Weller's War

by George Weller

  They could either become prisoners or back slowly toward the tiny ports of the Macedonian shore, hoping to board dingy little fishing craft. Some made the characteristic choice of the independent Greek spirit. They went on fighting.

  Although no fresh reports have come from that region, evacuees assert that fighting is continuing, the Germans having the greatest difficulty ferreting out the harassing Greek bands.

  This gallant rearguard action—strictly voluntary—has slowed and thinned the German progress westward, because a substantial number of Schnelltruppen [“fast troops”—i.e., motorized infantry] and airplanes were forced to keep their attention in the area bordering Turkey.

  Salonika was abandoned according to an orderly plan whereby the city was recognized as a liability in a long campaign. Though this may seem a loser's excuse for a setback, it is the truth. Such a policy of recognizing that a superior line of defense existed south of Salonika, and that the city itself was a military liability, could only be taken in secrecy, despite the heartaches involved. This fact cannot rub from the writer's mind the haunted eyes of Salonikans walking the streets last Tuesday afternoon, searching the face of each well-dressed person or braided officer for the answer to the unspoken question: When are they coming, and from where?

  The military decision for withdrawal was taken around dawn Tuesday morning, when the general staffs telegram was filed at Salonika. The man in the street knew only at 4:10 that afternoon that something terrible was happening when a huge black pillar cloud rolled directly over the city from the broad, beautiful bay.

  Only a few minutes before, all had been heartened by the sight of four German prisoners marching quickly under guard toward the railroad station, bound for Athens. They were treated, as this correspondent knows because he interviewed them in a railroad shelter during an air raid and later in a coach, with the greatest courtesy and understanding. They were stared at, but the only man who ventured to jeer aloud from the crowd was speedily silenced by policemen.

  Their businesslike march through the downtown temporarily restored hope that rumors of Teutons nearing the city, having broken the Serbian lines, were false. But when it was evident that the enormous black cloud was because a camouflaged oil tank banked up on the western end of the waterfront had been fired, the portent was unmistakable. Perhaps due to stoical Greek courage, no panic occurred.

  At six the last train departed from a tiny boxlike station in Salonika, carrying what it could in huge packages of army stores piled upon the platform. Since few believed that bridges still existed, there were only a few persons at the station.

  In the meantime, the heaviest Greek motorized equipment—which will not be detailed here for obvious reasons—went pouring through the main boulevards. The army was saving everything that could be saved. Departing soldiers tried to cheer the crowds by shaking their fists toward the north, but the pedestrians merely stood and watched, a few sadly raising their hands.

  Giant oil reservoirs plumed up. The demolition squads, determined that the Germans should not find even the little advantage of fuel tanks, moved to a second yard, and soon another terrific column of smoke and flame mounted skyward.

  By six o'clock it would have been natural to expect some such mass rush upon the few vessels at the waterfront as occurred at Smyrna and upon the occasion after World War I of the burning of Salonika, but none occurred. There were pathetic scenes at the docks, where civil administration employees were bidding goodbye to their relatives, and at a tiny dock behind a villa east of the city, where British citizens were being carried by tender down the bay to a waiting vessel.

  So great was the rush among Cypriots, Smyrniots and Jews carrying the authentic blue passport that the small camouflaged yacht was unable even to accommodate two Americans desiring passage. In the end, the tender simply failed to return after taking off British diplomatic pouches that had come from Athens with the writer the day before, leaving a small knot of pathetic people upon the quay for care by the imaginary financial resources of the American consulate. Meanwhile the two columns of oily smoke had joined at a great height over the city.

  While soldiers, federal constabulary and civil employees, including those of the telephone, telegraph and railroad services, crowded aboard two freighters in the bay, the overflow was obliged to take caïques, coastwise sailing vessels, averaging about forty feet long, with diesel power. After the six o'clock train left, the oil tanks continue to blow up briskly in a manner probably extremely satisfying to the demolition squads. A new and deeper note came about seven o'clock, from the western marshes: bridges going heavenward.

  Most of the small army of aged taxis probably got through—at least those that left before three o'clock. The first Nazi motorized equipment was coming down the road from Doiran, Ghevgheli and Torex, straight for the ruptured end of the communications. Refugees dropped their papier-mâché suitcases tied with string, their clothing wrapped in bed linen. (A no man's land between today's lines is apparently cluttered with household goods.)

  Most soldiers carried merely a rifle, a blanket, and a large round loaf of bread under their arms, and as soon as they had the safety of the deck underfoot, lit the omnipresent Greek cigarette and turned their eyes north to the low, bare foothills of the Rhodopes, where their comrades were still struggling to stem the Germans in the Strymona pass. Few wounded were aboard the boats, most apparently having been taken aboard the southward train.

  By sunset, all the big freighters and war vessels (undefinable here) had weighed anchor and slipped down the gulf, leaving the bay, which in the afternoon had been dotted with ships of every size, unnaturally bare. Around eight o'clock, warehouses in the harbor's free zone caught fire. The personnel of the Yugoslav area, mostly Serbians, left on whichever sailboats would carry them, heedless of destination. The last train from their homeland had passed the Ghevgheli-Idomeni frontier the night before, having been attacked by nine Stuka dive bombers at Skoplje and abandoned by the passengers seven times while their papers were being examined.

  After darkness fell, with the city still blindingly alight from waterfront fires, two deep booms were heard—the powder magazines of the chief fortresses guarding Salonika had been blown. Soon afterward fire leaped up from a flour factory which would have furnished nutriment to the oncoming German divisions, which reports number at five. Previously, according to a statement of the Greek authorities, army foodstuffs were distributed to the population so it would not fall into enemy hands.

  It is rare today to see a fire burning almost unchecked. Salonika firemen, alone among the civil employees, were required to stay at their posts and see that fires, while consuming thoroughly, should not spread to the remainder of the city.

  From eight o'clock communication with Athens, except the last military radios, had ceased. Since bridges had been blown up, the remainder of the troops directed themselves eastward, beginning the seaward evacuation.

  Through being the only foreign correspondent in northern Greece, the Chicago Daily News representative was able to choose between: a) going south by motorcar or railroad with the general staffs equipment and the majority of troops—arriving at Athens within two days and, b) taking a chance on embarking with the ragamuffin flotilla, which began leaving Macedonian and Thracian seaports 48 hours after the last bridge over the Cestos had been blown up and mobile retreat westward voluntarily cut off.

  Luckily, the writer chose the latter, slower course. Although this account must mention, by name, merely those places positively in German hands, it is the only testimony available by a journalist, either Greek or foreign, taking part in the withdrawal by sea—a withdrawal equivalent to Dunkirk, and testimony that seafaring Greeks have lost none of the cunning of Homer's time.

  The writer was accompanied throughout the 3½-day journey by Mrs. Ray Brock, wife of the New York Times correspondent, who had arrived from Belgrade aboard the last train before the Nazi invasion overran the Vardar Valley.

  Five different caïques—
as the Greeks call their small fishing boats—all with soldiers aboard, conveyed us from the burning Salonikan waterfront to the foothills above Piraeus, reached by taxi while the fiercest night raid by the Germans was directed against the port.

  The caïques were similar: high rounded prow, poop low amidships, canvas-lined rails. In each, the captain was absolute master until a ranking Army officer stepped aboard.

  After saying goodbye to the American consul and vice-consul, the writer went aboard a small sailboat, supposedly destined south for Chios. The engine stalled in the harbor, and it was nearly one and the moonlit bay was deserted when the motor finally caught. Occasional shots were audible. As the city fell completely silent, illuminated by brilliant flames, the distant reverberation of artillery began, volley after volley. (Already German motorcyclists were near, encountering no resistance.) It was the beginning of the great Aegean embarkation.

  The entire bay, in fact the entire northern Aegean, was the scene of a sea retreat organized upon the waves, with characteristic Greek willingness to make up the answers to emergencies when they were encountered. Majors and colonels upon the poops of dozens of crafts, most less than forty feet long, talked over the situation with old island salts who guided their craft by standing erect at a ten-foot-long helm, hewn out of a single piece of wood and held between the ankles.

  The sailing courses were discussed within hearing of all as in the days when Agamemnon's fleet was returning from Troy, and the waters were approximately the same, the vessels no bigger, nor was the map consulted even once. The menu, consisting of soft, black bread and oranges, with hardtack as dessert, was served by passengers tossing it from hand to hand. Although many of the passengers had known what it was to try to hold a Bulgarian border fort while it was being dive-bombed by countless German planes, not one complaint was heard.

  Officers and soldiers, who could escape the war forever by crossing the Turkish border, were calmly making new plans to meet the Axis forces upon the northwestern fronts. Some expressed the wish to return to Athens briefly, or see their families before taking up again the strain of war. Doubt of final victory never once was expressed.

  The grizzled skipper, who had served on freight ships on both American coasts, pointed up. A huge bomber, flying at about 5000 feet high and probably laden with a deadly cargo for the German columns, was passing to the north. No one paid any attention to it, except ourselves; and several soldiers, busily cleaning rifles and submachine guns, scarcely glanced overhead, while half a dozen hung seasick upon the rails had not even heard the motors.

  The caïque left Salonika Bay three hours before the Germans arrived, with firing audible in the suburbs and an unearthly glare from oil tanks fired by British demolition experts reddening the sea. The fire lay ahead, off the port bow. It was soon discernible as the mighty headland of Karaboun, where the Greeks had a fortress and a small naval air station listening-post guarding Salonika Bay.

  Two large buildings topping the peninsular cliff were walls of flames as the caïque passed. A Greek patrol boat waited in the choppy waters below the headland for the last of the demolition squad, in this case Greeks, to descend to safety.

  As the sun came up, the horizon ahead bulked with the outline of Cassandra, first of the three peninsulas extending southeast. As we ran along the coast, the odd passenger list, including Polish refugees, Salonikan merchants and several employees from as far east as Alexandropolis, stood upon the heaving deck in overcoats, watching the headland with the same sleep-befuddled eyes as the soldiers'. Were the Germans coming this way yet?

  When we slipped into the narrow quarter-mile canal at the village of Potiri two big army trucks and three cars were waiting at the end of the road. Could they be Germans? The boxlike ferry being pulled across the tide rip was full of soldiers wearing welcome brown. They were members of the fast transport that connected the field base and Salonika headquarters, headed by a husky young sergeant.

  The Germans were close behind. Although there were no signs of panic, the sergeant insisted that the boat leave immediately without pausing for provisions. Mrs. Brock and the writer bade adieu here to the first caïque, whose captain, anxious to obey the sergeant, quickly sailed for a remote island in the mid-Aegean, taking the luggage of both Americans, as well as their overcoats and food.

  About an hour after the caïque left another was found at the canal's eastern end. The bewhiskered captain lingered, despite reports of oncoming Germans, until two rowboats had been loaded with cases of oranges and bread as well as more soldiers at one time than the vessel probably had passengers in her entire history. Finally the sail was hoisted, the engine panted and the vessel began clipping the waves southward. Barely half an hour later German squads reached Potiri, making themselves masters of the peninsula.

  With the giant conelike peak of Mount Athos—the clerical republic where monks of the Greek Church dwell in perpetual celibacy—looming, the overladen craft began to be overtaken by other craft coming from tiny white villages perched upon the green surrounding hills.

  One small, blue-rimmed dirty-white craft passed, apparently superpowered, bearing demolition officers. When another lumbering caïque overtook us, the colonel ordered the ships, in constant peril of entangling their bowsprits' rigging, to be brought together. Many soldiers, constabulary, and troopers in blue-green were ordered overside. Learning that a new caïque had been found on an island a few hours from our baggage, we also clambered from one bucking vessel to the other.

  The officers and soldiers were eager to get to the mainland as soon as possible, but although the weather was clear blue, a terrific wind was blowing. Eventually the craft began to slip out and the two Americans found a fourth vessel, bound for a nearby island where their luggage and clothing and the records of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service had ended their wanderings.

  On the second night the sea grew rougher, the wind was contrary and the cold too great for sleep upon the rainswept, crowded decks. Soldiers, gendarmes, women and children dragged canvas through the craft's single hatch, spread it upon the naked ribs of the keel, and used a handful of cold bags for covering. The skipper, seated in an ordinary kitchen chair, hugged the huge helm under one arm as the rain blotted out the islands. The soldiers, now having acquired sea legs, calmly shared half their cigarettes.

  Before dawn, the craft had picked her way into the harbor of a landlocked island, far to the south—another white-walled town, cast like a deck of cards upon a moonlit hillside. The harbor was crowded by dozens of caïques and the worried portmaster, who had an American high school education, was pacing the stone quay, endeavoring to persuade the skippers to leave promptly to eliminate the danger of air raids. Here we rejoined the original transport squad and, surrounded by soldiers, spent the night upon the relative comfort of a wooden bench.

  In the starlit morning we were set, with soldiers, in a tiny motorboat piloted by a giant Greek, once a resident of Indiana Harbor. We reached the small island of Euboea about noon. After a two-mile hike to the nearest village, we procured a car which brought the entire company to one of the principal towns in central Greece.

  From the matter-of-factness with which the villagers received the cavalcade, it was evident that many defenders of Thrace and Macedonia had already passed the same way. In an unnameable harbor, we saw a Greek hospital ship.

  After the mayor himself turned out a force of constabulary to find a taxi, your correspondent set forth on the long drive to Athens. En route he saw many familiar faces and a considerable number of soldiers, indicating the general staffs plan had been carried out as well as could be expected, considering the sudden Serbian retreat.

  Repeated air alarms which were scrupulously enforced in the countryside, even at night, obliged the passengers, more for form's sake than for safety, to take refuge under bridges and in fields while pom-poms made punching noises in the darkness and the night over Piraeus was ablaze with flaming onions.

  Athens itself was wild with joy becau
se a German bomber had been seen falling in spectacular flames a few minutes before. The cool, well-managed retreat by scores of invaluable officers and hundreds of valiant men determined to fight the Germans again, wherever found, was little known, but for an American witness it was proof of Greek resourcefulness, cooperation and capacity to think fast when hard-pressed—as well as the first victory for a midget fishing fleet.

  GERMANS POUR DOWN HAIL OF LEAD

  FROM GREEK SKIES

  With the British Forces in Central Greece—April 22, 1941 (Delayed)

  Here in the shadow of cloud-enshrouded Parnassus, where blue valley mists make the long snowy summit seem to float in clear air, the hum of a German bomber scatters men across the landscape as if the droning were itself a bomb.

  When you hear a Messerschmitt's vibration or the pulselike whoom-whoom of a big Junkers or Dornier you select the pilot's probable object—tents, trucks, supply dump, railroad cars—and run as far as possible in the opposite direction. While running you attach your helmet, canting it instinctively toward the plane.

  With your breath coming short and fast and the nape of your neck feeling exposed, you pick possible places ahead—trees, big or small ditches, stone walls, old foundations or simply deep grass. Soon you learn to line up shelter spots away from the target by planning successive future dashes from bush to ditch.

  You run with your shoulders huddled low, ready to throw yourself to the ground as soon as the machine guns begin uttering their short epithetical bursts of hatred. If the plane is high you can run several seconds longer but you must be motionless and hidden before coming within the pilot's eye-range. Your face must lie flat against the earth though your back feels pierced with hundreds of bullets even before the ratcheting sound begins overhead. The lightest movement may mean the hose of death which, like a gardener's watering can, is carefully pouring bullets upon every tree and shelter within reachable distance of the road.