Alexander Rodgers
It was chaos from there, all the way down through Larisa, all these other places, machine-gunned, bombed all the time. Eventually we embarked on lighters that took us out to catch up with Navy boats that were there. There were destroyers, cruisers, a few big troopships, and we loaded our gear, our rifles and that, thinking, well, we’ll need them. We were going out to the ack-ack light cruiser there on a Greek boat and I was carrying this machine-gun, it was a Lewis Gun, and a sailor on the boat says, “Where’re you going with that?” and I said, “Going on the boat – we might need it,” and he says, “Well, it’s either you or that.” He said, “Give us it.” I gave it to him and he threw it overboard. He said, “There’s no room for that, mate.”
Well we went there and we took off. There must have been a dozen ships and a big troopship in the convoy, and we were halfway to Crete and you could see these planes there, way in the distance. We were on deck, there must have been 200 or 300 of us there, and we said, “By God, we don’t like the look of that.” We’d seen too many of them. Someone said that those were British ones come as our escort. We said, “Like hell they are!” They had big black crosses on them, so we opened up on them. Well, they didn’t hit us but they ripped a hole about 50 foot long alongside just about the water line with a bomb. We made it all right, but there was a troopship there, she got a direct hit and went down, and one or two other ships were hit too.’
Before the Germans struck in Greece, one New Zealander, Kenneth Frater, driver in the NZ Army Service Corps, had an unexpected encounter:
‘Goods were coming from Piraeus by the narrow-gauge railway which ran through Katerini and on to Bulgaria. I was loading stuff at a station near Katerini and I went to the corrugated iron urinal to relieve myself. I heard a train stop at the station and a bloke in a striped suit and a homburg hat rushed in and stood alongside me.
He said, “You are a New Zealander?”
I said, “Yes.”
He extended his hand and said, “Eden.”
I changed hands and said, “Frater,” and that is how and where I took a leak with the British Foreign Minister and a future Prime Minister. He’d been in Bulgaria meeting the Bulgarian Government and said he expected to fly back to the UK the next day.’
Kenneth Frater was one of a small number of drivers who volunteered to drive back north to pick up troops holding Thermopylae Pass for evacuation back towards Athens and the coast:
‘Around 9.30pm on 24 April we drove north to the foot of the mountain pass road. I thought I was fairly cunning by being last out of the forest. I’d presumed that each truck would have to turn round and then I’d be first away. Alas, the best-laid plans! I wasn’t to know that there was a place to turn and I would stay on the end of the column. A bit after 10pm there was the sound of feet tramping on the road, and shortly after the first truck left. At about 11pm, when there was only one truck left in front of me, some more troops came along and boarded the other truck. A sergeant came to me and said, “You’re to wait – Lieutenant Wesney will be here shortly.” Ages later – at least 15 minutes – when I’d been sitting by myself in the middle of nowhere on a dark night and feeling extremely lonely, I felt a movement at the back of the truck. The passenger door opened and a voice said, “Stay where you are – the men are getting in the back. My name is Arthur Wesney.” There was a slap on the cab roof and he said, “Right, get going.”
I said, “Are you the All Black?”
He replied, “Yes, I am. Now I’d like to get some sleep.”
Driving without lights is a tiring business. You can’t see through the windscreen and have to hang your head out the window, which gets very tiring. Some of the other drivers had knocked their windscreens out, but this meant that all of you was cold instead of just your head. Either way, top speed was never more than 10 miles per hour, which caused the engine to overheat. By daylight we’d travelled about 60 miles and had just gone through a cutting on top of a low hill a few miles south of Marathon. When we were down on the flat again I was told to pull into an area of trees and scrub well off the road.
Lieutenant Wesney and his men climbed the hill and spent some time observing the road north for any sign of the enemy. I thought it would be a good time to change my socks and have a feed. When I climbed into the back of the truck I found my tucker box was empty, and they’d also flogged my clean socks and underwear. Of all the ungrateful sods! After about one and a half hours the squad of 20 returned.
I said, “You’re an ungrateful lot of bastards, pinching my food and clothes, and it would have served you right if I’d driven off and left you.”
Arthur Wesney said to them, “Who is responsible – has anyone anything to say?”
Nobody said a word. He said, “Right, let’s get going then.”
When we moved off he said how sorry he was that I’d been treated like that, but they’d been without food for 24 hours. I was very hostile towards the blokes in the back for the four more days I was to have them for passengers.
We drove round a bay with two destroyers standing at anchor. I wondered if we were to be taken off by them, but we kept going and crossed the Corinth just after 10am on 25 April. After finding our way through the town we had just reached the open road when we were stopped by a despatch rider. Parachutists were dropping on the Canal area and we were ordered to go back. Turning round, we headed back to Corinth. Back in the town I was told to pull into a narrow street and wait. My passengers went off and I was left on my own to guard my truck. I got out my rifle and tried to make myself as small as possible. Another truck driven by a chap pulled in behind me, and his passengers went off. It was good to have company. He’d apparently been about 10 miles south of Corinth when he was turned back. The aerial activity was intense and pretty scary. We couldn’t see what was going on but saw plenty of planes passing overhead.
Around midday things quietened down, and shortly after our passengers returned. I then realised that the officer in the other truck was Colonel Rusty Paige (another All Black), CO of the 26th Battalion. We gave the other truck a few minutes’ start and started off again. On two different occasions I saw a plane diving towards us and the road ahead being chipped by bullets. Each time I went to stop to bail out, but Arthur Wesney made me keep going. On both occasions the plane had to pull out of its dive before the bullets reached us. I was beginning to really dislike the Luftwaffe.
Any time we passed over a rise or hill we would stop and the blokes would go out on a recce. At long last the penny dropped. We were “tail-end Charlie”. During one stop, which was in a village, I heard a hen cackle. I hopped over a mud wall and found a nest with three eggs in it. As I hadn’t eaten for nearly 48 hours, I decided to suck the contents, and boy, did they taste good! Moving over the Argos Pass we stopped at sunrise and pulled off the road down a tree-lined track. My passengers did their usual disappearing trick and I was left on my own again. It was a nice sunny morning and, holding my rifle, I went to sleep by the front wheel of my truck. I awoke about midday and filled my water bottle at a small stream nearby, filled the tank with the rest of my reserve petrol and then thought I would do something really rash and have a shave at the stream. When I went to get my small haversack from where I carried it under the driver’s seat, I found somebody had flogged it while I was asleep. Now all I possessed was the truck, which belonged to the Army anyway, my rifle, the clothes I stood up in and the contents of my pockets.
Early afternoon the troops returned and we resumed our journey, travelling over a mountainous area. There were lots of abandoned and burnt-out trucks, but we had a safe journey and went on to take up positions near Tripolis. Whilst I was playing my usual waiting game, I was parked near an aerodrome which had well and truly been done over by enemy planes. Nearby I found an abandoned pick-up in a ditch. I made a search of the vehicle and found a large tin of green peas. I couldn’t believe my luck. Food! I opened the tin with my pocket-knife, drank the liquid and shovelled the peas down my throat. What a marvellous, delicious taste! Fifteen minutes later I had my trousers round my ankles with a stream of green water running from my bowels. It