The battalion was close to the battle zone on the night of 10 April when they camped north of Larissa in green fields intermingled with red poppies in an idyllic setting similar to Daphni outside Athens. But there was no avoiding what the Rebels were about to face. They could hear the thunderous booms of the big guns and bombs; they could smell the cordite in intermittent wafts over the region; they could hear and see planes, still well overhead and not yet concerned with the Australian Machine Gunners. Early the next morning it was pouring rain and cold.
Brooker took Moody and Gill aside and told them: ‘You two will go by bike today. Gillie, you are going south to pass a message to oncoming troops. Moods, you are to get a word to brigade’s front HQ through the Thermopylae Pass.’
Both men felt tingles up their spine. They would be travelling alone and more than vulnerable if the Germans decided to attack from the air.
‘Why have the Luftwaffe not come after us, do you think?’ Gill asked.
‘It’s been pissing down. The clouds and storms may have made it difficult to achieve missions much beyond the front. Whatever it is, we are spared bombs for the moment. And it is very good luck for you two. When the weather clears they will come after our convoy first, and second, for fun they will come after you riding solo. They will come low and machine-gun you, maybe drop eggs too.’
Horrie sat watching Brooker as he spoke.
‘What will you do with H?’ he asked. ‘Orders may see the lot of you split up very soon.’
‘He must go with us,’ Gill said. ‘He is as important as any soldier.’
Moody reflected for a moment. He had to take responsibility. The Rebels as a group were most protective of Horrie. Each and every soldier enjoyed looking after him. Sometimes they even drew straws for the honour. But this was crunch time in his care. Moody was his master and while Horrie showed stump-wagging attention to all the men, he would go into a loving tail-spin when Moody returned from somewhere after they had been apart for even an hour. ‘He’ll come with me,’ he said.
‘On the bike?!’ Brooker asked.
‘Why not? If he can sit in a kitbag in the desert, he can lodge under my greatcoat.’
‘Dangerous! I’m not sure I should let you take him.’
‘Just as dangerous to leave him here.’
‘Moods is right, Poppa,’ Gill said. ‘If he is going to be any use in the battle zone, he has to become familiar with everything.’
Brooker looked dubious.
‘You saw him at Piraeus,’ Moody added. ‘He wet himself for about 15 minutes and then he was ready to take on the Luftwaffe—once he was used to the bombs and strafing.’
‘All right,’ Brooker said, ‘you take him. But remember, don’t take any silly risks to preserve the little digger. Look after number one first.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Moody reassured him, ‘it’s my arse on the line. He’ll just be there for the ride.’
Brooker furnished Moody with a map, which didn’t give him much of an idea of the terrain he would be going through. Thermopylae Pass was on the east coast of central Greece, about 136 kilometres north-west of Athens. Some 2000 years ago the pass had once graced the coast but silting had widened the cliffs so that they were now 1.5 kilometres inland.
‘Its name means “Hot Gates,” ’ Brooker told him, ‘because it had and still has hot sulphur springs.’
‘Got a new meaning now,’ Moody said.
Ron Ford, who had driven a truck to the 6.5 kilometre pass and back, informed him that it was ‘pretty narrow.’
Moody’s guidebook, which he was referring to now much more than in the Western Desert, informed him that the pass had been the conduit for many invasions dating back to the second Persian hostile entry in August 480 BC. At that time, a small Greek force under the Spartan King Leonides defended Attica and Boeotia against the southward march of Xerxes’ Persian army. Moody thought it a bad omen that the invaders had won that battle of Thermopylae and conquered central Greece. But he took solace from the fact that the Persians suffered huge losses in the conflict and that it had become synonymous through history with heroic resistance against the odds.
Moody put on his greatcoat, tying it at the waist with a thick belt, and took two practices to train Horrie to sit inside it. Horrie was content as long as he was close to his master, and his little cranium could poke out between a couple of buttons like a joey in a kangaroo pouch. Moody shook hands with all the other Rebels for, although nothing was said, farewells took on a greater poignancy now. They could not be sure if they would see each other again. Moody donned his goggles and black leather cap, strapped on his pack, revved his bike and was off, heading east on his mission. It was soon a sobering experience as he manoeuvred, skidded and shunted his way through the huge and growing throng of retreating Greek soldiers along with thousands of refugees fleeing the battle zone. Only Horrie’s little face and his yap, yap greeting brought wan smiles on the road and in villages as Moody ploughed on through mud and slush. The rain continued to bucket down, adding minor flooding to the many travails of the fleeing masses. Yet every time Moody grumbled to himself about the conditions, he thought again of the blessing that the weather somehow had thwarted hammerings by the Luftwaffe, which had been seen in its full, relentless devilment at Piraeus when the skies were clear in the evening and into the night. The enemy efforts had destroyed it as a port. Moody rode in a climbing spiral until he reached the mountain top. He stood his bike. Horrie eased free and dashed around, lifting his leg here and there as Moody took in the magnificent vista of green fields dotted with farms, which stretched for miles below. In the distance to the north-east was the dominant Mount Olympus with its cap and necklaces of uneven white cloud. No wonder, Moody noted, that the ancient Greeks had believed that the gods lived there.
It was colder at this height and Moody noticed Horrie was shivering as he snuggled down in the greatcoat. On returning that night, Moody and Gill fashioned a bodystocking out of socks and slipped Horrie into it. At first, he tried to shake it off with a dance that amused them but he soon began to appreciate the warmth trapped around his little trunk. The two men thought of making booties for his four stumpy legs but as neither could knit, the idea was abandoned. So was a plan for a bonnet with a colour patch. Horrie just wouldn’t wear it.
After that first ‘mission’—really a practice run—of 12 April, the Rebels and the rest of the battalion were warned that the Luftwaffe would be at them within days. The weather forecast was good, which meant enemy planes could extricate themselves from runway mud and take off. Nothing could stop a German battering from the air with the Stukas, which were combined dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft. They were two-man planes with a pilot and rear gunner, which had first impacted on populations on the ground during the Spanish Civil War five years earlier. All the Machine Gun Battalion knew what to look for. The Stuka had inverted gull wings, fixed spanned undercarriage and its infamous ‘Jericho trumpet’ or wailing siren. It was the sound as much as anything that frightened its targets, but it was this that could alert any living thing with super-sensitive ears, such as Horrie. He picked up the ear-splitting sound anything up to 120 seconds before humans could see them, let alone hear them. The Stuka had some innovative designs, including pull-up dive brakes that ensured the aircraft recovered from its attack even if the pilot blacked out from the high acceleration. It was sturdy, accurate and very effective against ground targets such as long convoys the battalion would form, or even smaller ones such as motorcyclists.
There would be no British planes to take them on or do retaliatory bombing on German bases. The Germans had come to Greece determined to conquer the country mainly with the Stuka. This efficient dive bomber was taking the place of artillery. The Germans had stolen a march early on the Allies in World War I by putting all their betting chips on artillery. In this war they were ahead of the game again by relying on the Stukas, and the British and Anzacs had come unprepared for them. The Allies’ advance air bases were small in number. Those in place had been blitzed and knocked out of action almost overnight. German Messerschmitt fighter aircraft hedge-hopped over the mountains, hitting one airfield after another and wiping out entire squadrons of British planes. Destructive waves of these German craft, and the Henkel, the first single-seater, turbojet fighter, never stopped. British crews often had no chance to jump in their Hurricane bombers, let alone load them. The Messerschmitt pilots were cunning and well organised tactically. They would fly high drawing ack-ack fire and then slice down beneath it to machine-gun the grounded and helpless British planes.
Many thought this overall masterstroke by the Germans would end the war before it got going. But in full British bulldog spirit, Britain’s Prime Minister Churchill and his planners went through with the Greek campaign. Allied propaganda suggested that the Stukas were cumbersome and had to be escorted by fighter planes. This gave every gunner a sense they could fight back. The Australians were almost all gamblers and they liked the chance that they could ‘win’ at least a few encounters from the ground. The Stuka did have some vulnerabilities that had been passed on to all the 2/1 Battalion’s gunners, and which had been exposed first in the Battle of Britain over British skies in the previous year, 1940. It had poor manoeuvrability; it was slow and lacked good defensive armament. The gunners were told that if they fixed their sights on one coming in, and if they could hold their nerve as it roared and whined at them, they had a chance of more than the odd ‘kill.’ Yet it was never easy for defenders on the ground. The ugly truth was that without a fight in the air and protection from British aircraft, the gunners on the ground were in for a torrid time.
Reports of breaking Greek resistance in the northeast were coming in. The battalion knew they would soon be attempting to counter the enemy in the air and on the ground, with German tanks leading the way in their prolonged ‘blitzkrieg’ operations. Brooker was giving orders with a new edge. There were fewer jokes and more repeated instructions as he split up the team for different operations. Featherstone, because of his stripe, would be first sent away to the front with the Gunners’ A Company. He would be in charge of a section of attached signallers. Murchison volunteered to be a spotter on the adjutant’s car, which meant he would ride on a sideboard and scan the skies with binoculars for the Stukas. He thought this might be an easier way to go, for the adjutant would be given privileges, as meagre as they were in the war zone.
The Rebels sat outside their tent smoking and cleaning their equipment as D Company marched off towards the conflict on the Albanian border. Minutes later, A, B and C Companies moved out to find two Australian and New Zealand brigades—a true Anzac force—who were having trouble holding positions just 25 kilometres north at Servia Pass. The Rebels called out words of encouragement but apart from that, said little to each other. There was tension in the group. Even Horrie was less exuberant as he picked up on the serious mood at the tent. He wandered among the group, looking for a pat, a smile or a word, and he received gentle focus, just enough to reinforce he was still wanted. His main attention was on Moody. Would he be sent somewhere and would Horrie go with him again? The thunder of oncoming and defending guns was closer now. Horrie pricked up his ears but was not alarmed enough to respond—not yet.
Brooker told Gill and Moody they would go on despatch-riding duties under the battalion’s Corporal Thurgood.
‘Well this is it,’ Gill said, ‘this is what we signed up for. Not quite the charge on Beersheba, but we’ll be in the thick of it.’
‘I dunno,’ Moody replied with a wry grin. ‘We’ll be going a little quicker than the troopers and they didn’t have anything like Stukas coming at them. And the tanks in the Great War weren’t quite like the Panzers that blasted through Poland.’
The Stukas whistled by in the skies for the first time on 13 April and created a different atmosphere in the region and in the battalion’s moveable base as it reached the foot of Mount Olympus where it would create its HQ. The gunners marched out to join the Anzacs, which had withdrawn already to a point about 15 kilometres north at what was called the Olympus–Aliakmon Line. The next day would be the beginning of the real war for Moody and Horrie.