Escape!

Adventures of Two Fiji Men in Greece

Peter Hetherington Martin, Of

Fiji, a member of a New Zealand division, was posted, in May, as “missing, after the Battle of Greece”.

But young Martin duly turned up in Egypt, and now is back with his unit. It appears that he and young Lew Free man, also of Fiji, were cut off during the evacuation of Greece, and had a long series of extraordinary adventures.

They had fought in many rearguard actions, and were near their embarkation point, when German troops appeared; and finally seven of them (Martin, Free man and five others) got away into the hills of the interior. There, with the help of the Greeks, who were very kind

to them, they remained hidden for three weeks, awaiting a chance of escape. The rest of the story is taken from a letter written by the young man to his parents, in “Fiji Times” of July “On reaching the coast the Greeks hid us, as usual, and it was here that we had our first real meal, goat boiled in oil. After such a long spell of fasting the quantity and quality of the food we received, as you can imagine, did not agree with us, and we were rather sick tor a day or two, for we just gorged ourselves.

In the meantime the Greeks were en deavouring to find a boat for us; which was rather difficult, as there were 200 Germans a couple of miles from us and they had taken all the boats that were any good. However, they patched up an old boat that had been lying up on the beach for a few months, and one night brought it round to where we were.

Waiting for a favourable breeze, and after a couple of false starts, we set off for Crete, with the aid of a pocket com pass and an old map, which was printed in Greek. We had nine Greeks on board besides ourselves, and they were all hornbiy sea sick, lying in the bottom of the boat in about six inches of water and never a move out of them. ‘‘One of our party happened to be an r 80 he sailed the boat, while I, with my yachting experience, helped.

That night, the wind came up fairly strongly and there was quite a big sea running, and we shipped a lot of water However, we didn’t mind that, being so pleased to get away. But things looked black when, about three o’clock in the morning, the sail blew out, tearing from top to bottom. We immediately got to work with our darning needles and cotton, which luckily we still had with us, and started sewing up the sail, using the only towel we possessed to patch up an extra large hole. In the meantime a couple of us tied two blankets to the shrouds, and in this manner ran before the wind for four hours while the sail was being repaired.

Finally, we hoisted the sail again, and. in doing so, the rope broke and jammed in the old block, with the sail half up and we could not get it up or down, so just carried on as we were.

“It was now broad davlight and we were well away from the land and head ing, we hoped, for Crete, although if we had known what we knew later we may not have been so cheerful.

“We were making good progress when, about mid-day, we were attracted by the sound of gunfire, and there, away to our Port, the sky was literally peppered with anti-aircraft fire, while German ’planes dodged here and there, dropping their bombs. We could not make out from where the firing came, but guessed it to be our Navy, which proved later to be correct; they were well over the horizon and, of course, we could not see them.

“Our wonderful luck was still with us, for we were not molested by a single German ’plane, though they came very close to us. Late that afternoon we saw the top of a mast appearing over the horizon, followed by the hull of one of our destroyers, and shortly afterwards the whole fleet loomed -up and came towards us —it was a wonderful sight.

“I rushed up forward and started flashing a mirror trying to attract their attention, and in a little while a destroyer left the fleet and sped towards us, A short time afterwards we were safely aboard her, and it was a wonder ful feeling.

“The sailors took us down and gave us tea—the first for weeks—and showered us with food and cigarettes. Lew then went and interviewed the Captain, and he informed us that we were a hundred miles from Greece, and if we had kept on our course would have missed Crete.

Also, they had their guns trained on us, and it was only the fact that they saw us flash the mirror that saved us from being blown up.

“That night, on board the destroyer, accompanied by many other ships of the fleet, we had the rare experience of going into action against enemy ships.

They cut the German convoy to pieces that night and I would not have missed it for worlds.

“Next day, we headed for Alexandria, the Huns bombing us for hours without damage to our ship, though, as you have probably read in the papers, the ‘Fiji’ and a number of others were sunk.

“We had two days in Alexandria and it was good to get back, even to a place like Egypt. Lew and I have now rejoined our battalion.”