From Sicily to Crete

Last week General Hans Geisler, commander of the independent air unit of the Luftwaffe which has been based near Catania, Sicily, since December, wrote an extraordinary bread-&-butter letter to the Italian Prefect of Catania:

"On the occasion of our departure from this beautiful island, where we shared combat in strictly comradely collaboration with the Italian forces, I feel it my duty to express to Your Excellency my deepest thanks for untiring and arduous work in favor of our units in your province."

This meant that the highly specialized German Air Force unit which had pounded Malta into unimportance, which had walloped the aircraft carrier Illustrious as it tried to run a convoy through the Sicilian channel, which above all had covered the transport of Axis troops and supplies to Libya, had gone on to greener pastures. The departure made the Sicilians very happy; no one now could say that Sicily was German-occupied territory.

Significantly the pounding unit went to Crete. The move was a blunt tip-off that so far as the Germans were concerned the job of bridging the Mediterranean to Libya was finished; that the Axis force there was nearly ready to roll. The move brought death from the air to Alexandria, which lies within striking distance of Crete (see p. 21). At Crete the unit was also available if necessary for action in Syria.

But above all the shift turned the heat on besieged, already broiling-hot Tobruch. For two months the British had clung to this inhospitable town because it lay athwart the Axis lines leading to Egypt. All week long Axis dive-bombers flying the easy 250-mile haul from Crete pounded the British defenses. The Italian press, with the jubilance of anticipated revenge, loudly guessed that the all-out Axis attack on Tobruch would come soon. The spearhead of the Axis forces, which fortnight ago squeezed its way through Halfaya ("Hellfire") Pass, the only convenient gateway from Libya to Egypt, would not be able to press on through the gate until the Tobruch threat was eliminated.

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