Individuals in conflict can decisively influence the outcome of a battle. Examples abound. Leonidas and his lonely Spartan defence of the narrow pass at Thermopylae in 480 BC against the might of the invading Persian army; an unknown standard bearer from Caesar’s Tenth Legion leaping into the sea off Deal in 55 BC and securing a foothold for the first Roman invasion of Britain; a single cavalry officer carrying a message causing the British Light Brigade to charge the Russian guns at the wrong end of the ‘Valley of Death’ at Balaclava in 1854; General von Paulus’ failure to break out the 6th German Army at Stalingrad in 1942 from Russian encirclement possibly costing Germany World War II. It is the actions of similarly important individuals that resulted in the loss of Hill 107 on Crete in May 1941, the key event that decided the entire campaign to capture the island.
New Zealand forces held this hill in the face of desperate German parachute assaults, which sought to capture the dominating high ground overlooking the only airfield where they could air-land reinforcements to secure the rest of the island of Crete. Hill 107 overlooked the two-thirds of a mile long by one-third of a mile wide primitive red-clay dirt landing strip.
Viewed from the dried-up Tavronitis river bed, the western slope of Hill 107 is high and intimidating, the stepped terraces enclosing small fields. It was spanned by a 130-yard metal girder bridge, perched on concrete piles. Today a modern highway bridge crosses the river alongside. Sections of the metal girders are punctured by ragged bullet holes or peeled back by shrapnel strikes. The steep sides of the west slope rise steadily in undulating fashion towards Crete’s southern mountain foothills.
The northern slope facing the line of the aerodrome runway is gentle; its summit slightly higher than the plateau that extends east, a ragged line silhouetted by clumps of olive trees. In 1941, the gently descending slope had open areas, planted with barley and young vines, extending down to the airstrip, which had a soft sandy beach beyond the perimeter. Today there is a multiplicity of olive groves. The summit of point 107, called Kavkazia Hill by the Cretans, is formed by stony red-packed clay, with clumps of dried grass. On its east side, the largely dried-up River Sfakoriako has carved steep-sided gullies in places, overgrown with vegetation, cacti and bamboo shrubs.
Nestled inside the north-eastern side of the hill, the village of Maleme lies due east of an ancient Minoan tomb, only discovered at the eve of the 20th century. Village houses were ugly earthfloor flat-roofed fortress-like structures, opened around the base for livestock, with living accommodation above. An occasional balcony might contain an isolated chair. The main street descended to the sea, and was narrow with tight alleys between houses. Rickety shutters afforded scant protection against radiant heat and bright sunlight. Large families occupied small houses, within a village community numbering about 200 souls.
Creeping villa expansion with brightly coloured tourist holiday homes as well as noisy taverns and night clubs has completely transformed the formerly peaceful idyllic coastline. Originally three churches served the small community and were the only ostentatious dwellings with priests providing social guidance and community leadership. Today only the basement of the original Agia Marina church remains from the war, but the most recent, built alongside, still has one of the original 1941 bullet-scarred venerable icons. Another church and some the hill village houses were relocated when airfield construction started in 1940.
Only rarely is it possible to positively identify the decisive point of a battle in modern warfare. Hill 107 was one of these during the night of 20/21 May 1941. Its loss was as decisive as Harold Godwinson’s death on Senlac Hill at Hastings in 1066, which
irrecoverably changed the future political and social development of England. The battle for Hill 107 likewise decided the entire outcome of this nine-day campaign for the island of Crete.
The book does not seek to comprehensively narrate the Cretan campaign. It deals instead with what was felt, heard or seen, left and right of the ‘mark one eyeball’, on and around the hill during the battle. At the height of the battle for Hill 107 the New Zealand perspective is from the summit, juxtaposed against the German view, looking up from below. The detail of what was seen wasinfluenced by the azimuth of the sun, moving east to west across the sky. Germans clinging to the western slopes were dazzled during the morning peering up from the shadow of the low ground. During the afternoons the New Zealanders were in the glare, their concealed positions, precisely illuminated by the direct rays of the sun, standing out in sharp relief.
Events are narrated through the filter of key historical eyewitnesses. Each one was either a decision maker or taker. Headings identify the people influencing the major events relating to the subject of that chapter. Two primary perspectives are explored – German and New Zealand – with another, the civilian Cretan view, when caught up in the events.
Drawing upon many original archived New Zealand and German unit post-combat reports and letters, diaries with personal accounts from both sides and supplemented by vivid individual interview testimonies, the three-day battle for ‘The Hill’ is brought to life.
When the Germans jumped on the morning of 20 May, they had never lost a battle thus far in the war. The New Zealanders, after fighting a succession of desperate rearguards during the evacuation of mainland Greece, had never won one. Success had previously been measured by the ability to break clean in retreat.
Yet, nobody behaved during these three fateful days as they might have been expected to; these were uncharted circumstances for both sides. Mutual surprise is a factor throughout, coming from unseen terrain containing unexpected enemies, a feature common to all airborne insertions. Nobody in history to that date had ever seen a strategic objective conquered from the air alone, and it has not been done since. The actors tell how it was done, peering out from around the summits and within the shadows of Hill 107 beneath.
Robert Kershaw is a historian and the author of The Hill: The Brutal Fight for Hill 107 in the Battle of Crete, published by Osprey.
