Extract from A Song at the Sacrifice, ch.12, by Theo Barker
The war in the Far East halted our plans for Lemnos, but George had been plotting schemes for raids on the enemy coast between Olympus and Salonika, so 11 Commando moved to the mainland in the New Year. I returned to Athens for the first time in nine months. Though everyone still seemed determined to keep up the fight, the war had really taken the shine off the place; all the men were in uniform, many of them visibly mutilated, all the women seemed to be working in munitions. Most people’s faces showed signs of short commons. Rations, I had heard, had become better in the autumn, when the big American shipments had come in, but had just been cut again, as shipping had been diverted to the Far East. ‘But it’s nothing,’ people said, ‘compared to how things are in Salonika. Sometimes people escape, and they tell us all about it.’
The German air raids got steadily heavier in late January. By February we started to become really concerned. There seemed little we could do to keep them off, as so many of our planes had gone East. One day George and I were talking and he filled me in on the gen.
‘The Poles are going back to Rhodes. Higher-ups think the Boche might want a crack at it,’ he said. ‘To be honest, they seem a bit baffled.’ Of course we now know why the fog of war descended so heavily at this time: ULTRA had stopped delivering the goods for the time being.
‘Leaves us a bit out on a limb,’ I said. ‘The Aussies and Indians are gone, the best of the French troops too, and the new lads haven’t settled in.’
He sighed, the first time I had ever seen him do so. His spirits were low. ‘The higher-ups have forgotten about us,’ he said. ‘The front here hasn’t moved in months, and everyone knows we won’t march on Berlin from Olympus. They’ve got plans for everywhere but here. Things are headed for a smash-up.’
We were hoping for more ack-ack at least, but nothing came. I chatted to one RA type in the city one day. ‘All going East,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. You know, the heavy batteries are rationed to ten shells per day.’ That’s as far as the conversation went, because at that point there was another air raid…
But in all these wider schemes we had to try to carry on with our own business, so we began to rehearse. I remember that on the 25th I had gone along with a company along the coast, just behind the front line. We saw yet another air raid coming in. None of our planes about of course. But then things started to happen differently. Some of our chaps came running up to say that they’d been strafed - there hadn’t been many low-level attacks up to that point. Then we got a signal to get back to HQ immediately…
George seemed oddly cheerful. ‘Well, they’re here now, so at last we can have a pop at the blighters,’ he said. Italian troops had landed by air behind our lines in several places. There was a report of parachutists a mile or so north, and also a report of troops landing by caique on a beach nearby, so he was taking two companies to counter-attack the latter while he sent me with a scratch force of rear-echelon types for the beach.
There was no-one there, of course, but while we were turning round a couple of Army trucks pulled up. ‘Save yourselves,’ they shouted, ‘the Panzers have broken through.’ They drove off in a great hurry, evidently having remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere. The noise of planes going overhead was constant…
I saw George again as we pulled back. He’d taken a head wound and he was bandaged up. ‘We gave them a bloody nose at least,’ he said. ‘Not many of their parachutists got away. But Theo, I don’t think we’re doing very well elsewhere. Get back to HQ and see the General.’ He gave me a message and told me to take a couple of men with me - we couldn’t assume the roads were safe…
It was just our bad luck what happened next. I took my little party back to battalion HQ and we picked up a vehicle, but on the way back to the city we were shot up by enemy planes. None of us were hurt, but our truck was burning, and before we could get very far on foot we bumped into a squad of Italian paratroopers. They seemed as confused as we were, and for a minute we weren’t sure who had captured who, but then an officer turned up with more men and we had to surrender. ‘We saw the truck burning, and thought you must be somewhere near,’ he said in perfect English… I hadn’t believed the story about Panzers, it seemed typical panic. But an hour or two later we saw tanks and half-trucks with black crosses, so it turned out true.
So that was that for the time being. They took us to a village where most of their paratroopers had assembled. They looked pretty smashed up - lots of wounded men kept coming in, they had a sort of field hospital set up next to the POW pen. But lots of our chaps kept coming in as well. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could - not a lot in the way of food or shelter, but the locals fed us a bit, kind souls - and spent our first night in captivity. The worst part was waking up in the morning and remembering what had happened…
A couple of days later they moved us to a bigger pen, and there we found George and the rest. ‘No use,’ he said, ‘nothing we could do. Any time we moved we got bombed and strafed.’ He looked round to check no Italians were listening. ‘We could have beaten these so-and-sos,’ he said, ‘we must have knocked out most of their paratroopers, but the bombers hit us just when we formed up.’ Not long after he fainted - I don’t think he had had any water all day.
On the whole, the Italians treated us about as well as they treated their own men - not brilliant, but from all accounts, better than most other Axis. Considering how badly we’d knocked them about, it was as good as we could expect…
You probably know the story that explains the fiasco. The Auk was a good general, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t bang heads together when needed. Some of our troops had gone into the line, relieving the Australians. Unforgivably, the staff hadn’t done their job - the comms with the New Zealanders barely existed, and at least one general had some kind of prejudice against the French, so they weren't talking to them either. Anyway, after doing pretty well against the initial German attack, this military genius ordered a withdrawal, despite Auchinleck’s orders, apparently believing that the Kiwis had retreated, which of course they hadn’t. You don’t offer German Panzers an opportunity like that without trouble following, and so it had.
The entire army had to fall back to Thermopylae, and the Hoplites had to fight a delaying action in the Vale of Tempe, losing almost all their tanks in the process. The Germans pursued with their customary ruthlessness, but ran up against the reserves holding prepared defences at Thermopylae - the Auk got that right - and it turned out Panzers can’t get along goat-paths… Likewise the Greeks had to fall back. I remember hearing that their 1st Division, covering the retreat, sacrificed themselves at the bridge of Arta, and thinking that the old song had turned into a prophecy…
In the years since I have had plenty of time to reflect on these events. I have read all the books of course, and fellows arguing this way and that, and I have come to the firm conclusion that Thessaly was more or less deliberately sacrificed. With both our land and air power reduced so badly, the risk of an Axis counter-stroke was evidently very great. We did not have enough for safety in both Greece and the Far East. Anyway, they should have seen it coming, and not left such a vital sector to inexperienced formations under untried commanders. When I say “they” I mean not only the Auk, or HQ in Athens, but the Supreme War Council itself.