ANZAC DAY A YEAR AGO

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 45, 27 April 1942, Page 2

ANZAC DAY A YEAR AGO

HOW THE N.Z.E.F. HELD UP THE ' HUN (By Robin T. Miller) This vividly-phrased story, by Robin T. MM'.er, Official (Correspondent with the N.Z.E. F., now convalescing in Auckland, tells how tinnew Anzaes made history in Greece a year ago. It is of Anzac Day, 19-11. when the sons of Anzaes made a name Cor themselves comparable only with that earned by their fathers 2C> years before. I can see the red blooms of wild poppies sprinkled through a green cornfield when I think of that day a year ago. And the red' of blood — that was poppy-red, too—showing tlirough the white dressing on a gunner's arm. "Hell!" he said. "Its Anzac Day." "So it is," said J. "Queer-" It was a nice day, as 1 remember it. Qu'eter than most- - There were times when you could hear the birds singing for an hour or so at a stretch. (It was wonderful the way the birds took it, though later, in Crete, the sky was so black with planes somebody declared hp saw sparrows limping sorefooted back along the road) .

But tliis was Greece, and it was tough enough. The sky was cle.ai and blue when I woke at sunrise that day and looked up at it through the branches of a stunted fir that had served me for a roof. There was something pretty and springlike even in the look of the first flights of Dorniers and Messerschmitts, gold in the early sunshine, as they soared ever us towards the embarkation routes and beaches. The gunner rubbed a stubbly chin with his good arm. "Fascinating blankety things, at this- distance," he said. I think we may well cherish Apri! 25 as a day or remembrance of the new as well as of the old Anzacs. Nothing exceptional happened to us in Greece last year on the day it-< self; but the smoke of pctwder and fire had hardly cleared from the foot of the cliffs at Thermopylae and the German army, I suppose, was burying its dead and licking its wounds—more dead, maybe, and deeper wounds than it had suffered in any battle since the war began, i How the Game Stood Then, too, we knew pretty well how the game stood. If its aim had been to hold the Germans out of this corner of Europe the expedition had failed. If it had been meant cis a gesture of admiration for the Greeks, a sign of good faith towards a friend and ally, a sign to the world that free men could stand unafraid in the face of tremendous odds, then it had been gloriously s-uccessiill. Now it. was drawing to an end. You could say that technically it had ended days before —the moment when it had been decided to evacuate the British forces. Yet for the New Zealand Division that was not the end. It was rather the beginning. Evacuation of the B.E.F. was going to be difficult. The enemy would do everything in his power to prevent us from getting away. With his air force he would try to block our roads, smash our ports, sink our ships. He would push his army hard and fast in an effort to overtake and cut us off.

Somebody had to slow him up— to stay up there between him and the ports and beaches, punch him hard and often as lie pressed down the highways, make him stop for breath. Every day lie was delayed thousands more men would be getting away in comparative safetj'. This was a rearguard job for a force Avith plenty of spirit, skill and ! morale. After seeing the rest of the expedition safely away, it would have to see itself off, brigade by brigade, and then battalion by battalion, until the last company of the last battalion slipped out from unilcr Nazi noses and got away—if if could. The three brigade groups of th? New Zealand division were the mainstay of the rearguard. Hardly had the enemy made contact with us in the mountain passes beside Olympus than withdrawal orders (lashed over the army wires:—puzzling and disappointing to men who had just thrown their first punch at Nazi troops and found it a killer. Withdrawal was no fault of theirs. Orders were orders. From that moment on, at strategic points all the way from the Olympus line to the Corinth Canal, our brigades fought delaying and covering actions Avhuse success saved men and lives by the thousand.

Figifiting for Time They fought like the full-blooded men they are in passes and valleys and plains drenched with the blood

of ancient conquerors and defenders., They were torn, but never broken, by the bomb blasts and bullet sprays of the Luftwaffe, growing in strength as British air power diminished. They fought near the beaches, with their backs to the sea, fighting for time, but coolly, calmly, until night should come and bring with it the ships of the navy. They are well worth remembering, those men and those days. And it's easy to remember. The young Austrian infantryman looked at me gravely. I had asked him, as he came trudging up the winding pass road with the remnants of a Nazi battalion shattered by Wellington men near Scrvia, on the Olympus line, what the Germans thought of their prospects in the Greece campaign. "We shall be in Athens in one week," he said. I had to laugh. "That will be the day," I told him. Technically, he lor,!; the point. It was just under a fortnight before the swastika Hew on the Acropolis. Rut on the day we talked—April 15 —I thought he was crazy. If he had said "one month" I would still have laughed. Things were going reasonably well. We had grown used to being divebombed and shelled—at one and the Same time, on occasion—and the enemy's shock troops had been taken rudely aback in their first sorties against the Olympus line. fore the chattering Vickers guns of our machine gun battalion the crack Adolf Hitler Regiment had left many dead lying in the spring slush beside the road from Yugoslavia a few dayes earlier. Our cavalry and artillery, with delaying, hit-and-run tactics, had hampered and damaged another German force feeling its

way down the coastal route from Salonika.

Now, with an encouraging measure of success, we were holding the mountain passes against a triple thrust—one behind the little town of Servia, another in the shadow of hallowed Olympus itself, the third along the railwaj" line that ran between the great peak and the sea. With the suddenness of all had news, -word came that the left flank of the line, held by valiant but warweary Greeks, had been turned. Our rear was threatened. The passes must be evacuated. On a wet, dreary night the leap-frogging backward movement began. Sound Effects The echoing crack and red flashes of field guns covering our departure, the squelch of sodden boots on sodden tracks, the rumble of endless blacked-out columns of transport, the boom of gelignite as sappers blasted bridges sky-high behind us—these were the sound effects. It was dangerous, dramatic, often violent. The rear party of the brigade I was with was cut off by Nazi tanks before it had cleared the mountains. A. lone Auckland battalion, overrun in the storied Vale of Tempe, had to fight its way clear. Gunners battled in the open, often at point-blank range. There were hairbreadth escapes. And when sunrise l flooded the plains with light the black bombers came looking for us . . . Progress had been painfully slow since we groped our way through the smouldering, shattered ruins of Larissa. Then two Australian trucks started the worst traffic jam of the lot.

When the column stopped, they stayed stopped—for breakfast.

We went up and told them to get moving, or get out of the way, or we'd "roll the blanketv things into the ditch."

But it was. too late. Somebody tried to cut past the block, and within minutes the road was jammed tight with a double line of vehicles.

"Jerry will be over and spot us for a mora!.'' We swung our car cfr the road into an open field.

\Ye were lucky. There was only one bomber. The j>ilot took his time, ft must have looked funny to him, the sight of those ant-like figures scrambling for dear life away ('rem both sides of the road.

He turner] and laid his eggs along the jam. The blavk earth showered upwards in noisy geysers. There was only one hit. and a trnek took lira vr.i.th a dull explosion. Every Tenth Minute Our umpteentli step Hint day was ordered by a sapper. "Off the road, and disperse." he shouted . ''Bridge gone—Jerry smacked it properly, and we've got a truck load of 'jelly' somewhere in the mess." (Continued on page G)