The Pittsburgh Press (May 2, 1941)
B.E.F. ENDS FLIGHT; STORY OF HORROR, HEROISM UNFOLDS
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Some Greeks, Slavs also land in Egypt after 600-mile voyage under fire; men tell of robot-like foe, ‘rain of parachutists,’ dance that scared Nazis
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By Richard D. McMillan and Henry T. Gorrell, United Press staff writers
With the British Empire troops evacuated from Greece via Cairo, May 2 –
Back in Egypt after a terrible 200-mile retreat through Greece and a 600-mile voyage across the sea under the attack of German dive-bombing planes, the undaunted British Imperial Expeditionary Force began today to reorganize for another fight.
Its men had fought the massed armored forces of the Germans for days, they had fired until their ammunition gave out at robot-like waves of massed German infantrymen, who marched endlessly over the bodies of their own dead, until the attackers were exhausted.
They had fought parachutists who had descended by the thousands in an attempt to cut off their final retreat. They had embarked on the beaches of the Peloponnesus, had made the voyage across the Eastern Mediterranean crowded into overloaded evacuation ships, singing below decks as the gun crews above fought a final furious – and successful – fight with the Stuka bombers.
Hundreds of soldiers, crowded on the decks because there was no room below, cheered a the gunners of the three anti-aircraft cruisers nearest us blasted at German and Italian planes.
Just before we reached port, a military funeral was held for one man who had been wounded by a bomb fragment before he embarked and died aboard our ship. The transport came to a dead stop as his body was lowered into the sea and 12 riflemen fired a salute.
The British Expeditionary Force, its men without tanks, its aviators without planes, its exhausted artillerymen without guns, its infantrymen and machine gunners, its nurses and surgeons tirelessly tending the wounded, and with the Greek and Yugoslav stragglers who escaped with us – had not only a story to tell of disaster but also of heroism.
Told to keep marching even though planes attack
With us also were women and children, the youngest child 10 months old, and one America woman who had escaped from Yugoslavia and joined the British Army at an island she reached with her Canadian husband. A New Yorker, her father is a U.S. Treasury representative at Toronto.
The British Expeditionary Force had fought day and night up to the beaches of the Peloponnesus where the German parachutists machine-gunned the small boats which put out from the shore.
And on the voyage to Egypt, the surgeons and nurses had fought a fight with death in treating the wounded.
It was necessary to leave some of the wounded behind, in charge of a base hospital corps which volunteered to remain with them.
But as for the expeditionary force proper, an Australian brigadier said aboard our transport:
All but the damned fools, the stragglers and the unfortunates wounded or killed along the roads by the German planes, will be evacuated.
A major in command of the contingent with which Gorrell reached the beach told his men:
Gentlemen, we are marching three abreast. I am instructed to advise you that in the event of an air raid we are not halting. Anyone who steps from the ranks to seek cover will be left behind. In event any of you are wounded, we will do our best to see you aboard a transport. As for the dead, naturally they will be left behind.
The rescue of the wounded continued until the ships left. Some were hoisted by ropes, in stretchers, to the decks of transports. Some were brought out in row boats by their comrades.
The Germans tried to cut off the Imperial force by landing thousands of parachutists along the Gulf of Corinth, principally at the Corinth Canal bridge and the Daphne naval base near Athens, and in the Peloponnesus.
New Zealanders who fought the parachutists at the Corinth bridge said that they came down like rain. The first parachutists who landed blew up the bridge.
A New Zealander said:
The air was filled with them. Some of the parachutes failed to open. They dropped hundreds at a time. Some were killed as they hit the ground. They would bounce up in the air again. Many were killed when their parachutes caught on the fuselage of their planes or thrown out in mass a few hundred feet above the ground, because their parachutes could not stop their fall. They were frightfully mutilated.
Dancing Maori natives yell, terrify blitz troops
There was a sudden change in the wind, and many of the parachutists were blown out to sea to drown.
We killed many of them. The Maoris gave them the fright of their lives. They would run out from cover in bunches, shouting their old native war cries and dancing Maori war dances. The Nazis ran.
Some of our men were cut off when the bridge was blown up. The rest of us fought our way to the coast, fighting as we retreated hour after hour.
The parachutists used red parachutes for landing heavy trench mortars and white parachutes for their gunners and machine gunners. Picked blitz troops on motorcycles, with machine guns, joined them.
We fought them right up to the beaches. There the Navy was waiting and held them off while we jumped into small boats and rowed out into the bay. The Nazis kept firing at us, after dark, and riddled many of our boats.
Greek Evrone troops, the skirted shock units who had slaughtered the Italians with the bayonet, made a pact with the New Zealanders in the Daphne zone to fight to the last.
The New Zealanders went into action with machine guns against Nazi ground troops. Then German parachutists came down and the Evrones went after them with the bayonet.
A New Zealander said:
We left nothing but dead Germans on that battlefield.
The New Zealanders continued their retreat to the beaches; the Evrones, members of a Greek rear guard, remained to await more Germans.
Certain beaches had been selected for embarkation. So efficient was the German espionage system that they had to be changed by secret signal. Four warships had to hug the coasts under the fire of Stuka bombers, as they sought stragglers who exited on small beaches with their wounded. They carried wounded men to the ships on their backs, wading out to meet the ship’s boats.
Some of the Imperial units had lost their officers.
With some of them were Yugoslav infantrymen and air force pilots; many Greek pilots were with them also.
It is possible to disclose also that many Yugoslav and Greek destroyers, submarines and other warships joined with the British fleet and aided in protecting the evacuation.
The Imperial force marched through the Peloponnesus by night, leaving the rear guard to hold off the Germans, and hid by day.
At dusk, the Germans would come over the woods in which the troops and trucks were waiting, and “dust off” the entire area with machine gun fire, methodically criss-crossing their target area, giving special attention to trees and bushes.
Yet we believe that there were not more than 50 casualties in our contingent.
We were sleeping under trees one night, too tired to be awakened by the first bombs which dropped. But the explosive bullets began striking the ground around us.
A Greek peasant nearby was screaming as he hugged his shattered knees. We dived for a ditch and were joined by two New Zealanders. We dodged from side to side of the ditch to keep to the windward side of the planes which flew back and forth.
As the planes flew off a New Zealander gripped Gorrell’s hand and said:
I guess we’ll make it; it can’t be worse than this.
When we marched we sang – “Tipperary,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” and such songs, and in the press contingent one man started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
A Scots regiment marching past shouted at us, and McMillan, a Scot, struck up “The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond,” amid the cheers of Scottish troops.
We reached the embarkation point at dawn. All day long thousands upon thousands of men poured in and then marched off to disappear on hillsides, hidden by bushes, or in wheatfields.
They lay all day among the rocks and the poppies and the wheat while German planes scoured the countryside.
Once we ventured into town and were caught in a terrific blast of bombs and machine gun bullets which blew up a truck near us, killing its two occupants. A third, wounded, escaped and was operated on aboard our transport.
The German planes dropped magnetic mines in the harbors, bombed the docks, fired a Greek munitions ship, machine-gunned every yard of road and every acre of ground, flew out to sea to attack ships.
With the early evening came word that transports were on the way. We walked four miles in a winding column of British, Australian and New Zealand troops and air force men.
We reached the shore where we were to embark and stood by as one of the three transports in our convoy tried to get itself out of the mud in which it had grounded. At last the grounded ship was left to get off as best it could and the 11,500 men and women in our group crowded into two transports, which were surrounded by cruisers and destroyers.
We watched the signalmen wig-wag signals among themselves, and watched for German planes. Nothing happened and we left on schedule.
Barge overturns
Jut before we left, one of our barges overturned. Two of the ship’s officers dived and rescued the heavily accoutered troops who fell from it.
Our own embarkation was comparatively eventless but many of the troops fought right to the beaches.
The rear guard fought through a hail of bombs and machine gun fire, and through parachute troops, to board fleets of motorboats, barges
Many reached the beaches one mile and a half ahead of overwhelmingly strong German forces, and got away safely.
Nurses ordered to leave
With one part of the rear guard were 150 Australian and New Zealand nurses. Forty of the nurses had volunteered to remain with the wounded. The general commanding their contingent ordered them to leave.
The nurses spent two hours in a wheatfield near Corinth, and nine hours crouching behind gravestones in a cemetery, to escape the bombs and bullets of German dive-bombers.
An anti-aircraft major told us that four of his five guns were put out of action by the dive-bombers and the fifth ran out of ammunition.
An RAF officer described how some wounded were taken in rowboats to big flying boats. One husky sergeant lay with his legs in the boat and held on to the seaplane, forming a bridge with his back over which wounded were passed in stretchers.
Take wounded in planes
The officer said the wounded were kept moving until the ships available were filled. Then they would be taken on to the next beach. The last 52 were put into seaplanes.
Dutch naval officers whose ship was sunk by a dive-bomber said they had 2,000 men aboard.
One of them said:
Every man was saved. The ship sank in 75 minutes. Destroyers and lifeboats came alongside and took them off to other craft. It was marvelous to see how cool the soldiers were.
Every man and woman evacuated told of the efficiency and bravery of the British Navy.
The Germans attacked ships without pause. One New Zealander swam from a bombed transport to a destroyer. The destroyer wa hit as it took on survivors. The New Zealander swam to another ship.
Gorrell collapses
On the voyage over we fought off German planes but our convoy was a big one. At one time, we could see 23 British warships on the horizon, including battleships and an aircraft carrier.
Gorrell, who had been ill of malaria, collapsed as he embarked. He was put to bed and tended by a nurse who stood by with a life belt on.
The ship trembled as destroyers around it dropped depth charges at intervals to blast any lurking submarine.
The nurse said:
You couldn’t swim now, but never mind – you’re with the Navy.
The warships drove off two fleets of dive-bombers and brought down one, aflame.
‘Never shall be slaves’
The convoy steamed on, on its 48-hour voyage, zig-zagging to escape submarines and planes, its anti-aircraft guns roaring.
The ships were crowded to our rigging. But in the lounge of ours, a British Tommy started playing the piano. Australians and New Zealanders, and a group of British children, gathered round.
It was daylight now. The summery blue sky was marked by fleecy clouds and puffs of smoke from exploding shells. Some of the children watched from the portholes, shouting with glee.
The guns died down, and the children at the portholes joined those at the piano. The Tommy at the piano started playing “Rule, Britannia,” and the soldiers and the children shouted out:
Britons never shall be slaves!
There were many children in the toddler stage aboard. A tin-hatted Australian nurse, trim and efficient looking, brought up the youngest, a baby of 10 months. It had been three days and three nights in an open boat with its parents.
Blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, called “Pinkie” by those aboard, it lay in the nurse’s arms, one thumb in its mouth, It played with a button on McMillan’s correspondent uniform and opened its eyes wide as a British fighter plane, which had taken off from an aircraft carrier, spiraled near us, its motor roaring deafeningly. Even when the guns started firing, the baby went on sucking its thumb, making eyes at the soldiers around it.
The mother told McMillan:
My husband was employed at Kalamalka. We escaped in a native boat. We stayed in it but traveled only at night. We touched an island, and left in a hurry when we found German parachutists had landed at an island nearby.
Infant takes it calmly
Baby was a model evacuee. She was somewhat flea-bitten but not seasick or alarmed.
Soldiers wanted to help tend the baby, and other children. One Tommy took charge of the bottle supply. A Scot, a tank corpsman who had been in the worst of the fighting, took charge of the drying of diapers in the boiler room. A London cockney acted as messenger, delivering the diapers.
Out on the decks, officers mingled with privates and civilians, eating corned beef from cans and drinking tea. One said that to make this ship ready for immediate transport, its cargo of horses and mules had been put overboard.
One party had made a table of two wooden cases.
The American woman aboard told McMillan she had escaped in the same open boat which took the baby and its parents.
She said:
My husband and I were the only civilians in a British convoy of 54 troop trucks from Patras. Stukas attacked and we took shelter in a culvert. One truck turned over. Two Tommies were killed and the others wounded.
When our convoy reached the Corinth Canal, an officer told us it was dangerous to proceed toward Athens because the Germans were near. We met the baby and its parents and took their boat.
A British officer helped us and we gave him a place in the boat along with three RAF pilots. We arrived at an island only to learn that German parachutists were near. We traveled 250 miles altogether and then transferred to the transport.
Surgeons keep operating
All during the voyage the surgeons kept operating on the wounded. They made an operating room near the salon of the ship, and the entire deck reeked with the fumes of ether.
An anaesthetist squeezed by the gramophone in the lounge as a young officer played “I Love You Only” on it to the accompaniment of the snores of soldiers, sleeping on the floor.
Now the ships have come to an Egyptian port in the twilight. They disgorge their passengers to waiting scows, barges and small boats which are ferrying between them and the shore.
An Australian plays his harmonica and the bay echoes with the songs of many voices. Across the sea are coming other ships, steaming safe to port with men who are already ready to fight again.
The men of the BEF do not feel that they have been beaten, as men. They were a small force sent against a force five times or more their superior, with five times as many tanks, and with a gigantic fleet of airplanes.
The Greeks are courageous and tenacious fighters. But they had spent months in beating the Italians, also superior in number and equipment, and they were tired. After the Yugoslav defense collapsed at the Monastir Gap (Bitoli), they could not protect their left flank.
The British didn’t have sufficient troops to back them up. The Greeks lost three divisions in Macedonia, one at Mt. Olympus, a fifth at Florina. They fought to the last. They collapsed only when the Germans shifted the brunt of their offensive to the left flank, side-stepping the comparatively fresh and fiercely resisting Imperial troops.
‘Battle like madmen’
An Australian brigadier described the last big battle, at Grevena, before the withdrawal of the last line of British defense.
We thought we were lost. The Germans were threatening our only means of exit. We should have been lost but our troops fought like madmen. They killed hundreds of Germans and we escaped by a hair’s breadth.
At Vevey, we mowed the Germans down thousands at a time with concentrated artillery fire. The barrels of our guns were red hot. They were firing at a range of 3,000 yards.
We completely broke up the Germans time and again but on they came. They walked over their own dead. They even used buses.
The German shock troops came four abreast three feet apart. It was uncanny. It seemed they must be doped but they showed no consideration for their lives. Our men could not fire fast enough. It was physically impossible to mow them all down because they came too fast. But our artillery kept up fire until the Germans were within machine gun and rifle range.
Another officer told how Yugoslav troops retreating from the Monastir Gap joined the Greek and British forces and fought on:
I saw a Yugoslav officer get behind a tree at Grevena and bring down two German planes with a French machine gun that had no sights. Other Yugoslavs with Skoda anti-aircraft guns got ahead of the British field guns and kept up their fire until they ran out of ammunition. They then retreated with us.
Greeks balk British
Our departure from Athens was poignant. We were gathered to leave with the Imperial troops, men, weeping, came up and tried to kiss our hands. As we boarded trains, they cheered and shouted:
Long live Britain! Hurrah for Greece!
But, on the other hand, either out of sentiment or because of orders, the Greek guards at gasoline dumps and munitions depots refused to permit British engineers to blow them up so the Germans could not get them.
But there was a terrific din as the troops destroyed other material. They had orders not to burn anything, so as not to attract planes. They destroyed vehicles with sledge hammers.
About 120 wounded were left behind. It was impossible to take them. Doctors, interns and base hospital attendants stayed with them, to become German prisoners.