INTO BATTLE

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 9, 8 May 1944, Page 12

INTO BATTLE

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNT.

With the New-Zealanders in Greece

The writer of this article was a medical orderly with the New Zealand Forces

VV/ herever we camped in Greece we Vy seemed always to be surrounded with a wealth of great natural

beauty. Our first headquarters was sited in the midst of a wood where the first touches of spring gave promise of the loveliness soon to be. Close by was a mountain stream of ice-cold clear water flowing through wide stretches of white sand. Nature seemed to have become the leader of a conspiracy to make the war appear to us the mere shadow of a distant threat. There were flowers among the green of the undergrowth, and birds in the trees. Sometimes a clumsy slowmoving tortoise would waddle unconcernedly across the winding bush tracks almost between our feet. In the distance the mountains, snow - capped, coldly watched us.

There was work to be done—that everlasting digging which is the bane of the soldier’s life, but often his salvation when the guns begin to fire. But in the evenings we were still free to visit nearby villages, and once or twice there were trips to a more distant town. In contrast with the small rural villages which boasted only small wineshops, this town had banks, public buildings, two fine churches, and quite a number of shops with a fairly wide range of goods. Many of the shopkeepers could speak a little English, and boasted of the happy days they had spent in America “ many years ago.” To deal with the heavy demands made by the soldiers on the town’s resources some enterprising former American Greeks opened restaurants, which, after all, supplied the main need, for there were none when first we arrived.

It was a busy place, transformed overnight from placid normality to bustling excitement by the arrival of the NewZealanders. Scores of tiny wine-shops, where once the locals used to sit for hours, chatting, singing, laughing, or

sleepily musing over a single glass of “ krassi,” became in an instant crowded with noisy throngs of soldiers.

Greeks and New-Zealanders formed countless little international groups, the members of which vied with each other in extending expressions of friendship. Mutual salutations were exchanged. Many a soldier called to his aid all the scanty knowledge of schoolboy French at his command combined with a smattering of Greek learnt from booklets sold in the streets of Athens and generously helped out by smile, shrug, and gesture in order to explain the beauties of his home country to admiring groups of listeners.

Others made the acquaintance of strange little places where rich, sweet cakes and pastries soaked in honey were sold, to be eaten with a glass of hot goat’s milk, or else ambled leisurely among the countless little stalls of the town markets where they would critically examine the stock put up for sale, commenting with the air of experts on the qualities or otherwise of anything from sheep and pigs to watercress and pickling onions.

In our camp among the trees we were settled in greater comfort than we had known for some time. There was soft white sand with which to floor our tents. Close at hand the clear stream provided a luxury unknown in Egypt. Somehow, in spite of wounded Greeks back on sick-

leave from Albania, whom we sometimes met surrounded by their fellow-country-men in the village streets, there was an atmosphere of peace. There was no threat of death, but in the bursting buds, the birds, and all the myriad joyous signs of spring was a promise of life. . Quite suddenly everything changed. One evening in April—l had just celebrated my twenty-first birthday—a silent, grave little group round a wireless in a camouflaged dug-out tent, we heard the news of Germany’s attack on Greece and Yugoslavia. The time had come. Soon we would be in action. And shortly the frontier guns began to sound the prelude to battle, their thunder coming to us like the roll of distant drums, jarring the earth. Events moved with lightening speed. Came the news of murderous Nazi barbarity in Belgrade. Our busy town began to empty of civilians, and then one evening came the order that we, too, were to move back to the main line of defence. Next morning found us in our new position, erecting tents at i a.m. in pitch blackness and drizzling rain, shivering with the cold. Daylight revealed a valley surrounded by high snow-topped hills in the shadow of Mount Olympus. A dreary drizzle of steady rain fell from low - threatening clouds. It was not at first a pleasing outlook, but in this spot we settled down for a while and found many compensations. In spite of one or two floodings we were soon comfortably housed in tents and ready for action. We were something like 4,000 ft. up, and at times the cold was bitter, while morning and evening a] eloping clouds of mist came rolling down from the heights above the snow-line. At first there was a good deal of rain, and we were at times struggling through mud. In fact, it was necessary to build a road, and the “ navvyin g nurses,” as . we had come to regard ourselves, set to work with great vigour. Over half a mile of passable roadway was completed in short order. At the beginning of Easter it began to snow, and one morning we awoke to find the whole earth buried under about 4 in. of whiteness. The cold was such, that the men hit upon the idea of making

braziers from empty benzine-tins, and placing these inside their tents. Results were excellent, though the tents soon became filled with smoke. We began to do some of our own cooking, and some evenings could sit round the cheery brazier gossiping, making toast, or frying eggs and chips bought from the peasants. Easter Sunday was a notable day, for we attended a special service held by our Padre while we stood amid the snow, grouped round the stones of what had once been a type of corral in which goats were milked. It was Easter, and from near at hand came the thunder of our guns hammering the advancing enemy. Easter, and the hills rolled back the echoes from a hail of fire. That night we had our first experience of the front line, our first stretcher parties going forward. Other units had been in action for some days, we learned, and on all sides there were encouraging reports of their splendid work. We felt that, whatever might happen, we too would do our job well. And from official reports it seems we did. However, that’s not for me to discuss, but I may be permitted to tell of one or two of the incidents which befell us. The turn of the party in which I had a place did not come till later, and the intervening time will be long remembered. One day, a beautifully fine one, at a time when the guns were silent, I was resting outside our tent. There was a flat grassy patch below a tree-covered slope. Bees were droning lazily among the many wild flowers, while the tinkling music of a mountain stream in a rocky bed sounded a pleasant symphony. On the slopes of the opposite hill a bearded ancient was ploughing. Everywhere was peace. Awakening was rude. A distant hum grew swiftly to a droning scream, a sound like the vicious voices of countless angry bees multiplied until it filled the air with menace. An air armada —there must have been over a hundred planes—was passing above and beyond us. They were mere black shapes to us, but soon after they had vanished behind the hills came the crash of bombs. When the first wounded began to arrive they brought with them many a story of high courage and work well done. Jerry was getting hell, they.

said. The Artillery was giving him the Devil’s own of a hammering. ‘' The Maoris put the fear of Hades into ’em with the bayonet . . . ” Before long it became plain that the Medicals, too, were

doing their job splendidly. In one area our chaps went up to the most forward area to bring back wounded, under fire. Once they had to run the gauntlet. A cobber

told me this story : “ There were more cases than our party could handle,” he said, “ and it wasn’t possible to get an ambulance up. The Jerry had a machine-gun post firing right across the road. There was shelling, too. It seemed a bit of a hole ... A truck-driver volunteered to try and run us through the danger zone. ‘Of course,’ he said, sort of questioningly, with a bit o c a grin at us, ‘ we may never get across, you know.’ He spoke just like a chap who says ‘ I may pop in and have a beer on my way home.’ Well, we had to give it a go, so we just grinned back and put the stretchers on the truck.

“ We started off quite well, two of us in the back holding the stretchers down on the bumps. Then came the place where enemy gunners had a plain shot at the road through a gap in the hills. We could see where Jerry had been pasting away all day. There was a groove cut, at about the height to catch us fair and square, all along the clay bank on one side.

" The driver just put his foot hard down, and we raced across that open space as though the devil himself were after us. As a matter of fact, I suppose, in a way, he was, but we had the luck. A heavy mist came up, hiding the road from the gunners, and there wasn’t a a shot fired. It was a pretty rough ride for the patients, though, and, despite all we could do, the stretchers bounced about a foot at every bump. Those wounded took it all without a murmur, too.” He went on to say that it was not the thought of the guns that had worried him as they entered the zone of fire, it was the fear that if anything did happen he just might not be able to attend to the new wounds which might be inflicted. Field Ambu-

lance men were exposed to just the same dangers as the fighting forces, with the difference that they faced those dangers unarmed. Several times shelling came pretty close. Once an M.O. was shaving, with his usual

carefree stroke of razor and brush, when the morning barrage began. There was a roar and a crash. Something whizzed close to his head, leaving a gaping hole in the roof above him. He dropped the razor and swore violently, eyed the hole in the roof, eyed the smoke of the burst shell outside, then slowly and deliberately walked to the doorway and directed a stream of invective in the general direction of the enemy.

When my own party moved forward, some time later, it was to a village half way up the slopes of Mount Olympus. We began the climb, by ambulance, in pouring rain. As the road became ever steeper so it became muddier and more nearly impassable. There were bends so sharp that they seemed impossible to negotiate. More than once we had to “ put our shoulders to it,” scrambling, cursing, in the mud. The cold was biting, and we were glad indeed to reach our base, which we did just as darkness began to fall. The village school was oui’ stretcher-bearer post. Joy of joys, fires were alight, and the class-rooms in which we camped were cheerily warm, though the wind whistled through cracks in the floorboards. We found our mates, whom we were to relieve, busily drying their clothing before the stoves. They had had an exceedingly hard carry, it seemed, working in rough mountain country, and with a long distance to march. “ I’d never honestly seen mud knee deep before,” said one, “ but I waded through oceans of it to-day.” And it seemed he had, for he was using a pocket-knife to clean his trousers from the knee down.

We settled down on the hard boards to sleep, ringed about the fires, while outside the rain fell steadily. Some thirsty soul found the caretaker and whispered longingly in his ear of cognac. “ Yes, yes,” said that worthy, “ Cognac. Good. Give me hundred drachmae.” There was

hasty consultation in the darkness, from somewhere came the money, and very shortly there was cognac. Little sleep was permitted us that night. Towards midnight there began a resounding series of crashes in the rest of the building. Our men were falling back, seeking shelter in the school. Morning found us so nearly in the front line that it did not much matter. The school was packed with weary, mud and rain soaked menmen who had been in action day and night without sleep, without rest for over forty-eight hours. Water was put on to boil, and hot drinks were quickly prepared for as many as possible. The enemy was pressing on, they said, creeping unseen, and often unheard, through the mist and rain. Our men were holding him just beyond the village. Outside, on the muddied slopes men were preparing to fight again. The mountain, the village, the advancing foe, all were hidden in thick, rolling mist. Soon a runner appeared. There were shouted orders, and out into the fog again went the weary men, tired almost beyond endurance, but still keen to give the enemy all and more than he could take. “ You medical orderlies had better clear out,” said the M. 0., “ the enemy’s entering the village.” The ambulance moved out, while seemingly only a few yards away, but unseen, tommy-guns and rifles began a deadly chorus. As we went on our own artillery began to fire, with a sound that nearly split our ear-drums. About a mile down the road a series of caves in the mountainside offered shelter from the still steadily falling rain, and in one of these we prepared to receive wounded. In the cave next to us flocks of sheep had been

shut in for protection against the cold, and two small shepherd boys guarding them set to work, unasked, to find dry sticks with which they lit a fire for us. Across the road another small boy and his sister were minding goats. I could not help wondering how they would fare when the Germans came. The sheep, the goats, and those tiny Greek children seemed very much out of place in an area soon to be under fire. We had hardly established ourselves before out of the mists came a messenger with a laconic “ On your way boys. Jerry’s coming.” Down the mountainside we drove and out of the mists into comparative clearness, though we thanked our lucky stars for the low-lying cloud which made strafing from the air an impossibility. A short way along the road we came across a large ration dump which was being prepared for destruction so that it should not fall into enemy hands. There were literal mountains of cases containing foodstuffs, rations of every conceivable type, food for an army, including many items of which we had been short. Someone shouted “ Want any rations ? Be in boys ! ” Before long all our spare space was piled with goods, not forgetting many a luxury item. There were cases of tinned fruit, cases of this, cases of that. We dined more luxuriously than ever before —or since—that day. Peaches and cream, in greater quantities than we could ever hope to deal with. As we left they were breaking into the piled cases with picks, pouring on petrol. At least the enemy would never benefit from the stores we could not take away. Greek peasants, though, were not denied, and many a mule-cart groaned under a load it could barely carry.