THIS LAND OD Greece

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 8, 24 April 1944, Page 3

Eye-witness Account

THIS LAND OD Greece

Our first glimpse of Greece, after a memorably unpleasant trip from Egypt, was of a range of snowclad mountains from which an icy wind was blowing. Soon afterwards steep green hills, pleasantly reminding us of our own New Zealand coast, came into view. Nestling among them, seeming to stretch for miles, were the red roofs and grey buildings of a big city upon which the snow-topped peaks looked down.

That city was Athens, surely one of the most beautiful in the world, with its wide clean streets, tree-lined boulevards, lovely parks, and beautiful gardens. Our welcome was a warm one. There were smiling faces everywhere. Crowds cheered and waved, some threw flowers into our trucks, others shouted greetings. On all sides the cry was “ English ! Welcome ! ”

We camped for a time among the trees and shrubs of a fine hill country park close to the city and not very far from the snow-line. I was lucky enough to be granted leave on the first evening. The first visit to a strange city in a foreign land during a black-out was to me a bewildering, but pleasing experience. Pleasing by reason of the warmth and genuineness of the welcome extended by the Greeks.

The profound darkness in which we found ourselves on stepping off a brightly lighted tram was at first alarming.

There seemed to be no streets, no buildings, no shops, no people, only a vast impenetrable blackness, throbbing and alive with all the myriad noises of a great city. Blinded, we stood for a moment to collect our scattered wits. Trams rattled and crashed, juggernaut shapes with eyes of green, red, blue, purple, or no eyes at all, loomed out of the darkness to pass with a whirr of gears and a rush of petrol laden air. These were motor-cars.

Somewhere across this river of noise and half-seen traffic footpaths packed with a hurrying crowd flanked the shadowy bulk of buildings whose doorways were darker shadows in a world of shadow. Here and there a chink of light showed for a moment and then was gone. The hum of conversation was in the air, and now and then we caught a gust of words, but always strange words, never an English word. Yes, it was all very bewildering, this city of shadows and half-lights, with its hidden shops, and its hurrying crowds who knew no word of English. But behind the veil, behind those mysterious black curtains, we found a very different Athens. Behind the shadows was a world of light in which the city carried on regardless of the war. Finding our way about, however, was something of an adventure.

One never knew quite what to expect on stepping beyond those heavy black

curtains. Sometimes it would be a brilliantly lighted, glittering emporium with its goods displayed with a taste and art quite equal to anything that shopkeepers in New Zealand can show. Or perhaps a tiny, noisy, hilarious wine-shop, or a resplendent modern restaurant. Once or twice we blundered into a ladies’ hairdressers, or a millinery establishment. Language difficulties led to many an amusing incident, and before long we had developed the art of speaking in sign to a point of perfection. This playacting for our tucker sometimes resulted in the most intricate performances of arm-waving, shoulder-shrugging, and grimacing, helped out by a series of weird noises. It was generally effective, even if the result was not always exactly what the actors had planned. For example, there was the soldier whose imagination balked at rendering the word “ sausage ” in sign language. Finally he thought of “ Hot dog ” and proceeded to try to convey this impression to the attentive waiter by barking vigorously and making sizzling noises to indicate frying. The waiter, bowing, anxious to please, looked decidedly puzzled, but he hurried away— return with a tiny wriggling puppy ! Next morning there was an opportunity to see a little more of the city, and the New-Zealanders made the most of it, finding their way by car and on foot

to every farthest corner of the capital. We strolled in the parks and along miles of tree-lined streets. Some visited the King’s Palace, there to make friends with the famous kilted Evezones, those splendid soldiers who put the fear of death into Mussolini’s hordes in Albania. Some of the Evezones were on guard duty. Others sought out the many monuments to Greece’s centuries of splendid tradition, there perhaps to dwell for a moment upon the glories of the past. And at the

same time they could not fail to think of the glorious deeds of the present, remembering that men worthy of the legendary Heroes of Homer were even at that moment creating fresh material for legend by deeds of valour, of courage beyond belief. Our admiration for the Greek people became the greater the more we saw of them. They were splendid folk, and at times, particularly in the smaller villages, it seemed to us that from the youngest child to the oldest greybeard, every living soul was doing his or her utmost for the war effort. Even the poorest had nothing but friendship and generosity with which to meet us. They were honest in the highest degree, hard workers, touchingly sincere in their hatred of Mussolini, and in their welcome to us. Much as we would like to have seen more of Athens it was not to be, and before very long we were off on our way to take up war stations in the path of the coming invader. That journey will be long remembered by all. During it we saw some of the finest and most inspiring mountain scenery that any of us had ever set eyes upon. Hundreds of miles, by varied means of transport, we travelled through the lovely land of Greece. A veritable glimpse of paradise it seemed to the sand weary “ Desert Rats ” of the First Echelon. Long stretches of

land under the plough, acre upon acre of fertile vineyards, mile upon mile of olive trees, great stretches of rolling green plains reaching to green hills with snow-capped mountains beyond, all were among the panorama spread before our transports. Nestling among the hills, hiding in the green of the plains, or perched in the very bosoms of the mountains, were many small picturesque villages of grey stone and mud, with tiled roofs and twisty, winding, stonepaved streets.

There was a bright moon in a clear sky when we passed through a range of snowcovered mountains. At times the way lay between soaring pinnacles of glistening white on the one hand, and great ravines whose bottoms were lost in the mists of unfathomable depth on the other. There were bleak, sheer rock faces, and dizzy precipices, among which the road wound a tortuous way. In the most unexpected places we came suddenly upon villages.

A steady rain was falling by the time we reached our destination, a moderately sized frontier town, and we marched to billets along muddy streets. What a contrast with Egypt, where rain is an excuse for someone to comment in the newspapers ! In this town, where we spent a few days, the sincere friendship we had come to expect of the Greeks was by no means lacking. They could not have made us more welcome.

Training route marches took us to every corner of that town, and wherever we went the townspeople would come

to their doors or lean from windows as we passed in order to smile, to wave, and to shout a greeting. Almost all showed a great interest in us, and in our language. Wherever Greeks and New Zealand soldiers met “ school was in ” for an exchange of impromptu lessons in Greek and English.

Pay, we found, seemed to go a long wav, for the people were simple in their needs, and shops stocked only the barest necessities. The unit of currency was the drachmae 500 to the

pound— issued in note form. A man with 20 shillings worth of drachmae in his hand might have thought himself a millionaire, for he would have a great fistful of notes. Meat could only be obtained on one day in the week, being strictly rationed, and, apart from food and drink, there was little the soldier could buy. There were scores of small “ rural ” villages in Greece, many of which we visited. In these lived the workers who cared for the surrounding fields, often together with their animals. They were very , poor, extracting a bare subsistence from the soil, but, none the less, they were touchingly generous. In these districts exchange in kind was greatly preferred to money. An empty benzine-tin was regarded as a good price for a man’s washing, while a tin of “ bully ” was wealth indeed and would buy almost everything.

When we first arrived there was a temporary shortage of bread, and soon we found it easy to barter “ hard ” rations for “ psomi,” a brown bread of good quality which the village housewives baked. Once we came across a “ bake ” in progress. Every house had its oven of stone and mud in the yard, and in this case the good wife was in the act of taking the freshly cooked bread from the oven to cool.

A noisy group of soldiery, we crowded into the yard, examined the oven, the bread, and the mixing-trough, then by smile, grimace, and gesture tried to convev the fact that we would like a

loaf. It was an intricate process which first the neighbours, then the whole village turned out to watch and to offer friendly advice. We smiled and pointed. With one accord the villagers smiled and pointed too, firing fusilades of Greek over our heads.

When at last the idea that we wanted bread became general the people seemed determined that we should have bread —plenty of bread. Bread was pressed upon us from all sides, and before long each member of the party had a loaf, smoking hot from the oven. We were hard put to it to find a way of gracefully refusing other gifts; for each housewife

seemed eager to demonstrate that her particular recipe was the best.

Perhaps because of the smallness of the flocks and herds, domestic animals in Greece were remarkably tame. Most of then wore bells hung roung their throats, and even sheep would respond when called by name. Each morning and evening there would be a colourful procession as the peasants—men, women and children—in national dress, went out to work in the fields or returned to their homes. They move to the accompaniment of the sweet-toned tintinabulation of manv bells, for their flocks travelled with them.

Though there were no men of military age among them, the peasant folk seemed to be carrying on with their work regardless of the war. It was spring when we arrived, and everywhere work on the land was in full swing. There were, we learned, no big farmers as New-Zea landers understand them. Rather each man worked a small allotment, planting, ploughing, or grazing as the village fathers directed.

Animals were grazed on the common land. Once I saw a big flock of sheep, led by a single shepherd, returning from the fields to the village. In and out among the twisting narrow streets they followed the shepherd, ignoring open doorways, their bells tinkling musically. In the central square a strange thing happened. The shepherd went his way with his own small flock, and the rest separated into a dozen or so small flocks each of which went merrily off by a different road, presumably to find its way into its own particular yard. Land ownership was not feudal, though there were common grazing lands, and the use to which the land was put was frequently, if not always, dictated from above. A man's farm was his own, and passed from father to son. It might, however, consist of several small allotments scattered obout the environs of the village. The village father was generally the Mayor, and “ Village Father ” he was in very truth, his duties ranging from deciding the crops to christening babies and controlling rationing.