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Glory, of which the Battle of Greece was made, was not in the Cretan fabric. This fight was all grimness. The ruses here were dastardly. The British charged that the Germans would make captives walk before them as human shields; the Germans charged that disguised British would wave the swastika in apparent triumph on a hilltop, and when the Germans rallied around the British would cut them down. The British charged that the Germans used Anzac uniforms; the Germans charged that the British tortured prisoners.
At times the claims and counter-claims bordered on the ridiculous. The British announced that the ex-world's champion heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling, who though a little overage and a lot overweight had volunteered as a parachutist, had been killed; the Germans replied that he was ill of a "tropical disease" in an Air Force hospital and quoted him ironically: "Many of the Tommies showed true soldierly spirit even toward their German prisoners. A British Army sergeant captured by us promptly assisted us in treating our wounded." As a sort of reprisal the Germans announced that Major General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, commander of Crete's defenses, had been killed while "cravenly" attempting to flee Crete in a plane; the British denied it.
On the waters Britain came out much worse than at Greece. The tonnage which Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham lost in the Cretan operation was twelve times as high as that lost off Greece. The horror off Crete was also many times as great—for while most of the damage suffered off Greece was suffered by night, the converse was true off Crete; here the terror was all too visible.
Wrote one correspondent, who had the temerity to ride into the struggle on a battleship: "Hardened seamen on the battleship . . . cursed and shook their fists as German bombers, roaring in for the kill after scoring a hit in the magazine of a destroyer, dumped bombs around sailors struggling in the water and swooped down with their machine guns blazing."
Evacuation was as much more difficult than Greece as Greece was than Dunkirk. At Dunkirk the British had good air protection and good beaches. At Greece they had fair protection and fair evacuation points. At Crete they had no protection and abominable jumping-off places.