On 6 April, thirty-three German divisions, six of them armoured, swept into Yugoslavia, easily overwhelming its army. A Luftwaffe bomber attack on the capital killed 17,000 people, an appalling toll which reflected its citizens’ absolute unpreparedness for their fate. Six days later the invaders occupied the city, and on 17 April the Yugoslavs capitulated.
A 56,000-strong British-led force, mostly composed of Australians and New Zealanders, began to land in Greece in March, to deploy in the northeast. Churchill’s insistence on committing imperial troops at the discretion of British commanders provoked serious and understandable dismay among the leaders of the white dominions. In theory, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand formations could be deployed only with the express sanction of their home governments. But, especially in 1940–41 before dominion ministers dug in their heels against abuses of their constitutional rights, such approval was often sought only retrospectively. The Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, attended the 24 February 1941 British War Cabinet meeting at which the decision was made to dispatch an army to Greece; but he and his fellow ministers were wilfully misled about the opinions and fears of commanders in the theatre, including their own most senior officers. Only after the first New Zealand soldiers had been in Greece for some weeks in December 1940 did their government in Auckland learn of the fact. Anzac rather than British forces were called upon to bear the chief burden of the most hazardous Allied military gamble of the Mediterranean campaign, serving under a British commander-in-chief. Australian politicians, in particular, were deeply dismayed.
Anzac soldiers, however, cherished more innocent sensations. The New Zealanders were voyaging towards their first battlefield; like most young men in such circumstances, they revelled in excited anticipation and exotic sensations, oblivious of peril. Lance-Bombardier Morry Cullen wrote home euphorically about the thrill of sailing the Mediterranean: ‘I have never seen such beautiful shades of blue, from a light sky shade to the deepest blue black and there was hardly a ripple on the water.’ Private Victor Ball wrote in his diary about Athens: ‘Best place we have been in and people very friendly. Had a look at the Acropolis, the old ruins of Athens…The brothel area is a lot cleaner than Cairo. We got very drunk but got home alright.’ Lt. Dan Davin reflected later: ‘We were all absolutely the picture of youth and health…There’s a sort of natural courage in people who’ve been fed all their lives on good meat.’ These dominion troops approached their first experience of war with a confidence and enthusiasm that persisted, in remarkable degree, through the ordeal which now began to unfold. Some of their officers, however, were more cynical: Gen. Sir Thomas Blamey, the seedy old reprobate commanding the Australian corps – ‘a coward and not a commander’, in the words of one of his staff officers – spent 26 March reconnoitring possible evacuation beaches in southern Greece.
The Germans invaded on 6 April 1941, simultaneously with their assault on Yugoslavia. They cited the British presence to justify their action: ‘The government of the Reich has consequently ordered its armed forces to expel British troops from the soil of Greece. All resistance will be ruthlessly crushed…It is emphasised that the German army does not come as an enemy of the Greek people, and it is not the desire of the German people to fight Greeks…The blow which Germany is obliged to strike on Greek soil is directed against England.’ British forces were spread far too thin to check the invaders. Where Germans met resistance – and there were some stubborn little stands – they merely pulled back and probed until they found a gap elsewhere.
New Zealander Victor Ball described the first stage of what became a long, painful withdrawal: ‘We were followed by shellfire the whole way, wherever we went they shelled us. One chap killed outright just alongside me – hit in the throat – and quite a few hit with bits of shale and stone. Planes coming over one at a time bombing and machine-gunning. Things sure get on your nerves when you can’t fight back.’ Russell Brickell, another New Zealander, reflected on the experience of being dive-bombed: ‘It’s a peculiar feeling, lying on one’s tummy in a trench or ditch listening to the scream of an approaching bomb, a second’s silence as it hits the ground, then the earth comes up and hits one in the face and there is a tremendous woomph! and bits whistle through the air.’
German forces were soon pouring through the Monastir Gap on the Yugoslavian border, threatening the rear of the Greek positions in Albania. Allied forces fell back southward in increasing disorder, outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and naked against air attack. An Australian medical officer described how ‘the patter of feet, human and animal, could be heard all night long’ as the Greek retreat became a panic-stricken rout. Everywhere in the path of the Axis advance, communities were visited by scenes of horror. A column of Italian prisoners being marched under escort through a village was suddenly enveloped in mortar and artillery fire, which killed and wounded dozens. An old woman, who had lost her eldest son Stathi in Albania, began to sob. A café owner urged her now to check her tears for the Italians: ‘They were the ones who killed your son.’ She ignored him, and ran to a soldier torn open by shrapnel, who lay crying: ‘Bread, mother!’ The old woman tried to wash his wounds with a cloth dipped in raki, still sobbing and talking to the man: ‘Don’t cry, Stathi. Yes, I am your mother. Don’t cry. I’ve got both bread and milk.’
The Greek army had exhausted itself confronting the Italians through the winter. It lacked transport for rapid manoeuvre. The Germans ruthlessly exploited their dominance of the air, especially effective in a country with few roads. ‘During the afternoon we had our first look at the great Jerry Luftwaffe,’ wrote Australian Captain Charles Chrystal. ‘190 bombers came over and bombed…till there was not a thing left. They flew in close formation…and I can tell you we simply gasped in amazement and were absolutely spellbound to see such numbers.’ Although the Australians and New Zealanders conducted some determined little rearguard actions, on 28 April the first major naval evacuations began, from Rafina and Porto Rafti. The Germans fanned out across the Peloponnese, where the Royal Navy took off troops from Nauplia and Kalamata.
Citizens in uniform, until with time they grow the skins of soldiers, are shocked by the waste created by war. Among many Anzacs’ most vivid memories of the retreat from Greece was the colossal detritus of wrecked and abandoned vehicles, guns, stores, wirelesses, range-finders – millions of pounds’ worth of scarcely used equipment, ditched by the roadsides of the Peloponnese. Men boarding the Royal Navy’s ships were ordered to discard weapons, especially machine-guns and mortars, which they had stubbornly retained through the retreat. This policy had serious consequences for the defence of Crete a few weeks later. Most fugitives suffered a sense of shame about abandoning the local people, who embraced them even in defeat.
By April’s end, the Germans held Greece. Some 43,000 of Wavell’s troops had been evacuated, leaving behind a further 11,000 who became prisoners, together with all their transport and heavy equipment. Prime minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide. Greek soldiers trickled down from the hills, many having abandoned their arms. ‘At one moment,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘I saw a captain mount a hillock and address thousands of men who were gathered around it. He shouted: “Men, alas our country has lost the war!” The audience responded with an eerie, nightmarish, perverse cry of “Zeto!” – “Hurrah!” “Zeto!” meant “We are alive!”’
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