NEW ZEALANDERS IN GREECE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 22 April 1941, Page 5

NEW ZEALANDERS IN GREECE

FIGHTING MAGNIFICENTLY CASUALTIES RELATIVELY SLIGHT enormous' enemy losses From the Official War Correspondent with the N.Z.E.F. in Greece (per Cable and Wireless, Limited). Athens, Apl. 21. From the front, April 17. Fighting magnificently on the seaward side of the British line in northern Greece, all units of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force this week have written their names into history. After the forward cavalry had joined battle on the Salonika Flats, the main New Zealand Force met the German advance on the slopes of Mount Olympus and the mountains west thereof, where the enemy suffered appalling casualties at the hands of our infantry and machine-gunners. The New Zealand losses, thanks to the ideal defensive positions, were relatively slight.

Withdrawing from the Flats the cavalry with the engineers blew up bridges, forcing the enemy to use pontoons to cross the broad Aliakmon River. Here our cavalry with Vickers guns took terrible toll as successive embarkations left the opposite shore and were swept with death at pointblank range. For two hours the advance was held and pontoon after pontoon was sent drifting down the river, heaped with the corpses of some ’of Hitler’s finest attacking troops. CHARGE OF ARMOURED CARS Two troops of New Zealand armoured cars withdrawing from outpost fighting found themselves in a blind gully, the mouth of which the Germans had just reached. The New Zealanders shot their way out. Then, when the commanding sergeant saw the havoc they had wrought among the German infantry, he turned the cars about and charged back into the gully and out again, so smashing through the enemy a second and third time with all guns blazing. At another stage of this preliminary drawing-in of horns a Bren carrier trodp missed a driver till they discovered him among the rocks with a spare Bren gun “pumping hell into the blighters” as a comrade described it. When snipers began annoying a radio operator who had been 18 hours on duty continuously, a North Auckland mounted lieutenant shot. the foremost with an anti-tank rifle. A trooper accounted for others with a Vickers.

Though every enemy attempt to break through there was brilliantly hurled back, the Mount Olympus sector is now being evacuated in compliance with the general plan for straightening and shortening the Greek-British line. The withdrawal is being carried out swiftly in excellent order, the rearguards constantly engaging the enemy vigorously and counter-attacking. The enemy, however, is harrying relentlessly from the air and inflicting casualties. IN GREAT HEART The New Zealanders, in great heart and eager to be at the Germans, say they are overjoyed to be fighting beside the Australians, with whom they have combined again after 26 years as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. One of the first ambulance trains to reach the base hospital was driven by a Timaru corporal and fired by an Australian sapper. “Can you drive a locomotive?” asked a railway transport officer civilly at a deserted station close behind the front. “I will try,” said the corporal, a motor-garage proprietor in peacetime, who proceeded, with the help of volunteer Greek railwaymen for short stages en route, to take 400 hospital cases safely through air attacks and over one of the highest passes in Greece. The journey of 200 miles occupied, with interruptions, 36 hours.” WITHERING FIRE Meanwhile the infantry were entrenching and otherwise preparing defences from which they presently poured down a withering fire. Now on the flats below the enemy tanks and concentrations of troops and vehicles came under the fire of the punishing New Zealand artillery, whose marksmanship the infantry—themselves incomparable—cannot overpraise. In the course of the morning one battery of 25-pounders fired 100 rounds, of which only the first failed to register a vital hit. The German gunnery, by comparison, was poor, and the rifle fire erratic.

Enemy motor-cyclists reaching the bluffs at the foot of the mountain were confounded by showers of hand grenades coming apparently from the clouds. Several further detachments arrived and suffered severe casualties before the Germans realised that the grenades were coming over a precipice above which hid a jubilant platoon of Wellington infantry, who were throwing the cricket ball for all their worth. ANZACS’ QUALITY With the aid of the engineers who mined the mountainside, and A he support of the guns, the infantry could have held Mount Olympus indefinitely. The close-range fighting there and on the adjacent heights convinced a trained neutral observer that the new Anzacs, man for man without machines, are three times as good as the C mans. Enemy prisoners express a similar view differently. “Too good, too good,” they say dejectedly. Numerous prisoners have been taken, many by Maoris, whose special job is mustering parachutists.