The Sword of Fate (38 page)

Salonika is only twenty miles along the coast from the mouth
of the Aliakamon, and our sappers had done great work in the big port by dynamiting harbour facilities and war plants before the Germans got there. They had also helped to evacuate considerable numbers of the civil population. In the meantime our modern cavalry, the tanks, had been ranging the low-lying campana in front of us through which ran the several rivers’ mouths forming the delta of the Varda. On the Friday dusty Greek troops with many wounded began to retire through our lines from the north and north-east to re-form under the shelter of the mountains, and during the afternoon our tank units were in contact with the enemy. By evening the town of Janitza, which lay to the north of us, was burning and a great pall of reddish smoke hung above us.

That night we had our first clashes with the enemy, and by the light of a full moon, which was from time to time obscured by dark scudding clouds, we participated in a dozen different engagements; but none of the separate actions took place after midnight. Having felt out the position and ascertained that it was held in force, the Germans withdrew to wait until daylight. Our chaps had destroyed three enemy tanks, and we felt very pleased with ourselves that we had not given an inch of ground anywhere, but we then had little conception of what we should be called on to face in a few hours time.

Soon after dawn there came a distant hum, which almost instantly increased to a terrific roar. The sky to the north-east seemed to be speckled all over with German ’planes. Every antiaircraft gun we had went into action. Here and there a Nazi ’plane was hit and spiralled down with smoke streaming from it; but the remainder never swerved from their course, and flight after flight of them dived straight down at us.

I shall never forget the twenty minutes that followed. We were all crouching in specially-prepared pits, but whenever we raised our heads to get a quick glimpse of the ground ahead, the whole earth seemed to be going up in spurts of smoke and flame. The noise was so terrific and so continuous that one could not make oneself heard, and it was only by pointing that one could draw the men’s attention to something one wished them to do or see. In that short time the Germans must have rained down at least a thousand bombs on us, but considering the weight of the attack the damage done was amazingly slight. We lost only one officer and twelve men killed and wounded, and half of those were the result of one bomb which made a direct hit on an anti-aircraft gun’s crew.

The moment the dive-bombers had ceased, the tanks, which had crept up in the meantime, came at us; but our anti-tank weapons had been well placed and our artillery immediately opened fire from the far side of the river, so between us we gave the first wave of German tanks an exceedingly hot reception. Seven of them were knocked out, and a number of others seemed to be in difficulties, as the bulk of them withdrew.

They had hardly retired when fresh flights of dive-bombers took up the game, and once more the earth shuddered as the bombs rained down. Immediately they ceased, the tanks returned to the attack. We laid out more of them, but they took their toll of us, and so the game continued hour after hour during the whole of the morning. The Germans never let up for a single moment, and one by one our positions were either destroyed by bombs or by tanks when they managed to penetrate deep enough into our defensive zone to enfilade them.

Later in the day we got some respite. Several flights of R.A.F. fighters, which had doubtless been operating on some other sector during the morning, came up and sailed into the Jerries. Dive-bombers are easy game for fighter aircraft, and the Germans had to call the attack off until they could rectify the air situation. There were a lot of dog-fights between Hurricanes and Messer-schmitts, in which our men seemed to be keeping up their extraordinary average, and every time a German was shot down we cheered like hell. But the time that a fighter can stay in the air is extremely limited, and again and again our people had to break off the battle and return to refuel, whereas it seemed that the Nazis had so many squadrons that these could relieve each other in an endless chain. Nevertheless, the R.A.F. protected us from the worst during the greater part of the afternoon.

At last darkness came, bringing us relief from the dive-bombers and the chance to move our wounded without being machine-gunned from the air. During the night there was sporadic fighting, but it was a picnic to the daytime, and as soon as the light was good enough on the Sunday morning the dive-bombers came at us again.

That Sunday was sheer hell, and how we managed to hang on to our positions I have no idea. The R.A.F. gave us what little cover they could, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. The sky was never free of droning aircraft, and nine-tenths of them were Nazis. The tanks, too, were much more numerous than they had been on the preceding day, and the earth all about us had been churned into a pitted sea of mould from the thousands of
explosions. By the late afternoon our ghastly plight was made even worse as the Germans had had time to bring up considerable quantities of artillery with which they now opened a heavy bombardment. To us, caked with the dirt and sweat and blood of battle, it seemed that twilight would never come, but come at last it did, and with it the order to retire.

I never thought that I would be glad to participate in one of those famous ‘withdrawals to fresh positions’ which in this war we have read of so often, but I honestly don’t believe that any troops ever born could have stuck it out for another day now that the dive-bombers and artillery were both getting to know every detail of our positions and systematically blasting point after point.

Our withdrawal during the night was to a zone facing east, where our backs were to the Agosto Mountains. The retreat was successfully accomplished without the Nazis tumbling to what was on, so on the Monday they spent quite a time dive-bombing and bombarding our old positions before, in a great tank attack, they found that we had already left them. By this time we had at least succeeded in instilling into the enemy a wholesome respect for us, so when his tanks came on they nosed their way towards our new positions with considerable caution. Being further into the mountains the ground was much rougher here, so more difficult for tanks and better cover for our anti-tank guns. The fighting was stiff all day, but not as bad as it had been on the Sunday. Yet that night we had to withdraw again.

This time the retreat was not caused by the impossibility of hanging on any longer, but by the fact that the Nazis had swung round the northern end of the short Agosto range and were now advancing towards Florina, which was immediately behind us, through the Monastir Gap. We were outflanked and liable to be surrounded during the night. In consequence we crossed the Aliakamon near Velvendo and this time faced almost due north with our backs to Mount Olympus.

The river took a sharp bend in front of us, and from the sides of the wide valley we could see it wind away for some distance. The Germans were now advancing down both sides of it, but another battalion of Imperial troops had the nasty job of holding the right bank, whereas we had the comparatively easy task of preventing them crossing the bend immediately in front of it and enfilading them if they endeavoured to thrust down the far bank. As things had gone so far Tuesday was an easy day for us, but some of the Home regiments further to the west had the
devil’s own pasting, and that night a further withdrawal was ordered.

This time we were moved a few miles further up the valley of the Aliakamon. The river here makes a huge V down which runs the open country from the Monastir Gap, leading right into the heart of Greece. The left-hand stroke of the V was being held by the Greeks, who had swung back from the Albanian border. Its right-hand stroke was to be held by the Imperial Forces and mine was amongst the units given the task.

The position was a good one, but so furious were the Nazis’ onslaughts that on the Wednesday they succeeded in forcing the passage of the river. Our own tanks and ’planes had fought splendidly, but a certain toll had been taken of them with each day’s fighting, and they could not be everywhere at once; whereas the Nazis had enough of both to use them with the greatest prodigality in all sectors. By Wednesday afternoon we had been forced back into the lower defiles to the west of Mount Olympus, and since the ground there was impossible for tanks, the Germans sent hordes of infantry at us.

From excellent cover in the scrub and behind great boulders we mowed down the oncoming Huns until in some places their bodies were piled in heaps, yet still they came on. We fired at them until the barrel of our Brens and rifles were almost red-hot, and for a short while we ran out of ammunition so were reduced to fighting with the bayonet in order to hold the Nazis off from streaming up the pass until further supplies arrived. At last in falling back we met our ammunition parties coming up, and the fact of being able to use our weapons with real effect again gave us a new lease of life.

That night orders came through for us to retire to a shorter line, south of Mount Olympus. To carry out such a lengthy retreat in darkness along roads that were little more than tracks was a ghastly business. We had suffered heavily that day, and it had been impossible to get any but the walking wounded away, so most of the others now had to be abandoned to become prisoners in the isolated farms and barns which were the only buildings available in that wild country for casualty clearing-stations. The less seriously wounded made the journey with us in such of our Bren carriers as had survived; but these could only move at a walking pace for fear of going over the precipices in the dark.

Somehow we made it, and got back the twenty-odd miles to a new zone that had been allotted to us, which was no great
distance from the sparsely wooded slopes where we had spent ten days in a peace that now seemed utterly unbelievable.

The Australians had been left to hold the main pass at the side of Mount Olympus, so while they were suffering the hell that we had had the day before we were able to get a few hours badly-needed sleep and afterwards a chance to give ourselves a bit of a clean-up. During our five days and nights of fighting, none of us had been able to snatch more than an odd hour’s rest while fully dressed each night, and shaving or proper washing had been entirely out of the question. There was little enough that we could do now but it was a blessed relief to be able to sleep even for a few hours without being bombed or machine-gunned, and to be able to get the worst of the caked dirt off our hands and faces.

That night the Australians, having done their job, fell back through us, and in the morning we had once more to face the full fury of the German onslaught. Whether all the British fighter ’planes had by this time been overcome through the hopeless odds against them, or if those that survived had been withdrawn from the unequal contest I do not know; but from that point on the sky was not disputed with the Germans. I saw one of our New Zealand sergeants bring three ’planes down with his Lewis gun that Friday morning, but it didn’t seem to matter how many of the dive-bombers crashed in flames. Others took their places and wave after wave of them launched their bombs upon any temporary strong point or gun-position that they could see.

The news trickled through that on the previous day all organised resistance had come to an end in Yugoslavia. The million-strong army of the Yugoslavs had lasted exactly eleven days. But of course not a twentieth part of it had been armed with modern weapons, so why, when their country was already four-fifths encircled, anyone should have imagined the poor fellows capable of standing up to Hitler’s fire-belching, petrol-driven robots, heaven alone knows.

The past successful resistance of the Greeks, although also poorly armed, had been in very different circumstances. They had defeated not Germans but Italians. They had been attacked on only 100 miles of their 500-mile frontier, and whereas they had had direct communications with their main bases, the Italians had had to bring every man, loaf and bullet over by air or water into Albania.

That was the plain outstanding fact. Ill-armed nations, of which by comparison the British Empire was still one, could defy
well-armed nations
only when a belt of water lay between their forces
. Even channels like the Bosphorus or the Straits of Gibraltar could make an immense difference; because the sloping away of their promontories on either side narrowed the zone of attack, enabling the weaker power to concentrate its forces and, given naval units, protect its flanks. Further, Hitler’s best weapon was the lightning speed with which he struck.
Any piece of water too wide to be bridged
robbed him at one stroke of his greatest innovation in modern warfare. Every bit of his heavy material and the bulk of his men, munitions and food would have to be unloaded from its trains and lorries, taken over in ships or barges, and loaded up again the other side. The time lost would be an incalculable gain to us and more than double our powers of resistance.

To see that needed no high knowledge of the art of war; it was kindergarten stuff. Yet here we were involved in a hopeless battle on the mainland of Europe. Of course those of us who got out alive would be told that we couldn’t have let the Greeks down and that we’d killed a lot of Germans. But one could not escape the fact that there had never been the least conceivable hope of our turning the scales of battle for the Greeks with such limited forces as we could send, and that killing a few thousands of Hitler’s millions was not bringing us any nearer winning the war. The truth was that Hitler could afford to lose trained men, ’planes and tanks infinitely better than we could, so all we had done was seriously to jeopardise our future chances of victory when we had to defend the gateways out of Europe which were the real keys to the strategy of the war.

History would doubtless disclose the personalities of those who, on chivalrous grounds alone, had urged this enterprise at the awful risk of later enabling Hitler to break out into Asia and thus perhaps transform what should have proved a three- or four-year war into one which dragged on for eight or ten.