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the rear of the Greek positions in Albania. Allied forces fell back southward in increasing disorder, outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and naked against air attack. An Australian medical officer described how ‘the patter of feet, human and animal, could be heard all night long’ as the Greek retreat became a panic-stricken rout. Everywhere in the path of the Axis advance, communities were visited by scenes of horror. A column of Italian prisoners being marched under escort through a village was suddenly enveloped in mortar and artillery fire, which killed and wounded dozens. An old woman, who had lost her eldest son Stathi in Albania, began to sob. A café owner urged her now to check her tears for the Italians: ‘They were the ones who killed your son.’ She ignored him, and ran to a soldier torn open by shrapnel, who lay crying: ‘Bread, mother!’ The old woman tried to wash his wounds with a cloth dipped in raki, still sobbing and talking to the man: ‘Don’t cry, Stathi. Yes, I am your mother. Don’t cry. I’ve got both bread and milk.’

The Greek army had exhausted itself confronting the Italians through the winter. It lacked transport for rapid manoeuvre. The Germans ruthlessly exploited their dominance of the air, especially effective in a country with few roads. ‘During the afternoon we had our first look at the great Jerry Luftwaffe,’ wrote Australian Captain Charles Chrystal. ‘190 bombers came over and bombed … till there was not a thing left. They flew in close formation … and I can tell you we simply gasped in amazement and were absolutely spellbound to see such numbers.’ Although the Australians and New Zealanders conducted some determined little rearguard actions, on 28 April the first major naval evacuations began, from Rafina and Porto Rafti. The Germans fanned out across the Peloponnese, where the Royal Navy took off troops from Nauplia and Kalamata.

Citizens in uniform, until with time they grow the skins of soldiers, are shocked by the waste created by war. Among many Anzacs’ most vivid memories of the retreat from Greece was the colossal detritus of wrecked and abandoned vehicles, guns, stores, wirelesses, range-finders – millions of pounds’ worth of scarcely used equipment, ditched by the roadsides of the Peloponnese. Men boarding the Royal Navy’s ships were ordered to discard weapons, especially machine-guns and mortars, which they had stubbornly retained through the retreat. This policy had serious consequences for the defence of Crete a few weeks later. Most fugitives suffered a sense of shame about abandoning the local people, who embraced them even in defeat.

The Invasion of Greece

By April’s end, the Germans held Greece. Some 43,000 of Wavell’s troops had been evacuated, leaving behind a further 11,000 who became prisoners, together with all their transport and heavy equipment. Prime minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide. Greek soldiers trickled down from the hills, many having abandoned their arms. ‘At one moment,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘I saw a captain mount a hillock and address thousands of men who were gathered around it. He shouted: “Men, alas our country has lost the war!” The audience responded with an eerie, nightmarish, perverse cry of “Zeto!” – “Hurrah!” “Zeto!” meant “We are alive!”’

Such deliverance provided only brief consolation to a nation which thereafter suffered appallingly under Nazi occupation. A Greek general told an air force officer, George Tzannetakis: ‘George, a black night descends on our country.’ In the capital on 27 April, a German officer, Georg von Stumme, addressed Greek Archbishop Ieronymos: ‘He began by saying that he had always wanted to visit Athens, of which he had learnt so much at school and Military Academy. At this point the Archbishop interrupted him and said: “Indeed, before the war Germany had many friends in Greece, among whom I was one.”’ Now, all that was over. A Greek wrote: ‘Von Stumme learnt that in Greece he might meet a few Quislings, but he would not find any friends.’

Three weeks later, on 20 May, the Germans launched a paratroop assault