NO TRANSPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 100, 30 April 1941, Page 10

NO TRANSPORT

GREEK DEFICIENCY

WHY LINE FAILED

UNABLE TO RETREAT

LONDON, April 29

A dispatch from Mr. Chester Wilmot, of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, explains why the Greeks' Albanian army was unable to hold its line when the Germans struck through Yugoslavia. They had not the transport to enable them to withdraw to new positions which would have dove-tailed into the Anzac line west of Olympus.

During the months he was in Greece Mr. Wilmot saw only an occasional Greek motor transport. He passed

long lines of ox carts drawing ammunition and food at about three miles an hour. The Imperial trpops were able to withdraw because they had the artillery to cover their retreat and the transport to move their troops safely back to new positions, but the Greeks had neither the artillery nor the transport.

When the Germans advanced through the Monastir Gap they cut the railway which was the Greek life-line, and after that the Greeks did not have a chance. It was a tragedy not only for the Greeks, but also for the Anzacs and British troops, because it was this breach which eventually turned the line. It was impossible after that for the Greeks to re-form for further resistance in the mountain passes.

Mr. Wilmot added that it seemed to him that only a nation which had unflinching courage and would fight against unbelievable odds could have carried on in circumstances like this. When the Australians saw what the Greeks had been fighting with they were lost in admiration.