Captured in Crete WW2

[alanmack]

Long ago I worked with an "old sweat", a former regular soldier, a member of 1st Batt, Royal Tank Regiment pre-WW2. He fought on Crete and was taken POW. He was among those who were marched the whole length of the Balkans to Austria. The German Army did their best to protect them but more British soldiers were lost to attacks by the Partisans than ever they lost in the battle for Crete.

alanmack

[Regorian]

To set the record straight, the paratroop drop by 7th Flieger Division (later 1st Parachute (Fallschirmjaeger) Division) was a near total disaster. British and Commonwealth troops were deployed in exactly the right places. The paratroops suffered about 50% casualties in the drop and subsequent fighting before the 5th Mountain (Gebirgsjaeger) Division was airlanded in to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.

Hitler forbade any further large scale paratroop drops.   

[IMBER]

Also to set the record straight, British troops were there in large numbers, not that I would want to differentiate between the Commonwealth forces who all had one objective, but let's keep to facts.

Imber

[LizzieW]

We were on holiday in Crete in April and stayed in a small village near Stavromenos.  There is a war memorial there commemorating the 1941 Battle of Crete in memory of the New Zealand, Australian, British and Greek soldiers who gave their lives defending the island against the axis forces.  From the wording around the memorial, it would seem that there were only a few British men there and that the majority of the others were from New Zealand and Australia as well as Greek soldiers and locals.

[IMBER]

Rootschat tends to deal only with facts. I have chosen the following source because it is from New Zealand and not the UK:

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Cret-b4.html

Imber

[LizzieW]

Imber - that's interesting as that shows the British far outweighed the other fighting personnel, yet the Stavromenos monument is definitely an Australian monument.  Perhaps it was just the fighting in that area that was predominantly Australian and New Zealand men.

[Regorian]

Just out of interest as it was Waterloo day yesterday, there's still a Prince Blucher von Wahlstadt. Pictured with the present Duke of Wellington and Charles Bonaparte. he even looks like his ancestor who was commander of the Prussian field army in 1813/14, Ligny and Waterloo 1815.

Three Blucher brothers were paratroop officers killed at Maleme Airfield in 1941. The fourth brother, who was in the Kriegsmarine was sent home to look after the family estate. He died in 1944 in a shooting accident. Assuming that he had children by then, perhaps the present Prince is his son. I haven't followed it up.   

[Alexis Penny Casdagli]

For a full description of the first few days before the Forced Surrender by the Allied Forces on 1 June in Sphakia, Crete, and the subsequent march back to Maleme airport to be transported to camps in Germany, read A T Casdagli's war diary, 'Prouder Than Ever' published by Cylix Press and available exclusively from them at www.cylixpress.co.uk with 20% of the price of each book donated to the British Red Cross. Also read the Casdagli British Red Cross Blog posted by them last month at http://blogs.redcross.org.uk/uncategorized/2015/11/man-took-nazis-needle/ and also the two 'Prouder Than Ever' videos on YouTube. I hope this is helpful to you. I am the daughter of A T Casdagli and compiled of 'Prouder Than Ever' and will be making a short documentary in Crete in May and June of 2016 to mark 75th anniversary of the capture of those 6000 men, of whom my father was one.

[curtains400]

My father was captured on the island of Crete and sent to a Stalag camp in Germany. Please email me, I am very interested in this