PART TWO
4
On 6 April 1941 Germany crossed the Bulgarian border and invaded Greece. Lusterforce was at Olympus, while the Greek Army was on the frontier with Bulgaria, or fighting the Italians in Albania. The Allied defence was a disaster. The Germans smashed through the 70,000 Greeks on the Bulgarian border and simply bypassed the holdouts. In no time, German tanks were in Thessaloniki.1 Once the German infantry had caught up with the armour, their assault on Olympus would begin. With an attack imminent, Ralph’s mapping work ceased, and he became message runner at General Blamey’s Australian HQ. Lusterforce prepared to make its stand on Olympus, with or without help from Papagos.
Ralph was present at the formation of the Second Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). The hope was that the troops would rally to the name, which recalled Australian and New Zealand resilience in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. The appellation ‘gives all ranks the greatest uplift’, declared Blamey. ‘The task ahead, though difficult, is not nearly as desperate as that which our fathers faced twenty-six years ago. We go together with stout hearts and certainty of success.’2 The announcement was greeted with a certain amount of eye-rolling. This was not a new combined Australian–New Zealander force: it was just Australian HQ with a new title. It ‘could never be more than a name’, the New Zealand staff noted, ‘when all the personnel on the headquarters were Australian’.3
Ralph and his fellow Anzacs prepared for the German assault, but it never came. The Germans did not attack Olympus; they smashed into the rear of the Greek Army on the Albanian front instead.4 Outflanked, Lusterforce had no choice but to retreat to Thermopylae, where it hoped to make a stand before evacuating from Greece.
On 15 April the retreat began. Ralph boarded an Anzac HQ truck on a cold, foggy morning that then filled with rain. At least the fog shielded them from air attack. Morale was low; all the side roads turned to slush so the entire force had to merge onto the main highway south. Fleeing Greek civilians and soldiers completely crammed the road, on foot or on skeletal, dying horses, in wagons or battered cars.5 As the clouds cleared, the Luftwaffe (German air force) tried to trap Lusterforce by bombing a bridge ahead of it. The attacks missed, but a British ammunition truck caught fire and exploded just past the bridge, leaving a crater metres deep. The convoy was held up for hours in the spring sun. Finally, Royal Engineers filled the hole and got the convoy moving again.6
After this, instead of mounting large assaults, the Germans ran relays of the column. A single plane would fly in low and fast from the rear and run the whole length. Many soldiers leapt from their vehicles and fled to the fields. The German planes passed by most of the column, saving their ammunition for any truck at the front: if they could immobilize that, everything behind would be stuck again, until troops could push the wreckage aside. As one plane finished its run, another would begin the process anew.7 By such means the Germans hoped to delay Lusterforce, preventing it from creating defensive positions.
Despite the Germans’ tactics, however, on 19 April Lusterforce reached Thermopylae. Ralph went with Anzac HQ to a new base at the town of Livadia.8 At Thermopylae, Lusterforce dug defences and waited. The only way this would work was if the Greek Army to the west could delay the Germans.
By now the Greeks were cut off, with little fight left in them. On 20 April the Greek Army’s field commanders mutinied and asked the Germans for an armistice. The terms were that Greek soldiers handed in their weapons and returned home, though officers would keep their sidearms. Greek forces still fighting the Italians would continue for a few hours, for the ‘prestige’.9 The Germans had cut the Greek Army to pieces: the supply lines were gone, the Italians were marching in from Albania, and the longer the Greeks waited to surrender, the more soldiers would die, the more civilians would be bombed. Even so, the principal concern was honour in beating the Italians – the sentiment that had led Papagos to abandon Lusterforce at Olympus. But Greece’s allies were now in mortal danger. For Allied commanders, hopes of a heroic stand at Thermopylae ended. After the mutiny, the only option was urgent evacuation.
General Blamey held a midnight conference with Royal Navy officers to discuss details. The navy told him that a daylight evacuation would be too dangerous: the British had too few planes to stop the Luftwaffe from attacking Allied shipping.10 Evacuating from Athens was impossible – its port had been devastated by an ammunition explosion – so evacuation would begin on the night of 24 April from beaches across the Greek south coast. Just as at Dunkirk nearly twelve months before, it would be slow: without deep-water ports, infantry would have to be ferried out to the ships in smaller craft. All heavy equipment would have to be destroyed and left behind. During a hazardous evacuation, strong leadership and good communications would be critical, with plans undoubtedly changing by the minute. At 07.00 on 22 April, Anzac HQ issued the order to evacuate.11
Lusterforce withdrew from Thermopylae. Engineers engaged in tactical destruction while rearguards held off the Germans.12 Behind the front line, Ralph ran evacuation orders to field commanders and rejoined HQ on the 23rd. Anzac HQ established its last base at the town of Mandra on the road from Athens to the south coast. Thoroughly frustrated by now with the whole business, Ralph determined to do his part to get everyone home.
That evening a courier arrived with a message for Blamey: he was to report to Athens. When he arrived there at midnight his superiors directed him to return to Egypt immediately with his senior staff. He protested in anger that he needed to oversee the evacuation.13 It was a dangerous blunder on the part of the high command: now over 60,000 troops were being deprived of their primary commander in the field. Blamey was told he could take five senior officers and confidants. For the last spot, the General wrote the name of his own son, Major Thomas Blamey Jr, an artillery officer already seconded to HQ.14 By prioritizing his only surviving son, General Blamey opened himself to great criticism. But he was only human.
In Ralph’s recollection he was the one to deliver Blamey Jr by car to the sea plane.* At 02.00 on 24 April, the Blameys left Greece by flying boat. Ralph returned to Mandra, dog-tired. He’d been awake for over twenty-four hours.