A near-run affair: New Zealanders in the battle for Crete, 1941

New Zealand soldiers arrived in Crete during early May 1941, short of equipment after a hasty evacuation from Greece. Three weeks later, the Germans attacked, and for a while the fate of New Zealand's active armed force lay in the balance on an island half a world away from home. Exactly why the island fell to the Germans has prompted intense debate - then and since. British historians writing during the 1990s argued that both the New Zealand soldiers and the island commander, Major-General Bernard Freyberg, fell short of the mark during the battle, resulting in the German victory.Matthew Wright draws on a wide range of archival sources to refute this criticism, arguing that in the face of total German air superiority, the battle was unwinnable. The fact that the British came so close to successfully holding the island can be largely credited to Major-General Bernard Freyberg's outstanding abilities as a commander, and to the quality of the men he led. The battle for Crete was very much a near-run affair, and remains one of the crucial events in the annals of New Zealand military history.