CHAPTER SIX

At the Feet of Zeus They Fought

In the mythology of Ancient Greece, Mount Olympus was the home of the gods. There the gods lived, loved, and fought, led by mighty Zeus, king of the Olympians. These were not distant spirits, but gods intimately involved in the lives of men and women, each adopting their favourites among the mortals. To support their preferred heroes, the gods descended to earth when need arose, aiding and advising. Trading the lives of one hero or city for others, they bargained among themselves, made compromises, and even deceived each other in the pursuit of advantage for their protégés. For these celestial spirits, Homer cast Olympus as a lyrical paradise:

where,
they say, the gods’ eternal mansion stands unmoved,
never rocked by galewinds, never drenched by rains,
nor do the drifting snows assail it, no, the clear air
stretches away without a cloud, and a great radiance
plays across that world where the blithe gods
live all their days in bliss.1

Unfortunately for the Anzacs, reeling from the hammer-blows of a German blitzkrieg, the environs of Mount Olympus proved a good deal less blissful than Homer had forecast. Although it was coming on for spring, the snows were still frequent, making life a misery for troops digging weapon pits that they were to live in for days on end, cold and sodden. Above them, the Anzacs found something other than a sky of flawless azure, but this departure from Homer’s ethereal idyll at least provided one contemporary parallel to his epics, because the prowling dive-bombers of the Luftwaffe certainly threw thunderbolts of which the gods could be proud.

The troops took up positions around the mountain in compliance with the orders issued by Wilson on 8 April. These were designed to pull back the British forces, then forward of Katerini, to a new position, the Aliakmon Line, that offered to guard the mountain passes through which the Germans would have to move to occupy central Greece. Blamey himself had been calling for this deployment since before even the German invasion, Freyberg recording in his campaign report that ‘General Blamey had said on the 23rd March that on becoming Corps Commander he would order this rearrangement of the line’.2

Reorganising the British defence line in the way preferred by Blamey was now a scramble against time. In compliance with Wilson’s orders on 8 April, the 4 NZ Brigade moved to the Servia Pass to act as a pivot for the W Group as a whole, with the 6 NZ Brigade withdrawing from its positions forward of Katerini, passing through the 5 NZ Brigade already in position astride the Olympus Pass. The Australian 16 Brigade, holding the Veria Pass, would also have to come back, to ground north-west of the New Zealanders at Servia. These moves meant that the New Zealanders had wasted a month preparing the Vermion–Olympus Line, and in the process had expended most of their anti-personnel mines and barbed wire, without a shot being fired as the Germans outflanked the positions forward of Katerini.

The preliminary orders for these moves were issued by the 1 Australian Corps, and were among the last before it was retitled the Anzac Corps. The 16 Brigade at Veria got warning orders on 10 April, which included a direction to send all the brigade transport back to Gerania. This meant that its three infantry battalions faced a route march:

[T]he Bde was apparently moved back by foot owing to the shortage of transport at this stage and the possible congestion of road traffic on the KOZANI–SERVIA Road during the withdrawal of 19 Aust. Inf. Bde and other troops from the VEVE Pass. Tactically there seemed to be no special point in moving the troops back by foot across this mountainous country.3

This decision, made even before Vasey at Vevi came under pressure, was a premature and unfortunate one for the men of the 16 Brigade. The distance from Veria to Servia was 60 kilometres on the map, but a paper approximation could only hint at the steep climbs required to get up and down the 1000-metre mountain ranges. Blamey and Rowell decided physical ordeal was preferable to German ambush, and the march out of Veria began on the evening of Good Friday, 11 April, when elements of the 2/1st and the 2/2nd battalions withdrew from their forward positions.

The decision not to bring forward transport meant that the withdrawal was a jumble, much equipment having to be dumped for want of transport. The 2/2nd Field Regiment had to leave a large stock of ammunition behind, and the infantry were assisted only by malnourished donkeys — one soldier of the 2/3rd Battalion muttered that he had seen bigger billygoats in the Australian outback. The animals proved incapable of lifting the heavier gear: the base plates for the battalion mortars were tied to a pole and carried out by two men, the pairs working in relays to share the load.4

Before the bulk of the Australian force set out on 12 April, it snowed for 24 hours, the weather and the altitude combining to set the men a gruelling physical challenge. The 2/1st Battalion endured a two-day march of 55 kilometres across mountainous country, the last six of them ankle-deep in mud. The battalion needed every bit of camaraderie it could muster — its men on the brink of exhaustion, ‘they rested in the snow for five minutes in every fifteen, and when a man collapsed his mates would distribute his gear among them and help him along’.5 The 2/1st literally marched into the wilderness, and was out of contact for several days: at one stage the 16 Brigade reported to corps headquarters that the battalion was lost, and liaison officers sent to find it along the appointed route could discover no trace of it.6 The battalion had indeed lost its bearings on a number of occasions, not least because the thick snow obscured paths and tracks. Nearing the end of the march, the battalion exhausted its supplies and, at one stage, the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel I. R. Campbell, set off himself with a small team of donkeys to find a way through and retrieve sufficient rations to keep his men going.7

Max Rice was with the 2/1st on that frightful march. With few rations of their own, he remembered his platoon drawing on the food left by the Greek peasants as offerings at the shrines and icons that graced the mountain paths. Rice recalled, ‘You had a groundsheet, that’s all you had, digger, some didn’t have overcoats, and we were in three or four feet of snow, you slept in it, you marched in it.’ Reasonably enough, he concluded, the experience ‘made you a tough man’. The young infantryman did profit from some advice passed on by his late father — ‘Always change your socks every chance you get, even just from right foot to left.’ Rice emerged from the march out of Veria without so much as a blister, and ever after stood by the quality of Australian boots — ‘not the black [parade] ones, but the tan ones, best you’ll get anywhere.’8

Apart from their personal kit, much of the 16 Brigade’s gear had to be destroyed. The 2/2nd Battalion used their bayonets to spear hundreds of ration tins that could not be carried out, and to rip their tents into shreds; without the latter, when the rain came on the night of 10 April, the eve of the retreat, the men spent a miserable night. In his report, the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel F. O. Chilton, a 36-year-old solicitor from Warrawee, New South Wales, wrote that: ‘For most of us there was little sleep owing to heavy rain falling, the water by morning had formed a coating of ice upon us as we attempted to sleep.’ When the foot slog got under way, Chilton described it as ‘a terrible march full of frightful memories for us all. Unceasingly we drove out donkeys before us and frequently we slipped and fell on the frozen road. The snow was falling heavily and a bitterly cold wind made us shiver in spite of our exertions.’9

Along with the rest of the men from the 2/3rd Battalion, Bill Jenkins was also part of the movement from Veria to Servia Pass. Jenkins quickly fell behind his company to support his mate ‘Troubles’ Whiteley, who was fading as the conditions became increasingly bitter. They were among the last to get back over the Aliakmon, and Jenkins had to persuade the engineers, who were about to sink the ferry used to shift the Australians over the river, to let them use it one last time. Jenkins supported his flagging mate for two days and two nights, narrowly evading a German patrol in one village, and relying on a few eggs taken from local farms as their nourishment.

Jenkins was so cold when he regained contact with the rearguard that, upon coming across a British artillery regiment, he jumped on the hot barrel of a 60-pound gun, hugging it for its warmth. When a British sergeant told him to get off the gun or he’d shoot, Jenkins delivered a stream of suitable invective. He got no more sympathy even from his own countrymen. Despite getting ‘Troubles’ to safety — and, in doing so, surviving two nights sleeping in the snow, succoured only by a groundsheet and a blanket — Jenkins was roundly condemned by his comrades, when he finally rejoined his platoon, for failing to deliver the tea and sugar he had been originally delegated to carry, but which he had thrown away to lighten his load. ‘You silly bastard’, was the unsympathetic conclusion of one.10

Frank Reid, the transport officer with the 2/3rd Battalion, always regretted the decision by corps headquarters not to send the brigade trucks forward to lift the infantry out. He was under orders, relayed from Brigadier Allen by his own commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Lamb, not to take trucks north of the Aliakmon, in the direction of Kozani, after 11.59 p.m. on 10 April. Concerned at the unnecessary ordeal of his comrades, Reid took the initiative to drive through Kozani to the Veria Pass on the evening of 12 April, using as an excuse a garbled order to take some gear forward. When he reached Veria, he met an exasperated Lamb, the officer who had asked his men in camp at Daphne to respect the beauty of the Greek landscape. Lamb now had a less bucolic eye, and told Reid where he could ‘shove’ his unwanted gear. With the infantry strung out for miles over the hills, Reid could only take the transport back to Servia, passing through Kozani unmolested as he did so.11 Reid concluded that the 16 Brigade could have been safely trucked out. As it was, it entered the decisive phase of the campaign unnecessarily exhausted and with its equipment stocks much degraded.

When the 16 Brigade finally slumped onto its new ground, it formed the right flank of the Anzac position guarding the Servia Pass. It was joined there by New Zealand units moving across from in front of Katerini. Included among these was the 4 NZ Brigade, which took the ground in the centre of the new line, and also the 26 NZ Battalion. This battalion was detached from the 6 NZ Brigade to stiffen the left of the Aliakmon line, which was otherwise formed by the 2/4th and 2/8th battalions. Still badly battered after Vevi, these units needed help, and the reinforcement role fell to the 26 Battalion. The 15 Platoon of this unit was led forward by Peter Preston — he recalled that it was only during this deployment that his men were given their first bandoliers of ammunition since landing in Greece.12

In compliance with this plan, the 26 Battalion went north of the Aliakmon to join the 2/4th and 2/8th battalions. The position this combined force occupied was splendid in its isolation: the only communications available were by dint of the hard slog of liaison officers, marching five to six kilometres each time fresh instructions were required; and all stores, rations, and equipment could only be shifted by mule train.13 Preston went across the Aliakmon on a ferry of rubber dinghies — with eight to ten men crossing at a time, getting the whole of the battalion across took an entire day. This slightly ramshackle performance was then completed when the New Zealanders marched up the heights to occupy the high ground above the river: Preston and his men were ordered to take up position on rock-hard slopes, without entrenching tools to prepare weapons pits. Suitably mortified, Preston directed his men to take cover in nearby scrub ‘if trouble started’. And trouble did not seem to be far away — Australian stragglers were passing through the 26 Battalion when it first took up position. Fleeing from their ordeal at Vevi, one of these men advised Preston to ‘get the hell out … they’re not taking any prisoners’. Preston declined the advice and said, ‘Bugger you, we’re staying’.14 From the heights that they occupied, the 15 Platoon could see German aircraft landing and taking off from an airfield near Kozani — they were Junkers 52 transports of KGzbv 1, 2, and 3, carrying in troops and supplies to maintain the momentum of the advance otherwise constrained by the limited capacity of the roads.15

The rest of the Anzac force at Servia was held south of the river, on the heights above the pass itself. If the weather was less forgiving than Zeus had enjoyed in Homer’s imagination, at least the ground around Olympus gave the defenders some advantages. At 2919 metres, Olympus is one of the great peaks of Europe; as the Anzacs fell back to the south, the passes around it gave them natural defensive positions from which to delay the Germans. At Servia Pass, these topographical advantages were used to deadly effect, resulting in the first tactical check to the Germans in the course of the campaign.

The 4 NZ Brigade moved to the Servia position in rain, sleet, and snow. Its 19 Battalion marched out of the Vermion–Olympus position before being met by transport in the early hours of 9 April. The 90-mile journey to Servia was a miserable one, and on arrival the conditions were no better — ‘the rain, sleet and snow were continuous; there were no tents and the frowning cliffs which towered above offered little shelter’.16 What the Kiwis did appreciate was the tremendously strong natural position they now occupied, so strong in fact that armies throughout the ages had gravitated to it. Above the pass itself was a medieval castle, built in Byzantine times by Samuel, king of the Bulgars. When they moved up the mountain on the northern side of the pass, the Hawkes Bay Company of the 19 Battalion also found trenches dug 30 years before, during the Balkan Wars. These were easily renovated, and the Hawkes Bay men also took advantage of a barn, which provided useful if over-crowded shelter from the alpine conditions. Hard work was nevertheless the order of the day: Malcolm Coughlin of the 19 Battalion found himself hauling, up the precipitous sides of the mountain, rolls of barbed wire and the iron stakes from which to hang it. ‘Good for the forearms,’ he recalled 60 years later.17

Among the Australian machine-gunners supporting the 19 NZ Battalion was Ian Manson. Second in command of the B Company he was a pre-war militia officer with machine-gun training, who originally enlisted with the 2/7th Battalion, but then found himself ordered to the newly formed 2/1st MG when the Australian army unwisely opted to follow British army practice by forming such a specialist unit at the end of 1939. Manson’s first job at Servia was to establish the company headquarters and field kitchen. While discussing the best site for this position with a New Zealand officer, Manson received some sage advice, warning him of the hazards posed by the Luftwaffe. No sooner had the Kiwi officer passed on this advice to his Tasman cousin than a Messerchmitt screamed over the nearest ridge line, spitting fire from its wings as it came. Manson ducked for cover, ‘scared stiff’, and thankful for the slit trenches that had been prepared for just such attacks.18

The New Zealanders at Servia also had the help of Australian engineers. In front of the New Zealanders, the bridge over the Aliakmon north of Servia was demolished by another section of the hard-working 2/1st Field Company. This was a ‘steel girder bridge of three arches, a reinforced concrete roadway roughly 150 yards in length with abutments and two pair of masonry piers’. The Australians worked for three days to prepare their charges. When when they were detonated at 3.20 p.m. on 13 April, ‘The result was a bit disappointing owing to the fact of not having the time to mine the two piers and the charge did not have enough power on its own to twist the bridge on its side’.19 It may have been disappointing to the professional eye, but the steel spans of the bridge were down, and as a result the panzers would need to find an alternative route across the river.

The Nazi spearhead marching on Servia came from the 9th Panzer Division, the unit which had supported the Leibstandarte at Vevi, and now had the job of chasing the Anzacs through central Greece. The detachment formed by the 9th Panzer to lead its advance was commanded by an aristocratic officer, Oberst Graf von Sponeck, who was ordered at 3.30 p.m. on 13 April to send forward II Battalion, 11 Infantrie Regiment for an attack on what the Germans called ‘Stena Portas’.20 The build-up of German force south of Vevi was followed by the Anzac Corps and the 6th Division, which noted at 4.40 a.m. on 14 April an air reconnaissance report indicating ‘200 enemy MT [motor transport] including AFVs’ on the road leading to Ptolemais.21

‘Hell it was good.’
The Battle of Servia Pass, 15 April 1941

The next morning, with Kozani reported clear of British forces, 8 Company of the II Battalion sent a platoon to the Aliakmon Bridge to capture it; yet, ‘soon afterwards it was reported that this bridge was destroyed, but there was no sign of any opposition … on the SE bank’. However, when the Germans attempted to cross the Aliakmon at the blown bridge, they came under shellfire from the 6 NZ Field Regiment and the British 7th Medium Regiment, which was effective enough to force them to bring up their own artillery in the shape of the I/77 Artillery Regiment and the III/102 Artillery Regiment. As a result, the 19 Battalion reported that from 6.00 p.m. on 14 April they came under artillery fire from ‘5.9 inch’ (150 millimetre) guns, the Wehrmacht’s standard medium artillery piece. Sponeck’s korps commander, General Stumme, was impatient — he ordered the 9th Panzer Division on to take Elasson at 11.30 p.m. on 14 April, even though the 11 Infantrie Regiment was still working out how to get across the Aliakmon.

Many young Germans were about to pay a price for their general’s impatience. With divisional engineers foiled in their attempts to build a bridge, the Germans were unable to bring up heavy weapons, and a tank towing a 20-millimetre gun was lost attempting to ford the river. This left those infantry elements that did manage to cross without their familiar armoured support. They found the New Zealand artillery and the river itself a difficult combination. Six and 8 companies of II Battalion, supported by 1 and 3 companies of the 59 Motor Cycle Battalion, did manage to get across the Aliakmon, but when I Battalion came up to support their success, its 2 Company had to abandon the attempt, such was the accuracy of the New Zealanders’ fire.

Across the river, 8 Company, II Battalion was commanded by Oberleutnant Hoffmann. He formed a reconnaissance section under Leutnant Wohlrabe, and followed it up with his 3 Platoon, and half of the 9 Heavy Machine-Gun Platoon under Leutnant Behrends. A mortar section, and Hoffmann’s 2 Platoon under Leutnant Hesse, completed 8 Company’s order of battle. Hoffmann’s company was assisted by Oberleutnant Doerfler, in command of 6 Company. Doerfler shared the urgency of the German high command — on the approach to the river, with 8 Company flagging, Doerfler sent his own 1 Platoon forward under Leutnant Freier to keep up the pace of the advance. Freier took two Greeks prisoner on the south bank of the river; their capture, together with the clatter of horses in the pre-dawn darkness of 15 April, suggested to the Germans that the Allied retreat remained in full swing.

This was not much of a reconnaissance on which to justify continuing an advance into unknown and difficult terrain and, without the panzers in support, the German infantry blundered on in the darkness. They found a mined anti-tank ditch prepared by the 6 NZ Field Company, before the road passed through a mountain defile with rock walls hard on either side.

Inside the pass, the 19 Battalion’s Wellington Company lay in wait, charged with defending the anti-tank ditches, of which there were two, not one as reported by the Germans. Wellington Company’s 8 Platoon was on the heights north of the road, and its 7 Platoon south of it. Bren-gun sections, the 9 Platoon, and the company mortar section were then deployed along a line parallel with and south of the road, creating a killing ground before and between the anti-tank obstacles. The Vickers machine-guns from the 10 Platoon, the Australian 2/1st MG Battalion, rounded out the defence, presenting any infantry attack with a formidable task.

The hour before dawn on 15 April was very dark, and in the black void New Zealand sentries challenged a group of strangers coming up the pass road, and were met by cries of ‘Greko, Greko!’ The New Zealanders later reported that the German party was led by soldiers in Greek uniform, but rumours of a ‘fifth column’ were rife during the campaign, and German records do not suggest help from quislings or the use of enemy uniforms to trick the defenders. The New Zealanders later reported a body in Greek uniform among the German dead, but this might have been one of the two prisoners taken by Freir, whose capture had encouraged the Germans to accelerate their advance.

In any event, the Kiwis were not confused — as soon as the unknown party of 50-or-so darkened figures were in front of the second anti-tank ditch, they opened a withering fire. The Germans were trapped, not least because the Australian machine-guns prevented them moving off the road around the New Zealand left flank. On the left of the road was the 10 Platoon of the 2/1st MG Battalion, whose well-sited Vickers poured a devastating fire into the confined space in which the Germans found themselves. The 2/1st MG Battalion later reported that each gun had fired 21 belts, or more than 5000 rounds, and these were expended to such effect that the platoon commander, Lieutenant R. G. Sampson, received the Military Cross for the work of his men in this action.22

The difficulties facing the Germans were compounded by hand grenades thrown on them from above. With German troops banking up in the anti-tank ditches, the 8 Platoon of the Wellington Company used red Very lights (flares) to bring down enfilade fire from the Bren guns south of and parallel to the road.

The bulk of the attacking force was thereby pinned down under fire; but, inside the defile, a number of brave Germans attempted to fight their way forward. A German officer and a handful of troops succeeding in getting behind Wellington Company’s 7 Platoon, killing three New Zealanders before being cut down themselves. Attempts to rush the New Zealand position were defeated with Tommy-gun fire. With these efforts to get forward having failed, and with retreat across fire-swept ground out of the question, the Germans began surrendering.

The German record of the action conforms very closely to the 19 Battalion’s account. With two platoons through the defile, Hoffmann heard two shots; alarmed, he ordered Hesse, still with his platoon in the anti-tank ditch, out onto high ground on the right. In his combat report, Hoffmann conceded that it was all too late:

Lt Hesse had hardly returned to his platoon and I had hardly reported the first enemy contact to Battalion HQ when fire was opened from the hills right and left of the defile on the troops who had not passed the defile and were lying in the ditch and under cover right and left of the road. The enemy was using MGs and probably A-tk rifles. From the hillsides to right and left flares went up and hand grenades were thrown down. It was still dark, and the moon shone most unfavourably for us, lighting up the road and the country right and left of it, while the hills containing the enemy were in total darkness.

The 11 Infantrie Regiment had walked onto a killing ground, and was barely able to take any coherent counter-measures, such was the overwhelming fire from the Anzacs on either side of the pass. The efforts of the German officers to bring some order to the battle were not helped by the loss of their field wireless section, which was wiped out in the first few minutes. Sponeck, in overall command, was still north of the river — when he heard the battle commence, he ordered elements of I Battalion to get across the Aliakmon despite the shelling, and even swam the river himself in a vain effort to retrieve the situation. With Sponeck effectively removed from the battle, Hoffmann was likewise impotent, still pinned down at the entrance to the defile — he reported that by 7.00 a.m., German firing from inside the pass had all but ceased, and that the ‘English’ were firing on any of his men outside it who exposed themselves in the open. In its description of the efforts of the 19 Battalion snipers, the New Zealand history concurs with Hoffmann: ‘Private Guilford, with his rifle sights at 1000 yards, dropped a man; Lieutenant Denis Blundell saw another killed while attempting to take cover about 800 yards away.’23

At the end of the action, the Germans tallied up the cost of their impetuous advance: one officer killed, one wounded, and five missing; and 33 other ranks killed, 71 wounded, and 185 missing in action. Most of the Germans posted as missing were prisoners — the 19 Battalion reported taking 120 Germans captive, and sent them rearward in two batches, where official photographers made the most of the propaganda opportunity.24

For the New Zealanders, this first experience of battle made a deep impression. Eric Davies was with the 19 Battalion’s Hawke’s Bay Company, north of the road. There he contributed to the weight of defensive fire, albeit with his line of sight restricted to a short section of the road. That evening, Davies recorded in his diary his impressions of this, his first battle:

About 5.30 firing started, enemy machine-gun had advanced quite close. Eventually annihilated or captured. One company did good work, hell it was good. Troops advancing all morning. I went for mess or tea, how I ran and ducked about. Prisoners taken. Stood to all morning and watched our artillery blow the Huns to bits. Should I survive this I’ll always remember our first day as front line troops.25

While the 19 Battalion was fighting and holding the Germans at Servia Pass, elsewhere the situation was deteriorating rapidly for the Allied cause. On 13 April, in an effort to keep in touch with the left flank of W Group, Papagos ordered his Epirus army, on the Adriatic coast, and the Western Macedonian army, in central Greece, to withdraw to the Venetikos River, south of Grevena. This movement at least promised to remove the huge salient that had formed in the Allied line, as W Group fell back, while the Greeks remained on the Albanian border. Unfortunately, Papagos was too late — on 14 April, the Germans, exploiting to their right from Vevi, stormed the Klisoura Pass, thereby cutting the withdrawal of the Western Macedonian army. Worse was to follow the next day when the Leibstandarte reached the Kastoria–Grevena road, thus cutting the communications of Greeks in eastern Albania.

George Tsioukanaras, the young farmer who had served his country as a transport auxiliary in the winter fighting against the Italians, played a part in attempting to hold back the Germans. He was now put to work digging field works as a defensive position outside Grevena. There he suffered the terrifying experience of coming under attack by Stuka dive-bombers, but his ordeal proved in vain. With the British 1st Armoured Brigade falling back, the Greek army decided that the engineering work of its civilian helpers was pointless, and Tsioukanaras was released from further service. Returning to his village, all he and his neighbours could do now was await the arrival of the conquering Axis armies.26

Through the likes of Tsioukanaras, the Greeks had done what they could, but the dark news on his western flank encouraged Wilson to form the hard military conclusion that the Greek army was spent, and that the British forces would need to look to their own salvation. Blamey, at least, had a new formation with which to try and plug the gaps in central Greece, the 17 Brigade under Stanley Savige having finally landed and come forward. On 14 April, Blamey ordered the formation of Savige Force, to hold the line around Kalabaka, and thereby cover the left flank of the Anzac Corps as the Greek formations crumbled. Along with Savige’s own 17 Brigade, this new force was given the 2/11th Battalion, what was left of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment (which amounted to just seven cruiser tanks), two troops of the 64th Medium Regiment, a company of the 2/1st MG Battalion, a battery of NZ field guns, and a battery of Australian anti-tank guns.

While Wilson and Blamey were juggling their command structure in an effort to plug the gaps on the left of W Group, the Germans were pressing the centre of the Anzac line. This was held by the 5 NZ Brigade, which had taken up position in the passes around Olympus, just north of Ayios Dimitrios, home of Dimitris Tsiaousis. The ground here was defined by three valleys, carrying — from north to south — the rivers Mavroneri, Elikon, and Itamos. These were separated by the spurs of Mount Olympus, ranging in height from 1400 metres to 2700 metres in the south.

Commanded by Brigadier ‘Jimmy’ Hargest, a sheep farmer from Gore, the 5 Brigade was laid out on a three-battalion front: the 28 Maori Battalion on the left running parallel to the Mavroneri; the 22 in the pass itself, forming a hinge in the centre of the New Zealand line; and the 23 on the right. Hargest had his own 5 NZ Field Regiment in support, together with an anti-tank battery and three platoons of the 27 MG Battalion. Few suitable positions could be found in the mountainous terrain to site the 25-pounders: eight guns of the 27 Battery were perched on a forward ledge, but the rest of the regiment had to go back to Ayios Dimitrios.27 At 5.00 p.m. on 14 April, the 22 Battalion saw vehicles in front of their lines for the first time and, that night, a party of motor cyclists were shot down on the road just before midnight. The next day, it was clear the Germans were massing for an attack, and by 4.30 p.m. on 15 April German artillery was in action, hoping to soften up the New Zealanders.

Against the Olympus position, General Stumme had sent a powerful battle group of the 2nd Panzer Division against the Mavroneri position. This kampfgruppe comprised the 2 Infantrie Regiment, the II/3rd Panzer Regiment, an engineer, anti-aircraft and anti-tank troops, and the III/74th Artillery Regiment. Stumme was also bringing up the 72 Infantrie Division, and would use it to test the New Zealand right flank, around the Itamos Valley. On the Kiwi left flank, German artillery efforts on 15 April wounded some men of A Company, 28 Battalion, but the greatest damage was to the unit cookhouse: ‘Quartermaster Peter Samuel, after surveying the damage to his stores, sent an invitation to as many as could be spared to come down and eat the punctured tins of bully beef and condensed milk.’28

Further patrol actions then followed that night; and when 16 April dawned, grey and threatening, the overwhelming strength of the likely German attack was in full view — away on the left, the Maoris could see the vehicles of the panzer column stretching back the full 22 kilometres to Katerini.

The Germans first attempted to charge through 22 Battalion holding the pass. This unit had formed in January 1940 at Trentham, from men recruited in Wellington and its surrounds, Hawke’s Bay, and Taranaki. It had spent the northern summer of 1940 in England, and only arrived in Egypt on 3 March 1941, before crossing to Greece aboard the Greek motor yacht Hellas.29 The 22 Battalion was commanded by a distinguished New Zealand regular soldier, Lieutenant Leslie Andrew, who had won a Victoria Cross as a lance corporal at the Battle of Messines in the First World War. Tall, lean, and equipped with a thin black moustache, Andrew was a noted disciplinarian. At the battalion’s first parade, he made his approach to command plain: ‘My name is Andrew: A-N-D-R-E-W. There is no S. And I’m the boss.’30

Even the martinet Andrew could not fully prepare his men for what they were about to face, but the German attack on 16 April opened in slightly comical fashion, before the horrors of the fighting became all too apparent: Andrew’s batman, ‘Shorty’ Lawless, lost his colonel’s pot of tea when the battalion field kitchen came under fire. The laughter of Lawless’ comrades was soon cut short when further German shells scored more telling hits, killing Sergeant Tom Logie and wounding Private Jack Tregea, whose life was saved when the battalion medical officer amputated his arm on the spot. The battalion padre was also present, and wrote later: ‘how quickly great fun … became real tragedy.’31

The artillery barrage that killed Logie and cost Tregea his arm was the prelude to a determined panzer attack on B Company. To get at the New Zealanders, the German tanks needed to cross the river on the company front, the bridge there had been demolished by field engineers. This obstacle would prove difficult for the panzers, because fire from the 5 NZ Field Regiment prevented German engineers from coming up to repair the bridge: the men of the 27 Battery ‘worked until their backs ached’, firing on orders from the regiment’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel K. W. Fraser, who occupied the forward observation post to personally direct the barrage.32 Nothing, however, could stop the tanks from coming within 100 metres of B Company, and subjecting the New Zealanders to a relentless fire. The infantry were at first unimpressed by the light PzKw Mk II tanks. But when the heavy PzKw III and PzKw IV machines came up, the situation grew increasingly uncomfortable: in the foremost company position, the 11 Platoon ‘had to sit and take it’.33 For this one small unit, the cost of sticking it out against the Germans was steep: ‘Alan Murray lost a thumb; Jack Tustin was mortally wounded across the thighs; Herb Burgess and George Peacock died at their post, manning their Bren gun to the last.’34

The fire of the New Zealand artillery, in concert with a barrage put down by the mortar platoon of the 22 Battalion, under Lieutenant J. McAra, a Dundein commercial artist, discouraged the Germans from pursuing a crossing around or over the demolished bridge. With their panzers halted across the river, the German infantry from 1 Company, 2 Infantrie Regiment were unable to press home their attack:

The tanks went into position immediately below the enemy-held hillside. Under their cover some of 1 Coy succeeded in crossing the blown bridge and pushing further along the road on foot, until they penetrated the outer fringe of the enemy defences, after suffering some casualties. The enemy positions were strongly wired and mined, and it was impossible to push any farther into them.35

Instead, the Germans looked to launch flank attacks, around the Maori Battalion in the north, and against the 23 Battalion in the south. The 72 Infantrie Division was accordingly ordered to move on Elasson via Kokkinoplos, but it would first have to drive the 23 Battalion off its ground. The defence was not aided by the huge front on which the battalion operated, which came to six-and-a-half kilometres: when the fog and mist thickened during the day, the Germans had limitless opportunities for infiltration. The battalion was soon in trouble around the village of Lokova, where a section of C Company was overrun; the right flank, however, was stabilised partly thanks to a scratch party of signallers, quartermaster staff, and transport drivers, assembled and taken forward by Major D. F. Leckie, a school teacher from Invercargill who later became the battalion’s commanding officer.36

At the other end of the 5 Brigade’s line, the Maoris were also under increasing pressure as the day went on. Its tanks halted in front of the 22 Battalion, while the kampgruppe of the 2nd Panzer Division sent forward its infantry in an effort to flank the New Zealanders by driving up the valley of the Mavroneri. An attempt to infiltrate behind A Company, 28 Battalion and the rear of the 22 Battalion was beaten back, and detachments of Maoris posted to guard the extreme left flank at Skotira were engaging in running fights with German patrols. Late in the afternoon, 7, 8, and 9 companies of the 2 Infantrie Regiment, supported by mortars and machine-guns, stormed the foremost Maori positions on the southern slopes of the valley, near the head of the pass. These were held by D Company, commanded by Major H. G. Dyer; the misty weather was such that, although he was but 30 metres from the fighting, Dyer could not follow the course of the battle. What transpired was that a section of his 16 Platoon was overrun in a brief but bitter combat.

In this, their first action, the Maoris began to establish the reputation for which they would become famous: 34-year-old Corporal H. P. Taituha ‘kept on shooting until the butt of his rifle was blown off and he was himself so seriously wounded that he was later left for dead’.37 Thus abandoned, Taituha wandered the local district for a week, until he was captured seeking medical attention in a nearby village: his wounds were such that the Germans agreed to his repatriation to New Zealand in 1943. For Private M. Ropata, a labourer from Wairoa, there would be no homecoming: on the slopes of the Mavroneri, he fought on until he fell, mortally wounded. Despite these losses, the fire of D Company was such that the Germans abandoned their efforts to push the battalion off its ground.

Murray McColl and his Vickers gun crew of the 11 Platoon, 27 MG Battalion was in support of the 28 Battalion and, like the Maoris, were going into action for the first time during this fighting. He and his crew were close to the entrance of the valley, helping to cover the Maori mortar positions. McColl’s war began nervously — on sentry duty before the battle, he kept an anxious guard on a bright, moonlit night. A rustle in the bushes heightened his anxiety — ‘Hello, here we are!’ thought McColl, who also recalled that his tin hat all but came off his head, because his hair was end. The lurking German storm-trooper eventually turned out to be a large rat, seeking access to the porridge which the nearby field kitchen had in preparation for the next morning.

When daylight came, McColl went into battle, his gun crew being used to cover two sections of the road, firing on motor cycle troops as they attempted to run the gauntlet of New Zealand fire. McColl found the fighting comfortable enough until the Germans ‘had the audacity to start firing back’, again using 150-millimetre guns in an effort to suppress the defensive fire. McColl’s section stayed in action throughout 16 April, and pulled out to find brigade transport waiting for them. All this augured well enough for a timely retreat, until news came that the Maoris had been surrounded, and McColl’s company of the 27 Battalion had to go back and help pull them out. Just as the machine-gunners assembled for this daunting task, the Maoris came ‘trotting around the corner’ of the nearest ridge. McColl was ‘never so happy to see anyone’ in his life.38

McColl and the rest of the 5 Brigade did not have to take the full weight of the German attack because by nightfall on 16 April, the New Zealanders had largely completed their allotted task of holding the Olympus Pass so that the Anzac Corp’s withdrawal to Thermopylae could proceed as planned. Veterans of the fighting around Olympus would later reflect on which was worse: German fire, or the night-march to the south and safety. The 22 Battalion found ‘the night was impenetrably black, the ground precipitous and bush-covered, every mule track a morass …’39 A driving wind and heavy rain began to fall in the early evening and, in the north, the mule trains expected to help out the 28 Battalion failed to materialise. The Maoris were left to tramp out unaided, following a trail of white paper and cigarette packs laid by the battalion intelligence section as a guide, and carrying as much gear as they could manage. The Regimental Sergeant Major described the march that night as ‘unmitigated Hell’.40 Burdened by their heavy packs, the men could only scale some of the worst inclines by hauling themselves hand over hand, using tree branches and roots as grips.

The 5 NZ Brigade was liberated from its position at Olympus by dint of orders issued by Wilson at 9.50 a.m. on 15 April, the day prior to its battle in the pass. Blamey then gave detailed movement orders at 6.00 p.m. that evening. In those orders, Blamey used brigade formations as battle groups, detailed to hold a road each for a designated period, after which they could then fall back in turn. The northern-most rearguard on the left was the 1st Armoured Brigade, operating around Grevena–Kalabaka, with Savige Force established as a stopping force at Kalabaka to the south. Blamey allocated the 6 NZ Brigade to the Tirnavos sector, and ordered the 19 Brigade back to Domokos, with the 16 Brigade at Zarkos. To cover these deployments, the 5 NZ Brigade was required to hold Olympus Pass until nightfall on 16 April; only with that task completed could the brigade fall back.41

On the far right of the Anzac line was the 21 NZ Battalion, undertaking a lonely and unsupported guard on the Platamon Tunnel that ran between Mount Olympus and the sea, having been detached for that task from the 5 NZ Brigade on 9 April. Wilson and the Anzac commanders were confident that the terrain at Platamon foreclosed the possibility of armoured attack, and thus concentrated their efforts in the west. However, in making this assessment, they were ascribing to the Germans the limited capabilities of their own armoured vehicles; should their confidence about the defensive qualities of the terrain not be borne out, the Anzac right flank might become imperilled.

On the Servia sector, the Germans declined to storm the pass again in the days following the mauling of the 11 Infantrie Regiment by the 19 Battalion, but then their success further west meant that they never had to. Instead, the various Anzac units around Servia faced the prospect of another gruelling route march, again to escape German flanking manoeuvres.

Along with the remnants of the 2/4th and 2/8th battalions, Peter Preston’s 15 Platoon of the 26 NZ Battalion spent its sojourn north of the Aliakmon looking on as German bombers passed overhead. When it came time to return south of the Aliakmon, the retreat proved a demanding and difficult matter. Thanks to the efforts of field engineers, Preston and his men now at least had the aid of a footbridge with a hand rail to get back across the river, which had been thrown up in difficult circumstances by a party of the 2/1st Field Company, led by the redoubtable Sergeant Johnson. With access to timber from the neighbouring forest, the work went well enough until the Australians neared the centre of the Aliakmon, where their efforts to drive piles were swallowed up by the depth and force of the water:

Difficulty now began to be experienced in launching the trestles due to the speed of the current, and the increasing depth as work progressed towards centre of stream. As soon as the legs of a trestle would touch the water, it would immediately be twisted around downstream, manpower alone being insufficient to check it. After various experiments, we found the only way to get the trestles in place was to float them out with check ropes from the shore, and men in the water to manhandle them into place, guided by further ropes taken across and handled by men on the other side of the stream.

The endurance of these men, grappling logs into place while standing neck deep in a river fed by melting snow, can only be imagined. Even with these labours, the engineers could not bridge the final 15 metres, so the ingenious Sergeant Johnson opted to span the gap: ‘only one spar of suitable length could be obtained, so two … spars on the site were spliced. This latter member sagged badly in the centre when hauled into position, but eventually we hauled it up level.’42

The resulting foot bridge might haven been rickety, but it allowed the 19 Brigade and the 26 NZ Battalion to retreat back across the Aliakmon more quickly than would have been possible had they continued to rely on the ferry. Unfortunately, the available aids on the rest of the retreat were strictly limited; but a Greek shrine, with a fresh water spring, at least greeted them at the top of their first climb out of the Aliakmon Valley. The conditions were not propitious for the 26 Battalion’s ‘long march’ — Peter Preston remembered that it ‘rained like hell’ for most of it. Even so, the threat of the Germans was never far away. With low cloud enveloping his platoon as it stumbled along a mountain track, Preston was dumbfounded by the sound of an approaching engine — it belonged to a Fiesler Storch, a German light observation aeroplane capable of very slow speeds. It came ‘chugging along out of the mist’ at what seemed to Preston at a speed of something like 45 kilometres an hour, but disappeared quickly into the swirling clouds before the New Zealanders had a chance to react.

Denied an opportunity to damage the enemy, Preston’s men got to discharge some rounds in slightly different and less war-like circumstances. With their rations all but exhausted, the 15 Platoon came across an Australian truck, run off the road and abandoned. Rummaging through it as all good soldiers would, Preston’s men found it well equipped with New Zealand tinned fruit, condensed milk and — to much joy — two stone jars of rum. With the wherewithal now for a range of exotic cocktails, Preston’s men elected to dispose of one jar of rum on the spot, and keep the other for safekeeping. Thus fortified, the 15 Platoon tramped on, happily firing their rifles at the local wildlife as they went.

However, the conditions were such that even rum-fuelled merriment could only be temporary. Officers and men suffered alike, and when Preston and his fellow company officers attempted to assert their privileges, the results were unfortunate. Faced with another night lying on a rubberised groundsheet in the snow, Preston opted to join three other officers who had found a stone hut on the path to Larisa. While his troops bunked down again under the trees, Preston looked forward to an evening’s rest under cover, until he and his brother officers discovered that their new abode was infested with fleas. ‘Pretty buggered’, weary, and footsore, Preston and his men eventually trooped into Larisa, where physical discomforts such as fleas were placed into perspective — on the road into town, they marched past a number of dead Australians who had been caught in the open by strafing Messerschmitts.43

Long-suffering Larisa, devastated by earthquake and smashed by Luftwaffe bombs, was now the decisive fulcrum of the Anzac campaign. If any of the panzer forces attempting to outflank Anzac Corps could enter the town, it would spell the end for any force north of it. Since all roads led to Larisa, it was a choke point for Blamey, Freyberg, and their troops — lose it, and disaster would surely follow.

In their efforts to block each German advance on the battered town, the Anzac leaders had their eyes in the west, on their left. It was there that Savige Force was sent, to guard against the rapid moves of the 9th Panzer. But this preoccupation with the inland flank nearly spelt the end of the second Anzac Corps.

On its eastern flank, the slopes of Mount Olympus descend virtually to the sea and, apart from goat tracks, the only route between the two in 1941 was the railway line that ran north to Katerini. Even this required a long tunnel to negotiate the ridges and spurs of the mountain. The 21 NZ Battalion arrived to guard it, supported by only four 25-pound field guns from A Troop of the 5 NZ Field Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant L. G. Williams, a draughtsman from Upper Hutt. The role of this force was essentially to ensure the tunnel was demolished as the panzers approached, the assumption being that, with such a demolition, no decisive penetration of the Allied line could then be mounted. The strength of this assumption was doubtful from the outset, since the New Zealanders lacked an adequate engineering capability with which to complete the destruction of the tunnel. Instead, the 21 NZ Battalion was accompanied by the 19 Army Troops Company, a Kiwi engineering unit which lacked the demolition equipment and pneumatic drills that specialised field engineers could have applied to the task. Without these tools, the New Zealanders attempted to drive holes into the concreted sides of the tunnel with picks, which the men dryly concluded was ‘not a recognised method of preparing a demolition’.44

The Kiwi sappers therefore opted for drastic measures. Like the Australians at Vevi, they had managed to acquire some naval depth charges: one of these was placed in the tunnel. Its explosion put a breach in the roof, which was then packed with 50 pounds of gelignite, and this charge brought down sufficient rock to block the tunnel: rubble was reportedly still falling from the roof four days later.45 The Army Troops men rounded out their contribution to the defence by laying a field of anti-tank mines. The Kiwi sappers had been issued with these mines while on anti-invasion duty in England: with commendable antipodean resourcefulness, they then forgot to return them to depot, and smuggled them out to the Middle East instead.

The 21 Battalion would be grateful for the contraband because, contrary to British and Anzac assumptions that only infantry would attempt to take the ridge above the tunnel, the German panzertruppen were undeterred by the terrain. Even more unfortunate for the orphaned New Zealanders was the fact that the German officer in command of the armoured column approaching Platamon was Oberstleutnant Hermann Balck. Now commanding the 3 Panzer Regiment, Balck had first made a name for himself as the leader of the panzergrenadier (motorised infantry) regiment that formed part of 1st Panzer Division in the French campaign the previous year.

The fall of France is rightly remembered as a calamity for Allied arms in the Second World War. But the implication that goes with it — that the fighting was half-hearted, and that the French collapsed from within — belies the reality. Balck’s infantry unit was at the forefront of the blitzkrieg that spring: it formed the assault force that crossed the Meuse River in rubber boats to make the first decisive lodgement in the French line on 13 May 1940. Having succeeded in getting across the river, Balck showed fine tactical acumen by pushing his men to seize vital ground, on and beyond the heights above the river, before the stunned French defence could respond, thereby maximising the area in which the following panzers could debouch. These moves admittedly followed pulverising Stuka attacks that stupefied the French defenders; but, such was the momentum of the advance under his leadership, Balck wrote afterwards, it was ‘impossible to hold the men’. Two days later, the fighting was of an altogether different variety, and would give the men of the 21 Battalion — had they but known it — some inkling of the kind of soldier about to storm the Platamon position.

Charged with continuing to expand the German bridgehead over the Meuse, Balck looked to take the village of Bouvellement, but came up against some of the finest infantry in the French army. All day, Balck’s panzergrenadiers battered themselves against the besieged and desperate French, until most of the German officers were dead or wounded, and his regiment’s infantry companies were reduced to half strength. With the German attack stalled, Balck made a dramatic battlefield appearance — one of his NCOs wrote, ‘like a tower in the battle he stood between us, equipped with only a field walking cane, gasmask and pistol.’ When his officers demurred at the prospect of a further attack, Balck exclaimed, ‘In that case, I’ll take the place on my own’, and led his men forward. Bouvellemont fell, and the German attack swept on.46

Now at the head of a panzer regiment in Greece, Balck had the mechanical power to go with his tactical élan. The position of the 21 Battalion, which he approached on 14 April, was topographically strong, but short on men to hold it. Like everywhere else in Greece, the New Zealanders were now occupying in modern times land that had been fought over many times. At Platamon, history defined the landscape — at the eastern end of the New Zealand line, overlooking the sea, was a castle. Later archaeology would show traces of Hellenic fortifications on the site dating back as far as the fourth century B.C. The Franks built a wall on the site around 1204, and Turks, who occupied the area in the late fourteenth century, built the castle that was now occupied by the 21 Battalion. It consisted of a stone central tower (‘donjon’), with a surrounding double stone wall and towered gate.

The castle tower provided the 21 Battalion with good observation posts, and Lieutenant Colonel ‘Polly’ Macky, the Auckland yacht club commodore, then deployed his companies in a line stretching up the ridge line, into which his troops chiselled weapons pits from the rock as best they could. Over this ridge line were a number of goat tracks. With the tunnel partly blocked, it would be over these rock-strewn and precipitous trails that the Germans would test the cross-country capabilities of their armour.

On 14 April, the New Zealanders were disconcerted to see German traffic deploying on the plain below them. Macky’s C Company, highest up the mountain, estimated that 100 tanks were present; and even when Macky cut this number in half in his report to Anzac Corps headquarters, he was met with scepticism, such was the fixation with events inland. At this stage, Anzac Corps merely asked for an air reconnaissance to confirm Macky’s report. Next morning, 15 April, the 21 Battalion was briefly bombarded before the Germans’ 2 Motor Cycle Battalion dismounted and attempted to climb the mountain above the ancient castle. A hail of Kiwi fire soon deterred that attack, but reports of the strong defences caused Balck to rush the I/3 Panzer Regiment forward, together with another infantry regiment, the II/Rifle Regiment 304, and an engineer company. The New Zealanders reported holding a tank attack that evening but, according to the Germans, this was merely a demonstration to cover flanking movements by infantry. While the German engineer company guarded the panzers and Balck’s motor transport, which had been sent into laager, the 2 Motor Cycle Battalion was taken out of the line and sent around the Kiwi left flank; meanwhile, the II/Rifle Regiment 304 went still wider and ‘made a night march of incredible difficulty across unknown ground covered with bush and boulders, and cut by deep gullies’.47

These moves spelt trouble for the 21 Battalion. At the extremity of the line was C Company, and this held such a long length of line that the men from Auckland found it impossible to prevent infiltration. The 21 Battalion’s problems grew as the night of 15 April wore on. German patrols probed for weaknesses throughout, and what little artillery the New Zealanders had was in trouble from counter-battery fire, to which A Troop, 5 NZ Field Regiment lost several men, through injuries or fatalities. This loss from a tiny force was serious enough, but even more alarming was the shortage of ammunition for the guns that remained — only 80 rounds were left for each piece, thus reducing the amount of harassing fire that could be brought down to disrupt the German assembly areas during the night.

This allowed Balck’s preparations to go on in relative peace. The Germans even planned to send the 8/800 Brandenburg Regiment by assault boat up the Pinios River to cut the line of Macky’s retreat, but fortunately a heavy swell prevented the landing.

Spared this threat, conditions at sea could not save the New Zealanders stretched thin along the mountain. At dawn on 16 April, a heavy bombardment began and, covered by smoke and explosive shells, the German tanks went forward above the tunnel. However, it was again the left flank of the 21 Battalion where the crisis flared. C Company was all but surrounded by the persistent 2 Motor Cycle Battalion and the I/304 Regiment. Most of the 15 Platoon was soon forced to surrender, and an attempt to succour the survivors with a fighting patrol from the 13 Platoon came to nought when German fire sent it to ground.

Platoon commanders began withdrawing down the ridge under this pressure, unbeknown to battalion headquarters, which lost contact with the fighting when the telephone line was cut at 9.00 a.m. With his flank turned, there was little Macky could do to prevent the Germans, hammering his left, from advancing down the ridge line. At the same time as his flank was turned, Macky faced a final and ultimately successful attack by 50 tanks, supported by a bombardment of high-explosive and smoke shells in the centre of his position. Opposed only by rifle fire, by 10.00 a.m. the German tanks were approaching the ridge line, despite breakdowns on the rough ground and the obstacle presented by a New Zealand minefield. The 3 Panzer Regiment recorded the action in its war diary, and paid compliment to the doggedness of the defence:

In the morning the attack was continued after a heavy preliminary bombardment, this time with the engineers in support. The right hand company of tanks forced its way forward through the scrub and over rocks and in spite of the steepness of the hillside got on to the top of the ridge. The country was a mass of wire obstacles and swarming with the enemy. In the thick scrub visibility was scarcely a yard from the tanks and hardly a trace was to be seen of the enemy except an occasional infantryman running back. The tanks pressed forward along a narrow mule path. Many of them shed their tracks on the boulders or split their assemblies and finally the leading troop ran on to mines. Every tank became a casualty and completely blocked the path. A detour was attempted. Two more tanks stuck in a swamp and another blew up on a mine and was completely burnt out. After strenuous exertions the track was cleared that evening while the engineers carried out a very successful sweep for mines. In the meantime small parties of infantry had followed up the English on foot, [and] driven them completely from the ridge … 48

Macky’s decision to retire came as a surprise to Anzac Corps headquarters. He had signalled at 9.20 a.m. that he was in trouble, repeated the message 20 minutes later, and did so again at 10.05 p.m. By then, the 21 Battalion was fighting for its life, and at 10.15 a.m. Macky’s signallers sent out their last desperate message: ‘W/T Sta 21 NZ Bn closing down. Getting out.’ If 21 Battalion was to survive, it had to drop everything and go — Macky ordered everything to be destroyed that could not be moved, except the hot food prepared by his field kitchen, which was left behind for any troops who could use it as they fell back.49 However, it was the Germans who were the ones to profit, the 3 Panzer Regiment reporting that it found ‘large stores of canned food and tents … left behind, signs of a hasty panic-stricken flight’. It reported of this finding: ‘That was fine for the tank crews, for in this type of country the field kitchens could not possibly get forward.’50 Apart from their cookware, the New Zealanders had to abandon all their telephone sets and lines, and this loss would have much more unfortunate consequences later on.

Given that he was up against a full panzer kampfgruppe, Macky did well to get his unit out at all. A Company went first, followed by half of D Company, then B Company, and finally what was left of C Company. The 18 Platoon of D Company under Lieutenant N. R. Flavell formed the stop line through which the rest of the battalion passed, and such was the good order that the guns of the 5 NZ Field Regiment troop were extricated, covered by the battalion’s Bren-gun carriers.

Macky was aided by the inability of the Germans to keep the momentum of their advance going. Having reached the ridge line, the panzers halted so that mines could be cleared and those tanks disabled by the ground could be re-tracked. The German infantry were also tiring — ‘pursuit was out of the question as the riflemen were exhausted by the night march’. What damage the New Zealanders had done to the tunnel also meant that the German vehicles had to go over the mountain, which not even the mighty Skdfz 251 half-tracks could manage. The German engineers therefore got to work ‘blasting on a large scale to open a way for the tanks’.51 While these preparations were underway, the German infantry indulged themselves, climbing the keep of the castle to hoist Hitler’s swastika.

At Vevi, the German attack threatened to completely destroy the 19 Australian Brigade and its associated units. This nearly eventuated, and would have been bad enough for the Allied cause. However, at Platamon, another German flanking manoeuvre boded much worse for Blamey — if Balck got to Larisa before the brigade groups north of Olympus could withdraw, the history of the second Anzac Corps would end in defeat and captivity for a large part of it. How this crisis was met would determine whether anything would be salvaged from a forlorn campaign.