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dashed into the street; a dead paratrooper crashed to the ground, splayed like a doll in front of them; within seconds a Cretan was stripping the man of his weapons. Ahead three more paratroopers arrived, two hit the road, already dead; the third landed on a wall struggling to get out of the harness trailing behind him. Suddenly it looked as though an unseen hand was pulling on his lines from the other side of the wall. He lost his balance and disappeared. An agonised scream tore through the air. Spurr burst through a gate in the wall to find a middle-aged woman, in traditional Cretan dress, shouting angrily. In her hand was a vicious-looking carving knife; at her feet lay the dying parachutist, his throat cut wide open, blood pumping on to his chest. The woman slashed at the parachute cords, hacking open his smock, looking for weapons.
    Spurr dashed off in search of his unit. He was soon surrounded by a crowd of running people. In the group were British, Greek and Cretan soldiers, civilian men, women and children. Most of them were armed with anything that could be used to inflict an injury, including hammers, saws and garden implements. Many of the women carried knives. The group ran to the West Gate out of Heraklion. Spurr found himself alongside a young Cretan couple: the woman brandished a large knife, and twisted to show him that she had a shotgun concealed in her skirts. The man motioned to the top of the massive arch that formed the gate shouting: ‘We are going up there where the German parachutes are.’ Spurr saw armed civilians and soldiers, all roaring at the paratroopers descending from the air. A Greek, Captain Kalaphotakis, appeared, trying to take charge. Spurr shouted to a British sergeant: ‘By the look of this lot they don’t need us do they?’
    ‘No,’ the NCO replied. ‘I think we had better get back to our own mobs.’
    The crowd started jeering at a bedraggled unit of confused paratroopers, doubling up the road towards the gate. The civilians opened fire, though some of the weapons were so old they would not work. A hail of bullets hit the German troops, who tumbled dead to the ground. Once more Reg Spurr tried to leave and get back to his unit. The shouting crowd surged forward, charging another unit of invaders. Small-arms fire crackled, echoing off the buildings; bullets ricocheted everywhere. The people gave a loud cheer. Smoke and the smell of cordite drifted through the air. More soldiers lay dead and bleeding round the gate. The defenders reloaded their weapons.
    That afternoon Spurr passed the site of a skirmish and found six or seven Germans lying dead in a dried-up creek. Close by were some houses where Spurr found two civilians, one, an old man slumped on his knees, his head forward and his hands clasped behind him. He had been shot in the back of the head and his corpse riddled with bullets. Next to him was a woman, still alive, writhing in agony. She was pregnant and had been bayoneted several times in the stomach. She died before Spurr could help her. He stumbled out of the house and vomited.
    The casualties on both sides mounted very quickly. The 7 th British General Hospital, situated between the sea and the Maleme Road, was right in the path of shellfire and bombs. Staff tried to move the sick and wounded to the safety of caves on the beaches. They established three caves for the casualties and a fourth for the exhausted medical teams. Soon the caves were overflowing with injured Allied soldiers. As the hours wore on a new category of wounded man began to appear: German parachutists.
    Later in the day the German 10 th Parachute Company landed in the vicinity of the hospital. Lieutenant Colonel Plimmer, a New Zealander and the commanding officer of a field ambulance company, was forced at gunpoint to surrender. As he climbed from his slit trench with his arms above his head he was shot dead. Twenty-six miles away to the west of Chania, at the small, almost derelict port of