Searching for Sofia, page 28
‘Yes, tell her that chicken was beautiful...’ Leo added.
‘Chicken?’
‘Yes, it was lovely and moist—perfect!’ Danny said with an exaggerated kissing of his fingertips.
George laughed loudly, shaking his head. ‘No, no.... not chicken! That was kohli—snails!’
‘Snails! No way!’ Danny grimaced in shock, no doubt picturing the pesky slugs that left slimy trails across the pavements in Australian gardens.
‘No! Really! Snails?’ Leo was equally surprised.
‘Yes, kohli.’
‘Mate... to be honest, chicken, snails, grasshoppers—I’d eat anything, that is cooked so well!’ Leo said. ‘You tell your aunt that her kohli was delicious!’
Jack laughed at Danny’s gape of astonishment and agreed with Leo—the meal had been delicious. Memories of other times when he’d partaken of snails flashed through his mind. The first was in Paris, seated across the table from Sofia at Le Grand Colbert, with white linen serviettes and polished silver cutlery set out before them. They’d received table service from a waiter wearing a gold-buttoned jacket. Then there were the numerous occasions in Malaga when Sofia had fried onion and garlic and herbs from her garden, then tossed a handful of plump escargot into her pan to sauté them in the spicy oil mix. Memories of hot summer evenings in the finca’s courtyard, its air sweet with the aroma of orange blossom, swept over him. Memories from a time long ago in a place far away.
‘You will be able to tell her yourself! She will be up in the morning,’ George replied, and for a second Jack actually thought he meant Sofia—that she was coming here to the cave! But of course, she wasn’t. It was his aunt who George referred to. Marita was planning to visit again.
Leaving them with more potatoes, eggs, a bag of lentils, onions and some soft cheese to add to their store, the boys departed. Jack sat on the ledge and watched them make their way along the path until the pinpricks of their lanterns vanished amid the trees on the mountain, hoping their return trip would be safe. He wanted it to be all over—the fighting and the war. Suddenly he felt desperate to get off this island and back to Alexandria where he could resume his search for Sofia.
* * *
Jack slept badly that night, with his dreams set in Paris. In them he searched lanes and blind-ended courtyards, running anxiously along the Seine and peering into the faces of women, none of whom were Sofia.
He was still sleepy when Marita arrived the next morning. She repeated the pantomime of the previous visit by dressing as an old woman and resting on the rock, waiting for the whistle to come, not moving until she was assured that the track was clear.
This time her visit was brief. Reiterating descriptions of the German soldiers’ horrific actions, she again encouraged Jack, Leo and Danny to remain in the cave’s shelter for at least the next few days. German patrols were everywhere, frequently arriving at Astikas, where they had claimed schoolrooms to use as a base for whenever they were in town. It left the villagers feeling uneasy, as if everything they did was being scrutinised.
‘Marita, do you think there is any chance for us to leave the island?’ Jack asked. ‘Are there any boats that we could board? Perhaps if we were to disguise ourselves as fishermen or something.’
‘No, no... you must not think to do this. The beaches are watched constantly. Every boat leaving the island is now checked. You must stay here, in the mountains, for now. The coast roads, the beaches are swarming with German soldiers. Nowhere is safe for you!’
‘Well, it’s too dangerous for you to be coming up here. It would be terrible if you got caught. How about we come down and get food under the cover of darkness? Would that be okay? If we are caught, we can say we’re stealing food. Your villagers can’t be accused of helping us that way. We will repay you someday, when this is all over.’
Marita nodded thoughtfully, although her grim expression revealed concern for them. ‘Yes. We do not want to risk our people—it is terrible what the Germans are doing. They want total obedience and for now, that is what we must show them. Otherwise, we too will suffer as Kondomari has suffered, or even worse, be bombed like Kandanis!’
Using a twig, she sketched the road through the village in the sandy soil, then marked the site of the schoolhouse where the Germans occasionally stayed overnight. At the opposite end of the town, she marked the site of an old shed, explaining that it was about twenty yards behind the town’s dairy and well out of the schoolhouse’s view. The shed had both a rear and a side door; Marita instructed them to take a broad sweep around the perimeter of the village and approach the shed through its back entry. She was confident that under the cover of darkness they could easily avoid drawing the attention of the Germans, should they be in town.
Next she marked the route of the track down to the village, noting the point where the forest ended and the village began. She drew an X to mark a house to the left of the base of the mountain track.
‘This house, here, it is Uncle Giorgo’s. You’ve met him—he’s the one who brought you to this cave. He has a window... here...’ Marita sketched out the front of the house, and then detailed the side facing the hill. ‘This is his spare bedroom. If he feels that the village is unsafe, I will see that he puts a light on. If you see the light, you will have to go hungry.’ She smiled. ‘Really, you should be fine. The German soldiers, they will soon realise that there is nothing for them in our sleepy little village. They will leave us alone soon.’
Jack, Danny and Leo agreed to follow Marita’s advice and remain in the cave during the daylight hours. Every second evening, they would make their way down the hill. She would make sure that food was placed in a cupboard in the shed.
Despite their reassurances that they would find their way back up the mountain in the darkness, Marita wanted to help with that, too. She explained that kohli gatherers went out each evening after dark; they would act as guides. Their lanterns would follow the route up the hill and along this track before their cave. Marita insisted that they were not to speak to them, just quietly follow from a distance and slip into the cave when they reached it.
Before departing, she unloaded her bag, leaving them with more torch batteries, matches and oil for their stove and three old sacks they could use as ground covers; they’d provide a buffer against the hard stone floor of the cave.
* * *
And so it was that two days later, Jack, Leo and Danny ventured down the mountain at sunset. Carefully, they followed Marita’s instructions, first checking the side window of the house near the track to be sure there was no warning glow, then remaining under the cover of the trees, circling to the back of the village before approaching the shed on a path barely visible in the veil of descending darkness.
Slipping through the shed door, Leo lit his torch and held it low for a few minutes so that they could get their bearings. A wooden cupboard sat beside the back door, and on the lowest shelf rested a large wooden box. In this they found two loaves of bread wrapped in a towel, an enamel pot—its contents still warm—and a jumble of enamel plates and cutlery. Wasting no time, they dished out the enticing meal and ate it quickly before filling their packs with the vegetables and fresh fruit that had been left out for them.
As Marita had organised, when they left the shed barely twenty minutes later, the glow of four lanterns hovered in the distance, and Jack could hear the laughter and chatter of their bearers. They must have sensed the men’s presence, for quickly they approached the mountain track and began their ascent, with Jack, Leo and Danny following about twenty yards behind. For over an hour they followed the chattering Cretans, resting while they stopped to collect snails from the base of tree trunks, then continuing on. He was thankful for their presence. By night, the track was totally unfamiliar, and when a shadowy figure placed a lamp low and whispered, “Here is your entrance,” he knew they would never have made it to the safety of their cave without the guidance of the kohli gatherers.
They continued with this pattern—going down to the village for sustenance every second night—grateful for the spicy lentils, salads and cheese pies as well as bags of fresh fruit and vegetables that were left for them. Only once did they find the lamp in the bedroom window shining its warning into the night, and although they watched from the trees for signs of German soldiers menacing the town, all appeared quiet. Nonetheless, they returned to their cave with stomachs rumbling.
On their fifth visit, Jack was startled to see a man leaning against the wooden bench in the shed. To his relief, he realised that it was George, who was relaxed and in high spirits and keen to update them on the latest events of the war-stricken island.
As Marita had predicted, visits from the German soldiers to Astikas had diminished. They only arrived once every two or three days, roaring through the main street on a half-track or a motorcycle with side car, staying a few minutes and then departing again. Regardless, the village council had decided to set up a sentry on the southern road at the point where the patrols entered and exited the village; and by using a series of whistles, they always knew in advance if a German patrol was about to sweep into the town.
George was highly amused by the strategy their mayor had adopted, pretending to cooperate with the Germans, when really he abhorred their invasion of the island. Like an actor, he demonstrated the bombastic tones of the German commander who’d met with the mayor the previous week.
‘You must ensure that all weapons in the village are collected and submitted to the German army promptly. No guns are to be withheld, or there will be severe consequences.’
‘Yes, yes, certainly,’ their mayor had agreed. Then he’d joined the elders of the village in gathering every broken and ancient relic that could be found, adding a couple of reasonable hunting rifles to the cache to allay suspicions. When a unit of Germans arrived late one afternoon and requested a fat lamb for their dinner, the mayor had offered two, and also a flagon of oil, bunches of freshly picked comfrey and a bottle of their strongest raki. When a labour team was summoned to mend a damaged bridge two miles down the hill, the mayor wasted no time in assembling a dozen good men, who’d worked well. Not only did they fix the bridge, but they’d tried their hardest to assist a hapless German officer repair his wireless transmitter, which had unaccountably lost reception repeatedly during the week when the bridge was being worked on.
In this way, by appearing immensely cooperative, the villagers hoped that the Germans would never learn how the villagers spent hours huddled in one house or another, discussing strategies to sabotage German operations or relaying messages across the island via the young shepherds who acted as runners. Nor, they hoped, would the Germans suspect that dozens of sub-machine guns, rifles and handguns lay hidden beneath floorboards of houses throughout the village, or that a jeep lay concealed down a forest track barely two miles away.
George told them that the Germans’ main efforts were still focused on the airports, but that troops were now positioned all along the island’s coastline, monitoring the movements of seafaring vessels and prepared for a British naval assault. Almost daily, the Germans were intercepting rafts and barges loaded with Australian and New Zealand soldiers—men who’d hidden in the mountains like Jack, Danny and Leo, but who’d seized an opportunity to escape, with unfortunate results.
‘Yes, but maybe some are making it off the island?’ Jack couldn’t keep himself from being hopeful. Surely there was one way or another that they could get to the mainland!
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. Word is that a few days ago, a submarine slipped in under the cover of dark and rescued a few dozen men, but I don’t know if this is true.’
* * *
As frustrating as it was, Jack had to accept that he, Leo and Danny were stuck on the island for the time being at least. It felt like they’d been there for months already, and calculating the dates in his notebook, he realised that it had been. Following the sinking of the Costa Rica, they’d landed on the island in late April, and the German invasion of Crete had begun on the twentieth of May. Then there’d been the walk to Sphakia followed by the weeks in the hills before they’d come to the cave. With the days now cooling, he knew that autumn was upon them, and, confirming the date with Marita the week later, it was no surprise to find that it was now September.
They stayed with the routine of going down to the village on alternative evenings, enjoying the meals that were left for them, and ever hopeful that the news Marita provided to them on the occasions when she met them would be positive. When, in mid-December she advised them that the Japanese had entered the war with an attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbour, they were shocked and could speak of nothing else for days. The war in Europe had become a world war, and they feared for what this may mean for Australia.
* * *
George, sometimes accompanied by Michael, was a frequent visitor to the shed, also. The boys were both fascinated by the culture and political freedoms of England and Australia, and they asked endless questions about life in ‘the western democracies’, as they referred to the nations of the British Commonwealth. America, and especially Hollywood, fascinated them also; and they loved to hear about talking films and glamorous stars, of which Danny proved to have expert knowledge. George, in particular, loved to discuss books of any description, and Jack thought it a shame that it was he rather than Sidney Nolan, who was called upon to answer questions about Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Rudyard Kipling. George and Sidney must have been born under the same star—each from humble beginnings and yet harbouring cravings to know everything he could about writers and poets.
Jack was curious about how George, Michael and Marita had learned to speak English so well, and George explained that Marita’s husband, Henry, had been a British soldier. She had met him in Greece during the Great War. Together, they’d lived in England for a short while, and then in Greece; and then, with their son Manos, they’d returned to live in Crete. Twice weekly for over a decade, either Henry or Marita had given English lessons at the local school, and many of the adults in the village had also learned some phrases. Both Henry and Manos, who was now nineteen, had left with the men from Crete to assist the Greeks resist the Italian invaders.
On learning about the bravery of Henry and Manos and of their commitment to supporting mainland Greece, Jack stewed about their own inactivity—hiding in the mountains, doing no more than passing time sitting against the ledge and watching the planes circle the sky before landing at their airfield to their east, wondering what the occasional bomb or plume of smoke might mean, and spending his days sleeping or sketching. He discussed his concerns with Leo and Danny and the next time they saw George, they insisted that they needed to see Marita, and to come up with a plan for action. They were soldiers, after all. Surely there was something they could be doing.
Chapter 27
‘You are getting restless, George tells me?’ Marita asked them, a week later.
‘Sure we are, ma’am! We are at war, and it is time for us to be doing a little more,’ Danny replied, his chest puffed out, his shoulders straightened, looking every bit a soldier who was ready for action.
‘Surely we could be doing something to slow down the Germans. Perhaps we could study their movements at the airfield at Meleme. That seems to be their major entry point. If we could disable the airstrip, that would stop the Germans from landing their supply planes.’ Danny shared the plan that had dominated their conversation over the last week. Now the idea that seemed to have such merit in the cave sounded ridiculously improbable to Jack as Danny spoke the words to Marita, and judging from her reaction, she thought so too.
‘No, no! You must understand, it is still very dangerous for you to upset the Germans. They are very strong and vastly outnumber our defences. Their vehicles and weapons command the roads.’
Jack, Leo and Danny listened dubiously as she continued.
‘Now the war front in Russia is escalating; it will only be a matter of time before most of the German soldiers are called off the island to go and support them. Then we will be able to put our plans into action.’
‘Our plans?’ Jack wondered what plans the villagers had made.
‘Yes, Jack. Our plans. Crete has been at war for centuries. We have defended our island—our way of life—in the past, and we will defend it again. It is all a matter of patience and timing. Daily, our resistance is gaining strength. Some important men have returned to Crete, and now we have the EAM—that is, the communists—as well as the EOK, who are non-communist, working together to rid the island of our invaders. However, it is essential that when we do retaliate, our efforts are effective. Our response needs to be like that of a tiger pouncing on a sleeping elephant. We need to play the Germans’ own game of blitzkrieg. If we simply buzz around like mosquitoes biting, blowing up bridges and immobilising their vehicles, certainly we will draw some blood; but we will just irritate them and make them suspicious. Particularly now with the Hitler Youth on the island, whose punishments for such irritations are particularly nasty.’
‘Hitler Youth? Who are these boys?’ Danny’s quick bark suggested that he was ready, willing and more than able to squash any German youngster if she would just point her finger towards them.
‘Danny, these are not ordinary boys. They are truly dreadful. Malicious and without honour. Far worse than the German soldiers. Hitler Youth are thugs who take pleasure in cruelty. Because of this, we must make sure that our own actions are coordinated, foolproof, and most of all, do not provoke their barbaric retaliations.’
Jack nodded despondently. The last week’s plans to attack the airport had filled him with excitement. For a few days, he’d felt that they were taking control of their lives, living up to their training as Australian Diggers. It was hard to call themselves professional soldiers when they were hiding in a cave and dependent on the people of Astikas to feed them. Nonetheless, he accepted Marita’s point. It would be terrible if they acted in haste and somehow their actions brought retribution to Astikas.
‘Chicken?’
‘Yes, it was lovely and moist—perfect!’ Danny said with an exaggerated kissing of his fingertips.
George laughed loudly, shaking his head. ‘No, no.... not chicken! That was kohli—snails!’
‘Snails! No way!’ Danny grimaced in shock, no doubt picturing the pesky slugs that left slimy trails across the pavements in Australian gardens.
‘No! Really! Snails?’ Leo was equally surprised.
‘Yes, kohli.’
‘Mate... to be honest, chicken, snails, grasshoppers—I’d eat anything, that is cooked so well!’ Leo said. ‘You tell your aunt that her kohli was delicious!’
Jack laughed at Danny’s gape of astonishment and agreed with Leo—the meal had been delicious. Memories of other times when he’d partaken of snails flashed through his mind. The first was in Paris, seated across the table from Sofia at Le Grand Colbert, with white linen serviettes and polished silver cutlery set out before them. They’d received table service from a waiter wearing a gold-buttoned jacket. Then there were the numerous occasions in Malaga when Sofia had fried onion and garlic and herbs from her garden, then tossed a handful of plump escargot into her pan to sauté them in the spicy oil mix. Memories of hot summer evenings in the finca’s courtyard, its air sweet with the aroma of orange blossom, swept over him. Memories from a time long ago in a place far away.
‘You will be able to tell her yourself! She will be up in the morning,’ George replied, and for a second Jack actually thought he meant Sofia—that she was coming here to the cave! But of course, she wasn’t. It was his aunt who George referred to. Marita was planning to visit again.
Leaving them with more potatoes, eggs, a bag of lentils, onions and some soft cheese to add to their store, the boys departed. Jack sat on the ledge and watched them make their way along the path until the pinpricks of their lanterns vanished amid the trees on the mountain, hoping their return trip would be safe. He wanted it to be all over—the fighting and the war. Suddenly he felt desperate to get off this island and back to Alexandria where he could resume his search for Sofia.
* * *
Jack slept badly that night, with his dreams set in Paris. In them he searched lanes and blind-ended courtyards, running anxiously along the Seine and peering into the faces of women, none of whom were Sofia.
He was still sleepy when Marita arrived the next morning. She repeated the pantomime of the previous visit by dressing as an old woman and resting on the rock, waiting for the whistle to come, not moving until she was assured that the track was clear.
This time her visit was brief. Reiterating descriptions of the German soldiers’ horrific actions, she again encouraged Jack, Leo and Danny to remain in the cave’s shelter for at least the next few days. German patrols were everywhere, frequently arriving at Astikas, where they had claimed schoolrooms to use as a base for whenever they were in town. It left the villagers feeling uneasy, as if everything they did was being scrutinised.
‘Marita, do you think there is any chance for us to leave the island?’ Jack asked. ‘Are there any boats that we could board? Perhaps if we were to disguise ourselves as fishermen or something.’
‘No, no... you must not think to do this. The beaches are watched constantly. Every boat leaving the island is now checked. You must stay here, in the mountains, for now. The coast roads, the beaches are swarming with German soldiers. Nowhere is safe for you!’
‘Well, it’s too dangerous for you to be coming up here. It would be terrible if you got caught. How about we come down and get food under the cover of darkness? Would that be okay? If we are caught, we can say we’re stealing food. Your villagers can’t be accused of helping us that way. We will repay you someday, when this is all over.’
Marita nodded thoughtfully, although her grim expression revealed concern for them. ‘Yes. We do not want to risk our people—it is terrible what the Germans are doing. They want total obedience and for now, that is what we must show them. Otherwise, we too will suffer as Kondomari has suffered, or even worse, be bombed like Kandanis!’
Using a twig, she sketched the road through the village in the sandy soil, then marked the site of the schoolhouse where the Germans occasionally stayed overnight. At the opposite end of the town, she marked the site of an old shed, explaining that it was about twenty yards behind the town’s dairy and well out of the schoolhouse’s view. The shed had both a rear and a side door; Marita instructed them to take a broad sweep around the perimeter of the village and approach the shed through its back entry. She was confident that under the cover of darkness they could easily avoid drawing the attention of the Germans, should they be in town.
Next she marked the route of the track down to the village, noting the point where the forest ended and the village began. She drew an X to mark a house to the left of the base of the mountain track.
‘This house, here, it is Uncle Giorgo’s. You’ve met him—he’s the one who brought you to this cave. He has a window... here...’ Marita sketched out the front of the house, and then detailed the side facing the hill. ‘This is his spare bedroom. If he feels that the village is unsafe, I will see that he puts a light on. If you see the light, you will have to go hungry.’ She smiled. ‘Really, you should be fine. The German soldiers, they will soon realise that there is nothing for them in our sleepy little village. They will leave us alone soon.’
Jack, Danny and Leo agreed to follow Marita’s advice and remain in the cave during the daylight hours. Every second evening, they would make their way down the hill. She would make sure that food was placed in a cupboard in the shed.
Despite their reassurances that they would find their way back up the mountain in the darkness, Marita wanted to help with that, too. She explained that kohli gatherers went out each evening after dark; they would act as guides. Their lanterns would follow the route up the hill and along this track before their cave. Marita insisted that they were not to speak to them, just quietly follow from a distance and slip into the cave when they reached it.
Before departing, she unloaded her bag, leaving them with more torch batteries, matches and oil for their stove and three old sacks they could use as ground covers; they’d provide a buffer against the hard stone floor of the cave.
* * *
And so it was that two days later, Jack, Leo and Danny ventured down the mountain at sunset. Carefully, they followed Marita’s instructions, first checking the side window of the house near the track to be sure there was no warning glow, then remaining under the cover of the trees, circling to the back of the village before approaching the shed on a path barely visible in the veil of descending darkness.
Slipping through the shed door, Leo lit his torch and held it low for a few minutes so that they could get their bearings. A wooden cupboard sat beside the back door, and on the lowest shelf rested a large wooden box. In this they found two loaves of bread wrapped in a towel, an enamel pot—its contents still warm—and a jumble of enamel plates and cutlery. Wasting no time, they dished out the enticing meal and ate it quickly before filling their packs with the vegetables and fresh fruit that had been left out for them.
As Marita had organised, when they left the shed barely twenty minutes later, the glow of four lanterns hovered in the distance, and Jack could hear the laughter and chatter of their bearers. They must have sensed the men’s presence, for quickly they approached the mountain track and began their ascent, with Jack, Leo and Danny following about twenty yards behind. For over an hour they followed the chattering Cretans, resting while they stopped to collect snails from the base of tree trunks, then continuing on. He was thankful for their presence. By night, the track was totally unfamiliar, and when a shadowy figure placed a lamp low and whispered, “Here is your entrance,” he knew they would never have made it to the safety of their cave without the guidance of the kohli gatherers.
They continued with this pattern—going down to the village for sustenance every second night—grateful for the spicy lentils, salads and cheese pies as well as bags of fresh fruit and vegetables that were left for them. Only once did they find the lamp in the bedroom window shining its warning into the night, and although they watched from the trees for signs of German soldiers menacing the town, all appeared quiet. Nonetheless, they returned to their cave with stomachs rumbling.
On their fifth visit, Jack was startled to see a man leaning against the wooden bench in the shed. To his relief, he realised that it was George, who was relaxed and in high spirits and keen to update them on the latest events of the war-stricken island.
As Marita had predicted, visits from the German soldiers to Astikas had diminished. They only arrived once every two or three days, roaring through the main street on a half-track or a motorcycle with side car, staying a few minutes and then departing again. Regardless, the village council had decided to set up a sentry on the southern road at the point where the patrols entered and exited the village; and by using a series of whistles, they always knew in advance if a German patrol was about to sweep into the town.
George was highly amused by the strategy their mayor had adopted, pretending to cooperate with the Germans, when really he abhorred their invasion of the island. Like an actor, he demonstrated the bombastic tones of the German commander who’d met with the mayor the previous week.
‘You must ensure that all weapons in the village are collected and submitted to the German army promptly. No guns are to be withheld, or there will be severe consequences.’
‘Yes, yes, certainly,’ their mayor had agreed. Then he’d joined the elders of the village in gathering every broken and ancient relic that could be found, adding a couple of reasonable hunting rifles to the cache to allay suspicions. When a unit of Germans arrived late one afternoon and requested a fat lamb for their dinner, the mayor had offered two, and also a flagon of oil, bunches of freshly picked comfrey and a bottle of their strongest raki. When a labour team was summoned to mend a damaged bridge two miles down the hill, the mayor wasted no time in assembling a dozen good men, who’d worked well. Not only did they fix the bridge, but they’d tried their hardest to assist a hapless German officer repair his wireless transmitter, which had unaccountably lost reception repeatedly during the week when the bridge was being worked on.
In this way, by appearing immensely cooperative, the villagers hoped that the Germans would never learn how the villagers spent hours huddled in one house or another, discussing strategies to sabotage German operations or relaying messages across the island via the young shepherds who acted as runners. Nor, they hoped, would the Germans suspect that dozens of sub-machine guns, rifles and handguns lay hidden beneath floorboards of houses throughout the village, or that a jeep lay concealed down a forest track barely two miles away.
George told them that the Germans’ main efforts were still focused on the airports, but that troops were now positioned all along the island’s coastline, monitoring the movements of seafaring vessels and prepared for a British naval assault. Almost daily, the Germans were intercepting rafts and barges loaded with Australian and New Zealand soldiers—men who’d hidden in the mountains like Jack, Danny and Leo, but who’d seized an opportunity to escape, with unfortunate results.
‘Yes, but maybe some are making it off the island?’ Jack couldn’t keep himself from being hopeful. Surely there was one way or another that they could get to the mainland!
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. Word is that a few days ago, a submarine slipped in under the cover of dark and rescued a few dozen men, but I don’t know if this is true.’
* * *
As frustrating as it was, Jack had to accept that he, Leo and Danny were stuck on the island for the time being at least. It felt like they’d been there for months already, and calculating the dates in his notebook, he realised that it had been. Following the sinking of the Costa Rica, they’d landed on the island in late April, and the German invasion of Crete had begun on the twentieth of May. Then there’d been the walk to Sphakia followed by the weeks in the hills before they’d come to the cave. With the days now cooling, he knew that autumn was upon them, and, confirming the date with Marita the week later, it was no surprise to find that it was now September.
They stayed with the routine of going down to the village on alternative evenings, enjoying the meals that were left for them, and ever hopeful that the news Marita provided to them on the occasions when she met them would be positive. When, in mid-December she advised them that the Japanese had entered the war with an attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbour, they were shocked and could speak of nothing else for days. The war in Europe had become a world war, and they feared for what this may mean for Australia.
* * *
George, sometimes accompanied by Michael, was a frequent visitor to the shed, also. The boys were both fascinated by the culture and political freedoms of England and Australia, and they asked endless questions about life in ‘the western democracies’, as they referred to the nations of the British Commonwealth. America, and especially Hollywood, fascinated them also; and they loved to hear about talking films and glamorous stars, of which Danny proved to have expert knowledge. George, in particular, loved to discuss books of any description, and Jack thought it a shame that it was he rather than Sidney Nolan, who was called upon to answer questions about Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Rudyard Kipling. George and Sidney must have been born under the same star—each from humble beginnings and yet harbouring cravings to know everything he could about writers and poets.
Jack was curious about how George, Michael and Marita had learned to speak English so well, and George explained that Marita’s husband, Henry, had been a British soldier. She had met him in Greece during the Great War. Together, they’d lived in England for a short while, and then in Greece; and then, with their son Manos, they’d returned to live in Crete. Twice weekly for over a decade, either Henry or Marita had given English lessons at the local school, and many of the adults in the village had also learned some phrases. Both Henry and Manos, who was now nineteen, had left with the men from Crete to assist the Greeks resist the Italian invaders.
On learning about the bravery of Henry and Manos and of their commitment to supporting mainland Greece, Jack stewed about their own inactivity—hiding in the mountains, doing no more than passing time sitting against the ledge and watching the planes circle the sky before landing at their airfield to their east, wondering what the occasional bomb or plume of smoke might mean, and spending his days sleeping or sketching. He discussed his concerns with Leo and Danny and the next time they saw George, they insisted that they needed to see Marita, and to come up with a plan for action. They were soldiers, after all. Surely there was something they could be doing.
Chapter 27
‘You are getting restless, George tells me?’ Marita asked them, a week later.
‘Sure we are, ma’am! We are at war, and it is time for us to be doing a little more,’ Danny replied, his chest puffed out, his shoulders straightened, looking every bit a soldier who was ready for action.
‘Surely we could be doing something to slow down the Germans. Perhaps we could study their movements at the airfield at Meleme. That seems to be their major entry point. If we could disable the airstrip, that would stop the Germans from landing their supply planes.’ Danny shared the plan that had dominated their conversation over the last week. Now the idea that seemed to have such merit in the cave sounded ridiculously improbable to Jack as Danny spoke the words to Marita, and judging from her reaction, she thought so too.
‘No, no! You must understand, it is still very dangerous for you to upset the Germans. They are very strong and vastly outnumber our defences. Their vehicles and weapons command the roads.’
Jack, Leo and Danny listened dubiously as she continued.
‘Now the war front in Russia is escalating; it will only be a matter of time before most of the German soldiers are called off the island to go and support them. Then we will be able to put our plans into action.’
‘Our plans?’ Jack wondered what plans the villagers had made.
‘Yes, Jack. Our plans. Crete has been at war for centuries. We have defended our island—our way of life—in the past, and we will defend it again. It is all a matter of patience and timing. Daily, our resistance is gaining strength. Some important men have returned to Crete, and now we have the EAM—that is, the communists—as well as the EOK, who are non-communist, working together to rid the island of our invaders. However, it is essential that when we do retaliate, our efforts are effective. Our response needs to be like that of a tiger pouncing on a sleeping elephant. We need to play the Germans’ own game of blitzkrieg. If we simply buzz around like mosquitoes biting, blowing up bridges and immobilising their vehicles, certainly we will draw some blood; but we will just irritate them and make them suspicious. Particularly now with the Hitler Youth on the island, whose punishments for such irritations are particularly nasty.’
‘Hitler Youth? Who are these boys?’ Danny’s quick bark suggested that he was ready, willing and more than able to squash any German youngster if she would just point her finger towards them.
‘Danny, these are not ordinary boys. They are truly dreadful. Malicious and without honour. Far worse than the German soldiers. Hitler Youth are thugs who take pleasure in cruelty. Because of this, we must make sure that our own actions are coordinated, foolproof, and most of all, do not provoke their barbaric retaliations.’
Jack nodded despondently. The last week’s plans to attack the airport had filled him with excitement. For a few days, he’d felt that they were taking control of their lives, living up to their training as Australian Diggers. It was hard to call themselves professional soldiers when they were hiding in a cave and dependent on the people of Astikas to feed them. Nonetheless, he accepted Marita’s point. It would be terrible if they acted in haste and somehow their actions brought retribution to Astikas.
