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Home , 6th Division (Australia), Iven Mackay

the gathering storm: mid-march and early april 1941 115

Chapter Five

The gathering storm: mid-March and early April 1941

By mid-March 1941 plans for the opening stages of Operation Marita were firming up on all sides. On the Vermion-Olympus Line W Force’s hurried deployments continued with the first units of Wilson’s last , ’s 6th Australian Division, landing at Piraeus on 21-22 March.1 Soon after disembarking the leading battalion of Arthur ‘Tubby’ Allen’s 16th Australian Brigade moved by rail and road up over Brallos Pass, across the plain of Thessaly, up over snow-clad mountains through Elasson to Larissa, and then to Servia Pass, in preparation to relieve the 12th Greek Division in the Veria-Kozani defile. An officer on Allen’s headquarters remembered his first night at Servia as ‘one of the coldest I’ve ever spent’.2 The terrain in this location was a serious challenge for the newly arrived Australian units which had difficulty even reaching their positions in the mountains. The second of Mackay’s formations, the 19th Australian Brigade under Brigadier George Vasey, landed in Athens on 3 April, while the last to arrive, the 17th Australian Brigade under Brigadier Stan Savige (with a battalion from Vasey’s brigade), had by 6 April not yet set sail for Greece from .3 Meanwhile, a number of important developments were unfolding back with the New Zealanders in the vicinity of Katerini. First, on 27 March a

1 That the Australians were so late was largely a consequence of Blamey’s insistence that the 6th Australian Division be sent to Greece first on account of its experience and training, rather than the 7th Australian Division. Consequently, Mackay’s men had a dis- tinctly rushed move from North Africa. On 8 March, the day after the first elements of W Force had landed at Piraeus, his brigades were still spread from to Tocra in western , and to the Tripolitanian frontier at Agadabia. The next day the Australians received a warning order for re-deployment and thus very little rest between their campaign in the desert and embarkation to Greece. After a rapid concentration, which included a disorderly recall from leave for some battalions in Alexandria, Allen’s brigade departed Egypt (with headquarters) as part of the fourth Lustre convoy: G. Long, ‘The 6th Divi- sion in action’, AWM PR88/72; Long, Greece, and Syria, pp. 30-1. 2 G. Long, ‘The in action’, AWM PR88/72. 3 ‘Report on operations in Greece 16 Aust Inf. Bde.’, 29 July 1941, AWM 3DRL 4142, 2/9 [6-14]; ‘Bericht über die Tätigkeit der Armeeabteilung von Zentralmazedonien (T.S.K.M.) im Kämpfe gegen die Deutschen.’, BA MA RH 67/1, p. 1; ‘Material copied for use in the compilation of New Zealand War History’, ANZ ADQZ 188999, WAII2 [Microfilm 3650]. 116 chapter five

Figure 5.1: Members of the 2/1st Australian Field Regiment, Athens, gamble at ‘two-up’ before boarding a train to Larissa in April 1941. (Source: : 069830) of the 26th NZ Battalion was despatched to the Plantamon Tun- nel, where a Greek railway passed between Mt Olympus and the sea. This narrow coastal ‘pass’ began at Pinios Gorge, which separated Mt Olympus and Mt Ossa, and continued north as a narrow coastal strip ending as a ridge running east of Olympus to the coast. Access to Pinios Gorge, and from there the Larissa plain, was either by road over this ridge and down into the gorge, or by rail through the Plantamon Tunnel into the gorge. This coastal pass would later prove to be of pivotal importance. The New Zealand company sent to Plantamon was ordered to prepare a defensive position for subsequent occupation by a battalion-sized group, which Freyberg as- sessed would be sufficient to block the pass, so long as enough demolitions were used to destroy the railway tunnel.4 The last of Freyberg’s formations to arrive in Greece, Brigadier J.E. Hargest’s 5th NZ Brigade, began moving into a reserve position in the

4 Correspondence, narrative and draft notes (various) concerning the activities of the 26th (NZ) Battalion in Greece, ANZ ADQZ 18886, WAII1/172; WAII1/173; ‘ in Greece’, ANZ ADQZ 18886, WAII1/105; AWM PR83/137; GOC’s [Freyberg’s] Diary (extracts), 2 January – 2 September 1941, ANZ ADQZ 18906, WAII8/5/42-43; ‘Campaigns in Greece and Crete’, B. Freyberg, October 1941, ANZ ACGR 8476, PUTTICK2/4/6; McClymont, To Greece, p. 146.