by Iain Gale
Their path was surprisingly clear. They rattled along through the morning heat, the distinctive scent of thyme and the baking, parched earth rising from the countryside. From time to time they passed evidence of German air attack: a shot-up vehicle or a peasant cart and the bodies of a horse or a team of oxen. They drove on for two hours, climbing steadily until the poplar-clad mountains enveloped them on both sides. The lower slopes of the hills, where the trees had been taken, were dotted with scrub. Beyond this was thick foliage: oaks and beeches and, as Lamb remarked to Bennett, pear trees. Ahead of them they could see the dust from the column, and occasionally, where the road took a twist and doubled back on itself, they saw their comrades below them, in a long trail of carriers and trucks.
Near the village of Brallos, through the pass that guarded the left flank of the Allied army, the countryside opened out and they found themselves on a high plain looking across to a vast mountain range. It was breathtakingly beautiful. They passed into a lush valley dotted with red-roofed farms and olive groves. But now Lamb began to worry, for apart from a few old men playing cards outside a bar, a few villages back, they had not seen any people. Not one.
On the outskirts of the little town of Levadia they turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt behind a cart. It was moving, but only just, and was piled high with belongings – a chest of drawers balanced on a table sat next to battered leather suitcases and two gilt-framed pictures. Perched amid and on top of the whole pile was an old crone dressed in black from head to foot. She was sitting facing them, travelling backwards, rocking back and forth and wailing quietly. Beyond the cart lay what looked to Lamb like an endless line of other carts and trucks of all descriptions. There were donkeys, too, and a horde of civilians. He swore. ‘Damn. This is what I feared. Those villages back there were much too quiet. This is why. They’ve heard the Germans are coming and they’re not staying to welcome them.’
Smart spoke. ‘Perhaps it’s just a bottleneck, sir. Maybe someone’ll pull the plug.’
‘Maybe, Smart.’
But ten minutes later they came to a halt and ten minutes after that they had still not moved. Lamb spoke to his runner, Bill Turner, seated behind him in the carrier, who had been chosen for the post as the fastest man in the company. ‘Turner, go ahead and see what’s going on.’
Five minutes later the man returned, breathless. ‘It’s a real jam up ahead, sir. Trucks and carts and all sorts.’
‘No idea what’s causing it?’
‘Could be anything, sir. Just goes on for about a mile. I didn’t get to the front. Shall I go back, sir?’
‘No, don’t bother. Any sign of the rest of the battalion?’
‘No, sir. There’s no Brits up there. A few Greek soldiers, but aside from that it’s all civvies.’
‘Damn. This lot must have cut in between us and them at that last junction. Well, there’s no other route and Jerry’s too close on our tail. We’ll just have to get out here and hoof it.’
Lamb looked around at the countryside. It was hard terrain off the road, with steep drops and vineyards and olive groves, which would make the going hard. But how the devil could they get past the mass of humanity on the road? He climbed out of the carrier. ‘I’m going to take a look. Sarnt-Major, Turner, you come with me. The rest of you wait here. Charles, tell the others what’s going on.’
The three of them pushed through the crowd of civilians along the road and Lamb marvelled at their composure. For the most part they passed through the crowd without comment. But soon Lamb became aware of an overwhelming atmosphere of grief. While children wailed and mothers chided, some of the refugees seemed almost catatonic, staring at the ground or away into the distance. Occasionally someone, usually a Greek soldier, would notice the three Englishmen and smile or give a thumbs-up. Civilians were mixed in with the military, and looking at them Lamb thought how war had become a great leveller, possibly more than it had ever been. Over to his left a woman in a fur coat and an ornate hat was stumbling along the road on high heels accompanied by her ageing and still neatly besuited husband. Who was he? he wondered. A lawyer, a doctor? Groups of civilians stayed close together, presumably families and neighbours from the same villages. What had they left behind, and what did they have now? And where were they going? To stay with relatives in the safety of the mountains? He supposed that more than a few of them might not have any idea.
The trail of people and vehicles seemed endless. At last, after what Lamb reckoned might have been the best part of a mile, they found what they had been looking for – a huge truck, old, with peeling black paintwork and of uncertain age and make, was slewed across the road and around it stood a cluster of Greek men of all ages: old men and boys, farm hands and soldiers in filthy and incomplete battledress. The men were talking and gesticulating towards the truck. Lamb had no Greek save the little he had learnt at school and he had quickly discovered how different that was from the local patois. It was clear to anyone, though, that the thing was stuck. He pushed through the men and stared at the truck as a Newmarket trainer might look at a horse, assessing its pedigree, its probable strengths and weaknesses, for one of the traits which marked Lamb out among his fellow officers was his knowledge of mechanics. Before the war, while he had thrown himself into the Territorial Army, his first love had been motors. When not employed as manager of a garage in his home town of Sevenoaks, when not in the drill hall or on manoeuvres, he had spent his evenings tinkering with his beloved BSA. There was little about engines that Lamb did not know or could not work out. He could of course take the easy option. They could take the brake off and push the thing off the road. But he looked around him at the empty, anxious faces and knew that it was not really an option. To destroy this precious means of transport might mean the end of all hope for a good dozen of these people if not more – old women and young children incapable, try as they might, of making it through the mountains to the safety of some hilltop village. The truck was their only chance of salvation.
He walked over to the truck and lifted the bonnet. A man beside him muttered something in Greek and Lamb smiled at him and shrugged. Then, propping open the bonnet, he removed his battledress top, tucked his tie into his shirt and rolled up his shirtsleeves before getting to work.
The Greeks stood staring, fascinated, as this British officer worked away at the engine. After a few minutes Lamb raised his head from inside the bonnet and yelled at Bennett. ‘Sarnt-Major, turn her over, will you.’
Bennett climbed into the cab and, finding the starter, switched it on. There was a deep roar, a thump and a chug and the Greeks gave a cheer. But after three revolutions the noise stopped. Lamb swore and dived back into the oily mess that was the engine.
Half an hour and two further attempts later, despairing, Lamb again raised his head. ‘Right, Bennett. One more time.’ The Sergeant-Major, patient as ever, turned the starter and the machine burst into life. The Greeks, who had not stopped watching, reserved their applause this time, but now the motor continued to turn over and after a few minutes they began to cheer. Lamb emerged from the bonnet wearing a huge grin, his face covered in grime and his hands caked in oil and grease. One of the Greeks offered him a torn sheet and he wiped himself down gratefully. ‘I thought we’d never get it,’ he said to no one in particular. A priest standing close by nodded and smiled at him and several of the men clapped him on the back. ‘Whose truck is it, anyway?’ asked Lamb, gesticulating. But, to judge from the shrugs, no one knew. Perhaps, he thought, the owner had given up and abandoned it. He called to Turner. ‘Get it moving. Get as many on board as it’ll take.’ Returning the handshakes of the Greeks, Lamb smiled and accompanied by Bennett made his way back to the carrier.
‘You know, sir, you could just have ditched it. Pushed it off the edge, like.’
‘Yes. But did you see them? How could I do that? It would have been like a death sentence.’
Bennett nodded and said nothing. He knew that Lamb was haunted by something that had ha
ppened in France. A bridge that they had been ordered to demolish with high explosive. A bridge that had been packed not just with the advancing enemy, but with Belgian and French civilians – men, women and children. And he knew that Lamb would never forgive himself and would take any chance to atone.
They reached the carrier. ‘Smart, see if you can raise Battalion on that crystal set. Tell them we’ve been held up. Get their direction, can you.’
While the radio operator began to tinker with the unreliable field wireless, Bennett started up the carrier. Ahead of them the convoy was beginning to move.
After a few miles they reached a junction in the road and were soon caught up in a massive column. While the refugees remained in front, they were no longer the bulk of the column. From a road to their left, the road from Thermopylae by way of the coast, lorries were filtering on to the main highway, filled to bursting with British, Greek and Commonwealth troops. Lamb looked at the men in the trucks. He saw grim, unshaven faces, tattered uniforms, and noticed the shortage of weapons. This is an army in retreat, he thought. The same army, in fact in many cases the same soldiers that he had witnessed pulling back in France almost exactly a year ago. A year that seemed a lifetime away.
It took them another five hours to get to the outskirts of Thebes. Lamb looked down at his watch. It was close to 4 p.m. As they drove on, he looked to either side of the road and saw that they were in a bivouac area, bounded on either side by slit-trenches and laagers of trucks covered in camouflage netting. To the right on a slight rise in the ground stood a lone 25-pounder. Everywhere, in the olive groves that lined the road, men were sitting, shattered by exhaustion. Most of them were asleep, quite oblivious to the cacophony of the column pouring past their billets. He wondered which enlightened officer would have chosen to make camp there. It was not a position that he would have chosen – open, exposed and with little natural cover. He was wondering where they should stop when there was a cry from the roadside. ‘Aircraft. Take cover.’ Instantly, Bennett killed the motor on the carrier and the other drivers followed suit. The men slapped open the tailboards and, jumping down, ran to the sides of the road and threw themselves forward into the foliage, disappearing amid the scrub. Lamb followed them and landed hard on his back, reawakening the pain from the old wound. Sitting up he found himself beside two New Zealanders, their heads buried in their hands. One of them spoke, without bothering to see if he was addressing an officer. ‘Hide yer face, fer Chrissake, mate. The Jerries can spot anything down here.’
Lamb silently ignored the man’s lack of deference, took the advice and pushed his head between his knees. As he did so, he heard the whine of engines in the sky and waited for the bombs.
2
There was nothing at first, just the shrill noise of a single-engined aircraft. Lamb did not dare to look up. Spotter plane, he thought. Then he heard it wheeling away and a few seconds later it was replaced by the deeper drone that he had dreaded. The bombers came in low and dropped their sticks in no particular way on the road. He heard the bombs fall almost rhythmically and thought, There really is no point in worrying. If one of them has my name on it then that’s it. This is war. Random and unforgiving. There was a huge explosion and then another and another as the stick of bombs fell in their orderly row along the road. Another, different explosion told him that one of them had found a target, a truck of some sort. He prayed that there had been no men left inside. They were so powerless here, utterly unable to fight back. Perhaps the politicians had been right after all before the war. Perhaps the battle for the skies was what would win. Hadn’t the Battle of Britain proved that? But from where he was sitting this was an infantry war as well. These rocks, these hills, he knew would never be taken until the Wehrmacht had pushed the last Allied soldier back into the sea. And even then, when the Germans were in Athens, he knew the Greeks would not give up their country. Another stick of bombs crashed through the earth and Lamb, pushing his tin hat down on his head, heard the big New Zealander next to him let out an oath and sensed the man pushing himself into the ground. He thought of Bennett and knew that his thoughts must be going out to his wife as she sat cowering, as they were now, beneath the stairs in the Sergeant-Major’s house in Islington. And just as he waited for the next bombs to fall, Lamb heard the engines fading.
As the planes wheeled away he raised his head and turned to the New Zealanders. ‘Who are you?’
‘20th Battalion, 5th Brigade, sir. We’ve come down from Molos. Never seen anything like it, sir.’
His mate joined in, stony-faced. ‘Hundreds of our lads were killed. Hundreds of them, some in a bayonet charge. We was shelled all morning and as we were pulling out too, shells everywhere. Didn’t even know if we’d get out or not.’
Lamb said nothing but shook his head, hoping that would be enough. He stood up and looked for the company. Called out. ‘Sarnt-Major, Lieutenant Eadie, Mister Whitworth, Mister Sugden. To me. Sarnt-Major, casualty report.’
‘Sir.’
‘Gentlemen, I think that we had better get on before Jerry makes the road impassable. Get your men together and mount up. We leave in ten, casualties notwithstanding.’ He turned away and raised his voice. ‘Sarnt-Major, casualties?’
‘None, sir. It’s a bloody miracle.’
‘Well, saddle up then. Ten minutes.’
Leaving the New Zealanders to manage as best they could down the pot-holed road, they carried on. Thebes itself was deserted. The German bombers had done their work here. It was hard for the untutored eye to tell what was an ancient ruin and what more recent damage. Through the town they began to gain height as they went until the sides of the hills became steeper and they entered a pass, thickly wooded on both flanks.
Lamb turned to Bennett. ‘Keep your wits about you, Sarnt-Major. If the Jerries have managed to get round the flank this would be the perfect spot for an ambush. Smart, have you managed to raise Battalion on that thing yet?’
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘Don’t worry, not your fault. I just wish we knew where they were.’
He looked at the tattered map that he had taken from the canvas map case at his feet. ‘Once we get through this pass there’s a village and then a fork in the road. We take the right, towards Corinth. Once we get over the bridge there we are in the Peloponnese. Then it’s a straight run to the sea.’
Bennett smiled. ‘I do like to be beside the seaside.’
‘Home in time for tea, sir?’
‘Not quite, Turner. But we’ll give it a try.’
The mood of optimism was short lived. As they drove on, the pass became ever narrower. Lamb scanned right and left. ‘Be alert. Keep your eyes open.’
They rounded a bend in the road and Bennett slammed on both brakes, bringing the carrier to an abrupt halt. Lamb jolted forward, knocking his chest against the front of the carrier and dropping the map. ‘Christ, Bennett, have a care …’ Then he saw that ahead of them to the left lay a defensive barrier of stones made into a chest-high wall – a sangar, which was matched on the opposite side of the road by another, leaving a narrow gap only just wide enough for a lorry to negotiate. The top of each wall was lined with Lewis guns and riflemen, while a heavy machine-gun had been set up in the middle of the road. As they looked on a sergeant appeared from behind the right-hand sangar, his Thompson gun held at waist level and fixed directly on Bennett.
The man spoke in a broad New Zealand accent. ‘Who goes there?’
‘Friend,’ said Lamb, quickly. ‘North Kents. We’re trying to get to Corinth.’
The sergeant whistled and within seconds they were surrounded by his men, rifles at the ready. The sergeant advanced to the carrier and peered at Lamb. ‘North Kents? What the bloody blazes are you lot doing here? We thought you were Jerries. Almost let you have it.’ He paused. ‘Maybe you are Jerries …’
Lamb shook his head. ‘Good God, not again. Listen, Sergeant, I went through all this in France a year ago. How many times? I don’t know. What d’y
ou want to know? Who won the Cup last year? The length of Don Bradman’s inside leg? The name of the King’s dog? Where Winston Churchill gets his bloody cigars?’
The sergeant peered at him. ‘Nah, sir. You’re kosher. No bloody fifth columnist would ever have said that. Sorry, sir, can’t be too careful. We’re the rearguard, see. Jerry can’t be far behind you. Haven’t you heard, sir? They’ve taken Corinth. Yesterday. Only took them two hours. Paratroops. We blew the bridge, though.’
Lamb felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. If the Germans had taken the Corinth canal then that meant the whole of the Peloponnese was cut off. He was aware that the New Zealand sergeant was still talking. ‘… I said why don’t you go through there, sir. The pass broadens out again there, sir. You’ll find yourself a billet if you need one.’
Thanking the sergeant, they drove on and Bennett summed up Lamb’s thoughts. ‘I wonder if the battalion got across before the Jerries took it.’
‘Well one thing’s for sure, Sarnt-Major. If they did, we can’t follow them now. There’s only one way out for us and that’s through Athens.’
There was no point in trying to make Athens by nightfall, and if they carried on along the road in daylight they would just be more sitting targets for the Luftwaffe. Better to stand here and set off again in the early hours of the morning under cover of darkness. ‘We’ll stop here, Sarnt-Major. Pull up over there.’
They parked the trucks and Lamb walked across to one of a number of the sangars which dotted the area. The pass, as the sergeant had told them, had broadened out and given way to olive groves and a landscape of cultivated fields and vineyards. He found a corporal. ‘Is your officer anywhere?’
A voice spoke from behind a wall of rocks. ‘Actually I’m over here. Who wants to know?’ A tall New Zealand captain walked forward. ‘Captain Nichols. And you are?’
