by Mike Carlton
With overwhelming superiority in the air, the Luftwaffe hounded them all the way. The RAF had about 80 operational aircraft in Greece. The Germans could call on 800. In just one brief air attack, lasting not more than a few minutes, two Australian battalions lost 17 killed and 35 wounded. But by 20 April they and the New Zealanders had regrouped at Thermopylae, the storied mountain pass where the Spartans had defied a Persian army 2500 years before.
If the situation was dire in the Balkans, it was equally so in North Africa. On 24 March, Rommel and the nucleus of his Afrikakorps had begun an advance along the curving Mediterranean coastline of Cyrenaica – modern-day Libya. This, too, would become a disaster for the British. Rommel’s instructions from Berlin had ordered him to launch only a limited offensive to stop the Italian rout, and that at first is what he did. But the folly of Churchill’s strategic fantasies was being laid naked. With the Australian 6th Division and the Kiwis in Greece out of his way, Rommel found himself pushing at an open door. Ambitious, impatient, but not quite believing his luck, he kept his tanks and motorised infantry thrusting eastwards to send the Allies tumbling back across the vast expanse of desert they had gained from the Italians in 1940. By 3 April, he had captured Benghazi, which the Australians had taken so easily just months before. He was now moving so fast that the diggers gave his onslaught a horse-racing nickname, the Benghazi Handicap. In a letter home to his wife that night, Rommel wrote:
We have been attacking since the 31st with dazzling success. The brass in Tripoli, Rome and possibly Berlin will gasp. I took the risk against earlier orders and instructions because I saw an opportunity. In the end they will give their approval and I am sure that anyone would have done the same in my place. The first objective, planned for the end of May, has been reached. The British are on the run …9
This was no idle boast. The next day, a German spearhead sent three companies of the 2/13th Australian Infantry Battalion tumbling in retreat from a place called Er Regima in the desert well to the east of Benghazi – the first encounter between an Australian Imperial Force and German troops since 1918.
Early on the morning of 7 April, a small squad of Germans on a reconnaissance patrol stopped a British staff car near the port of Derna, on the Libyan coast, and found, to the astonishment of all concerned, that they had captured the two senior British commanders in the field: Lieutenant-Generals Philip Neame and Sir Richard O’Connor. The loss of Neame was perhaps unlamented by the Australians. A general whose ability was no match for his delusions of grandeur, he had once complained furiously about a brigade of the Australian 9th Division: a drunken mob, he thought, ‘who have not learnt the elements of soldiering, among the most important of which are discipline, obedience of orders, and soberness. And their officers are equally to blame, as they show themselves incapable of commanding their men if they cannot enforce these things.’10
A day later, another British commander fell into Axis hands when Major-General Michael Gambier Parry surrendered his inexperienced 2nd Armoured Division to the Italians about halfway between Benghazi and Tobruk. By 10 April, racing still further east, Rommel was poised to devour Tobruk itself.
Here, at last, he would be checked. Tobruk was a fortress, protected not by walls but by the surrounding desert – flat and featureless ground that gave no cover to an attacker. The Australian 9th Division – Neame’s drunken rabble – and the British gunners with them had their backs to the sea, but they were well dug in behind anti-tank ditches and barbed wire. And that day their commander, the resolute Lieutenant-General Leslie Morshead, issued an iron-clad order:
There will be no Dunkirk here. If we have to get out we will fight our way out. There is to be no surrender and no retreat.11
It was Easter. On Good Friday, 11 April, and throughout that holy weekend, the Afrikakorps used all the unholy force they could summon to break Tobruk’s defences. It was clash after bloody clash of tanks and rifles, bombs and artillery, and man upon man in a ballet of death. Time and again, the Germans were repulsed. Tobruk held and held again. The 9th Division would be a poisoned thorn in Rommel’s side for the rest of the year. They stayed as Morshead had ordered them to stay, the immortal Rats of Tobruk, supplied and supported, and their sick and wounded carried away, by the battered but unbeaten small ships of the Mediterranean Fleet.
Perth had shed her Walrus amphibious aircraft when she first arrived at Suda Bay in January 1941. Though a useful asset in peacetime, the wartime reality was that the stumpy little Pusser’s Duck, No. A2-17, was more a hindrance than a help. Poised precariously on the midships catapult between the ship’s two funnels, she sat right in the path of the tremendous shock waves from the main 6-inch armament, and she blocked some of the arcs of fire of the high-angle anti-aircraft guns. The blast from a full broadside would quite probably wreck her thin metal – something that had apparently not occurred to the Admiralty designers. Still more of a concern, her supply of aviation fuel, stored nearby on the upper deck, was a fire hazard that could endanger the entire ship if hit by an enemy bomb or shell.
The nine men who flew and serviced her were landed on Crete as well. They were a mixed, knockabout bunch of navy and air force. The plane nominally belonged to the RAAF’s No. 9 Squadron, and her pilot was an air-force officer, Flight Lieutenant Ernest ‘Beau’ Beaumont, just 23 years old, of Bexley North in Sydney. His Observer and Navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Gerald Brian, 22, was a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm officer on loan to the RAN. The third member of the aircrew, Petty Officer Telegraphist Daniel Bowden, of Black Rock in bayside Melbourne, had joined the navy as a teenage boy in the Tingira in 1925. The oldest of the trio at 31, he was the aircraft’s wireless operator, who also doubled as an air gunner. The others included riggers and an armourer.
It was a funny set-up ashore at Suda – rough and ready after the naval discipline and routine of the ship. The Duck was tethered to a buoy in the bay and refuelled from 40-gallon drums ferried out in a barge from shore. Beaumont and Brian lived in a house in a local village, while Bowden and some other sailors camped in tents in an olive grove. They cooked for themselves with navy stores, or sometimes with meat and vegetables bought from local farmers. Each dawn and dusk, they flew anti-submarine patrols, and by day they carried messages, delivered mail and carried senior officers about.
Things livened up when the air raids began. Often, the first hint of trouble would be the sight of the locals running for cover, even before the sirens opened up and the Air Raid Red flag was hoisted. That meant a scramble for shelter in slit trenches they had dug in the olive grove, where they watched the black puffs of anti-aircraft fire bursting around the attackers. The Italian high-level bombing didn’t give much trouble, but when the Luftwaffe started coming over the surrounding hills at low level there was a real danger that the Walrus could be bombed or strafed at its buoy, so they made a rough runway out of rocks, where they could taxi the aircraft ashore under the protection of a steep hillside.
Each morning, the throaty roar of the Duck’s 635 hp Bristol Pegasus engine would shatter the silence of Suda as she lifted out of the bay, past the little clump of islands at its entrance, and climbed into the sunrise. One morning in March, when it was still dark, there was a sudden flash of light and an explosion as they were taking off, which startled the socks off them. It was an Italian speedboat attack on the heavy cruiser HMS York. Returning that afternoon, they found York beached and damaged beyond repair.
For months, the three men fought their own private war. Sitting on the Heraklion airfield on Crete, they were shot up by two Italian fighters and had to take refuge in a trench. There were a few bullet holes, but when they got back to Suda the rigger discovered a damaged wing root and declared the Walrus unserviceable for operational flying. On the way to Alexandria to pick up a replacement aircraft the next day, they landed to refuel at a small field in Libya. An RAF corporal on a motorbike raced towards them, pointing to a cloud of dust on the horizon. ‘That’s the Jerries,’ he said. They got away in the
nick of time.
On Wednesday 23 April, Beaumont, Brian and Bowden rowed out to the Duck as usual, hitched their dinghy to the buoy and clambered aboard for yet another dawn patrol. They headed north-west for the island of Kithera, lying between Crete and mainland Greece. It was a flight of about 45 minutes, droning across an empty blue sea as the sun rose on their starboard side. They were circling low over a small village on Kithera when Bowden in the rear cockpit, hunched over his ancient Lewis .303 machine gun mounted on the fuselage, glanced up to find himself staring at the giant black Iron Cross of the Luftwaffe. They had been jumped by a pair of JU88s. Bowden thought they were done for:
I thought to myself, ‘Cripes – this is it!’ Our pilot had a rear vision mirror in which he could see me standing up in the rear cockpit which was completely open, and I was exposed from the waist upwards. Our Walrus was slow but very manoeuvrable and by comparison with the Dorniers12 we could turn on a threepenny bit. We had previously worked out a drill on what we should do if attacked. The observer in the front cockpit and myself in the rear cockpit would signal a turn to the pilot by raising an arm to show the attacking aircraft had turned and was lining up on attack.
This signal system worked very well and I felt we could have got away with only one aircraft attacking but with two it was no dice. They worked out a counter and I soon heard the explosive pops of the cannon shells above our engine noise as they hit and exploded. Beaumont also could hear the pops and threw our ‘Pusser’s Duck’ around at the first burst, and I later told him I was sure glad I had hooked up my monkey strap to keep me anchored in the aircraft.
We turned off their line of attack and when our tail was clear kept firing, and the Jerries showed us respect. This at first aborted their attack. However, as we dodged one, the other was on to us and I could see pieces flying off our tail and holes appearing in our aircraft. Whenever he could do so, the pilot flew along ravines in the island but the Jerries were waiting when we flew out again and away from the island. The flares stowed just aft of my position ignited and I grabbed them and threw them over the side. The port petrol tank caught fire and I could feel the flames blowing back over my head.
About this time I got a stoppage and I ducked down to clear the gun. I guess the Jerries thought I was a gone coon. What with my gun pointing up in the air apparently unattended and the aircraft on fire, it must have seemed that we had the ‘roger’. I was still working on the gun when I popped up my head to check and to my surprise one of the Jerries was coming up on our port quarter almost in formation with us. My gun was useless, but I swung it towards the Jerry and I guess he got one helluva surprise for he sideslipped and turned astern. I got my gun in action again and the attack and evasion continued. Our starboard petrol tank caught fire and it was not long after that we crashed on the water.13
Satisfied with their morning’s work, the Germans flew off. That was a relief for the three men. At least they weren’t going to be machine-gunned in the water. The Walrus was still afloat, just, but burning fiercely. Bowden wrestled to release the emergency rubber dinghy, dimly aware of the pain from some shrapnel that had hit him in an arm and leg and broken a bone in his wrist.
Beaumont shoved the raft overboard, pulling at the toggle on the compressed air bottle to inflate it, and the three of them tumbled in, Bowden not forgetting to snatch hold of a Verey flare pistol. Then they realised they had forgotten the paddles. Somehow, Bowden struggled back on board the burning Duck, grabbed them from their stowage and flung himself back into the sea. It was in the nick of time. Seconds later, the burning engine collapsed onto the spot where he had been. They paddled away and watched, too stunned to feel fear, as the Pusser’s Duck sank in a hiss of smoke and steam. Beaumont and Brian threw away their heavy flying boots but then retrieved one to use as a bailer.
Now what? The radio aerials had been shot away early in the dogfight, so they had not been able to get away a Mayday message. Nobody knew of their plight. At least the sea was calm and they could see Kithera on the horizon in the distance, so they tried to make for it:
The raft was a tight squeeze for the three of us and we found when we tried to paddle, the round raft kept turning in circles. Instead of getting closer to the island we seemed to be drifting further out. We debated swimming but we decided we had a better chance remaining in the raft. We were sitting in water and we were cold. I was probably more comfortable with my boots on but as we had the Verey pistol and cartridges we decided to stay put.
We estimated the air fight had lasted over twenty minutes and we got a certain satisfaction that with our hand signals and the pilot twisting and turning we were able to keep going for so long against two cannon-firing fast aircraft. The conversation soon lagged and we just sat, each with our own thoughts and watched as we gradually drifted away from the island. Early in the afternoon, we heard an aircraft and sighted a Sunderland flying boat at about 5000 feet. Beaumont fired flares several times, but to our dismay the aircraft veered away from us and proceeded on its way.
Time passed and several times I wondered if we had made the right decision staying in the raft when the island was still in sight. Darkness came and we arranged in turn to keep watch. I think it was Brian, the observer, who first saw the destroyer. We did not know then it was British, but actually by that time we did not care. We just wanted out. Beaumont again fired some Verey lights and to our joy the destroyer altered course towards us. She kept coming at speed and then we realised she was apparently heading to ram us. Beaumont shot off some more Verey lights and the destroyer altered slightly and shot past us. We rocked in the wash and I thought we were going to turn over.14
The destroyer was HMS Havock. Slowing down and going about, she lowered a Jacob’s ladder over her side. The three men scrambled on board and were hustled below for dry clothes and hot food. They had been luckier than they knew. The Sunderland which flew over them had reported them as a German submarine on the surface. Havock had been detached from a convoy to search for it and had come very close to firing on the dinghy in the dark. Exhausted, they slept like children. Back in Alexandria, they were given a week’s survivor’s leave. Then they returned to the war.15
Retreat and defeat – they were the only words for it. In Greece, the Wehrmacht had again proved unstoppable, as wise heads had predicted. The Germans continued to push south. The government in Athens prepared to surrender, and on 18 April the Prime Minister, Alexandros Korizis, went to his study, put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out. The next day, Wavell arrived in Athens to confer with the Greeks and his commanders, and the bitter decision was taken to evacuate the Commonwealth forces. The tens of thousands of men carried to Greece at such immense cost only weeks before would now have to be lifted off by whatever ships Admiral Cunningham and the Mediterranean Fleet could scrape together, in the teeth of the German onslaught. With the harbour at Piraeus still a shambles after the bombing of the Clan Fraser, the evacuation would have to be from whatever smaller ports and beaches could be found.
By now, the British were experienced at the desperate business of snatching an army from the jaws of defeat. They had done it in Norway and at Dunkirk. They gave this new undertaking the name Operation DEMON. The soldiers fought their weary way to the coasts, taking what cover they could by day, moving by night to avoid the incessant attacks of the Luftwaffe. In Alexandria, Cunningham marshalled his ships to bring off their rescue. The original lift-off date was to be 28 April, but the rout was gathering pace. On the 23rd, the Greeks surrendered to their German invaders and – most bitter pill of all – to Mussolini’s strutting Italians, who, like carrion crows, had come to feast on the carcass. The evacuation was brought forward by four days.
Since the Clan Fraser disaster, Perth had ploughed around the eastern Mediterranean in and out of Suda and Alexandria. To the north-west, the Luftwaffe had established bases in the Greek mainland, and to the east of Crete, on the Aegean islands of Rhodes and Scarpanto, bringing the bombers within closer striking dist
ance. Air raids were now more intense than ever. Without even looking skywards, you could tell what sort of aircraft was attacking, just from the different engine noises. In Alexandria, Perth was given a new addition to her anti-aircraft defence: a pom-pom mounting placed amidships where her Walrus catapult had been. It had four barrels of quick-firing 2-pounder guns that made a splendid racket – hence the nickname – but which were already obsolescent and would prove largely inaccurate in action. The Bredas captured from the Italians were a far better weapon, which inflicted a lot more damage.
After accompanying the battle fleet to take part in a bombardment of Tripoli – the port that carried supplies to Rommel – Perth was back in Suda on 22 April for more sorry news. There had been a massive air raid the day before. One of Perth’s shipwrights, Petty Officer Donald ‘Bingle’ Haddow, had been left behind to work as a diver on the beached cruiser HMS York. He had just come to the surface and was removing his heavy brass and copper diver’s helmet in the diving tender when the bombs began falling. A near miss capsized the tender. Still with his lead-weighted boots on, Haddow sank like a stone and drowned. Born in Glasgow, he had joined the RAN in 1925. A popular man, a close shipmate of George Hatfield, he left a wife and two young children.
Perth now joined Operation DEMON. The evacuations had to be conducted at night to avoid the Luftwaffe as much as possible, and this tactic was surprisingly successful, but it placed an extra strain on the ships’ crews in loss of sleep and in the added difficulties of navigation on strange coasts and unfamiliar anchorages, with charts of uncertain accuracy. On the night of 25 April, Anzac Day, under a starlit sky, they escorted a convoy of soldiers and some British, Australian and New Zealand nurses from Porto Rafti in Greece back to Crete, emerging shaken but unscathed from the inevitable air raid the next morning.