Tidings of ruin reached Pireaus at night. On that night, no man slept (Lysander, 407 BC)
‘So, Wilson had to be content with three Greek divisions, and six battalions from Thrace. And what a ragtag and bobtail lot they were with their oxcarts and mules for transport! One of them, the 19th Motorised Division, which Pagos insisted should play an anti- parachutist roll in the plain consisted of about 2000 untrained men, most of whom were garage hands. As for being motorised, its only vehicles were a few Bren carriers, motorcycles and sports cars collected together from heaven knew where. In addition to the motley collection the Division possessed a handful of Dutch tanks, and a few ramshackle lorries and Italian tanks captured during the Albanian campaign. A fine force to compete with the German Panzers.
Yet there was nothing wrong with the troops themselves. They are tough, wiry men as sturdy as their pack mules. And because they were most of them peasants, whose homes were in the villages into the mountain side, Wilson put them to fight in the mountains, where they could climb, as nimbly, as their herds of goats. In the narrow gorges, he placed his Imperial troops supported by what artillery he had at his disposal, while forward of the Aliakmon line, he placed his armour, consisting of some 52 light tanks, and about the same number of cruisers.
On 6 April at 5:45 am on a Sunday morning, while the German ministers in Belgrade and Athens were delivering their declarations of war, von Weichs, commanding the second army and von List, commanding the 12th army, gave orders to advance. And while these two great armies of the Third Reich swept into the little countries which had shown the courage to resist Hitler’s threats and coercion, the bombers of the Luftwaffe were loading their bays for a raid that was to paralyse the Allied lines of communication.’ (Source 1a)