The Sword of Fate (37 page)

This extraordinary last-minute defeat of Axis machinations in Yugoslavia would, we all knew, mean war. It was not in the bill drawn up by the megalomaniac of Berchtesgaden that any nation should keep its freedom and choose its own rulers. The fact that the pact had already been signed and that another fourteen million slaves were as good as in the bag and had suddenly slipped out of it again as free men must have made him livid with rage. One could well imagine him tearing down the curtains in his fury and grovelling in an epileptic fit upon the floor after the news was brought to him; but when he recovered enough to think coherently he would see to it that the Yugoslavs paid for their temerity. It could only be a matter of days now before the great Balkan blitz started, and we were not surprised when next morning we received orders to break camp and take the road further into Northern Greece.

From our old camp we had been able to see the snow-capped peak of Mount Olympus towering into the blue sky some thirty miles to the north of us. For the next five days we trekked by short stages slowly round it, first up through the desolate mountains to the north-west, then down into the valley of the Aliakamon, where we followed the course of the river to the north-east until Olympus was behind us, and we came out of the foothills in the north to the lower ground, where a great plain with an eight-mile-long lake in its middle forms the basin of the Varda.

Here we halted and learnt with considerable relief that it was not the intention of the Allied High Command that British Forces should hold the narrow strip of Thrace with their backs to the sea against any attack which the Germans might launch from Bulgaria. We were to remain where we were and fight with our backs to Mount Olympus.

During the trek we learnt of the Battle of Cape Matapan, in which the Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm had once more so signally distinguished themselves by sinking three Italian cruisers and two destroyers. The news from Abyssinia was also good. On April the 1st, Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, Italy’s oldest African colony, fell, and to cheer us still further the Air Ministry had disclosed the fact that we were now using a new type of bomb for our air-raids on Germany which had more than four times the explosive power of those previously used.

In the Balkans the game of lies and bluff still went on. Germany was not yet at war with Greece or Yugoslavia but
became more threatening every day. Every sort of dirty trick was being used in Yugoslavia to ferment trouble. The Nazis had demanded that the new Government of General Simovitch should ratify the pact already signed and, having played their old game of using Fifth Columnists to provoke riots among the Croat minority, was now warning the Yugoslavs that action would be taken if they could not restore order in their own country.

It was now just on three weeks since I had left Egypt, so for some time past I had been wondering with increasing anxiety how long it would be before someone tumbled to the fact that I had not the least right to be with my old friends, the New Zealanders, or Major Cozelli, having discovered that I had broken my parole, succeeded in tracing me and set the machinery in motion for having me brought back to Egypt.

Only two factors, I felt, had enabled me to remain out of trouble for so long. Firstly that as I had spent so many months with the battalion in the Western Desert no one dreamed of now questioning my presence with them. Secondly although I had been officially posted from Benghazi to the Prisoners of War Control Staff in Alex in the latter part of February, I had done only two days’ duty there. After that I had been arrested, and I had served for such a little time in that command that even if anyone there knew that I ought to have reported back on the 12th of March, but had failed to do so, it was quite on the cards that they had forgotten all about me.

On the other hand, sooner or later the fact that I should be there but was not would emerge in the returns of strength sent into the A.G.’s Department in Alex, even if Cozelli did not trouble to check up on me and find out that I had disappeared.

That I should get into exceedingly hot water before very long seemed an absolute certainty, but I was much too worried about Daphnis to care about myself. Old Diamopholus had promised to use his considerable influence with the British authorities to get a priority telegram through to me should he receive any news of her, and as I had not heard from him I felt certain that it was because he had no fresh news to send.

I thought of her constantly, but since she was in enemy territory there was nothing—absolutely nothing—I could do to trace her. She might still be in Bulgaria or possibly by now she had followed Mondragora’s trail into Hungary, Italy, or Germany. The awful haunting knowledge that wherever she might be she now went in peril of her life made me so wretched that I began to lose weight; but as an additional officer on the Battalion H.Q.
staff I was able to make myself useful in all sorts of ways to ‘Long Willie’; so once more to tire my mind and secure sleep through bodily fatigue I took on every sort of job that offered.

During those days when we were preparing our positions opposite Janitsa the news was far from good. While the Navy had been occupied in performing another miracle and escorting the whole of the Imperial Expeditionary Force from Egypt to Greece without the loss of a single man or gun, the Germans had taken the opportunity to pump stuff across the Sicilian Channel for all they were worth in ships which, with the connivance of the treacherous French, then ran down the territorial waters off Tunisia to Libya. By means of their extraordinary determination and organising ability the Nazis had succeeded in landing a really formidable force, consisting of Hitler’s personal friend, General Eric Rommel, and the African
Korps
, which was fully mechanised and comprised panzer units specially trained and equipped for fighting in hot countries.

On March the 26th El Agila, on the Gulf of Sirte, the furthest point to which the British had penetrated in Libya, was taken. A withdrawal was immediately ordered, but the Germans surprised us both with the speed of their advance and their strength. Benghazi, with its valuable airfields, had to be evacuated on April the 3rd, and soon afterwards 2,000 of our men, including three very able Generals, were taken captive by the enemy.

This calamity, arising from the overstraining of our Navy and the weakening of our Libyan Army and Air Force, was the direct result of our sending an Expeditionary Force to Greece. It was the first fruits of placing chivalry before strategy in Total War, and many of us wondered how much more it was going to cost us without anything equivalent to show in the weeks to come.

Of course the apologists in Whitehall would say afterwards that we had gone into Greece in order to induce the Yugoslavs to fight; conveniently forgetting that the Yugoslavs had refused even to have staff talks with us, and that their Government had actually signed a pact with the Nazis
after
the British had landed in Greece. And if the Yugoslavs did fight, as it now seemed likely that they would, what then? For how long did our stainless knights imagine that the poor fellows would be able to stand up against the Nazis’ Luftwaffe and panzer divisions? Every enemy we could make for Hitler was something to the good, but if the French Army was not powerful enough to prevent our limited forces being driven out of Belgium, the Yugoslav Army was certainly not strong enough to prevent our being driven out of Greece.

Another nasty smack was the revolt, on April the 3rd, of Sayid Rashid Ali, a dirty little Iraqi lawyer, who had been a former Premier of Iraq and a source of trouble to the British for years. Quite obviously he had been got at by the Nazis and was a Quisling of the first water. After a day or two there was talk of the Nazis landing specialists by ’plane
via
Syria to assist Rashid Ali against the British, and it seemed quite clear that most of the Iraqi Army had gone over to him. I then remembered that when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had been kicked out of Palestine he had sought refuge in Iraq, which some wiseacre in the Foreign Office had considered quite fitted for self-government, although our vital pipeline, by which the Mediterranean Fleet was supplied at Haifa, ran through the country. Putting two and two together I came to the conclusion that it had been a revolt assisted by German air-borne troops in Iraq and not Egypt which had been under discussion that night when I had so nearly lost my life in Mondragora’s flat.

Another ominous item was the death, soon after admitted to be suicide, of Count Teleki, the Prime Minister of Hungary. Germany had been putting pressure on Hungary to make war on Yugoslavia in spite of the friendship pact which existed between the two countries, and there could be little doubt from the fine record of this upright statesman that, at the last, he had preferred to take his life rather than be a party to such a betrayal.

By April the 4th seven German divisions were reported on the Bulgarian frontier in the neighbourhood of the Struma Valley. It was a foregone conclusion that certain of them would drive down through Thrace, cutting the whole of Eastern Greece off from the main body of the country; but the general opinion was that the Yugoslavs would be able to hold the Germans in the mountains to the west of the Struma.

Personally I doubted that. It was no particular prescience on my part but common sense applied to knowledge that had already become history. In the Norwegian campaign the Germans had amazed everybody by doing the apparently impossible when they had crossed the great mountain range which separates the Osterdal from the Gudbrandsdal Valley to descend upon the all-important railway junction of Dombas, where the British were taken entirely by surprise and completely routed. Those Norwegian mountain roads, still covered in ice and snow at the end of April, had appeared absolutely impassable to tanks, but nevertheless the Nazis, with their incredible determination and endurance, had thrown their panzer divisions across them to our complete
discomfiture, and I saw no reason whatsoever why, if the Germans could do that sort of thing in Norway, they should not do the same in Yugoslavia.

It seemed obvious that unless the miserable Italians were to be entirely squeezed out of Albania and the whole country have to be reconquered later by the Axis Forces, the Germans must direct their main stroke to joining up with their Allies in the neighbourhood of Lake Ochrida, at the south-eastern corner of Albania. Such a thrust would also separate the Greeks from the Yugoslavs and was thus of such enormous value that it was inconceivable that the German General Staff should neglect to undertake it, whatever the cost in men and materials. However, it seemed from the very little that I as a second lieutenant could gather that the Allied Command was banking on the Serbs, who had neither tanks nor war ’planes in any quantity, to hold their mountains against the most powerful military striking force which had ever been created in all history.

On April the 5th all Yugoslav frontiers except that with Greece were closed, and we were given the order to stand to for all emergencies. On Sunday, April the 6th, the open town of Belgrade was blasted and reduced to flaming ruins by the blond beasts of Goering’s Air Force. With that news the tidings reached us that at dawn that morning the Germans advance units had crossed the Bulgarian frontier into Thrace. We had sown the wind, and now must real the whirlwind. The Battle for Greece was on.

With growing tenseness we waited hour by hour until we should be called upon to face the tidal wave of steel and flame which we now knew to be advancing inexorably upon us; but that was not to be for some days yet.

At first, as always seems to be the case when the Germans start a new blitzkrieg, the news was better than we had expected. During that fateful Sunday and Monday the Greeks fought with indomitable spirit, and a terrible toll was taken of the Nazi shock
troops all along the Bulgarian border; but by the Tuesday it had been forced in at least four places. After that any hope there had been of holding Thrace was gone.

On Wednesday morning the Germans reached the sea at Maritzan on the Turkish frontier, cutting the Greeks off from their potential Allies, and that night they also entered Salonika; but that was by no means the worst of the picture. At last news was beginning to come through from Yugoslavia, and it was exceedingly perturbing. The most weighty of all the German thrusts had been delivered against the Yugoslavs’ southern army, almost before it had taken up its positions. The panzer divisions had gone through the much-talked-of Serbian mountains like butter, and were already at Skoplje, which was two-thirds of the way to the Albanian border.

The destruction of the Yugoslavs in the south had left the Greek flank uncovered, so they were now forced to abandon Eastern Macedonia and make fresh dispositions. It was then that we blessed Generals Wavell and Wilson, who must have insisted that the Imperial Forces should not be exposed to the possibility of complete annihilation by being sent up to the Bulgarian border, but had arranged for them to hold a zone to the north of Mount Olympus. For us there was no question of having to change front at the last moment, and we knew that we would at least have the benefit of fighting on ground deliberately chosen for us by Generals who had already proved themselves to be great commanders.

On Thursday the 10th the Germans broke the Metaxas line and occupied Xanthe, which virtually put an end to all organised resistance in Thrace. By this, the first day of the battle, they had also penetrated into Southern Yugoslavia in sufficient numbers to divide into two spearheads, one of which was racing forward to join the Italians in Albania, while the other had turned southeast to come crashing down the Valley of the Varda. Meanwhile dozens more German divisions, with Hungarians as auxiliaries, had overrun the Banat and all the low-lying country to the northeast of Belgrade, so that about a third of Yugoslavia was already in German hands and the armies of our new ally thrown into the utmost confusion.

On the sixth day Zagreb, the Croatian capital, fell in the north, and the Nazis reached Monastir in the south, thereby cutting the last communications by road or rail between Greece and Yugoslavia. On that day, too, we saw the first signs of the fighting.