‘No! No! No!’ said Tanner, then turned to Sykes. ‘You got that stick, Stan?’ he said, pulling his last grenade from his pack.
‘Right here.’
‘Then light it and when it’s almost ready to blow, hurl it as hard as you can in the direction of those shots.’
Moving forward under the brow of the cliff, Tanner inched forward, then glanced back at Sykes, who hurled his stick of dynamite. At the same time, Tanner had pulled the pin on the grenade and threw that too. One explosion then another, and now Tanner was up, cresting the lip of the cliff and running forward, blindly firing his Schmeisser, emptying the magazine through the haze of smoke and dust. He heard several men cry out and then, leaping through the smoke, glimpsed the man he was after, shaking his head and staggering. Seeing Tanner, Balthasar reached down to grab his rifle but he was not quick enough and Tanner charged into him, flinging him to the ground. He punched his face once, then again, and then closed his hands around the German’s neck.
Balthasar gasped, flailing for his rifle, but then his fingertips closed around the breech and now he had it firmly in his hand. He swung it round onto Tanner’s back, knocking him sideways, but Tanner did not loosen his grip, so that as he fell he pulled Balthasar with him, over the edge of the cliff, the two men tumbling towards the beach. Both men gasped as they rolled to a halt on the shingle, Balthasar now free of Tanner’s grip.
It was Balthasar who was on his feet first. ‘You,’ he said in English. He could not believe his plan had gone so wrong, that so many of his men were either dead or wounded. Even his attempt to outflank them had failed. He had killed the Cretan
‘You,’ he said again, as he pointed the Sauer at Tanner, ‘you should have killed me when you had the chance.’
‘Yes,’ said Tanner, ‘I reckon I should.’
A rifle crack rang out behind them, further along the beach, and Balthasar instinctively ducked. In that same moment Tanner swung his arm, knocking the German’s hand clear so that the shot fired harmlessly into the shingle. At the same moment, he drove his boot into Balthasar’s crotch, then swung with his left fist. Balthasar cried out in pain, his pistol fell from his hand and Tanner drew out his German knife and thrust it hard into the man’s chest.
‘But I’ll not make that mistake again,’ he said. Balthasar staggered back a few steps, a look of astonishment on his face. He glanced up at Tanner, blood already running from the side of his mouth, took another step, then fell.
Tanner walked over, pulled the knife from Balthasar’s chest, wiped it against his trouser leg, then stumbled towards Sykes, who was waiting for him at the shore’s edge.
‘Cheers, Stan,’ said Tanner. ‘Reckon you saved me there.’
‘Couldn’t have him shoot you, sir.’ Sykes grinned.
‘You might have hit him, though.’
‘I didn’t want to deny you the pleasure.’
Tanner looked back towards the cliff and saw the three
‘Leaving your boots on, are you?’ said Sykes.
‘Yes, Stan, I bloody well am. And I’m keeping my rifle on my back as well.’
Not a single shot rang out as they swam to the waiting submarine. When they reached the hull, waiting crew heaved them aboard, and then, dripping, their clothes clinging to their bodies, they climbed the conning tower. Sykes entered the hatch first, and Tanner followed, but as he was about to duck down, he paused and looked back towards the shore and the mountains beyond. He was leaving the island that had entranced him with not a few regrets, and yet his conscience, at least, was clear.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Tanner had good reason to feel let down by the British commanders on Crete, a failure one year on from Dunkirk that should have never happened. The German Fallschirmjager units dropped on Crete on 20 May 1941 were absolutely slaughtered, most units suffering between 50 and 70 per cent casualties and some even higher than that. There is no way a defending force of superior numbers, armed with rifles and machine-guns with an effective range of four hundred yards or more, should have lost ground to an attacking force, hideously mauled in its first moments, armed principally with sub-machine-guns with an effective range of twenty–forty yards. For that to happen, some monumentally bad judgements and decisions had to have been made.
A lot of the blame lies with Major General Freyberg. Although he did not know it, Freyberg was being fed Ultra, the decrypts from the German Enigma machines, but he became so concerned by his instructions to preserve the secrecy of what he knew that he was unable to act upon them. Even worse, he developed a strange obsession that the main threat would come from a seaborne invasion. A cool head and some logical thinking would have shown the unlikelihood of this, not least because the Germans had almost no surface fleet, and no ships within the Mediterranean. Furthermore, he misread the decrypts, clinging to any mention of a seaborne invasion and overlooking the greater threat – namely an attack on Maleme airfield. Thus he failed to move troops to reinforce that vital airfield when he had the chance. The extraordinary conversation he had with Monty Woodhouse on the morning of the invasion occurred in much the same way as depicted in the book. Such sangfroid was not the sign of a commander with a full grasp of the situation.
Freyberg was, by all accounts, a thoroughly decent fellow, but he was no great intellect and had been promoted well above his capabilities. His reputation for bravery and his status as New Zealand’s most famous soldier had seen to that. But this also made him very difficult to sack – Britain depended on New Zealand’s not inconsiderable contribution and could not afford to threaten her co-operation by getting rid of someone as well known and decorated as Freyberg. Sadly, the Crete fiasco would not be the last time Freyberg messed things up. Three years on, after an undistinguished period of command in North Africa, he oversaw one of the worst-planned battles of the entire war – the Second Battle of Cassino.
At Heraklion, Brigadier Chappel, despite clever deployment of his forces, was overly cautious. Perhaps he was undone by the formidable, all-conquering reputation German – and especially Fallschirmjager – troops had acquired by this stage. British confidence was low, but again, cool logic should have told Chappel and his commanders that a quick, decisive counter-attack could and should have seen off the German invasion efforts in that part of the island in one neat blow. Tanner’s exasperation was understandable.
The British forces on Crete also suffered from the appalling shortage of wireless radio sets. The perils of any over-dependence on easily broken land lines had been demonstrated all too clearly in France the previous year, but this was a lesson, it seems, that had not been learned. It is true that an army lacking radios cannot become equipped and trained with them overnight, but the battle for Crete was a whole year on, and the provision of ample radio sets should have been a priority, as Pendlebury had correctly recognized.
Most of the events depicted occurred pretty much as is written here, although it is often hard to piece together the precise details. On the British side, battalion war diaries were often written up some days after the events, or even only once evacuated, and personal testimonies are frequently contradictory. German records are even less reliable. Paratroopers carried little with them into battle – typewriters, paper and pencils were not a top priority – and again, events were often recorded some days, or even weeks afterwards, and in the case of personal accounts, sometimes years later. It was, for example, very hard to piece together the nature of the III Battalion, 1st Fallschirmjager Regiment’s attack on Heraklion following their landing. Major Schulz’s men (he was very much a real person) did land west of the town and did attack Heraklion but were eventually forced back. However, no single account that I have read agrees with another as to when this took place. Some suggest it was that first night, others after the bombing attack the next morning. Several accounts claim the fighting continued well into the following day and that the town mayor had already surrendered when a British, Greek and civilian counter-attack forced them back again.
