For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II

About the very early hours of the morning, possibly 3 or 4 o’clock, we were told to form up and make our way down to the seaside, and there the Royal Navy had arrived with their lifeboats and we were bundled aboard these lifeboats; any gear the sailors manning the lifeboats considered excess, they’d chuck overboard. We were ferried out to, in our case, HMS Carlisle. We eventually got aboard her and we finished up in the Stokers’ Mess where the off-duty stokers couldn’t do enough for us, making copious mugs of cocoa and bread and buns and whatever they could find to feed us, for we’d had no food during the day. Then we set off, as we found out later, of course, for Crete. However, we were bombed several times, but the Carlisle, being an ack-ack cruiser, put up a terrific display of anti-aircraft fire and we only had about three or four near misses, which was pretty good. Eventually we arrived in Suda Bay just before dusk, I think it was.’

On the retirement and under bombing, the practical common sense of the 20th NZ Infantry Battalion’s Padre was well-remembered by Keith Newth, then a Corporal of Signals:

‘We had slit trenches, dug in we were, and the bombers, German bombers, came over and I can always hear Padre Spence saying, “Well, boys, it’s all very well to believe in the Lord, but it’s better to take action or get down into our holes when this sort of thing is going on,” which we did.’

Sapper Alexander Rodgers, NZ 7th Field Company, recalled the voyage to Greece only too well:

‘We’d only been gone a few hours when the whole convoy turned round and headed back towards Alex. The Italian Fleet were waiting for this convoy to put out, but the British were one jump ahead. We retreated and the whole of the Mediterranean Fleet, the British, took up their positions and they blew every one of the Italian ships out of the water. Fantastic – you could hear the noise in the far distance there, and the next day they told us what had happened. [This must have been the Battle of Matapan when, on 28 March 1941, the Mediterranean Fleet sank three Italian cruisers, two destroyers and damaged at least one battleship, all for the loss of one aircraft.]

Our job was to put through a secondary road to meet up with the Maori Battalion in the Olympus. We would start at daylight and work to dark every day, sleeping underneath the trucks, no tents or anything, only bully beef and hard biscuits, and after a couple of weeks we eventually got the road open. Bridges were built and the bridges and the road mined in case those Jerries came down. That was the officer’s job – they mined them all right, but they didn’t put the leads in the mines and the first ones across the roads and the bridges were the Germans. They came round the Maori Battalion and cut them off and they were the first to use our road.

Alexander Rodgers

It was chaos from there, all the way down through Larisa, all these other places, machine-gunned, bombed all the time. Eventually we embarked on lighters that took us out to catch up with Navy boats that were there. There were destroyers, cruisers, a few big troopships, and we loaded our gear, our rifles and that, thinking, well, we’ll need them. We were going out to the ack-ack light cruiser there on a Greek boat and I was carrying this machine-gun, it was a Lewis Gun, and a sailor on the boat says, “Where’re you going with that?” and I said, “Going on the boat – we might need it,” and he says, “Well, it’s either you or that.” He said, “Give us it.” I gave it to him and he threw it overboard. He said, “There’s no room for that, mate.”

Well we went there and we took off. There must have been a dozen ships and a big troopship in the convoy, and we were halfway to Crete and you could see these planes there, way in the distance. We were on deck, there must have been 200 or 300 of us there, and we said, “By God, we don’t like the look of that.” We’d seen too many of them. Someone said that those were British ones come as our escort. We said, “Like hell they are!” They had big black crosses on them, so we opened up on them. Well, they didn’t hit us but they ripped a hole about 50 foot long alongside just about the water line with a bomb. We made it all right, but there was a troopship there, she got a direct hit and went down, and one or two other ships were hit too.’

Before the Germans struck in Greece, one New Zealander, Kenneth Frater, driver in the NZ Army Service Corps, had an unexpected encounter:

‘Goods were coming from Piraeus by the narrow-gauge railway which ran through Katerini and on to Bulgaria. I was loading stuff at a station near Katerini and I went to the corrugated iron urinal to relieve myself. I heard a train stop at the station and a bloke in a striped suit and a homburg hat rushed in and stood alongside me.

He said, “You are a New Zealander?”

I said, “Yes.”

He extended his hand and said, “Eden.”

I changed hands and said, “Frater,” and that is how and where I took a leak with the British Foreign Minister and a future Prime Minister. He’d been in Bulgaria meeting the Bulgarian Government and said he expected to fly back to the UK the next day.’

Kenneth Frater was one of a small number of drivers who volunteered to drive back north to pick up troops holding Thermopylae Pass for evacuation back towards Athens and the coast:

‘Around 9.30pm on 24 April we drove north to the foot of the mountain pass road. I thought I was fairly cunning by being last out of the forest. I’d presumed that each truck would have to turn round and then I’d be first away. Alas, the best-laid plans! I wasn’t to know that there was a place to turn and I would stay on the end of the column. A bit after 10pm there was the sound of feet tramping on the road, and shortly after the first truck left. At about 11pm, when there was only one truck left in front of me, some more troops came along and boarded the other truck. A sergeant came to me and said, “You’re to wait – Lieutenant Wesney will be here shortly.” Ages later – at least 15 minutes – when I’d been sitting by myself in the middle of nowhere on a dark night and feeling extremely lonely, I felt a movement at the back of the truck. The passenger door opened and a voice said, “Stay where you are – the men are getting in the back. My name is Arthur Wesney.” There was a slap on the cab roof and he said, “Right, get going.”

I said, “Are you the All Black?”

He replied, “Yes, I am. Now I’d like to get some sleep.”

Driving without lights is a tiring business. You can’t see through the windscreen and have to hang your head out the window, which gets very tiring. Some of the other drivers had knocked their windscreens out, but this meant that all of you was cold instead of just your head. Either way, top speed was never more than 10 miles per hour, which caused the engine to overheat. By daylight we’d travelled about 60 miles and had just gone through a cutting on top of a low hill a few miles south of Marathon. When we were down on the flat again I was told to pull into an area of trees and scrub well off the road.

Lieutenant Wesney and his men climbed the hill and spent some time observing the road north for any sign of the enemy. I thought it would be a good time to change my socks and have a feed. When I climbed into the back of the truck I found my tucker box was empty, and they’d also flogged my clean socks and underwear. Of all the ungrateful sods! After about one and a half hours the squad of 20 returned.

I said, “You’re an ungrateful lot of bastards, pinching my food and clothes, and it would have served you right if I’d driven off and left you.”

Arthur Wesney said to them, “Who is responsible – has anyone anything to say?”

Nobody said a word. He said, “Right, let’s get going then.”

When we moved off he said how sorry he was that I’d been treated like that, but they’d been without food for 24 hours. I was very hostile towards the blokes in the back for the four more days I was to have them for passengers.

We drove round a bay with two destroyers standing at anchor. I wondered if we were to be taken off by them, but we kept going and crossed the Corinth just after 10am on 25 April. After finding our way through the town we had just reached the open road when we were stopped by a despatch rider. Parachutists were dropping on the Canal area and we were ordered to go back. Turning round, we headed back to Corinth. Back in the town I was told to pull into a narrow street and wait. My passengers went off and I was left on my own to guard my truck. I got out my rifle and tried to make myself as small as possible. Another truck driven by a chap pulled in behind me, and his passengers went off. It was good to have company. He’d apparently been about 10 miles south of Corinth when he was turned back. The aerial activity was intense and pretty scary. We couldn’t see what was going on but saw plenty of planes passing overhead.

Around midday things quietened down, and shortly after our passengers returned. I then realised that the officer in the other truck was Colonel Rusty Paige (another All Black), CO of the 26th Battalion. We gave the other truck a few minutes’ start and started off again. On two different occasions I saw a plane diving towards us and the road ahead being chipped by bullets. Each time I went to stop to bail out, but Arthur Wesney made me keep going. On both occasions the plane had to pull out of its dive before the bullets reached us. I was beginning to really dislike the Luftwaffe.

Any time we passed over a rise or hill we would stop and the blokes would go out on a recce. At long last the penny dropped. We were “tail-end Charlie”. During one stop, which was in a village, I heard a hen cackle. I hopped over a mud wall and found a nest with three eggs in it. As I hadn’t eaten for nearly 48 hours, I decided to suck the contents, and boy, did they taste good! Moving over the Argos Pass we stopped at sunrise and pulled off the road down a tree-lined track. My passengers did their usual disappearing trick and I was left on my own again. It was a nice sunny morning and, holding my rifle, I went to sleep by the front wheel of my truck. I awoke about midday and filled my water bottle at a small stream nearby, filled the tank with the rest of my reserve petrol and then thought I would do something really rash and have a shave at the stream. When I went to get my small haversack from where I carried it under the driver’s seat, I found somebody had flogged it while I was asleep. Now all I possessed was the truck, which belonged to the Army anyway, my rifle, the clothes I stood up in and the contents of my pockets.

Early afternoon the troops returned and we resumed our journey, travelling over a mountainous area. There were lots of abandoned and burnt-out trucks, but we had a safe journey and went on to take up positions near Tripolis. Whilst I was playing my usual waiting game, I was parked near an aerodrome which had well and truly been done over by enemy planes. Nearby I found an abandoned pick-up in a ditch. I made a search of the vehicle and found a large tin of green peas. I couldn’t believe my luck. Food! I opened the tin with my pocket-knife, drank the liquid and shovelled the peas down my throat. What a marvellous, delicious taste! Fifteen minutes later I had my trousers round my ankles with a stream of green water running from my bowels. It wasn’t nice.

Next morning we moved through Sparta and my passengers went into a holding position until early on the morning of 29 April. We pulled out just after daybreak. The old Bedford was now only firing on five cylinders. My original load had overnight grown from 20 to over 40. Over 4 tons on a 3-ton truck. She still went good downhill, but I was in low gear going uphill. However, this didn’t last for long and we started a steep descent of about 10 miles toward the sea at Momenvasia. I think, for my passengers, this was probably the most hairy part of the entire trip. Being well overloaded, even in third gear it was hard to keep under 50 miles an hour. I must admit I was anxious to get off the road before the strafing started, so perhaps took some unnecessary risks.

The road flattened out and about a mile from the sea I was directed into an olive grove. Arthur Wesney thanked me for a job well done, the rest said nothing. I was still pretty terse with them for pinching my food and gear. I guess if they had known I would be responsible for carrying them safely for over 400 miles and five nights and days to the evacuation beach, they may have acted differently. I hope the act of them leaving without a word was an act of shame.

Parking under an olive tree I looked around the dozen or so trucks dispersed and hidden through the olive grove. This was all that were left of the 30 that started. One of our officers had caught up with us during the day. At sunset we drove our trucks to a cliff edge. There we drained the oil and ran the engines until they seized up, then pushed them over the cliff. When it was fully dark we marched down to the beach and for hours sat there wondering if and when something was going to happen. Finally, about midnight a few row-boats appeared and were quickly loaded. It was about 2am before it was our turn. We got into a row-boat and pushed off, and after a few minutes drew up alongside an old Greek fishing-boat. There were probably over a hundred aboard when the one-cylinder engine was started. I thought, “My God, if we’re going in this old thing we’ll be dead at daylight.”

However, after puffing round for about 10 minutes, there, at anchor, were two beautiful destroyers, HMS Isis and the Hotspur. We were put aboard the Hotspur where a mug of cocoa was put in my hand and, grasping my rifle, my only possession, I went to sleep on the steel deck under a stairwell. This was the last of the organised official evacuation, although I understand the Ajax picked the General up at 4am.

Around mid-morning on 30 April I was awakened by the tannoy telling us to assemble on deck. We were in a bay which someone thought was Canea in Crete. We were just tying up alongside an old freighter called the Thurland Castle and were quickly transhipped to her. There were a number of sunken ships. There was an air raid and bombs dropped near several ships, but we were left alone although the Thurland Castle showed marks of previous strafing. It was suggested by the ASC Officer that we would be returned to our units who were now on Crete. However, Colonel Paige said that we were going to stay under his command until he had orders to the contrary. Hooray for Rusty Paige!

We sailed about midday. There were three troopships with survivors of the 6th Brigade and odds and sods like us aboard. The 6th Brigade had been placed in reserve. The troopships were in line ahead and on either side was a row of warships, probably most of what remained of the Mediterranean Fleet. They stayed with us until we were out of range of the Luftwaffe, and then we were left with only one destroyer for escort. During that 24 hours, though, they were continually attacked by German planes. Fortunately they were after the warships and left us alone. The day we arrived in Port Said was 2 May, exactly one year since sailing from New Zealand. Happy anniversary!’

CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_b0b6adfa-5ec4-589b-9a5a-d91f1a96567d)

Crete (#ulink_b0b6adfa-5ec4-589b-9a5a-d91f1a96567d)

And so, towards the end of April 1941, the war-weary troops evacuated from Greece, minus equipment and often rifles, began to arrive in Crete. They settled in and waited for the anticipated German invasion.

Lieutenant George Arthur Brown, 20th Battalion NZ Infantry, who was evacuated from Greece in the destroyer HMS Kimberley, arrived at Suda Bay to see:

‘. . .the masts and funnel of the cruiser York that had been sunk in Suda Bay by the Germans. The Colonel was on the wharf with his Adjutant and RSM. We officers gathered together and had breakfast. The men were told to report to a certain area-there was only one road. “Take your time,” said the Colonel, so take your time meant that the boys visited the bars. I set off for my area, which was a lovely area, trees and a stream; I stripped off, washed my clothes as best I could, laid them out to dry and put them on. No tools for digging, but we relieved a battalion of the Welsh Regiment, who had been on the island for about six months and had not completed their trenches.

We dug and we dug with what we could find – we only had M&V, that is meat and vegetables, to eat, all tinned. I got a couple of blokes one day and I said, “We’ll go to Canea and see if we can get some food.” So we went to Canea and we bought what we could, and one of the chaps said to me, “Sir, do you mind going back on your own?’

I said, “Why?” and they said, “Well, the battle will be starting before very long and we want to go to the brothel. We’d hate to be killed without having been to the brothel.” So I let them go to the brothel and one of them was killed.

We were at Division when the real aerial bombing started. The island had a couple of Hurricane fighters, which had been shooting down the odd German plane, but they didn’t last long so we were completely at their mercy. The Germans were concentrating on the port of Suda Bay, which was the only port which our supplies came through. The sky was black with heavy oil smoke.’

One of those who endured that wait for the German onslaught was Rex Thompson, a driver in the NZ Army Service Corps:

‘There were a few vehicles on Crete, not many, but we had virtually nothing else. It was just a matter of supplying Maleme aerodrome on Crete and the battalions who were dug in round the place. And the Germans, to start with, used to come over and bomb occasionally, bomb Canea, that was the main town there. It must have been about 14 orl5 May they really set in and bombed virtually most of the day off and on. They bombed the town, they also bombed the harbour, but despite all that and the noise and the dust our casualties were not that heavy.’

Bruce Smith, Gunner in the 25th NZ Artillery Battery, recollected that:

‘Suda Bay had a lot of shipping in it, which was being bombed fairly frequently and ineffectually, actually. And we eventually disembarked and were told to make our way some distance out of Suda Bay where there was a reception area, where we got some basic food, bully beef and biscuits, and told to find somewhere to sleep for the night. We had no baggage, just what we stood up in. Some of us had greatcoats, others didn’t, and fortunately the weather wasn’t over cold.

In the morning we were lined up and those of us that had rifles were put into groups of eight to 12 and usually with six rifles assigned to each group. We had a bombardier in charge of us; we were told to carry on, I think, in a southerly direction and keep going until we were caught up with by a guide or a runner to take us to a particular area which we were supposed to defend. We kept going all day and part of the night and then came to a little gully, not far off the sea, and told to make ourselves comfortable in this little gully. Four to five gunners were to stand on duty with their rifles at all times, taking shifts – I think four hours on and four off. We were supposed to look for any sea invasion or aircraft invasion, and that went on for two or three days. Not a lot of activity except somebody came out on an old broken-down vehicle and gave us a bit more food and water, which was pretty frugal.’

When Richard Kean, Sergeant, NZ Artillery, arrived at Suda Bay:

‘We were told to march along the road, but every time we stopped and said, “How far have we got to go?” we were told, “Oh, its only another couple of miles.” We were finally told that our camp was 10 miles away. So we walked 10 miles and settled in. It was pretty cold but I managed to scrounge a blanket from somewhere and another bloke had a ground sheet. We dug a slit trench with a bayonet and we got into that, put the groundsheet on the ground and covered ourselves with the blanket and we slept. Well, this went on for a while and things improved; we got a bit more food and got sorted out and we finished up with the armed personnel staying on the island – that was the fellows that had rifles – but I, unfortunately, was armed with a .45 so I was classed as armed personnel.