For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ sorry, Sergeant, I forgot all about you – your battery went over the hill and if you can find that number three post on the other side they’ll tell you which way they went.” I finally caught up with them and went up through Larisa and up almost to the Albanian border, and there we camped – took me 36 hours on the bike. On the way up we were watching the planes come over and could see tracers and, my God, they’re not going up, they’re coming down. We hit the dirt pretty smartly at the side of the road. However, we got used to that.

      And we got into position there and stayed there for a while, and in the evening I got off my bike, about 4 o’clock, and lay down beside it and went to sleep, and shortly after there was cheers and I looked up and saw about 30 planes in the air; Spitfires had arrived, or Hurricanes, and it turned out they were Messerschmitts, and they were coming down not going up. There was an airfield just behind where we were, equipped with Gladiators and Lysanders, and a Lysander got up and two of the Gladiators got up; they managed to bring down two of the Messerschmitts, but later on the German planes came back again and cleaned up the whole of the outfit.

      We got down eventually to a fishing place called Volos, quite a good spot actually, because we were in a trench about 10 feet deep, pretty wide and we could move around quite a bit. We dug the exchange into the side of the bank and ran the appropriate lines and were quite happy there for quite a while. The fields behind us had peas and stuff and they were getting near ripe and we kept popping up and picking a few peas and back down into the village when the planes came over – at least we’d got green peas. It got a bit hectic after a while, and the lines were getting shot up.

      Then we got word that the Greeks had packed it in and we were evacuated. I smashed my good BSA motorbike up with an axe and pulled the bank down over it. We had to leave our guns; we couldn’t spike them and destroy them because that would have given the enemy a clue that we were perhaps moving. All we had to do was take the breech blocks, and we took as much of the equipment as we could. I closed the exchange and got on the truck and drove down. We finally got down to the water’s edge and after loading put the telephone exchange into the drink. Our packs, our main packs, all went into the drink; it meant that through the three packs we’d discarded, another man could get on the ship. We didn’t have too much: I had binoculars, gas-mask, revolver, compass, technical haversack, a small haversack on my back, greatcoat, and we had to dump our blankets, mess tin, water bottle.

      We made it out to whalers that came in, and every time I tried to get on board I missed out. I’d two cartons of cigarettes, tucked in behind my gasmask, and after several attempts to board, a big Navy hand came and grabbed me by the back of the belt of my greatcoat and hauled me in head over heels, and I never saw the cigarettes again. We got out and climbed up the net on to the side of the destroyer, the Kandahar, and I got assigned to the Petty Officers’ Mess. The entrance into the Petty Officers’ Mess was through a hole in the deck, and I got stuck half way down the hole – it was all the stuff that I had on me – and the next thing I know is a big Navy foot on top of my tin hat, gives me a push and I went through pretty quickly. Things soaking wet, everything was wet having to wade out, and the Navy boys there took all my clothes down to the engine room, gave me Navy pants and a skivvy, and they dried all my uniform out down in their engine room and brought it back. It was great to get a good feed with fresh vegetables, which we hadn’t seen for some considerable time.

      We were bombed a bit on the way and I was lying on my bunk resting and saw the side of the ship being pushed in and thought that this is no place to be. I tried to climb up the ladder to get through, but the manhole was closed and the Chicago piano – what they call a “Chicago piano” was a pom-pom – kept them busy firing up on the top, so I had to stay down there wondering whether I’d get out of that. However, we finally made it and landed at Suda Bay in Crete.’

      George Brown was a Lieutenant in the 20th NZ Infantry Battalion, and recalls his initial enthusiasm for Greece:

      ‘We landed in Greece at Piraeus Harbour and marched to our bivouac, which was lovely after the heat of the desert. We explored Athens, learnt a little bit more about its history, drank their lovely wine, ate their lovely steaks and eventually entrained to Katerini. After a few days there we went by truck, I think, to Ryakia; from Ryakia at night you could see the lights of Salonika.

      We dug in there, and found the people very hospitable. We officers of our company were billeted in a house and the Greeks would bring us some of their food and bring their babies in to see us. Our battalion pioneers put in a pump in the well in the town. The padre had received a few dozen bars of chocolate – well, a few dozen bars of chocolate weren’t much good to a thousand odd men, so the colonel and the padre went down to the local school and I believe the delight that the children showed when given a cake of chocolate was well worth their effort. We took up various defensive positions round Ryakia. Yugoslavia was expected to fall to the Germans and we were to defend Greece.

       George Arthur Brown (left)

      Late one night we were all called out and we marched and marched to the front line overlooking the Aliakmon River. It was snowing, and we had no shelter; we settled down for the night, cold, unfed and miserable. Eventually we dug in there, did various patrols and had a communion service. During the service, conducted by a Padre Dawson, the Jerries came over in their planes and took pot shots at us, but nobody was hurt. We then went forward as a battalion for a short time, didn’t really have any skirmishes with the German infantry, and eventually we were withdrawn. During the withdrawal the German Air Force had dominance of the skies and we were severely bombed; there were a few casualties and I think we went back as far as Larisa.

      One morning we were told that our company were to take up a position on a very high hill – it must have been about 3,000 feet high. We climbed up that hill – there were no paths, it was really beautiful through the bush, squirrels everywhere. We stopped for lunch and Colonel Kippenberger arrived and sat by me, and whilst we were having lunch a runner came up and delivered him a message. He read it and passed it to me. He said, “George, don’t tell the troops until I am well on my way – we are withdrawing.” After having climbed thousands of feet, we went down. We were then told to destroy everything. My friend Jack Baines, who was tenting with me, he and I had an ‘His Master’s Voice’ gramophone, and we each shouldered a pick and broke it up with all the records. It was devastating.

      So then the withdrawal started; we were still being bombed and we got through Athens when the German advance party were actually there. This was fairly late at night; we got on to trucks that were directed to a certain area and we were told to destroy everything except our arms. So we set to and pierced the tyres of the trucks and ran the oil out and started the motors. Then the order came that we were to stop that, because we were going on further, still retreating. We went through a village and there B Company of our Battalion had the most casualties from machine-gunning and bombing from the air. I don’t think our company had anything, although we did fire a few shots. The Germans didn’t seem to be taking any action at night-time, so we marched down to the beach. I don’t know how many miles it was, but it was interminable.

      We had got to the beach and dropped down to rest when one of my men came round and said, “Sir, give me your water bottle – we’ve found a dump of rum,” and he brought my water bottle full of rum, which I eventually drank. The caiques appeared to take us out to the Navy ships and I got on the caique and the next thing I heard was a voice from this Navy ship, the destroyer Kimberley: “Hurry up there or you’ll get left behind!” I had fallen asleep.’

      Rex Thompson, a driver with the NZ Army Service Corps, related that:

      ‘We supplied the base at Larisa, which was about half way up Greece. The dump there was a big dump and the Germans, being keen on routine, used to bomb every lunch-time, and the personnel on the dump there would bail out as soon as the sirens СКАЧАТЬ