by Tim Bowden
The truck, with Tubby Bruce’s driver, was still intact so with Lieutenant Alan Ibbotsen and other members of the section, Clift clambered aboard and went into the gloom without lights towards the east, the general withdrawal direction. Tracers came closer and closer and criss-crossed in all directions. They were all completely exhausted. The driver turned the truck over into a creek, presumably a tributary of the Pineos River, in the darkness. ‘We were flung headlong into the freezing water, dunked under the truck, Harry, Tiny and I going a long way under before scrambling out with our weapons and gear onto the bank and the blackness of the night.’
They dragged a badly injured Billy Wyatt with them, his spine crushed with a belly full of water as well, and rendered what first-aid they could in the chilly darkness. Tubby remarked that they were shivering like ‘a lot of dogs shitting razor blades’.
Reluctantly, they found it necessary to take Billy back to the regimental aid post to await the coming of the enemy. (He was treated well as a prisoner of war in Germany, but he died in Yaralla later of recurring pneumonia.)
They now looked around for another means of evacuation, preferably the mechanical kind, with Tubby declaring that he didn’t want to spend any time in a ‘fucking Hun Constipation Camp’. They caught up with a couple of Army Service Corps trucks, but agreed to split into two groups so they could accommodate them. Clift recalled their parting moments:
I will never forget Harry’s handgrip, his handsome face and the ‘good luck’ as he went over the tailboard of his vehicle. Tiny walked across as Blue and I settled into our truck, giving my behind a friendly push and a slap as I clambered in. ‘Good luck,’ he said, still with that big friendly unafraid grin in the sickly moonlight. I never saw Tiny and Harry again, and the years have never stifled my regret. In Crete we were given tragic news that they had gone west, and as soldiers do for very close friends, we grieved—experiencing the acute sense of pain, deep inside, when someone close, such as a brother, goes away forever. Death is so definite, so final. One tries to recall their gaiety, generosity and comradeship which we shared with them through good times and bad for what now seemed an eternity.
Heeding Brigadier ‘Tubby’ Allen’s call for every man to look after himself, Private Bob Holt and what remained of his 16th Brigade headed for the coast. They sloshed their way through the swamp that had stopped their trucks. The Luftwaffe was out in force, bombing and strafing. ‘We eventually struck a solid road and one over-enthusiastic Luftwaffe pilot immediately came in low with all his guns blazing. I dived into the trench alongside the road, which was half full of icy water. I was cold, wet and miserable and pretty near freezing by the time Fritz turned his attention elsewhere, and I stayed that way till my clothes dried out.’
Shortly afterwards a couple of truckloads of New Zealand infantry came along and gave them a lift—but they were shadowed for miles by a mysterious armoured car and they did not know if ‘it was one of ours or theirs’. They passed through the rearguard of the 17th Brigade at Lamia.
There was a lot of bombing and strafing on the roads and Lamia and Volos were certainly getting their share. Going down the Thermopylae Pass, there were signs that the various 16th Brigade units were forming up. Holt’s group thanked the Kiwis for the lift and the food they had shared with them and rejoined their battalion, which was sorting itself out in the hills.
Our platoon position was on top of the hill, overlooking the long straight road leading to the pass. The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, but any spare time we had was used watching the planes giving the vehicular traffic a pasting, the smoke from the burning trucks dotting the road. The German aircraft not only blasted the transport off the roads but also incinerated villages, towns and cities. But there were at least some flyers with a conscience.
Just back from their position, a field ambulance was tucked right among the troops and military hardware. Holt saw several planes come strafing along the valley, but as soon as they saw the Red Cross on the tents, they stopped their strafing and zoomed off. What with the long marches, the fights around Pineos Gorge, insufficient food and constant air attacks, Holt’s mob had been having a rough time and ‘quite a few fellows’ nerves were on edge’. They received news that the Sixth Division and the New Zealand division had been formed into the ANZAC Corps.
‘In another boost to our morale, we were told that the battalion was going into an attack the following evening. There had been a spate of self-inflicted wounds, and I overheard two company commanders discussing their problems. “How many men have you got John?” The reply was 48. Just then a rifle shot was heard from over the hill. “Correction, make that 47”.’
Instead of attacking, Holt’s unit again piled into buses. The word was that they were to retire to the coast and would be evacuated. They were bombed and strafed on the roads. They passed the Corinth Canal, where there was to be a rearguard action, and eventually finished up in some olive groves outside Kalamata.
We started to clean ourselves at a fountain on the grounds of a girls’ school. Surprisingly we were as popular in defeat as we were when we landed. The girls washed our filthy socks and boiled us eggs and couldn’t do enough for us.
The Luftwaffe came over and dropped bombs around us and it was horrible to see these young girls so upset. Some of us were given hammers and told to smash up our transport vehicles. We hammered the engines, smashed the lights and windscreens and left them useless.
On the nights of 26 and 27 April, they marched through Kalamata to the docks through darkened streets with all their arms and equipment. About 10.30 pm they saw lights flashing out to sea and shortly afterwards the destroyer HMS Hero came in and they embarked. ‘We were packed in like sardines from the bilges to the superstructure and it was just as well we weren’t on the destroyer too long, or some of us would surely have smothered.’
The embarkation was carried out in a well-disciplined manner. The battalions had been arranged into groups and they marched through crowds of Cypriots and Palestinians. Hero sailed out into the bay and they transferred to the British troopship Dilwarra. As soon as the other transports were loaded, Hero formed up in convoy and set sail for Alexandria.
Ken Clift also acted on Brigadier Allen’s orders to head south but his group, led by Lieutenant Alan Ibbotsen, decided to travel to the east coast through the mountains and pine forests, dodging as many roads as possible, which by now were crawling with German convoys, motorcyclists and armoured transport. They aimed to get to the port of Volos. Ibbotsen believed there was a British presence and a destroyer on the tiny island of Skiathos just off the coast. ‘Any British naval craft would be a welcome sight to us weary bedraggled warriors,’ Clift reckoned.
They covered the distance to the coast in a couple of days. Their meagre rations had long since gone but they had the cover of the pine forests practically all the way. Water was no problem, with mountain streams criss-crossing their route constantly. Tubby had a water bottle full of rum and Ken had a bottle of whisky in his haversack filched from an abandoned dump of stores near Servia, ‘so prudent use of the spirits was helpful on the journey’.
They were now a little dubious of the reaction of Greek civilians to their presence, but were welcomed like brothers. The port at Piraeus had been ‘blown to hell’ and was no longer useable for shipping. Other towns had also suffered the same fate, including Elasson and Larisa. German parachutists had landed a long way south in the vicinity of the Gulf of Corinth. The Greek government had capitulated and had requested the Allied troops withdraw from the mainland to save further civilian suffering, so the longer they stayed the more embarrassing they became to their hosts.
The Huns had made it quite clear to our Greek brethren where they could, with proclamations pinned on walls and announcements put over the Greek radio to the effect that immediate reprisals in the form of execution by firing squad would be smartly carried out on any person or persons reckless enough to harbour or assist Australian, New Zealand or British troops. L
ittle imagination was necessary to see our lot was not a happy one.
But it takes more than propaganda and threats to unsettle the sturdy northern Greeks who have a long history of being overrun, and they seem to take it all in their stride.
When they did get to a little village on the coast below Volos, they were welcomed and fed by the villagers and guided to a tiny isolated Greek Orthodox church out of sight of the village to get a night’s rest. As well as some more Australian troops, there were a few refugees who’d come from Yugoslavia. The local mayor, speaking in halting English, showed them the grave of a British fighter pilot who had been buried near the church by the locals the day before. They took the pilot’s few papers and personal belongings into safekeeping.
A barge powered by a diesel motor lay at the wharf below and it was decided to make a recce out to the island of Skiathos, which was only about 8 miles off the coast. The date was 25 April 1941, Anzac Day, and not far east of their location was Gallipoli from where Australian troops had also had to flee nearly a quarter of a century before.
The trip out to the island was fruitless. A base had been there all right before the German planes got to work on it and now it was a deserted, wrecked mess of wharf and naval installations with not a destroyer, corvette or even a rowing boat to be seen. We went ashore and said ‘hello’ to a few local inhabitants, purloined and slaughtered a stinking billy goat which Tubby barbecued, stuffed some of the bones and other remains into our haversacks for further meals, then made back under cover of darkness to a church on the mainland.
The skies up and down the coast crawled with German aircraft during daylight hours, and they seemed to take delight in blowing anything out of the water which floated—especially if it contained an Allied crew. Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, Clift’s group commandeered sufficient fuel for the diesel boat and travelled down the east coast between dusk and dawn in the hope of picking up a British or Australian ship. The news over the Greek radio was that the defensive positions further south at Brallos Pass had been overrun and all Commonwealth troops were evacuating the mainland.
Nearing Chalcis they pulled in at dawn and decided, because of the condition of the vessel, they would have to continue on foot.
A continuous loud drone unlike anything I had ever heard came from the north and wave after wave of assorted German military aircraft passed in majestic formation above us. I estimated that over 1000 aircraft were involved in a show of regal pageantry and power, designed, no doubt, to intimidate the Greeks who had already capitulated, and the evacuating forces. We felt helpless with rage on hearing the bombs ‘crumping’ away on the people who had already surrendered and we could have cheerfully wrung the neck of every fat-arsed Hun pilot sitting aloft immune from any battle danger. It goes without comment that we the forces of the Navy were fair game but this did not apply now to the Greeks, either civil or military. They were obviously copping a lot of belated Teutonic spleen.
Chalcis was not yet occupied but they skirted the town, as any military movement seen from the air would have brought a wave of Stukas on their erstwhile allies. Dodging all the main roads, while heading south towards the Gulf of Corinth, they had two scouts alternating well ahead, while three or four acted as a rearguard.
On the second day the scout signalled to them to halt and take cover. Into view, roaring down the track, smothered in dust, came three armoured scout vehicles. Every weapon of the group was trained on them from behind the pine trees as they came to a halt. Happily these vehicles were driven by New Zealanders who had come looking for the Australians after a civilian Greek scout car, which had been travelling from Chalcis, reported their position. They were invited to climb in smartly, as the road ahead was about to be cut.
We clung all over those vehicles while they made it post-haste back from whence they came. We arrived at a railway siding—the rail and rolling stock further north were now in enemy hands so troops were advised to entrain. Shortly after boarding, our old steam rattletrap took off south crammed with a hodge-podge of military personnel. The smoke from its stack soon ‘drew the crabs’ and a burst of machine gun fire from the air along the carriages brought everything to a halt. The Greek driver took to the scrub leaving us to our own devices. Fortunately we had a 2/1st Sapper aboard. To him, driving trains was old hat, so off we puffed away leaving our original driver to whatever fate awaited him.
Their destination, the Gulf of Corinth, was a welcome sight. Some hundreds of troops were on the beach, waiting for the safe cloak of darkness and for the craft which would evacuate them. Shortly after dusk, the Australian destroyer Stuart was spotted in close, with the larger bulk of the RAN cruiser Perth standing further out in deeper water. ‘We felt bitter about leaving our Greek friends and in some respect and in some inexplicable way we felt as though we had deserted them. It was very late that night when the warships took off on what was the last of their many ferry trips between Greece and Crete where our lords and masters believed we still had a chance against the invading Germans.’
How things had changed. As dawn broke and after a good night’s sleep, dinner and breakfast, the rescued Australians were feeling a lot more chipper after all the attention of their navy mates. They were well on their way south towards Crete when they were spotted by seven German Stuka dive bombers, which came down in their familiar pattern, follow the leader style, ready to attack.
The deck was full of troops, the pom-pom navy gunners were ready and every digger had ‘one up the spout’ and a full magazine in rifles or Bren ready to greet our unwelcome visitors. The Bren gunners rested the legs of their gun in two of their friends’ tin hats, the ship’s mate further assisting by grasping the legs of the gun to steady it while the gun fired and traversed. The drill for troops combating a dive bomber was to wait until a Stuka aircraft dropped its stick of bombs which occurred at the conclusion of its dive, when the belly of the bomber turned up and was exposed. It was then that it was most vulnerable to pom-pom or small arms fire. Rapid fire right into its guts, aiming 12 degrees off, was the order of the day for all hands including the cook.
The skipper of the Stuart was a very cool customer and he clearly had a lot of experience evading the Luftwaffe. His technique was to watch the dive bombers peel off, wait for the bombs to drop and as soon as they left the aircraft he would bark his commands, ‘hard to port’ or ‘hard to starboard’, to the helmsman who then swung the wheel with all his might, the Stuart keeling over, cutting through the water at full bore like a speedboat. The skipper made his ship an elusive target.
Two Stukas were hit, one coming down into the sea without any sign of smoke or flame. Clift thought it must have been small arms fire which killed the pilot. Another Stuka made for the mainland, trailing a plume of smoke as a result of Stuart’s ack-ack guns. ‘We revengeful types hoped the bastard wouldn’t make it. None of their bombs came close enough to do damage to the ship—a great tribute again to the skipper because they dropped a stick of four bombs apiece. Stuart was not molested further and we arrived in Suda Bay, Crete.’
Before disembarking, they arranged for navy sailors to send cables to their families when they reached Alexandria, informing them the troops had been evacuated from Greece safely. The sailors refused to take cash to cover costs, and recorded all the names and addresses of the people they were given. Clift later knew of no instances when the telegrams were not delivered.
‘No wonder the AIF loved the Royal Australian Navy!’
Chapter 8
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE
Under the circumstances, the withdrawal of Commonwealth troops from Greece was a very credible effort despite the final chaos of what had been an utter military disaster. The total number of servicemen taken aboard navy ships in a whole series of embarkations was 50,662. In the fighting for Greece, British Commonwealth forces lost 903 killed, 1250 wounded and 13,958 captured, while the Greeks suffered 13,325 killed, 62,663 wounded and 1290 missing.
Blamey and his staff planned the withdrawal with great skill. Generals Ivan Mackay and Bernard Freyberg, both sage and cool military veterans, maintained firm and inspiring control of the fighting formations holding back the Germans to enable so many troops to leave safely. The skill and competence of the British and Australian navies ensured there were almost no casualties during the entire operation. The greatest military losses were all the vehicles and heavy weapons which had to be abandoned.
Not everyone was evacuated back to Alexandria. Those who drew the short straw were landed in Crete, another Allied military disaster in the making—like Signaller Ken Clift. Private Bob Holt and his comrades from 2/3rd Infantry Battalion made it back to Alexandria after being evacuated from Greece, shortly afterwards taking part in the Allied invasion of Syria against the Vichy French in June and July 1941.
As in Greece, the fighting in Crete was brutish and short against overwhelming German forces, and was over by the end of May 1941. The Australian troops still in Egypt, Palestine and Syria were well aware of what was going on there, and summed up the whole Greek disaster with this verse, ‘The Isle of Doom’. Bob Holt recalled the words: