The Fall Of Crete

In what could be called a brief history of an airborne attack of Crete, this battle was fought in just over 2 weeks with this book covering the area of contention mainly around the north western side of the island at Maleme and surrounds. After several hard fought incidents mostly involving Australian and New Zealand troops various issues of command and lack of air support eventually took their toll with an evacuation of the island taking place. A worthy subject to anyone with an interest in WW2.

So with me personally never having read an in-depth book on the fall of Crete this was interesting to read for long periods but the faults were far too overt and in the end they became annoying. Occasionally, military personnel appear without reference as to who they are. The lack of detailed maps. One of the entire Mediterranean theatre and a useless map of Crete are all we get. If describing a battle surely a localised map is not too much to ask. The index helped most of the time but even then fell down occasionally. Australian politician Menzies gets a mention at one point with no explanation as to who he is but then has no reference in the index. The writing gives the impression of an atrocity committed on NZ wounded in a captured hospital but the NZ Official history and a newspaper cutting from later hardly give that impression. The author gave a sycophantic write up on the prowess of the Australian soldier that is too ridiculous for words. A fairly useless epilogue with a few little escape tales from those left behind after the evacuation.

To be fair to the author he has used both the Australian and NZ official histories and an interesting bibliography. He has also used the footnotes well. I would not tell anyone interested in this event to not read this book, the pickings seem to be slim in terms of a book focused on the entire campaign with Beevor the only one coming to mind at this point in time. But in the end it just lacked polish for me.