After battle of Crete

[Rod Salter]

Purchased an item on eBay today from Mike Smythe. He linked me to his site.

"At the end of the Battle of Crete in May 1941, the many troops and a small group of civilians with the support of various rearguard actions walked over 70 km across Crete to the southern beach at Sphakia with the hope of being evacuated to Egypt"

In September 2018 he plans to bring this story, to you and many others, using soldiers personal accounts, original photos, maps and unit diaries as he traces the original route documenting it as he goes.

Here is a link to his site

http://www.nocountryforoldboots.com/

cheers rod

PS, Hanno, please feel free to redirect/move/remove as appropriate

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Rod,

Thanks for the heads-up! That sounds like a very interesting project indeed:

This site is being created to tell the story of thousands of men who walked over 70 km to evade capture,some however were captured and walked back the way they came to become pows for the duration of the war.

PS: I moved it to "WW2 Military History & Equipment".

Regards,
Hanno

[Lang]

By sheer coincidence I am in Sfakia right at the moment for the second night. Walked the Imbros Gorge that all the troops came down today.

We went to the ceremony at the Commonwealth War Cemetary at Suda Bay the other night on the 77th Anniversary of the German Parachute drop. A good service well attended run by the Brits with Greek Navy support. The German Para Association laid a wreathe and actually got polite applause. The old timers still have little love for the Germans and let it be known. The Australian ceremony at Rethymnon was the day before and the Kiwi and German ceremonies at Maleme airfield today.The German cemetary at Maleme is a beautifully kept site with nearly all the 4,600 Germans killed on Crete buried there.

Photos from our hotel balcony. The small pier is where 15,000 troops loaded into small boats for transfer onto the naval vessels standing off-shore (at night due to continuous bombing). The harbour is about 100 metres across. Boats can not approach the sea side and all loading is from the end or inside.

The second small harbour you can see behind the hill to the left was not there in 1941

Lang

[Mike K]

Interesting . My uncle was taken POW on Crete, he was in 2/7 I think . He ended up in Silesia in a POW camp but he spent some time in Berlin working in a sheet metal factory as forced labour for the enemy

[Lang]

View from top of the hill. As mentioned the second harbour was built after the war.

[Mike K]

Found the link

http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...ighlight=crete