NEWS for the Troops On Crete...

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 6, 27 March 1944, Page 3

NEWS for the Troops On Crete...

Canea, BUILT originally by the Venetians, in the words of the newsreel travelogue “ still retains much of the character of its origin." This is not the newer residential Canea, spread-

ing up the hillsides, but old Canea huddled around the toy porta picturesque town of cafe dives, cobblestones, remains of the walled defences and narrow lanes meandering along rows of unspaced houses.

But it seems nowadays that no people, however sturdy and independent, however poor in terms of this world’s goods, can indefinitely live their own lives in their own way. In May the machine came to Canea, and it was a sudden and spectacularly brutal introduction. During a hectic fortnight, into this tiny backwater of modern life, swept the full torrent of the death struggle of machineage mankind. When it had passed, mediaeval Canea was left a desolate little area of blasted and smoking ruins and piles of rubble. The irreparable loss of a quaint and charming survival or the clearing-out of an old near slum which should have been rebuilt long ago anyway, depending on your point of view.

Many little institutions of ancient origin were blasted out of existence by the thorough ruthlessness of the unopposed Luftwaffe, and also at least one with no roots at all in the past —-the British troops’ newspaper Crete News.

Among the newspapers of the world Crete News can claim to be exceptional not for its size or the excellence of its editorial content, but because for half its short life (four issues) it was produced in the midst of the first great air-borne invasion in the history of the world.

For troops almost entirely without information from the outside world some sort of news service rapidly became more than a necessity on Crete after the Greek Campaign. General Frey berg deputed 2nd Lieutenant Geoffrey Cox, of the New Zealand Division, to produce a newspaper. A former Rhodes Scholar who had been present at most of the great scenes of the European drama over the past five years as representative of famous English dailies, Lieutenant Cox nevertheless took up this assignment with enthusiasm.

It was arranged that Crete News should be printed at the same establishment as produced one of the two little Greek newspapers of Crete. This Canea printery was as similar to the modern metropolitan idea of a printing-plant as a gondola is to a transatlantic liner. Everything was manual or womanual. Men

and girls set all the type by hand, men operated the press by foot treadle. Not the least of many difficulties was that there was no language common to all parties.

Some dozen or twenty people, including three girls, comprised the staff of the printery, which was housed in a little below-street-level dive in a blind alley near the port. Some days before the blitz proper the firm moved the typesetting portion of its activities to another dive behind the Plaza Hotel on the waterfront. This the Greeks considered preferable from the point of view of safety from bombs.

Not typical of the Greeks, but with all their faults plus some peculiar to himself and with, from our point of view, few virtues, was Georges Zamaryas. This was the man with whom Lieutenant Cox had to deal. Zamaryas had, by his own account, been a big man on a big newspaper in Athens. He had brought English type over from Athens with the idea of starting a newspaper in English in Crete.

Actually the type was not quite English, having practically no “ w’s,” but this was the least of a huge crowd of difficulties and was easily overcome by using upside down “m’s” and Greek characters. Zamaryas was commissioned to carry out our printing at so much an issue. So far so good. Nothing was easier than making agreements like this with Zamaryas, but nothing was harder than getting him actually to do anything.

Zamaryas was, we gradually found out, completely ignorant of the printing trade, understood much less English than he pretended to, and had the habit of promising any old thing whether or not he had any intention of trying to carry it out. Result—not only was the copy we sent down for the first page not set at the promised time ; it was not even started.

Consequently we were unable to keep faith with an unsought announcement of the beginning of our newspaper, published in the cyclostyled news sheet of the Welsh regiment. It was at about this time that Zamaryas came to light with the most shattering of his many excuses. The four of his men who could

set English type had been enticed away by a jealous rival. Lieutenant Cox then had to assist him, two journalists from the New Zealand Division, Arch Membry, Barry Michael, the part-time services of a Greek-speaking English schoolteacher, Graham, and Alec Taylor, a printer from the New Zealand Division. He dashed out to the 18 Bn., and by good luck and the unofficial help of a truck-driver was able to bring back two more printers, lan Bryce and Alan Brunton. The first issue of Crete News was finally printed, and we even delivered a portion of it to the nearby units before going home that night. The first hurdle of getting the first issue out was the most difficult. After that things were easier, but still rackety. Another printer, Jock Gould, was brought in from 18 Bn. One of the four deserters, who happened to be a serving Sergeant in the Greek army, Lieutenant Cox had pressed back to our service. He was in some ways a doubtful asset. He was a slick workman, but so frequently rose to a high pitch of hysterical and gestureful argument as to interfere not only with his own work, but with that of the others.

During the blitz week, just as we were starting to get used to him, he was grabbed one evening by a Greek officer, who apparently wanted him for more warlike duties. The head man of the printing establishment, Nick, fortunately turned out to be very competent, intelligent, and imperturbable and, although he spoke no English, was invaluable to us.

The original idea of printing Crete News as a daily had to be abandoned. Three papers a week was the utmost our printing facilities would run to. The editorial side was much more straightforward. We depended first and foremost on the 8.8. C. wireless bulletins. An idea of how necessary this was can be gained from the fact that one of the parties of troops who escaped from Crete by invasion barge was under the impression that the British army was at Benghazi. This was only one of the many rumours that were being quoted all over the island as “ direct from the wireless.”

It was the intention to supplement this with any other suitable material we could get hold of, including reporting of happenings on Crete. For the first issue we drew on an N.Z.E.F. news-sheet which happened to arrive at Force H.Q. at about that time. Our wireless listening and other editorial work we carried out in our “ Editorial Office ” at Fernleaf House.

Very different from the printery, but in its own way even more picturesque and unreal to a humdrum New-Zealander, was Fernleaf House, where Crete News had its editorial offices. The house was one of several rather imposing residences on Flagstaff Hill, below Force Headquarters area. A new, fresh-looking structure in red brick and concrete, its design was such as not to clash unduly with the general impression of the battlements, walls, and houses of old Canea down by the sea.

The house had a good deal of the appearance of a castle of the middle ages, standing in a well-kept garden — altogether a pleasant place and occupied by pleasant people. The latter were the personnel of an institution which even now remains something of a mystery to us.

Some kind of a mission connected with, but apparently to a great extent independent of, the army is the clearest idea I have about it. This mission, I think, arranged the finance for Crete News, and they appeared to own the typewriters, wireless, and other equipment we used in our office in their house.

The principals of the Fernleaf House group were Englishmen—soldiers, and, I suppose, diplomats. One of the latter, Mr. Pirie, took most notice of us and appeared to be the leader of the institution. A small, dapper, pink-and-white man, he had a chucklesome manner and a hearty laugh, and was not unlike a grown-up Cupid in well-cut clothes. To deal with he was brisk, competent, and very polite.

During the blitz week Mr. Pirie went all military in his sartorial arrangements. One night I saw him a lieutenant and later heard him borrowing a major’s crown. During the first few days of Crete News activity I was curious enough

to question Mr. Pirie about the Fernleaf House set-up. He did not seem to mind being asked, but left me not very much the wiser. He made such remarks as “ Of course, we most of us have both military and naval rank.”

Fernleaf House was complete with a staff of Greek servants, and at different times Greek soldiers, an English warrant officer carrying quite a battery of pistols on his person, and last, but not least, a glamour girl (when I say “Glamour” I mean with a capital G and the most emphatic degree of the meaning of the word). One way and another, the place exuded Wodehousianism to a considerable degree.

For example, a scene during the preblitz period : Outside Fernleaf House : All the works of a heavier-than-usual raid on Suda Bay. The barrage blazing away madly, all kinds of guns spitting lead and explosive in the air, every degree of noise from the ground-shaking “ crashboom ” of the heavy ack-ack above us to the rattle of guns in front of the house. Stukas of the Luftwaffe slipping over the ridge and setting off for home down our valley, dipping and dodging with seemingly languid indifference to the puff balls puncturing the sky all about them. Inside Fernleaf House : Two women servants in the kitchen, on their knees

praying. Mr. Pirie, wearing tin hat, sprinting smartly out the back door to the slit trench in the garden, where at least one of the English officers was already established. Out on the big front veranda “ the Maj aw ” pot shotting at the planes to the accompaniment of his own running commentary : “ Bai jove, this is much better than duck— Ha, I made that blighter turn Great satisfaction that—Rathaw—Better than

duck much. ...” Behind the Maj aw the butler (or maybe steward), a big splendidly handsome figure of a man, waiting impassively to pass the tea or the ammunition, as might be required.

For his new, better-than-duck variety of “ shooting ” the Major used a service rifle. This was one of several incredibly dirty specimens about the place. Other hardware included a couple of Hotchkiss guns.

At Fernleaf House we got wine, cold drinks, and, once or twice, tea on the veranda. We never became quite accustomed to leaving this comfortable background for the very rough Force H.Q. camp. The contrast was too great. Like walking in and out of the war.

Crete News was forgotten in the excitement in the first day of the paratroop attack. Lieutenant Cox was wanted for intelligence duties, and the rest of us were incorporated in the general stand-to in Force H.Q. area.

Next morning Lieutenant Cox came down to see us. The outcome of a parley was that Bryce, Brunton, Gould, and myself went down to Canea to get on with the paper.

The electricity supply, which always stopped during air raids, being for the first few days of the blitz in complete suspension, we had no wireless available to get news of the outside world for No. 3 issue of Crete News. However, as Lieutenant Cox explained in a “ Crete News Carries On ” paragraph, this did not matter, as the big news of the world was happening in our backyard. Of course, we did no first-hand reporting of the fighting, but the editor was in the

best possible position to get all the information about the battle that it was considered advisable to make public.

In No. 3 issue we used little else than the matter Lieutenant Cox was able to provide in this way. With the story of the British Navy intercepting the seaborne invasion as the star item we were not unsatisfied with No. 3 issue when it was finally put to bed on Thursday afternoon. We were able to use two of the blocks in the printery stock, thus improving the appearance and saving setting at the same time.

When we arrived at Canea on the morning of the second day of the blitz (Wednesday) the town was practically closed up. There were few people other than troops about the streets, and practically no places of business open. At the printery we found Zamaryas looking distraught. It took a little time to convince him that we had come down to carry on business as usual, but, having got the idea, he rose to the occasion rather well, pottered off and started to collect the staff.

As a result they were able on Thursday not only to print Crete News for us, but also to publish an issue of their own

Greek paper on the same “ one side only ” policy as us. By the time the No. 3 issue of Crete News was out the end of the paper supply in the printery was in sight. Lieutenant Cox came down and took Zamaryas off to the Customs Office, where they arranged for us to be allowed a quantity of paper. It was then only necessary for me to wait until a truck was sent down to go along and collect the paper — so we thought. The truck arrived, and off we went to the Customs Office, where Zamaryas immediately became involved in violent, gestureful argument with the chief clerk.

After listening some ten minutes to this, I hauled him aside and tried to find out what the trouble was. He said that he was for Crete — everyone was against him. They said, “No 8.8. C. Noos—no paper.” Zamaryas who had been pestering us for the last forty-eight hours for “ 8.8. C. Noos,” apparently regarded this as a masterly diplomatic thrust.

I made a big speech about having him bayoneted from both sides at once if he made any more funny cracks like that and went off in search of a more reliable interpreter. Fortunately, there was such a man about the place and through him I was informed that what was wanted was a receipt. They wrote out a receipt and I signed it, keeping it in my pocket until such time as the paper was on the truck.

Off we went with the Customs man and Zamaryas in the truck. The door of the shed, really a big corrugated-iron blind running right up to the roof, had been bent by a bomb blast and the Customs man could not open it. lhe Tommy truck-drivers came to the rescue with a big iron bar and forced it open at one bottom corner. Inside there was nothing but sacks of something. The Customs man then found another

door which he said was the right one. Neither he, with his keys, nor we, with the iron bar, could open this one at all. By then we had wasted so much time that I could not hold the truck any longer. This incident, typical of the ordinary routine in Canea, should, I think, give some idea of what Lieutenant Cox was

up against when first trying to start the paper. For the fourth and final issue of the Crete News we were able to get some wireless news. Zamaryas was on to this like a dog spying a chunk of raw meat. We had to watch him carefully to prevent his walking off with the copy so that he could get his friends in the cafes to help him with the translation. It was only after several brushes and displays of almost tearful frustration on his part that he started to bring in Alexis, through whom we were able to satisfy the Zamaryas craving and make the life of his editor an easy one. Saturday was our last day in Canea, and the first day of the several during which the town was subjected by the Germans to the process which they describe as “ coventrating.” All through the week, of course, there had been bombing and machine-gunning in and around Canea, but it was never of a sustained nature, nor did it seem to be deliberately organized.

But it was soon evident that we were to get the whole works. During the whole of that day until nearly dark there was no half-hour when sticks of bombs were not dropped near to us or when planes were not flying over us spraying the streets and houses with their machine-guns.

As mentioned before, our premises offered some degree of protection from bombing. During the day many of the Greek people were gradually withdrawing from the most blitzed area, around the port past our place, to take shelter in the places under the lea of the cliff. Our place, it turned out, was just on the edge of the area most thoroughly dealt with. Bombs were dropped within two doors of us. All the walls of the Plaza Hotel, a two-story building in front of us, were blown in or out. The blasts of the nearest bombs filled our retreat with dust and broke most of what little glass there was, and once water came in from the harbour, some 75- or 100 yards away on the other side of the Plaza Hotel. We had quite a number of Greeks sheltering with us, which made considerable difficulty for the chaps when they were trying to make the most of

the last half-hour of daylight which remained after the planes had gone home.

During the early part of the morning we made fairly good progress. The Greek sergeant had, of course, gone by then. However, we had the assistance of some of the staff, including one of the three girls. We didn’t really need her work that day, but kept her busy and were impressed by her placid imperturbability. When we told her to go into the sheltered part of the room she did so ; at other times she just carried on picking letters out of the boxes, not at any time displaying the slightest trace of any emotion whatsoever.

During the middle of the day not much actual work was done on the setting. We were either keeping our heads down in the shelter or occupied with the numerous domestic matters which cropped up. We had to go and lug “ Moma,” a woman of great age and weight, out of the house where Nick and Zamaryas lived, which was in a group that had been hit by bombs and set on fire. Nick’s two daughters, smiling and unworried, were apparently still stopping in the next door place, which was right alongside and joined on to the burning house. I suppose they shifted out later, because the whole of that street was burning before nightfall, and quite early in the evening all the places around Nick’s house were well gone.

The last I saw of Nick he was standing on the pavement contemplating the burning remains of his house and taking no notice of my attempts to persuade him to come and help us with the printing.

We had to make one visit up to the other premises of our printery to get boxes of the type needed for headings. No bombs had apparently dropped very near it, but the Tommies in the machinegun nest at the blind end of the little street told us that they had lost one man. Lying between two men who were unhurt, he was killed outright.

A New Zealand soldier came in during the afternoon and asked us to help him. He said that he had seen two parachutists among the houses. We went out with

him, warned the Tommy party mentioned above. Their officer set off gleefully with his tommy-gun and Tommy riflemen. The soldier could not find the parachutists, but he turned out to be quite a remarkable fellow and found all kinds of other things that were very useful.

He would stand about looking bored while the bombing was going close, and in between times would wander off foraging. Returning from these trips he brought, among other things, bread, a great quantity of cigarettes (rarer than diamonds at that time), biscuits, sweets, pocket-knives, belts, and a lot of cognac and cherry brandy. The only necessity he seemed unable to supply was water, for which we had also been searching during the day.

During the quiet time in the evening when Jerry apparently goes home for dinner Lieutenant Cox came down to see how we were getting on. He was still there when the after-dinner stir came, by which time we had practically all the setting for one page completed and had started making up or, rather, throwing together. There being no certainty that there would be any sort of light available after dark, we made the most of the remaining daylight. It turned out then that we did not have enough type for some of the headings, but we could not spare the time to get more and just made the best of what was handy. This was one of the reasons why No. 4 issue was, in general appearance, a good deal below No. 3. In the dusk we moved ; the other three moved up to the premises housing the press and I, enlisting the help of the great forager, went through the wrecked cafes and places looking for a light. Most of the Greeks were moving out of the town and the swallows were flying dazedly about over the port. Despite expert assistance, the only light we managed to get that was much use was two small bits of candle, one of which I had found while on a visit to the ordnance during the afternoon in an unsuccessful search for cigarettes, and the other I cadged off some Greek soldiers. The only good lamp glass we found Jock Gould dropped.

The fire was coming up our street all the time our chaps were working, and after a while we were more or less cut off from the other premises. This was the cause of some worry to Lieutenant Cox, who came down to look for us and was unable to get past the fire. However, we had a clear way out through an archway at the blind end of the alley, along the road skirting the top of the walled cliff facing the sea, down big stone steps, several of which were shattered by a bomb, and along the wharves to the road leading out to Flagstaff Hill. No help was forthcoming from the Greeks that evening. One of the old men who worked the machine treadle waited around for an hour or so, but left before we were ready to print. The fire, completely unchecked, was lapping steadily through the houses and had come up our street on both sides to within two or three houses by the time the actual printing was started, getting on towards midnight.

The last remaining inhabitants of the street moved out soon after midnight, the last remaining being another “ Moma” like Zamaryas’s, only even less portable,

who was left sitting on a chair on the pavement a couple of doors up from our place. There were Greek soldiers up on the cliff-top road, and I brought some of them down to the old girl. They tried carrying her, but she made so much fuss that they gave up the idea and went off, whereat she made even more fuss. I suppose they came back with a stretcher or something, because she was gone when we passed the place on our way home.

Being tired, with the candle fast burning out and the fire coming closer and closer, we contented ourselves with the printing of about six or seven hundred copies. We arrived back at Force H.Q. area, bringing the entire edition with us, in the early hours of the morning to find that everybody had moved out to Suda Bay, except Lieutenant Cox and one or two officers. He broke the glad news that we would have to set to and march eight miles forthwith. However, in the long run things turned out not so bad as that. Lieutenant Cox found a ride for us in a truck, and before dawn we were in a camp alongside the Suda Bay waterfront.