Monday, March 9, 2020

1. Prologue by Valentini Papadopoulou

http://xanthoulabertwrigley.blogspot.com


I feel I need to write my own Prologue before the commencement of this blog "The War Bride". I have personally known Xanthoula for many years and oh what a wonderful sweet lady she is.  I have attended a couple of talks she has given on this subject and both times she has left me feeling quite emotional as her story really does touch the heart.  I hope you find it as profound as I did.

Xanthoula's sister Valentini Papadopoulou wrote "The War Bride" in November 2009.  I believe it is worthy of publication, so if someone would like to take on the task of publishing "The War Bride", please contact me, Joy Olney via email - joyolney@gmail.com.

In the mean while, the best I can do is publish "The War Bride" as a Blog.  You need to read Numbers 1-14 in order, as you would chapters in a book, to understand the story line.

Xanthoula grew up in the remote village of Ritini in Greece where in 1941 the family sheltered Bert (Slim) Wrigley during WW11.  Xanthoula was only 15 at that time.  Her father Ioannis Papadopoulos was imprisoned and executed by the Germans in 1944.  Her sister Eleni was also imprisoned.  Four years after the war ended, Xanthoula's mother encouraged her to write to Bert in Australia.

I do not want to give away too much detail but there was a happy ending as Xanthoula arrived in Australia on the migrant ship "Cyrenia" on 31 December 1950 and they married just 9 weeks later and spent 45 happy years together.

Unfortunately Valentini and Eleni have now passed away and Xanthoula is well in her 90s.


Xanthoula with her beloved Bert (Slim) Wrigley.


  The War Bride

  by Valentini Papadopoulou


Prologue

Early this morning, it was like an epiphany for me.  The story of my 83-year-old sister Xanthoula and her husband Herbert Wrigley had to be told, simply and from the heart. This is a true story and long overdue. I know it as well as anyone else besides herself, I lived with them for many years when I was a student, and I am living in her house at the moment. I have at my disposal, besides my sister still alive and well, other documents, photos, newspaper clips, letters, recordings of earlier interviews with her and her husband Bert, recordings with my two other siblings, as well as vivid memories and strong feelings of my own.

I must not wait any longer to put this moving story to paper. For my sister and for Bert’s memory, a man who truly cared and whom I loved and admired, for their sons and grandsons, other relatives, friends, and for anyone else who cares to read it.  I can try to follow the events and piece their lives together. I am not writing this for fame or money.  It is a human story that needs to be told, a story of courage, generosity, self-sacrifice, and love.  Not the kind of love you will read about in “best-sellers”, passionate or unrequited love to excite the readers who need a bigger than life tale to live vicariously with powerful feelings not felt in their own lives.  I hope readers will find this to be an out of the ordinary story, and appreciate the fact that it is true, not the figment of a creative imagination.

I will try to begin from the beginning: who are these two people?  Where do they come from, what were their families of origin like, where did they live and what did they do in their lives before they met?

For Bert’s individual story I have gathered the material sources available to me, some of which I will mention here at the outset: recorded interviews, personal letters, and three main books which recount Bert’s WWII experiences, especially during his time in occupied Greece fighting with the Greek guerillas.  As the events come up during the narrative, I will mention other sources such as newspaper clippings, post cards, and photos.

When Bert returned to Australia in February 1944 after more than three years overseas, he no doubt told his family about what he had been through.  But he seems not to have given them many details.  When I came to Australia in 1955 to live with Bert and Xanthoula, there were times when I asked him questions about the war, and he did tell me some isolated stories over the years.  But on the whole he didn’t talk readily about his war experiences.  He was more willing to reminisce about places he saw and people he met than about the battles he had fought and the hardships he had endured.  Many years later, I had considerable difficulty in convincing him to let me record him as he spoke about his war experiences.  Now, I am glad I did. 

That happened in 1992, about fifty years after the actual events in Greece.  I had come from America for a long visit, full of grief following my brother Stefanos’ death in Greece.  I felt Bert agreed to talk only to please me,  probably thinking that it would distract me from my grief, and because I said that this would help me towards my project of writing the story of my family. That project has been on my mind since 1986 and I had been gathering material over the years.  Several important documents had been kept in a file by my brother, and when he died his wife handed the file to me.  Over the years, I have added to it anything else I could find, letters and family photos as well as oral accounts which I had recorded.  However, I only actually started writing in 2008 beginning with my father’s biography.  Having lost my father at the age of seven, I have been trying to grasp the essence of him by piecing together whatever I could find in order to reconstruct his life.  Bert had met my father and was part of that family story.  So, I wanted to record his memories about Greece, about the German occupation, and about his encounter with my family in a remote Greek village near Mount Olympus.

In that 1992 recorded interview, I heard his story directly from him, with considerable details about his own experiences and feelings mingled with his unique sense of humor.  I can’t transcribe everything here, but it is good to listen to his deep and melodic voice now, nearly fifteen years after he passed away.  The feeling is one of sweet sadness.

I had the privilege of having as a brother-in-law this remarkable man, who had lived through so much in his youth but kept it very much to himself.  As a young man Bert chose to live dangerously for five years.  And as his story unfolds, it will be evident that he threw himself into the fight with a passion. 

His memory of the events in Greece was vivid and detailed for some events and more faint for others.  It was after all some fifty years later. In addition, I also have in my hands other documents that help me tell his story, reconstruct his life, and draw a portrait of him.  There are Bert’s letters to his elder sister Emily (“Em”), letters written between 1940-41 from Palestine, Egypt and Libya, before he actually landed in Greece.  They were fortunately kept by his sister. Of course he wrote others too, to his parents, and to whoever else wrote to him.  In one letter he says he has been busy writing because he had received many letters.  But only eight letters to his elder sister “Em” and her husband Tom have survived.  Bert and Xanthoula were very involved in the last ten years of Emily’s life, visiting her regularly and taking care of her affairs.  They cleared up her home when she died in 1993, and these letters were found among her things.  My sister Xanthoula preserved them and she gave them to me for the purpose of writing this story.  

Also fortunately, there is a detailed account of a large part of his time in occupied Greece made in a book by his fighting companion and friend, Bruce Vary.  Bruce was another Australian who was twice captured in Greece and escaped twice jumping off a moving train that was taking him to a prison camp in Germany or Austria.  Like Bert, he found himself cut off trying to survive on his own in a foreign country occupied by the enemy.   When he returned to Australia together with Bert in February 1944, Bruce was anxious to record for posterity his own ordeal and near-death experiences, and he did it as soon as he came back, with memories still fresh.  In a book entitled I lived with Greek Guerrillas (story written by E.B. Burton and published in Melbourne in 1945), Bruce Vary gives a detailed record of his Greek experience and of his special bonding with “Slim”, Herbert Wrigley.  That book reveals a lot about Bert, his bravery, his generosity and his loyalty to a fellow soldier. 

Other books which appeared later, such as Patsy Adam-Smith’s “Prisoners of War: From Gallipoli to Korea” (Penguin Books, 1992), and Hugh Gilchrist’s “Australians and Greeks (Volume III: The Later Years”, Halstead Press, 2004), also give accounts of the footprints that “Slim” left behind in Greece.  Hugh Gilchrist, himself a serviceman during WWII in Australia and New Guinea, later entered the Department of External Affairs and served in official posts in many countries, especially as Ambassador to Greece in the years 1968-72.  He includes in the above-mentioned book a detailed account of events related to these two men.  In Volume III, Chapter V, under the title “Australians in Occupied Greece”, there is a special section on “’Slim’ Wrigley and Bruce Vary” (pp. 65-72). What we read there was obtained directly from the two friends when Gilchrist invited them to visit him in Canberra specifically for the purpose of getting first-hand information about their war experiences.  Volume III finally appeared in 2004, but the interview took place many years before, in the 1970’s, so what we read there can be accepted as an accurate account of what they remembered.

The accounts given in these three books, the personal information from Bert’s letters to his sister, the recorded interviews, my sister Xanthoula’s memories, what my elder sister Eleni in Greece knows and remembers, what his sons can tell me, and my own recollections will all be part of this story.  I actually met Bert (he was then known as ‘Slim’) for the first time when I was nearly 6 years old, during the harsh winter of 1941-42.  He came to my grandfather’s house up in an isolated snowbound village from which one can see the peak of Mount Olympus.  He stayed with us for a while, then left but returned several times, until he joined the Greek partisans and the British Secret Mission in Greece during the Occupation. My subsequent knowledge of this very special man began in 1955 when I immigrated to Australia and continued until he died in 1995. 

I will try to piece everything together like a jigsaw puzzle, and I hope that a fuller portrait of the man will emerge.


Go to the next blog 2. "Herbert ("Bert" or "Slim") - Family roots.



Saturday, March 7, 2020

2. Herbert ("Bert or "Slim") Wrigley - Family roots

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            Herbert (‘Bert’ or ‘Slim’) Wrigley - Family Roots


Herbert Pascoe Wrigley was born in England on the 30th of November 1919, in Ashton-under-Lyne, then a small town just outside the city of Manchester, now showing on the map as an outer suburb of the city.  He was the seventh out of eight children of Thomas Wrigley and Florence Holden: George, Tom, Emily, Claire, Florence, Harold, Herbert and Eric.   His two elder brothers, George and Tom, came to Australia first, probably in 1920, it seems for health reasons.  George, having suffered from being gassed while fighting in France during WWI, was looking for a warmer climate and better working conditions than could be found in an English industrial area.  The rest of the family followed late 1921 or early 1922, with Bert not yet three years old and Eric a baby, no more than a year old.  The family settled in Yarraville, near Footscray, a suburb of the city of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria.  

Not a great deal is available in the way of history of that family back in England and of the conditions under which they arrived and settled in Australia.  I will briefly give here what I have been able to find through various sources: a few family documents, some letters and photos, and pieces of oral history by members of the Wrigley family.  It seems that Bert’s grandfather, by the name of Frederick William Wrigley, was the son of a well-to-do family who owned a paper mill in Manchester.  But, having fallen in love with a girl working in the mill and having married her against his family’s wishes, he was disowned by his father.  They considered he was marrying “beneath his station”.  So that branch of the Wrigley family had to work harder at making a living.  The Wrigley family’s ownership of a paper mill is confirmed in a letter, written by a relative in England many years later as a response to an enquiry by one of Bert’s elder sisters.  In 1953, Claire (the third-born) had planned a trip to England with her daughter Fay and wanted to try and reconnect with her roots.  Claire had some memories herself, since she was around thirteen years old when the family left England. Her father gave her the name and address of a relative in England and Claire wrote to her.  I found the reply she received in the box in which my sister kept the Wrigley family documents and photos.  Dated October 21st 1953, the letter includes a fairly long list of names of several members of the Wrigley family and what happened to them.  It also contained the following “….. The mill passed out of the Wrigley family a long time ago now, it was sold to the present owners, which is sad.  I always feel there are not many Wrigleys left as there seem to have been mostly daughters in the later generations…..”

Among the very few family documents available, the marriage certificate of Bert’s parents, Thomas Wrigley and Florence Holden, both nineteen years old, dated 20th February 1897, also gives us some details.   In it, the profession of the father of the groom is listed as “Paper-Stainer”, a skill he might have learned working in the family’s paper-mill until his “disgrace”.  That of his son Thomas is listed as “Collier” (working in the coal mining industry), and that of his wife Florence, as “Winder” (working in a cotton mill operating a piece of machinery with that name).

Bert’s father, Thomas Wrigley, must have joined the British army not too long after his marriage and was sent to Africa to fight in the Second Boer War which ended in 1902.  It seems that from the start he served as a paramedic. There is a well-preserved studio photo in which we see a good-looking young man in the British army uniform, with a light moustache, wearing a large-brimmed hat folded up on the left side and a white band with the Red Cross on his left arm.  The photo was very likely taken before he left for Africa (a wise thing to do before going off to war), where young Thomas witnessed what is considered by historians as one of the bloodiest wars in which England became involved.

There is also a service medal featuring Queen Victoria and bearing four bars across the ribbon with the following inscriptions, indicating the campaigns in which the young man participated: “Cape Colony”, “Orange Free State”, “South Africa 1901”, and “South Africa 1902”.  From the medal, we can guess fairly accurately that he must have served for at least two years, probably longer.  A later photo, which I will describe further on, shows Thomas Wrigley wearing that very medal.  A second medal featuring King George V is from WWI, with the simple inscription of 1914-1919.  A third one features a winged Victory and has the following inscription on the back: “The Great War for Civilization 1914-1919”.

“Grandpa Wrigley” (as he was referred to when I met him in 1955) left his war medals, with a handwritten note inside the box containing them, to his grandson John Stephen Wrigley, first son of Bert and Xanthoula, when he died in 1959.  The boy was then only seven years old, but as “Grandpa” lived his last years with them, he must have felt closer to this grandchild than to the others -- he had another six, four boys and two girls.  He writes: “I wish to give my War Medals to my grandson John S. Wrigley so that he may wear them like other children on Anzac Day.” John also has his Uncle George’s war medals, two from WWI, exactly the same as his grandfather’s mentioned above.  George, Bert’s elder brother, enlisted in the army at the outbreak of WWI and eventually reached the rank of Sergeant Major.  John also has Bert’s seven war medals.  He kindly put all of them at my disposal, with as much other information as he had, for the purpose of writing this story.

It is easy to see from Thomas Wrigley’s war service medals that during his married years in England he spent considerable time in the army and away from home.  At least there was a space of twelve years in-between the Boer wars and WWI.   In 1914 he was 36 years old, but he served again as a paramedic attached to a hospital ship.  From those years of service, I found again in my sister’s “Wrigley Family” box nine post cards that Thomas sent mostly to his wife Florence and to his elder son George.  The first postcard to his wife shows the “Gloucester Castle” an eight thousand-ton steamer belonging to the Union-Castle Line, which was, as he writes “made into a Hospital ship”.  He also writes that they “landed” on July 4th, but doesn’t say where.  It must have been France, more specifically the port of Dieppe, since there are three postcards from that city, one to his wife, one to his son George, and one to his son Tom.  Two other postcards are from Paris and two more from Malta.  One of those two, dated 29th October 1915, is addressed to his son George, who seems to have already engaged in the war, and having been gassed, was sent back home on leave.  Here is what I can decipher:

Dear Son
Thanks for your letter, I am very pleased you are getting on so well, but mind you don’t overdo yourself (...)  I was looking what would happen after the War is over, but if you are better in health I don’t mind.  It is raining like the devil but I am all right if the tent pegs hold and no wind gets up for there is only 4 inches of soil then you are on solid rock.  I hope you are all in good health, your mother said she did not feel well in her last letter.  Don’t forget what I told you. 
I remain Your Loving Father.

The last card, addressed to his brother, is a humorous one satirizing the daily schedule of recruits, featuring a fully loaded British soldier looking exhausted.  On the upper left hand corner we read:

RECRUITS -- ORDERS of the DAY
8 HOURS        DRILL
8 HOURS        ROUTE MARCH
8 HOURS        TRENCHING

GOD SAVE THE KING!

At the bottom:           
AND THEN WE HAVE ALL THE REST OF THE DAY TO OURSELVES!

On the back Thomas writes: “Dear brother, Is it as bad as this at your end?”

It seems that his brother must have been in the army as well.  The rest of the writing unfortunately isn’t legible, it was written in pencil and I can only make out a word here and there.  Those cards are nearly a hundred years old...

The family photos are quite revealing: A very nice one of Florence, Bert’s mother, is remarkably well-preserved for more than a century.  It shows her with their first-born George, who looks about two years old.  Although there is no date on it, we can guess that it is probably from around 1900, since George was born in 1898, a year after the marriage. The photo is taken in the studio of “Mrs. J. Bardsley, Photographic Artist, 216 Stamford St., Ashton-under-Lyne, the same studio that had taken the photo of her husband Thomas before he went to the Boer War.  It shows a beautiful young woman, in a nice though dark-colored dress, with abundant dark brown and curly hair tied in an elegant bun behind her head.  She is looking lovingly at her son.  The little boy is dressed in a dark velvet suit with a wide collar, wearing brand new shoes and white knee-length socks. 

A much later and larger in size family photo, this time not a studio photo but taken in front of a brick house, so it isn’t as well preserved as the previous one, shows Thomas Wrigley sitting on a chair wearing his army uniform, with his Boer War medal hanging on the left side of his chest. His wife Florence is sitting next to him dressed elegantly and wearing a large hat, a large white poodle on her right and a young boy about three years old dressed in white standing on her left -- the sixth born, Harold.  They are surrounded by five more children: standing up on either side of the photo are George and Tom, the two older boys, wearing suits, white collar shirts with a tie, and hats.   Emily, the eldest daughter, with long and beautiful curls of hair falling freely on either side of her face, is sitting down. Two other little girls, daughters Claire and Florence, are standing more in the background.   On the back of the photo we read: “Taken August 1914”.  It was probably taken after Thomas had enlisted, since he is wearing his military uniform, and before he was sent away to serve as a paramedic on the Hospital Ship.  Having a full family photo taken seems like an appropriate step to take before going off to war again.  By now they have six children; the youngest seems to be about 3-4 years old.   In 1914, Thomas and Florence are both 36 years old and have already had six children within 17 years of marriage.  Just that is an amazing achievement for a couple who had no inherited wealth and probably had no help at home. Florence had one child every two to three years, and she looks as slender as before!   The seventh and next to last child, Herbert, was born five years later, on the 30th of November 1919, and Eric a couple of years after that.  By then WWI had ended and the family was already considering the move to Australia. 

I spent some time looking at and reflecting on those photos, because they can tell us quite a lot. What they indicate is that in spite of a large family, Thomas and Florence seemed to have been managing fairly well in Ashton-under-Lyne, well enough to feed, clothe nicely their six children and send them to school.  So their move to Australia was likely to be less out of desperation or poverty-level living conditions than out of a desire to give their children a better life, in a better climate and in a country far removed from a war-torn Europe.  Also, their two elder sons had made the decision to leave England and they must have wanted to be close to them.  Still, uprooting oneself is difficult at any time, and doing it with a large family is even more so.  Just travelling with six young children, one of them still a baby, from England to Australia at the beginning of the 20th century, couldn’t have been an easy undertaking.  When they arrived, the area of Footscray and Yarraville, where the family settled, was a predominantly working-class suburb of Melbourne with quite a few factories close by.  It seems that the two elder sons who came to Australia first were able to set up a modest home in that area so the rest of the family could join them.  The parents were able to get jobs there, George and Tom went up to Ballarat for a while gold prospecting like hundreds of others, and the younger children went to school.  They all survived the change well and were able to make good lives for themselves.

That is about the extent of information available on Bert Wrigley’s roots.  His life really begins in Australia, but before I continue with his individual story, I will say here something about this family, drawn from my own experience of meeting all of them after I arrived in Australia in 1955 at the age of eighteen.  Over the five years of my living with Xanthoula and Bert, and over the total of seventeen years I lived in Australia before I left for America, I interacted with many of Bert’s brothers, sisters and their families on several occasions.  I was witness to the closeness between them.  During their life-time they visited, helped and cared for each other in an exemplary manner.  None of the members of that original family is now alive, with Claire, the third-born, being the one to outlive all the others.  She passed away in 2008 at the age of over one hundred and one years. Except for the eldest brother George, all of them married and most of them had a family.


Go to the next blog 3."Bert enlists".


Friday, March 6, 2020

3. Bert Enlists


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Bert Enlists.


With that background in mind, I will now pick up Bert’s story, after about eighteen years from the time the family settled in the Footscray area.  In the “Wrigley Family” box again, I found a worn and yellow piece of a Melbourne newspaper, “The Herald”.  It is dated Friday June 7, 1940 and features a photo and a short article entitled “A.I.F. Recruits March Today”.
“Heavy rain did not damp the spirits of these men who marched from Footscray drill hall to the station and entrained for Caulfield today”.

Another small yellow piece of a different newspaper (probably a local one from Footscray) with a clearer photo says:

“Headed by Hyde Street State School Band, 60 A.I.F. recruits from Footscray marched from the City of Footscray drill hall yesterday to entrain for Caulfield camp”.

On the first row, a tall and thin young man by the name of Herbert Wrigley, is seen with a slight smile on his face.

Less than a year later, probably around April 1941, another small and yellow piece of the local newspaper features this announcement:

“Pte. H. Wrigley sailed on September 15th and is attached to headquarters.  In a letter to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Wrigley, he stated that he had fractured an ankle and was in hospital probably in Greece.  The ambulance which took him from a clearing station to hospital was a gift to AIF by Footscray citizens.  He has a younger brother in the RANR.  His father fought in the South African and 1914-1918 wars, and his eldest brother was in the last war”.

Evidently, with a father who had fought both in South Africa and in WWI, and a brother who also fought in WW1, being in the army and fighting wars were familiar things for the Wrigley boys. When WWII broke out, both the younger boys, Bert and Eric enlisted, while the elder brother George went as a Sergeant into the Reserve.  It is known in the family that the younger brother, Eric, lied about his age and forged his father’s signature in order to enlist in the navy.  He was neither the first nor the last Australian boy to do that, as those under 18 years were not officially accepted.  Many young Australians saw enlisting in the army or the navy as an opportunity to get out of farming or a small town where there was no excitement and no promise of a good job.  For others it was an opportunity to see the world or to have a piece of the action in a war that they sensed was having an impact on the whole civilized world.  No doubt in some cases all of the above applied.

Soon after the first announcement, the same newspaper published another notice:

PRISONER OF WAR
Pte. H. Wrigley. 
Mr. and Mrs. T. Wrigley, Banool avenue, have been advised that their son, Herbert, is a prisoner.  He is a former pupil of Francis Street and Footscray Technical schools and worked at Mason & Cox, Yarraville.  He had been previously injured and was in hospital in Greece.  Eric, a brother, is a naval reservist who expects to go overseas at any moment.  The Red Cross is endeavoring to locate Pte. Wrigley, upon which the family will be allowed to send one letter (unsealed) monthly and a parcel of clothing every three months.

No date is recorded for this announcement, but it has to be some time after April 1941, when Corporal H. Wrigley (he had received a promotion a few months after he left) was captured in Greece.  He was sent there in March 1941 with his Commando Squadron to fight, but was wounded in the very first battle and captured shortly after the falling of Greece to the Germans in the month of April.

Another small yellow piece of newspaper makes a similar announcement:

FOOTSCRAY MAN NOW PRISONER

The parents of Pte. Herbert Wrigley, 21, of Banool Avenue, Yarraville, who was reported missing, have been advised that he is a prisoner of war.  In a letter to his father, Pte. Wrigley said his ankle was fractured in an accident and when being taken from a casualty clearing station, he discovered that the ambulance was given by citizens of Footscray.  Pte. Herbert Wrigley, first reported missing and now reported prisoner of war, is 21.

That is all his family knew, apart from what he had written in his early letters from Palestine and Egypt before he was sent to Greece. 

From his letters, we know that after he was sent to serve overseas, he was first in Palestine, then in Egypt and Libya, mostly in a reserved occupation in what was called “Employment Platoon”.  Between mid-October 1940 and February 1941 we have a total of eight letters to his elder sister Emily, written in his distinctive handwriting and style. They reveal a lot about young Bert, his interests, his sense of humor, his feelings and his compassionate nature.  Having read them, I now feel I know him a little better than before.  So I will let him speak directly by quoting parts of some of them.

Here is part of his very first letter dated 16th October 1940:

Dear Em and Tom,
Just a line to let you know I received your very welcome letter.  I was rather surprised to get it, but very pleased.  It reached Palestine before I did, but unless you send letters air mail I won’t get them for months.  I’m feeling pretty fine just at present and hope you are the same.  I hope to go on leave to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv soon, then I may apply for a transfer to the infantry with my pals, the life in this camp is too quiet, a bloke would go off his nut in a few months.  Some of the old hands seem that way now.  We have pictures and there is a wet canteen for those who drink.  I would like to go to Egypt and visit Cairo and the old Temples and tombs in Luxor so I’ll have to wait for my chance while things are quiet.  (...) There were only two other chaps who received letters the same time as I did, the rest looked so disappointed I felt sorry for them. 
Well, until later when I may have fresh news.  I’ll close down.
                                                                        Your Loving Brother 
Bert


These few lines tell about the young man’s impatience with waiting around in a quiet camp, making it clear that he had joined the army for some action.  This will be a constant thought in all the subsequent letters, until he actually succeeds in joining the AIF and begins his war experience around February 1941 by participating in the advance from Egypt to Benghazi. 

The other theme that runs through all these letters is his desire to see the world.  What is remarkable is that here is a young Australian, just past his teens, from a working class family, who grew up in working class neighborhoods such as Yarraville and Footscray (I remember them well, I lived there myself for four years in the mid-fifties), but who knew about and couldn’t wait to visit Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and more surprisingly the temples and tombs in Luxor, Egypt.  I wonder how many young people of that age in any country, with his background and education, even today in the age of internet and easy access to information, would actually know or care about Luxor, let alone risk their life to join the army and wait eagerly for the opportunity to go and visit those monuments.  My guess is that the number of such young people would be rather small.

For now, let’s go back to Palestine and listen to Bert a little more in his second letter, dated 4th November 1940.

VX 24068.  Pte. H. Wrigley. 
Employment Platoon.

Dear Em.

Just a line in answer to your welcome letter of 21/10/40.  Letters are few and far between amongst the boys, so anyone who gets a letter is considered very lucky.  I hope this finds you as well as it leaves me.  I feel pretty full of fight just now, so I and a pal have applied for transfer to the 2/11th Infantry Battalion. So we might get to Egypt.  The 2/11th are W.A.s [West Australians] and bonzer chaps too, very hospitable; from what I’m told they are nearly all miners from Kalgoolie.  I went on leave to Jerusalem last week end (...).  We saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with all the various Biblical scenes and the Tomb of Christ and the stone which was rolled away from the door.  We visited the mosque of Omar and the ruins of Jericho and the Dead Sea.  It’s a beautiful trip down along the road through the mountains down to Jordan River. Now that Syria has declared war I shouldn’t be surprised if the enemy try to advance along the Jordan Valley (...).
However we’ll take’em any time they care to come, things are that quiet here I feel like belting the ears of some coot just to ease my feelings.  I met a lot of Pommies in Jerusalem too.  I asked them about England and they told me it wouldn’t be long before English troops would be back in France again.  One of them had been at Dunkirk and he said it was “B—awful” (...).  But he won’t be sorry to even up the score.  (...)  I visited Gaza War Cemetery, the Arabs there keep it in excellent condition, there are lots of English lads lying there.  I have sent you a cushion cover, I hope you like it.  Thanks a lot for the canteen order. 

You might tell Mum that sea mail is very slow, I only received her letter 23/9/40 yesterday, practically 5 weeks to get to me.  Well that is all for the present, so I will close
                                                                                                Yours ever
                                                                                                Bert 
                                                                                                 xx


The same eagerness to be involved in fighting the war is expressed here, and along with it the same interest and excitement about visiting historical places.   Those of us who lived with Bert, as well as his close friends, knew well his fascination with history, an interest that must have started early, which explains how he knew about the temples and tombs in Luxor, Egypt.  After he returned to Australia, and throughout his life until the very end, he would visit the local library from where he would bring home books on philosophy, cosmology, the occult, and more especially history books and novels.  He also bought books which are still on the book shelves in his home.  He read all his life, sometimes the same book more than once if he really liked it.

Another letter gives amusing details about daily life in the camp, the food, the camaraderie with the other soldiers, the weather: “We had some rain you wouldn’t believe possible for two days.  I thought it would never stop.  I did my washing and got it dry though between showers.  What with being his own washerwoman and peeling vegetables in the cookhouse a man becomes very domesticated these days!”    He also mentions that finally he had an interview for his transfer to an infantry battalion.  But what stands out in this letter is when he asks his sister for a favor:

I wonder if you would do me a very special favour.  We have a chap in our crowd called Colin Cations and he hasn’t had a letter or word from his sister or friends since he’s been in the country.  He always looks rather wistful when we get a letter and he doesn’t so if you would care to write to him his address is

            VX 15869
            Pte. C.E. Cations
            Employment. Plat.
            Corps HQ.
            AIF Abroad.

Further down, he thinks of his younger brother Eric (“Dig”, who had also enlisted). “How is my little brother anyhow.  I’ve been wondering about him, has he gone away yet.  I think I’d like to bring him over here to the East after the war and show him round.” 
He closes with a joking remark to his sister: “I don’t think you’d care for sheiks, they make their wives do all the work.”

The next letter bears no date, but from the content we can tell that it was written and sent again from Palestine some time after Christmas 1940.

I received your welcome letter of 12/12/40 and thanks for writing to Colin Cations. (...)    Well I wish they would hurry up if they intend to accept my application for transfer.  I should never have come to Corps HQ in the first place, however being pushed into it, I had no idea what it was like. Besides the infantry need me more than they do here.  (...)  I think I’ve seen enough of this part of Palestine to last me for a lifetime, I’d like to seek fresh fields and pastures now as soon as possible.  (...) They have a Roman baths 2000 years old here.  I had a Turkish bath the other night in there.  It cost about 2/- with massage and all (...).  I had some wonderful feeds at Christmas.  We had eats laid on in our tent, I could hardly cope with the supply.  (...)  I wonder what sort of Christmas they had up the front.  The Comforts Fund chap told me he sent Xmas parcels to the front so the boys could have Xmas dinner while their rifles were cooling.  By the way I told Dig I’d send him an Arab knife, but now I’m told that weapons cannot be sent through the post so I’ll bring it home when I come home. (...) 

I saw a Bedouin in from the desert the other day, the first of them I’ve seen.  He stood out on his own amongst the city Arabs.  He had a sword about a yard long that I think I could have used for a razor.  Some of the local celebrities started out on the pilgrimage to Mecca.  They all stand together to be blessed by the priest or Imam I think they call him here, before they start.  Another novelty here I saw was when a government official died.  The priest got up on the minaret and howled the news to the town’s people, you could hear it all over the town.  Well cheerio for the present.
                                                                                    Your loving brother,
                                                                                                Bert
                                                                                               

As in all previous letters, the same elements stand out: his eagerness to get into action, his thinking of others -- whether soldiers fighting in the front on Christmas Day or keeping his promise to his younger brother to send him an Arab knife --, and his interest in what he experiences in other cultures: Roman baths and Mecca pilgrims, how a death is announced in the Islamic world, a quick portrait of a Bedouin and his deadly sword. 

Like the letter quoted above, the next letter has no date, but it is clear that he is still waiting for his transfer so it was probably written sometime in January 1941.

Dear Em and Tom,

I got your letter today.  I had letters from all the family the other day so you can bet I have been busy writing.  (...)  We were glad here when the British went into action.  I wish I was there right now, however I’m waiting to be sent for by the infantry now.  (...)  I haven’t done any more sightseeing yet, but if I get with the infantry battalion I’m transferring to, I’ll go to Egypt, so the sooner the better.  I saw an Arab funeral on Sunday, they carried the Arab to the cemetery in a sort of stretcher, all the women walking by the litter howling.  His wife had put ashes on her face and cried all the way to the bone orchard.  All the village was there.  (...) 

Well I don’t think I have anything more to write about, if I am moved to the infantry, I’ll let you know, so I’ll close.
                                               
The next letter dated 2nd February 1941 is mailed from Egypt.  The first part of the letter shows again his impatience to be actively involved in actually fighting the war and his frustration at not being able to do so.

Dear Em,

I hope you won’t mind my failing to answer your previous letters but the truth is I got them at a time when it was impossible to answer them.  You will see by the stamps on the letter that I’m in Egypt but I don’t know for how long.  I was in the advance party.  It wasn’t such a hot job either.  The second day we were here it started to blow a dust storm and I was working out in it.  We were filled up to the back teeth with dust, in our ears and nose and we couldn’t comb our hair for dust.  Still we haven’t had another one like it yet so I don’t mind this place so much now.  I’ve given up hope of ever getting out of Corps HQ now, apparently all the chaps in Corps who want to go and fight are not allowed to go and all the infantry chaps who would like to get jobs in Corps are not in the race either.  I wouldn’t mind if I was doing anti-aircraft work, at least I stand a chance of getting a few shots in.  This place is as tame as Palestine, if something doesn’t happen soon I’ll probably die of boredom.........

Having let off steam about that, he moves on to his next favorite subject, his experience of the foreign cultures he encounters, his interest in seeing new places and learning about the people who live there.  It looks as though he never made it to Luxor, but at least he managed to visit Alexandria.

I don’t know whether I’m supposed to tell you this or not but I and my pals went on leave to Alexandria.  It’s a more lively place than Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.  There’s everything anyone could want in the way of entertainments.  We had a hot shower at the YMCA club and after Tuesday’s dust got washed off me I began to feel more like a human being.  The four of us went and had a lovely feed of steak, eggs and chips twice, and it was OK.  There are a lot of Greeks in Alex, quite a large percentage of the population is Greek and French so there were some very lovely women in the shops etc, extremely polite too. That’s rather strange too, not many women in Palestine bothered even to talk to us.  (...) Still give me Alex any time.  I could have bought some good souvenirs but I didn’t want to risk having them on my hands if we should have moved suddenly. You can never tell now, here today and gone tomorrow (...).
            Well I say cheerio now until later.
                                                                        Your loving brother Bert

Bert’s second to last letter is dated 20th February 1941. He explains that he is now in Libya, and it sounds as though he is finally much closer to the action he so much wanted.

Dear Em and Tom,

I hope you’ll excuse the pencil but I can’t get any ink because we haven’t got a canteen here.  You probably know I’m in Libya, but it’s better than Egypt for scenery etc.  There are a lot of trees and green fields and shrubs that in parts remind me of Blackburn and Eltham.  I don’t know how long we’ll be here but I hope it’s not too long.  There’s nowhere we can go on leave, the nearest city is bombed nearly every night so it wouldn’t be much fun having to spend leave dodging bombs.  Anyway it’s out of bounds to us.  The mail is very irregular so it will be some time before you get this as the Australian Mail plane goes from Egypt and the mail transport down there is very uncertain.  We had rather a dreary sort of a trip up here, we couldn’t wash and after being covered with dust in the back of the trucks we felt pretty miserable.  Also I think I’ve seen enough bully beef and biscuits for a while anyway.  It started to rain when we stopped at one place and all the dust on our clothes went into mud.  We saw a pile of Italian planes that had been shot down, you’ve no idea the size of some of their bombers.  Some of our own are beauts!

At present we are living in a Dago barracks, it’s not a bad place but the trouble is water or rather the lack of it.  We have to be very careful so it is only turned on periodically.  There is a small Arab village not far from us where we go to buy eggs from the Arabs.  They haven’t woken up to the fact that when a country is conquered the currency is sometimes affected and they ask 1 lira for an egg.  There is about 10 lira to 1 and a half pennies, so when we offer them 1 piastra Egyptian for an egg (about 3d) they think we’re trying to rob them.  So one chap bought about 10/- worth of liras for 2/- and then the Arabs talked business so we had a good feed of boiled eggs.  I tried some Italian wine, it’s not bad stuff, if you can get the good wine it’s very good for you, but some is just plonk.  The Italian buildings are picturesque places.  One city we were in, we visited a house that was typical of any villa you would see in Monte Carlo, it was a pity it had a bomb dropped on it.  There was a lovely hotel in the same city that they are using now for Italian prisoners before they are drafted to the rear.  The prisoners are more to be pitied, they look so unhappy and miserable we passed a lot of them who seemed very glad to be out of the war.  I had an Italian officer’s cap, but I couldn’t carry it and had to leave it behind.  We heard yesterday that our troops had landed in Singapore, but the news is never given in detail and I haven’t had a letter or paper since I left Egypt. 
Well Em, I think that is all for the present so I’ll say cheerio till later.
                                                                                                                                                                                                Your loving brother
                                                            Bert

P.S. Am putting a Libyan stamp on the letter although it has nothing to do with the post, it’s just for any collector you might know.

This particular letter is partly devoted to describing the new surroundings, the vegetation of the countryside, the people and customs in Libya, but he is also giving an idea of what it is like to be closer to the action:  the long truck rides in the dust, the lack of water in the former Italian barracks, the army food, the nightly bomb raids over the closest city, the sight of the Italian bombers that had been shot down, the Italian prisoners of war looking miserable and his feelings of pity towards them.  It is a letter that covers many aspects of that experience, which he takes the time to share with his family, ending with the temptation of holding on to an Italian officer’s cap or the gesture of putting a Libyan stamp on the letter, “just for any collector” that his sister might know.  

Bert’s last letter to his sister has no date, and it isn’t clear whether it was sent from Libya or from Egypt.  But we see that he has finally been successful in his persistence to go into active duty.  The top of the letter shows his ID number as in all his letters, VX 24068, then it reads “Cpl. H. Wrigley, 2/3 Commando Sqn. AIF”.

Interestingly enough, the letter itself doesn’t say anything about either his promotion or his forthcoming move, as one would expect, probably because of a sense of modesty.  Bert was throughout his life very low key about his achievements.   He may also not have mentioned it because he didn’t want his family to worry about the fact that his life would now be in immediate danger.  The letter is still revealing in its own way.  It deals with family and friends’ news and concerns -- about a friend who isn’t very strong to undergo some harsh training he is going through, about his younger brother “Dig” who is in hospital with a “strain” of something in his stomach, and who perhaps should be discharged, about his older brother George, the one who had been gassed in WWI, who “ought to retire now and enjoy himself”, and about his mother to whom he had sent 20 pounds for a Mother’s Day gift but who said “she didn’t need anything at present”.  This last letter shows a young man fully involved in the life of his family, even at a critical moment in his own.  He ends the letter mentioning the possibility of a leave, perhaps in July, probably to make his family feel better.  He must have known that the way the war was going, and especially now that he was going to be on active duty, he wasn’t likely to go back to Australia with a leave that soon.



Go to 4. "Bert in Greece" blog.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

4. Bert in Greece


http://xanthoulabertwrigley.blogspot.com

Bert in Greece.


It was about then, in the early spring of 1941, that Hitler became frustrated with Mussolini’s unsuccessful attempt (begun at the end of October 1940) to invade Greece after several months of fighting at the Albanian border. To the surprise of the rest of the world, Greece, a small country with a small army and meager armaments and supplies, said “No” to the Italian dictator’s demand of surrender.  A greater surprise came when the Greek army defeated the Italian army.  Mussolini’s incompetence had cost Hitler a loss of precious time and so he decided to do the job himself.  After an angry letter to the Italian dictator in which he treated him more or less as an idiot, Hitler decided to send his own army with its tanks to break through the Greek border.  While the Serbs were putting up a fierce fight in Yugoslavia but were being decimated, Bulgaria joined the Germans who arrived quickly at the Greek border. As soon as this became known, the Allies rushed to send troops from Egypt to Greece, but it was too late.  The Greek army fought to the death, but the Germans had such superiority that they were able to sweep through mainland Greece and reach Athens in a matter of days.  They broke through the Bulgarian-Greek border on the 6th of April and twenty days later they had taken control of Athens and the port of Piraeus.  The Allies had little time to act, and may not have accomplished much even if there was more time.  Hitler was determined to conquer Greece and control that part of the Mediterranean.  He needed it to be able to get supplies to his armies fighting in Egypt and the Middle East.  If he had found more resistance he would have thrown in more troops, more tanks, and the Luftwaffe would have flown more bombing missions.

Backing up a little in time, Private Wrigley receives his promotion to Corporal and is transferred to an Infantry Battalion in February 1941.  He is assigned to a Commando Squadron and arrives in Greece with thousands of others in March, less than a month before the Germans break through the northern borders of Greece.  Patsy Adam-Smith, a prize-winning author of several bestseller books dealing with the recovery of oral history, covers this part of the Australian involvement in WWII in her book “Prisoners of War”. In a chapter entitled “The Road to Suda Bay”, she focuses on the fate of the Australian troops sent to Greece.  We read in her book that the order to sail to Greece was given by the headquarters in Egypt around the 8th of March 1941.  Only 11 days later, Australians began to disembark at Piraeus.  Among them was Corporal Wrigley who was immediately loaded on to a truck and sent north towards Mount Olympus to try and stop the German’s descent to Athens.

“It was the first time the Australians were to experience large-scale mountain warfare.  They were spread inland with little air support (they believe they had none, hence the lines of doggerel, ‘For if in Greece the air force be, Then where the bloomin’hell are we?’ (p.150).

Their only joy was that the Australians immediately struck a great and lasting rapport with the people of Greece who prized their independence and were brave fighters, courageous, skilled, and resourceful. But they stood little chance against the German army and air force and they died on the narrow passes, high mountains and rocky cliffs.  Greek troops hauled mountain guns up precipices only to have bombs rain down on them from the air.

On 19th March Australians began to come ashore at Piraeus.  One month later, 20th April, Greek resistance had ceased and the Australian retreat and evacuation began.  It had all been in vain.  Another bungle by the ‘Big Wigs’, as the men called the top brass – when they were being polite, that is.  But this bungle was followed by, or rather flowed on to, a bigger bungle. “(p.151).

What follows in Patsy Adam-Smith’s book is an account of a catastrophic attempt at evacuation, both from the area around Athens and from Crete where “upwards of 25,000 men (including almost 9,000 Australians) were bundled off ships in the next four days, regardless of what battalion or company they belonged to and some with no officer known to them to care for them or advise” (p.152).

But that is another story for the real historians to deal with. We will stay with Corporal Wrigley in Greece and follow his odyssey in a country which had such an impact in his life and personal journey.

With the Germans advancing relentlessly and bombarding Athens heavily almost every day, the 2/5th Australian General Hospital was receiving the first infantry patients,  brought in haggard, worn out and freezing from fighting the continuous droves of Germans and their tanks in the spring snow.  One of the many wounded was Corporal Herbert Wrigley, who had suffered a serious leg injury. The hospital was trying to tend to patients coming in while simultaneously organizing an evacuation.  Female nurses, specialist doctors, and some staff managed to evacuate before the Germans took over Athens completely.  Ships were heavily bombarded in the port of Piraeus, some filled with soldiers, many of whom were already wounded. The hospital’s Commanding Officer was killed by shots from German planes flying low while he was literally carrying wounded soldiers aboard.  We know from Bert’s own words (and from the account given by one of the Medical Staff Sergeants interviewed by Patsy Adam-Smith), that he was in the Australian General Hospital at precisely that time.  And although there is necessarily the memory factor involved, since the oral interview I have with Bert took place many years after the events, it is amazing how vivid these events were in his memory after so long. They also match perfectly the account given by Gilchrist who himself interviewed Bert and Bruce many years before I did.

The story that Bert tells in these tapes resembles, in its broad lines and in many details as well, the one that can be read in accounts made in the books I mentioned earlier.  I will on occasion quote him word for word.  He remembers that he was in the Australian General Hospital on the outskirts of Athens when the Germans broke through the northern Greek border.  With his leg in a cast following a major but unsuccessful battle near Mount Olympus, he was transported to the Greek King George’s yacht Hellas ready to sail from the port of Piraeus.  But the yacht, like several other ships, was bombed by the Germans before it could leave the port.  Some patients and crew were killed and some swam out or were “fished out” of the sea only to be all taken prisoners.  Corporal Wrigley was one of those.

Patsy Adams-Smith records the words of Staff Sergeant Bill Gamble, who was later to meet Slim in the Mount Olympus area and go through an aborted plan of escape to Turkey with him.  Bill was in charge of the male nursing staff at the Australian General Hospital. He recalls that most doctors and female nurses evacuated on April 26th and that the rest of the staff still remaining was captured on the 27th by an Austrian Alpine regiment (Patsy Adam-Smith, p.159).  He also recalls that three weeks later they were all moved to a big, brand new building to the north of Piraeus, where a new hospital was established.  At first they didn’t know why, as they had only a small number of patients, mostly those who were taken prisoners during the unsuccessful evacuation attempts.  But after the Germans invaded Crete they understood why.  The Germans were bringing the British wounded from Crete to that hospital in Piraeus, while they were taking their own casualties to their own hospitals in Athens.

After about four-five months in that hospital, around August or September 1941, this time as a prisoner of war, Corporal Wrigley was sent, with others, to a former Greek army barracks and prison by the name of camp “Pavlou Mela”, some 500 kilometers north of Athens, at the outskirts of Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece.  

Conditions there were bad.  There wasn’t enough food and the quarters were filthy.  Prisoners were brought in every day and many of them suffered from malnutrition and diseases such as dysentery and malaria.  In some cases they even took an occasional beating by the guards.  Their ultimate destinations were prison camps scattered throughout Germany and Austria.  But Corporal Wrigley didn’t stay in prison long enough to board a train to those countries.  He was there for less than two months, but long enough to contract malaria.  However, this didn’t stop him from escaping during a working party expedition outside the prison camp.  He remembers that all of a sudden he and a fellow prisoner, another Australian by the nickname of ‘Mac’ (Pattie McRae is the name I hear on the tape), had the urge to run.  So they started running across a ploughed field, out in the open with no cover and bullets hissing over their heads and all around them.  They were lucky that the guards weren’t good enough shots and didn’t pursue them, probably concerned about leaving the group of others behind.  So they fled unharmed and just in time, as only one day later all POWs from Thessaloniki were sent by train to prison camps in Germany and Austria.  It was from that very train that his later life-time friend, Bruce Vary, escaped, as did two New Zealanders who kept company with Slim for a while.

“We met a couple of New Zealanders, they recognized me by my clothes.  The day after we escaped, the Germans cleared the whole camp out and sent everyone by train to Germany.  These boys got away from the train.  And that must have been when Bruce got away.  He must have been in the prison camp at the same time as I, but I didn’t know him then.  These two blokes, something happened, we heard later the story of two New Zealanders who ate themselves to death on bread and tomatoes.  They were that hungry. Your stomach shrinks, you see, and they killed themselves overeating.  Mac and I heard that story later, so whether it was these two or not, I don’t know.

Well, your normal rations are so many calories a day, we had lower than that, it was just on the border line, and your stomach shrinks.  Fortunately, the old lady that hid Mac and me first under the hay, she brought us some hot soup, chicken soup, some bread and some olives”. (From tape)

The two young Australians knew they had to head for the mountains, as most main roads and towns were already overrun by the Germans.  After a while, they decided to separate so that they wouldn’t attract attention, especially as Bert, tall, fair and thin, didn’t look at all like a native.  (No mention was made again of ‘Mac’ and I wonder now whether he survived or not.) Left alone, Bert remembers not having a plan, not knowing where he was or where he was going to go.  But he remembers thinking of Mount Olympus.  It is hard to forget that 3,000-meter-high mountain in full view and at a short distance from the main national road linking the two major Greek cities, Athens and Thessaloniki.  This was also the area where he, together with many other British and Australian soldiers, had fought hard but unsuccessfully in April trying to stop the Germans from marching down to Athens.  It was where he suffered the injury that took him to the Australian General Hospital in Athens, only about a week before the enemy took over the Greek capital and the port of Piraeus.

It was probably around November and already the beginning of winter in northern Greece.  Alone, hungry, and cold, he started heading in the direction where he thought he would find the mountains.  He was avoiding roads, towns and even villages, stumbling in the night through muddy fields, hiding in barns or even cemeteries where he slept.  Still laughing nearly half a century later, Bert recalls an incident with a Greek priest:

“I don’t know whether I was going north or east or what.  The village was down the bottom and there was a hill with a church. I thought it was the best place for me to stay.  There was an open grave, it was filled with grass and it was a good place to sleep.  It was in the morning, I heard somebody coming up on the path, and I put my head up.  It was the priest.  I never gave it a thought, I just said “kalimera Pater (“good day Father”).

He stopped, looked around, and went AH!!!!!! crossing himself.  I must have scared the hell out of him.” (From tape)
 
Hiding and sleeping during the day and moving silently at night, given a little food by Greek peasants occasionally and asking for directions in sign language, he finally saw Mount Olympus.  Fortunately it can be seen from a long distance away.  He kept moving upwards towards the mountains and found himself near a remote village where the Germans had not yet set foot.  One would have to go up there on foot literally, as there was no road for army trucks to reach that area.  Trudging through the rocky slopes, he found a shepherd who gave him food and promised to take him to a “safe house”, that of the local teacher in the nearest village.  By then young Bert was desperate for some rest, food, and most of all he needed his swollen, blistered and bruised feet tended to.  His boots had disintegrated from many days of harsh walking conditions.  At nightfall he was quietly taken by the shepherd to the teacher’s house, where the wife, a mother of four children, immediately started to take care of his feet.

This was an area of Greece where Slim, as he was soon to be referred to, would spend many months to come, and which, many years later, would touch his personal life.

I will come back later to the village and the family that took in Corporal Wrigley, but here is a quick background for now.  The village was called Ritini, the teacher, Ioannis Papadopoulos, was my father, and his wife Glykeria was my mother, native of that village.  The four children were two older girls, Eleni and Xanthoula, around seventeen and fourteen years-old respectively, a young boy of twelve and a half, Stefanos, and I, the youngest in the family, about five and a half years old. Schools were closed at that time, it was still the beginning of the German occupation, so the whole family was up in the village house.  The two-storey house built in stone belonged to Glykeria’s father, Athanasios Dimopoulos, nicknamed ‘Dimonatsos’, who had gone to America twice for work when he was young.  The house was for many years used only during summer vacations.  When our grandmother died, our grandfather joined our family in the city during the winter months.  When the war against Greece was declared by Mussolini on October 28th 1940, and well before the Germans started sweeping south towards Greece, our father decided that the village would be much safer for the family than the city.  In 1938, he had been transferred from being the Headmaster of a school in the small town of Katerini to the department of education in the city of Thessaloniki.  But now Thessaloniki had already started being bombed.  A refugee from Russia after the revolution, having lived through war and famine (he had been drafted in the Czar’s army to fight in WWI, before the revolution), father knew that people in the cities would starve at the very least.  So he asked to be transferred to the school of Ritini, where he was first sent as a young teacher when he arrived in Greece in 1921, and where he had met and married Glykeria.  The first three children were born in that village.

The shepherd knew that, in spite of the danger involved, the teacher wouldn’t refuse to take in an escaped prisoner of war and an Ally.  In fact the nature of my father was such that he would probably give assistance to anyone who came to his door. Many people in the smaller towns and villages throughout Greece risked their lives and the lives of their families to hide Allied soldiers.  The penalty, officially announced and well proclaimed, could be on the spot execution for conspiracy and treason.  At best, it would be the prison camp for the whole family and may be the close relatives as well, if British or other allied soldiers were found in the house during a raid.  But the people of Greece still opened their doors, shared their home and gave what they had in clothing and food.

The passage of Herbert Wrigley through our home in the village is well remembered by everyone in the family.  My memories of him may be blurred a little, but I remember a thin man who was so very tall, he seemed unreal to me, like a being from another planet!  In later years, after the war ended in 1945, my mother used to speak of Slim, the Australian, and say what a lovely young man he was, but I still thought of him more like a giant.  I don’t remember being afraid of him, because he had a warm smile on his face, but I was little then and I just kept my distance!

After my mother looked at Slim’s feet, she called me aside and in her usual soft voice, this time more like a whisper, asked me to go to some nearby relatives’ homes in the village to ask for as many leaves of a plant called “pagos” (meaning “ice”) as they could spare.  It is a small plant that women in the village were growing for medicinal purposes in small clay pots inside the house.  Its leaves are thick and juicy, and when the outside thin layer is peeled and applied to a wound or blister it acts not only as an antiseptic but also has healing properties.  For several days I would make the rounds of houses in the village collecting these leaves of “ice” and bringing them to my mother. Bert’s feet were bandaged for a few days with some clean cloths.  Mother used to sew our clothes as well as my father’s and grand father’s shirts, so there were always pieces of cloth in the house.

My elder sisters, Eleni and Xanthoula, also remembered him after he had long gone to join the guerillas (“antartes” in Greek). ‘Slim’ was more clearly remembered than some other Australians and New Zealanders who came through our house in the next year or so.  It may have been because of his unusual height and physique, or because he was already picking up some Greek and was trying to speak to us.  He also came to us more than on one occasion and later, when he had joined the guerillas and the British Mission, he would send us greetings every now and then with the messengers going through our village.  It is a fact that his was the only home address we had been given.  He had written it on the back of a small photo which my sister still has in her possession.  It shows him in the midst of another 15 young men in British uniform (with the exception of one who is in white clothes, perhaps a doctor in the group), from the time when Bert joined the British Mission operating from the village of Pouliana, at the top of Mount Olympus.  On the photo, which is rather small so faces aren’t very clear, Bert marked himself with an arrow over his head and wrote his name and address on the back. He sent it to us with one of the messengers moving around transporting information, as part of his greetings to us and proof that he was alive and well. My mother saved that little photo for years, and it followed us in a box with other photos through several moves when the war ended: from the village of Ritini down to the small town of Katerini in 1944, and finally to Thessaloniki in 1946.  (It is thanks to that photo that my family and Bert reconnected again many years later, in 1949).  Whatever the reasons, Slim’s figure had remained alive in our memories for years after the encounter, even after the war and the tragedy of the execution of our father in January 1944, more than two years after Slim had come to our house.

To return to Corporal Wrigley’s journey: With his feet somewhat healed and wearing my grandfather’s American boots, Slim left our house and the village to hide in a nearby monastery.

At this point, I must say something about these boots, as they were quite unforgettable – as was my grand father’s gesture of giving them away.  Bert still remembers that gesture fifty years later and speaks of it with some emotion in the taped interview. I remember my grandfather carefully polishing these black-leather boots with laces that crisscrossed over little metal buttons.  He was proud of them and he only wore them on Sundays.  The rest of the time, while in the village, he wore the traditional mountain village pig skin soft footwear which he made himself, like everyone else. Bert had no shoes and little or no hope of finding any at that time and place. His feet were also too big to fit into most Greek’s shoes, like my father’s for example.  The soft pig skin footwear would not have given his already damaged feet enough support. My grandfather, unlike the rest of the men in the village, was at least six feet tall himself, a benevolent giant for me back then!  With big broad feet to go with his big frame, his boots just fitted the Australian young man perfectly.  How could he not give them to him?

Slim had to leave.  It was indeed dangerous to have a stranger stay very long in the house.  It wasn’t possible to hide him, with relatives and neighbors coming and going freely in the houses in a village, for a chat and a cup of Greek coffee, or to ask for something they needed.  The teacher’s house was very popular.  He always had medicines and had been the only “doctor” that the village had known earlier in the years he lived there serving as a teacher. And Glykeria was known to give oil, sugar, coffee, soap, or handfuls of flour if someone came to visit. So our house was well frequented.

The possibility of being informed on by someone in the village didn’t seem to worry my father too much, as he felt close to these people and trusted them – a trust that unfortunately would later be betrayed.  But the Germans had started to raid villages in the area, and they had already set up Gestapo quarters and a prison in selected big houses they took over in the nearest town of Katerini.  Rumors were growing that the Germans were likely to drive their army trucks up the rocky road to reach us, as they had already reached villages that were only a little lower.  Ritini was 750 meters above sea-level, but there was a kind of narrow road leading to it and it was only a matter of time before they came. 

So Bert was sent by my father for safety to the monastery of Agios Georgios (Saint George), about 1 hour’s walk from the village, where two monks lived.  He stayed there for a while in one of the cells whose walls were barely standing.  Here are his memories recorded on my tape about that event:

“Your father knew all about war.  His experiences in Russia would give him an edge over other people, he knew what was coming.  I remember I would ask him for advice what to do, where would be the best place to go.  He was the one who sent me to the monastery, there were only two monks there at the time.  I was rather dismayed when I went there and found it was just a heap of rubble.  The two monks there were very good to me, let me sleep there for a few nights”.

The monks had barely enough food for themselves, although they would have shared it anyway, so the teacher’s family provided.  But it was difficult for this particular young man to sit around and do nothing.  He moved out of the monastery and, having made contact with two other Australians, Sergeant Bill Gamble and Sergeant Ted Bryant (who both had been on duty at the AGH in Athens, and who had also managed to escape from the prison camp in Thessaloniki), they all went up to a mountain location called Fteri (“Fern” in Greek), to stay with shepherds.  Only, they also had a German with them! He claimed that he was a deserter from the German army, and he had attached himself to the two Australians, but it seems that no one trusted him enough.  The decision was made to get rid of him, but they couldn’t just let him go, being afraid that he would betray them, and the Greek people who were harboring them, whether willingly or unwillingly.  Someone had to do the unpleasant task of shooting him.  It seems that this task fell upon Slim, the other two Australians being medics.

Here is the story as told by Bert himself:

“I shot a German deserter (...). When I got up to Fteri with the other boys, this chap was with them. (...) I wasn’t very happy about it.  There was the possibility of him being recaptured.  He knew how many we were, where we were and he also knew who was feeding us.  If he got recaptured, he would have given the information to the Gestapo, nothing surer.  So I shot him, and the two doctors were supposed to bury him.  But they didn’t, they must have covered him over with leaves, instead of piling up rocks or something like that.

The next thing I knew, everywhere I went the village people told me I had to go, I couldn’t stay, the Germans were looking for me.  They were looking for the tall Australian, Slim.  “Where is he? We are going to hang him when we find him.”  It rather seems to me that the two doctors didn’t take the identity disk off the German’s body.  The people in Morna (the closest village) knew all about it.  I found out later that the doctor from Morna went and found the body, the Germans were notified that this man was obviously a German.  They found out who shot him and everything. That’s why they were looking for me.  Until this happened I was more welcome in that village – I can’t quite remember the name.  Though they gave me bread, eggs, and so on, they told me to go, “they are going to hang you”, they said.

After that, Slim and the other two Australians worked out a rough plan to get out of Greece.  Slim brought them for a brief visit to our house in Ritini.  After receiving hospitality there, got some rest and some food, they split up but agreed to meet outside another village in the area.  Bert actually remembered the name of that village, Keramidi, just outside Katerini.  They planned to start their journey which they hoped would lead them to freedom.  All together, they would try to make their way to the nearest port and find a way to head for Turkey.  Here are the words of Bill Gamble, as reported by Patsy Adam-Smith, describing that aborted exit plan from occupied Greece:

“Then we met Lance-Corporal “Slim” Wrigley, also of the 2/5th AGH.  The three of us decided to get guns and go down towards Bolas (actually, the correct name of the town is Volos, and it is a port) and steal a fishing boat.  I had a small Luger with only one bullet in it so I left the Luger behind and decided we could get another later.  My friend had a .45 with holster belt so he hung on to it.  Slim had gone to another village to get a gun for himself and we had decided the three of us would meet at one of the villages.

As the two of us walked towards this rendezvous, we passed a country policeman who had been friendly previously and he suggested we wait in a copse of trees while he went into the village to get food, but what he got was the Germans.  After about a quarter of an hour, we suddenly heard cars pulling up around us, and we peered through the trees and there they were, coming at us with automatic rifles”. (Patsy Adam-Smith, pp.160-161).

The two Sergeants were arrested and sent to the Gestapo Headquarters in Thessaloniki for a stiff interrogation.  The Germans thought that they might know something about the groups of guerillas active in the area of Katerini so they were, in the words of Bill Gamble, “most unpleasant”.  And he continues:

“They bashed us around because they knew there were some partisan troops in the hills up above where we had been and they thought they had artillery and all sorts of things up there and that we had been with them.  If we’d only known where the blooming people were we would have been with them!” (p.161)

After a few days, they were sent back to the prison camp from which they had all escaped, and then later were loaded onto a train for Stalag VIII A, Wolfsberg, Austria.  Bill Gamble, suffering from frequent bouts of malaria and being medical staff was released as part of an exchange of prisoners in September 1943.  His friend Ted Bryant was also put on the same list but he had escaped just before.  Both made it back to Australia, and met in the recovery center in Ballarat, where they found out that Slim had also made it back home just before them.  The difference was that, instead of spending about two years in a German prison camp, Slim’s fate was to stay on in Greece and fight the Germans, as he was sent to do, though not with other Australian and British soldiers but with the Greek guerillas, the “Antartes” as they were called in Greek.   Slim first, then, at his instigation, Bruce Vary also joined the Greek Resistance fighters active high up on Mount Olympus and the mountain ranges that surround it, called Pieria.  During their time with the partisans, Slim and Bruce ended up trekking through most of the mountains of northern Greece. That is the chapter of the guerilla war fare, which Slim learnt from the Greek partisans. 

To pick up Bill Gamble’s story and that of Slim after the missed rendezvous, here is what we read a little further on in Patsy Adam-Smith’s book:

“Slim had gone to the rendezvous the three of us had arranged and learnt what had happened.  So he went down and dealt with the policeman and after that met with the partisans.  Eventually Slim got pneumonia and these partisans organized to have him evacuated out by submarine to the Middle East” (pp.161-162).

The meeting with the partisans mentioned by Bill Gamble did indeed take place but not for a while yet.  There are the months Slim spent hiding in the town of Katerini, where he met Bruce Vary, the fellow Australian with whom he was destined to spend a long time, even before they both joined the partisans.  They stayed together almost continuously until December 1943, around two whole years, when Bruce and Slim finally made an escape route through the area near the port of Volos.  That area is a peninsula called Pelion with Mount Pelion in its middle, one of the most beautiful and most tourist-frequented parts of Greece today, with picturesque villages and spectacular beaches.  But every village there, every bit of stone, has a history.  Bruce and Slim made it across to Turkey, as originally planned, and then, after some additional adventures, back to Australia. 

But before that happy event, we will follow Slim immediately after he “dealt” with the Greek policeman, who was collaborating with the Germans and who actually received money for each “head” he delivered to them – it seems that the going price was 1,000 drachmas for British soldiers. It isn’t difficult to understand what “dealing with him” meant.  That man wouldn’t be able to continue doing what he had been doing.  Bert didn’t say anything about that detail in the interview.  But we knew from my mother in later years, and Xanthoula also remembers the event, which I don’t.   He returned to our house in Ritini immediately following that incident.  The betrayal, his friends’ arrest, and “dealing with” the man who had handed his friends to the Germans had upset and disturbed Slim to such an extent that he broke down.  After all, he was only about 21 years old.  He declared to his host family that he was going to turn himself in.  He felt alone and desperate, all hope seemed to have vanished of ever being able to escape from occupied Greece and rejoin the Australian army, let alone make it back home to Australia.  It was an understandable moment of weakness.

Xanthoula remembers that our father was away for that day.  She remembers, and I also remember my mother and my grandfather talking about it after the war ended, how they all tried to reason with the young man, tried to comfort him.  Finally in order to stop him from leaving and turning himself in, it seems that my mother discreetly locked his door at night, waiting for my father to return.  When my father came, he was able to calm him down.  He promised to hide him again and find a way to put him in touch with people who would be able to help him leave the country.  One thought was to put him in touch with the partisans, as the resistance movement was already under way and growing fast.  While waiting for that opportunity, our 13-year old brother, Stefanos, took him again up to the location of Fteri, to a cousin on my mother’s side, a shepherd guarding his sheep on the mountains towering above our village.  It was best for Slim not to return to the monastery, a place where he had already hidden and which may have been compromised.  The monastery was also further removed from the partisans’ paths than Fteri. Both Slim and my brother Stefanos stayed up there for a while, and Slim took the opportunity to learn more Greek from our brother and from our cousin the shepherd, who later became the priest of our village. 

Soon Slim found it again difficult to just sit and wait, even though he was helping the shepherd with his chores.  Daring as he was, he decided to venture down to the town of Katerini, where he heard that other Australians, New Zealanders and British soldiers were hiding. The idea seemed more comforting to him, and he felt he had more hopes to organize an exit from there with some of his own people.  So he left the mountain and cautiously crept into the town of Katerini.  He couldn’t remember exactly how a host family was found, though we believe that it was through my father’s friends and acquaintances there.   Father and our family had lived in that small town for nearly ten years, from 1929 to 1938, after he was transferred from being the Headmaster of the small school in Ritini to being the Prinicipal of a larger school in Katerini.  I was born there myself in 1936. Two years later, father was transferred to Thessaloniki to a higher administrative position, and that is where the declaration of war found us.


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