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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.
Go to 5. "Bert meets Bruce" blog.
