our lights would be spotted, just waiting for the signal to advance. We were all pretty tense and we didn’t say much, but we were pleased that we were going to get a real crack at Jerry. The battalion was strung out in an extended line from the seacoast to the main road leading up to the drome. On our left flank, just across the road, the Maoris took up position in another long line. Then came, our orders. “Fix bayonets.” said the platoon officers. The word was passed down the line. We each “put one up the spout,” that is, put a bullet in the chamber, and then came the order: “Advance. It was still dark, but we set off at a slow walk, carrying our rifles at high port, and I could hear the footsteps of the men in the other companies behind us, strung out one hundred yards apart. We pushed on this way for a full ten minutes. As extreme flank man, I walked in the ditch along the road and it was my responsibility to see that no Germans got through on the road behind us. Suddenly we ran into our first opposition. A Jerry machine-gun nest opened fire on us at a range of fifty yards and they got four of our boys before we could drop to the ground. The man just on my right gave a sharp yelp and I crawled over to see what was the matter. Two fingers of his right hand had been blown off by an explosive bullet. Jerry was using tracers and it was strange to lie there under the olive trees and see the bullets coming. I could see the explosive ones go off in a shower of flame and smoke as they hit the trees. We waited on the ground and finally the order came for my section to advance and wipe out the nest. JERRIES WIPED OUT. We edged forward on our stomachs until we were within twenty yards of the Nazis, who were tucked away behind a large tree, and then opened fire with our one Tommy gun, one Bren gun, and eight rifles. As we kept up the fire the platoon officer cautiously crawled round to the side and slightly to the rear of the tree. Although it was still dark, we could tell by the way the Jerries were shouting to one another that they didn’t like the looks of the situation. When he got round behind the tree (he platoon officer jumped to his feet and hurled three Mills bombs, one right after another, into the nest and then jumped forward with his revolver blazing. Single-handed, he wiped out seven Jerries with their Tommy guns and another with a machine gun. It was real V.C. stuff. Two machine gunners managed to hobble away in the darkness, but we got them later. We reformed our lines and as we did so I could hear shouting from down along the beach, where the boys were dealing with more nests. We pushed on slowly for another fifty yards or so. By this time it was getting light and I could make out the shape of a house on the edge of the road just ahead. Just then Jerry opened up with machine guns from the windows of the house and from a small outhouse at the rear. We fell to the ground again and took cover. I got a bead on one of the windows and as soon as one of the Nazis poked his head above the sill with his machine gun I let fly. I caught him right through the throat and the machine gun tumbled down inside the window. Our platoon officer dashed ahead again and came round from the back toward the door of the outhouse. BOMBED OUT. “Come on out!” he shouted. The Germans’ answer was a burst of fire. The platoon officer stepped back round the corner and yelled to us to hold fire. Taking a Mills bomb from his pocket, he calmly pulled the catch and then carefully placed it in the hand of a dead Jerry whose arm was stretched out through the outhouse door. “Take that, you bastards,” I heard him say. Then he stepped back and waited for the explosion. As soon as the bomb went off he shouted, “Come on, boys, they’re finished,” and we rushed forward. There were about eight German wounded inside. Half a dozen more came running out of the houge: they had their hands held high and were yelling. “Camerad, camerad.” The majority of them were well-built, strapping fellows, who looked like picked men. Most of them knew a smatter-

ing of English. In neither nest had I seen any officers; those in charge were either corporals or sergeants. We dumped their guns down the well and left their wounded under guard to wait for the upcoming stretcher bearers,, and then moved on. Over on my left I could hear wild shouts from the Maori lines as they forged ahead. All along the line to the beach we ran into German fire as the enemy retreated to the airodrome. but we didn’t waste much time. We were all anxious to finish the job. Every now and then the Nazis turned and offered resistance: at one point I saw a long bamboo fence neatly whittled down as the Germans raked their machine guns across the fields and groves. It was broad daylight by this time. Our lines had strung out in a semicircle. On my right the boys on the beach strip had managed to fight their way through to the airodrome where they quickly wiped out the Nazis defending it, but we in the middle sector came up against Maleme village where Jerry had taken up vantage points in the houses. We slowly blasted our way from house to house, wiping outone nest after another, while the snipers kept up a constant, deadly fire at us for more than two hours. ENCOUNTER WITH SNIPER. At one house the Nazis had mounted a captured British Bofors gun from the airodrome behind a well and were turning it on our men with devastating results. We just had to wipe out that gun crew. With two Bren gunners I sneaked forward until I was in a position to cover my platoon officer who was advancing toward the well. Cautiously he crawled forward on his stomach for thirty yards; then he tossed his Mills bomb smack on to a gunner crouched behind the well. We rushed forward and carelessly stood up behind the battered gun and the dead Jerry. At that moment a Hun sniper opened up from the houses. The New Zealander on my right died instantly with a bullet in his head. The Maori on my other side fell to the ground with a bad wound in his stomach. I flopped behind the well and waited for a chance to dash for cover. The Maori was dying fast and there wasn’t much I could do. Struggling hard for breath, he asked me if I’d take away his “meat ticket” (identity card), his “tiki” (Maori charm), and a small cross from his neck. I did. A minute later I scrambled to my feet and clashed across the rough road. Right in the middle of the road I lost my balance, tripped and fell sprawling on my face. Instantly the sniper opened up on me. I decided the only thing to do was to lie doggo and make believe he had killed me. SHAMMING DEATH. For five agonising minutes I lay still as a corpse. Then, for some reason, he took another shot at me. The bullet pinged into the road just under my knee. I decided to put on a really convincing act and for twenty more horrible minutes I lay dead still. Then gathering myself for a spring, I jumped and ran for the ditch on the far side of the road where his bullets couldn’t reach me. I wriggled back down the ditch and rejoined my outfit. By this time the Nazis had opened up with their dive bombers on our boys on the drome and a general retreat was ordered all along the lines. It was absolutely impossible to stand up to the weight of stuff they were dropping on the open drome and the only thing we could do was to get back into the cover of the hills. Soon the German air activity had become terrific. All day long their troop transports came rumbling down on Maleme aerodrome and discharged their loads: at one time they were arriving at the rate of one plane every three minutes! Up on the hill to which we had managed to make our way we were dive-bombed and machine-gun-ned from the air constantly. We had no cover at all but simply crouched in shallow trenches and hoped that the oats and grape vines would hide us. RETREAT TO BEACH. Late in the afternoon the German advance patrols coming out of Maleme came in contact with us. From five hundred yards they opened up with their trench mortars, one of their most effective weapons, and the shells exploded into the flinty ground and threw muck all over the place. As many as six mortar shells per minute were landing on some portions of our lines. It was obvious to all of us that we couldn’t hold on under constant air attacks, and during that night we began the retreat that was to carry us by forced marches right up over the mountains to the other side of the island. It was a week later —after, constant marching and fighting and marching again—that we reached the south shore of Crete. At length we got the word that we were to descend to the beach for evacuation, but just as we reached it my commanding officer asked for fifteen men from my company to volunteer to return to the hilltop and put up a last stand for one more day. I volunteered, as did dozens of others, and finally fifteen of us made the labourious, two-thousand-foot crawl up the hill again. The next day was the longest in my whole life. The members of a concert party which had been on the

island volunteered to carry water up to us, and all that day they shuttled up and down, bearing water in every kind of container they could find, from wine jars to gasoline tins. LAST STAND. We had no cigarettes or tobacco left by this time so we crushed dry leaves and rolled cigarettes out of old letters from home. I saw one lucky chap reading a Bible and then tearing out each page after he had read it to use as cigarette paper. We didn’t have much left to eat and one tin of bully had to go round ten of us. At last the day dragged- to an end and we slithered down to a beach. A Navy motor-boat chuffed ashore and we plunged into the surf and clambered aboard. In a tick we were aboard a destroyer, where the Navy lads handed out cigarettes, bully, and bread —and tea, which was the first hot drink I’d had in twelve days. Most of us popped off to sleep and in ten hours we were back in Egypt. It had been a tough campaign—some of the British troops who went through both Dunkirk and Crete said that Dunkirk was a picnic compared to the pasting’ they took in Crete—but we all felt pretty confident after it. It proved to all of us that Jerry is definitely inferior in man-to-man fighting.- He just doesn’t like cold steel. We’re all convinced that, without the air support he had had, Jerry wouldn’t have been able to take Crete with a million parachutists.