‘I’m praying the Germans don’t think of dropping parachutists there.’
Bending over the map, Dicken had his finger on the narrow isthmus that joined the Peloponnese to Hellas and the rest of the country. It was cut by a canal which was crossed by a single bridge, the loss of which would mean that the whole of the British force of 60,000 men would be trapped, because the Piraeus was now barely useable and there was little hope of embarking them in the northern half of the country.
The Greek authorities had finally agreed to leave the handling of all shipping to the Royal Navy, a general headquarters had been set up in Athens and, though no one else appeared to have thought yet of evacuation, the navy, with its experience of Dunkirk, was already reconnoitring suitable beaches to the south, and scouring coastal villages to charter caïques, motor boats and other small craft.
As a systematic blitz of airfields and aircraft began, news came in of increasing numbers of enemy machines and the loss of more and more British machines.
‘We have nine aircraft left in the three bomber squadrons in Thessaly,’ Babington reported. ‘The three fighter squadrons have twenty. After that, nothing.’
Diplock’s Committee, known by this time as the Clearsight Committee because of its avowed intention of looking at things clearly before issuing its plan, was busy in a set of offices it had taken over. So far little had emerged and Babington produced the information that they had decided it would be unwise to remain in Greece – ‘I can believe that of Diplock,’ Dicken growled – but that they hadn’t yet come up with any ideas.
Then, without waiting for Diplock’s decision, the AOC decided he’d had enough and, ordering his squadrons south, signalled Middle East Headquarters urging immediate withdrawal. Another flurry of orders brought the instruction from the Clearsight Committee to Dicken to send off the Redistribution Plan.
‘It’s too bloody late now,’ he snapped. ‘The roads are already packed with traffic!’
By means of despatch riders, he was able to get instructions to three of the squadrons which immediately started to move, but the delay had gone on too long and the other squadrons had made their own decisions and were already making for the Athens area. The situation was beginning to fall apart. As the western of the two RAF wings was forced south, the Greek Epirus divisions folded up and the Greek army started to disintegrate, so that it began to seem highly improbable that any substantial part of the British force could hope to escape.
‘This is going to be worse than Dunkirk,’ Babington said. ‘We’ve farther to go and we haven’t got fighter cover.’
That afternoon, Babington came in with a report of large formations of German bombers approaching, escorted by Me110s. There were only fifteen Hurricanes to send up against them and, as they watched from the roof, they could see the fighting swaying over Athens, the Piraeus and Eleusis. There were huge cumulus clouds in the sky and the aircraft kept disappearing to reappear moments later at the other side. There were bursts of firing then a machine slid out of the sky, trailing its sacrificial column of smoke, before the fight finally broke up and the aeroplanes vanished, as aeroplanes always did, as suddenly as they had appeared. The tally soon arrived. There were now only five serviceable Hurricanes left.
That evening, as Dicken and Babington ate at a small restaurant near headquarters, the shadow of catastrophe lay over the whole city. The army was still clinging to the last ditches of Thermopylae but there was the constant drone of German bombers above and the echo of explosions at the Piraeus and anywhere else where there might be a hope of embarkation.
Deciding not to wait for Diplock’s decisions, which seemed to have atrophied behind the closed door of his committee room, Dicken arranged for the remaining bombers in Greece to be flown to Crete, where the navy had established a base, and what was left of the Hurricanes to an improvised airfield at Argos in the Peleponnese. By this time conditions were changing like a kaleidoscope as the German advance proceeded almost unchecked. Orders became outdated before they could be implemented and confusion was spreading like ripples in a pond, the situation became more chaotic by the hour as the air attacks continued with an intensity that stunned the senses.
Returning to headquarters, Dicken found the Clearsight Committee still in session. ‘What about the evacuation?’ he demanded.
‘They’ve decided nothing yet,’ Babington said.
Heading for Eleusis, he found the RAF men packing furiously.
‘When are we to be evacuated, sir?’ the squadron leader in command demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ Dicken admitted.
‘Well, where to, sir?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
Diplock’s Committee had been working in monastic seclusion for four days now but not a word of a plan had appeared. The army, which was now in control of all movements except by air, were still clinging to the hope that they could hang on and were issuing no instructions, so that it was a period of orders, counter-orders and lack of orders, of men waiting patiently to be told what to do and where to go, of troops passing through the city with no notion of where they were heading.
‘Sir–’ Babington arrived with unexpected news ‘–one or two ships have started evacuations of their own, and merchantmen and ferries are loading refugees in the Piraeus and at Salamis!’
That afternoon the Germans came over again and that evening they learned that a yacht taken over as a hospital ship and packed with Greek and British wounded, Australian nursing staff, and British, Maltese and Cypriot women and children had been hit and almost everybody on board had perished in a vast funeral pyre. Even the jetty had caught fire and the few survivors who had escaped had done so only by jumping overboard.
After a frantic day of issuing orders, withdrawing them, reissuing them, of trying by car and telephone to make sure they reached their destination, Dicken sank into an armchair to drink a cup of coffee, only to awake with a start to find he had fallen asleep and spilled the coffee on his chest. Babington was standing alongside him, his face haggard with weariness. ‘You’re wanted at Army HQ, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ve decided on a withdrawal and they’re having a conference on implementing their order for the evacuation. It had nearly ended when somebody noticed they hadn’t informed us.’
There were profuse apologies from the brigadier in charge but nothing from Diplock.
‘Why were the bombers flown to Crete?’ he demanded.
‘Because they were no use here,’ Dicken snapped back. ‘We’d only have lost them.’
‘Who issued the orders?’
‘I did.’
‘You didn’t ask me.’
‘You were never available.’
Diplock’s pale features reddened and, as he stared defiantly back at him, Dicken realised just how much he disliked him for his physical and moral cowardice. He had obviously been sitting on his plans because he hadn’t the courage to issue them.
‘There’s a great need for secrecy,’ Diplock snapped.
‘Why?’ Dicken snapped back. ‘The Germans obviously know our evacuation ports because they’re already bombing them.’
The meeting ended in confusion, ill temper and hostility, with the brigadier trying to cool hot words, and they spent the rest of the night drawing up instructions for the assembly of RAF men at railway stations the following morning.
The German attacks didn’t cease for a single day, and even as they issued their orders and repeated them by telephone in case they didn’t arrive, the Piraeus and the airfields were bombed again. But key personnel were by this time being flown to Crete and they started to burn confidential documents and destroy unserviceable aircraft and transport. It was less than a year since they had been doing the same thing in France.
Driving to the station the following morning to make sure the men were safely on the way, Dicken and Babington found the train they were expecting was two hours late and, after frantic telephoning from the stationmaster’s office, discovered there was a good chance it wouldn’t come at all.
‘Bab,’ Dicken said. ‘We’re wasting our time. I’m sending everybody to Argos by motor transport. And we’ll go with them.’
The next day he heard he was to be evacuated that evening in a Sunderland with the AOC, Diplock’s Committee, other members of the staff, the King of Greece and the British Minister. But, during the afternoon, he learned unexpected difficulties had arisen at Argos where, because of the bombing, ships were having to arrive after dark and leave before 3 a.m., so that it needed considerable organisation to make the best use of the few hours available.
‘We need a senior officer down there to organise things,’ the AOC said. ‘Accounts will let you have funds to hire caïques. The place’s too small for anything else.’
As they left Athens, the Greeks were lining the streets and, as the car stopped for the traffic, an old man climbed on the running board and kissed Dicken on the cheek. ‘You’ll be back,’ he said. ‘We’ll be waiting for you.’
The drive developed into a nightmare. The little towns were full of burning houses, bewildered Greek troops and confused columns of mules and bullock carts. Babington drove, while Dicken sat watching the sky, yelling to him to stop as the German bombers appeared, so they could dive for the ditches. A lorry just ahead went up in flames and a Greek transport column of mules was caught, so that they had to struggle past screaming animals and lopsided carts.
The road was narrow and twisting and the traffic jammed nose to tail for miles. Buses and private cars, Greeks riding horses or trudging along on foot, were all crowded among army transport and an occasional gun. The halts were interminable and every time they stopped the weary drivers had to be roused from sleep by cursing officers and NCOs hammering on their helmets with the butts of revolvers. The road was littered with discarded clothing, ammunition, harness, dead mules and horses, the inevitable sodden papers and office files which had been thrown away, and dozens of abandoned vehicles and requisitioned lorries from every province of Greece, side by side with British three-tonners, Italian tractors and mobile workships captured in Albania and now left to be returned to their original owners. Some were bogged down in ditches. Others were tipped at crazy angles into bomb craters. Others were burned or shattered by gunfire.
As dawn drew near they were unable to disperse off the narrow road and the port of Nauplia was almost impassable, so they decided to halt in the town. It was beginning to look as though Nauplia was becoming unusable, and eventually an officer, exhausted and depressed at the poor chances of getting any more men away, arrived to confirm the view. A Greek ammunition ship had blown up and the Stukas were using the flames to drop more bombs.
‘We’re hiding ships in small coves along the coast,’ the officer explained, ‘and taking the troops out by small boat from Nauplia Pier. I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep it up much longer because no ship’s captain will come near the coast in daylight.’
They continued to wait in a small bar where messages could be sent and finally a message arrived that Kalamata on the south coast might be used. When they arrived to check, however, they found hundreds of bewildered men bivouacking on a nearby airfield, around them the smoking ruins of all that remained of the British Hurricanes in Greece.