Dawn had broken a short time after five. First a faint pink and grey strip in the east and then, slowly, an arc of deep orange had risen, just a sliver at first. Oberleutnant Balthasar had awoken, cacophonous birdsong sounding through the many trees and groves around them. Raising himself from his grassy bed on the edge of the river, he took out a water bottle, drank greedily, then went down to the river’s edge and refilled it. The river was barely a trickle and no doubt the water had been filtered with all manner of dead animals and other bad things, but it was better to struggle with a stomach upset than to die of thirst.
He moved forward to check on the pickets. He found two of the men watching diligently from the safety of an olive grove, trees and the tall May grass providing good cover. Lying beside them, he drew out his binoculars. Up ahead were the houses and the walls – the walls that had been briefly theirs. He and the men around him at the Canea Gate had been among the first back to the battalion command post. He had known Major Schulz had gone to try to link up with von der Schulenberg after their breakthrough; his own task had been to secure the west of the town. It had been plaguing him that he had been the one to sound the retreat, but what else could he have done?
Schulz and von der Schulenberg had eventually reappeared with the remains of their storm troops some time after midnight. Balthasar had never seen Schulz so angry. It seemed that, with von der Schulenberg’s men, they had reached the edge of the port. There, he had even taken the surrender of the town from a Greek major and the town’s mayor and had raised the swastika from a flag-pole at the western end of the harbour, but as they had been corralling the prisoners, they had come under attack again. The Tommies were refusing to honour the surrender. ‘It is completely against the practices of war,’ Schulz had fumed. He had been cheated of victory and, in the process of falling back out of the town, had lost far more men than they had when they stormed the walls. Anger was fuelled by bitter disappointment; that night, they had suffered their first defeat of the war.
He looked at the town. It seemed quiet enough.
‘Have you had contact with the other pickets?’ he asked.
‘No, Herr Oberleutnant.’
‘All right,’ he said, moving into a crouching position. ‘I’ll send some men to relieve you shortly.’ He moved along through the grove, pushed his way underneath two thick olive trees, and then recoiled. Before him, in a slight hollow in the ground, lying in the grass, were two of the pickets, side by side, their heads severed and placed on their chests. Pinned to the jump smock of one was a note, written in German: ‘Ravening a blood drinker though you may be, yet will I glut your taste for blood.’ Balthasar snatched the note, the paper stained with blood, then looked back towards the town. A fury he had not experienced before coursed through him, as he made his way to the command post. Quickly sending forward replacement pickets, he then found Unteroffizier Rohde and ordered him to organize a burial party. ‘Wrap them in parachute silk,’ he snapped. ‘The fewer men who see them the better.’
Schulz was up, squatting beside a radio, anxiously watching the operator as he tuned the receiver.
‘Herr Major,’ said Balthasar, ‘two pickets were killed in the night.’
‘
‘They had their heads cut off.’ He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
‘My God,’ said Schulz, his voice quiet.
‘Here,’ said Balthasar, passing him the bloodied note.
Schulz snatched it, his eyes scanning the words. ‘What does it mean?’
‘Revenge, Herr Major. I imagine it is a quotation of some kind.’
‘Revenge?’ snarled Schulz. ‘Revenge? I will give those sons of bitches revenge!’
But there was little they could do that morning. A head count showed they had now lost more than seventy per cent of their force since the air landings had begun. Ammunition was low; so, too, was food. The survivors were exhausted – Balthasar could see it in the men’s drawn faces. Morale, usually so high, had taken a beating. Every man among them had lost good friends, and that was hard to take. And there was the shock of defeat, too. Those who had fought in France or in Greece were used to lightning victories with minimal losses; those new to action had joined their ranks expecting those successes too. Now there was the grotesque murder of the two pickets. Schulz had tried to put a lid on it but, of course, word had quickly got round.
It was their inability to make contact with any of the other units that Balthasar found so frustrating. They knew that more men were due to be dropped that day around the airfield, and, they hoped, more supplies, but it was infuriating not to know what was happening, whether the men dropped around the airfield were making headway, whether the other drops at Rethymno and Canea had succeeded or failed. Despite repeated efforts on the radio set, no contact had been made with Oberst Brauer and the rest of the men in Orion Sector, the designated codename for the Heraklion Drop Zone, nor had the runner sent the previous night reappeared. God only knew what had happened to him. A link had been established with Major Schirmer and his men from the 2nd Fallschirmjager Regiment, who had now secured the Canea road, but Schirmer would only spare one company. The 3rd Battalion now had just 204 men left and nothing like enough ammunition to launch any kind of attack. They would have to stay where they were, digging in and watching out for any enemy counter-attack.
Just after seven, with the sun now risen, a radio signal from VIII Fliegerkorps was intercepted. From this they learned that the Luftwaffe would be carrying out a supply drop and bombing Heraklion some time after 8 a.m.
‘Let’s hope they come soon and find us,’ said Balthasar, squinting up at the cloudless sky. ‘It’s going to be hot today.’
‘Get a flag pinned out,’ said Schulz, ‘and have the green flares ready. We can’t afford for those fly boys to miss us. Some supplies will give the men a much-needed lift.’
Balthasar took another glug from his water bottle. ‘I know what will really lift morale,’ he said. ‘The chance to make those bastards pay.’
The daily hate arrived just after 9 a.m., Stukas first, circling and bombing the harbour area, and then around a dozen Junkers 88s. From their positions on the walls, Tanner watched through his binoculars. Some of the bombs landed in the sea, others on the town. The noise – the scream of the sirens, the whistle of the falling bombs, the explosions, the crash of stone and timber collapsing, and the pounding of the anti-aircraft guns – was deafeningly loud. Huge clouds of dust and smoke enveloped the harbour and then several houses were hit nearby, the ground thudding at the explosion. The dust and smoke that rolled up into the air soon drifted across to the walls, making the men there cough and choke.
And then they were gone, the smoke soon thinned and dispersed, and above them droned another wave of aircraft, this time transports.
‘Here, look at this, sir,’ said Tanner, passing his binoculars to Lieutenant Timmins.
‘What am I looking at, CSM?’ asked Timmins, a thin-faced twenty-three-year-old from Knaresborough, commander of 2 Platoon.
‘The flare, sir, that Jerry’s just fired.’
‘What of it? I’m afraid I don’t really catch your drift, Tanner.’
Tanner tried not to let his impatience show in his voice. ‘Well, sir, first of all it’s pinpointing exactly where those para boys are, and second, it’s clearly a signal to the transports coming over to drop them supplies and maybe even reinforcements.’
‘Yes, yes, I see what you mean.’
‘So next time they come, if our lot to the south of the town start firing green flares, then maybe Jerry will drop us some supplies too.’
Timmins grinned. ‘That would certainly get up Jerry’s nose.’
‘It would, sir.’
Most of the transports seemed to be to the east of the town and, once again, the chatter of small arms could be heard between the thunder of the ack-ack guns. Parachutes were blossoming behind him, but now several opened out ahead. Tanner took back his binoculars and peered through them again.
He had been studying the ground since first light, and already it felt familiar to him. The edge of the town spread only a short distance from the walls, then beyond were the seemingly endless olive and fruit groves and vineyards, interspersed with small grass meadows. Stretching away from the town was the main road to Rethymno and Canea, an unmetalled and dusty track that cut a creamy path through the endless green vegetation and rose up over the ridge, beyond which, he guessed, was the river he had seen the previous afternoon. Then maize fields, yet more olives and finally the mountains. Just the far side of the ridge, but clearly visible above it, was a house, a
