Eighty years ago, proud but defeated the British evacuate mainland Greece

Most of the 48,000 British led troops were safely evacuated from Greece, but they had suffered 3,000 battle casualties. They had fought courageously, but never managed to establish a tenable defence line. Several thousand were left as prisoners. They had inflicted at best minimal delay on the German advance which reached Athens. British honour was safe; it had respected its commitment and stood by its ally at the time of need, but the military cost had been high. The desert army , weakened by the diversion of units to the Greek campaign, had gone from triumphant advance against the Italians a few weeks before to headlong retreat in front of the Afrika Korps. Many of the units from Greece sailed to Crete which was to serve as a bastion in the north eastern Mediterranean. A British submarine, HMS Regent , spent nine hours under Italian guns in the Albanian port of Kotor flying the largest White Ensign she had on board. She had sailed into Kotor to rescue Mr. Ronald Campbell, the