CEASELESS ATTACKS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20547, 6 May 1941, Page 7

CEASELESS ATTACKS

ANZACS CARRY ON TRUCKS CROWDED SYDNEY, May 3. During the heroic retreat in Greece I often heard the old Dunkirk cry: “Why don’t they send more Hurricanes?” says Ronald Monson, Sydney Daily Telegraph war correspondent, in a despatch from Alexandria. Every move of the Anzacs’ 300-mile withdrawal was made under unceasing dive-bombing and machine-gunning from the air.

I watched the German aeroplanes coming, in droning droves, hour after hour. I saw them wheel and bank, one after another, to attack our columns. There was never any long break from the screech and thunder of their bombs.

Squadron after squadron they came all day, every day. When they were not bombing, they were machinegunning. High overhead their guns would begin to sputter. Then they would dive, spraying bullets everywhere. Their guns would still be belching bullets as they turned away.

Through all this our convoys moved steadily back. They were doing a job which they had never expected to find easy. They were never flurried. Men crowded in the slow-moving trucks swore heartily as each bomber attacked.

At one stage of the withdrawal retiring Anzac columns had to wind, mostly at crawling pace, along a single road which passed for miles up and dow’ii mountains, zigzagging at crazy angles, sometimes ringing the edge of a deep precipice. Along the mountain roads they dropped cases of bully-beef for the hungry, tired Greek inlanlry trudging behind them.

Infantry and engineers stuck to bombed roads, throwing up barriers to the Germans, and repairing bridges. The ' Army Service Corps never left the roads: ambulance men went back fearlessly looking for wounded; gunners, despatch-riders, signallers stuck to their jobs 1 ail through.