| Original caption: “Exhausted English troops sleep half-propped up on the deck of a Greek coastal steamer whose deck is so narrow that the men have no room in which to stretch out their legs. Except for the second man from the right, who belongs to the Royal Signals, the rest are from the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. The bald-headed man is a sergeant who uses his gloves for a pillow.” Like the Greek evacuation, that from Crete was 1 of hurried improvisation, reliant often upon the ancient skill of seamanship inherent in the British sailor and upon the sturdy spirit of the troops who patiently awaited embarkation, battle-weary and exhausted by long marches over rugged terrain at night. A total of nearly 22,000 troops awaited evacuation. These troops had enormous faith in the Navy. Buried among the mass of official [Admiralty] documents accumulated [are] intimate human papers [that] are rather surprising to be found. It appears that some of the soldiers rescued, non-commissioned officers and privates as well as officers, wrote down their personal experiences just after their escape and left them in the ships which took them off. Thence they ultimately reached the Admiralty and so came to be incorporated in the official records…In every 1 of these accounts appears the sustaining, almost blind faith that, if they could only reach the sea coast somewhere, the Navy would rescue them. 1 young New Zealander calls it the ever-present hope of contacting the Navy and another wrote that during all the long retreat in Greece our 1 hope and thought was the Navy. It is perhaps in these records that the purpose and justification of all that was endured by the maritime services at this time is to be found. The island of Crete was not well-endowed with port facilities suited to evacuating the Commonwealth Armies. Indeed, Heraklion was the only place with any port facilities at all where warships could berth alongside a jetty or quay. The bulk of the evacuation from Crete had to be made from the small open beach at Sfakia. Sfakia lay at the foot of a 500 foot (a 150 meter) escarpment, access to which was gained by a near 2-hour scramble down a narrow, twisting goat track in the dark. The fishing village, for that is all it was, possessed a shingle beach which it wore like an apron. About 200 yards (a 180 meters) in width, it shelved ideally for small boats to embark troops. Communications from the beach to those on top of the cliff were kept as simple as possible. The onus of signalling the number of troops for embarkation and the point of pick-up was placed upon Royal New Zealand Army General Freyberg (March 21, 1889 – July 4, 1963), General Officer Commanding of the Crete garrison. United Kingdom Royal Navy Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham (January 7, 1883 – June 12, 1963) would then consult Major General John F. Evetts (June 30, 1891 – December 21, 1988), his military liaison officer, before deploying his ships to the point of embarkation. It was against this background of retreat, military defeat, of confusion and uncertainty that the evacuation from Crete had to be planned and conducted. Group Captain Claude B. R. Pelly (August 19, 1902 – August 12, 1972) was sent from Headquarters Royal Air Force (RAF) Middle East to organize this onerous undertaking, upon the efficiency of which the safety of so many ships and the lives of so many seamen and troop depended. An Air Ministry comment to Cunningham’s Despatch says: “The general air situation remained much the same, with one important difference. The bulk of the troops were evacuated from bays in southern Crete during the hours of darkness and it was possible to provide some limited fighter cover to ships which by first light had proceeded some way towards the Egyptian mainland.” Even then, the ranges from RAF airfields and the small number of aircraft available allowed no margin in hand to deal with changes in the routing of timing of naval operations which were necessitated by Axis air action. The message on May 27 initiating this fighter protection came from the Air Officer, Commanding-in-Chief, RAF Middle East, who stated that while all possible would be done to provide fighter cover; owing to the distance from Egyptian bases, the cover could only be meager and spasmodic. But even this would be preferable to the complete absence of cover for the 8 days of the Battle of Crete, except for the short intervention of HMS Formidable’s own aircraft on May 26, a sortie which was costly inasmuch as it resulted in the serious damage of the carrier and its withdrawal from the theatre. The original intentions for the evacuation from Crete provided for the following: Troops from the Maleme/Suda Bay sector were to withdraw over the mountains and along the final poor approach road and series of hairpin bends to the assembly area at the top of the Stakia escarpment, there to hide themselves from the prying eyes of reconnaissance aircraft; Those from the Ketimo area would have to make their way to Plaka Bay; Troops at Heraklion would be embarked from the jetty in the port; The small number of troops cut off in a pocket to the south of the Heraklion sector were to withdraw to Tymbaki. It was also intended that the evacuation was to be carried out at night, invariably between the hours of 0000 and 0300 Hours. This would enable the rescue ships to minimize the danger by withdrawing well to the southward before daylight; for daylight would bring reconnoitering aircraft, swiftly followed by dive bombers. These intentions and the ability of the Navy to extricate the troops from the island would depend upon the rearguard forces keeping the enemy at bay. Such were the intentions. In the event, the signaled numbers of troops at the embarkation points each day were substantially correct. The numbers of ships made available were generally adequate for the task. The organization ran as smoothly as any wartime undertaking can expect to operate when subjected to the stresses and strains of aerial bombardment. But mistakes and errors – both Axis and Allied – occurred. German and Italian bombers notched up even more substantial successes. The Mediterranean Fleet suffered grievously. The Allied troops, despite their combat weariness, endured the final retreat with fortitude and patience. And, as Admiral Friedrich Ruge (December 24, 1894 – July 3, 1985) chronicled wryly, “The Italian Fleet did not put in an appearance.” Lieutenant Leslie Buxton Davies (June 20, 1905 – December 5, 1941) “Sport and General” Press Agency staff photographer, was appointed by the War Office to take official pictures at the front. Davies took pictures for the Timaru Herald among other Empire and foreign newspapers. He boarded Steamship Chakdina in Tobruk, Libya on December 5, 1941. At 2100 Hours, an Axis aircraft torpedoed the ship. She sank in 3 1/2 minutes with heavy loss of life. Davies went down with the ship. This image appeared in the June 16, 1941, issue of LIFE Magazine. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0691.jpg |
| Image Size | 663.19 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2211 x 2800 |
| Photographer | Leslie B. Davis |
| Photographer Title | Number One United Kingdom Royal Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | May 3, 1941 |
| Location | |
| City | |
| State or Province | Crete |
| Country | Greece |
| Archive | Imperial War Museum |
| Record Number | E 2762 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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