On 20
th May 1941 the paratroopers fell on Heraklion. I was in Messambelies, and at two in the afternoon I heard the air raid sirens. I waited five minutes to see what would happen, and suddenly aeroplanes began to arrive. As soon as I saw them I ran and hid in a three-by-three metre room that a cousin and I had dug in the ground next to a fig tree.
Up until five o'clock it was bedlam. We could hear the areoplanes droning and the shots being fired, with their sirens wailing as they dived to terrify us. After five in the evening everything stopped and went calm. I came out of the shelter I had been hiding in and went up onto a rise to try and see what had happened in Heraklion. On the Gazi side the sky was full of coloured German parachutes. You could see every colour imaginable.
Then the fireworks started...
