moved to a safe house surrounded by German billets. Nonetheless, an andartes operation was mounted to execute him. On the night of 2 2/23 September three men entered the building, one to carry out the sentence and the others to act as bodyguards. The executioner was armed with a knife and had vowed to scrawl the words ‘Traitor!’ on the walls in Komnas’s blood. In the frenzy of the attack he stabbed his victim over and over again. Blood pumped from the writhing body, covering the floor and the bed he was lying on. The executioner had not expected this, or the smell it caused, and began to retch, unable to carry out his promise. He tried to scrub the sticky red blood off his hands with whatever he could find and then fled with his comrades. The Germans found Komnas’s body the next day. Almost every piece of cloth in the room, the bedclothes, the curtains, even the tablecloth, was smeared with his blood. He had been stabbed seventeen times, Cretan justice had been done.
See Notes to Chapter 9
10
A Terrible Tragedy
In November 1942, General Bruno Bräuer took over from General Andrae as commander of Fortress Crete. He was forty-nine years old, short, with a slight stammer, and famous among his men for his gleaming gold cigarette case. As a young major he had commanded the elite General Göring Regiment, and on 11 June 1938 became the first German paratrooper to jump from a plane. At the start of the war he was commander of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment and had been part of the forces that stormed through Poland, France and the Low Countries. In Holland he captured Dordrecht Bridge in very heavy fighting and acquired a reputation for extreme bravery.
Had Operation Seelöwe (Sealion), the invasion of England, happened Bräuer and his men would have been in the vanguard. His orders were to parachute into Kent, near the village of Paddlesworth, and take the seaside town of Sandgate. But Seelöwe was cancelled and on 20 May 1941 Bräuer jumped with elements of 1st and 2nd Fallschirmjäger over the area east of Heraklion with orders to take the airfield. He and his men fought for eight days and achieved nothing. When the Allies in Heraklion heard that German forces from Maleme airport were heading for the town they withdrew to the harbour to await evacuation, thereby handing Bräuer his objective.
Bräuer’s initial approach to the command of Crete differed to that of his predecessors, Student and Andrae. He made little of the stories of mutilation that had so enraged Kurt Student and tried to educate his officers about the ‘warrior spirit of the Cretans’. Bräuer wrote a report explaining why, in his view, the people had risen up with such ferocity. It was called the ‘Memorandum by the German High Command concerning the attitude of the civilian population in Crete towards the German armed forces and the reaction of these’. In it he concluded that many of the reports of atrocities were caused by the general chaos and excitement accompanying the invasion and that it was even possible that some of the reports were imaginary. He pointed out that legitimate troops had been forced to fight in civilian clothes because the speed of the mobilisation had meant that proper uniforms had not been issued. Bräuer explained that the Cretans had spent hundreds of years fighting invaders – Arabs, Venetians, Turks – and had a tradition that every islander is a soldier. Bräuer also concluded that some of the blame could be assigned to ‘Captain John Pendlebury, who, disguised as a vice consul appealed to the population to fight’, and in whose house were found arms and maps.
Bräuer went to some lengths to try to woo the people under his dominion. He opened the forbidden zone south of Mesara, and sent his ADC on a tour of the Mesara Plain with the unenviable task of making speeches, explaining that the new Festungskommmandant was a passionate lover of all things Greek and that his dearest wish was to help and
See Notes to Chapter 9
10
A Terrible Tragedy
In November 1942, General Bruno Bräuer took over from General Andrae as commander of Fortress Crete. He was forty-nine years old, short, with a slight stammer, and famous among his men for his gleaming gold cigarette case. As a young major he had commanded the elite General Göring Regiment, and on 11 June 1938 became the first German paratrooper to jump from a plane. At the start of the war he was commander of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment and had been part of the forces that stormed through Poland, France and the Low Countries. In Holland he captured Dordrecht Bridge in very heavy fighting and acquired a reputation for extreme bravery.
Had Operation Seelöwe (Sealion), the invasion of England, happened Bräuer and his men would have been in the vanguard. His orders were to parachute into Kent, near the village of Paddlesworth, and take the seaside town of Sandgate. But Seelöwe was cancelled and on 20 May 1941 Bräuer jumped with elements of 1st and 2nd Fallschirmjäger over the area east of Heraklion with orders to take the airfield. He and his men fought for eight days and achieved nothing. When the Allies in Heraklion heard that German forces from Maleme airport were heading for the town they withdrew to the harbour to await evacuation, thereby handing Bräuer his objective.
Bräuer’s initial approach to the command of Crete differed to that of his predecessors, Student and Andrae. He made little of the stories of mutilation that had so enraged Kurt Student and tried to educate his officers about the ‘warrior spirit of the Cretans’. Bräuer wrote a report explaining why, in his view, the people had risen up with such ferocity. It was called the ‘Memorandum by the German High Command concerning the attitude of the civilian population in Crete towards the German armed forces and the reaction of these’. In it he concluded that many of the reports of atrocities were caused by the general chaos and excitement accompanying the invasion and that it was even possible that some of the reports were imaginary. He pointed out that legitimate troops had been forced to fight in civilian clothes because the speed of the mobilisation had meant that proper uniforms had not been issued. Bräuer explained that the Cretans had spent hundreds of years fighting invaders – Arabs, Venetians, Turks – and had a tradition that every islander is a soldier. Bräuer also concluded that some of the blame could be assigned to ‘Captain John Pendlebury, who, disguised as a vice consul appealed to the population to fight’, and in whose house were found arms and maps.
Bräuer went to some lengths to try to woo the people under his dominion. He opened the forbidden zone south of Mesara, and sent his ADC on a tour of the Mesara Plain with the unenviable task of making speeches, explaining that the new Festungskommmandant was a passionate lover of all things Greek and that his dearest wish was to help and
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