Book Review - Crete: the Battle and the Resistance by Antony Beevor

Crete: the Battle and the Resistance by Antony Beevor

London: John Murray, 2005 (1st published 1991)    ISBN 9780719568312

I found this book - the first in Antony Beevor's justly celebrated histories of various campaigns of World War II - incredibly hard to read. Not because Beevor's writing is flawed - far from it: but because the story of Crete in World War II is a tragic one of flawed tactics, wrong-headedness and missed opportunities on both sides, and an appallingly unnecessary loss of life.

After the debacle of the Greek Campaign, which Beevor briefly touches on, there was little doubt that the Wehrmacht intended to take Crete. In fact the British knew, thanks to their ability to read the German code, not only the German's intentions, but also to a great extent the timing and size of the attack.

One would think that, even with troops still recovering from retreat and defeat on the mainland, this advantage would be decisive, especially considering they outnumbered the German troops by a factor of almost 2:1. The problems stemmed from the top: General Freyberg, whilst undoubtedly brave and caring of his men, was very fixed in his ideas and not gifted tactically. He seems to have almost willfully mis-interpreted the Ultra signals, and fixed his mind on the idea that the main invasion force was to come by sea, with the paratroop drop merely a precursor. This mistaken view was the main reason the Allies lost the island.

And what of the German side? General Student's plan of drops at all airfields on the Northern coast meant that his forces were stretched dangerously thin, with little ability to co-operate if they were hard pressed. The appalling lack of intelligence meant that Student was deceived into thinking the numbers of Allied troops were much less than the actual numbers on the island, and so he thought his paratroops could take the island purely by airborne assault (it is one of the ironies of war that Student was the officer commanding troops at Arnhem, troops the Allies didn't know was there because of an intelligence failure).

Both sides were heinously deficient in radio equipment, vital in a country both mountainous and with poor transport infrastructure. The lack of communication would affect the British very much in the first days of the invasion.

The upshot of all these failings is that most German paratroops dropped into a hail of gunfire, and while their losses were appalling, Freyberg's misjudgment and the lack of communication between his troops meant that one airfield was taken by German troops, and this was enough to allow them to bring in enough re-inforcements to win the battle. Beevor describes this disaster well, describing some very heroic (and some not-so-heroic) actions on both sides.

The second part of this book describes the four years of occupation and resistance to Nazi control over Crete, focusing mainly on the work of the British SOE operatives that were in constant touch with the bands of Cretan resistance forces that based themselves in the mountains and kept pressure on the occupying forces. Beevor covers the politics of the various Cretan forces: republican, nationalist, and communist, as well as the politics of the special forces, with their jealousies and rivalries affecting at different times not only operations in Crete, but across the Balkans.

The heroism of the Cretans, from the armed bands to the village women who risked all to shelter Allied soldiers, is hard to fathom in the modern world, but is as admirable as any other sacrifice made in those much harder times.

While Crete might have only been headline news during the War in the few short weeks when it was the frontline (and after Leigh-Fermor kidnapped General Kriepe, which Beevor covers briskly and well), there was much activity there for a long period. It is hard to think of a book that covers it better than this one.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Sea of Dangers by Geoffrey Blainey

Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and his rivals by Geoffrey Blainey

Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2010         ISBN 9780143204893


The blurb in the front of this book points out that Geoffrey Blainey is "one of Australia's best-known historians." With over 30 books to his name, he has also been one of our most prolific. His academic career initially started in the field of Economic History, but he soon branched out into more general topics, with Mining being a particular interest, before in his late career writing some broad histories such as A Short History of the World, which sold very well.

Sea of Dangers is a return to the more specific, a history of Cook's "discovery" of Australia - mostly. The book is mainly about Cook's first voyage (1768-1761), but Blainey has intertwined the journey of Jean-Francois-Marie de Surville across the Pacific in the Saint Jean-Baptiste with Cook's story. Why has he done this? Because, although Cook was on a scientific mission and de Surville on a trade mission, they shared a similar goal - to find the "missing continent" "Davis Land", which was purported to exist in the South Pacific.

Although the two explorers never met, they were at one stage of their voyages within a few hours of each other, at the Northern tip of New Zealand, an absolutely extraordinary circumstance. Blainey notes that de Surville was also within a few hours of the Australian coast before he turned east to New Zealand: in fact he was so close that the crew could smell land.

So the question needs to be asked - why did de Surville spend so little time investigating new lands? The key is in the purpose of his voyage - to trade. Spurred on by the belief that Davis Land existed, and by stories emanating from the voyage of the Dolphin that Jewish traders from another land were seen at Tahiti, de Surville did not want to land on the coast of Australia, which others had written about as a barren land of no water, gold, or food, and with natives who were hostile and not interested in trade.

In fact de Surville's search for trade ended up severely hampering his voyage. With no incentive to stop for a long time at places he couldn't trade, his crew never had the chance to gather and eat enough fresh food to stave off scurvy and the other ills that beset a ship-bound crew in the Eighteenth Century. On several occasions he barely had enough fit men to crew the ship.

Nor was Cook's crew immune to the effects of scurvy. Despite what we think we know, on his first voyage Cook did not fully understand how to curtail the effects of this disease, and it was only his frequent soujourns ashore that saved much of his crew. In fact Blainey suggests that the holing of the Endeavour on the Great Barrier Reef was in some ways a blessing in disguise, as it enabled his crew enough time on shore eating fresh food to face the rest of the voyage.

Blainey, using the journals of Banks and Cook as prime sources, shows us a Cook that was methodical, usually averse to risk-taking, and willing to indulge his scientists as long as it fitted into his bigger plan. Blainey points out too that it was the scientific outcome of the voyage that was the highlight on the Endeavour's return - there was no real ballyhoo about the "discovery" of a new land. That was because of course Cook did not discover Australia, or New Zealand. What he did do though, and with a remarkable degree of accuracy, is map much of the coastline of both countries (While one could claim he "discovered" much of the East Coast of Australia, he knew it was there before he arrived, just not it's extent).

Blainey carefully describes the interaction of Cook and his crew, and de Surville and his, with the native inhabitants of the lands they entered. The mutual misunderstanding is well mapped out in the text, highlighting the effect that over 100 extra mouths to feed had on the locals. This quite often led to friction and occasionally conflict. Blainey notes the difference in attitude to the Europeans between the Maori and the Aboriginals, with the former keen to barter or to steal for European items, especially steel and iron, and the latter not interested at all.

Cook came home to praise and promotion, but what happened to de Surville? An altogether sorrier tale, after sailing the Pacific and not finding the hoped-for lost continent, de Surville sailed to South America, only to drown trying to enter Chilca Harbour. His crew were then kept captive by the Spanish for three years before getting home to France, with little to show for their time away. Unlike Cook, de Surville was not an assiduous chart-maker, so his voyage added little to the knowledge of the Pacific, and his name has faded into obscurity.

Cook also met his end in the Pacific, but by that time he was already famous, and has gone on to greater glory. While he never saw himself as the discoverer of Australia, it suited the English to paint him that way, thus obscuring his true genius as a map-maker and leader of men.

Sea of Dangers does not really break any new ground, and the premise that Cook and de Surville were rivals in any real sense of the word is false (a publisher's gambit perhaps?), but as a wonderfully readable account of Cook's first voyage, and an interesting one of de Surville's, this book is worth the effort.

 

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Raw by Martin Crowe

Raw by Martin Crowe

Wellington: Trio Books, 2013            ISBN 9780986461569

It seems that recently cricket has been overtaken by far too many deaths - the tragedy of Phillip Hughes, the icon Richie Benaud, Tony Greig taken before he was ready: and the writer of the book being reviewed, Martin Crowe, dead at 53 from lymphoma.

Martin would surely be thought of by many as New Zealand's greatest batsman (although Kane Williamson seems on track to overtake him),  and no doubt thought of by all as a difficult, prickly character, which he acknowledges in this book. Crowe began writing this book after his diagnosis, and it lives up to its title: writing this was no doubt an act of catharsis for him, as he lays bare his own failures, as well as exposing those whom he felt had failed him and New Zealand cricket.

The first section of the book is not a biography per se, but Crowe looking back on his life and career and picking apart his attitude to life and sport. Fear was his major driver, and the lack of support shown by those in the cricket hierarchy who dropped him into major teams at extremely young ages did nothing to assuage that emotion. Crowe has some interesting things to say about former teammates and managers, and how they not only affected him emotionally, but how they dragged the team down as well.

In fact he has a fair bit to say on how the structures and people around cricket in New Zealand seem to be continually trying to kill what they claim to love, with some good chapters about the Ross Taylor captaincy affair, John Bracewell's stint as coach, and the machinations of the Board.

Crowe also talks of his time at Fox Sports, and how the machinations within that organisation matched or exceeded those he found within cricket. He writes of all this as therapy, letting go of the bitterness and anger he felt while describing what it was that led him to feel those emotions.

He also writes of his personal life, his relationship with his father and his other loved ones, but not so much about his cricket life, which he had covered in two previous books.

The second section of the book is about cricket, and Martin's views on the game. He describes his venture into tinkering with the game, Cricket Max, his (failed) efforts to implement a sensible DRS system for the game, his views on Stephen Fleming and snapshots of the New Zealand team of the 1980s, perhaps their greatest era. He writes of technique, and his short stint in the hierarchy of an IPL franchise.

The last section contains his lists of best players from the era 1870-1961 and from 1961-present, with his reasons for those choices. He lists the best teams for each country through history and then his all-time best team, which, like all well thought-out exercises such as this would be cause of much argument around the bar of any Cricketer's Arms.

Overall this is an interesting and worthwhile book from an interesting and worthwhile cricketer. The chapter in which he writes of a fantasy test match between the best of the old era vs. the best of the modern era is poignant now after his death: one can almost imagine him on the heavenly sward, the trademark floppy hat and steely glint in the eye, bending over his bat to face a thunderbolt from Trueman.

A sad loss too early.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell