Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy
Page 22
The crucial summary of the key Enigma decrypts (OL 2/302) was sent to Freyberg’s headquarters on 13 May, at 5:45 p.m. The picture of operations it gave was as follows: the operation would be launched on 17 May (later amended to the 20th). On day one the parachute division would seize Maleme, Candia and Retimo. Secondly, arrival of fighters and bombers on Cretan airfields. Thirdly, air-landing (by glider and transport aircraft) of glider troops and army units carried by transport aircraft. Finally, arrival of seaborne units consisting of anti-aircraft batteries as well as more troops and supplies.
In addition, 12th Army will allot three Mountain Regiments as instructed. Further elements consisting of motor-cyclists, armoured units, anti-tank units, anti-aircraft units will also be allotted . . . Transport aircraft, of which a sufficient number—about 600—will be allotted for this operation, will be assembled on aerodromes in the Athens area. The first sortie will probably carry parachute troops only. Further sorties will be concerned with the transport of the air landing contingent, equipment and supplies, and will probably include aircraft towing gliders . . . the invading force will consist of some 30 to 35,000 men, of which some 12,000 will be the parachute landing contingent, and 10,000 will be transported by sea . . . Orders have been issued that Suda Bay is not to be mined, nor will Cretan aerodromes be destroyed, so as not to interfere with the operation intended.36
OL 2/302 was an almost comprehensive guide to Operation Merkur, one of the most complete pieces of timely intelligence ever to fall into the hands of an enemy. It revealed the timing of the attack, the objectives and the strength and composition of the attacking force. Moreover, as the success of Merkur depended on surprise—as all airborne operations must do—the revelation of the operation order to General Freyberg was particularly damaging.
And yet OL 2/302 did not quite tell the whole story. It did not specify which units would land where, an important omission. As we now know, the 3rd Parachute Regiment was to land at the east of the island, the 2nd in the centre and the Assault Regiment to deplane on Maleme airstrip, at the western end, after it had been captured by the 1st Parachute Regiment. This was vital information but it was either not in the raw Enigma intercepts or was omitted from the intercepted version sent to Crete. Bletchley’s policy was not to release raw decrypts, on the grounds that they were often incomprehensible, and even Winston Churchill, who initially insisted on seeing the signals just as they were decrypted, was forced to accept that Bletchley knew better.
Had the raw decrypts revealed which units were to land where, Freyberg might have conducted the battle differently. He might have concentrated more of his available strength at Maleme and thus denied the airfield to the enemy, in which case Germany certainly would have lost the Battle of Crete. On the other hand, he might not. Freyberg was not fully let into the Enigma—properly speaking the Ultra—secret. Few commanders were. The Ultra system allowed only very senior officers, usually theatre commanders, in this case General Wavell in Cairo, to know that German signals were being decrypted in real time. They were instructed to tell subordinates that certain intelligence was particularly reliable—“Special” and “Very Special Intelligence”—but to explain its worth by reference to a supposed agent inside enemy headquarters. Small cells of Ultra-cleared officers handled the material in operational zones but were sworn to complete secrecy. Freyberg, not being in on the secret, was merely told the agent story and forbidden to discuss OL material with anyone else. It was, for him, an intellectually unself-confident man, an unsettling restriction. Instead of being able to discuss his concerns with his close subordinates, his normal method, he was forced to bottle up his Ultra knowledge.
Worse, there is no doubt that he misunderstood what he had been told. He was misled by the confusion caused by references to the 22nd Air-Landing Division, the 5th Mountain Division and the attached regiment of the 6th Mountain Division, in signals OL 2167 of 6 May and OL 2168 of 7 May, to believe that the non-parachute element of the force was much larger than it was. He was also misled, by the references to shipping, to believe that he was faced with a seaborne landing as well as an airborne landing, perhaps simultaneously and perhaps with the seaborne element outnumbering the airborne element. He perhaps should be forgiven, as his son has loyally argued in retrospect.37
Ralph Bennett, the authoritative historian of the Ultra system and himself a wartime Bletchley analyst, persuasively puts it thus:
[Freyberg] had known nothing of Ultra until Wavell appointed him to command in Crete [on 29 April, exactly three weeks before the battle began], and so he was quite without experience in interpreting it. Yet almost at once he was compelled by events to make operational decisions in the light of it, without the benefit of a second opinion or any advice whatever [Group Captain Beamish, the Ultra intermediary on Crete, was not in the chain of command]. [Moreover] in the whole course of history no island had ever been captured except from the sea. The only evidence that the new airborne arm could overpower ground defences consisted of [the evidence from Eben Emael and associated minor operations]. The first parachute battalions in the British army would not be formed for another six months. Finally, the fact that the Royal Navy’s command of the Mediterranean was being seriously challenged for the first time since Nelson’s victory over the French in Aboukir Bay in 1798 was in itself enough to reinforce fears of attack by the traditional means . . . in spite of Ultra, [Freyberg’s] apprehension of danger from the sea can only be faulted by an abuse of hindsight.38
Yet, when all allowances are made, Ultra did warn that the Germans were going to assault Crete with thousands of airborne troops; the garrison, though disorganised by its Greek ordeal, was not at a disadvantage of numbers (42,460 British Commonwealth and Greek troops to 22,040 German).39 The seaborne landing did not materialise; but Crete was lost. What went wrong?
THE BATTLE OF CRETE
The twentieth of May was a lovely early Mediterranean summer’s day. The diary of the New Zealand 22nd Battalion, positioned at Maleme, recorded “Cloudless sky, no wind, extreme visibility: e.g. details on mountains 20 miles to the south-east easily discernible.”40 There were early German air raids on most British positions, as there had been every morning in the previous two weeks. Then calm returned, briefly, until at eight o’clock bombing, heavier than before, was resumed. At Maleme there were numerous casualties. While they were being treated the noise of a new wave of German aircraft broke in. They were the Ju-52 tugs of the gliders of the Assault Regiment, which began to land in the dry bed of the Tavronitis River, running inland just to the west of Maleme airstrip. In the course of a few minutes, about forty crash-landed, bringing, in ten-man groups, the first battalion, commanded by Major Koch, who had led the assault on Eben Emael in Belgium the year before, part of the 3rd Battalion and regimental headquarters. As the gliders crashed in, they came under concentrated fire, from the New Zealand infantrymen dug in on the airfield and on Hill 107 which dominates it.
The Maleme battlefield, when visited, is, like most battlefields, much smaller than maps suggest beforehand. The airstrip appears to lie under the lip of Hill 107 (today the graveyard of the German invaders); the sea is clearly visible beyond; only the valley of the Tavronitis is, by a trick of topography, hidden from view. Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie Andrew, commanding 22nd NZ Battalion, and a Victoria Cross winner of the Great War, had allowed for faults in his line of sight by positioning his D Company on the bank of the river bed; A and B Companies were on Hill 107 and its slopes; C Company was actually on the airstrip. He had two tanks, two static 4-inch guns and several Bofors anti-aircraft guns. Together with the rifles and light and heavy machine-guns of his infantry, he deployed formidable firepower.
It took a heavy toll of Battalions II and IV of the Assault Regiment, which dropped by parachute, as did part of Battalion III. Casualties were particularly high among officers; the second battalion was to lose sixteen killed and seven wounded, most in the early part of the fighting. Yet casualties were high all around Maleme
. The parachutists had been told that the garrison of Crete was small, only 12,000, an underestimate by nearly three-quarters, that resistance would be light and that the Cretans would show them a friendly welcome. All three predictions proved untrue. The Cretan civilians turned out with any sort of weapon to hand the instant the landings began, an act of collective courage for which they were to play a terrible price in massacre and individual reprisal as soon as the Germans got the opportunity. The British, New Zealand and Australian defenders fought with ferocity, indeed downright glee during the parachuting phase. Parachutists were shot by soldiers sitting down to breakfast, sometimes keeping score as if on a morning’s duck shooting. The sense of invulnerability that parachuting confers was quickly dispelled as bodies went limp at the end of the harness. Some of those who were not immediately hit felt outrage at the advantage being taken; others raised their hands in surrender in midair, to no good purpose. Where trees stood they were soon draped with parachutes from which dead bodies hung.
Parachutists who landed unharmed—and most of Battalions I and II of 3rd Parachute Regiment did so, together with the Parachute Engineer Battalion, between Maleme and Canea—had only to find their weapon canisters to be ready for action. Those groups quickly consolidated and started fighting as formed units. Around Maleme itself, even after they recovered from the chaos of their opposed descent, the survivors of Battalion III and from the glider parties remained desperately hard pressed. The New Zealanders, including those of 23rd and 21st Battalions who held the ground to the east of Maleme, were dug in and full of fight. As for the Germans, “even those who landed unwounded and unseen in a vineyard or field of barley could not fight effectively until they found their weapons. And if a container had fallen in the open, retrieving it was like a murderous game of grandmother’s footsteps.”41 Quite quickly the battalion was almost destroyed. The commander, his adjutant, three of his four company commanders and 400 of his 500-odd soldiers were killed outright or died of untended wounds among the olive trees and scrub of Hill 107.
General Freyberg, eating breakfast in his headquarters in the quarry near Canea, had greeted the arrival of the Germans at eight o’clock with the comment “They’re dead on time!,” his only known public acknowledgement of his access to Ultra intelligence.42 “His attitude,” wrote the future Lord Woodhouse, later to be a leader of the Special Operations Executive in Greece, “was that he had clearly made all the necessary dispositions on the basis of his information, and that there was now nothing more for him to do except leave his subordinates to fight the battle.”43
Freyberg’s dispositions, despite his continuing misapprehension of the danger from the sea, did indeed prove effective in the central sector around Rethymno and at Heraklion in the east. Two Australian battalions, 2/11th and 2/1st, defended Rethymno airfield, supported by two Greek regiments. The Australians were well dug in and had good fields of fire, there being little vegetation in the area. They also enjoyed the advantage of ample warning because of delays in Athens, the German parachutists did not arrive until the afternoon, several hours after the descents at Maleme and Canea. The two battalions, I and III of 2nd Parachute Regiment, were also flown in along the coastline, the planes and jumpers presenting excellent targets in the last moment of their approach; some of the aircraft actually flew below the positions of the Australians hidden on the coastal hills. When the Australians opened fire they caused carnage. Several aircraft were brought down, others dropped their parachutists into the sea, where they were instantly taken to the bottom by the weight of their equipment. Those who survived found little cover from either fire or view. They were shot in large numbers, many falling to bands of Cretan irregulars.
The key to the success of the defence was the quality of the two battalion commanders, Campbell and Sandover, who kept their men in hand, organised effective fire and led counterattacks to mop up any remaining resistance. The 2nd Parachute Regiment was decisively defeated at Rethymno. It suffered very heavy casualties and its commanding officer, Colonel Sturm, was taken prisoner by Sandover on the morning of 21 May.
The 1st Parachute Regiment, dropping at Heraklion, suffered even worse ill-fortune. Its Battalions I and III fell among the best-trained defending units on the island, the 2nd Leicesters, 2nd Black Watch and 2nd York and Lancaster. Their soldiers were pre-war regulars, who knew their business. They were also supported by more than a dozen light antiaircraft guns which held their fire during the preparatory German air raids and whose positions were therefore not detected. When the troop-carrying Junkers 52s appeared, even later than at Rethymno, some as late as seven o’clock in the evening, fifteen were shot down in the two hours the parachute runs lasted. The parachutists who got clear were shot in large numbers by the British, as they hung in their harness, as they touched down or as they scrambled to seek cover and their weapon containers on the ground. Whole companies were destroyed—one had only five survivors; Battalion III of 1st Parachute regiment lost 300 killed, and 100 wounded out of a strength of 550. Among the casualties at Heraklion were three brothers, members of the illustrious family of Blücher, Wellington’s fellow commander at Waterloo, serving as a lieutenant, corporal and private.44
By the second day of the battle, 21 May, the advantage had swung decisively Freyberg’s way at Heraklion and Rethymno. Both airfields remained in British hands and, though there were parties of Germans still fighting in the countryside and within the Venetian walls of Heraklion, they were simply hanging on. It was only a matter of time before they would be overrun or forced to surrender—unless, that is, the battle went against the British elsewhere on the island. And it had already begun to do so.
Creforce lacked wireless sets, so that intercommunication between Freyberg’s sectors was at best intermittent, often nonexistent. Signalling to Wavell in Cairo on the night of 20 May, he reported: “We have been hard pressed. I believe that so far we hold the aerodrome at Maleme, Heraklion and Retimo and the two harbours. The margin by which we hold them is a bare one and it would be wrong for me to paint an optimistic picture. The fighting has been heavy and large numbers of Germans have been killed . . . The scale of air attack upon us has been severe. Everybody here realises the vital issue and we will fight it out.” Freyberg actually believed that the tide had turned. What he did not know was that the second sentence of his signal was crucially incorrect. Maleme airfield was about to be abandoned by the defenders under cover of darkness. The Germans would use it to fly in the infantry of 5th Mountain Division, thus turning the balance decisively their way. The Battle of Crete was about to be lost.
Not for want of courage. Both Andrew, the Victoria Cross winner commanding 22nd New Zealand Battalion, and Hargest, his superior commanding 5 New Zealand Brigade, were brave men and experienced veterans of the Great War; their soldiers were brave and experienced also. The unexpected nature of airborne warfare had unnerved them, however, while their means of intercommunication was erratic at best and Hargest in particular shared Freyberg’s anxiety about a landing from the sea. Andrew made one concerted effort to drive the Germans away from the airfield in late afternoon, when he sent the two Matilda tanks he had under command forward. Neither was in proper working order and one soon turned back. The other, which might have swept the airfield clear, so frightened were the parachutists of tanks, inexplicably drove past and descended into the Tavronitis River bed, where it soon grounded.
Soon after dark fell on 20 May Andrew came to the disastrous conclusion that his forward companies had been overrun and that his best procedure was to draw his other two companies back on to Hargest’s other battalions to the east, perhaps to launch a counterattack in daylight the following morning. In one of their few wireless contacts, Hargest appeared to agree with him, or at least to accept the decision of the man on the spot. Both were quite wrong. The two companies Andrew thought cut off were, though battered, holding their ground and still dominated the enemy, who were now exhausted, often to the point of falling asleep where they lay. Hargest h
ad plentiful reserves, including a whole uncommitted battalion, but declined to organise a full-scale reinforcement of the airfield or Hill 107. During the night, as the New Zealanders in the forward positions learnt haphazard that they had been abandoned, they left their positions, and made their way eastward. The vital ground was falling by default.
In Athens the German senior commanders were concluding, on the night of 20–21 May, that the battle was lost. Student realised he faced the destruction not only of his division but of his reputation and career. He hastily convened a conference to make a new plan. Surplus parachutists would be formed into a battle group under Colonel Ramcke to land directly around the airfield, while Captain Kleye, a particularly daring pilot, was to attempt to land on the airfield at first light, to bring badly needed ammunition but also to test the defences.45
Kleye made a successful touch-down and take-off on the morning of 21 May. On his return to Athens, every available soldier was set to preparing the Junkers 52 fleet for the renewed assault. The effort took all day, during which the New Zealanders, partially reorganised by Brigadier Hargest, pushed forward to retake the ground abandoned the night before. They advanced under heavy air attack and against the fire of the surviving Germans, hidden in vineyards and olive groves. The 28th Battalion, composed of Maoris, New Zealand’s native warrior race, actually got back onto the airfield but, finding themselves unsupported, turned about. There were other successes as the New Zealanders probed forward. Then, in the late afternoon, the Ramcke parachute group fell in 5 Brigade’s area and the New Zealanders were forced to renew the business, as on the day before, of shooting parachutists as they fell out of the sky and mopping up parties that managed to land unscathed.
Ramcke’s descent would probably have merely added to the parachute catastrophe had not, simultaneously, the 5th Mountain Division begun to arrive in strength on Maleme airfield. It was not a tidy arrival. The New Zealanders within range opened a devastating fire, thickened by shells from captured Italian field guns fired by British gunners. Twenty-two Junkers 52s were hit on or before reaching the ground, a heavy loss to a transport fleet already severely depleted on the preceding day of action. The Germans, however, were ruthless, using captured British Bren gun-carriers to push wrecks off the runway and turning aircraft round in seventy seconds. On 21 May a battalion of 100th Mountain Regiment was flown in; by the 24th the whole division had landed, bringing the numbers transported by the troop-carrier fleet to nearly 14,000. During the arrival of the mountain division, the New Zealanders, reinforced by the 2/7th Australian Battalion and the 1st Welch Regiment, continued to battle on against the airheads around Maleme and Canea, often with success. It was during this phase of the fighting that Lieutenant Charles Upham, of the 20th New Zealand Battalion, won the Victoria Cross; he was to win another again later in the war, the only infantry soldier, and one of only three men, ever to be awarded two VCs.