Captured - The Battle for Crete

Prisoners of war

About 2000 New Zealanders were taken prisoner on Crete. Those captured by the Germans at Sfakia were marched back over the White Mountains to a prison camp near Canea. The heat, and lack of food and water took a toll on the men.

Conditions at the camp were very poor.  There was little to occupy the men's time, although some joined work parties to bury the dead or to work on the airfield at Maleme. Food and shelter were scarce.

The conditions in the camp were shocking. It was dusty and dirty and there was only sandy ground, with a few tufts of grass. The toilet facilities were shocking. All they had was a trench in the ground, dug in on the outside, the edge of the camp. Out in the open. Everyone had dysentery. It was nothing to see a hundred all lined up along the trench, and more waiting to get there. Chaps couldn't make it. If you soiled your clothes, all you had to do was go down to the beach and get in the tide. There was only one well, and the water used to get muddy in that.

Colin Burn, interviewed by Megan Hutching, 5 December 2000. Colin Burn was on Crete until January 1942 when he was sent, via Greece, to Germany. He spent the rest of the war in camp and on working parties in Germany and Poland.

Security could be lax. Initially the Germans turned a blind eye to prisoners leaving camp at night to find food. As the months passed security tightened up.

The food was pretty poor, but the Germans couldn't help that, they didn't have any spare to give us. Our ships got bombed in the harbour; got a real thrashing beforehand, and, for instance, there were a lot of sacks of dried beans that got wet with sea water, and then they were given to us and boiled up. Well, it was better than nothing. We ate a lot of them. It was all in one big tub out in the open — they heated it and tipped the beans and whatever else there was. They ladled it out into our mess tins if we still had them, or anything we had, and we ate it. It was enough to keep us alive....Our blokes had built the wires, and there was one part where they were a bit loose. But the Germans were so friendly once we were prisoners, I don't think they cared. One bloke told us...'I see some of your friends steal grapes. They go over the road and come back with them at night.' He should have shot them, but he didn't. I thought, that sounds alright to me. I'll go over the road too.

Norm Delaney, interviewed by Megan Hutching, 30 November 2000. Norm Delaney was on the run for ten-and-a-half months, and eventually managed to get on board a small boat which took him to Egypt.

Camps in Crete were short-term only. The majority of the men were sent first by boat to Greece and then by train to prison camps in Germany. If they were non-commissioned, they were then sent out in work parties to quarries or factories. There most of them stayed until they were liberated in 1945.

Escapees

Many men escaped to the hills where they were helped, at great personal risk, by the Cretan people. Some were re-captured and others got off the island by boat or by submarine. A few escaped by way of Greece.

Some New Zealanders were involved in the guerrilla warfare between the Cretans and the Germans. Escaped prisoners could be parachuted back to the island to take part in this. Among them were New Zealanders Tom Moir and Dudley Perkins, whose outstanding leadership led to his being christened 'Vasili' by the Cretans. Perkins was killed in action on Crete in February 1944.