BRILLIANT ANZACS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 126, 30 April 1941, Page 7

BRILLIANT ANZACS

FACED TERRIFIC ODDS. LONDON, April 28. In a first-hand account of the brilliant fighting and perilous rearguard action fought by the Imperial forces

in Greece, Chester Wilmot, of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, bays: “For more than a fortnight a small Anzac force, backed bv British artillery and tanks, has fought the ay hole of the German advance, but in spite oh 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. . “For every Anzac battalion there was a division of Germans. At one stage, shortly alter the Germans drove down from the Monastir 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. “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 loft to help the Greeks, an<l another to the right to help the Mew 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 cneinv on sharply-rising lulls com . man ding the plain.- Through bomb shell, and machine-gun fire, these men stuck to'their guns, and in this hell let loose thev ceased fire only when the last round was fired. Hie gunners then hitched their guns behind their tractors and took to the roads behind the thousands of men whoso lives tney had safeguarded that day.