GHASTLY WEEKS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 182, 30 April 1941, Page 7

GHASTLY WEEKS

Anzacs’ Rearguard Action BRILLIANT RESULT Fought By Day, Withdrew By Night LONDON, April 28. A first-hand account of the brilliant fighting and perilous rearguard action fought by the Imperial forces in Greece has been received in a dispatch from Cairo by Chester Wilmot, of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. It states:

“For more than a fortnight a small Anzac force, backed by British artillery and tanks, has fought the whole of the German advance, but in spite of the enemy’s strength the Anzac line was never broken; it was never penetrated, even during the most difficult and dangerous stages of the withdrawal.

“The Germans, with their superiority in numbers, were able to dive-bomb the forward troops and to bomb and machine-gun lines of communication and smash the ports through which reinforcements might have come. “The Royal Air Force worked ceaselessly with the few planes they had. They could have protected the front, or the roads, or the ports, but they could not cover all three. The forward troops stood the dive-bombing. They were dug in and had very few serious casualties. But the transport on the roads could not withstand it. They had 40 or 50 raids a day, and the drivers had to stop every 10 or 15 minutes to take cover in the fields.

“In spite of all this the Anzacs fought a rearguard action for two and a half ghastly weeks. They fought by day and withdrew by night. For days they had little or no sleep. Practically everyone had a bandage somewhere, and yet everyone had a smile. . “For every Anzac battalion there was a division of Germans. At‘one stage, shortly afterthe Germans drove down from the Mofiastir Gap, two Australian battalions were holding up the enemy advance, and had there been but one battalion in reserve to go to their assistance it is possible that the advance would have been thrown back.

Army’s Long Retreat.

“The Empire troops, in the retreat to Thermopylae, covered more than 200 miles in 10 days under constant air attack and pressure from the land forces. There were only two narrow roads, and along these hundreds of guns and thousands of transport wagons had to be moved. At times a few battalions and some of the guns held up the whole of the German attack.

“At one stage it looked as though the Germans could not be held off long enough. It was just north of Larissa, and we had sent one Australian brigade to the left to help the Greeks, and another to the right to help the New Zealanders, who had been fighting a bitter action for several days.

“After a night withdrawal from their positions a handful of Australians, with a brigade of New Zealand troops and a few Greeks, turned to face the enemy on sharply-rising hills commanding the plain. Behind them was an ammunition dump/bf 8000 251 b. shells. For more than eight hours Australian gunners fired a round almost every minute from their 21 guns. No wonder the plain became the graveyard of dozens of German tanks and vehicles and hundreds of men, and no wonder the enemy forces never got within striking distance. “Through bomb, shell, and machinegun fire, these men stuck to their guns, and in this hell let loose they ceased fire only when the last round was fired. The gunners then hitched their guns behind their tractors and took to the roads behind the thousands of men whose lives they had safeguarded that day.”