George (‘Loop’) Kennard, like Bruce Shand, was a pre-war regular officer in the British cavalry. He shared Shand’s light-hearted attitude to life, displayed at its best in desperate circumstances. Circumstances were desperate at the end of the British campaign of 1941 in Greece, to which Winston Churchill had sent a large contingent of the Western Desert Force (later Eighth Army) to assist the Greeks in their resistance to the German invasion in early April. Kennard’s regiment, the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, took part in the fighting withdrawal down the east coast of Greece but was one of those overwhelmed by the weight of the German offensive.
We reached the Peloponnese, where we hoped we might be allowed to stand and fight. By now the Squadron had a seventy-mile front from Corinth to Patras, four tanks, a handful of trucks and a hundred men. Here there was a respite as the enemy, too, had its resupply troubles. All went quiet apart from the plane that machine-gunned Billy and me as we clung to our motor-cycle on a mountain pass. What a sleep we had that night in the olive groves, but at dawn bigger aircraft appeared and the parachutists dropped like autumn leaves as the Germans tried to seize the bridge over the canal. We took a heavy toll of them but they got on to the bridge and our Sappers tried to blow it. Nothing happened and on they came, accompanied by a newsreel truck filming for the benefit of Berlin cinema audiences. Then up it went, bridge, trucks, troops and camera. Whoopee!
Close to that bridge, the Colonel and the Adjutant, returning from Headquarters with fresh orders, ran into an ambush; for them the war was over. Clem took command and on we went, what was left of us, to Kalamata, Greece’s most southerly port. There we were to be embarked to fight another day. As we set off, Billy Hornby was captured. Later he was to be put into a POW cage in Salonika where he saw his chance to make a run for it. They spotted him; a few pfennigs’ worth of German powder and that bundle of gaiety and fun lay dying — dead. Ja, he was shot while trying to escape.
A few miles from Kalamata we paused while Clem went on to try and discover what the powers that be, if there were any, wanted us to do. We were out on our feet and, one by one, we collapsed by the side of the road in sleep, some thirty men and one anti-tank rifle, grimly clutched by Trooper Small. I awoke to the sound of machine-gun fire and of John de Moraville exhorting Small to fire at a German armoured car. He did his best but the bolt jammed. I ran to a garden shed inside which were more of our men; I told them to beat it quickly to the south. I badly wanted to go with them but couldn’t leave John and Small. The volume of firing increased as I did my best to retain my dignity; as I arrived John was trying to kick the gun into action; suddenly he spun round and said: ‘The buggers shot me,’ and so they had. In his neck was a neat entry hole and no exit; it didn’t seem to affect him much, except to increase the volume of oaths he was directing at the enemy as the gun still refused to fire. I was trying to plug the wound with a handkerchief when a polite, Teutonic voice, speaking in a modulated English accent informed me that we were now prisoners of war. It was my turn to spin round. I gaped: ‘Good God, Otto, wie gehts? What on earth are you doing here?’ It was Otto Hertzog, who had often come to stay at the von Mitzlaffs [with whom Kennard had stayed before the war] and was their cousin.
Otto’s men were busy rounding up the remainder of our party, including those who had bolted from the garden shed; three had been killed in the initial burst of fire. We were all shepherded together on the road and I tried to introduce Otto to John. The latter threw his field-glasses on to the ground and said: ‘For God’s sake, Loopy, stop talking to that bloody German.’ I suddenly realized that I might appear to be some sort of fifth-columnist and contented myself with trying to find out what would happen to us now. Otto told me that we were to be taken to Kalamata by vehicle and from there sent to a prison camp. We would be well treated and John would be taken to hospital. He added that he would take me out to dinner when he had some leave. All this seemed good news; Kalamata was, as far as we knew, full of British troops still fighting, and it should be relatively easy to make a break when we arrived there. We were put into an open truck and driven off singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ at the tops of our voices; this seemed to annoy the German escort considerably. We redoubled our vocal efforts.
The Germans appeared to have no clue how many British and Allied troops there were in Kalamata, or perhaps because they thought that most by this time were unarmed, they didn’t care. We drove on into the outskirts of the town in the gathering dusk and were fired on. We were bundled into a cellar and I decided that this was my moment. As I gathered up my courage, I heard shouted German orders for the deployment of a large field gun which was to begin firing shells on to the beaches now packed with largely unarmed troops waiting for the naval evacuation. Our guard dropped dead, shot by one side or the other and I hopped it. There was some erratic shooting from both sides as I ran down the street and eventually I found myself among some New Zealanders. I explained that I knew the whereabouts of the gun that was even now causing havoc and death on the beaches and a Sergeant said: ‘Right, Sir, hop into this truck and we’ll go get him.’ The truck was a small one and Sergeant Hinton had only a revolver; I was unarmed. I had just started to mutter, ‘Not bloody likely ...’ and other excuses when I was elbowed aside by a huge Australian. ‘Come on then Taffy,’ said Sergeant Hinton, and off they charged, straight at the gun. But it wasn’t the only gun, it was supported from both flanks by automatic weapons. There was a vast commotion, then silence — the gun lying on its side and the truck on its roof. The German crews were dead and Hinton was prone in the road seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had been shot in the stomach. Taffy was away in the distance chasing more Germans in the darkness.
Sergeant Hinton won a Victoria Cross, presented to him in a POW camp. None could have been more deserved, but as far as I know Taffy, whose name I never discovered, got nothing.
On my own once again, I thought I would go back to the cellar to find John and the others. I passed a badly injured German officer lying by his defunct gun and gave him some cigarettes. The cellar was empty but a little further on I came across a dozen or so German prisoners being led away with their hands up. Among them was Otto. I took them over and headed for the beach. Otto was nervous; he obviously thought that I had shot his sentry earlier and that he was likely to be similarly treated. I told him that if the Navy came he would be taken to Egypt and treated well as a POW. I would, I said, take him out to dinner.
On the beach I gave up my prisoners to the New Zealanders, and tried without success to find the remnants of my Regiment. I wandered back into the town and fell in with a New Zealander carrying a Bren gun. We had barely introduced ourselves when we heard the now familiar pop, pop, popping of a German motorcycle combination. We rushed into the nearest house and took up position at a first-floor window. More Germans appeared, a target too good to miss. I grabbed the gun and emptied the magazine. At that moment, the last few weeks and months overwhelmed me. Night after night, bomb after bomb, no regiment left, Cecilia and the baby, no mail, a fuck-up on the beaches, Billy gone and me here, with a Bren gun, and out there the enemy. The New Zealander went out to look at the dead and the dying. I did not and remember only how much nicer they looked without their steel helmets which had rolled off as they fell.
We went back to the beach and heard that the Navy would take off only the sick and the wounded, believing that the German Divisions had arrived at the coast in force. We knew better, but there was nothing more to do. I was taken to the Brigade Commander who, knowing that I spoke German, had a job for me. As the Navy had refused to evacuate us he was forced to surrender some 10,000 men at dawn. I was to convey this message to the German Headquarters so that the packed beaches would not be bombed at first light. I was to take my German Officer friend with me as a guide. I told Otto, who addressed his fellow captives before we left. They let out a tremendous cheer, quickly stifled under threats from the infuriated Australians.
Otto and I set off once more. No training manual that either of us had read covered our mission. We decided that I would go first shouting: ‘I am a British officer with a German,’ on our side of the town, after which he would lead and make similar noises in what we imagined might be the German sector.
We wandered round and round and through the square, the scene of my brainstorm. I told him what I had done. He shrugged. He said it was a pity; they were good men; one had just won an Iron Cross, First Class. I muttered, ‘Fuck him’ under my breath.
By now the poisonous thorn in my foot, my only wound, had made walking almost impossible and it was with much relief that we eventually found Otto’s headquarters. He left me outside and went in. The sentry gave me a cigarette. After about half an hour I was ushered in. It was just like a film set. Around a candlelit table sat half-a-dozen officers. All got up, saluted me and gave me food and schnapps. I told them of the beaches, the coming surrender and the lack of food and water. I asked them, please, to stop the bombers. They said they would and mentioned that they had lost nearly 75 per cent of their force. I went to sleep on a mattress, still wearing my revolver, for which I had never had any ammunition. ‘Loopy,’ said Otto, ‘tomorrow I shall have to take your pistol away.’ And tomorrow they did, but not until after I had motored with the German commander to the Brigadier on the beach and he, faced with no alternative, handed over to captivity 10,000 men.
When soldiers are taken prisoner their first reaction is to blame someone — anyone. Many on that beach blamed the Brigadier. Many more blamed the Navy. Some blamed Wavell, some the Government and some the Greeks. For my part, I blame a combination of circumstances which, once under way, led to an unstoppable chaos. Recrimination is fruitless.
The Germans struck a medal and gave their highest award to Oberleutenant Otto Hertzog, who as a prisoner, ‘frightened the British High Command into surrendering’.