GREEK CAMPAIGN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25101, 17 December 1942, Page 5

GREEK CAMPAIGN

WAR OFFICE ACCOUNT SEVERAL INACCURACIES (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) SYDNEY, Dec. 15. “Without collecting the stories of a large number of New Zealanders and Australians now scattered over the world, from El Agheila to Gona, it is doubtful whether a thoroughly authentic account of the Greek campaign will be written.” This comment was made by Mr Gavin Long, the Sydney Morning Herald war correspondent in Greece, when reviewing the recent official British War Office account of the campaign. Mr Long points out several, inaccuracies in the official story. A statement that the New Zealand and Australian troops each numbered 10,000 to 15,000 men he terms “ unnecessarily vague.” There were 24,200 British troops (including the Palestinian Cypriot Labour Corps), 17,125 Australians and 16,532 New Zealanders. The War Office account records that wet cloudy weather during several days prevented R.A.F. bombers from operating usefully against the German convoys streaming into Greece from Jugoslavia. “This bad weather was a boon and not a handicap,” Mr Long says, “since it also kept the German squadrons out of the air at a critical time. Without this weather 50 or more squadrons .of German aircraft could have strafed the New Zealand machine gunners and Australian infantrymen, who were making their' difficult way southwards through rain and snow from Fiorina towards Alialmon River.

“There were later fortunate days,” Mr Long adds, “ when the jammed lines of our retreating trucks slowly moving south were protected from strafing by drizzling rain and clouds which hid the peaks and filled the valleys.” No estimates of the German casualties in Greece are given in the War Office account, but Mr Lone states that Hitler’s statement that 1098 were killed, 187 missing, and 3752 wounded is probably a good deal closer to the truth than has usually been the case when the Fi’hrer purported to give the German losses. Most of these casualties were inflicted bv the New Zealanders. Discussing the War Office’s high strategical testification for the Greek campaign, Mr Long remarks: “ The Germans marched through Greece from top to bottom in a little over a fortnight, so it is unlikely that the Anzac Corps and one British armoured brigade materially upset the German time table. The defence of Crete, impromptu though it had to be, proved far more costly and caused more delay than the campaign in Greece. Men of Australia and New Zealand can point with pride to the fact that they came out of Greece an organised fighting force and that many of them were soon in action again in Crete.”