By the time that the Australians moved into houses, the Germans had withdrawn from them. After dawn, they had captued a German who ran into one of the houses. The Germans fired an anti-tank gun at one house. That caused the Australian platoon to move to another house. By early afternoon, the Germans bombed one house but did not attack it.
The Germans constantly fired machine guns at the houses from the church and from the side towards the sea. No one was hit, but the houses had many bullet-holes. That created a good deal of dust. Jackson planned to pull out that night. They would follow the wadi to the beach. Once they were on the beach, they would push through the enemy line to the east.
Jackson had no way of sending a message to battalion headquarters. He thought that the headquaters would know where they were by the gunfire. The battalion commander, Sandover, Sandover thought Jackson would try to breakout during the night, under cover of the darkness. He had the artillery fire on the German positions as soon as darkness fell. The Australian artillery fired most of their ammunition at that time.
This is based on the account in "Greece, Crete, and Syria" by Gavin Long
No comments:
Post a Comment