Operation Mercury (5 page)

As Salonika was too exposed for disembarkation, the majority of British and Dominion troops came ashore at Piraeus or further north at Volos which was closer to the forward post at Larissa. In total the forces dispatched totalled some 58,000 men, of whom roughly 35,000 were front liners, with the rest support and administrative personnel. The Dominion divisions were between 10,000-15,000 strong at the outset and took with them their own divisional artillery, mainly the highly effective 25-pounder field gun and the considerably less useful 2-pounder anti-tank gun, obsolete and generally ineffective against panzers.

The Kiwis had their mechanised battalion equipped with light tanks and Bren carriers – the ‘divisional cavalry regiment'. In addition to an anti-tank regiment the divisions were equipped with anti-tank rifles and Brens; the men carried .303 Lee-Enfield bolt action rifles as their personal weapons, together with a few Thompson sub-machine guns, the ubiquitous ‘tommy gun', a .45 calibre weapon which was capable of firing in bursts. A large number of trucks was available and the single British armoured division of 3,000 - 4,000 soldiers had around 100 tanks, together with field artillery, anti-tank and engineer formations. It also possessed some anti-tank rifles and light mortars.

Nominally the Greek army could dispose some fourteen divisions in Albania and three and a half on the Bulgarian border. Inevitably some of these formations existed more in name than reality, were poorly equipped and their morale had been sapped by losses and the intensity of the campaign fought in the freezing passes. They possessed little modern artillery, less tanks and only the most basic logistics; most supplies came on the backs of mules or donkeys. They were totally exposed to attack from the air. From the outset the Luftwaffe enjoyed an almost unchallenged superiority in the air.

The lack of air cover was a constant nightmare for the hard-pressed and weary troops on the ground – much criticism was levelled at the RAF (‘Rare as Fairies' and other epithets). This was not due to faintheartedness – the planes were simply not available; the crucial element for the success of any modern campaign, adequate air support, was lacking from the very start.

The initial Allied plan was that the three Greek divisions, under-equipped, under-strength and under-supplied, would be used as a blocking force to blunt the German onslaught. The remainder of the available Greek forces were enmeshed with the three Italian armies operating in Albania. This attempt at a holding action was never really a viable proposition and the blow launched on 6 April across the Bulgarian border and to the east of Salonika, was delivered in overwhelming force, with full and close air support.

Paratroops were dropped behind the Greek lines guarding the Rupel Pass but this early deployment of airborne troops was not a success; most of the detachment of 150 were killed or captured as the Greeks fought back with considerable gallantry. Nonetheless Salonika fell within days.

 

Greece was, to all intents and purposes, a country with a near medieval infrastructure. A single railway line wound from Athens to Salonika, a narrow and highly vulnerable ribbon that connected the two principal cities. Roads were little more than tracks, unsuitable for motor vehicles and impassable in bad weather. The Allied commander, General ‘Jumbo' Wilson, was further hamstrung by the fact that, in order to satisfy the Greeks, still officially neutral, he was obliged to pretend he did not really exist, masquerading as a journalist!

As war between Germany and Greece had not, prior to 6 April, been declared, the German legation in Athens was not troubled and the military observers were able to observe without interference. It was into this almost Ruritanian atmosphere that British and Dominion troops were disembarking:

The situation had the makings of comic opera but the consequences of this extraordinary lax security were serious enough – by 9 March OKW in Berlin had a full and accurate assessment of Allied strength and intentions. If Wilson's problems were not sufficient, he struggled to exercise any proper form of command structure beset by logistical difficulties imposed by an unhealthy mix of Balkan politics, difficult terrain, poor communications and muddled objectives. These problems were further exacerbated by a lack of standardisation and cooperation between the forces at his disposal, each clinging rigidly to its own pre-determined structure.

Brigadier ‘Bruno' Brunskill, to whom was passed the poisoned chalice of coordinating the logistical effort, found, initially, he was not able to move freely north of Larissa for fear of antagonising the Germans! His only reconnaissance was by air and he was obliged to rely on a single borrowed map, his efforts to blend Greek and Allied supply networks were doomed to failure.

Ultimately he was forced to fall back on the tried expedient of heroic improvisation; the Wehrmacht was not labouring under such intense difficulties and in the finest blitzkrieg tradition had been able to concentrate its attacking forces, the
Schwerpunkt
, in overwhelming strength in the right place and fully supported from the air. No improvisation, however brilliant or inspired, can triumph against such deadly precision.

To ensure that this superiority in the air was maintained, Von List was the beneficiary of a new aerial command, Luftflotte 4. A mix of fighters, bombers, dive bombers and observers with a full complement of aircrew and base personnel, created specifically to support the Balkans offensive, some 1,200 aircraft flying from bases in Romania and Bulgaria. Against this formidable armada, backed by a further 300 Italian planes, the RAF could, as mentioned, muster a paper strength of perhaps a couple of hundred, less than half of which were airworthy. It was an inauspicious beginning.

The primitive state of the Greek national infrastructure further hamstrung the Allies, whilst the Germans had been able to create functioning airstrips in the occupied countries. To signal the type of interference the British might expect, the Luftwaffe carried out a serious raid on the docks at Piraeus on the night of 7 April. One of their targets was the supply ship
Clan Fraser
– loaded with munitions. Brunskill, arriving by car to do what he could, found total chaos:

There was little that could be done. Presently a further ammunition supply vessel also blew up to add to the confusion and to reinforce the message that the Luftwaffe ruled the skies over Greece.

Despite all these difficulties the Allied soldiers found themselves being greeted rapturously by the citizens, welcomed as friends and liberators, an affection that never waned even when the same troops, battered, bloodied and in the exhaustion of retreat, came stumbling back through the same streets.

By the middle of March the battalions were digging in along the Aliakmon line but the plan was already crumbling. General Papagos was unwilling and largely unable to extricate his divisions from Albania, the newly raised formations were hopelessly inadequate and under-equipped. Wavell's expressed concerns over the vulnerability of the Allied defences proved entirely well founded. The line was also very thinly held and a vital corridor, through which the Germans could penetrate and thus turn the whole position, was virtually unmanned. Hitler was not blind to the strategic opportunities his sudden and violent occupation of Yugosalvia now presented.

There was no alternative but to withdraw and Wilson extricated his forces from the trap which the Aliakmon line had become to establish a new position which, in the east, would stretch from the anchor of Mount Olympus to the Serbian border. In the course of the withdrawal the Greek Macedonian divisions began to disintegrate; a whiff of treachery was also in the air.
²¹

This proved to be the beginning of a series of extended rearguard actions into which the campaign deteriorated, faced with the continuous advance of an enemy with an overwhelming superiority of men, guns and armoured vehicles, his advance closely supported at every stage by the siren wail of the Stukas and the murderous strafing runs of Me109s.

 

Sir Lawrence Pumphrey had been commissioned into the Northumberland Hussars; Yeomanry, who were being re-equipped with anti-tank guns and obliged to part with their beloved mounts (officers had been allowed to retain their horses, however, until the close of the current hunting season). He arrived in Egypt on New Year's Day 1941. The regiment was encamped near Tel-el-Kebir, site of Sir Garnet Wolseley's victory over dissident local forces in 1882. Here they practised the techniques of desert warfare before moving closer to Alexandria, on the fringes of the Nile Delta.

Rumours abounded, and soon the ‘Noodles' were aboard HMS
Gloucester
bound for Piraeus. Young men, schooled in the classical tradition and reared on Homer, strained for a first glimpse of the magical Greek mainland. Initially they were based at Glyfada, amidst delightful hill country cooled by thyme scented spring air.

Squadron Leader David Barnett, who would be killed on Crete on the morning of 20 May, gave a series of lectures before the unit moved into position on the line of the River Axios in late March. The Noodles were temporarily attached as gunnery support to the Greek 6th Division under General Karasos. Sir Lawrence found the General spoke no English, and they communicated with a little oral French and by written exchanges in classical Greek.

On 6 April, Easter Sunday, Sir Lawrence returned from communion to find the entire Greek force had decamped without notice. His detached four gun battery was obliged to limber hurriedly and follow the rest of the regiment in their retreat through Thessaly. German tanks were catching up on the far side of the intervening river and the guns made ready to stand and fight. Before the enemy was sighted, fresh orders to withdraw were received and the rearguard once again struggled after, losing one of the guns during the course of a difficult river crossing.

Sir Lawrence's battery was supported by a platoon from the Rangers and, even though they were bringing up the rear, never actually sighted the Germans. They did not rejoin the main body until they had reached Thermopylae; ground sanctified by the sacrifice of much earlier wars.

The line was always in imminent risk of being outflanked and the panzers probed around the extremities, avoiding strongly held defensive positions which could be encircled and mopped up later; the pressure from the air was nerve-racking, relentless and virtually unopposed:

M. Koryzis, the Greek Prime Minister, on hearing from Papagos (as did Wilson) that the Greek armies had reached the limit of their endurance, chose the moment to end his political career by blowing his brains out. His commander-in-chief, now becoming anxious to spare his country further suffering in the face of inevitable capitulation, suggested to Wilson that it was time for the Allies to withdraw,
sauve qui peut
.

This was the news that Wavell must have dreaded; all his worst fears were confirmed and the War Cabinet accepted the inevitable, endorsing the order for an evacuation; it was now just a question of how many could be saved from the gathering debacle.

On the ground Wilson faced the unenviable task of attempting a fighting withdrawal from the ruptured position around Mount Olympus to a shorter line of no more than fifty miles and running from the heroic outpost at Thermopylae to the Gulf of Corinth.

A nightmare retreat for the troops, dodging from one bomb-racked village to another, constantly exposed to the chattering machine guns, the trucks bumping and toiling over unmade cart tracks, exhausted, disorientated. All movement was confined to the hours of darkness, the drivers straining to maintain contact with the taillights of the truck in front, the only illumination permitted, the stark mountain landscape lit by the bursting of enemy shells and the crump of abandoned supply dumps going up.