HEROISM OF ANZACS

Camp News, Volume 2, Issue 71, 2 May 1941, Page 3

HEROISM OF ANZACS

Epic Stand In Greece

SOME STIRRING TALES

SYDNEY, April 26.

ney 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.”

Hour after hour Junkers divebombers, Heinkels and Messerschmitts circled over the troops on the roads, bombing and machine-gunning theiA from low altitudes. Some battalions had been fighting and marching for 12 days without a break.

The magnificence in battle of the new Anzacs is related in stirring tales from correspondents and eye-witnesses of the grim Allied retirement in Greece, said a representative of the Sydney “Sun” in a dispatch 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.

New. South Wales battalions which marched for five days across the mountains coming out from the Verria 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. 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 till 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.”

“One Australian battalion had to march for three days over the top of Mount Olympus, down frightening precipices,’ and across rocky ravines, till the boots were almost worn off the men’s feet.”

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 till 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 nearby when demolition charges had been placed in position.

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 bitter 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.

March Over Olympus.

Half the brigade’s transport remained on the wrong side of the blownup 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.

Richard MacMillan, correspondent of the American United Press, in a dispatch 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. “One of them said: ‘We walked for days and nights and fought often in Gin. 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 told me his unit fought continuously from noon one day till 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. Strafing By Luftwaffe. 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 “Syd-