GRIM STAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24595, 1 May 1941, Page 6

GRIM STAND

ANZACS IN GREECE MAGNIFICANCE IN RATTLE A FIGHT WITH BAYONETS SYDNEY, Apl. 26. The magnificence in battle of the new Anzacs is related in stirring tales from the correspondents and eye-wit-nesses of the grim Allied retirement in Greece, said a representative of the Sydney Sun in a despatch from London this week. Wherever, the Anzacs have been able to face the enemy, they have inflicted tremendous losses, according to the correspondents. One New Zealand battalion got at the Germans with the bayonet and did heavy execution.

" When German Alpine troops tried to cross a river we caught them with artillery and machine guns," said a New Zealand soldier, "and mowed them down until the river ran red." To a question whether three German casualties to every one of ours would be a fair estimate, a staff officer said, " No. The Germans lost far more than that." Tired, but Cheery The Athens correspondent of The Times, who had just returned from a new British position, said: ■ "Australians and New Zealanders were coming in, tired but cheery, after their long trek from Mount Olympus. Some had bout after bout of close and bittev fighting with German tanks and infantry, while a few had hardly seen the enemy, but had found their communications threatened, and had had to return over the mountains. " One Australian battalion had to march for three days oyer the top of Mount Olympus, down frightening precipices, and across rocky ravines until the boots were almost worn off the men's feet."

Richard MacMillan, correspondent of the American United Press, in a despatch published in New York, said that, in spite of the most furious demonstration of German aerial terror. British and Anzac troops fought a desperate retreat. "Crouching in the muddy banks of a swollen river, I met three Australians from the thick of the fighting on Mount Olympus," he added. " They arrived footsore, hungry, and sleepy at the newly-established line.

Sleeping in Snow

" One of them said: ' We walked for days and nights and fought often in six inches of snow once we reached the peak, climbing like goats, to act as the rearguard for the withdrawal of the main body. When we were exhausted we slept in the snow for an hour or two. One night we had only 10 minutes' sleep.' Another Australian hold me his unit fought continuously from noon one day until midnight the next." Mr MacMillan added that the British lost the sector when German engineers blasted a path through a railway tunnel which the British had wrecked, thus outflanking the British positions.

As long as Australia lives she will tell with pride the story of the Anzac Army's withdrawal from the Vistritsa River to a new position, said the Sydney Morning Herald's war correspondent in Greece. The army withdrew in the face of attacks by the German Army, which outnumbered it three to one, and the German Air Force, which " strafed" it day after day as fiercely as any army was ever " strafed." New Zealanders' Post

Hour after hour Junkers divebombers, Heinkels and Messerschmitts circled over the troops on the roads, bombing and machine-gunning them from low altitudes. Some battalions had been fighting and marching for 12 days without a break. . New South Wales- battalions which marched for five days across the mountains coming out from the Verm Pass went immediately into what was, perhaps, the ■■ hardest > battle of the campaign—namely, the defence of the Tyrnavo Gap, against repeated German attacks. They inflicted on the Germans the heaviest casualties they had had in Greece. When the decision to withdraw was made the Australian brigades on the right and left of our Vistritsa River line were still arriving on their positions through the mountains. The New Zealanders were holding the Servia Pass itself, through which the main road runs. A Victorian brigade was protecting the valley entering the Plain of Larissa from the north-west through Kalabaka and Trikkala. Brigade Gets Through Tired New South Wales troops were in position on the Pineios River, north-east of Larissa. These brigades were ordered to hold their positions until the New Zealanders and other troops still north of Elassona got through Larissa going south. The Victorians had to cross two bridges on the way to Larissa. One of them was blown up by accident, and the other blew up when a German bomb exploded near by after demolition charges had been placed in position.

Half the brigade's transport remained on the wrong side of the blown-up bridges, but by taking a roundabout route six miles north and across the Pineios River the brigade got out with every serviceable truck intact. The Victorians left two companies behind to form the main part of the final rearguard, while the rest of the brigade completed withdrawal. These companies subsequently got back to the new line intact.