Do read the Bob Fulghum's story, worth your time. Then visit Maleme memorial place to feel yourself the told story and touch the peace of mind there.
== A few historical facts ==
The (''Operation Mercury'') was headed by [[Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte]] on the Nazi side. Allied forces were successful only on blocking the Nazi ships from reaching Crete and opening the main huge invasion on the north coast-lines.
Von der Heydte had a quite hard time to make re-join and lead paratroopers initially sparsely located alongside the north-west coast. With help of general [[Julius Ringel|Ringel]]'s [[Gebirgsjäger]] (Mountain infantry) the invasion got ahead to Galatas and Chania.
'''A WW2 story''' is told about his final success to take-over the that time capital city of Crete,[[Chania]], and says, that after a week of hard fights from both sides, von der Heydte and his men lost under harsh conditions imposed by many injuries on landing parachutes into vineyards and rocky hills and by brave Greek, British and New Zealand defenders many parts of their weaponry, ammunition, supplies, uniforms.
After more than a week the invaders took over of the territory and conquered the city of [[Chania]]. Von der Heydte was finally sitting at a small table in a tavern there and asked to seek and bring in the Lord Mayor of the city to ask for unconditional capitulation.
The '''Lord Mayor of the Chania''', walked up with a translator to the tavern and once facing at the table to baron von der Heydte, he had, in response to Heydte's request to capitulate and hand-over the city to his hands, surprised the invader at the very Crete-style - saying that he is ready to capitulate, but does not see any officer to hand-over city to and simply rejected to discuss about any capitulation as he does not believe von der Heydte to be any kind of officer at all because he has no such uniform and cannot proof himself by any available means to be an officer...just in shirt, torn of trousers and wounded knees, no cap - he lost it days ago, just a tied handkerchief and only a belt was remembering the original uniform.
