CHAPTER SEVEN

Disaster Averted: the Battle of Pinios Gorge, 17–18 April 1941

While the fair day

waxed in heat through all the morning hours

missiles from both sank home and men went down

The Iliad, 8.71–3

Anzac Corps Dispositions, 15–16 April 1941

With the withdrawal of the 21 Battalion from Platamon, the Anzac Corps faced imminent disaster. The defenders were themselves in this situation partly because the right flank on the sea was something of an unwanted child: before the appearance of the 2nd Panzer on the slopes below Platamon, corps headquarters took over command responsibility for the 21 Battalion when Freyberg asked to have it detached from his division, so that he could focus on the withdrawal of his brigades west of Mount Olympus. Anzac Corps accepted this reorganisation with ‘some reluctance’, still believing that its major challenges lay on the left flank.1

When the first probing attacks then went in against the 21 Battalion on 15 April, the gravity of the situation began to dawn on Anzac headquarters. Brigadier Sydney Rowell, Blamey’s chief of staff, was the first to recognise that all was not well at Platamon: he gained Blamey’s approval to send forward the corps artillery commander, Brigadier Cyril Clowes, to appraise the situation and take such action as he thought might be necessary. Clowes got orders to that effect at 1.00 a.m. on 16 April, and immediately set out from Elasson to Platamon, via Larisa, pushing down the crowded roads and dodging bomb craters along the way.

Even with Clowes in motion, Rowell’s anxiety remained. Reserves were all but non-existent; so, with the footsore 16 Brigade marching back from Servia Pass, he diverted its first available battalion to Pinios. This happened to be Chilton’s 2/2nd Battalion, fresh (or rather, fatigued) from its march out of Servia. Emerging from the wilderness on 15 April, Chilton was first ordered to move to Zarkos, 24 kilometres west of Larisa. Now, at 10.00 a.m. on 16 April, Chilton received instructions to report to corps headquarters, where Rowell ordered him to Macky’s assistance. The information Rowell could give to Chilton was scant: all he could do was pass on that the final signals from the 21 Battalion were of a ‘disquieting nature’, and it was not clear whether anything of the New Zealand unit would be left by the time Chilton got into position.2 This at least simplified the task facing the 2/2nd Battalion. Chilton was told only to move to the south-west of the ‘Penios’ Gorge and to ‘take such steps as … thought best to hold that approach for a possible period of three to four days’.3

Having sent one of its constituent battalions east, Rowell followed up by sending on a second battalion of the 16 Brigade, the 2/3rd under Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Lamb. In command of the 16 Brigade itself was Brigadier Allen who, when he reported to corps headquarters for orders, found Rowell trying to get some sleep under a tree. Lighting his map with a torch, Rowell gave Allen an appreciation of the situation, and orders to proceed to Pinios and there take command of a composite force, to be known as Allen Force, including: his own two battalions; the battered 21 NZ Battalion already on the ground; the 26 Battery of the 4 NZ Field Regiment; the L Troop of the 7 NZ Anti-Tank Regiment; and some orphaned Bren-gun carriers — four from the 2/5th Battalion and seven from the 2/11th Battalion.4

On the morning of 16 April, when Macky’s desperate last signals indicated the severity of the German attack, Rowell wrote that ‘from 9.00am onwards we had a string of messages on the radio telephone rather like a ball-to-ball description of a cricket match’.5 With wickets tumbling, Rowell had already reorganised the Anzac batting order, but he got no thanks for it. He gave orders to Allen Force without Blamey’s approval — the latter was asleep, and the considerate chief of staff thought the measure so self-evident that he issued the orders without disturbing the corps commander. Having taken the steps needed to save Anzac Corps, Rowell was amazed to receive not praise but irritation:

I told Blamey what I had done on my way to breakfast and to my amazement he raised objections and said he had proposed to use the NZ Cavalry Regiment for the task. I pointed out to him that it would take from twenty-four to forty-eight hours to concentrate … He then confirmed our tactics.6

Blamey’s poor grasp of the battle was, fortunately, not decisive, since Rowell’s early orders got help to Pinios in time. First to arrive was Clowes: the Australian artillery brigadier eventually found Macky at a ferry across the Pinios River at the eastern end of the Pinios Gorge, some six and a half kilometres from the sea. Clowes was horrified by the threat to the Anzac Corps — the prospect of a single and battered infantry battalion holding a mechanised German column with freedom of maneouvre was negligible, and would inevitably mean the loss of Larisa and all that went with it. Clowes and Macky hastily considered their options, which amounted to either holding the gorge at the eastern end, where they then stood, or at its western inland entrance. The seaward option had little to commend it, since there was nothing to stop German mountain troops from outflanking such a line, through the simple expedient of climbing the ridge on the northern side of the gorge. Clowes therefore directed Macky to fall back further through the gorge to take up a holding position at its western end, and left him appropriately dramatic orders: it was ‘essential’, he demanded, that the 21 Battalion ‘deny the Gorge to the enemy till 19th April even if it meant extinction’.7 Having received that cheerful order, Macky set about deploying his battalion as best he could. He had done excellent work in withdrawing his battalion in something like good order, but he had inevitably lost some crucial equipment — apart from the telephone sets already lost, his mortar section came back without all of its necessary gear, and as a result had to fight on as infantry men.8

Macky first had to shift his men onto the southern bank, and he used for that purpose the ferry where he had conferred with Clowes. Operating this was the battalion pioneer section (field engineers), whose men performed a miracle of physical labour, drawing on ropes to pull the ferry against the stream of the river for hours on end. The punt was too light to carry anything more than 15-cwt trucks, but the New Zealanders still managed to get the guns of the 5 Field Regiment across the river — the 25-pounders that had served so well at Platamon were manhandled down the steep northern bank, hauled through the river, and then towed away by trucks brought up by the battalion’s B Echelon.9 With the ferry considered too fragile for the other heavy equipment, Macky sent the gun tractors, ammunition limbers, and Bren-gun carriers along the northern bank of the gorge, where they came to the railway bridge at the village of Pinios, eight kilometres upstream. His withdrawal accomplished, Macky gave orders for another tunnel on the north bank and stretches of railway line around it to be blown, and the ferry sunk. The battalion engineers were about to dispatch the ferry when they were visited by local peasants — two women shepherding a flock of sheep and goats required passage across the river, and the New Zealanders duly obliged before finally disposing of the ferry.10

With his heavy equipment across the railway bridge at Pinios, Macky also had it blown, and the 21 Battalion’s position appeared to be secure, at least temporarily. As the New Zealanders bedded down on the evening of 16 April, they were joined by the first elements of the 16 Brigade — Chilton appeared at Macky’s headquarters in a Pinios house just after dusk, with news that his unit was not far behind. Parts of the 2/2nd were quickly deployed behind the 21 Battalion, and the remainder along the river in front of Gonnos, the town on the northern bank. The tools of the 2/2nd did not arrive until the morning of 17 April; and, when they did, weapon pits were prepared, incorporating where possible the low stone walls of the Greek farms. Chilton’s men now made use of one of their spoils from the Libyan campaign — an invaluable stock of Italian telephone line was laid out to link the weapons pits to command posts. There was, however, no barbed wire nor mines with which to secure these hastily dug field works.

The first mishap to befall the 2/2nd Battalion occurred almost as soon as Chilton set up his headquarters in a shepherd’s stone hut. A Greek man arrested as a fifth columnist was so anxious about his fate that, when he was brought forward to Chilton for questioning, he clung fast to the doorway and refused to budge. Major Paul Cullen, leading Chilton’s headquarters company, stepped forward with a revolver to strike the man down, but managed only to clip his commander’s arm as Chilton intervened to prevent his subaltern committing an injustice against an Allied civilian. Cullen later gave the Australian army highly distinguished service, but his wartime ledger also contained at least one splash of red ink — namely the broken wrist of his commanding officer.11

While his men readied themselves as best they could on the morning of 17 April, Chilton — with his arm in a sling — undertook a reconnaissance of the area with Macky and the commander of the 4 NZ Field Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel G. B. ‘Ike’ Parkinson. The three officers agreed on a plan of defence, which would see the 21 Battalion hold the entrance to the Gorge, opposite the tunnel blown on the northern bank, together with the high country behind and Pinios village. This position was buttressed by four two-pound guns from L Troop, 7 NZ Anti-Tank Regiment, under Lieutenant K. A. Longmore.12 The 2/2nd Battalion was allocated the centre and right of the line, between Pinios and away west nearly to the outskirts of Parapotamos, on a front of nearly five kilometres. Chilton put his C Company next to the New Zealanders at Pinios, supported on its left by A Company, with B Company and battalion headquarters next to the railway line, south of Evangelismos. For anti-tank defence, Chilton had three two-pound guns of A Troop, the 2/1st Anti-Tank Regiment commanded by Lieutenant C. M. Johnson.13 To the west, on a slight rise near the river, was Chilton’s D Company: the gap of over 1.5 kilometres between the railway line and this company was covering by patrols from the carrier platoon of the 2/2nd Battalion. The terrain here levelled out into an expanse of river flats, impossible to fully cover with the available infantry, and even vigorous patrolling by Bren-gun carriers could only be a gesture in the face of a determined crossing.

The Anzac commanders rounded out their limited resources by placing the 26 Battery, 4 NZ Field Regiment, and what remained of A troop, 5 NZ Field Regiment in a central position west of the railway and behind the 2/2nd Battalion, where the 25-pounders could dominate the demolished railway bridge. Parkinson evidently felt vulnerable there, because on the night before the battle he sent two guns forward in an anti-tank role to guard the road out of Tempe.

At midday on 17 April, Allen arrived to take command of the composite force. Accompanying Allen’s car was Frank Cox, the signaller from the 1 Australian Corps Signals. Aboard his motor cycle, Cox followed Allen up to Pinios and, after climbing a rise near the gorge, the little band gathered to consider the ground and its defensive qualities. Allen looked around and then, Cox said, ‘[H]e turned to his driver: he says, where is the front line from here? The driver looked at him and said, “Sir, I think we are the front line”’.14 Equipped with this sage advice, Allen established his brigade headquarters in the railway station of Makrykhorin, 4.8 kilometres south of Evangelismos, a site well chosen given that it lay on the only feasible line of retreat. When the 2/3rd Battalion came forward as ordered by Rowell, Allen opted to extend his left flank. He placed its C Company on the high ground north of Makrikhori, where it could support Chilton’s isolated D Company, and, finally, deployed Lamb’s two other available companies into reserve, 6.4 kilometres south of the 2/2nd Battalion.

The newly arrived 2/3rd took on its diverse tasks already depleted in numbers — some of its infantry were lost, and were then driving on to Lamia. Those who reached Pinios had no tools, and such little signal wire that Lamb had to organise runners as his principal form of communications. The shortages of equipment in the ranks of the 2/3rd were part of the price to be paid for the earlier precipitous withdrawal overland from Veria. The battalion then had little chance to catch its breath, since the journey back from Servia proved a further ordeal, few men getting any proper rest.

In individual platoons or trucks, morale was boosted briefly by chance finds amid the wreckage of the retreat. Passing through the earthquake-shattered and heavily bombed Larisa, Bill Jenkins’ platoon came across an abandoned NAAFI canteen (a kind of wartime comfort store for troops off-duty). Bottles of beer were being smashed and other luxuries destroyed, to deny them to the Germans. Many of the troops passing through Larisa opted for a different method to dispose of this treasure-trove — Jenkins’ platoon made room for their share of the booty by piling everyone into one of their trucks, and loading up the other with whatever they could find. Moving up to Pinios, the ghastly evidence of the earlier fighting at Platamon took the gloss off the festivities. New Zealand wounded were coming down the road — Jenkins remembers one helping a wounded comrade with most of his leg blown off, calling out to the Australians, ‘Don’t go back there Aussie, there’s thousands of them.’15

‘Even if it meant extinction’
The Battle of Pinios Gorge, 18 April 1941

When Allen completed his deployments, three infantry battalions prepared to hold a line five-and-a-half kilometres in length as the crow flies, and even more if the twists and turns of the river were included. Against Allen’s scratch force came not just the victors of Platamon, but further German reinforcements as well. Skirting the ridge north of the Gorge was the 6th Gebirgs Division, which had been part of the German assault on the Metaxas Line around the Rupel Pass. It was now aiming to seize the village of Gonnos, and then to cross the river on a broad front, around and over the demolished railway bridge. The division was sustained in its march over the mountains by airdrops from Junkers transport planes, and its advance guard — 2 Company, 143rd Regiment — reached Gonnos at midday on 17 April, followed in the mid-afternoon by the divisional commander, General-Leutnant Ferdinard Schörner.

Schörner was an experienced soldier who had won the kaiser’s highest award for valour, the Pour le Merite, in 1917. After the Armistice, he had remained in the tiny army of the Weimar Republic, and found sufficient favour with the Nazi regime to be appointed to the SS as an instructor, when Hitler’s bodyguard was converted from a street-fighting gang into a combat army. After a successful campaign in Poland at the head of a mountain regiment, Schörner had been given command of the 6th Gebirgs when it was formed in June 1940.

With a good view of the battlefield from the slopes above Gonnos, Schörner quickly ordered an assault across the river for the next morning. On the German right, the III/143 Regiment was sent to flank the Anzacs west of Parapotamos, to be followed by the 2 Company, 143 Regiment. Further east, Schörner briefed I/143 Regiment to cross the river in front of Evangelismos.

Through the gorge itself, driving west from the sea, came the other wing of the German thrust, led by the indomitable Balck with the I/3 Panzer Regiment, screened by Schörner’s reconnaissance unit, the 112 Aufklärungsabteilung. The panzers reached the eastern end of the gorge early on the afternoon of 17 April. Unfortunately, all of Macky’s demolitions counted for nought, because Balck was no more deterred by the Pinios than he had been by the Meuse, eleven months before. The Germans found the river fordable at a place below the gorge, thanks to the bravery of two junior officers:

Finally Leutnant Brunenbusch and Leutnant Schmitthemmer went to recce and by swimming and wading through the river they discovered a spot where it could to some extent be forded. Both of them were carried far downstream as they swam.16

Balck opted to chance his luck, and the watching tank crews held their breath as he sent one of their number into the river:

A Mk II tank drove determinedly down the high, steep embankment into the water. It struggled through the river like a walrus, with nothing showing except its turret; it appeared to be swimming. But the driver carried on calmly, although he was sitting up to his middle in water and the waves completely prevented him from seeing anything. Finally the tank clambered out on the other side amid loud cheers from the spectators …17

With this success, five more tanks made the passage and, although ‘two missed the track and sank helplessly into the river with no possibility of salvage’, Balck had an assault group on the southern bank. No wheeled vehicles could manage the crossing, but four 100-millimetre guns drawn by tractors did, allowing Balck to assemble an all-arms force in readiness for the decisive engagement.18

In the path of the panzers on the gorge flank lay the long-suffering 21 Battalion. Its men spent 17 April preparing as best they could — having lost most of their entrenching tools, they scoured Pinios village for replacements, and came up with an uneven assortment of implements, together with other, less official acquisitions, like the wine and liquor left behind by the local populace. This booty was unattended because the Greek civilians were sensibly involved in making their own preparations — strapping what they could to mules, and driving their flocks in front, they made over the hills to the south throughout the day. The New Zealanders appropriated what livestock remained, and the occupants of the village hen-houses were quickly consigned to cooking pots. Some of the Australians shared in this agricultural bounty. Coming from the land himself, Frank Cox found a cow, badly in need of milking, in an outlying farmhouse. He soon alleviated the animal’s distress and, by raiding the chicken coup, prepared some eggnog, complete with a dash of rum. He later remembered it as the ‘best drink’ he’d ever had.19

Fortified by these means, the Anzacs took up position. At the western end of the gorge, Macky deployed his men as best he could; but, with such an expanse to cover, he could only attempt to hold the vital ground, leaving vast spaces in between which could not be covered by fire, or even mined and wired. Opposite the damaged tunnel he placed B Company, with patrols from its 11 Platoon tasked to prevent infiltration down the goat tracks on the high ground behind the main position. C Company held a line between Pinios and the village of Ampelakia to the south-east, with D Company holding the hamlet of Ampelakia and the high ground to its south. A Company, having borne the bulk of the tank attack at Platamon, was in reserve behind Pinios.

Late on 17 April, the I/3 Panzer Regiment sent a solitary tank forward to explore the demolitions on the northern bank. Without the field telephones left behind at Platamon, the New Zealand artillery observer overlooking the river was relying on a wireless set, the reception of which was so poor in the mountainous terrain that he was unable to lay direct fire on the German tank opposite. Undisturbed, the tank’s fire forced elements of B Company to higher ground, allowing German infantry to come forward.

On the southern side of the river, a detachment from the 2/1 Field Company was attempting to multiply the obstacles that a German advance would face if and when they got across the river. The plan was to blow the road into the river on the right flank of the 21 Battalion, but the Australian engineers found that ‘Jerry was on the other side of the river about 200 yds away, shooting all over the place, mostly with tommy guns and at nothing in particular.’ The Australians persevered, preparing a demolition which ‘consisted of two blows about six feet apart across a road, 50 lbs of ammonal (two tins) to each blow’. They then awaited orders to detonate — ‘about the longest two hours I ever put in’, according to Sapper Brady — until a New Zealand patrol returned at 11.15 p.m. and the firing occurred.20 By the time the Australian engineers departed, it was obvious the Germans were on the southern side of the river, to the east of the Anzac position.

Opposite Gonnos, Chilton and the 2/2nd Battalion did what they could to find out what was developing on the northern side of the river. Finding a small punt, a patrol led by the former manager of the Muswellbrook swimming pool, Lieutenant C. T. Colquhoun, was sent across the Pinios late on 17 April. Having successfully reconnoitred the opposite bank, Colquhoun reported back to Chilton ‘by telephone on his return about 0800 hrs 18 Apr. He found enemy tps. in GONNOS. Contact was made later with several German patrols. He also saw small bodies of tps with pack tpt …’21

With both sides having completed their reconnaissances, 18 April dawned in the worst possible way for the Anzacs: the weather was fine and clear, bringing the Luftwaffe into play. The defenders could only await the Germans as they made obvious preparations for an attack. Troops were seen dismounting from transports in Gonnos, and the 26 Battery opened a determined barrage to disrupt them, thereby provoking an artillery duel across the valley. The historian of the 21 Battalion later recorded the scene:

The valley was filled with the roar of rushing shells, the thunder of exploding mortar shells, and the crackle of musketry echoing and re-echoing. The ancient Greek gods who dwelt on high Olympus might have been engaged in combat.22

This duel went on throughout the morning, the New Zealand gunners and Australian mortar crews fighting a losing battle as more and more German weapons entered the contest. The principal German unit involved in these exchanges was the I/118 Gebirgs Artillery Regiment, which found the New Zealand fire accurate and damaging: ‘The enemy artillery, which obviously had very good OPs [observation posts], was very watchful, and particularly engaged our OPs, and 2 Bty’s positions, with very accurate fire, which caused casualties in 2 Bty.’23

Edwin Madigan, the Newcastle surf lifesaver and footballer, was a member of one of the mortar crews from the 2/2nd Battalion opposite the demolished railway bridge. He recalled that ‘all we could see was extended lines of German troops … We just keep bombing the [railway] bridge …’24 With the Australians’ standard-issue three-inch mortars out of range, ‘What we did was put more charge in to get the distance.’ With this hazardous expedient, Madigan and his mates kept up their barrage, but the weight of fire they could mount given the scale of attack that was unfolding was never sufficient to prevent the Germans pressing on. Under the cover of their own bombardment, the Germans began infiltrating on the Anzac left, getting the III/143 Regiment across the river to occupy the village of Parapotamos. This was no mere reconnaissance patrol, but a determined effort by the 6th Gebirgs to cut the line of retreat of the Anzacs — in addition to a full battalion, 2 Company of the 143 Regiment, led by Leutnant Jacobs, followed up. He was ordered to skirt the defences altogether, and push far to the south to set up a roadblock on the Pinios–Larisa road.

The commander of the left-most company of the 2/2nd Battalion, Captain J. G. Hendry, a school teacher and law student from Strathfield, New South Wales, attempted to meet the challenge on the left by sending a patrol forward at 9.00 a.m. — on approaching Parapatomas, this patrol was met by a sharp fire that barred further progress, one Australian being killed and others wounded. On hearing reports of this fighting, Chilton made a larger effort to stabilise his flank, sending forward the battalion carrier platoon, led by Lieutenant J. Love, with orders to ‘prevent infiltration’.

The Bren-gun carriers moved out around 8.00 a.m., but soon found the task beyond their limited resources. Love halted his vehicles short of the objective, and sent a section ahead on foot. Coming to a small rise, the Australians saw a camouflaged boat on the opposite side of the river. Love quickly deployed three Bren guns, and ‘fire opened on various enemy positions, (1) river spit, (2) enemy mortars, (3) enemy scouts and patrols’. With action joined, Love went back to the waiting carriers to bring them forward, and to give a report to D Company. In the midst of this conversation, the Germans retaliated with a far greater weight of fire than the Australians could handle. A barrage of mortar bombs mortally wounded Love, and killed Private W. P. Sullivan. The carriers themselves were undamaged but forced to withdraw, and the boat used by the Germans that the Australians had hoped to destroy went on with its business. The Germans were thereby free to go about their work, and the efforts of Jacobs in particular were to have unfortunate consequences for the Anzacs later in the day.25

At the other end of the line, the Germans launched another attempt at a crossing at 11.00 a.m., selecting by design or accident that part of the river bank which formed the junction between the Australian and New Zealand units. Thanks to the shortage of men among the Anzacs, this crossing was again not directly opposed, but Chilton at the head of 2/2nd asked Macky to send in the 21 Battalion’s carrier platoon. Macky obliged, and nine New Zealand Bren-gun carriers under Lieutenant Dee advanced, and claimed to have forced the German infantry into the cover of the river bank.

In fact, this was but a German feint; and when the full-blooded onslaught began, the defenders found it impossible to hold their ground against the panzers. Covered by fire from the north bank, the Germans brought forward the tanks that had crossed to the southern bank downstream of the gorge, and with their arrival the 21 Battalion was soon in desperate trouble. On the right were isolated platoons of Macky’s B Company: these were driven quickly up into the hills to the south. Next in line was C Company in front of Pinios, whose men were confronted by Balck’s tanks, protected only by the four guns of L Troop, 7 Anti-Tank Regiment. One of the two-pounders was destroyed before it could fire, but gun L4 under the command of Sergeant D. E. Cavanagh lay in wait, camouflaged and undetected. When a group of three panzers pulled up at a range of just 100 yards, Cavanagh let fly with 28 rounds that set fire to two tanks and stopped the third.26 Cavanagh’s claims of the damage he had inflicted were valid; however, the inconvenience to the Germans was only temporary, as the war diary of I/3 Pz Regiment recorded:

Nest after nest was smoked out with the utmost difficulty, but then the leading tanks came round the end of a hill and were greeted with A Tk [Anti Tank] fire from the flank at very close range. In a moment both point tanks were burning. Some of the crews, including Leutnant Brunenbusch, escaped into the thick scrub seriously wounded. The third tank spotted the enemy and opened fire at once. It kept on firing until the enemy was fought to a standstill and an ammunition wagon burst into flames and exploded. The unit medical officer came up quickly and had plenty to do. The driver of the HQ tank saved both tanks before they blew up. Both fires were put out with fire extinguishers.27

Despite his success, with the German infantry in close proximity Cavanagh found his position untenable: he abandoned his gun and attempted to move to the south. The other two guns of L Troop never fired a shot before being overrun and, with their anti-tank defences shorn, the New Zealand infantry were inexorably pushed aside. Having dislocated C Company as an organised force, the German tanks pressed on to Pinios and, halting on its outskirts, poured a devastating fire into the village.

With their tanks in control, the German infantry on the northern bank joined in, sending a platoon across the demolished bridge. In an effort to keep control of the fighting, Macky withdrew his battle headquarters from its position in a deep ditch south of Pinios to higher ground where he could directly observe what was going on. By now his gallant battalion was all but spent — only A Company, supported by a section of carriers, remained under effective command. The carriers helped keep the German infantry at bay for a time but, under cover from a withering mortar barrage, the panzers at length broke onto A Company’s ground. In a last, defiant act of frustration, Sergeant Major Lockett, a student from Gisborne, rammed his Bren-gun carrier into the leading German tank and knocked it off the road. He won a deserved Military Medal for this feat, only to be killed on Crete the following month.28

As the New Zealand companies and platoons were broken one by one, surviving Kiwis began moving back in small groups through the Australian lines from about 11.00 a.m. Macky succeeded in reporting to Chilton that a heavy attack on Pinios was being mounted under cover of mortar fire, and Macky’s intelligence officer then reported to Allen, just before the phone line was cut at 12.00 a.m, that tanks were in Pinios. The 16 Brigade was remarkably unsympathetic to the plight of their Anzac comrades, complaining that this ‘excited telephone message’ was the only communication received from Macky.29 Only the platoon led by Lieutenant W. J. Southworth, an Auckland schoolteacher, drew praise from the Australians during this phase of the battle: he brought his little band of men out as an organised force and, reporting to Chilton, was posted to help bolster the positions held by the 2/2nd Battalion.

As the 21 Battalion dissolved into isolated and desperate bands of men, the Australians endured a two-hour lull before the German attack moved into its next phase. When that was launched, the Germans sought to envelop the 2/2nd Battalion on two fronts, or three if the sustained bombing of Makrikhori by the Luftwaffe is included. On the right, facing where the 21 Battalion had been, was C Company led by Captain A. A. Buckley, a farmer from Tamworth, New South Wales. At around 3.00 p.m., a tank drove into its forward positions: in the ensuing fire-fight, a two-pound gun of the 2/1st A-tk Regiment was disabled, and the solitary panzer was joined by two others to threaten Chilton’s right flank.

The difficulties of the 2/2nd Battalion were intensified by a frontal attack from across the river, against Captain W. B. Caldwell’s company. The German infantry attack was made in battalion strength, and was met by sustained Bren-gun fire and by two mortars commanded by Sergeant G. Coyle, a labourer from Newcastle, New South Wales. This tiny force lobbed 350 mortar bombs onto the Germans as they came across the river, and the war diarist of I/143rd Regiment testified to their weight of fire:

As soon as the enemy at and SE of Evangelismos recognised our attack they opened heavy shell, mortar and MG fire on our bank and the river itself. But before the fire could have any effect 1 Coy … had reached the other bank, thanks to the speed of the advance … 3 Coy, Bn HQ and the signals platoon followed under extremely heavy fire. In about 1½ hours the whole battalion crossed the swift river (70 metres wide and 1½ metres deep) under terrific defensive fire.30

The efforts of Coyle and his mortar crews were particularly noteworthy: the Australian sergeant hammered away at the oncoming Germans until his mortars had only six rounds of ammunition left. Hoping to save his equipment, Coyle loaded up a platoon truck and sent this off while he and a small party formed a rearguard, engaging the Germans with small arms. This heroic effort deserved better, but a tank shell destroyed the truck and equipment ‘before it had gone 200 yards’. Major Paul Cullen, in reporting this action, noted quietly that Coyle’s ‘conduct merits recognition’.31

The I/143 Regiment was across the Pinios, at a cost of 12 men killed, one missing, and 69 wounded. The efforts of Coyle and the other men of the 2/2nd Battalion were of no avail, partly for want of medium machine-guns. The 16 Brigade later bemoaned the absence of Vickers guns at Pinios, observing that such weapons would have found targets ‘made to order’ during the battle.32 In this way, Allen Force paid for the 1939 decision to strip medium machine-guns from the armoury of standard infantry battalions and concentrate them instead into the unwieldy MG battalions.

Even without heavy machine-guns, the Australian fire did some harm to the German infantry, and the New Zealand gunners accounted for a number of the panzers, but nothing could stay the German armour coming along the road from Pinios. Chilton’s problems intensified at 5.00 p.m. when the telephone lines to his forward companies went dead. With communications failing, so went the ability of Allen and his battalion commanders to direct the battle. On the left, at the junction between the 2/2nd and 2/3rd battalions, company commanders had the difficult job of coordinating the movement of their units so that they did not expose each other’s flanks. Captain Hendry of the 2/2nd Battalion, who had stubbornly tried to prevent the Germans penetrating through Parapotamos earlier in the morning, was puzzled at 3.45 p.m. when the neighbouring company commander from the 2/3rd Battalion, Captain A. C. Murchison, arrived at his headquarters to say that orders had been received for both units to withdraw. Hendry was then in the midst of organising yet another counterattack to shore up the left flank, but he was not then under direct attack, and he therefore questioned whether the orders were valid. Murchison had indeed misinterpreted what was intended — rather than withdraw himself, with Hendry to conform to his movement, the reverse should have applied, with Murchison’s company moving only when Hendry, closest to the enemy, decided it was time to fall back.

Just as at Vevi, withdrawals by one unit that left the flank of a neighbour exposed promised military disaster, and so it proved again at Pinios. Hendry and Murchison pulled their companies out as Murchison thought they had been ordered to do, and the slopes leading to Makrikhorie were given up between 4.30 p.m. and 5.00 p.m. even without direct pressure from the Germans. Chilton, still calmly attempting to hold his line, was puzzled by the sudden cessation of firing on the left, and concluded glumly that the companies posted there must have been overrun. Murchison’s error was the sort of mistake a soldier can regret for the rest of his life, because with such decisions lives are lost and comrades taken prisoner. With the 2/3rd Battalion at Pinios was the under-age warrior Bill Jenkins, who later became post-war friends with Murchison, sharing a drink with him regularly on a Friday night. The camaraderie of fellow veterans, however, never washed away Murchison’s sense of guilt for the events on that slope above the Pinios River.33

This debacle was not the least of Chilton’s problems. Not only was he under pressure from the marauding German tanks, but just after 4.00 p.m. he acquired a diplomatic responsibility as well: General Freyberg chose this moment to come forward to Allen’s brigade headquarters to find out what had befallen his 21 Battalion. The enquiry was directed at Chilton, after contact with Macky had failed. Freyberg’s suggestion that he, the general, might go forward and assist Chilton was gently declined — Freyberg commended the young Australian colonel to Allen, saying, ‘You’ve a fine man up there, he’s as cool as a cucumber.’34

Freyberg was at least interested in the fate of his men. By contrast, when Rowell suggested to Blamey, on the morning of 18 April, that the Australian commander go forward to check on Allen Force, he ‘demurred’.35 When Rowell repeated his suggestion in the afternoon, Blamey again declined, so the chief of staff went forward to 6th Division headquarters on his own. He reached the Australian divisional commander, Mackay, at 4.00 p.m., only to be met by an air attack. With no slit trenches available, Rowell lay on the ground with his hands over his ears, only to look up and see Mackay ‘standing there with his arms folded, calmly surveying the scene’.36

Mackay was indeed worried by more than air attacks. Around this time, Allen reported to divisional headquarters that tanks had broken through on the left, and that ‘he was endeavouring to hold on to his present line and … could [do] no more than his best’. This was sufficiently alarming for Mackay to cancel the movement back to Thermopylae of his divisional reserve — the 2/1st Battalion holding the airfield at Larisa, and the 2/2 Field Regiment — and order instead that it be held in readiness to move to Allen’s aid.37 Although it does not figure in Australian war diaries, Allen received one modest reinforcement during the course of the day, a column of Marmon–Herrington armoured cars and carriers from B Company, NZ Divisional Cavalry. He deployed these south of Makrikhori, obviously as a stop line in the event of withdrawal.38

Meanwhile, Chilton needed his phlegmatic disposition, because his right-hand companies were then facing concentrated groups of German tanks. Buckley’s company, above the road, fought on against one such, each tank reportedly pulling a trailer carrying an infantry section. As the panzer force approached the neighbouring company of Captain Caldwell, the Australian infantry were supported by the two Kiwi 25-pounders posted forward for anti-tank work. One gun, under Lieutenant J. H. Franklin of the 5 NZ Field Regiment, hit two tanks, but a third detonated a nearby petrol lorry, and the New Zealand gunners were forced to flee. The other gun, from F troop, 4 NZ Field Regiment, commanded by Sergeant J. C. Brown, stopped another two tanks and then entered into a deadly duel with a third, which took up a hull-down position (meaning only its turret showed above the rise behind which it sheltered). This very personal battle ended with three of Brown’s crew wounded, and the gun useless.39 Even with their sacrifice, ten panzers broke into Caldwell’s position in the minutes before 7.00 p.m.

Caldwell, too, now had little choice but to pull back his headquarters, chased by 18 tanks. These fanned out in the Evangelismos area, where they were confronted by Lieutenant Moore, commanding the eleven carriers inherited from the 2/5th and 2/11th battalions. Moore bravely placed the thinly armoured Bren carriers across the road and railway to cover the embattled infantry:

[T]wo carriers shot out to the track, where several wounded were thrown aboard, and a number of weary infantry given a lift. Groaning under the heavy load, the carriers were about to move forward when two more tanks appeared from around a huge bluff, only 200 yards away … for some strange reason, maybe caution, the tanks stopped about 150 yards behind, and started to fire orange tracer shells. Shut in under the mass of humanity, [driver] Frank Duffy was unaware of the position. Ashfold yelled ‘He’s ranging on us, Duff’ and Duffy, forcing his head through the passengers, sized up the situation and drove the vehicle forward to where the first shots had landed. This cool bit of driving caused the next few shots to fall short, but one of the wounded, lying right on top of the mass of bodies, summed it up when he said ‘How stiff can a man be. I would have my arse pointed straight at the bloody thing.’40

German caution and Australian equanimity allowed the carriers to make good their escape, but the withdrawal of the remaining New Zealand guns left Chilton with just a single two-pound gun as the only effective anti-tank capability in the vicinity of his headquarters. Attempts to use the Boys anti-tank rifle to halt the German armour proved as useless at Pinios as the weapon had proved to be at Vevi. Fighting to protect Chilton and the battalion staff, Sergeant ‘Sapper’ Tanner hit three tanks in a row with rounds from a Boys rifle, all without effect, and in despair whacked the side of the last with the impotent elephant gun as the panzer drove by.41

Their armour impervious, the tanks chased the men of the 2/2nd across fire-swept ground. Sixty years later, Edwin Madigan remembered that horrific experience:

[W]hen we got the order to retreat, I remember the name of the bloke still, Carl Parrott, we came to a corner of a house, and I said, Carl just have a look. Well, he went white, there was a tank waiting there around the corner. We got into a gully on the near side, so that the tank could not depress its gun low enough, and as we scrambled out, the fire was thudding into the far side … you only got out with your life.42

While the 2/2nd Battalion was being hammered in this way, the remnants of the 21 NZ Battalion were dispersed to the south of the battlefield. Macky had arranged for his transport to establish a rendezvous at which his troops coming out of the fighting could rally, and be lifted out. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Penney, the battalion transport officer, had taken his trucks south to Molos to offload gear, and could not get back in time along the crowded roads. Major Harding, the battalion second-in-command, took matters into his own hands and went back to corps headquarters in search of alternative transport, but the Australians unhelpfully advised him to seek help from his own division. More sympathetic, Freyberg’s chief of staff, Colonel K. L. Stewart, despatched 20 trucks from the 4th RMT Company to help Harding.43

This convoy was led by Captain F. H. Muller, an engine driver from Hamilton, and it reached the rendezvous at 5.00 p.m. to be met by 150 men of the 21 Battalion, mostly from the Headquarters Company, who were brought out by Lieutenant Colonel Parkinson. He had come across them while unsuccessfully attempting to organise the withdrawal of some his guns, and Parkinson took up the command slack to re-group the tired infantry. With these men and a few more who trickled in, the RMT trucks took away what was left of the 21 Battalion after 7.00 p.m. They first had to negotiate the chaos as the fighting line fell back over the assembly area, with German fire ranging on the vehicles. One of the Kiwi driviers, H. H. Elliott, an Auckland lorry driver, wrote:

It was a fair dinkum rout. There were guns and trucks and what-have-you going for their lives, and us still sitting there. When we started to move down the valley towards Larisa it was fairly dark and things were sticky. There were guns and trucks in the ditch. One gun was right across the road and we had to heave it off before we could get past.44

While the 21 Battalion was getting out as best it could, the remaining elements of Allen Force attempted to hold on until nightfall. Any kind of coordination by Allen Force was now at an end. Even the system of runners had failed to operate — a liaison officer sent to Chilton at 5.30 p.m. to authorise his withdrawal failed to get through as the battlefield dissolved into small parties of desperate men fighting their way out.45 Units retaining their organisational shape were thin on the ground, but the companies of Hendry and Murchison began arriving at Allen’s brigade headquarters at around 5.45 p.m., together with a number of New Zealand artillery guns. Allen used these scant resources to form another stop line, following orders from Freyberg that the Germans had to be kept on a line running through the Pinios–Sikourin road until 3.00 a.m. the next morning. A company of the NZ Divisional Cavalry were under the same orders, lying astride the road south of Makrihori. The commander of these vehicles, Major J. T. Russell, a farmer from Hastings, complained that ‘by dusk the Australian infantry towards which the squadron was retiring had pulled out and left it in the air’.46 The Kiwi’s light armour could hardly stand up to tank fire, and the New Zealand crews had to work hard to stay in the battle. One Bren-gun carrier commanded by Corporal R. F. White was hit twice by panzer shells:

[O]ne landed amongst tins of water and petrol … while the other passed under him, through blankets, packs and everything, and finally bounced into the front cockpit. But the carrier still kept going, with the crew extinguishing a fire as they went.47

Covered by this fighting, Colonel Jimmy Lamb assembled the next stop line in compliance with Allen’s orders, putting one of his 2/3rd Battalion companies on some high ground to the right of the road. He put Murchison and Hendry to the left of it, using Bren-gun carriers to extend the flank in that direction, and posted the remaining available company of 2/3rd — only 30 men strong — as his only reserve. Allen brought his headquarters back to this new line.

It was thus now the turn of the 2/3rd Battalion and Hendry’s attached company from the 2/2nd to take on the German tanks, which duly arrived at 7.30 p.m. when five of them appeared on the road. Two New Zealand 25-pounders were hurriedly swung into position in the open, destroying two tanks before one of the guns itself was knocked out and its crew wounded.

With the only anti-tank defences eliminated, the Australian infantry soon had German tanks on top of them, and several soldiers were run over. One of them was Corporal Bill Cameron — he had clambered aboard one of the tanks hoping to set it alight with a can of petrol, only to be thrown off as the tank manoeuvred violently. Fortunately for him, the soft ground yielded as the panzer passed over him, leaving him, miraculously, still alive but with his thigh so hideously bruised that he was unable to walk and had to be carried from the battlefield.48 Elsewhere, the remnants of the 2/2nd Battalion fought on as best they could — the battalion transport officer, Lieutenant Adrian Wilson, formed a line of B Echelon men (logistics troops) in a field, and took on several Mk IV panzers, the heaviest in the German armoury, with rifle and pistol fire. The exposure of the battalion’s support teams to the German attack inevitably cost it dearly: among other losses, killed in this fighting was Captain J. A. F. Flashman, on secondment from the 2/1st Field Ambulance to serve as the regimental medical officer of the 2/3rd.49

Even acts of desperation such as this could only go on for so long. Hendry wrote that ‘at one stage a group of fifteen to twenty men were round a tank firing rifles and light machine-guns to no apparent effect … the feeling of helplessness against the tanks overcame the troops and they began to move back in small parties to the trucks’.50

Lamb rallied his men again, 1000 metres further south. All was now in a state of confusion, with trucks, gun tractors, and field pieces jammed together, blocking the road.51 When officers attempted to unscramble the men into their own platoons, Sergeant Arthur Carson, a rigger from inner-city Sydney and a veteran of the First World War, defiantly spoke up: ‘We’re not platoons here. We are the AIF.’ Bill Jenkins was a witness to Carson’s legendary contribution, but remembered the words slightly differently. When tired and battle-weary men asked what to do, Carson, in Jenkins’ memory, said simply, ‘Get down here and fire, there’s no platoons here, we’re soldiers and we’ve got to stop these bloody Huns’.52

Whatever form of words Carson used, the 2/3rd was about to need all of his pluck, because the German tanks were still in pursuit. In near darkness, the leading panzer arrived with its commander standing high in the turret to see the way. The tank commander was quickly shot down, and Lamb implored his men to keep fighting, hoping that the German tanks would stop for the night once the darkness was complete. The heroics of Lamb and his men prevailed — harassed only by rifle and Bren guns, the German tanks withdrew. Jenkins, who was alongside his battalion commander that desperate moment, recalled that three panzers came up to their position, and that Colonel Lamb shouted out, ‘Keep firing, fire at the [observation] slits, it’s getting dark, they can’t see where we are!’ According to Jenkins, ‘Blokes with pistols even were firing at [the] tanks.’ No-one was more surprised than Jenkins when the Germans pulled back as the 2/3rd Battalion faced complete decimation. For the tanks’ crews however, discretion was the better part:

It was by now very dark, and one company reported by wireless to Unit HQ that it thought it was being fired on by the other one. Leutnant Stotten (adjutant) came on a convoy of trucks at 10 yards range and was fired on, but got away. It was better to halt. The regimental commander fired flares, and we formed a laager round him, covered by infantry and the recce troop.53

With the immediate threat from the panzers gone, Lamb and Allen got what was left of Allen Force onto the available trucks, and joined the New Zealanders led by Parkinson and Harding going south. However, the long Anzac column fell foul of Leutnant Jacob and his ambush party, 2nd Company, 143rd Regiment — the unit that had crossed the river at Parapotamos that morning. The Germans had set up a roadblock not far short of Larisa; and when Jacob sprung his trap, the results were further disaster.

Surprised by the German fire, and naturally confused in the dark, the Australians of the 2/3rd Battalion took casualties as they spilled from their trucks. Among the party Bill Jenkins was with, he lost his mate Jim Basterfield — with his truck halted and Germans firing from the roadside, Basterfield tried to jump out, but was hit in the head by a burst of machine-gun fire and killed instantly. As men stumbled around in the darkness, a New Zealand counterattack led by a Bren-gun carrier failed to dislodge the Germans. The war diary of the 143rd Gebirgs Regiment described the success of their roadblock:

At 21.30 hrs a long MT convoy, whose lights could be seen as far as the foot of the mountains, approached the block. The leading vehicle [described by the Germans as a light tank, but certainly a Bren-gun carrier] came up to the block at 40 to 50 mph and immediately opened fire. It was engaged with several LMGs, 2 HMGs and an A Tk rifle and destroyed. The rest of the convoy stopped, and the troops took cover on either side of the road and opened a heavy fire with rifles and machine pistols. At 2230 hrs two armoured cars came up [either NZ Marmon Herringtons, or Bren-gun carriers] firing with all weapons, and tried to crash through the block to the SE. In the darkness they came forward with no lights along the railway embankment (which was higher than the road) and stopped. Leutnant Jacobs fired flares, collected all the heavy infantry weapons which were on the embankment and opened fire again in volleys on the vehicles farther away. The effect was terrific. In the first pause in the firing the rest of the Australians left the vehicles and made a determined attempt to overrun the positions on the embankment by coming in to very close range. Our accurate defensive fire inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy. About 0100 hrs a heavy tank with a quick-firing gun was knocked out by several direct hits with the A Tk rifle. The attack collapsed. About 30 Australians came in to surrender, and the rest ran in all directions across the fields trying to escape SE. 8 or 10 dead and about 20 seriously wounded were left behind.54

The two armoured cars reported by Jacobs were probably two Bren carriers from the carrier platoon of the 2/2nd Battalion, which reported their loss: ‘Due to enemy action at this point, a further two carriers having been attacked in the darkness by the enemy at close quarters finding themselves unable to manoeuvre, due to the narrow road and traffic congestion were ditched.’55 The armoured cars and carriers of the NZ Divisional Cavalry were still to the north at this point; forewarned by the fighting at the roadblock, they pushed south-east across country, abandoning vehicles as they broke down one by one.56

Back at the roadblock, many trucks were lost and their drivers made prisoner. Those that escaped made a wide detour, and reached Molos, the next stop line, at about midday on 19 April. At that stage, the 21 Battalion consisted of just 132 men of all ranks — Macky was missing, as was Harding (he later walked back to Molos with a small party after his pick-up truck bogged) and all four company commanders.

Like the New Zealanders, the remnants of the 2/3rd Battalion were forced by Jacob’s roadblock to take a wide detour. Further north, the greater part of the 2/2nd Battalion was in an even worse predicament — on foot, in isolated parties trying to clear the battle area by walking out over the hills. Edwin Madigan was one such, and his odyssey south from Pinios was a truly extraordinary adventure. Left behind by the rapid advance of the German armoured columns after the battle, Madigan and a group of comrades could only plod on in the hours of darkness, and hole up in the day. They were soon a long way behind German lines, but how far they did not quite appreciate until they awoke one morning, cold and stiff, in a ditch where they had sheltered for a few hours. Madigan was dumbfounded to see they had chosen to camp beside an advanced landing ground of the Luftwaffe, on which was parked a bomber with its crew having breakfast beside it. First awake among his party, Madigan covered the mouth of the man next to him, and quietly tried to rouse him. When his comrade objected and demanded an explanation, Madigan suggested a cinematic option: ‘I said to him, “Well, if I was Errol Flynn, we’d go over and capture those blokes and I’d fly you to Athens.”’

With Errol Flynn otherwise engaged, and Indiana Jones not yet born, Madigan and his group opted for discretion and slunk away in the ditch. They got away, and walked for several days. Madigan still carried a revolver, which came in handy: in desperation, he used it to hold up a Greek civilian driving a car, and took possession of the vehicle. Thus mobile again, Madigan and his team drove south until they came to a village housing a large number of Anzac wounded. They left the car to help shift the casualties, and walked on. Coming in the dark to a line held by a New Zealand company, one of Madigan’s companions lit a cigarette and was immediately fired on, fortunately without result. For the time being, Madigan was safe, and admitted to hospital.

Many of the Australians and New Zealanders trekking away from Pinios Gorge endured even longer and more difficult escapes. Chilton, the CO of the 2/2nd Battalion, was one such. With a small group of men, he tramped by night as far as the Greek province of Euboea on the east coast, and obtained a boat there to sail to the Aegean island of Skyros on 8 May. Joined by other escapees, Chilton and his band eventually reached Smyrna in Turkey, and were repatriated to Egypt via Alexandretta, finally arriving at Port Said on 24 May. Only when he reached Egypt was Chilton able to ask the question that had pressed upon him for the previous month — had the sacrifices of his unit delayed the Germans to prevent them gaining Larisa?

An even bigger group of men from Chilton’s battalion, led by Major Paul Cullen of the headquarters company, likewise made passage to the Aegean islands, hoping to reach Turkey. Helped by the Greeks, including shipowner D. G. Limos, who lent his allies a large sum of money, Cullen’s party reached Chios close to the Turkish coast, and then completed their escape by sailing to Heraklion, Crete, where they arrived on 5 May.

Not all of the refugees from the Pinios battle had the good fortune of Chilton and Cullen. Frank Cox attempted to make his way out in the confusion. Having lost his motorcycle, Cox went out by truck, but ran into the German roadblock. With tracer fire screaming through the night, Cox managed to find another lift, but the second vehicle broke down and he had to take to the hills on foot. Heading east for the coast, Cox and his small band wandered for several days, moving at night to avoid detection. Striking the coast, the soldiers seized a row boat: with 14 men piled aboard, this little vessel groaned and leaked its way a little south. Calling into a small village for supplies, the Anzacs took shelter in a gully during the daylight hours. In need of food, a party was sent to catch some of the chickens scratching about the laneways:

[S]uddenly there was this great hail of bullets. I didn’t think of Germans, I thought it was our blokes shooting the chooks. The next minute, there were more bursts, we got in behind some houses. I poked my head round the corner, and straight down the barrel of a gun — I could see his fingers, he was that nervous, only a young bloke this fellow, from the German air force.

For Cox, what lay ahead now was the interminable life of a prisoner of war. Of the psychological blow of his capture, he remembered, ‘It’s a complete let down. You can’t envisage it — your freedom’s gone, that’s the thing that leaves you completely devastated.’57

Allen’s composite brigade had fought itself to extinction as a military force but, at a strategic level, its sacrifice had delivered what Rowell required — the 2nd Panzer Division was kept out of Larisa while the rest of the Anzac Corps north and west of Olympus got away to the Thermopylae Line. Had Allen and his men not demanded a fight of Balck’s panzers to get across the Pinios River, it is entirely possible that the Germans could have cut through to Larisa on 18 April. Had that occurred, the second Anzac Corps would be as well known as the original edition from 1915, but for very different reasons. Three brigades and associated artillery and transport units were still north of Larisa on 18 April; had they been cut off, upwards of 10,000 Australian and New Zealand troops would have fallen into the German ‘bag’.

Apart from the men who did the fighting, Sydney Rowell deserves the greatest credit for what was achieved at Pinios Gorge. It was his acute appreciation of the Platamon action and its possible consequences that got the 16 Brigade onto the vital ground before the Germans could renew their attack. Had he not taken this initiative, the 21 NZ Battalion, no matter how game, could never have halted a panzer battalion, its supporting units, and the best part of a mountain division for a full day. Rowell later wrote in his autobiography, with some understatement: ‘I may have made a mouthful of a small incident. But I am convinced that but for the action we had taken at Corps headquarters we would have had two German divisions in Larisa before the main withdrawal got underway.’58

In his assessment of what the fighting at Platamon and Pinios meant, Rowell was surely correct. Not that he got any thanks for it from Blamey, the nominal corps commander. Blamey’s military experience in the First World War had been almost entirely as a staff officer — he had never faced the need to make rapid decisions under fire, with all the pressures and strains that go with it. This might explain his lack of direct involvement in handling the battle, and his grudging and irritable approval of the various decisions made for him by Rowell. By contrast, with the battle in the balance, Freyberg realised what was at stake and offered to go forward to lend a hand, even though only one of his battalions was involved. Blamey made no such move. After the campaign, George Vasey, one of the many high-quality Anzac brigadiers in Greece, wrote bitterly of Blamey that ‘he was never seen in the battle area’.59 Blamey’s pointed indifference to the fate of Allen Force on 18 April is an indictment that is difficult to overstate.

Pinios Gorge offers another indictment against one of the senior commanders in Greece, namely Maitland Wilson. There the Anzac infantry again paid the cost for Wilson’s mishandling of the British 1st Armoured Brigade at Vevi, and afterwards. At the time the Germans stormed across the Pinios, what was left of the Armoured Brigade was operating on the left flank, covering — in cavalry style — the withdrawal from Grevena to Kalabaka. Had Charrington’s Brigade been used as the cardinal element in a central reserve, it could have been used to deal with the most critical threat as the withdrawal developed, which by 16 April was on the right, eastern flank. Even a few medium tanks would have allowed an all-arms combination to be set against the 2nd Panzer Division. What might have been achieved by a tank element was evident in the performance of the Bren-gun carriers — even these flimsy vehicles gave the infantry something to withdraw behind, and required the German infantry to halt while they were dealt with by the panzers and mortar fire. Medium tanks operating with the well-handled New Zealand 25-pound guns would have cost Balck more tank losses, provided Allen with a counterattack capability and, in the retreat, allowed the infantry to withdraw in stages with proper support, and hence fewer casualties. Most of the losses suffered by the infantry were prisoners, which might have been avoided had armour been available in cooperation — Platamon and Pinios Gorge cost the 21 NZ Battalion 14 men, with another 26 wounded, and 235 taken prisoner (eight of whom died of wounds). The 2/2nd Battalion lost 14 men, saw 16 wounded, and 112 taken prisoner, while the under-strength 2/3rd Battalion mourned 12 of its number, had 31 wounded, and had 62 taken prisoner.60

If Pinios Gorge reflected badly on Blamey and Wilson, not far below Rowell in terms of leadership and ability were Brigadier Allen, battalion commanders Macky, Chilton, and Lamb, and the New Zealand artillery commander, Parkinson. The Anzac infantry commanders confronted an impossible challenge, but each led his men bravely and doggedly. Macky especially deserves credit, having achieved what was asked of him at a tactical level, and yet still managing to get something of the 21 NZ Battalion out of not one last rearguard, but two. Likewise, Chilton and Lamb led their men from the front, rallying their troops under fire to stand against tank attacks, ably supported by Parkinson, whose gun crews provided the only defence against the panzers. Chilton was afterwards criticised by his divisional commander, Mackay, for not reconnoitring a line of retreat for the 2/2nd. The general attributed this failure to the subsequent dispersal of the battalion as an organised force, but Chilton’s steadfastness against overwhelming odds could hardly be faulted.61

The Australians did not confine their critique of the battle to their own performance; they were, if anything, particularly harsh on their Anzac cousins. One of the more unsavoury themes in Australian accounts of the battle is the pointed criticisms of the 21 NZ Battalion and the 4 NZ Field Regiment. When he reported to the 6th Division headquarters at 7.30 a.m. on 20 April, Allen alleged that the ‘21 NZ Bn and the NZ Field Regiment withdrew without orders’.62 ‘Ike’ Parkinson, the commander of the New Zealand artillery at Pinios, went on to command the 6 NZ Brigade, not an appointment likely to be given to someone who shirked the issue under fire. Chilton, in his report of 2/2nd Battalion’s battle, shares Allen’s misplaced indignation, but it can hardly be substantiated — the 21 NZ Battalion no more ‘withdrew without orders’ than did the 2/2nd, when the Australian unit was broken into pieces by Balck’s panzers. When overrun by tanks against which there were but a handful of field and anti-tank guns, weapons that were themselves under closer range attack, infantrymen of any nationality stand their ground as best they can — and then get out as best they can.

As at Vevi, where cooperation between the English 1/ Rangers and the rest of Mackay Force was poor, at Pinios the Anzacs paid for intermingling their units, so that isolated companies, platoons, and gun crews fought alongside strangers. Chilton roundly criticised a New Zealand officer he thought was in charge of the two-pound gun near his headquarters, but conceded, ‘I cannot remember this officer’s name.’63 All the evidence suggested that this gun came from the Australian 2/1st Anti-Tank Regiment, the only New Zealand guns of this type having been accounted for when they were overrun in the first panzer charge on Pinios. With senior officers unable to tell who was who, unfavourable reflections on the effort of another national force hardly seem warranted.

Whatever the squabbles among their officers about who was to blame, our conclusion about the fighting men involved must be straightforward — they were magnificent. Of all the battles fought by Australian and New Zealand troops in the Second World War, Pinios Gorge (and Vevi) must rank among the most anonymous. Tobruk, El Alamein, and Kokoda capture the public imagination in Australia. Likewise, in New Zealand, campaigns and battles such as Crete, Sidi Rezegh, Ruweisat, and Monte Cassino are better known.

Yet nowhere have Anzacs fought in a more valiant cause, nowhere have they faced longer odds, and nowhere have Australian and New Zealand soldiers faced those odds with grimmer determination than they did at Pinios Gorge. To fight experienced and superbly equipped German panzer units with rifles and machine-guns, without so much as a string of barbed wire to secure weapons pits, and with Luftwaffe bombers swooping overhead, took a raw kind of courage. And yet the Battle of Pinios Gorge features scantily in the pantheon of Anzac legends.

At that battle, three Anzac battalions took their turn to be smashed into pieces by German armour. Knowing full well what was to come, the men of these battalions stood their ground until their units were broken into fragments by the weight of panzer fire. The men who died fighting Nazism in this way deserve to live in our memory.