GREEK ORDEAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23985, 7 June 1941, Page 13

GREEK ORDEAL

SOLDIERS' STORIES

ESCAPE IN SMALL BOATS FORCED MARCHES TO COAST "It was on a few of my chaps that the Germans dropped their parachute troops along the Corinth Canal," writes an Auckland sapper officer of the Greek campaign, while resting at the mansion in Crete where King George of the Hellenes later stayed. "It has been a hectic campaign, with the Imperial Forces set a perfectly impossible task."

This officer shows how difficult it was to prepare casualty lists. He says: "I still try to believe that more of my men will make their way out of Greece. Each day a sailing boat or two makes this island with'a few desperate troops on board who have bribed or.threatened the Greek crew to bring then.) over. Or else they have just commandeered the boat and sailed it. Others of my chaps 1 believe are prisoners, but it will be weeks before the full tale is known. Last war it took six weeks before my own name came through." Escape of Prisoner Later ho says that since he had started the letter 15 more of his men had arrived after making their way Ironi Greece in a small boat. One of his men was captured bv a German soldier. While he was looking at the Now Zea lander's pay-book the New Zealander pulled out his sheath knife and cut the German's throat. He then changed into civilian clothes, walked through the German lines, found a sailing boat, picked up some other soldiers and sailed to Crete. "We gave liini a darned good licking for live days," says a Gisborne soldier, "taking just over 200 prisoners and killing about 000 or 700 others, for the total number of casualties on our side of seven killed and 20-odd wounded, these figures including casualties from air bombing and machine-gunning." Indiscriminate Bombing

The battalion was heavily shelled on the way out after the order to withdraw, but in a hard ten-mile forced inarch only one man was missing. Then started nightmare convoys where traffic jams held up the retreat, while German dive-bombers came over incessantly.

"Talk of military objectives," says the Gisborne soldier. ''l have seen close at hand about .'SO-odd bombers literally wipe a little innocent village right off the face of the earth. The Hun airman seems to take a fiendish delight in killing and obliterating everything in sight, be it only a dog or a donkey,"

A ('hristchurch soldier tells how their position was given away by some of the men firing their rifles at a German reconnaissance machine. After that, with two brief gaps, they were bombed for six hours, "Shortly after I hit the dust," he says, talking of his feelings when taking cover. "I found a 2ft. snake alongside me. I tossed up—snake or Merry' —and the snake won at a gallop. He shared mv couch with me until the party was over." Germans fired at a group of soldiers marching down to a beach to be evacuated. A Stratford private who was in the party says the Germans had a small field gun and machine-guns, but without anything hut their rifles the New Zealanders charged and cleared them out. taking 81 prisoners. "It was a great little scrap while it lasted," he says. Magic of the Pipes In time the men reached Crete. They were desperately tired, says a Stratford sergeant, and many of the men fell out during the march to an overnight camp. "They looked as if they were going t,o stay there on the roadside for the night," he continues. "Then a lone piper—a real Scot by his voice—began to play a stirring tune. You know well enough the story ot the Pied Piper who lured all the children after him—well, this was the same. The magic skirl of the pipes put new life into tired men and set dragging feet marching again. Out of the ditch all along the roadside rose men who. to all intents and purposes, had chucked it for the night. "Soon the piper was heading a small army of'men. who reached their camp bed that night and were ready there for their breakfast in the morning, instead of waking stiff and hungry in a ditch miles from the camp."