Remembering Uncle Hughie
David Hill receives the warmest of welcomes when he retraces his uncle’s heroic war-time experiences on Crete.
We spent Christmas on Crete partly because my Uncle Hughie once walked across that island. He hadn’t intended to. He found himself there in May 1941, along with the rest of the New Zealand Division after their hasty evacuation from Greece as Hitler’s forces tore southwards.
On the morning of May 20, when German Ju 52s started lumbering overhead, thousands of invading paratroopers filling the sky beneath them with red, yellow, black or white chutes, Hughie was halfway through breakfast (‘‘goat, I think’’).
Orders were yelled. Counterorders and counter-counter-orders were yelled. Within half an hour, my uncle and about 60 other New Zealand troops were heading inland.
With them were King George of Greece, the two-metre-tall Crown Prince Peter, and the Greek Prime Minister. The New Zealanders were supposed to get their distinguished guests across the width of Crete to the south coast, where the Royal Navy would take them off.
It seemed impossible, but they did it. Uncle Hughie remembered it as being like walking from Napier to Taupo – 150 kilometres over high hills and low mountains.
German planes searched for them. A few edgy locals shot at them. The king, limping along with rags around his feet, asked his escort to call him George. ‘‘Yeah, of course we did,’’ Hughie told me. The Navy were there, and King George eventually returned to rule Greece again.
My Uncle Hughie and his wife Zona helped bring me up, for various reasons. He died in the early 1990s. I was overseas, and never really got to say goodbye to him. So that was partly why we came to Crete for Christmas, a quarter-century later.
We flew into Heraklion on December 21, 2012. We were staying at a 2.5 star hotel with lino floors, groaning classroom-type radiators, two-day-old bread and three-day-old cake for breakfast. We liked the place instantly.
Over the next few days, we caught a bus to Knossos and its 3000-year-old plumbing. We strolled Heraklion’s waterfront, where fishing boats called Artemis, Mount Pelios, Prince of Lilies bobbed at anchor.
We caught another bus to Suvla Bay and its flawlessly-kept war cemetery. ‘‘AGED 20,’’ the headstones read. ‘‘AGED 22 .... AGED 19 .... ’’ I knew that some of Uncle Hughie’s pals were buried here; I wished I’d learned their names.
Christmas Eve in Heraklion was bedlam. Music blared from every shop doorway in El Greco Square. Cretan teenagers on motor-scooters howled down alleyways, shouting greetings, blaring horns, smiling at us terrified visitors. We briefly lost control when we realised that the music pounding from one boutique we passed was
Christmas Day breakfast in the hotel was three-day-old bread and four-day old cake – plus beaming smiles and handshakes from all the staff. We were passed the transcript of a phone message from a friend in England. ‘‘Dennus ringed to say you the Verry Merry Chritmas.’’
In El Greco Square, the motorscooters had vanished. The people of Heraklion, all ages and all dressed in black, were filing into churches. More smiles and nods to us benighted foreigners in our jeans and T-shirts.
An acquaintance of a brother of a friend had arranged to pick us up early afternoon, and drive us inland to the Lassithi Plateau, a wonderful high plain of wildflowers and windmills. We wanted to see the Dikti Cave, where the infant god Zeus was hidden so his father Cronos couldn’t find and devour him.
We saw it, and a silent dark chasm it was. We began strolling back to the car. I looked around me at the plateau of stone walls and little fields, the mountains glittering blue and white behind them. I tried to imagine my young uncle crossing this gaunt and beautiful land, watching the skies for enemy aircraft, listening for the shouts of German pursuers.
In the village where our guide had parked her car, a gnarled old gent in a gnarled old pinstripe suit was making his slow way up the street. He paused, leaned on his stick, squinted at us. ‘‘Deutsch?’’ he asked.
‘‘No, no!’’ I said. ‘‘Nozilandoi. New Zealand.’’
The old man’s arms went up in the air. His stick waved at the inland mountains, and a torrent of Greek burst from him. He turned towards nearby houses and shouted. Next minute, men and women were rushing out, surrounding us, smiling and exclaiming.
They also gestured towards the mountains. ‘‘Nozilandoi! Keewee!’’ Our hands were clasped. We were embraced, kissed on the cheeks. Old women seized my hand, pressed it to their cheeks. Many of them were weeping.
So would I have been – if I hadn’t been a New Zealand male of a certain age. But as I stood there on this Christmas afternoon, 16,000km away from home, I knew I’d finally been able to say goodbye to my Uncle Hughie.