Horrie the War Dog Page 9
Despite it being spring, the weather was cold, sometimes freezing in the morning. Some of the hardier battalion members swam in a stream near their camp but often they would have to break through a thin layer of ice. Horrie was one of them, but his desire for a dip was questionable. The next morning he went for a dawn romp with Moody, Gill and Murchison and insisted on crossing a stream on a log ahead of the others. Halfway across he slipped and fell into the water, breaking the ice. He scrambled for the other side, much to the mirth of his ‘walkers.’ Then an incident occurred that they swore they would never forget, one of countless ‘Horrieisms.’ The dog had attempted to restore his dignity by beginning to cross the log from the other side. Halfway there again, he barked to get their attention and then fell into the water. All of them interpreted this as an attempt by the dog to show that his original ‘slip’ had been on purpose, which was really telling them that there was no need for them to laugh at him. It confirmed Moody’s belief that the tiny animal had an enormous sense of dignity.
On returning to camp for breakfast, Horrie stopped. He sat like a stone statue. After a few seconds of monk-like contemplation of the skies, he growled. All heads turned to watch him.
‘Uh-oh!’ Murchison said. ‘Horrie’s at it!’
The three Rebels rushed to the tents and yelled for everyone to take cover. ‘Planes! Gerry! Stukas!’ were the cries as hundreds of men, half-naked or with only one boot on, ran towards trenches. Horrie was in an exhausting long-running bark. Gill counted more than a hundred continuous grunts from him before the Stukas were heard, swinging low out of the sun. Horrie himself led the Rebels in the dash for a trench. The Stukas did their worst, creating damage to vehicles that could not be hidden, and causing some cuts and bruises without any gunners being badly wounded, thanks to Horrie. When he emerged from the trench with Moody, Gill, Murchison, Featherstone and others, scores of men made their way to him to pat and thank him. As ever, the dog was chuffed at the attention. There was no doubt in any digger’s mind that this amazing little quadruped knew what he was doing and without any signs of real anxiety, only impatience for his mates to follow him into the trenches.
There were no frivolous gestures towards him from the men. Many believed that they would have been killed by the attack as they lay in their beds in vulnerable tents and flimsy makeshift covers designed to keep out the bitter cold and winds, but not bombs and machine-gun bullets. His status as a battalion member, not just a pet or mascot, was confirmed. This was put to the test in the afternoon of 16 April when Horrie again alerted the entire camp. He led the way toward the trenches, his tail wagging as he looked back at the rushing Rebels all following his lead. But somehow in the mayhem, Moody and the other Rebels lost sight of him. After the thundering, crashing, hellish Stuka attack, hundreds of battalion members emerged from their refuges. But not Horrie. Diggers came from all corners of the scattered camp to thank the little ‘God Dog’ as the padre preferred to call him (rather than ‘Wog Dog’). But he was nowhere to be seen. A hundred gunners went out looking for him and when he couldn’t be found, some feared the worst. The padre put up a prayer, but even that seemed to fall on deaf celestial ears until someone noticed a moving brown object in the latrine trench. It was Horrie covered in shit. He emerged with a happy face, and was confused by all the protests when he padded his way towards the Rebels. The rollicking ball of stench had everyone backing away in protest. Few of the grateful gunners were prepared to go near him and they called out their thanks from a distance. Moody assigned himself the thankless task of cleaning him up, and he used oil to do it. When a few of the gunners were reduced to expressions of mock anguish over the incident, Murchison blasted them, reminding all that he was not to be subject to derision or contemptuous laughter. Horrie the War Dog was placed above it all for the sake of his finely tuned feelings and sensitivities. But he still needed a very good wash.
*
Concerns increased for the battalion at the news that the hard-battling Greek allies, who were fighting for their homeland, were losing the fight on the Albanian flank and border with Italy. The force of the German army, the best equipped in the world, was beginning to tell on several fronts. The Rebels making the runs to the Anzac front were returning with pessimistic assessments. They reckoned they might be in for a fight to the death unless there was an exit plan and no one had heard of one. It was never discussed, at least not in the ranks, although officers poring over maps were beginning to face facts. They might have to think about a Gallipoli-like evacuation strategy. Greece was being overwhelmed by three encroaching enemy elements: their absolute superiority in the air; their Panzer tank divisions, which frightened and swept all before them, and without opposition from any equivalent armed vehicles; and their artillery power. These three military arms allowed the German soldiers and gunners to follow through and mop up. The Nazi military machine, fed on victory on several fronts in Europe and now the Mediterranean, was beginning to believe its own propaganda about invincibility. After a gallant, long hold-out, utterly spent and broken Greek soldiers began to straggle from the Albanian border in increased numbers among the never-ending flow of refugees. It was a sure sign that this war could only end in defeat for the Allies, who did not have the numbers or firepower to make a contest of the battles.
The gunners gave the Greek soldiers bully beef and any other food they could spare, along with warm clothes and blankets. The pitiful, desperate men were grateful; lost soldiers defeated in their own homeland. Only a few carried the type of rifle that was first seen 40 years earlier, and they were out of ammunition.
The Rebels all moved out at various times on 16 April to take despatches to fronts, which were getting harder to find. Defences were crumbling as the Germans pressed. Featherstone reached the battalion’s A Company, which had just received instructions that they should keep going from Gerania, 30 kilometres west of Mount Olympus, and take up defensive positions between Tirnavos and Zarkos, towns 20 kilometres further south. The battalion’s B Company was machine-gunned by Stukas at Servia Pass. A truck was destroyed and three men, including a signaller, Private H. D. Moran, were wounded. Moran died the next day (and was temporarily replaced by Brooker), but not before some measure of revenge had been secured by Lance Corporal Donald Story Gill from Geelong, Victoria (not to be confused with Moody’s mate Donald Munro Gill from Signals). He manned his Bren gun at the pass for two days. A concerted Stuka attack attempted to wipe out the company’s nearby HQ. D. S. Gill faced the onslaught and returned fire, bringing down two planes. Gill received the Military Cross for his brave efforts, but resistance like this was rare, such was the sheer weight of attacks from the air. Right along the front, the Anzacs began a slow withdrawal.
‘We were ordered to support the withdrawal of our troops,’ the battalion’s Corporal W. J. Freeman noted. ‘In doing so we caught sight of a German patrol about 1000 yards [900 metres] distant. We brought fire on them, causing them to take cover. We continued firing in that direction until the withdrawal was completed.’
In effect, the Germans could follow without losing great numbers of men and equipment as the Allies, caught in the refugee flight south, began a gradual pull-back.
The battalion’s C Company was ordered to support a New Zealand brigade south of Servia. Murchison was to join C but, in the perpetual movement of troops, could not find it. He eventually discovered its gunners below the top of Servia Pass and to the left of the road that ran to the rubble that was once-pretty Servia. Murchison had to follow the trail of the gunners who had carried the always heavy load of weapons and ammunition on a rocky, narrow track across a steep gorge. He braved it alone, with just his trusty ‘lethal weapon,’ as he called his rifle, and the pistol that had once punched holes in the tent roof in the Western Desert. Two squads (32 men) of one platoon were spread 200 metres along the mountain. Murchison found his assignment sections perched where gunners loved to be: 20 metres above the pass with a good protection of rocks. They had built fair shelte
r under rocky outcrops, should the Stukas take a liking to them as targets. Yet despite their positioning the gunners were open to the skies. There would be shoot-outs with the Stukas’ gunners. This was what they were in this battalion for: not easy kills of troops in trucks coming to the pass, although that was part of the job. The adrenalin rush came from taking on the enemy planes as they screamed down at them. The gunners on the ground turned their weapons up and held the rat-tat-tat at the enemy on the swoop in and swoop out in the hope that they would see a wobble, a spring of smoke or even flame before the long whining, spiralling death-dive.
Murchison was stunned by the sight of 30 Stukas droning in low, guns blazing and releasing bombs. It was a combined attack on the platoon’s position as German infantry came at them from several angles with the aim of surrounding the Australian gunners. But somehow, inspired by their fearless Lieutenant R. G. Sampson (who would earn the Military Cross for this action), the gunners were able fend off, then capture 150 Germans, once the Stukas had drifted off to attempt damage elsewhere, or reload their bombs.
Murchison hoped he would survive the experience, just for the bragging rights back with the Rebels. He was able to use his rifle against the Stukas or their support planes. After only half a day with this platoon, he was ordered to take any vehicle he could manage a ride on across to two others about three kilometres to the left of the pass. These platoons were covering a river frontage of about six kilometres. Murchison found them with some difficulty after hitching rides with three trucks.
‘Jesus,’ he muttered to the 12 Platoon captain, as he tore his signals gear from his tired back, ‘you must be bloody close to the front.’ A few gunners grunted cynically at his awe.
‘Mate,’ the captain said, ‘we are the bloody front-line.’
‘There’s no—’ Murchison began.
‘That’s correct. There are no infantry in front of us.’ He handed Murchison binoculars. ‘See the river? That’s the Aliakmon. Beyond that you can see a little town—Kazani. Note the road north of it. That’s where Gerry will be marching to the river with nothing to stop them.’
‘Range?’ Murchison asked.
‘About 3000 yards.’
Murchison handed back the binoculars in silence.
‘We can’t even place our guns in depth,’ the captain said with a hand gesture indicating behind them. ‘Gerry is coming in such numbers that we must be in one thin line of defence. We are doing what we can to give protection. That’s all we can do.’
*
The true Anzacs among the diggers in the battalion, men such as Brooker, who had come all the way from Gallipoli in the last war, knew the signs. As he rode a motorcycle back to HQ, he had to pass the depressing sight of the road clogged now with trucks, vehicles, carts and refugees fleeing south, always south, squelching through an endless quagmire in the still-bitter cold winds and often sheeting rain. Brooker had most compassion for the old, young and the ill. Women with babies strapped to fronts and backs; old men in raggy jackets and threadbare trousers, with little children, some only barely able to walk, clinging to their uncle or grandfather. Brooker wanted to feed them all. He felt depressed about people who had dropped from exhaustion. Odds were, he reckoned, they would die. No one could afford to stop and help. But he did stop to hand his day’s ration of bully beef to a woman who was stumbling and seemed likely to fall at any moment. She had a pusher holding two children, while one little boy straggled behind her crying and complaining. She blessed Brooker for his generosity, and then cried when he pulled from his pack a box of hard biscuits and handed that over too. She fell at his feet in gratitude. He was embarrassed, and he did not have the heart to tell her this food was no loss to him. Yet to her it was sustenance for her children. He made it clear with hand motions that she should break the biscuits up into little pieces and dunk them in water to soften them before she gave them to her children.
Brooker had been in the country less than a week and he already loved it and the people. He found the Greeks gracious and friendly. Even at this most grim of times, they maintained a quiet dignity. They were losing everything and he felt more than a twinge of guilt that for once his mighty Anzacs would not be able to defeat the enemy. His mind cast back to the Great War and how the diggers and troopers on the two major fronts had done more than any other armies to defeat the enemy and liberate the peoples of France and the Middle East by October 1918. There would be no repeats here. The sons of the vanquished had become the victors, and there was a measure of revenge in the goosestepping Nazi army. Instead of liberating towns in Greece, the battalion would now witness the opposite.
On 21 April 1941 the Greek government more than generously officially ‘released’ its Allied partners from the losing battle by advising them to withdraw their forces. It was clear to all diggers that this was the sentiment of the Greek population too.
‘There were no reproaches from this wonderful people,’ Cyril Falls wrote in the Illustrated London News, ‘who bade our troops farewell with the kindliest of good wishes, and often urged them not to dally too long at the risk of capture. Where in history shall we find combined such tenacity of purpose [in the way the Greeks continue to fight in a losing cause], such purity of motives and such generous and gallant hearts?’
*
The Rebels linked up again and joined the listless, sad throng of people. Battalion members at least believed they would probably reach a troop ship, but there were no guarantees; no certainties. Stopping at a village north of Larissa, still about 400 kilometres by road to Athens, Moody noticed an old woman, dressed in black, struggling to dig a hole in which to place some precious tins of food. She would not have the strength to make the long journey on foot. Moody and Horrie wandered to her, and the dog looked questioningly at her efforts. His sad little face caused her to stop. She made some admiring noises and stopped to wipe her brow. Horrie, perhaps feeling the compassion of his master, waddled to her in supplication and licked her hands. The fierce little terrier, killer of poisonous snakes, nemesis of all people in Middle Eastern dress, attacker of all intruders into the Rebels’ camp, and brave defender against hundreds of murderous planes, was now as sympathetic and soft as any creature could be. She pointed north and with gestures and a few words about the ‘Devil’ coming soon, made it clear she was doing this in preparation for the German takeover. Moody was touched. He completed the hole for her, dropped in her tins of food and covered them, so that the ‘treasure’ would not be discovered. While he toiled, the old woman had picked up Horrie and was sitting on a stone fence rocking him. The dog enjoyed her warmth and attention.
‘I crossed over to her and taking Horrie put him within my coat,’ Moody wrote. ‘His little head popped out and gazed at the old woman. With tears welling in her eyes, she smiled and put one hand on mine and one on Horrie’s head.’
Horrie licked her hand and Moody had to hold back tears himself as he bade her God’s protection and hustled back to the slowly moving convoy that was being harassed by Stukas. Hundreds of Greeks joined the throng from the burnt-out shell of a town, Larissa. Only days earlier it had been a happy, if nervous village, whose inhabitants had turned out to cheer the foreign heroes who had come to defend Greece. The village was about 60 kilometres south of Servia Pass, which the Germans were already moving through despite strong resistance. The enemy had warned Larissa’s inhabitants they had three hours to leave before they struck. Nuns in the town’s convent were hustling out of the building about 40 little girls, aged from six to ten years and all dressed in white. They seemed unconcerned as six of them carried a sheet marked with a Red Cross, which was the universal sign that registered a hospital, or the wounded or injured, or those who were defenceless and not involved in the fighting. The sign was often painted on buildings in attempts to stop enemy forces bombing hospitals. The sheet that the girls were carrying would be seen easily from the air. The nuns would have thought this signature of neutrality would protect them. While others around them panicked
and rushed to the local station where a train was waiting and already overcrowded, the children seemed happy not to run. They waved at the diggers. They were singing a happy little homage to Jesus. Moody and Gill were walking by and waved back. Horrie, perhaps stimulated by the sight of youngsters, wriggled inside Moody’s coat and he was released for a ‘pit stop’ at a tree, before he bounded up to the girls and dashed around them. Even in the hurry and defiance of a nun’s cry to ‘keep moving,’ a couple of the girls stopped to pat Horrie.
While people were still trying to climb aboard, the train began to kangaroo-hop out of the station before building to speed. Still some refugees struggled to climb on. Several fell off. Thousands of locals, including the girls from the convent, women and elderly, did not make it. They would be forced to move down the one, long exit road with the massing crowd of others, along with the escaping military convoy. The 1st Battalion Gunners would be called on to take up defensive positions if the enemy pressed too close or at strategic locations. A Company was ordered to the nearby Larissa airfield in case the Luftwaffe attempted to make it a base. Meanwhile, Stukas hovered overhead, a warning of threats to come. Then they struck. The Germans’ warning to evacuate Larissa before it was destroyed from the air made it seem like a little touch of humanity had come from the Nazis. But this evaporated fast as the Stukas came down hard on the convoy. They were aiming at the trucks, but because they always missed more than they struck, there was ‘collateral damage,’ which often now meant human beings. The Rebels, without any signals assignments at this time, were asked to police the movement of traffic, with Corporal Thurgood, on his motorcycle, leading the Rebels in directing people and vehicles as if he were in outback Australia mustering sheep. It was a tough, thankless task as vehicles were hit and had to be bundled clear of the road to allow the seething mass of humanity to keep surging away from the attacking army. The Panzer division was being held up by Anzacs and others fighting a rearguard action. But the Germans were not acting with any great urgency on the ground. They thought the softening up by the Luftwaffe would make their task easier as the refugees surged on. Why overdo it and attack maniacally and deplete your force when you could not lose this ‘contest’? The German commanders on the ground believed it was better to let the herd swell so it could be brutalised from the air.