The other airfields had ant-aircraft guns , both heavy and light. They also had no armor-piercing capability. Cerman aircraft could fly low over Retimo fairly safely. They could shoot at German soft vehicles. The Australian 2/1st Battalion had no wireless and only had three telephones. Tgeir cables were supplied by the gunners. Campbell used the telephones to connect with hills A and B. Some signallers were used to run the telephones and as runners. The rest became riflemen. The other Australian battalion, the 2/11th, had telephones for each company, but had very little cable. The two Australian battalions communicated by runner. They were well-equipped with barbed wire, so they had barbed wire for the whole front and the airfield.
Food could be an issue. Tthey had enough fot ten days, but enough for four days had been sent to Mesi at the end of the road. If the Germans took the ridge above the airfield, they would withdraw to Mesi. The soldiers also bought food locally, such as pigs, eggs, goats milk, and vegetables. Aswe mentioned, the 2/11th Battalion hired goats to milk and kept them in their positions.
Because olive trees blocked the slopes of the ridges, the field guns and most machine guns were positioned on hills A and B so they were able to fire to the north, east,and west. Two medium machine guns were sitting on the ridge above Hill B.
Hill A had a company from the 2/1st along with 2-100mm, 4-75mm, with one platoon "of machine gunners".
This is based on the account in "Greece, Crete, and Syria" by Gavin Long.
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