Word: crete
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...attack was by night, and even then the Luftwaffe dropped flares and death. "I was in Greece," said one dust-caked, ragged soldier, "but what their aircraft did to us there was absolutely nothing compared to the concentrated attack by hundreds of planes at once which was made in Crete." The British came out of Crete still convinced, as they had been after Greece, that they were individually as good fighters as the Germans; but they were more amazed than ever at German military efficiency. They were particularly amazed at how precisely the German aerial and ground combat teams cooperated...
...Force hospital and quoted him ironically: "Many of the Tommies showed true soldierly spirit even toward their German prisoners. A British Army sergeant captured by us promptly assisted us in treating our wounded." As a sort of reprisal the Germans announced that Major General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, commander of Crete's defenses, had been killed while "cravenly" attempting to flee Crete in a plane; the British denied...
...waters Britain came out much worse than at Greece. The tonnage which Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham lost in the Cretan operation was twelve times as high as that lost off Greece. The horror off Crete was also many times as great-for while most of the damage suffered off Greece was suffered by night, the converse was true off Crete; here the terror was all too visible...
Evacuation was as much more difficult than Greece as Greece was than Dunkirk. At Dunkirk the British had good air protection and good beaches. At Greece they had fair protection and fair evacuation points. At Crete they had no protection and abominable jumping-off places...
...British had almost no heavy equipment in Crete, so they did not have to worry about preventing that from falling into enemy hands. The only thing to get off was men-straggling, struggling men with dried sweat and dust caked in their beards, clutching water bottles as if they were purses of gold; men who had had nothing to eat for twelve days but grimy cold food; men half-crazed with fatigue, who had fought at night and been hounded by day; soldiers of defeat who nevertheless were still sure they could beat the Jerries man to fighting...