COSTLY DELAYS

Auckland Star, 12 May 1941, Page 5

COSTLY DELAYS

NAZIS SUFFER BATTLE OF! GREECE DESTRUCTIVE N.Z. GUNNERS •From the Official War Correspondent with the; N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, May 9. New Zealand gunners fighting defensive actions along withdrawal routes through Greece stood up unflinchingly to all the destructive Power the Germans could muster. It was in the courage, accuracy and versatility of our artillery that the enemy met his most costly delays, suffered the heaviest casualties and lost the best opportunities to overrun the retiring forces. He expressed his respect for them in efforts from the air and the land io wipe them out with violence beyond conception. But our guns kept

Stories which were written in the countless thousands of shells Pumped into German troop concentrations, tank forces and motor columns at ranges from several "iiles to a few hundred yards are such classics of coolness and endurance that I would find them hard to appreciate if I had not seen some or our gunners in action with my own eyes. The manner in which I first saw gun crews in the pass to Serbia, left S a .ken and undeterred by furious "if ? lltzes > became a commonplace spectacle. l n other and hotter pities our gunners ignored air rnn com Pletely in their deadly concentration on enemy movements f" em Pted under cover of this bombtog and strafing. . Accurate Shelling ster thodical and highly accurate cos- «F across th e Olympus passes dalVi ♦ enem y dearly in the few *wjs between the time the first con-

tact was made and the start of a hectic week of withdrawal. Advanced columns were scattered and shattered whenever they appeared within range. One field regimenti laying defensive fire through a blanket of mist learned afterwards that it had been the cause of great discomfort to two German battalions.

I Such a comparatively orthodox operation reached an abrupt end for many gun crews on the day of withdrawal. A line roughly from Elisson to a railway pass near the sea became the scene of what must have been the most extraordinary artillery stand made in any war. Here all rules for normal conditions went by the board as field guns fought at point-blank ranges, rushed fromj place to place, and switched from, target to target with the mobility| and speed expected only of far lighter weapons.

One battery was in action almost the whole afternoon with nothing between the guns and the enemy. A troop commander told me: "Our targets were anything on feet, wheels or tracks, and we opened on every-} thing that moved. The boys had thel time of their lives and they were absolutely grand. JerFy plastered ■ them with bombs and bullets, but, , they always bobbed up again, asking,! 'What do we shoot next'." i Guerilla Warfare Many were the times when the targets were so close that the guns were fired over open sights, and one| destroyed a tank at only 150 yards. 1 Sometimes observation posts were : merely trees within the hail of the guns.

When the Germans began to push troops across the river in rubber boats a New Zealand officer went for-| ward in a wireless truck, watching: the operation and relaying information so quickly and exactly that boatload after boatload was blown out of the water. Most of this action was a sort of guerilla warfare, in which the New Zealanders excelled. That it greatly perturbed the enemy was] shown by the fact that not only did 1 the Luftwaffe constantly hunt gun positions but the German artilleryi and mortar and machine-gun fire swept along the hillcrests in a ! systematic search for observation posts.

A few days later Thermopylae Pass became the hottest corner in Greece when over 100 guns, mostly manned by New Zealanders, blazed for 15 hours at enemy forces trying

to push beyond Lamia. Three thousand rounds at a conservative estimate were falling into every known centre of German activity.

I Our shells drove off working , parties trying to rebuild a demol-j ished bridge, silenced enemy'guns.' and caught troops and armoured columns in a terrific barrage. Ger-j man casualties and equipment lossesi must have been huge and the enemy suffered considerable delay at a vital period in the withdrawal. Before the guns ceased firing 1000 more British troops were well on the road to safety. Destruction of Tanks An indication of the extent of the damage done is given by the facti that three field guns playing an anti-j tank role alone accounted for 12 • tanks in only 90 minutes. "We got our chance at dusk after being shelled, bombed and machinegunned," said a sergeant-major at one gun. "Our three guns were cov-| ering a stretch of winding road wheni 12 tanks attempted to pass along it. ' Not one got through in spite of their speed of 30 miles an hour. One gun! alone stopped seven tanks and the; others cleaned up the remaining five. We got each broadside on at point-: blank range by waiting until the : nose appeared in the gun-sights. My| crew had the pleasure of gaining! a direct hit, and the tank seemed j to disappear in the air." I