Medical and Base Units leave the Athens Area, 22–25 April

In Athens the King of Greece announced that the Government would leave for Crete and from there continue the war. The troops were told of the decision to evacuate Greece; movement orders were prepared; arrangements were made for the Greeks to have the supply depot and for the American Red Cross to take over the canteen stores; and the Military Attaché at Athens began to tour the Peloponnese to make plans for the Greeks to assist any British troops who might not be evacuated.

No time was wasted; in fact some of the New Zealand base units had already moved out. On 19 April 1 General Hospital¹ had received its orders: the nurses would leave for Egypt in a hospital ship within a few hours; thirty orderlies must be sent to 26 General Hospital at Voula; and all the other male staff, less the five officers² already at Voula, would leave Piræus that afternoon in the MV Rawnsley.

The vessel left that evening with some 600 British base troops and the medical group: Colonel McKillop, with 14 officers and 69 other ranks. But it missed the convoy and next morning, when standing by for instructions, was bombed and machine-gunned. The British had several casualties but they were transferred to the hospital ship Aba, and the Rawnsley carried on to reach Alexandria on 23 April.

On the night of 21–22 April the New Zealand liaison officer at Headquarters British Troops in Greece, Athens, Major N. A. Rattray, had attended a conference with the naval staff and Brigadier Brunskill. The evacuation plan had been outlined and Rattray had been instructed to move the base units from Athens and the medical group from Voula. The officers of the Base Pay Office (Captain Morris²) and Advanced 2 Echelon (Second- Lieutenant Morton³) had been awakened just before midnight and given orders to join immediately the convoy which would be leaving that same night from the Reinforcement Camp at Voula, a village south-east along the coast from Piræus.

Shortly after midnight the authorities in the camp, Major MacDuff⁴ and his adjutant, Lieutenant Curtis,⁵ were given similar instructions by Major Rattray. Several groups were soon packing equipment and preparing to move out in half an hour's time. Among them were the staff and patients of the temporary Convalescent Hospital, the Mobile Dental Unit encamped nearby, some members of the Divisional Postal Unit (Second-Lieutenant Harbott⁶), the Convalescent Hospital (Captain Slater⁷) and many convalescents recently discharged from the hospital to the reinforcement group.

Here they waited for further orders from 80 Base Sub-Area and in peacetime would have remarked upon the sound of sheep bells and the enchanting countryside. On the outskirts of Megara the land sloped south to the minute coastal plain and north into a long valley thick with olive trees. The cemetery with its tall cypress trees was to the left, the dusty village faced south across fields red with poppies to the blue Mediterranean and the island of Salamis. To the west beyond the road above the cliffs there was the mass of the Peloponnese, range behind range, in a soft blue haze.

As it was, the Luftwaffe dominated the scene, patrolling the highway and making all movement by day extremely dangerous. That night, 22–23 April, a train came through from Athens with Australian troops, drafts of convalescents from the British hospitals and several New Zealanders, including the seven¹ YMCA secretaries who had been working with the line-of-communication units and at the Base Reception Camp at Voula. Once again the Greek villagers offered eggs and brown bread—and once again the day was spent sheltering from observation aircraft and dive-bombers. But there were nearly 1200 men in the area, many of them convalcscents or walking wounded still needing attention. Captain Slater went back to Athens for medical supplies and three of the YMCA secretaries returned to Voula, where they salvaged chocolate, cigarettes, tinned milk and even clothing for those who had been hastily evacuated with little more than hospital pyjamas.

Another small detachment under Lieutenant Wilkinson² was more fortunate. The convoy with the sick and wounded had set out for Voula, but at Daphni, just a few miles west of Athens, Wilkinson's group had been ordered off the road by the military police who were restricting travel in daylight. The lorries had been taken back to Athens and the party left to its own devices for several anxious days before it was picked up by some New Zealand Divisional Postal Unit and Army Service Corps transport and taken to Navplion. From here they were taken off by HMAS Perth on the night of 26–27 April.³