BEGRIMED ANZACS FIGHT OFF BOMBERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 103, 3 May 1941, Page 9

BEGRIMED ANZACS FIGHT OFF BOMBERS.

ATTACKS AT SEA. ;! No Serviceable Equipment i Left For Enemy. I'nifprl T'rfss Association.—C«»pvri^lit. Rec. 1 p.m. LONDON, May 2. The cheerful and begrimed first contingent of Anzaes arriving in Egypt from Greece told how even at.' sea they continued fighting. Their actual embarkation was unmolested, but German dive-bombers attacked them five times en route. The commander said men were posted all over the ship. They enjoyed ; themselves immensely, firing at Ger-\ man planes with Bren guns. A num- j ber of bombs were dropped very j near, but there were no casualties.) The embarkation occupied six nights. i A German communique claims] that the Germans have completed i their occupation of the Peloponnesus. The number of British prisoners are now reported to be 8200. Rome admits that the Prime Minister. Mr. Churchill, was probably right in his estimate of the J number of Imperial troops killed i and wounded. (Mr. Churchill esti-j mated that the British forces suffered I about 3000 casualties, in killed and [ wounded, in the actual fighting.) j Berlin states that the nrmber of British dead cannot be estimated. Ten Evacuation Points. The navy evacuated troops from 10 different ports and beaches on, moonlit nights, using boats of all i descriptions from whalers to pleasure j craft and rowing boats. An Aus- j tralian commander said his ship was five times attacked by dive-bombers while she was at sea. Another correspondent tells how British troops on arriving at a small port lay in olive groves and in cornfields for 24 hours with the enemy constantly machine-gunning and bombing. The embarkation was arranged at the dead of night. The correspondent said it was a sight he would never forget. The men offered a perfect target for the enemy bombers, but luck was with them for no aircraft appeared at the time of embarkation. Thousands of German parachutists landed in the last days of the with- j drawal. They blew up the Corinth j Canal Bridge and set fire to the naval j base at Daphne, near Athens, in an j effort to trap the last battalions covering the withdrawal of the Anzaes. Some parachutes failed to open, as the Germans dropped hun-1 dreds at a time, and many parachutists were killed. Anzac Nurses Machine-Gunned. Reuter's special correspondent in Cairo says 100 Anzac nurses from a British hospital on the outskirts of Athens were machine-gunned along the entire route to their point of embarkation. Their grey cloaks trimmed with scarlet made good targets for the dive-bombers and: they were continually forced to j shelter in the cornfields and under trees. Eventually they found com-, parative safety on board an Australian destroyer. ] The gallant band made light of their experiences, but they deeply regretted being forced to leave some of the wounded who were not able to travel. The ambulances which the nurses accompanied were driven on to the beaches, where they were blown up, like other abandoned vehicles, immediately the wounded j had been transferred to the boats, j German L/Osses 80,000. ! The British lost their aerodromes | as they retreated, then the Germans j began bombing our machines on the | ground. Finally they attacked the j Athens aerodrome every three I minutes. The withdrawal to Thermopylae was successfully completed by April 20, thanks largely to the New Zealanders, who held their ground in spite of the fiercest attacks by the , German armoured divisions, but it ' was obvious that without Greek assistance the British could not hold that line, with only two divisions against the enemy's five.

The spokesman added that the final evacuation was carried out under cover from a New Zealand brigade and an Australian brigade.

Reliable observers from Greece estimate that the German losses are between 75,000 and 80,000 men. A New Zealander who was at Thermopylae said it was a massacre. It was just impossible to keep on killing.