A Brit's view

The following is an extract from 'Crete Eyewitnessed'. It is a recollection by Arnold Ashworth of the main paratroop drop as he saw it. It does not say which unit he was with, or where on the island, so I have assumed the Maleme area.	Site Map
Almost simultaneously with the awareness of a heavy droning in the distance, I noticed one of our number frantically pointing out to sea, and agitatedly drawing our attention to something which at first I could not discern. Automatically the sound of droning engines caused me to look toward the unfriendly skies, but I quickly noted that my comrade's finger was not indicating anything skywards, but rather something toward the far horizon of the encircling sea.
My momentary fears were of an invasion by sea, and I half expected to see an armada of invasion ships approaching our shores, but what I saw was probably unprecedented in any previous operation of war.
I saw them crawling like noisome giants towards us, their undercarriage appearing almost to be sweeping the placid sea.
They were coming in waves, the blackness of them added the sinister to the fantastic, they were easily the largest planes that we had ever seen.
I felt myself muttering the two fatal words through my clenched teeth, "troop carriers", it was quite obvious to all of us now that the invasion of our short-lived sanctuary was to be made from the air.
Very slowly the great heavily laden troop carriers drew ever closer to the island, every eye was glued onto them like a cat would watch a mouse, but then there was a difference, for they were the cats and we were the mice.
Instinctively rifles and machine guns were in our hands, spare bandoliers of ammunition were thrown over our shoulders, the strange fight with these men from the skies was about to begin.
Then the signal for the big drop took place. It was a magnesium flare that suddenly appeared, and even in the bright sunlit morning sky, the super brightness of it as it slowly floated toward the earth, left us in no doubt at all that the battle was on.
The paratroops must have jumped at the first show of the flare, but it seemed a while before the mushroom-shaped parachutes began to appear all over the sky. In actual fact it was only a matter of seconds. It was a revelation in modern warfare, but for those who were guarding that land strip it must have been a most demoralizing experience. There were men and equipment falling everywhere. The sky was alive with the descending attackers.
The glider troops trying desperately to get their heavy machine gun into action, and our new rifles so hot with rapid fire that little warm rivulets of grease were running all over our hands and bare arms. I remember too a pathetic looking German trying to drag his bullet-riddled body behind the glider for refuge which it could not offer and a field grey uniformed arm which kept managing to raise itself a few inches from the ground to wave a white handkerchief - a token of surrender.
......There was one man still alive. We were about to continue to the glider was down to our left (the one which had shown most fight) when we heard a most agonizing voice panting over and over again, "shotten, shotten", which translated into English means, "shoot me, shoot me".
We moved into the direction of the voice, and we found him, he had crawled into a little grassy hollow a few yards away from his comrades. I don't know how he had got so far, for half his hip was shot away, he had been hit with the heavy calibre bullet of the anti-tank rifle.
I gazed down into his tormented countenance and felt great compassion. A short while before he had been a fine specimen of manhood, as of course were all these airborne troops, all specially chosen men with a high standard of physical fitness, and now here he lay at my feet pleading with me to put an end to his horrible suffering and wasted life.
More however was I touched when I stood over one of the grotesque shapes of the dead German soldiers and examined the photographs which had been taken from him. I saw him in civilian clothes in what looked like a German park or garden, a smart young man smiling at what appeared to be his two children picking flowers. I could not help looking down at his horribly distorted form, and wondering if maybe tomorrow someone else would be standing over me gazing at the few photographs which I carried. It was a sobering thought and it didn't cheer me up at all.