The Sword of Fate (40 page)

Having broken through the Serbian mountains, thus outflanking the Greek Eastern Front, the Germans had penetrated Central Greece in overwhelming numbers, forcing the British back from their position in front of Mount Olympus on the one side and the Greeks back from their positions round Kastoria on the other. The retreat of the Greeks from the Albanian territory, which they had conquered so gallantly in the autumn, had not been quick enough, and great numbers of them had been pinned down in North-Western Greece without ’planes or guns, and with very little ammunition. On the previous day, April the 22nd, this Army of the Epirus, numbering 250,000 men, after having fought one of the greatest campaigns in history, had been compelled to surrender.

The position of the British was almost equally desperate as the port of Volo, which was their principal base of supply, had
been captured on the previous Monday. But it was thought that, if the Pass of Thermopylae could be held, the British might establish a short line from the Gulf of Lamia to the Gulf of Amphissa across a neck of land which was only about thirty miles in width. Thus, according to the base-wallahs, Athens might yet be saved and the whole of the Peloponnesus retained in Greek hands.

It seemed to me that they were sheer wishful thinkers who had not, even after the lessons of Norway. Holland, Belgium and France and the
débâcle
that was even then taking place to the north of us, realised the terrible speed, ingenuity and determination which animates a Nazi blitzkreig. And a few moments later I got a nasty shock.

I learned that, within twenty-four hours of their having reached the Mediterranean on the coast of Thrace, the Germans had flung air-borne troops into Samothrace and Lemnos; since, they had also made landings by speedboat and ’plane in the islands of Mytilene, Khios, Nikaria and Samos. It was said that some of the Greek police in these islands had put up a stout resistance, but of course they had soon been overpowered; and nobody in the bar seemed to think that these sparsely-populated islands were of any great importance. To me it seemed utterly incredible that they had not been garrisoned weeks before with the best armoured units which were available in the whole of the Near East.

The Dodecanese, which lay a little further south, had comparatively little significance so long as they were five hundred miles from the nearest Axis base on the mainland; but with the Germans in Athens, as I knew they soon must be, those Italian-owned islands could be reinforced with ease. Now that the Germans had occupied all the principal Greek-owned islands further north it meant that, with their forces in Bulgaria as well, the Axis Powers had encircled the whole of Western Turkey; yet apparently not a blow had been struck to prevent them.

Surely we should have gone into Samothrace, Lemnos, Mytilene and Khios at the same time as we had gone into Crete. To do so was so clearly all part of the same operation, and an essential precaution if the Nazis were to be prevented from breaking out of their European cage into Asia.

With air and submarine bases in every one of those islands the Germans could render the Aegean Sea untenable to us. If Turkey were attacked and called on us to assist her, the best immediate help which we could give was to send a powerful
squadron from the Mediterranean Fleet through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to help defend Turkey’s long and vulnerable northern coast against a Nazi invasion from the Rumanian and Bulgarian ports across the Black Sea. It was obvious, too, that we ought to land every man that we could spare in North-Western Turkey as this was one of the great gates to the outer world in which, if necessary, the men of the British Empire must be called upon to fight and die. The holding of it was not just another battle but one of the keys to winning the war.

Again, even if the Turks did not ask us to support them with troops, they would badly need munitions and supplies. By throwing Lemnos and Samothrace away we had made all these ways of helping them impossible. No convoy of troops or supply ships would ever reach the Dardanelles now, and even the sending of a squadron of the British Navy to reinforce the Turks in the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea would be hazardous in the extreme.

But worst of all it seemed to me unlikely now that Turkey would resist German demands to send troops across the Bosphorus and through her possessions. It was unreasonable to expect her to do so when we were no longer in a position to reinforce her properly, and by leaving those all-important islands undefended had virtually handed the Nazis the key of her front door.

Of course the reason for leaving the islands undefended was not far to seek. Only tanks and anti-aircraft guns could break up concentrations of Nazi air-borne troops. Evidently our numbers of these were still so limited that we could not afford to garrison the islands with them
and send them into Greece
. Once more we were paying up for that chivalrous gesture of ours which had been allowed to overrule the really vital question of winning the war while we were still strong enough to enforce a lasting peace. There seemed no end to the grim possibilities for which we had been let in by this Greek adventure.

I went to bed very depressed, but what a joy it was to slip between clean sheets again! I had hardly sensed the first pleasure of it before I was asleep.

In the morning, as I had nothing to do, I had meant to have a good lie in bed; but about half past eight a sapper, who was occupying the room next to mine in the Club, thrust his head through the door and said: “Heard the news? We’re evacuating!”

I sat up in bed and lit a cigarette as I replied: “Thank God for that! I had an idea that they’d be trying to take off as many of us as they could pretty soon. When did it start?”

“The Air Force people have been at it for some days. They’ve
been flying ground staffs out in big seaplanes, but the Army only started last night. I’ve got to rush. So long!”

I saw no particular reason to hurry as the news having only just come through it was certain that several days would be occupied by the operation, and in Athens I was within a few miles of the biggest port in Greece. Parodying Sir Francis Drake, I felt that there was plenty of time to have breakfast first and run from the Germans afterwards. With the help of the Navy, the Army was going to perform another ‘miracle’. How sick the Navy must be of those stupid ‘miracles’ by now, which cost them precious ships and lives of highly-trained officers and men who were absolutely irreplaceable!

After bathing and dressing I contemplated going to see the A.P.M. captain instead of waiting for a message from him, but I thought that he was probably incredibly busy with more important matters, and that it would be unfair to bother him at such a time; so leaving a message with the English-speaking porter that if I were wanted I should be at the Grande Bretagne, I went along to see Nicholas Diamopholus.

The old boy was just off to his office to make final arrangements pending the occupation of Athens by the Germans.

I urged him most strongly to leave Greece immediately, because he could be so much more useful to the Allied cause as a free man; and he told me that his ship was in, so he hoped to sail that afternoon.

Nicholas knew all about the evacuation and had helped for some days past in making arrangements for it. He was optimistic enough to think that the ships would be able to get the best part of our men away, owing to the very indented coastline of Greece, which would help to conceal them from the German aircraft; but it meant abandoning all our tanks, guns and stores. He said that the King of Greece was going to Crete and our people had pledged themselves to hold that to the last man in order to maintain a Greek Government on Greek soil. I prayed that we could, as otherwise we’d lose our naval base at Suda Bay and the power of the Fleet to prevent the Nazis from sending strong reinforcements into Libya would be immensely crippled.

The old boy was pro-British to his fingertips and I found his confidence in our ability to hold Crete rather touching. Naturally the last thing I should have dreamt of doing would have been to sow doubts in his mind, but once more I was miserably puzzled and bitterly angry. Of course we could have held Crete, and Mytilene, and Lemnos, too, if we had put the flower of our troops
into them in the beginning and used these wasted weeks to fortify them with every anti-aircraft gun that could be spared, or even that could not be spared, from Egypt and Palestine.

Britain’s element was the water; those sea-girt islands should have been our chosen battleground, and from them we could have barred the path of the wild beast eastward. Malta was in a far more exposed position than any of these islands, yet we had hung on to that in spite of the most devastating air attacks. We could have hung on to the Greek islands if we had spent our substance on them, and even if the Nazis decided to sacrifice thousands of their air-borne troops by making crash landings, we could still have overcome those landings and broken up their concentrations, if we had tanks.

We had tanks, but where were they now: scattered over the length and breadth of the Greek mainland, and those which had escaped destruction in the frightful battles of the past eleven days were to be thrown away, abandoned on the beaches in these coming nights. By our decision to fight on the wrong ground the first round in the Battle for Asia had been lost before it had even started.

I told Nicholas that I should get back to Egypt as soon as my duties permitted and that, should Daphnis reappear in the mean-time, I wanted him to tell her that she was never out of my thoughts and that I was half-crazy from worry about her. Then wishing each other luck we parted.

Athens now knew the bad news that very soon it was to be abandoned to the enemy; yet there was no panic and the people showed the greatest fortitude. There were no longer cheers for the little groups of British troops that passed, but the people still smiled at them sympathetically and understandingly. They realised that, like their own soldiers, we had put up a good fight, and it was only that our enemies had proved too many for us.

There was no reliable news, but it was said that the Germans had forced the Pass at Thermopylae, and from the roads to the north there were now considerable numbers of British vehicles making their way towards the Piraeus.

I lunched at the Club and at about half past two a chit arrived for me from the A.P.M. It simply said: “You are hereby temporarily released from arrest and instructed to rejoin your unit forthwith.” So having collected my few belongings I set off to walk to the station in the hope of finding a train which would take me part of the way up to the Front.

It was a lovely afternoon and the sun was still shining upon
that miracle of loveliness, the Acropolis, which can be seen from almost any part of the city. As I looked at it, away there in the distance, it revived in me a comforting sense of proportion. The Germans would not be the first invaders to enter Athens. Romans, Venetians, and Turks had all overcome her in their day, but in the end she had overcome them and risen again to resume her rightful place as the first free city of the world. The same thing would happen once again, only this time her people would have earned a new glory and a new respect from all other peoples.

As I looked up to the Acropolis I thought again of Daphnis. She was one of the millions who, through nearly a hundred generations, had gazed upon it. That beauty was the common property of us both, especially as she must have seen it so recently. I had only missed her in Athens by a few days but, I reflected bitterly, a miss was as good as a mile. She must, I felt sure, have got on Mondragora’s track through von Hentzen, as according to Cozelli the Baron had been in Athens when she first arrived there. If only I could have traced Mondragora I felt absolutely certain that I should have found Daphnis; but there was not a single clue for me to start on.

At that moment a car crawled by me; its driver was the Portuguese.

Mondragora was driving a long, low, dust-covered car. As it passed me I saw that the metal coachwork at the back of it was holed and torn in several places, evidently by bomb or shell splinters; so it looked as if he had come from the battle zone. The streets were not particularly full, but he was driving at an easy pace, perhaps from being tired after a long journey. The moment the car had passed me I began to run.

It was checked at the crossing by traffic lights, which gave me a chance almost to catch up with it before it turned right opposite the Stavrou; but obviously I could not possibly keep up with even a slowly-driven car on foot and no taxis were in sight.

As I ran I looked wildly round for any means of keeping on
Mondragora’s trail. In the side street between Athens’ two main thoroughfares, the Stadiou and the Panepistimiou, I saw a bicycle leaning up against the kerb outside a tobacconist’s shop. Crossing the road I grabbed it from under the very eyes of its amazed owner as he emerged from the tobacconist’s. He gave a shout, but fortunately there were no police about. With a furious spurt I risked death under an oncoming tramcar but shaved in front of it and managed to put the Panepistimiou between myself and the unfortunate victim of my theft.

The Portuguese had turned in among the fine blocks of buildings and small gardens that form the University, and he appeared to be looking for an address. Eventually he pulled up and spoke to a passing student, then drove on a few blocks in a north-westerly direction.

Although we were still quite near the centre of Athens it was quiet here in the University quarter, and very few people were about. The car stopped beside a long blank wall, which evidently enclosed the garden of what might well have been the old private palace of some rich Athenian family, and was so still for all I then knew. As I came pedalling up, Mondragora got out of his car, stood for a moment facing the wall, then seemed to step through it. That, of course, was only because I was still the best part of a hundred yards away when he disappeared. By the time. I drew level with his car I saw that there was a double gate in the garden wall and just beyond it two smoking chimney-stacks protruded over the wall-top, showing that there was a coach-house or lodge just inside.