April 1941: Part Two

British troops passing Palamidi, going to Tolo. LIFE Magazine.  

Continuing the accounts from last week:

Bernard Ryan, 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion, Redhead, NSW: 

We reached the vicinity of "T" Beach on 25th April, after passing through, I think Nauplion & Argos . . . My recollection is of a couple of days spent taking cover in gullies with Messerschmidts & Stukas attacking anything that moved.  . . . One memory I have is of seeing fireflies for the first time -- they do not occur in my country so far as I know.
      At last our turn came for evacuation and for the first time since arriving in Greece, I saw the sea.  I don't think there was any moon but we could make out the shape of the ships quite close to the shore, perhaps no more than 100 yards away.  At the head of the queue was a small barge or lighter and I was near enough to it to see a group standing on it waiting to be transferred to the ships . . . Whatever the intention, the barge or lighter did not move at all while I was watching it.  I calculate there is a very good chance I would have been in the next batch to board the craft.  A story went the rounds at the time that the thing was stuck on the bottom because it was overloaded and no-one would disembark to allow it to float free . . . It remained stranded by the outgoing tide and the ship sailed away.
      Dawn found us at a village which may have been Tolo.  We set up a defensive perimeter of sorts, although weapons of any kind were scarce, and there was some firing exchanged between us & the German troops who were now appearing in force.  It still had not been realised by most of us that the evacuation was over & that we had been left behind.
      During that day I saw the waters of the bay in full sunlight and even in the circumstances I realised why the coastline of Greece was so famous.  There was a small island perhaps a quarter mile from shore and I remember a woman in a small rowboat standing up & calling to someone on the island. (I saw no Greeks in the village at "T" beach except the woman in the boat out in the bay.)  I saw an English sergeant take the ammunition out of his revolver & throw it into the bay.   . . .  In the afternoon there was a meeting between one of our representatives and the German command . . . The news that we were prisoners of war was brought to us by a Salvation Army major, I can even remember his name -- Major Hosier.  It was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon of 29th April 1941.  I cannot begin to convey to anyone the sense of shock . . .
       Our imprisonment started with a march of about 3 hours in the early part of the night . . . I am sorry to say that in the doorway of a few houses along the road -- not many -- people stood giving the raised hand of the Nazi salute.   [In Nauplion] we were in a compound at the foot of [Palamidi] next day, 30th April, and looking up the first thing to take the eye was a huge swastika flag flying over the fort . . . I think we spent one or two days & nights there in the open. There was no shelter but that was no novelty if you were in the infantry.
         

POWs, Nauplion.  

We travelled to Corinth by rail and I think it may have been a narrow gauge railway, in closed trucks, and of course without any contact with the Greeks. At Corinth we spent, I estimate, about two months in a huge compound which I believe had been a Greek military barracks.  There were buildings there, filthy of course, but a least they provided a roof over the head.  In this prison camp we joined another 3000 or 4000 allied troops who had been captured at Kalamata  . . . In addition to about 5000 British, Australian & NZ troops, there were Yugoslav, Cypriots and a few hundred Indian civilians who were said to have been brought to Greece to look after mules or donkeys.  As well, there were a couple of thousand Italians who had been made prisoners by the Greek army near the Albanian frontier . . .

     In Corinth we did have some contact with the Greek civil population, in that the Germans allowed the Greeks to set up a few food stalls, just inside there wire, where, if you were lucky enough to have any drachmae, you could purchase such items as dried fruit & the like.  About once a week the Germans took us down to the beach to swim and I remember a Greek woman attempting to distribute a basket of bread among us being roughly handled by the Germans for her pains . . .

     The compound at Corinth was a really dreadful place -- open latrines, lice, bugs, and starvation.  We spent two months there &  then moved to Salonika, which was much worse.  The journey to Salonika was by rail & on foot, where bridges & tunnels had been wrecked.  There were many escapes on this journey and a number of fatalities.  Some who escaped lived with the Greek people for two years evading capture at what must have been great risk to the inhabitants who sheltered them. 

* * * * * *

There is much more in Bernard Ryan's account which begins with his background in Australia, an interlude in Alexandria, his arrival at Piraeus, rail trip to the north of Greece, and arrival at Veria with the Aliakmon in flood, where their retreat began and he was injured. He describes the retreat, being bombed at the Larissa railway station, passing through Athens, and then comes the section excerpted above.  He left Greece on a train (with a German military band playing "Roll out the Barrel," for prison camp in Germany. 

* * * * * *  

Sometimes the midday sun, sometimes handfuls of light rain
and the beach covered with fragments of ancient jars . . .
Friends from the other war,
on this deserted and cloudy beach
I think of you as the day turns.
                                     G. Seferis

April 1941: Part One

 

Destroying equipment at Nauplion.

In the summer of 1978, swimming just outside the harbor at Nauplion, I glimpsed on the seafloor what looked like part of the bridge of a ship.  The Blue Guide mentioned the British-Anzac retreat in April 1941 from Greece.  Later, I wrote to leading newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, asking if anyone remembered Nauplion.  This post and the next will consist of excerpts from the dozens of letters I received about those days.  I have not edited the excerpts beyond indicating where I have omitted text.  

* * * * * *

Jack Underwood, 1st. Aust. Corps Salvage Unit, Wollogong, NSW:

I was evacuated from Nauplion . . . on April 25, 1941.  I was just 20 years of age then and a driver with a bomb disposal, salvage-cum-recovery unit.  . . . I did keep a diary . . . unfortunately I was rather busy at Nauplion and scrawled in fewer lines in those couple of days. . . I was given duty of destroying (per tipping over cliff) trucks, cars, bikes, etc. which were arriving hourly bearing personnel of every description and country.  For a depression kid who never owned more than a push bike it broke my heart to see such a waste. This carnage went on all day during which we were bombed pretty consistently although casualties were surprising light.

      I just noticed I wrote: "bloody Stukas again!" -- Remember coming back from cliff face and seeing quite a few bodies at road-side.  I clearly remember being assigned to group and under cover of darkness moved northwards to Argos (from Nauplion) . . . We were told our ship was to be the Ulster Prince.  Recall the ship sidling into bay, then to our horror saw it run aground. . . with a short period, over came bombers with grounded ship as target.  Ship caught alight and continued to burn throughout night, lighting up whole area.

     In early hours of morning in came the Glenearn and we boarded her "ducks" and ferried out bay to her.  One of "ducks" was hit by a destroyer and sunk with loss of life.  Ours made it to mother ship but boarding was all haywire with many of us taking a ducking in attempts to get aboard.  . . . Might add in passing, with me was my father who had joined AIF with me claiming to be my elder brother!

Jim Roberts, Manly West, Queensland

I was with the 6th Div Signals  . . and we fought the rearguard action during our withdrawal from Greece, on reaching Argos . . . a sad sight met our eyes, the ship on which we were to escape on was in flames, having been hit by the German bombers . . . we traveled to Kalamata and waiting as we had received a radio signal that a ship would pick us up from there.  In the early hours of the morning we saw a light coming in from the sea and it was a destroyer.  My brother and I were two of the last soldiers to board her on her final run to the Dilwara, as we found out after the war that a Sgt friend of our was captured half an hour after we left.

 

 Troops of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force at Nauplion. 

Michael Stark-Brown, 2nd NZEF, Aukland, NZ

. . .  Our route was south to the town of Trikala, east to Larissa, southeast to Volos, then southwest to Lamia where we dug in.  Our stay was not much more than a week when the Greek army to the west was overrun and we had to pull out again.

      This time we uplifted the 25th Maori Battalion and brought them back in one night through Eleusis and Corinth to Nauplion where they marched to Tolo and were taken out that night.  We hid up in a pine forest till dark then went back to Corinth to pick up the rearguard battalion.  Back at Nauplion my most vivid memory was at how quickly the Greek peasants took everything moveable before we destroyed the vehicles.  The heavy vehicles like repair trucks were tipped off a cliff into the sea, the rest the radiators and engine sumps were drained and motors raced at full gun until everything broke, tyres were shot and slashed to bits and all told it was a shambles.  At about 2 am on 25th April we went on board the troop carrier Glengyle and after a fairly hectic sea voyage made it to Suda Bay.

      . . .  On food, we fed quite well on the whole during the Greek affair.  During the actual withdrawal we fed like lords.  We had huge food dumps etc. in our area and were told to help ourselves before they were destroyed.  . . . it was rather a gamble as none of the cases was labelled and if you did not know what the numbers meant, anything could happen.  . . . I understood several Greeks were later shot by the Germans for being in possession of foodstuffs they had acquired from the dumps.  On the whole, the people we met were very hungry even before we landed there.  It was not unusual for the females to offer themselves or even their daughters to the troops in return for food.  Tea was the highest price commodity with canned beef running a close second.

      . . .   Probably about 80% boredom.  The remainder? 18% a lot of noise and about 2% drama and danger.

Ex. Sgt. R. J. Corbett, Brisbane, Queensland:  

I left Athens in a small convoy on 23rd April and after some drama we crossed the Corinth Canal and arrived during bombing and straffing at the small port of Argos.  We were a bit short on sleep -- and rested all day -- the 24th  -- in tense German air activity.

     At midnight we were instructed to gather at the loader's edge and were ferried in small boats to the side of the Stirling Castle (I believe that was the name*) and clambered aboard . . . I remember bread & coffee  & a long sleep until dawn. A heavy AA gun mounted on the predeck began firing and scared the daylights out of me.  I jumped up and saw we were part of a convoy preceded by many Royal Navy ships -- 2 of the 3 aircraft were hit and we proceeded to sea.  News was that we were on the way to Egypt.  However -- after passing Crete, I understand the crew volunteered to go back to Greece to pick up further troops.  It was 25 April. . . . The ship turned round and we were off-loaded on Crete at Suda Bay.

 Soldiers being evacuated on the Thurland Castle.

* Not Stirling, but Thurland Castle.