Attack on hospital during Battle for Crete

A Red Cross marked out at 7 General Hospital

Battle for Crete: the German attack on 7 General Hospital on 20 May

The hospital was bombed and machine-gunned from the air on 20 May and then overrun by paratroops from 10 Company of III Battalion, who drove out patients able to walk, herded them and the hospital staff into the nearby area of 6 NZ Field Ambulance, and later marched their captives towards Galatas.

The hospital area was well marked with Red Crosses, and these attacks and their sequel have therefore been widely regarded as intentional breaches of the Geneva Convention. (International Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field, signed at Geneva on 27 July 1929, and ratified by Germany on 21 February 1934.)

The hospital consisted of a few buildings, a number of marquees, and an assortment of smaller tents covering a large area of open, almost treeless ground. Red Crosses were clearly painted on the roofs of three of the buildings, and a large one (estimated at 30 feet by 20 feet) was marked out on the ground near the sea. The marquees used as hospital wards were mostly grouped together and a large cloth Red Cross was laid out on the ground among them. All the crosses were large enough to be seen from the air from a considerable altitude.

German orders for 20 May included references to attacking an 'enemy encampment' and a 'tented encampment' but it is hard to see how their Intelligence could have mistaken the area as a military camp when it was so obviously marked with Red Crosses.

On the other hand, German intelligence was poor—their estimate of the number of Allied troops on the island was woefully—and almost fatally—wrong by about two-thirds. As a result, they would not have thought it possible that there was a need for a 600-bed hospital and a dressing station just west of Canea, as well as a much smaller tented hospital and other smaller establishments in that sector. It seems likely though that German intelligence, poor in its estimate of Allied strength on Crete, was again wrong in failing to realise that the whole ara claimed Red Cross protection.

German paratroops occupied the hospital but sniper fire from the New Zealanders and small counter-thrusts into the area made their position precarious. They decided to push south and chose to take their prisoners with them. This was a body of about 500 men. The party moved off with guards to the front and rear and on the flanks. It is not surprising that the New Zealand prisoners felt that they were being used as a screen.