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get-tive.r der-ner-thewasnln-•mal■hen new am-her — a dec-\ set fork heir 1 of fa-/hat.heirma-hreeuresun-tself here ene-sque 1 of i are fas-the by ness king loirs ro-ead-rallythathingfferseverbril-den,theR.1lent.port and the hinterland which it serves. As a reference volume when Dakar comes fully into the news, it will be invaluable.CRESTON B. MULLINS.From the Land of the Silent PeopleBy Robert St. John. Doubleday, Doran, New York.Mr. St. John’s vividly written story of what he saw and heard as the Nazi divisions swept down over Yugoslavia and Greece is not always pleasant reading. The brief Balkan campaign was not a pleasant war.St. John, now an N. B. C. commentator from London, was the Associated Px-ess correspondent in Belgrade when the war came. He saw whathappened to the Yugoslav capital that bloody Sunday the Nazi bombers struck without warning. His experiences in the next four weeks, as heand three companions—Leigh White of C. B. S., Russell Hill of the NewYork Herald-Tribune and Terence Atherton of the London Daily Mail-tried to reach a point from which they could send a story, is one of the epics of journalism.What he saw on that trip by auto through Yugoslavia, and thenby boat and train through Greece, left with him a series of unforgettablepictures of what modem war is.He recalls the man he saw lying on a sidewalk in Greece, with a hole through his skull and both hands blown off, screaming because he couldn't reach into his pocket to get a drachma to buy aspirin tablets to stop the funny feeling inside his head . . .And the sickening smell that permeated all Corinth the day the Stukas dive-bombed a hospital train and cremated wounded soldiers in 20 or 30 cars . . .And the sound those other Greek soldiers made when the Messer-schmitt came alongside their train and pumped death from machine guns into eveiy car, an^ their screams for an hour after the planes went away, as they hid in trees and crouched behind rocks . . .The Yugoslavs never had a chance. Their planes were destroyed on the ground, their ox cart-supplied armies cut to pieces by the German mechanized forces. The British and American help on which they had depended never cameSkoplje had fallen, cutting the road to Greece, when St. John reached Sarajevo after a hazardous auto trip just in time to see the Easter Sunday bombing of the mountain city. The government already had fled when the four newsmen, none of them sailors, set out down the Adriatic in a 20-foot sardine boat.Greece, too. was lost by the time they reached Corfu, and the British were trying to salvage what they could of the pitiably small force ofsome 40,000 men—mostly Australians and New Zealanders—they had 6entto stem the German advance. But the four managed to get to Patras, then Corinth, where they had to leave White, badly wounded when German planes strafed a train.St. John, also wounded, and his two companions got to Crete on thedestroyer Havoc, last British ship to leave Greece. They were still aheadof the Germans, but not of the bombers. And. finally, they reached Cairo, where they could put a story on the wires—but not the whole story of how two divisions of empire troops, standing alone as their Greek allies fled, were cut to pieces for lack of air support, and then slaughtered by Nazi planes in an evacuation far more costly than Dunkerque.“From the Land of the Silent People'1 is a great adventure story by a man who remembers too much for his own peace of mind. But it is even more important as a picture of what happens to the little, unimportant people when war sweeps over their country and the bombers bring terror and death.And from any angle it is as fine Job of reporting as has been don# in World War H. C. BELMONT FARIES.
Newspaper Details
Evening Star
Washington, Washington-DC, US
Sun, Jan 25, 1942
Page 91
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 17 Dec 2021
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