OVERWHELMING ODDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 102, 2 May 1941, Page 7

OVERWHELMING ODDS

EPIC STORY

OLYMPUS TO THE COAST

N.Z. TROOPS MAKE DEATHLESS NAME

(Rec. noon.) LONDON, May 1. "Now that we are back in Egypt, the story of the fight for Greece and the evacuation in the face of overwhelming German odds can be told," says Mr. Richard McMillan, correspondent of the British United Press. "It is a story of Anzac force|, with British gunners after them, holding up the German forces day after day until sheets numbers and mechanical strength forced them to retreat; it is a story of German infantry being driven like cattle to the slaughter, of Maoris fighting to the last in the pass at Thermopylae, of troops hiding all day in wheat fields to escape German bombers as they sought to smash British transports off-shore; it is a story of English troops marching under fire, singing 'Tipperary,' with Scots comrades marching at their side to the lilt of 'Yon Bonnie Braes.'

"The story began at Mount Olympus, where New Zealanders—Maoris and white troops—made names as deathless as those of the ancient Spartans as they took the full shock of fresh enemy divisions and new tank squadrons. Under a withering fire from the New Zealanders, the pass was soon filled with the bodies of German dead. Grimly hanging on to their lines in a magnificent delaying action, the New Zealanders held up the Germans while the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force hurried to a secret rendezvous on the coast from which they were evacuated. "I embarked in a convoy with 11,500 troops, among whom were scores of Dunkirk veterans. They said that the bombing of Dunkirk was nothing compared with that in Greece, and that in some ways it was Dunkirk all over again. "Transports and warships worked inshore to the beaches, and despite German dive-bombers brought off thousands of men night after night. SHORTENING OF THE LINE. "While the evacuation was going on, a rearguard action was proceeding. The New Zealanders held Thermopylae, and Australian units, backed by British artillery, held the Brallo Pass, in the mountains south of Lamia, and the left flank of the British Army spread out right over Brallo Pass to the Gulf of Corinth. "With the surrender of the Greek army in Epirus, the British High Command had to make a rapid decision and form a shorter line, with the object of covering the retreat. "The big German assault came in two prongs against tb": British line, one directed against Thermopylae, and the other against the Brallo Pass. "A New Zealander who fought at Thermopylae said: 'Sheer weight of numbers, combined with overwhelming air superiority, won the battle for the enemy. Our platoons were sometimes separated by one-third of a mile. When we sent out patrols of five or six men we encountered enemy patrols as strong as 400. We smashed plenty of tanks, but still they came on. ( The enemy infantry was entirely Austrian, and of poor quality—just cannonfodder. We hadn't the men to relieve our troops.' "An Australian said that the Germans got through the Servia Pass by close infiltration, climbing over rocks up to and around the British positions. "A colonel of a Maori unit was the hero of Thermopylae Pass. Being exhausted, he ordered his men to leave him behind. They protested, but he made them obey. Rather than endanger his men, he remained behind, to be either killed or taken prisoner. "For two days and nights, starting on St. George's Day, the New Zealanders fought a terrible battle in the pass, but their ordeal did not then

come to an end: they were called on for a supreme effort to hold the Corinth Canal bridge and enable the withdrawal of the British forces to Peloponnesus. After they had destroyed the bridge, they held off the German hordes and enabled the evacuation to go on in orderly fashion at three different ports. The troops hid all day in wheat fields and among rocks while German bombers tried to blast the harbour into a flaming ruin.

"Our convoy consisted of large merchantmen, cruisers, and destroyers, all loaded almost to the rigging. The R.A.F. and nurses were there, too, and a number of Australian nurses. As the British Expeditionary Force; moved to the beaches British wounded who had been in Greek hospitals hobbled along to join them singing Tipperary' and 'Pack Up Your Troubles'. The embarkation went on all day and all night, ships zig-zagging to avoid dive-bombers. Ashore one R.A.F. sur%eon operated for 36 hours in a church, the operating theatre consisting of a .stretcher placed on two chairs, while waves of German planes rained bombs on the town. , "The Germans dropped mines into the harbour, bombed docks, set fire to a Greek munition ship, and strafed every inch of the road and every acre of adjoining fields by the flickering light of the burning munition ship. "The Navy handled the embarkation with ito usual efficiency. We poured into the ships, which were surrounded by war craft of all sizes. Fighters and fighter-bombers guarded the skies and drove off dive-bombers in dogfights. -' NURSES SHARE FRONT-LINE TERRORS. "The armada drew off from the shores of Greece a couple of hours before dawn. The nurses had shared with the troops the terrors of the frontline bombing, and bore the ordeal with the same heroism as the -vomenfolk of the blitzed areas in Britain. "Imagine 5000 officers and men jammed into a cargo vessel, and you will get an idea of our overloaded ship. "A brigadier told of how Australian gunners south of Elassan found a dump of 10,000 rounds of 25-pound ammunition and fired every round, causing a holocaust among the enemy. The casualties in the Imperial Forces would

"A brigadier told of how Australian gunners south of Elassan found a dump of 10,000 rounds of 25-pound ammunition and fired every round, causing a holocaust among the enemy. The casualties in the Imperial Forces would have been heavier if it had not been for the sappers blowing up the bridges and delaying the German advance. The heroism of the rearguards was matched by that of the Royal Navy, which carried out the re-embarkation at many points under very heavy bombing.

"Cruisers and destroyers fought off dive-bombing attacks before the convoys reached their destinations."

Mr. McMillan adds that there were several causes for the failure of the Balkans campaign. "In the first place," he says, "the curtailment of our effort was due to the German diversion in Libya; secondly, the Greeks could not stand the strain of the mechanise^ and air warfare against an enemy vastly superior to the Italians; thirdly, the numerical superiority of the Germans, both on land and in the air, was too great. , Hitler threw in masses of Austrians to be killed, while Goenng used vast numbers of planes as artillery to strafe the front line. Behind the lines, also, the Germans checked the R.A.F.'s counter-offensive by bombing every airfield we used."—U.P.A.