Chapter 257 Surrender

The defense of the British and Greek armies on Crete soon reached the stage of collapse, although the British and Greek armies tried hard to save the situation.

The Greek army's attempt was to attack the "Eight O'Clock" Heights together with the National People's Liberation Army, but their attempt did not work at all.

Qin Chuan believes that this has a lot to do with the British supply distribution.

Theoretically, even if the German army is well-trained and occupies the advantageous terrain of the high ground, the total strength of the British, Greek and militia is at least five times that of the German army... More importantly, the German army is surrounded on a high ground and cannot move, and all its supplies have to rely on transport planes to drop.

So this is actually very easy to solve, that is, to compress the space of the German army as much as possible, so that it is difficult for transport planes to drop supplies to the German-controlled area, and even if they are dropped to the British and Greek coalition forces, they can directly blow it up with fire blockade.

The problem was that the British army had the most advanced equipment but little fighting spirit, while the Greek army had fighting spirit but no equipment, especially the Greek militia... The militia fought bravely, especially at night, and launched group charges towards the high ground where the German army was stationed several times, but they were suppressed by the powerful firepower of the German army several times. So much so that by dawn the next day, only more than 500 of the more than 1,000 Greek militiamen were still capable of fighting.

The bodies of Greek militiamen were everywhere on the slope of the high ground. What made the German army unbelievable was that many of the bodies were not holding guns, but spears and axes.

The German army even launched a counterattack against the militia... The militia's firepower could not stop the German attack at all, so the German army easily obtained more space transport planes and took this opportunity to drop ammunition and supplies.

This can also be said to be the British army's own fault. In fact, the British army did not lack sufficient weapons to equip these Greek troops and Greek militias. It's just that the British had their own little calculations... They wanted to control these troops, so they didn't dare to equip these Greek troops with strong independent consciousness, especially the National People's Liberation Army. Otherwise, the equipment of the National People's Liberation Army would not be so bad.

(Note: This is also related to ideology. The "Greek National Liberation Front" was established by the Greek Communist Party)

In other words, the British army, the Greek government army and the Greek militia actually had their own intentions and feared each other. Although they had to fight the enemy together because of the airborne landings of Germany and Italy, they were in a state of disunity and were like a pile of loose sand, which gave the German army the opportunity to defeat them.

The British army's efforts were to transfer the "Indomitable" aircraft carrier.

This approach is of course correct. The biggest problem of the British army on Crete is that the airport is blocked and cannot play an air advantage, and the aircraft carrier is equivalent to an active airport on the sea. Montgomery tried to use this method to ease the crisis on Crete and turn the tide of the war.

The problem is that the aircraft carrier is just a small airport, or more precisely, a super-small airport, which can only allow some short-distance take-off and landing fighters to take off and land, and must have professionally trained pilots.

This made the investment of the "Indomitable" aircraft carrier not play a big role: at this time, the British carrier-based aircraft were still relatively backward "Sea Gladiator" and "Fulmar" fighters, which were barely useful for competing with Italy for air and sea supremacy, but could only be beaten by the German BF109, among which the "Sea Gladiator" was even an old-fashioned biplane.

On the third day of the battle, the German side had another exciting good news: Maleme Airport had been put back into use under the control and emergency repair of the German army.

Although it was just an airport, it had extraordinary significance for the battle, because it meant that the German fighters could land and resupply at Maleme Airport, and then they could fully control the air supremacy of Crete.

So Montgomery had to bow his head and said, "We lost, let's withdraw the headquarters!"

There was really no point in fighting further except for more deaths. The British always valued interests and reality, so they announced their surrender after withdrawing the British 14th Infantry Division and several important generals of the Greek Army.

The Greek Army also announced its surrender soon after.

The National People's Liberation Army would certainly not surrender, they just chose to withdraw quietly and then disperse and hide among the people.

There was also a small episode when surrendering:

The Italian army rushed to Iraq Airport to accept the surrender, but Colonel Smith refused the surrender of the Italian army after discussing with the Greek army.

"The German army that defeated us!" Colonel Smith said to the Italians: "So, we only surrender to the Germans!"

This made Colonel Ennio, the commander of the First Italian Parachute Regiment, very angry. A group of defeated generals were still showing off in front of the great "Lightning Division".

So they planned to force their way in with a command, but they didn't expect that the British equipment at the airport was not comparable to that of the Italian army. They rumbled out several tanks.

Colonel Ennio was stunned when he saw this situation... Most of the paratroopers were lightly equipped, and they didn't have "iron fists" in their hands, so they couldn't fight these tough "Matilda" tanks head-on.

At this time, the staff gave Colonel Ennio a way out.

"Colonel!" The staff said: "If we let the Germans come, we can make them surrender, and there is no need for casualties..."

Colonel Ennio said "hmm" with a very ugly face, and asked someone to notify the German troops on the high ground.

The Germans did not dare to give up the "Eight O'clock" Hill easily, because it was the main position for blocking the airport... They did not want the British or Greeks to seize the "Eight O'clock" Hill and lift the blockade of the airport while the Germans were accepting the surrender.

So in the end, the Italian army had to send a troop to the "Eight O'clock" Hill to replace the Germans and accept the surrender.

When the Italian soldiers walked up to the "Eight O'clock" Hill, they were all shocked to see the overlapping craters on the hill and the corpses and broken limbs on the ground. Because of the heavy humidity on the island, some corpses had even become smelly and had maggots.

"How did you do it?" An Italian captain asked the German soldiers whose uniforms were torn to pieces: "How did you hold out for three days under such circumstances?"

"Relax, Italians!" Alfredo answered for them: "This is not the toughest battle we have ever fought, and it is not as difficult as you think!"

Alfredo was telling the truth, because the enemy's quality was uneven, and the German soldiers believed they could still deal with it.

But this was a bit ironic to the Italian soldiers...because they were facing the same enemies, but they did not have an easy time fighting, and even now they still couldn't do anything about the British troops at the airport.