Ramcke wrote scathingly, not only of the use by the New Zealand Army of Maori troops, whom he considered savages, but also brutalities and mutilations practised upon his wounded men by the Cretan population. He admitted that he cariied out reprisals against those villages in which mutilated bodies of paratroops had been found. He had the offending villages razed to the ground but justified his actions by saying that against the brutalities carried out by the civilians there had to be ruthlessness.
James Lucas, Hitler's Enforcers: Leaders of the German War Machine 1939-1945, Brockhampton Press 1999
page 122-123
German claims of Australian/New Zealand Attrocities on Crete
Student was found guilty in 1960 "of being responsible for cold-blooded shootings and for the use of prisoners in unloading war-like stores..."
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-W ... 75380.html
The cold-blooded shootings related to three New Zealander Pows shot for not complying with orders to work under fire at Maleme.
http://www.geocities.com/greekmedals/WarCross.htm
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-W ... 75380.html
The cold-blooded shootings related to three New Zealander Pows shot for not complying with orders to work under fire at Maleme.
This as well:After a brief search for arms they were immediately made to work on the airfield, dragging away wreckage and unloading planes, carrying wounded and burying dead. Even had they known that the Geneva Convention exempted them from such work—and most prisoners had barely heard of it—their protests at this stage would have availed them little.The German invasion troops had suffered heavy losses and were desperately trying to maintain their bridgehead: they were certainly in no mood to discuss the niceties of international law. A YMCA secretary was forced at rifle point to carry containers of ammunition; a chaplain was put to digging graves alongside the airfield, others to filling in shell holes and sandbagging gun emplacements. Among those pressed into service were walking wounded and dysentery cases. Some worked there for several days under fire from our own artillery and occasional bombing, suffering casualties as a result. No rations were issued and prisoners were left to find their own food.
And the story of Captain Thomas Geoffery Bedding,NZ 19th Battalion:At the holding area near Maleme, as at the airfield, there was no attempt to provide rations, and for the first few days there was some kicking and other rough treatment from nervy and ill-tempered guards. The Germans claimed to have found some of their men horribly mutilated and suspected the British troops, though they later admitted this to be quite unjustified. Nevertheless for those captured while the rumour was current, the situation was ugly. A chaplain and some walking wounded were lined up against the outside wall of their RAP ready to be shot, and were saved only by the intervention of a German wounded officer who had been well treated. Similar timely pleas by recaptured Germans probably saved many others, and those who found themselves the prisoners of their former captives reaped the reward of their own treatment of the enemy. The front-line German troops were on the whole much better in their behaviour than some elements of the occupation force which later carried out such brutal mass executions of the Cretan civilian population.
http://www.geocities.com/greekmedals/WarCross.htm
...attached as liaison officer to 1 Greek Regiment Crete May 1941. Taken prisoner of war in Crete 24 May 1941. Listed in London Gazette 7 April 1942. Later Major Bedding ED Mid, stood trial before a German Army war crimes tribunal charged as being in command of Greeks who had mutilated German wounded at Kastelli in western Crete. He was saved from execution by the report of German soldiers who identified Bedding as the officer who had saved them from being lynched by local Cretans.