Every school child in Australia & New Zealand is bought up on the legend of the Anzacs. This, though, is the largely unknown story of another Anzac force which fought not at Gallipoli, but in Greece a generation later. On 12 April 1941, General Thomas Blamey, commander of the Australian Imperial Force in the Mediterranean, issued an order of the day announcing the formation of a new Anzac Corps. Australian & New Zealand troops were at the time fighting side by side in Greece against an invading German army that had been triumphant everywhere. With the very existence of his force in the balance. Blamey invoked the spirit of Gallipoli to inspire his troops. Those hopes would be quickly dashed. Desperately outnumbered, and fighting in deeply inhospitable conditions, the Anzac found themselves engaging in a long retreat through Greece, under constant air attack. Most of the Anzac Corps was evacuated by the end of April, but many men got only as far as Crete. Fighting a German paratroop invasion there in May, large numbers were taken captive and spent four long years as prisoners of the Nazis. British interests. Just as Gallipoli provided military academics the world over with lessons in how not to conduct a complex feat of arms, Churchill’s Greek adventure reinforced fundamental lessons in modern warfare – heavy rifles, and Stuka dive bombers would not be deflected by promises of air support from London that were never honoured. Until now there has been no history on the campaign in Greece and Crete written from a truly Anzac perspective. Based on rarely accessed archives and more than 30 interviews with Australian, Greek and New Zealand veterans, this superb book gives overdue recognition to the brave, forgotten Anzacs of 1941.
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Comment(1)
Lisl P rendergast says
August 6, 2017 at 12:35 pmThis is a very thorough account of the Greek campaign. I read this recently in Dubai on my way to a reunion of Stalag 18a in Austria. Many people there had Fathers like mine who were captured on the beach at Kalimata.It was by chance I picked up this wonderful book in Freemantle o my way to Europe.