THE EMBARKATION from GREECE RILE the Rearguards Were Travelling
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CHAPTER 7 THE EMBARKATION FROM GREECE RILE the rearguards were travelling south from the Thermopyla e Wline on the night of 24th-25th April the first of the three big embarka- tions provided for in the plans of "W" Group was carried out .' At Porto Rafti the embarkation of the 5th New Zealand Brigade Group and othe r units totalling about 5,750 was achieved without a hitch, under the direc- tion of a team of Australian officers led by Major Sheppard, 2 the legal officer of the 6th Division . The troops lay under cover until after dark, when they were marched to ,the beach and ferried to Glengyle and the cruiser Calcutta in two landing craft. The ships took them aboard at th e rate of 1,500 an hour until, about 2 a.m., there were some 5,000 in th e transport and 700 in the cruiser and they sailed . The evacuation from Navplion and Tolos Bay proceeded less smoothly —on this and later nights—partly because there the men were drawn largely from a variety of base units and were less well-organised tha n those of the fighting formations . Embarkation was controlled by Lieut - Colonel Courage ;3 Major O'Loughlin4 was in charge of the dispersal area . There was an Australian staff at Tolos and a British at Navplion . At 6.30 a.m. on the 24th O 'Loughlin found the little town of Navplion crowded with men and vehicles . Having selected eight dispersal areas and place d officers and N .C.O's in charge of them he sent the officers into the tow n to find unit commanders and instruct them to lead their units out to on e of the dispersal areas. By 10 a.m. the town had thus been emptied of most organised bodies and their vehicles, and contained only small groups , stragglers and abandoned trucks . A section of the 2/2nd Field Workshop Company was given the task of moving abandoned vehicles out of th e town, and the stragglers were assembled into a single party and led to one of the dispersal areas, each of which had been chosen with the objec t of housing about 1,000 men and 150 vehicles . Between 7,000 and 8,000 men collected in the Navplion area durin g the 24th, though only 5,000 had been planned for . After dark in bands of fifty they marched through the streets, which had been bombed an d machine-gunned during the day and were strewn with glass; and at 10 .30 began to embark in barges and ships ' boats. All went well until the trans- port Ulster Prince ran aground at the harbour entrance. She was refloated but ran aground again near the wharf. However, by 3 a.m., despite the loss of the Ulster Prince, 6,600 men (1,600 more than the pre-arrange d I Some 1,300 base troops, British civilians, and 150 Germans captured at the Servia Pass had bee n embarked in small Greek ships at Piraeus on the nights of the 22nd and 23rd. 'Col A. W. Sheppard, MC, NX68 . 2/4 Bn 1940, DAAG 6 Div 1941-42, AAQMG NT Force 1942 , Dir of Org LHQ 1943-45 . Journalist-Secretary ; of Lindfield, NSW; b . Welbeck, London, 2 Jun 1910 . s Lt-Col J . H. Courage ; Pioneer Corps. Director; b. Kirkby, Fleetham, Yorks, Eng, 16 Aug 1904 . Lt-Col B. J. O ' Loughlin, OBE, VX130. 2/7 Bn 1939-40; DAAG 6 Div 1941, I Corps 1941-42; AA G FIrst Army 1942-44, II Corps 1944-45. Law Clerk ; of Richmond, Vic ; b . Murray Bridge, SA, 1 6 Aug 1904 . 24-25 Apr THE THREAT TO CORINTH 161 number) had been embarked in the ship Glenearn, the cruiser Phoebe, the destroyers Stuart and Voyager, and the sloop Hyacinth .5 The troop s who embarked included Australian Corps headquarters, 6th Australia n Divisional headquarters, the 4th Survey Regiment, 16th Heavy Anti - Aircraft Battery, base troops, and about 150 Australian and New Zealan d nursing sisters who were carried in Voyager. There was no embarkation from Tolos that night. Meanwhile, an effort to embark troops from Piraeus that day had ended disastrously . On the 24th the large yacht Hellas arrived at that devastated port . Her captain said that she could carry 1,000 passengers ; she took on board some 500 British civilians, mostly Maltese and Cypriots , and about 400 wounded and sick men from the 2/5th Australian Genera l Hospital, and about as many from the 26th British General Hospital . At 7 p.m. German aircraft attacked, hit her with two bombs and set her on fire. Passengers and wounded men were trapped in burning cabins ; the only gangway was destroyed, and eventually the ship rolled over. Estimates of the number who died range from 500 to 742 . Among them was the mortally wounded Colonel Kay,s commander of the 2/5th Hospital, wh o was organising the embarkation of patients . During the night of the 24th-25th Allen Group moved out from Megara under orders to go to the Argos area for embarkation . At 1.30 a .m., as the long column was passing over the Corinth bridge, Brigadier Savig e was stopped by a staff officer from Brigadier Lee with a request that h e detach a battalion to Lee's force to help guard the area against possibl e attack by German armour from the north or against paratroops . Savige ordered his staff captain, Major Bishop, to halt the 2/6th Battalion an d instruct Lieut-Colonel Wrigley to detach a force for this task, and himsel f went on to meet Lee who "seemed to have little information about the plan of embarkation" . It was finally agreed that three companies of the 2/6th plus two platoons should be deployed on tasks nominated by Lee . In consequence Captain Dean's 7 company was halted and placed on th e north side of the canal in defence of the bridge, under command of Colonel Lillingston of the 4th Hussars ; and Captains Jones' s and Carroll's9 com- panies with two platoons of the remaining rifle company were halted b y 6 The Navplion Beach-master's report states that a total of 5,500 were embarked but the Vice - Admiral, Light Forces, reported the following detailed figures : Phoebe . 1,13 1 Glenearn . 5,10 0 Voyager . 340 Stuart . 1 Hyacinth . 113 6,68 5 "Col W. E. Kay, DSO, NX441 . (1st AIF : 1 Fd Amb, and CO 2 Fd Amb 1917-18 .) CO 2/5 AGH 1940-41 . Medical practitioner ; of Waverley, NSW ; b . Glen Innes, NSW, 3 Jan 1888 . Died of wounds 26 Apr 1941 . 7 Capt H. A . Dean, MC, VX140; 2/6 Bn . Farmer ; of Geelong, Vic ; b. Geelong, 11 Sep 1909 . e Lt-Col J . S . Jones, VX181 . 2/6 Bn 1939-43 ; CO 4 NG Inf Bn 1945 . Textile manufacturer ; of Ballarat, Vic ; b . Ballarat, 7 Jul 1915 . e Maj K . A . Carroll, VX57. 2/6 Bn 1939-43 ; 24 Bn 1943-45 . Bank officer; of Colac, Vic; b . Donald, Vic, 8 May 1912. 162 THE EMBARKATION FROM GREECE 25 Apr Lee near the two adjoining airfields north of Argos . Lee ordered Jones , who was senior to Carroll, to place one of these companies to defend th e airfields and send another to join the 4th Hussars at Corinth ; it was to travel in one-ton vans so that parties with their own transport could b e attached to scattered detachments of the Hussars . Jones took his own com- pany back ; having obtained twelve vans from his battalion at Argos, h e drove forward, and about 5 .30 arrived at the edge of Corinth where h e was halted by General Freyberg, bound for a new headquarters near Miloi . Freyberg informed him that Corinth had been bombed and the road was out of action and beyond repair. After hearing of Jones' task, Freyberg said that the object of the force at Corinth was to ensure the withdrawal of 6,000 troops to the Peloponnese, and the Australians could best serv e this purpose by clearing a detour through the town, otherwise there woul d be a traffic jam and the stationary column would be bombed . Jones set his men to work under attack by German aircraft flying low above the roof-tops. Later Colonel Lillingston allotted Jones the task also of defending a ridge running parallel with the road south of the canal against low-flying aircraft and paratroops. Jones returned to Corinth and found that his men , in spite of fatigue and frequent attacks by aircraft, had almost complete d the new route. He left small parties to finish and maintain the work, an d took the remainder out of the town, leaving it about 9 p .m. "just as the leading vehicles of the withdrawing column reached the beginning of the detour". The company was in position by midnight and spent the remainder of a second almost sleepless night digging weapon pits . In order to avoid heavy loss of ships as a result of air attack agains t vessels operating off the beaches near Athens, the staff of "W" Group radically amended the plan of evacuation with the objects of guarding th e beaches of Attica and the Peloponnese against attack from the north and north-west, and embarking more men at beaches farther south . Inevit- ably this necessitated prolonging the period of embarkation . As noted above the embarkations on the 25th-26th and 26th-27th were to have been : 25th-26th : 19th Brigade and others, from Athens beaches ; 26th-27th : 6th Brigade and armoured brigade from Athens beaches, 4t h Brigade from Megara .Various units from the Argos beaches .