7

Captive

‘Oop, oop, oop. Ahnds oop.’ It was 06.00, and they woke to two young Germans pointing guns at them. Bleary-eyed, Ralph rose and complied, standing in the boat with his arms raised. He could make out another two dozen Germans on the shore and two patrol boats.¹ The Australians had had the misfortune to lay up to rest at the meeting point for German patrols.

Despite the commotion, Jim was still fast asleep. Ralph gave him a whack with his boot: Wake up – the Germans are here! ‘They’re not Germans, they’re Greek police,’ Jim mumbled, and rolled back to sleep. Ralph and the Germans looked at each other, perplexed. Ralph nudged him again, Jim groaned, and then stood up.²

They lay demoralized on the shore. The German soldiers patted them down and robbed them. They took everything: binoculars, wristwatches, writing cases, dispatch folders, mess kits – they even took Ralph’s New Testament and leather-bound photos of Ronte and his family. The Australians protested that this was illegal under the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war, but they were in no position to negotiate. Ralph at least succeeded in getting the photos and New Testament returned, and they would continue to be a great comfort in the years to come. Apart from his clothes, all he now possessed were the pictures and a mapping pencil his captors hadn’t found. While the German patrol boats prepared to leave, the Hauptmann (Captain) tried to reassure his new charges: their internment would be short. Soon the Germans would triumph, and everyone could go home. There was no reason that their stay should be unpleasant, ‘so long as you makes nudding stupid’.³ They got on one of the German patrol boats and found another four captured Australians on board. To try to soften the blow a little, the German crew broke out some schnapps to share around the prisoners, and the boat then headed back up the coast to Monemvasia. From there it was a truck to the town of Molaoi, to be locked in the top floor of a schoolhouse with a dozen other prisoners. Renard moved as far away as possible, wanting nothing more to do with Ralph; Ralph preferred the company of the other Australians anyway.

A pair were leaning back on the small school chairs as though they were back in class. Henry Walter Steilberg and Gerrard Pollock had made themselves comfortable. Ralph introduced himself. Wal was an inspiring presence, a six-foot-two Sydneysider used to manual labour.⁴ Gerry was a natural comedian hailing from the port of Newcastle. Jim Forrest, though, had gone quiet: he’d taken capture badly. Ralph felt terrible for the Lieutenant; Jim was a good man and a great leader. He didn’t deserve to have his war end like this.

Two German guards entered, both English-speakers. One was an eternal Yank, and an honest one. He’d come back to Germany in July of 1939, he explained, to convince his parents to help run a restaurant in Chicago. The war had started, and he’d been conscripted into the army, and made a translator.⁵ The other Germans regarded him with suspicion, he said. The other English-speaker only wanted to boast that nothing could stop the glory of Germany.

‘What about the Russians?’ someone asked.

‘What about them?’ the guard replied, puzzled. ‘Are they not our great friends and allies?’ He was in for a shock in a few weeks’ time.

Ralph’s stay at the school was mostly uneventful. The food was adequate, and the guards were urging the prisoners to eat more. An officer from the SS (the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party) who was passing through decided to show how to extract intelligence from the captives. He barked because the room did not spring to attention for him. Rather than conduct separate interviews in private, the Nazi interviewed everyone at once. He had obviously never interrogated Australians before. Now the Aussies were in the mood for some fun. Each question was met with a barrage of excited heckles and replies. He eventually stormed off in a hail of jeering and cynical flippancies.

After a few days, the prisoners were moved from the school via another truck. Because he was an officer, Jim Forrest went separately from the enlisted men. He turned to Ralph before departing, and they shook hands. Loaded on board, Ralph, Wal, Gerry, the silent Renard, and a few other prisoners began the long drive to Corinth. They were nodding off by the time the city came into sight. Ralph stood up and peered over the side. They were at Frontstalag (Front Camp) Corinth, a temporary holding camp for prisoners of war. An old Greek Army barracks, it had a few buildings and a square of bare earth fenced with barbed wire. There were almost 12,000 men crammed within its confines.

Prisoners taken at Kalamata (now known to Lusterforce soldiers as ‘Calamity Bay’) filled the camp. The chaos at Tolo and Nafplion had been bad, the Allied soldiers lost to captivity numbering a few thousand. Events at Kalamata on the night of 28 April were worse. The town lay on Greece’s south-western edge, and all those who had not been able to evacuate earlier had fled there – more than 8,000 in all: support staff, stragglers, mule drivers, and the entire Cypriot and Palestinian Labour Corps.⁶ It was no army. Only a few men had firearms: 400 Brits, 800 New Zealanders, and 70 Australians.⁷ There was no suggestion that evacuation wasn’t going to happen – 8,000 had been rescued from the same site two days before, with the navy sending in eight warships, led by Perth.⁸

But the Germans now knew of the site. Most were too far away to intervene, but two motorized companies of the 5th Panzer Division, a few hundred men, made a bold attempt to spoil the evacuation. At 17.00, the Germans had broken through the British-held perimeter and ram-raided into Kalamata. The quay fell, along with half the town, and the British naval liaison officer had been captured. Everyone on the beach knew that if the Germans held the town the navy wouldn’t risk coming. If the Allies were going to get out, they had to remove the enemy. The New Zealanders had launched a savage counter-attack with a few Australians.⁹

HMS Hero, a destroyer, had gone ahead of the flotilla to check the situation, and its crew had sighted gunfire in the town and received a message from the beach: ‘Germans in the town.’ Hero had relayed this to Perth while putting an officer ashore to assess the chances of evacuation. The New Zealanders had fought street to street to press the counter-attack, outnumbering the Germans,¹⁰ but though the Allies had won the Battle of Kalamata and Hero had radioed all-clear, a glitch meant the message didn’t reach Perth for forty minutes, by which point Perth’s captain, too spooked by the prospect of losing his ships and their crews, had decided not to turn back.¹¹ Hero had taken on board those few it could, and the following night three destroyers did pick up a few hundred stragglers,¹² but the rest were left to the Germans, who had begun to arrive in force. So now nearly 12,000 Allied troops were crammed into the tiny Frontstalag Corinth. One was Driver Leslie Laws of the Royal Engineers, who Ralph would meet almost twelve months later.