Sunday, July 06, 2014

Greece Crete Stalag Dachau by Jack Elworthy - Review by Maggie Rainey-Smith


Greece Crete Stalag Dachau
by Jack Elworthy
Published by Awa Press
RRP $40.00

I leapt at the opportunity to read this book and could hardly wait to begin.  It didn't disappoint.  Of course, I am perhaps an ideal reader, because like Jack Elworthy, my father was also in the 5th Field Regiment and part of the 22nd Battalion who sailed out of Wellington on the Aquitania.  But, although I've written about my own father in essays and travel stories, I really knew very little about the day to day detail of his experience on Crete and later on in Poland as a POW.

Jack Elworthy writes eloquently, but not extravagantly.  His writing is very  matter of fact and under-stated. It's quite an extraordinary story.  He's a fairly ordinary bloke and like many at that time, he set off to the war with an eager sense of adventure.  He puts it like this "I got married, built a house and was about to become a father. Then war was declared in September 1939 and everything changed." Most of us abhor this idea, of war being an adventure, but in context it sounds reasonable.  I never got around to asking my own father, but I imagine that in the late 1930's in small town New Zealand, many young men signed up for the war, imagining exotic places and adventure.  Of course they were wrong and Elworthy's story most eloquently describes how wrong they were.

From the moment the Aquitania sets sail from Wellington, I was hooked.  Indeed, I was fascinated with the journey of this troop ship, having previously not known the details of their journey. I was riveted by each and every detail, hungry for information, because mostly Elworthy's journey is also my fathers.  But too, I was surprised. For example, the historic defeat of Crete, when the German elite dropped from gliders in their parachutes. I was racing to this event, to hear and feel it through the immediacy of someone actually there.  But war is more ordinary and mundane, even when it is horrific. Elworthy was in the 7th General hospital on the morning of May 20 when the paratroopers began arriving. Irritated by a fellow patient who was frightened, he went outside and watched the airborne invasion commence..."It was a fine sunny morning and a marvellous sight to watch".  Whereas I recall my own Dad speaking of the young men falling from the sky and some of them screaming for their mutters. The strength of Elworthy's writing lies in these factual recollections, unembellished, not making himself either more heroic, nor minimising his own misfortunes.

                The Fifth Field Regiment defended the airport at Maleme, so when the airport fell to the Germans and many New Zealanders were taken POW, they were then forced to assist the Germans to clear the runways and try and rebuild the airport. Again, I was utterly gripped having never known any of the details of what happened after my father was taken POW . Elworthy describes a shocking incident when the Greek POW's are taunted by a German guard who removes the pin from a hand grenade to frighten them and then tries to put the pin back... the result being he is blown to pieces and the Cretans are left with those pieces and how to explain to the German guards. It seems they fretted about it most of the day and decided to tell the truth and were believed.  This incident is used to highlight the idea of both the good and the bad side of the German occupiers - humanity at its best and worst whatever the uniform.
                Fortunately, Elworthy kept a diary, and so he is able to recollect quite vividly the often mundane aspects of war along with the horrific and heroic. It's interesting to read an account that is so finely balanced and doesn't appear to glorify either the author or the war.  I'm always amazed at the odd morality of war. The fact that Elworthy was in hospital when the paratroopers were landing and that there is an expectation that hospitals are sacrosanct and shouldn't be bombed (although the hospital was). Over and over, the 'rules' of war are inexplicable to me. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, in the olive groves, New Zealand soldiers and the Cretans are firing at young men falling from the sky in parachutes, unable to return fire (perhaps covered by Stukas)...  I recall reading somewhere once that the Germans had expected to be able to land and then commence the battle and they hadn't expected the ferocity of the local Cretan population who were not officially an army and therefore did not intend abiding by the 'rules' of warfare.

                Too, it surprised and even slightly amused me to read early on when the troops were in England preparing for the war and their motor transport was made up of a 'former Snow White Laundry van... a butcher's van... and a cumbersome and underpowered Morris horse float."  It is these odd extraneous details that make Elworthy's story such an interesting read.  Somehow the very ordinariness makes it extraordinary.

                The journey by the New Zealand POW's in the cattle trains to Poland was something I really wanted to read about and I was fascinated to learn that they used their socks and helmets to defecate and urinate into and took turns at passing the socks and helmets along the carriage to a small opening where they could dispose of the foul contents. My father never spoke about these things in detail - or perhaps we never bothered to ask him - we just knew about them in a vague and insubstantial way, so it was truly interesting to have a first-hand account of this awful journey. My father used his soldier's book to record doggerel and poetry written by fellow POW's and one of these which as kids, we loved to sneak and read, was 'Brown Thursday'. Now I'm beginning to think this bawdy poem about diarrhoea may well have been an account of the train journey to Poland.

                Disappointingly, Elworthy almost skips over the four years as a POW in Stalag VIIIB which is also where my Dad was. I've visited this site, known as Lamsdorf, but now called Lambinowice. Indeed, I stayed overnight and wrote about my pilgrimage for the Listener.  But it seems that Elworthy was embarrassed about being a POW as if it was somehow shameful and indeed this idea prevails even when he returns to New Zealand. He describes himself as being isolated from other war veterans who hadn't been captured.

                My thoughts kept returning to the author's wife.  She was expecting their first child when he left on his 'adventure' and was away for seven years.  If he had been like most of the war veterans, he would have been home within the five years, but Jack Elworthy somehow seemed to think he owed something to the war effort having spent so much time as a POW and somewhat amazingly, "he talked his way into the US Army's 45th (Thunderbird) Division as it made its way to Munich - birthplace of the Nazi Party - and the liberation of Dachau concentration camp." My Dad was part of the now infamous six hundred mile march out of the camps and across Europe in the snow - I was eager to hear first-hand about this march from a New Zealand soldier.  But Jack had a higher ranking than my Dad and had been moved to a different camp before the march. 

Who would I recommend this book to? I recognise I am the ideal reader, so I'm assuming anyone with family who were involved in the Greek campaign (whether a Kiwi or a German) would find this interesting. And too, for any reader interested in war history, this is a 'report on experience' from a Kiwi solider on the front-line. I would imagine that this book provides fresh insights for historians into both the Greek and Crete campaigns.

Maggie Rainey-Smith is a Wellington based author and regular reviewer of fiction on this blog. - http://www.maggieraineysmith.com/

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