The Capitulation - The Battle for Crete
Allied prisoners of war pass German transport
1 June 1941: the capitulation
On 1 June the troops who had been left behind faced either surrender to the Germans or escape into the hills if they could. Some who escaped were captured almost immediately, though others were able to stay away for the duration of the German occupation. For further details, see the 'Aftermath' page.
Lt-Col Colvin's orders were to capitulate. Early in the morning he called together the officers in command of the various groups and announced that that was what he intended to do. But when Lt-Col Walker of 2/7 Australian Battalion arrived, Colvin gave him the orders as the senior officer.
Walker told his men to destroy their equipment and to escape if they could, then found an Austrian officer at the village of Komitadhes and surrendered to him.
The news was a shock to many. Driver C. Farley recorded his reactions:
'God Almighty! What a blow. A Prisoner of War. Me, I had had visions of wounds, death from various causes, including a fight to the finish in the event of a hand to hand go, but a prisoner, never. It was something that I had never reckoned on. The realisation was stupefying, dumbfounding. In all my previous experience and I had then nearly 35 years of it, [never] had I received news that had knocked me all of a heap as this had.
Well, the next thing was what to do now. Stay and take the consequences or bugger off into the hills. One could not go straight back into the hills as the Germans were coming down towards us from there. The only safe exit was along the coast towards the East. But then there was the problem of food. The majority of us by this time were thoroughly undernourished and now we had to depend on our captors to supply us with food. There was nothing left in the food dump and what little I had collected was not going to carry me far.'
D.M. Davin, Crete, Wellington, 1953, p. 454
Peter Cosgrave, a signalman with Divisional Signals, recalled that:
'We reached some caves at Sfakia and hid in these caves. Then one of the officers told us to pile up our weapons and wait for the Germans—we were aghast, and cursed all and sundry. Then the Germans arrived and started marching us back over the mountains. There was no food or drink and the Germans robbed us of watches and rings on the march to the POW camp. It was a bloody shambles.'
From M. Hutching (ed) 'A Unique Sort of Battle': New Zealanders Remember Crete, Auckland, 2001, p. 202
Next page: The Aftermath 
