THE GERMAN ATTACK OPENS the Commander of the British Expedition
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CHAPTER 2 THE GERMAN ATTACK OPEN S HE commander of the British expedition was directly concerned onl y T with that part of northern Greece which lies east of the towerin g Pindus mountains and west of Salonika. This area was linked with Athens by one main railway . North of Larisa in the wide plain of Thessaly, thi s travelled through a narrow pass between Mount Olympus and the sea , and thence across the Aliakmon River. Beyond the river it branched, one line going to Salonika, the second city of Greece, and another climbin g through the Edessa Pass to the upland valley of Florina and thence int o Yugoslavia . From Salonika a second line entered Yugoslavia through the Doiran Gap. The one main road linking Athens with Macedonia travelle d into the Florina Valley west of Olympus—not east of it as the railwa y did—and thence on to Yugoslavia through the Monastir Gap . Although it was the principal highway of Greece, the Athens-Florina road was second-class by Western European standards . The surface wa s generally bitumen interspersed with stretches of macadam, often so narrow that two vehicles could not pass, particularly on hills and side cuttings . The Athens-Salonika railway had a single track and was of standar d gauge . A branch line linking this to Volos, the one considerable port between those cities, was only one metre wide . There were but 1,653 miles of railway in Greece, and the rolling stock was correspondingly limited. When war broke out there were only some 350 passenger coaches an d about 5,000 goods waggons on the Hellenic State Railways, the standard - gauge system,' and both rolling stock and fuel were imported . Piraeus, the port of Athens, was equipped to unload 3,000 tons o f cargo a day—enough to maintain a British force of the size contemplated . There now seemed no likelihood of holding Salonika ; and Volos, the only other port that could be used effectively to supply the British force, coul d not accommodate ships of more than 6,000 tons . The small port of Stilis, connected with Lamia by standard-gauge railway, would have been useful , but the Greeks were not willing to make it available because they wante d that dead-end line for storing the railway waggons to be withdrawn from Macedonia when the Germans advanced . Thus, when Brigadier Brunskill, General Wilson's senior administrativ e officer, arrived in Athens on 23rd February to prepare for the arrival o f the new British force, he could count on only one considerable port an d very limited roads and railways . The railways were already maintaining about 100,000 Greek troops in eastern Albania, supplied through Florina , 1 Australians may gain a clearer conception of the capacity of the Greek railway system fro m the following comparison (figures for 1938 or 1939) : Greece Victoria Area (square miles) 50,000 87,00 0 Population 7,108,000 1,873,00 0 Railway mileage 1,653 4,745 Goods waggons and vans 6,456 21,00 0 Freight carried (000 tons) 2,510 7,258 30 THE GERMAN ATTACK OPENS Feb-Apr where so far the Greeks had been unable to build up even thirty days' reserve supplies . Fewer than 400 railway trucks would be available t o the British force. Brunskill wrote later : The Greek Army was therefore already using its railways almost to maximu m capacity, the country had been denuded of every animal, cart and motor vehicl e which was fit for use, the army had taken control of all small ships and practically all caiques; the available civilian labour (men, women and children) was al l employed, largely on road maintenance. The civil population, moreover, was alread y badly off for food ; there was no meat, and flour was short and they even had to feed wheat to their pack transport owing to the shortage of barley . The British Military Mission in Athens had placed large orders for equipment, stores, food, coal, etc. at home and occasional ships were arriving from Britain, but the program of fulfilment of the orders could not be predicted at all . From a Greek point of view, therefore, the cupboard was nearly bare of local resources ; from a Britis h Army point of view nothing was available locally.2 One of Brunskill's first steps was to ferry forward to Larisa as soon a s possible the stocks of food and ammunition already at the base in Athens ; and it was decided that troops arriving at Piraeus from Egypt would als o be moved forward piece-meal to Larisa . The object was to place sixty day s ' supplies for forward troops at this advanced base and to establish forwar d depots or dumps at Levadhion, Servia, Kozani, Katerini, Veria, Edess a and Amindaion, the intention being to prepare for probable interruptio n of railway traffic by German air bombardment . By the end of the firs t week in April 58 days ' supplies, 38 days ' petrol and lubricants, 70 days' ordnance stores and 14,000 tons of engineer stores had been landed in Greece, and the forward dumps had been established . The engineer stores included 300 tons of explosives which were later to prove of immens e value, particularly as the Australian Corps could obtain only three tons for its ordnance echelon instead of its normal entitlement of 30 . 3 By 18th March the 1st Armoured Brigade } and about half the New Zealand Division were in Greece . The 16th Australian Brigade disem- barked between the 19th and the 22nd . For the men of the Australian division it was a swift transition. On 8th March when the first "flight " or contingent of Lustre Force was landing at Piraeus, the 16th Australia n Brigade was at Tobruk, the 19th near Tocra in western Cyrenaica, the 17th in position on the Tripolitanian frontier beyond Agedabia. That day the 16th Brigade travelled back to Mersa Matruh . There the battalions received some equipment, including a new weapon—the Thompson sub - machine-gun . From Matruh the brigade moved to its old camp at Amiriya , where the men were given leave in Alexandria and renewed acquaintanc e with the pleasures of the town for the first time since December . Hun- s G . S. Brunskill, "The Administrative Aspect of the Campaign in Greece in 1941 " (Army Quarterly, Apr 1947) . 'The large supply of explosives was obtained through the foresight of Brig H. P. W. Hutson , Chief Engineer of the force . 'This brigade included the 3rd Royal Tanks (cruiser tanks), 4th Hussars (light tanks), 1/Rangers (infantry), 2nd Royal Horse Artillery, and 102nd Anti-Tank Regt. The 3rd had fifty-two cruisers , the Hussars fifty-two light tanks, the vehicles being in good condition except that, as mentioned , their tracks were somewhat worn. Mar 1941 WHAT A CONTRAST! 3 1 dreds were still on leave in Alexandria on the night of the 17th when a n order arrived that the brigade would embark early next day . Military police, who were hurried into the city to summon the holiday-makers t o their units, entered cafes and, disregarding secrecy, shouted that all men of the 16th Brigade must return to camp because they were to move next morning. Posters were placed in the streets announcing the news . All night men streamed back to Amiriya, in taxi-cabs, gharries and on foot ; by dawn few were missing . For example, when the 2/2nd Battalion embarked only two were absent without leave . The 2/3rd Battalion embarked next day on the cruiser Gloucester, and Brigadier Allen's headquarters and the 2/ 1st and 2/2nd Battalions an d attached troops in merchantmen. The Gloucester arrived at Piraeus o n the 19th, having left the merchant ships and their escort far behind . One of the more obvious dangers of the expedition to Greece lay in the presence of a considerable Italian air force in the Dodecanese Island s on the eastern flank of the sea route to Athens, and on the 21st the slow ships were attacked by a squadron of Italian dive bombers from tha t quarter. The Australians fired back with the Brens and with captured Italian Bredas which they had mounted on the decks . Only a tanker was hit, and she did not sink . As their ships steamed into the gulf towards Piraeus the shores seeme d to the New South Welshmen strangely like home—the hard light, th e grey-green trees clothing steep hills, and the clear water evoked memorie s of Australian ports. It was stranger still to find themselves among a friendly people, who cheered them and threw flowers as their truck s drove along the streets to the staging camp at Daphni . For the first time since they had reached the Middle East these men were on the soil of a people who genuinely welcomed them, and in a land as green an d pleasant as their own . What a contrast! Instead of awaking with eyes, ears and noses full of sand we breathed pure crisp air with the scent of flowers . Flowers!—we hadn't seen them since leaving Australia. After months of desert glare the landscape at Daphn i was a dream come true . The troops stood and gazed at the natural gardens full of shrubs and flowers which scented the breeze ; at the grasses that made a swishin g noise as you walked through . We saw civilians dressed as we used to dress before the war—civilians whom you could trust . From the hillside one could look back into the valley below and see Athens .5 The troops who were given leave in Athens acquired an increasin g respect and sympathy for the Greeks.