Military historians spend a lot of time calling out the commanders of the past for their mistakes, pointing out the wrong decisions they took that led them (and the men under their command) to defeat.
One of the granddaddies of them all took place on Hill 107, during the Crete campaign. The 22nd New Zealand Battalion had held the German paratroopers at bay for an entire day–the opening day of Operation Mercury–successfully blocking their path to the airfield at Maleme. It was an increasingly dire situation for the Germans, who HAD to take the field in order to land the necessary supplies and reinforcements …
This post originally appeared on World War II magazine’s Front and Center blog; click here to read the rest of this post and find more blog entries on the Second World War by Rob Citino.
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