Very Special Ships. Arthur Nicholson
of the Abdiel’s success, but Lieutenant-Commander Chavasse later heard from the Director of Naval Intelligence that the minefield ‘had been most successful. A German coastal convoy had gone into it and been decimated’.39 It was not a bad payoff for the ship’s first minelay in the Mediterranean.
By the time the Abdiel returned to Alexandria, the battle for Crete had begun and her latent talents would soon become useful. The Germans had launched an airborne invasion of the island on 20 May and the fighting was fierce. At first, Crete’s defenders inflicted severe casualties on the Germans paratroopers and their Ju 52 transport planes took heavy losses. Then the surviving paratroopers captured the vital Maleme airfield and the Germans began to bring in reinforcements by air.
While the fighting took place ashore, the Mediterranean Fleet turned back efforts to bring in reinforcements by sea and escorted reinforcement to the island. Almost completely unprotected by the RAF, the Royal Navy had to operate in waters close to Luftwaffe bases. As its ships endured long hours of bombing attacks, they often ran low on anti-aircraft ammunition and losses mounted. On 22 May the battleship Warspite was badly damaged by a bomb and the light cruisers Gloucester and Fiji were sunk. On 23 May bombers sank the Kelly and Kashmir from Lord Mountbatten’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla. The Mediterranean Fleet was in the fight of its life.
On the evening of 23 May, the Abdiel sailed from Alexandria for Suda Bay in Crete with 50 tons of ammunition and stores and 195 men from ‘A’ Battalion of ‘Layforce’, which consisted of two battalions of ‘Special Service’ or commando troops commanded by Colonel Robert Laycock.40 The next day, she passed through the Kaso Strait in the evening in a thick fog, during which the ship was sighted by one enemy aircraft, which immediately made off on being fired at. A BBC report that ‘massive reinforcements were on their way to Crete’ caused some amusement on the Abdiel.41
No further incident occurred until arrival at Suda Bay at 23.30 on the 24th. The bay contained many beached and burning wrecks and there was also quite a lot of bombing and gunfire in the surrounding district. Troops and stores were disembarked alongside the small pier and a number of evacuees embarked, including four Greek cabinet ministers, sixty walking wounded and several POWs, including a young Luftwaffe pilot.
At 02.00 on the 25th the Abdiel sailed from Suda Bay at 34 knots to rendezvous with a cruiser squadron to the west of Crete. After sailing, a signal was received informing her that the cruisers would not be there and that the ship would have to make her way home by herself. The POWs were aboard were very nervous, knowing that the ship would be passing very close to German bomber bases, and were convinced the ship would be sunk.
The Abdiel experienced heavy weather passing through the Kithera Channel and speed had to be reduced to a mere 28 knots. As a result, the ship was far from being out of sight of land by dawn. A reconnaissance plane sighted her, leading the Captain to expect a heavy air attack. Instead, she was only attacked by four aircraft, which went after her one after the other. The POWs could have relaxed, as the ship was not hit, but she was near-missed, such that the men in the Transmitting Station below decks could hear bomb splinters striking the hull. The Abdiel safely reached Alexandria that same evening.
There would be no rest for the weary. Orders were immediately received to take on another load for Suda Bay, in this case troops and stores that destroyers had been unable to land in Crete because of bad weather. The Abdiel sailed from Alexandria at 06.00 on the 26th in company with the destroyers Hero and Nizam, with the remaining 750 men of Layforce,42 including Colonel Laycock, his intelligence officer and famous novelist Captain Evelyn Waugh,43 and about 50 tons of stores. The ships were warned to expect a large number of wounded for evacuation and suitable arrangements had to be made.
The passage to Suda Bay on a brilliant day with maximum visibility was, surprisingly, made without incident. Captain Waugh wrote in his diary that ‘we were shown no hospitality; the ship’s officers were tired out’, but he got a large cabin to himself ‘and spent the day in great comfort and contentment’.44 At about 18.00, the ship’s crew all blew up their life belts somewhat tightly on receiving a signal from the Commander-in-Chief saying that intercepted enemy messages indicated that the heaviest scale of dive-bombing and torpedo attacks could be expected just before dusk.
On arrival in Suda Bay at about 23.00 on the night of 26/27 May, it became apparent that a very confused situation existed. Instead of empty lighters for the commandos and full ones with wounded, nothing but ones full of the whole of the Naval Base came alongside and even they were slow to do so. While Laycock and his staff were waiting in the Captain’s cabin to disembark, a terrified naval officer in a greatcoat and shorts came in to tell them how horrible things were ashore. It was reported that the Germans were about a mile and a half up the road from the town.
According to Evelyn Waugh, ‘No light could be shown on deck and there was confusion between the wounded and runaways and our troops waiting in the dusk to disembark’. Somehow, in all the chaos the three ships disembarked the commandos but only some of their stores. In the haste of the moment, some items, such as valuable wireless sets, had to be thrown overboard. The ships embarked 930 walking wounded and other unneeded men,45 about 500 of them in the Abdiel, all in the space of an hour and then the three ships sailed at full speed for Alexandria.
At dawn on 27 May, when the Abdiel was just turning the northeastern corner of Crete, the first enemy aircraft appeared, in the form of three large bombers. From this time on until about 10.30 to 11.00, the three ships were under almost continuing bombing attack by a variety of aircraft, including one large-scale dive-bombing attack that was concentrated on the Hero. No hull damage was done to any ship, but the Hero had her main circulators put out of action, with the result that she could only steam at full speed and keep herself going by the scoop effect through the circulator inlets. Alexandria was finally reached at 19.00 the same day.
The Abdiel had landed the last reinforcements to be sent in to Crete.46 On the 26th the Germans had broken though the main defensive line and the defence of the island had begun to collapse. General Freyberg had to convince General Wavell in Cairo and Wavell had to convince a reluctant Winston Churchill that the battle was lost and that evacuation was necessary. The order to evacuate troops from Crete was finally given and began to proceed. Evacuation would be difficult, as the port at Suda Bay had been lost, leaving only Heraklion and the small port at Sphakia on the south coast of Crete. The Abdiel was kept at short notice until she could play her part.
On 30 May the Abdiel received orders to sail with the light cruiser Phoebe, flying the flag of Admiral King, on the 31st for one last evacuation, this one from Sphakia. The two ships, to which were added three destroyers, the Kimberley, Jackal and Hotspur,47 sailed at 06.00 on the 31st. The passage to Sphakia was made mostly without incident, save for three air attacks between 18.25 and 19.05 in which none of the bombs fell very close and one Ju 88 may have been damaged.48
The ships reached Sphakia shortly before midnight. The Abdiel was at full Action Stations because it was not known if it was still in British hands until English voices were heard coming over the water.49 In moments, the first landing craft came alongside. The evacuation continued from about 11.20 until about 02.30 on 1 June, at which time the force had to sail in order to obtain the benefit of the fighter protection that had been ordered.
The ships together had embarked 4050 men, including just twenty-seven men from Layforce.50 The Abdiel alone had embarked 1200 men. Many of the passengers were New Zealanders, including a number of Maori soldiers of 28 Battalion, whose mood was one of resentment at having to give up the fight. Midshipman Goodwin noticed that some of the Maoris had strange things attached to their belts, which on closer examination turned out to be the ears of the enemy they had killed in combat, according to Maori custom.51 Lieutenant-Commander Chavasse greatly admired one Maori officer who had had both his arms broken, but had gotten himself from Suda Bay over the hills to Sphakia.52
One of the Abdiel’s Maori evacuees was Second Lieutenant Rangi France Logan. Born in Hastings on the North Island on