It was an honour for me this year to participate again in the annual Battle of Kalamata commemorative service as a representative of Melbourne’s Battle of Crete and Greece Commemorative Council.
Held at a memorial erected in 1994 by the British veterans of the Greek campaign, close to Kalamata’s beautiful waterfront, wandering down to the quay, I took in the view as people promenaded along the esplanade or enjoyed their frappé or ouzo as they gaze out into the waters of Kalamata Bay.
But as I stood there I imagined the dark days of late April 1941 when this same esplanade was choked with tired and weary Allied troops.
They had made their way from across the length and breadth of Greece – by truck, train and on foot – some fighting a desperate rearguard against the advancing German invaders. And they did so to safeguard the evacuation beaches that would take the troops to Crete to continue the fight.
And the last of these evacuation beaches was the waterfront of Kalamata. By the evening of 26 April nearly 20,000 Allied troops had made their way to Kalamata hoping for evacuation.
Disembarking on the outskirts of town, the Allied troops marched through Kalamata, along Aristomenos Street and then to the olive and citrus groves to the east of the town, to rest and recuperate, and to avoid German air attack, amongst the trees.
Photographs from the time show Anzacs and other Allied troops marching along Kalamata’s main thoroughfares, watched and welcomed by local residents. Diggers later recounted local women offering them freshly cooked chicken, cakes, and retsina.
One of the soldiers who marched through Kalamata was a young man from north-western Victoria. Albert William Gray had been born the Melbourne suburb of Kensington but by the time he enlisted in 1939 the family had moved to rural Red Cliffs on the Murray River.
By then Albert was married to Hazel and working as a salesman.
Albert’s leadership potential saw him promoted to lieutenant prior to his departure from Australia on 13 October 1939. By the time he arrived in Kalamata, Albert was a captain in the Australian 2/6th Battalion.
To Greece
The 2/6th Battalion diary records their arrival at Piraeus from Alexandria on 12 April and by the 15th, they had moved north, first to Larissa and Orphana, only to fall back. They occupied various defensive positions as they took part in the Allied withdrawal. Along the route Albert and the battalion suffered casualties due to enemy air attacks. As they crossed the Corinth Canal during the night of 25th April some of the battalion were detached to take part in its defence. Many were subsequently captured. Albert and the remainder of the battalion finally arrived at Kalamata at 6.45 am the next day.
The evacuation was a planned affair, with designated areas along the waterfront, with troops assembling every nightfall, awaiting their turn. One witness described the men lined up in queues, standing still, not talking or smoking. For a time, order was maintained on the waterfront by Gallipoli veteran Brigadier Stanley Savige, with Australian soldiers as provost marshals. Albert’s battalion was divided into groups of 50 men led by an officer. And as they waited for evacuation, Albert was ordered to oversee the destruction of Allied vehicles. The embarkation process was so orderly that one digger recounted later that it was “like the Sydney ferry service.”
Albert and the Battle of Kalamata Watefront
It was in the early evening of the next day, the 28th, that all hell broke loose in Kalamata. Two companies of the German 5th Panzer Division with two field guns made a daring raid into the centre of Kalamata, capturing the Customs House, and the Allied officer in charge of evacuations. One of the defensive posts established by the Germans was on the waterfront, at the corner of Navarino and Koroni Streets. Here they set up machine gun and artillery post to defend the Customs House from any attack from the Allied troops camped to the east.
Initially the Allied troops were unaware of the German position and were fired on as they marched down Navarino Street expecting to be evacuated. Soon furious fighting had erupted around the quay, tracers lights could be seen by the evacuation ships assembling in the bay.
Soon a combined force of mostly Australian and New Zealand troops would directly engage the German’s and retake the port.
It was now that Albert’s courage and leadership shone through. While he was in command of some 400 Australian troops from various units, only around 70 could take part in the engagement due to a shortage of weapons and ammunition. Albert split his force into two platoons. One platoon joined the 30-strong New Zealand force which moved along the streets parallel to the waterfront with the aim of attacking the Germans from a flanking position and in the rear.
Albert and his group moved along Navarino Street, attacking the Germans head-on. While under constant enemy fire, Albert’s force first occupied defensive positions in a ditch running at right angles to the beach near Navarino Street. Private Bowler of Albert’s battalion was wounded here. At 8.45 pm the attack began.
Albert and his men made a frontal assault on the German position on the waterfront. One account of the attack talks of an intense fight, of “mad confusion” and of the men fighting “like wildcats”. The only thought in the digger’s minds was “to get the jerries from that quay at all costs”. At one point the Australians drove a truck full of diggers “yelling, shooting and swearing” straight towards the German position.
At the same time the combined Anzac force led by Sergeant Hinton of the 20th New Zealand Battalion, pistol in hand, attacked the Germans from the north, making good use of a single Vickers machine gun. Hinton led the assault on a number of German positions, hurling grenades and capturing an artillery piece. In the attack he was severely wounded in the stomach and was later captured.
The battle lasted under an hour, the Germans were overwhelmed by the Anzac-led combined attack and the port was retaken. Over 100 German soldiers were killed or wounded, and another 100 captured. Meanwhile another combined British and Anzac force led by British Major Geddes engaged and defeated German troops in the northern part of the city, taking 150 prisoners.
Victory then Capture
Due to the bravery of Albert and the other troops who took part in the battle, the evacuations were able to continue for another night. In the end 9,217 Allied troops were safely evacuated from Kalamata, including 8,650 Australian troops. When the 2/6th Battalion assembled in Palestine on 2 May there were only 10 officers and 220 other ranks from a force that originally totalled 900 men.
Albert achieved Mentioned-in-Dispatches and was awarded the Military Cross “for exemplary conduct and leadership at Kalamata”. Albury-born Private Max Wood of the 2/6th Battalion was awarded the Military Medal “for high courage and devotion during the evacuation from Greece”. Major Geddes was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Sergeant Jack Hinton received the highest accolade, being awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the action on that night.
While 330 Allied troops were taken off in the final evacuation in the early hours of 29 April, Albert was not one of them; an officer was not to abandon his men. When the Germans finally secured Kalamata on the morning of 29 April, Albert was one of the 7,500 Allied troops taken prisoner, along with a quarter of his battalion. One who escaped capture was Private Max Wood who made his way down through the villages of the Mani and was evacuated by an Allied warship two days later.
Albert’s bravery did not end in captivity; he made no less than four escape attempts from German POW camps and assisted in many more. After the long night of incarceration and liberation, Albert returned to Australia after the war, first to Black Rock and then to his beloved Red Cliffs. His name is proudly etched on the local war memorial.
I wonder what went through Gray’s mind as he contemplated capture all those years ago. Maybe he would have gazed out across Kalamata Bay as the last evacuation ship made its way south to Crete. And I wonder if the water, with its silvery reflections, took him back to earlier days on the banks of the great Murray River as it bent its way through his home town.
Standing on Navarino Street there are few reminders of the battle of Kalamata. I hope that the memorial might be one day complemented by one at the site of the battle for the waterfront itself, honouring the service of Captain Albert Gray and the other brave Allied soldiers who defeated the German forces in Kalamata on that terrible night in April 1941. Lest we forget.
* Jim Claven is a trained historian and a freelance writer. He is currently working to erect a memorial plaque in Kalamata to Captain Albert Gray and his comrades who fought in the Battle of Kalamata.