This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns. In March 1941, 40,000 Australian and New Zealand troops were rushed to Greece in a desperate

attempt to support the Greeks against the looming threat of a German attack.

Although the operation was ultimately doomed to fail,

the Ozies and Kiwis managed to hold up the German advance long enough

to evacuate thousands to Cre where Hitler then set his sights.

I'm Angus Wallach and joining me today is Craig Coley, the author of Where the Flaming Hell

are we, the story of young Australians and New Zealanders

fighting their Nazis in Greece and Crete.

So for this episode we'll be delving into these overlooked disastrous operations in the Mediterranean.

But before we begin, I want to extend a big thank you to David Philipson from the History Guild,

who suggested our guest today and connected me with Craig.

The History Guild has a project focusing on Australians in the Mediterranean theatre during World War II.

For more articles and posts on the topic, visit history guild.org.

Craig, thanks for joining me. We'll be focusing on the deployment of the Australian and New Zealand forces in this early part of World War II.

To start, could you give us an overview of the forces available in both countries at the time?

Had they anticipated fighting a foreign war, how prepared were they? For instance Britain had introduced

conscription in 1939. Did Australia and New Zealand follow suit to boost their

armed forces as well? They were enlisted, so they volunteered and in fact in Australia I'm not

sure what the situation was in New Zealand but in Australia only those who volunteered that

was changed at some stage during the war is my understanding,

...