BEFORE THE BLITZ

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 16 May 1941, Page 6

BEFORE THE BLITZ

I FIRST DAYS IN GREECE [ KIND-HEARTED VILLAGERS (From the Official War Correspondent with the N.Z.E.F. in the Middle East) In a Greek Village, Mar., 25. With the whole of Greece in holiday mood to-day, as far as the war effort allows, this little village nestling in green hills seems to be making a special effort at celebration in honour ; of its guests—-the headquarters staff of ; a New Zealand Infantry Brigade. This day is a national holiday in commemoration of past victories. The villagers are in their “Sunday best,” and blue and white flags and paper • banners are flying everywhere. New ; Zealanders helped to decorate the ‘ municipal building, which at the moment is the brigade headquarters as L well, and there have been enough i streamers left over to adorn the windl screens of trucks bearing the familiar fernleaf sign. ' The New Zealanders here, like those > in other villages across the hills where . headquarters of other sections of the , force have temporarily established themselves, seem to have been accepted L without question as part of the com- • munity. While front line troops are ; under canvas or in dugouts in their , new battle positions, scores of officers and men have first been accommodated ; in schoolhouses, stores, and cottages. To most of them billeting is an entirely new experience—all the more novel in the case of this oldest brigade of the N.Z.E.F., which spent a good half of . its first year overseas in tents dug into . the Egyptian Western Desert. > Probably because their own country ; is so earnestly at war, a feeling of mutual affection of a kind we have > never known before has sprung up be- • tween these simply-living village folk ; and our troops. As everywhere else in Greece the men are especially , popular with the children, and almost every evening sees a couple of shirt- ! sleeved soldiers and a crowd of boys join in a rough-and-tumble football game around the artesian well, the equivalent of the village pump. Until the N.A.A.F.I. shortly establishes a canteen service, wineshops where two drachmae, worth about a penny, buy a glass of local wine, are some sort of haven at the day’s end. The menfolk who are left in the village, and an occasional soldier home on leave from Albania, make willing companions, and although most of them know only their native tongue some remarkable conversations are still held. GREEK HOSPITALITY 'New Zealanders billeted with families in cottages are enjoying a particular measure of Greek hospitality. To the spare room in which I sleep alongside stacked bales of uncured tobacco, I for instance, the woman of the house has brought on successive days boiled eggs, fresh milk, hot wholemeal bread, and even a dish of curds and whey. This experience is by no means out of the ordinary. Similarly, many a soldier’s clothing has been included in the family wash, and payment, in money at least, usually seems out of the question. Other ways of repayment are finding themselves, however. An Example is the experience of the staff of the brigade supply officer, who found their billet turned into a clinic almost overnight. This happened when they promised an anxious mother to ask one of the New Zealand medical officers to examine her sick baby. The result was that they were taken for medical men themselves, and there was a small procession of “complaints” during the days that followed. With a first aid kit of their own they dressed several broken skins, and one of them performed a very real service by putting a tourniquet on the arm of a woman who had been badly gored by a bull, and rushing her to an army dressing station. PICTURESQUE SCENES J The village itself is like an illustration for a story book. Chickens in the twisting lanes, whitewashed cottage walls, moss-grown tiled roofs, a pretty school teacher, the endless drawing of water from the communal wells—it has them all. There is a low ceilinged shop crammed carelessly with everything from pottery to salted fish, with an old-fashioned stove in the middle of th floor and an open cask of olives into which one may dip while the storekeeper rummages in his dusty shelves. The biggest event of any week is the arrival of mail, much of it from soldiers at the front, an occasion on which the whole community seems to gather at the postmaster’s door while the letters are handed out one by one. Although these villages have too much of the “old world” look about them to be reminiscent of their counterparts in the Dominion, the surrounding country brings to the New Zealanders a feeling of nostalgia. With spring in the air, cultivated fields are bright green patches on the rolling hills, and snow-fed streams are rushing over their shingle beds. The mountain peaks and gorges through which the troops passed as they journeyed here are on the same grand scale as in their own land.