THE FATHERLAND

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 5, 9 April 1945, Page 30

THE FATHERLAND

(From facts known to Ivan Tong, Kiwi prisoner of war in Germany)

By

Jim Henderson

The four had been hiding out in Greece a long time, now. The days,

the weeks, the months, and the years had slipped by, but in spite of the misery and hardship and vileness of a vagabond life, they had stuck it out, together, four cobbers, four refugees. They had lived in caves: damp, dismal dripping caves. They had lived in deserted huts : lousy, swarming with parasites from goats and sheep.

They had lived in isolated little villages : then on again, out and away, as rumour whispered of approaching danger.

They had lived in the open : in bivouacs built between boulders, under trees, in , hollows gouged from shinglebeds when fierce torrents had sprung to •short, angry life in the season of melting snows.

The wilder and rougher the region, the safer the four refugee soldiers felt. For the strutting Italians still smarted from the humiliating defeats the Greeks had inflicted upon their lumbering armies in the Findus mountains. That was why the Italians took their job of Army of Occupation in Greece so very seriously. Now and again Jerry patrols would be out, but generally the Germans didn’t worry very much about enemy soldiers up in the hills. So long as they didn’t show themselves or give trouble, the Jerries preferred to forget about them,

This story won the first prize in Korero's recent competition

for, when all is said and done, they were pretty harmless, and a prisoner has to be fed, and clothed, and housed, and guarded. Food. And smokes. That was the problem. That was the great need which time and again had driven them, in desperation, to the point of discussing surrender. But whenever they got round to talking about chucking the whole thing in, two of the four refugee soldiers always had pleaded so fearfully, undeniable terror in their voices, that the other two relented and decided to stick it out, for their sake. * The four had met up in strange circumstances. Two New Zealand soldiers found themselves cut off from their section during a rearguard action near Thebes late in April, 1941. Lost, determined to evade capture, failing, by some strange stroke of ill-fortune, to link up with other New-Zealanders still at large, these two Kiwis were on the point of death through exhaustion and exposure when they stumbled into a cave occupied by two other refugee-soldiers. It was a strange meeting ; it never should have taken place ; everything was against these four men living together in friendship and harmony. But there are odd happenings in wartime, and men still can love one another, even though the whole world is steeped in hatred.

So the four refugee-soldiers grew to understand one another, as brothers, and they lived in these wild hills in Greece, as I have told you. * Times were when an undeniable craving for lights and music and the bustle of city streets and the litheness and laughter of women —a terrible loneliness drove them down from the hills, along the flat land and into Athens. Armed, uniformed Jerries and Eyeties always were about, in every .street and cafe, of course. But they had to risk capture because of the great loneliness, you understand. The four would stroll along the pavements, arms linked, the two on the outside twirling watch-chains, as is a Greek custom. Their hair was long and carefully oiled, their borrowed clothes were appropriatethat was all rightand the constant sun and the mountain winds had darkened their complexions.

Sometimes a visit to the picturetheatres,'where the flickering fairy stories of our twentieth century gave a little peace.

They, the four refugee-soldiers, would pass from one Greek family to anothera day here, three days under a recommended roof four tram sections away, on again. And although food was becoming more and more scarce and the hand of famine was upon the land, somehow, oh somehow, these little people would scrape together sufficient bread and scraps and olives and boiled weeds to fill their guests’ bellies.

And after the evening meal the four comrades would lie down upon the floor, and a little wine would be produced, and the mandolin and guitar would make music for them. And so they found the lights and sounds and love they had craved when far away in their mountain retreat.

Sometimes a cordon of German soldiers, heavily armed, ordered to shoot and kill upon suspicion, would be thrown round a block of Athens, and from house to house patrols would crash searching for concealed enemy soldiers or agents, and Greeks suspected of pro-British sympathies or hoarding. And every time the four managed to escape, fleeing from roof-top to roof-top, hiding under floors,

in attics, in cesspits and wells. The Jerries were cruel and hard and exacting in the cities. Oh yes.

Then the strain of the prison city would begin to tell upon them (especially upon two particular members of the little party), and the restlessness ' and fear was upon them again, and they would depart from Athens, and, walking by night, return once more to the solitude and security of the hills and little hamlets they knew. * And, as the months and then the years went by, the four men learned of the guerrillas gathering in the hills, and of the Forces of the occupied nations rising against the German conquerors. Yet, somehow, between the four soldiers wasa great friendship, a great understanding, a love beyond words, and they lived on together, as before, yet deep down within them feeling that the time of their comradeship was drawing to a close.

And back from the Russian Front winged Junkers 52 —long black transport planes bearing hundreds, then thousands, of German wounded, smashed by bullet, shell, grenade, or mine, or crippled and in the agony of severe frostbite. They

had seen the Junkers coming low over the snow-white hills and flying down the long frozen valleys, Athens-bound. And they knew, too, of other planes, British planes, in deadly swarms by night over the cities of Germany. And the armies of the Third Reich fell back, battered and bloody, but grim and resolute, still fighting ferociously as the Reds swept in from the east ; the Allies invaded Italy ; England and America struck at the beaches of France, then on, grinding on, to the very frontiers of Deutchland.

And the two New-Zealanders were genuinely joyous (without arrogance), for they knew soon the hour of their liberation would be at hand. But an unexpected change came over their two companions. Daily, they grew increasingly sadder. And times were when the two would draw apart, and talk softly, far into the night, while the New-Zealanders slept. And one day an R.A.F. fighter suddenly shot out of the morning sky, and pamphlets were seen descending, like agitated sea-birds, upon a little village in the valley beneath. And the New-Zealand-ers we out, and in the evening returned, bearing with them a copy of the information from the sky. And it told the invasion of Greece had begun, and the death of Germany was nigh. *

There ' was much discussion amongst the four soldiers. Of what they said, in those last hours together, I know not. But the last three precious bottles of cogniac were brought out by the four comrades, and, in their mountain retreat, they drank to each other, to their friendship which would last to eternity, and to the hard long days which were dead now, forever.

And, as the light of a new day came into the sky, two men rose up and gathered their few pitiful possessions together, and they awakened the two New-Zealanders and told them of the story they had prepared. How they would say they had been held captives in Middle East prison camps, how at last they had managed to escape. They intended to join the last fleeing German column from Greece, where, in the confusion of withdrawal, their story, in all probability, would be accepted. And they would be given arms again, and the uniform of the Wehrmacht.

And once again they would take their places beside their own folk-—their own folk they had deserted at Thermopylae in April, 1941. They would take their stand in Hungary, then Czechoslovakia, then back, back as they knew fate had decreed, back until the last stand in the last battle within Germany itself. Then they, too, would die in the death of their Fatherland.