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‘We can’t really beat them here, though, sir, can we?’
‘No, if you want me to be honest. But as I told the men, as far as I can see all that we can do is hold up the German advance and then get away with whatever we can.’ He looked across to Bennett and Valentine. ‘Sarnt-Major, come and tell the lieutenant how easy it is to beat the Nazis.’
Bennett grinned and walked over.
‘Tell Lieutenant Wentworth what we did to the enemy in France, Sarnt-Major.’
‘Well, sir. Gave him a right bloody nose. Blew up an air base, we did, and captured a colonel. Had them chasing around all over after us. And then we got all those men away off the beach, sir, didn’t we. And before that, up north, Mister Lamb – sorry, the Captain – well, he just walked out with a sack of grenades and took out two enemy positions and …’
Lamb cut him short. ‘All right, Bennett. That’s enough, I think.’
Wentworth looked at him. ‘Sir? Did you do that?’
‘Some other time, Lieutenant. It’ll have to wait. Thank you, Sarnt-Major. The main point is that the Hun can be beaten. He’s not some bogey-man. He’s human like you and me. We beat the Ities in Egypt and we can beat the bloody Jerries too. But maybe not just yet, if you see what I mean. So get back to your platoons and when they come make sure you don’t do anything silly. I want all of you, all of you, with me when we get aboard that boat to Alex.’
They saluted and left Lamb with Bennett, Valentine and Mays. It was the best that Lamb could manage to keep Wentworth’s spirits up. But he had seen the boy’s face. He knew, they all knew, that their position was hopeless. Not just here at the pass, but in a global sense.
It was perhaps even more hopeless than it had been a year ago, even though Britain itself was no longer under threat of direct invasion. The RAF had seen to that back in September. Nevertheless, with Greece under the jackboot, Egypt was threatened. And if Egypt fell then the way would be open for Hitler to walk into India. And then the end of the Empire and no more men from Down Under. Then they really would have their backs to the wall, and he wondered whether they would survive. Lamb caught himself. Mustn’t think like that. Defeatist talk. This war was all about morale. Wasn’t that what he had just told the men? If they believed in themselves they would come through as victors.
Valentine spoke. ‘Of course you know why we’re really here, sir?’
‘No, Valentine. You tell me, because I’m sure you’re going to.’
‘Well, sir, we’re here because those chaps in the High Command all studied Greek at Eton and Harrow and they’re a little sentimental about this old place. Can’t stand the idea of Nazis jack-booting about all over their precious temples.’
‘I thought you were a Classical scholar yourself, Valentine.’
‘In a way, sir, but not in the way they are. It’s Greece for the Greeks, sir, in my book. With them it’s personal. You see they all have ancestors who came over here in the eighteenth century and pinched the statues to smarten up their stately homes. And now they just can’t bear the idea that the Jerries will do the same.’
Lamb slept fitfully and had strange and disturbing dreams about Greek statues and the General Staff, in the last of which the New Zealand captain dropped from the sky by parachute, shouting ‘eggs and whisky’. He could still hear the words in his head as he was awoken by the sound of two explosions, jolting him into semi-consciousness. Coming to, he realised that they came from the direction of Thebes. He found his watch.
It was 3 a.m. Lamb got to his feet and, stumbling through his prostrate men in the olive grove, bumped into a Kiwi corporal.
‘What the hell’s happening? Any idea?’
‘There’s an enemy column advancing towards us, sir. A hundred vehicles at least. Tanks too.’ The word sent a chill through Lamb. He had a secret phobia of tanks. Of being crushed beneath their tracks. He had seen in France what that could do to a human being. He had noticed earlier, though, while talking to Nichols, that the country to their immediate flank was almost certainly tank proof. Nichols had told him that there was a track through the village of Villia up to Kriekouki, but it too was steep and easily covered. There would be no option for the German armour but to advance along the road.
There was a crash from the front and then the whoosh and thud of artillery rounds followed by several explosions. Lamb raced towards the forward sangars and saw in the valley below them that the fire from the Australian artillery had already set fire to two trucks from which, in a vision of hell, enemy infantrymen were leaping, their clothes ablaze. The sound of their screams mingled with that of gunfire and echoed across the hills. He looked along the road and saw, behind an advance guard of motorcycle troops, three more lorries outlined against the night and in front of them the unmistakable shape of a tank.
‘Here they come. Stand to.’
As the tank slowly climbed up the pass towards them, Lamb yelled again. ‘Wait for the tanks. Fire at the infantry.’
They were only 1,000 yards away now. He felt the knot tighten in his stomach as it always did when they went into action, and the dry mouth that came with it. He checked his Thompson gun, the weapon he now favoured above a pistol. One full magazine and three more in his pockets. That would do for now. The tank reversed briefly, shoving the burning trucks off the road to allow those following to pass through. Again the artillery crashed out, hitting another truck, but the rest of them lumbered on, jammed tailboard to radiator on the narrow road. The motorcyclists had halted now and had established themselves in cover on either side of the road. Within moments their heavy machine-guns were spitting death at the New Zealanders. More Germans were spilling from the backs of the trucks now, diving for cover in the scrub.
Lamb yelled. ‘Now. Open fire. Fire at the infantry.’
The three platoons opened up, and as they did so the New Zealanders around them joined in, turning the pass ahead of them into a killing ground filled with a horizontal rain of burning lead. He watched as the German infantry tried to burrow deeper into the ground to avoid the fire and as the rounds hit home, sending the young stormtroopers hurtling back like marionettes in a ghastly dance of death. Lamb squeezed the trigger of the Thompson and it kicked into life, spraying the scrub before him. He heard Bennett shout, ‘Keep it up, boys. Don’t let them get away.’ All the frustration of the past few weeks, the anger at dead friends and comrades and the knowledge that they were an army in retreat, was released in an instant. For a moment Lamb’s men forgot that they could not win this battle, that no matter how many Germans fell to their bullets they would eventually be forced to pull back. All that mattered for this moment was the fact that they were winning. They were killing the Germans in the pass, cutting through Hitler’s finest with round after deadly round of small-arms fire that had in minutes transformed a peaceful Greek hillside into an inferno. One man from Number 2 platoon stood up and, shouting some inaudible war cry, fired his rifle from the hip. Eadie yelled at him to stay down, but it was too late. He fell, almost cut in two by a hail of bullets from the machine-gun. This was no pheasant shoot. There were men out there firing at his lads.
Lamb called out, ‘Stay down. Stay in cover.’ A burst of automatic fire ripped through the night air just above his head. There was a cry from his left as another burst of German fire hit home. But it was paid back twofold. The rifles and machine-guns spewed bursts of flame into the night, the bullets ricocheting off the stones and tearing at the trees and bushes.
And then it was over. As quickly as they had come the Germans were running away across the scrub and through the vineyards, climbing back into the trucks, limping into the undergrowth and crawling through the short vines away from the stream of bullets. Still the artillery on the heights fired into the column, and more trucks burst into flames. Those that were still intact began to reverse down the hill, and the tank, which, pinned down by the gunners and blind in the dark, had showed itself powerless in such a situation, followed as fast as it could go.
Lamb gave the command. ‘Cease firing.’ The Jackals held their fire, all but three men who, elated by their unexpected success, carried on shooting at shadows until their platoon sergeants had shouted themselves nearly hoarse.
Lamb surveyed the road and hills before them. Counted eight lorries and two motorcycles burning on the highway.
He saw Nichols. ‘Well, that sent them packing. I wonder how long before they try again.’
‘Not long, I should say. If they do.’
‘They won’t try to bomb you out, will they? They need the road intact.’
‘Don’t be too sure. They don’t care how they get rid of us. Then they’ll just fix the road, or build a new one. They’re already building a new bridge at Corinth.’
Mays found him. ‘Sir. Two wounded. One bad, Marks. Hit in the thigh. He’ll need to be treated, sir.’
Nichols spoke. ‘Our MO’s somewhere by the command post to the rear. Take him there, Sergeant. I’d better see to my own men.’
Lamb walked across to the left as they were helping Marks back to the aid post and gave him a smile. ‘Well done, Marks. You’ll be fine.’ He looked around at the others, sitting in the moonlight on the rocks, wiping down their weapons and sensed not just exhaustion now but a sense of achievement. ‘Well done, all of you. That showed them. Sarnt-Major, make sure they’re ready in case Jerry tries it again. And be ready for air attack too. They know where we are now.’
It only took a few minutes before the recce planes came over. They flew close to the ground, like hawks hovering over a wheat field, swooping and climbing in their search for prey. There was no point in trying to hide. It was too late for that, and no sooner had the planes gone than others appeared over the mountains. Dorniers, lumbering in. The heavy stuff. Lamb saw them and joined in the warning shouts.
‘Aircraft. Take cover. Take cover.’
The aircraft were not as low as the Stukas. There was no frantic, screaming dive, but looking up he could see the bomb doors open and watched as the black sticks fell from the belly of the plane. He ran to one of the stone sangars and found himself crouching next to Bennett, Eadie and Smart, and it crossed his mind that this sort of thing was really of no use as cover against air attack. He prayed that the order forbidding anti-aircraft fire would be lifted, but it was a full ten minutes before he heard the crump of the Australian batteries as they tried to down the bombers. He looked up and saw little puffs of smoke appear in the sky around the planes, but by then it was too late.
‘Just in time,’ scoffed Eadie. Some distance over to their left another sangar filled with Kiwis had taken a hit and its useless stones lay scattered across the valley, along with the remains of its occupants. Lamb looked away as the Dorniers turned for home.
As the dust settled and the post came to life, with desperate medics searching for signs of life, Nichols came up to him, smiling broadly. ‘Haven’t you heard? We’re pulling out. Being relieved by 1st Armoured and the Rangers. You’d best get ahead of us and make time. No point in waiting – you’ll just get caught up in our undertow, and there’s nothing else you can do here. Our sappers are going to blow the pass anyway. Jerry will have to make a new way through.’
The adjutant, it seemed, had established a control post at the Villia crossroads to check out the brigade and the hangers-on, while the Kiwis’ CO, again in charge of the rear party, supervised the blowing of demolitions in the pass. After the excitement of the raid, Lamb again felt the cold of the night and shivered. ‘Charles, find the others and get the men together. We’re moving out.’
‘Can you say where to, sir?’
‘Athens, as far as I can see. Then a boat to Alex. After that it’s anyone’s guess.’
Bennett found them. ‘Sir, no casualties from that last lot. We were lucky, sir.’
‘Yes, damned lucky. Let’s hope it holds out.’
They watched as stretcher-bearers passed them carrying what had once been a man. Galvanised, Lamb spoke. ‘Right. Let’s get moving.’ Eadie sped off with Bennett and within minutes the men had assembled, rubbing their hands together and blowing on them against the cold. They lined up in platoons and sections and Lamb looked them over. There was no denying it, they were hardly fit for Horse Guards, as scruffy a bunch of soldiers as he had ever seen. But they were alive, and that was what mattered to him. And they were going to stay that way.
Before the German attack the transports, including their own carrier and lorries, had been moved a few miles to the rear and they made their way on foot at first.
As they passed through, Lamb heard the explosions as the first charges went off, bringing what sounded like half the old mountain down on to the road.
‘Jerry’ll never get through that lot, sir,’ said Bennett. ‘Leastways, when he does we’ll be long gone.’
Lamb heard Valentine speak, to no one in particular.
‘A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust.
That’s Byron. Lord Byron, if you will. You walk, gentlemen, in the cradle of civilisation.’
On their arrival at the transport area they were met by the unexpected and welcome sight of four Australian corporals and a handful of Australian nurses handing out tots of rum. Bennett held out his tin mug. ‘Blimey, this is a turn-up for the books.’
Valentine piped up. ‘I thought this went out with Wellington.’ He smiled at a nurse. ‘I’ll have a double please, my dear. Just like a Friday night at the Bag o’ Nails.’
An Australian sergeant approached them. ‘You got transport here, sir?’
‘Yes. One carrier, two lorries. Where did you leave them, Sarnt-Major?’
‘Over to the right there, sir. In those olive trees.’
The sergeant nodded at Lamb. ‘Very good, sir. But you’ll have to wait your turn with the others. There is a queue.’
‘Naturally,’ said Valentine, taking a short nip of rum.
They found the trucks and Lamb produced the distributors which he had had the foresight to remove, carefully replacing each one. As they waited and slowly sipped at the acrid spirit, they watched other units depart, queuing up for their turn to get away to freedom.
At last the sergeant nodded them on, saluting Lamb, and the three vehicles rumbled out on to the road. As they hit the track an Aussie redcap, standing at the roadside, yelled across. ‘Put your foot down, mate. We don’t want to hold up the ones coming behind.’
Bennett shook his head. ‘He’s got some hope, sir. No headlights. That’s the order. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s the order, Sarnt-Major. Stop the Jerry planes from seeing us in the dark. Better do as he says, though. Quick as you can then.’
‘Whatever you say, sir.’ Bennett pushed gingerly on the accelerator and soon they were doing a comfortable 15 miles an hour along the narrow road, just able to see the rear of the truck in front, by the light of the moon.
‘Just as well we can’t see a blind thing, sir.’ Turner said. ‘Reckon there must be a sheer drop over there.’
At that moment, Bennett pushed the carrier round a turning and Lamb was suddenly aware in the moonlight of a yawning ravine directly under their tracks. ‘Good God, man. Be careful.’
‘Christ, sir. Sorry, that was a bit close.’
‘Too bloody close, Sarnt-Major. Let’s try and get there in one piece.’
Lamb wondered whether the rest of the battalion had made it across the Corinth canal before the German attack. He prayed that they had and would get away from the Peloponnese. But that was of no immediate concern to him and his men. From what Nichols had said, the Germans were advancing from two directions now. He had no doubt that they would soon complete their bridge across the canal.
He turned to Smart. ‘Have another go at raising Battalion on the wireless, Smart, will you?’
“I tried an hour ago, sir. There’s just no signal in the mountains.’
‘Well, have another go. You never know, do you?’
There was a click in the darkness and then the familiar hum of the set in its blackout cover as Smart began to talk into the hand-piece. After ten minutes he gave up. ‘Nothing, sir. I told you, it’s the mountains.’
Lamb nodded and pushed himself deeper into the seat, his hands tucked under his armpits for warmth. The next thing he knew, he was lifting his head, aware that he must have fallen asleep. He quickly took in their surroundings as one vine-covered hillside succeeded another. He looked at his watch. For almost half an hour, it seemed, he had been drifting in and out of sleep. They were all exhausted, of course, but he knew that they would have to find that extra ounce of strength if they were to get away.
Here the road to Athens was no more than a tiny, winding, dusty track crammed with refugees and soldiers: Greeks, Brits, Kiwis, Australians. Most were on foot and only the lucky few, like the Jackals, in trucks. Lamb and his men, scarves over their mouths and noses against the dust, drove on without lights, as ordered, their road lit only by the stars and the moon. Even so, they could barely see thirty yards in front of them. After Bennett’s near miss with the cliff edge, they drove at a tortuously slow pace over the next few miles of curling roads and ragged hills.
Lamb swore. ‘Damn this. Switch on the lights, Sarnt-Major, or the Jerries’ll be on our tails before we ever get to Athens.’
‘You sure, sir? We were ordered to …’
‘I know what the orders were. Switch the damn things on. They’ll see us in the daylight soon enough.’
Bennett switched on the lights, bathing the road ahead in a white glow, and moments later they began to accelerate. Clearly the men in the vehicles in front had had the same idea and were now some distance ahead.
Bennett grinned. ‘That’s more like it, sir. Permission to put my foot down.’
‘Permission?’
The Bren carrier lurched forward into full speed, which, although only some 30 miles per hour, after the appalling slowness gave the impression to its occupants that they were on the racetrack at Broadlands. The trucks behind them followed suit. It took them just over another hour to manage the thirty miles to the outskirts of Athens, and as they left behind the final range of hills Lamb relaxed. The road flattened out quickly now and became straighter. He had kept the map before him and continued looking up to verify their position. But when he did so this time, he gasped. For the dawn was with them now and the sun’s pink and orange rays began to pierce the night sky, falling upon the ancient capital and glinting off the whiteness of the Parthenon.
3
Athens was in chaos. The streets and boulevards, which only a week ago had seen the well-heeled drinking cocktails at the hotel bars and cafés filled with the locals, were now thronged with a quite different type of visitor. Refugees had of course been arriving in the city for more than a year, from Smyrna, Rumania, Russia, even Poland. But now the place seemed to Lamb to have become the hub of the world, brimming over with every nationality, and there was no mistaking the mood of the newcomers. The place stank of fear. The local people, though, seemed strangely sanguine.
Driving more slowly now into the ancient city, the company were greeted by several Greek civilians with a thumbs-up sign. It seemed bizarre to Lamb and singularly inappropriate.
Valentine, who, as he spoke Greek of a sort had transferred to the lead vehicle, whispered to him. ‘Sir, they think it’s the way we always greet each other.’
Lamb suspected, though, from their smiling faces that they might be some of the Greek fascists about whom they had been told. The streets were daubed with anti-Italian slogans but he wondered whether these men hadn’t come out from hiding in the expectation that soon their friends the Germans would be among them.
Most of the Greeks, however, he knew to be a proud people, and President Metaxas himself had refused the ultimatum to submit to Italian occupation. Unanimously Greece had united against the Axis when it had seemed that only Britain stood against Hitler and Mussolini. And now, thought Lamb, this is what they get for all that faith and defiance. We were put in here as a political move, and now, when they need us most, we’re leaving them, abandoning them to their fate.
The little convoy made slow progress, hampered by the press of civilians as they smiled and waved. A pretty, dark-haired girl with brown eyes stepped up to the carrier and planted a kiss on Bennett’s cheek. He shied away as the others laughed. Mays joked, ‘Oi. Careful, miss. He’s a married man.’
Funny, thought Lamb, how it feels as if we’re being welcomed as liberators, when they know all too well that we’re about to abandon them. What sort of people could they be to have such strength of spirit?
While he and every one of his men knew that time was of the essence, they were glad at least that there was no apparent present danger on the rooftops and in the streets of the ancient capital. The danger from the skies, of course, was ever-present.
Lamb was not sure quite where he was aiming for, but it had occurred to him that, with so many Allied soldiers trying to find senior officers, the British Legation might be a good alternative starting point for discovering a means of escape. He clutched his tattered and spineless copy of Baedecker’s Greece and thanked God he had brought it with him.
The Legation, he knew, was in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, and according to the book that was in Constitution Square. Turning left, they found themselves beside the terrace of a large building, Italian in style and baked by two centuries of sun. On the terrace in front, among the carefully manicured gardens, some steamer chairs lay broken and surrounded by empty wine bottles. The army’s been here, he thought. He sniffed, and Valentine saw him do it. ‘It’s gum, sir, that smell. Sap from the pines. Nice, isn’t it.’
Lamb turned to him, bemused. ‘Uh yes, very pleasant.’
‘It always says “Greece” to me, sir, don’t you agree?’
‘You know Athens well?’
‘Didn’t I tell you, sir? A trip to study the antiquities, when I was up at university.’
Lamb shook his head. ‘Where haven’t you been, Valentine? In that case you can point us in the direction of the British Legation.’
