Bert meets Bruce Vary.
In the town of
Katerini, we know that Slim was given refuge in the house of a Greek Lutheran
baker who had spent time in America and spoke some English. Bert had said at some point to me that they
went out of their way to be good to him but didn’t elaborate, perhaps he
couldn’t remember all that much after so many years. Bruce Vary, however, who recorded his
experiences in 1945 in the book I mentioned earlier, soon after he returned
home, gives a moving account of the generosity of his protective family. The father of the family had died, but the
mother and four children hid him and took care of him for a total of seven
months. They all slept in a single room
so as to give him the only other room they had, sharing their food to keep him
alive, treating him as best they could when he was very ill with malaria and
nearly died. At some point, when it
looked as though Bruce might not make it, the family decided that, if he died,
they would bury him in their own back yard, since a grave in a churchyard was
out of the question.
Bruce records
many other detailed memories of his time in Katerini with his host family, this
“home away from home” (p.58). He remembers that months went by, and he
could not go out because, as he says, “Katerini
was ... lousy with Germans”. He
spent most of his time in his little room watching people go by in the street
outside his window, and the Germans right opposite. He would only go out every now and then and
only at night for a brief walk, sometimes looking into a crowded café through
the opening and closing of a door. In
his own words: “I knew a desperate
loneliness, a desperate boredom” (p.62).
It is then that Bruce
Vary met Slim through their respective host families. Here is how Bruce records that event:
“It was at this time that I met Slim, and with the
meeting of him the first definite step was taken towards a greater adventure
than I had experienced up to date. For it was owing to him that I joined with
the British Military Mission
When they told me there was another Australian in
Katerini, I was suspicious of such a statement.
But one night I had got to the state of boredom which demands action of
any kind, even dangerous action, so I allowed myself to be taken to meet Slim.
When I saw him I couldn’t help smiling to myself. Over six feet, and incredibly thin, with a
typically Australian face and shock of fair hair, he must have had considerable
difficulty concealing his person. Not
even drunk could anyone imagine he bore the remotest relation to a Greek
(...). From that time we became cobbers”.
(p.64)
A short personal
note here to say that when I met Bruce after I arrived in Australia myself in
1955, I saw a small and dark man -- and all the photos bear witness to that -- who
could have easily passed as a native Greek, except of course for the language
which he desperately tried to learn. It
seems that Slim was much quicker at learning the language, and by the end of
his stay in Greece
Bruce tells how
after four months, all of the Allied soldiers, some thirteen of them being
hidden by families in Katerini, had a scare.
The Germans started an organized hunt and all of them had to move from
house to house to avoid being captured.
Trusted Greeks acted as scouts and would tell them which houses the
Germans had searched and where to go (Vary, p.63).
After they had
been in Katerini for several months, Slim and Bruce decided they were a burden
and a threat to their respective host families.
Food was getting scarcer and the Germans more and more suspicious. So the two friends took to the hills,
sleeping anywhere they could find shelter, mainly with shepherds (Vary, p.69). Soon after, a trap was set up by the Germans
using three good-looking girls claiming they were sent by the Red Cross to a
particular house to bring parcels to the English soldiers. The Germans were successful: eight of the
thirteen men were captured. After that
incident, Bruce and Slim who had fortunately missed the “party”, “feeling pretty sick ... with that rotten
trick” decided to go even higher into the mountains for more safety.
After a 15-hour
walk towards Mount Olympus they reached a deserted village which was being used
mostly by shepherds during the summer.
For a few months they shared one of the abandoned homes with a shepherd.
Neither Bruce in his book nor Bert in the interview could remember the name of
that village. But for them, away from
danger and in beautiful nature, still with good weather, it was an idyllic
existence for a while compared to what they had been through up until
then. After living closed up in small
rooms with no bathing facilities, and with the fear of the enemy at their
doorstep, the two young men were thrilled with the new conditions.
“Time was our own, there were no Germans; the
shepherds looked after us, the sheep and the church. We wandered on the hills, bathed in the stream
that ran down through the village, and at night helped to yard the sheep in the
back of the house, to protect them from the wolves that howled around the
village after dark”. (Vary, p.71).
But all good things
come to an end. Winter 1942 arrived, the
shepherds left to take their sheep to warmer places down in the plains, and in
the plains were the Germans. Bruce, who
had been sick with malaria and still seemed unable to throw it off, went back
to his usual home in Katerini for a short while. Slim, himself infected with malaria but
suffering attacks more rarely, was in much better health than Bruce. When Bruce left for Katerini Slim started his
usual peregrinations throughout the area, keeping in mind the possibility of
joining the Greek guerillas. He came by
our house for a brief visit, then went up to Fteri once more to stay with the
shepherds. But later, when Bruce left his
shelter in Katerini again and was out looking for a place to hide, he sent word
for Slim to come and meet him at a particular village -- a very small village
“some hours walk from Katerini” says Bruce (p. 72). Slim was very close to joining the Greek
guerillas, but his friend had sent for him, so he went to the village where his
friend was. Bruce doesn’t record the
name of the village but Bert did remember it well and mentioned it in his
interview with me. The village of only a
few houses was called “Moni Petras”, meaning “Monastery of Stone”. Close-by there was an uninhabited monastery
and an abandoned mine. I actually know
the village and I have been there twice in the recent years -- once with my
sister Xanthoula in 2006. It is more
than just “some hours’ walk” from Katerini.
Even today, it takes nearly an hour and a half by car through an uphill
and tortuous road.
Close by there
was also a TB Sanatorium whose now empty old buildings still stand. Later, after the war, the former sanatorium became
a psychiatric hospital for severe cases. The small village became uninhabited
at some point, its few residents left partly because of the proximity of the
psychiatric hospital but mostly because of the post-war and post-civil-war
drive of the population towards the bigger cities in search of a safer and better
life. The area and the village, which are now slowly being revived, is indeed a
beautiful spot on the spur of Mount
Olympus
They both found
sanctuary at the T.B. Sanatorium, whose matron hid them in the underground
boiler-room and managed to get rations of food for them “in some miraculous way”, writes Bruce.
It is now winter
1942, nearly a year and a half after the Australians had landed in Greece. It was a cold one too. Conditions were severely depressing
throughout the country and Bruce was well informed about them when he wrote the
following:
“In Katerini itself hundreds died of starvation. In Athens
Bruce, with his
frequent malaria attacks, was content to stay in the boiler room, but Slim, in
better health except for his sore feet and lack of shoes, liked to move. The American boots had worn out by then! He sometimes visited his friends in Katerini
or just went out hoping to get food and information on how they could leave Greece
While in the
cave, Bruce went through his worst ordeal yet.
“I was struck with a mysterious illness. I could not put any weight on my legs, and
all the joints of my body became exceedingly painful. But for Slim I would not
have lasted long. He used to go across
country to the little village of Lophis to find food”. (Actually the name of the village is “Lophos”, in Greek meaning
“Hill”, a relatively well-to do village then by Greek standards. It is situated
on a hill, but the inhabitants owned some fertile fields located on its west
side).
“Kosta would go with him. They
would leave in the afternoon, stay the night and arrive back the next morning,
having completed the journey over wild tracks in their rugged and practically
shoeless condition. What food they had –
if any – they would leave within my reach.
If it was cold they would make a fire, and as with the food, they would
gather firewood and leave it within my reach”. (pp.74-75).
Bruce doesn’t
mention anything about Slim’s and Kosta’s excursions down to Katerini. But Bert recounts those trips in my tape,
hitching a ride on the back of trucks to save time, energy and shoe wear and
tear. The trucks, driven by Greek
drivers but with a German guard sitting next to them, were carrying materials
from the nearby mine, now taken over by the Germans. Going out on the main road and getting a ride
into town, which they did on several occasions, was quite a risky move, but
Slim wasn’t known for his cautiousness.
He was always ready to take risks if he set his mind to do
something. He just hoped that wearing
local clothes and being with someone who looked Greek would not draw attention
to his height and foreign features. But
if anything had gone wrong, Bert says in the interview, they had their guns
hidden and ready for action.
“From Moni Petras, we occasionally made trips to
Katerini. We got a lift on the back of
the German trucks. They were coming from
the mines at Agios Dimitrios, chrome mines or some sort of mines, they were
digging ore anyway. And they had these
trucks running backward and forward, with workers. We got out on the main road, between Agios
Dimitrios and Katerini. You could get a
lift in. Initially I was a bit apprehensive.
Kostas, the young Greek lad and myself, we were walking along the road
to Katerini and one of these trucks pulled up along side us. I think the driver was Greek, with a German
guard sitting beside him. Anyway, we got
on the back of the truck, and as soon as we got close to Katerini, I said to
Kosta I will bang on the top of the truck and if he doesn’t stop, you shoot the
driver, leave the German to me. Well that was all right. But they stopped, so we did that a few times.
We just waited for a truck to Katerini.
It was like waiting for a bus service!” (From tape)
And so the
months went by, the two men taking care of Bruce and trying to feed themselves. Those days in northern Greece and up in the
mountains the snow came early, sometimes as early as October or early November. Life was becoming very difficult in the cave. Bruce’s text has some striking images:
“All around the cave and down the creek was a
cotton-wool world. The trees were
scarecrows smothered in a white shroud and all around them was an unearthly
silence”. (p.75).
Then he
continues with their constant preoccupation: food and footwear.
“For us, the problem of food was serious; even if we
could have found it, to get to the cave was anything but simple. The deep snow and ice made travelling on foot
practically impossible, and Slim’s and Kosta’s condition which before had been
bad, was now almost hopeless.
After a heavy fall the Sanatorium again came to our rescue. They discovered we could get nothing to eat,
and insisted on our accepting their protection.
We were past refusing; that white, silent and starving world outside the
cave had, for the time being, defeated us”. (pp.75-76).
They took refuge
in the boiler room of the Sanatorium, as they had done before, but after a few
weeks they decided to leave realizing that if they were discovered there the
consequences for their hosts, and for the patients, would be devastating. Not long before that, and for similar reasons,
the Monastery of Agios Dionysios, deep inside a gorge on Mount Olympus, was
burnt down to the ground after nearly 50 monks were thrown out of their cells. The same fate would no doubt be awaiting the TB
Sanatorium, but this time with very sick people having nowhere to go.
I will insert a
brief note here on the Monastery of Agios Dionysios: there is also a newer one
by the same name which was built after the war in a more accessible location
closer to the village of Litohoro, in order to replace the old one. In May 2008, when my sister Xanthoula came to
Greece, we visited the old monastery.
You can now drive there on a partially dirt road. We saw that restoration
of the monastery complex is well under way.
The church in the middle of the grounds is fully restored and open for
celebrating the liturgy and for visiting.
Restored are also the monks’ long dining hall and a couple of small cells,
already occupied. Speaking with one of
the monks, I heard that rumors have it that the German government may be
willing to give some kind of compensation for the completion of the whole
monastery’s restoration.
The three young
men felt they had to leave the TB Sanatorium again. Bruce, somewhat recovered from his mysterious
incapacitating illness but still suffering from frequent attacks of malaria,
went back to Katerini “to that home which
never failed [him], no matter what conditions its people suffered” (Vary, p.76). This time Slim announced that he was definitely
going to join the Greek guerillas and young Kosta followed him.
Bruce
reminisces:
“I knew for some time he [Slim] had been more than
restless. Things looked so hopeless for
us. I thought that probably he had found the solution for himself. Also, of late, the rumours had been growing
that the British were actually back in the country. We had not paid much attention to them, but
in spite of ourselves the thought was there, deep down in our minds. Perhaps___!
As far as I was concerned I knew I was going to miss
him unutterably. I was going to miss
him, not only because he was a man from my own country, speaking my own
language, but also because, although we were completely dissimilar, we had
found a companionship in those long, hard months that was impossible to define
or break”. (p.76)
Bruce further
describes Slim as “young and spoiling for
action”, eager to join the partisans. That thought didn’t appeal as much to
Bruce. He couldn’t see how that would
help them get out of Greece, and he wasn’t keen to participate in what he
perceived as “a political fight”. Slim left with the words “When you’re better I’ll be calling back for you” (p.76) and he
kept his word. When he later visited
Katerini to see his friend, as always risking to be recognized or betrayed and
arrested, he was “full of stories and
plans”, says Bruce (p.78).
Go to 6. "Bert and the Greek Guerillas" blog.
Go to 6. "Bert and the Greek Guerillas" blog.
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| Bruce Vary (left) and Bert Wrigley (right) in Greece. |
