THERMOPYLAE IN '41

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1945, Page 8

THERMOPYLAE IN '41

AUDACIOUS FLYER SKY DRAMA RECALLED

By FRANK BRUNO

This, the fag-end of our Indian summer weather, Is that of the Grecian spring. The bakelite-blue sky smudged with scudding cloud at wide intervals; the cold night, damp with heavy cew, and the dry-bright sun lapping up the mist in the low-lying areas. All this brings memories. This and, of course, a dogseared diary scribbled in smudged, indelible pencil; scribbled in the slush of Olympus, or the frost-crisp lowlands along the coast. Just outside Lamia, overlooking that marshy flat where Jerry was expected— and indeed tried to do it—to make a flanking attack with his tanks, I lay and wrote up my little diary this time some four years ago. It is with considerable difficulty that I can decipher it to-day. The news that Greece had capitulated . . . that some of the boys already were evacuating . . . that Jerry, whose transport lights we could see flashing the whole road rushing on to Lamia, was going all out to stop a single member of "Lustre Force" from getting away from Greece . . . that some of the 22nd had discovered a large dump of cans of beer—and the beer was tastily frozen . . . that there were 90,000 Canadians behind us; and that 100 Spitfires would cover the evacuation. All this buzzed over the silent front. All through the night we had been digging m.g. pits and carrying the spoil away into the bushes. And now the sun was eating into the steaming remnants of the frost and causing pins and needles to electrify my half-thawed feet sticking out of a small bush. In nearly every bush curled a dead-tired soldier, relieved from the feverish digging by the onrush of daylight, and the sharp eye of the enemy recco planes. A long, drowsy silence, which the lazy, crumping exchanges of an Australian battery on the heights to our left, with a couple of German batteries along the Lamia road, only accentuated. Mosquitoes droned: a few startled birds twittered excitedly. Three German bombers snored away over the bay. . . . Then, scooting like a streak behind them, came a small plane. Confidently the big bombers droned along . . . the little streak came flashing up . . . in among them . . . before those of us who were watching could quite take it in. We were past expecting any of our own aircraft. The flight of bombers broke up, rather like that of a flock of sheep when a sheep dog shoulders in among them. For a few long moments they tumbled about the sky over the bay; and then one of them gouted a plume of greasy smoke, plunged downwards to crash into the pellucid waters. Down after him sped the solitary plane, rattling on his guns; levelled off, and with his belly almost touching the bay, it seemed to us, streaked off cheekily. . . . I suppose he got away. We never knew. But I wonder if there are any Kiwis reading this page to-day who remember that incident in the retreat to Thermopylae ip '41.