NURSES' GALLANTRY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 130, 3 May 1941, Page 7

NURSES' GALLANTRY

UNFLINCHING UNDER FIRE. NAVY'S FLXE FEAT. (United Press Associatijn—C'opvright) LONDON", May 2. Reuters special correspondent in Cairo says a hundred Anzac nurses from a British hospital on the outskirts of Athens were machine-gunned over the entire route to the point of embarkation. Their grey cloaks trimmed with scarlet made good targets for the divebombers.

The nurses were continually forced to shelter in cornfields and under trees and eventually found comparative safety aboard an Australian destroyer. The gallant band made light of their experiences, but deeply regretted being forced to leave sonic of the wounded who were unable to travel. The ambulances drove on to the beaches where they were blown up.like other vehicles immediately the wounded wore transferred to the boats. The military spokesman in Cairo yesterday stated that the Imperial forces which withdrew against overwhelming odds from Greece remained almost intact in spite of the hard fighting till they reached Thermopylae Pass. The spokesman emphasised that the evacuation was not another Dunkirk, because not only the majority of the troops were evacuated but also most of the light equipment was saved and not a serviceable item of equipment was left lor the Germans.

The evacuation, he said, was a fine feat for the Navy, since the Germans at the end were'using 860 aeroplanes. Tho British lost aerodromes as they retreated, and then the Germans began bombing machines on the ground and finally attacking Athens aerodrome every three minutes.

"The withdrawal to Thermopylae was successfully completed by April 20, thanks largely to the New Zealanders, who held their ground in spite of the fiercest attacks by a German armoured division, but it ■was obvious that without Greek assistance we could not hold that line with only two divisions against the

enemy's five," the spokesman said. "The final evacuation was carried out under the cover of a New Zealand

brigade and an Australian brigade."

Beliable observers from Greece estimate that the German losses were between 75,000 and 80,000. PARACHUTE ATTACK.

Thousands of German parachutists landed hi the last days of the withdrawal and blew up the Corinth Canal Bridge and set fire to the naval base of Daphne, near Athens, in an effort to trap the last battalions covering the withdrawal of the Anzacs. >Somc of the parachutes tailed to open as the Germans dropped hundreds at a time, and many were killed. The Cairo correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain says the evacuation of the Imperial Forces proceeded with astonishing smoothness. Some reached the neach of Euripa Channel, south of Chalkis, where they were picked up by small boats and others were taken off at places along the Aegean coast, but the. bulk of the army'cut across Attica to the region of Megara and Mecara. Heavy bombings indicated that the Germans suspected the British were there, so instead of embarking the British moved by night across the Isthmus of Corinth to the shores ol the Aegean coast of Peloponnesus, mainly on the Gulf of Argos. The biggest embarkation was carried out there in the night between April 24 and '27. One Air Force officer stated that while they were waiting in a small bay German bombers scored a direct hit on a Greek vessel lying off the short with 280 tons of high-explosives on board. The explosion blew many of the men on shore off their feet.