The Girl Under the Olive Tree

by Leah Fleming

  I peered out of the front window. In the distance I could see people going about their business in jeans and black shirts, on scooters and mopeds, and tourists in sundresses and shorts. Part of me was expecting to see everyone in traditional dress: breeches, cloaks, lace bandanas and white boots. Customs had changed, Europe was closer now. Then an old woman, bent, with a stick, covered head to toe in widow’s weeds with the full black headscarf covering her chin, came into view, taking me back instantly to those far-off days before the onslaught began in earnest on 20 May. That was the date none of us would ever forget.

  I looked up into that ink-blue sky, half expecting to see what we saw then, and I shivered, hearing again the little girl shouting, ‘Kyria, look! Come and see! Men with umbrellas are falling from the sky!’

  Rainer Brecht sat staring from his hotel balcony in Platanias, sipping a bottle of Mythos beer from the minibar.

  The taxi, sent to collect him from the port, had rattled along the by-pass heading west of Chania, to a holiday resort still in the process of construction, judging by the concrete lorries blocking the main street. The driver tried out his excellent English and German after checking if his passenger spoke any Greek.

  When the old man complimented him, the boy smiled and said his family had lived in America for a while. ‘Now we are home.’ Rainer was glad the boy didn’t ask the obvious question, ‘Were you here during the war?’ but it hovered just the same. He was the right age to be a veteran.

  Their journey took him through many familiar routes, though the olive groves had shrunk, replaced by harsh concrete buildings. Chania was still sprawling out towards the high hills, an outline that he hoped would never change, but the mule carts and donkeys had been replaced by battered cars and bikes and smart buses. There was investment beginning, but here and there he spotted familiar squatted shacks and old houses dwarfed by high-rise apartments, and homes with iron rods sticking out of the flat roofs, ready for another storey to be added. It was a world away from the one they had jumped into in 1941.

  Out in the bay he could see a distant island rising from the aquamarine sparkling water. The sea never changed its appeal or yielded its secret store of bones. He’d chosen this hotel for its bland anonymity. It was rough round the edges still, three stars, spotless, soulless. There was a smell of fresh paint ready for the new season, newly laid paths to the shingly beach. It was quiet, suiting his purposes well enough. This was a personal pilgrimage, a time for reflection. He could smell barbecue smoke and music blaring somewhere. He hoped it wouldn’t be intrusive or he would move on. He had not hired a car – his eyes were no longer reliable – but he would hire taxis for his trips into the interior.

  The snapshots he’d collected over the years didn’t do justice to the colours of Crete. He was too late for the famous spring flower meadows, the heat had dried them out. He had a wallet full of sepia shots of his old brothers in arms and lined them up on the bed. How relaxed they all looked, smiling in the sun in shots taken on some forgotten beach before they set out on their campaign, none of them realizing what lay ahead. He had nothing else to honour them by but flashes of memory, and their ever-youthful faces, these silent ghosts who haunted his dreams, brave young men who never saw another dawn. He had come to pay his respects and recall each one of them.

  How could they have known what was awaiting them right here in the sea, in the hills, olive groves and ditches just down the road?

  No one knew that they were rushing headlong into the swallowing jaws of hellfire, or that their sacrifices would change the course of military history.

  20 May 1941

  The transport planes flew out at first light towards Crete, in formation, skimming the water then rising over the mountains, heading west to their target, landing close to the western airstrip at Maleme. As they sat facing each other, Rainer had time to examine the eager faces of his men, wearing wool jumpsuits full of pockets, heads protected by new rimless helmets. Some grinned with confidence, others, grim-faced, kept checking their harnesses and kit, silently lost in the discomfort of the flight. How young they all looked with their bronzed features. He felt a stab of fear for them all.

  Then came the guns roaring at their approach and he saw tension flash among them as the Junkers swerved but thundered on their course. The radio operator yelled, ‘Get ready, Crete.’

  Rainer saw its shape, familiar from their briefings, coming ever closer in the morning light. They juddered down low and then swooped up to avoid being struck. He felt his stomach turn over as their target position appeared.

  Some of the men started to sing their anthem to steady the nerves. ‘No road back . . .’ rang in his ears. Now, primitive instinct and months of training kicked in as they stood ready to harness up and check their chutes. He must be first out, leading the way by example as they leaped into the cruciform shape in free fall.

  It was a strange sensation to leap from the sky, full of such power and adrenaline. Then came seconds of panic, waiting for the first chute to open. He felt the jerk and the lightening relief, but he turned in horror to see one of his boys caught on the end of the plane, his harness ripped as he fell like a stone to earth.

  Suddenly the lush green valley spread before them and he saw the lake. They were close to the prison compound that must be secured as their base. The ammunition crates were floating down, and supplies, suspended from chutes of different colours, and they must be found before the enemy got hold of them. They were out there watching, waiting for the right moment to pounce. He must get his men under cover and armed as quickly as he could.

  Rainer landed without mishap, but he saw some of his men fall into the trees, and he heard the rattle of small-arms fire and a roar of angry voices. Suddenly all hell broke loose, and he watched in horror as his men were shot out of the sky like ducks. Their chutes were set on fire, ripped, and they jerked helplessly like puppets, brave handsome paratroopers shredded by fire before they had even reached the ground. For a second he was enraged at such lack of chivalry but he realized this was no ordinary battle in which you set up your lines and marched in. Once they arrived they were target practice for troops on the ground.

  He yelled for them to hide in the olive groves and dry river beds. Everyone was scattered out of sniper shot, alone in a cat-and-mouse game with the enemy. It was hot and the jumpsuits were heavy. He’d lost his water bottle in a skirmish with a Tommy, sniping from the branch of a tree. He’d knocked him off with a bullet through the face. He felt no pity. It was either kill or be killed. He crawled his way out of danger, out of the close-range fire. He could hear a terrible racket going on somewhere west. The sky was black with planes and men, but nothing was going to plan, and there was no welcoming party to greet them, as had been assured, only a hail of bullets. No road back indeed.

  ‘This is the big one! The sky’s black with the bastards!’ yelled the Scottish orderly who was helping Penny move the stretcher cases further under cover. The guns had been screaming at the plague of black hornets discharging their load since first light. Wave upon wave came overhead. Orders were to get the walking wounded into slit trenches.

  ‘Helmets on. Can’t they see Red Crosses marked in the bloody sand?’ Douglas Forsyth yelled. ‘Nurse, get yourself out of the line of fire!’

  Penny pretended she couldn’t hear him as she guided some men from the tented marquee to the newly dug defensive trenches. It was slow work and the noise from above was terrifying.

  She’d wandered round the exposed site only the night before, wondering where there was some decent cover. Whoever designated this site for the hospital ought, themselves, to be shot. All she could see were caves, and she’d suggested to the doctors they might be useful should things get worse.

  Dr Ellis had dismissed her with a wave of his hand. ‘Have you seen the state of those filthy holes? They’re full of goat shit and worse. I wouldn’t stall a horse in there.’

  ‘But they’re dark and cool. We could clean them up. At least we’d
be out of range,’ she had argued. In vain. Whoever listened to a nurse? ‘There’s four decent ones and they go back some way into the rock. We could store supplies in there. Better than being in flimsy tents open to the air.’

  ‘Good Lord, look to the west. Is that what I think it is?’ Ellis was pointing now to hundreds of yellow, red and green parachutes floating down, opening with what looked like dummies hanging on the end of them, which suddenly jerked into life.

  ‘It’s raining Jerry,’ said Forsyth, pausing for a second before turning his attention back to his patient.

  Penny watched the gliders hover over the sea, ditching and disappearing into the waves. The bombed buildings on the shore were raging into a furnace and some of the enemy parachutists were sucked right down into them. Behind them came a wave of other gliders jerking on the end of ropes like ghost riders, discharging men into the sea and onto the rocks before crashing, themselves, into splintered pieces on the distant shore. It was a terrible haunting sight of certain death for those men trapped as the Bofors guns blasted into them.

  In response, the bullets from the low-flying planes tore into the tent fabric and the hospital barracks. Everyone who had a weapon was shooting the invaders but still they kept coming.

  ‘What happens if they land here?’ Penny asked, but no one answered.

  She watched burning planes crash and men struggling to swim ashore. What if one of them were her own brother, Zander? Helplessly she watched men drown, though one or two scrambled exhausted onto the shore. They would soon be prisoners. Then, to her horror, she saw armed figures darting from the village, leaping out to kill the invaders as if they were seals in a cull. She screamed for the guards to take them as prisoners, but no one was listening. Each of these boys was someone’s child, someone’s husband, only doing their duty. She had taken vows as a Red Cross nurse to help all wounded soldiers, but now she was in battledress and British colours, and under British orders. She felt torn between trying to help them, and her duty to the wounded in the hospital crying out for help. She had to look away, she couldn’t bear to see the slaughter.

  The number of wounded started to pile up on the beach, and some of the paratroopers were carried in with the most appalling injuries, beaten senseless by village people angered at the bombing and the invasion. Others were burned, blinded and traumatized, young boys, frightened they would be executed on the spot, wetting themselves in terror and crying out in pain. Ellis and Forsyth were working flat out to save whoever they could.

  ‘Put them in the caves out of sight,’ Ellis ordered, pointing to the rocks. ‘This isn’t going to end today, is it?’

  The hospital was beginning to resemble an abbatoir, and confusion reigned.

  Suddenly there was gunfire at close range and shouting in German in earshot as a group of paratroopers raced through the hospital grounds, demanding those who could should stand up and walk in front of them onto the road. Penny, breathless with fear, slipped away unnoticed and hid with the prisoners in the cave as the doctors were marched off in a makeshift shield. The German prisoners cried out to their own comrades that they were safe in the caves, and so Penny, hiding among them, was left undiscovered.

  For several hours Penny worked on alone, terrified of what was happening outside, not daring to look out or even imagine how this might end. Stay at your post, look after the men no matter what. You can do no more than your best. Courage mon brave, she prayed for the strength to stay calm and face death if needs be. If this was to be the end then so be it

  It was the longest afternoon of her life, swallowing back the fear and panic that rose in her throat like bile, but there were too many injured to nurse for the luxury of worrying about herself. When I have time, then I will worry, she mused. Then there was a roar of shooting, and, when the noise had faded, she saw the doctors walking back, accompanied by some New Zealanders, distinguished by their slouch hats. Penny felt such a relief at their appearance, wanting to fling her arms round them both but she held back, knowing a nurse must behave with dignity at all times.

  ‘Thank God you’re in one piece,’ said Forsyth waving his stethoscope at her. ‘We gave them a dose of their own medicine.’

  Dr Ellis explained to her that the paratroopers had been ambushed from behind and the hospital was safe – for the moment. Immediately it was back to work as normal, though rumours were rife of fresh enemy landings in Maleme.

  ‘It’s all over,’ said one of the orderlies, smiling, more in hope than truth.

  ‘Not from where I’m standing.’ Forsyth wiped his ashen face. ‘Those men are well armed and mean business. What a bloody cock-up. Here we are, stuck in no man’s land between the airport and Chania, right in their firing line, sitting ducks ready to be picked off

  He turned to Penny with a shrug and a smile. ‘I think those caves look like the Dorchester to me and, Nurse, you proved a point steering those prisoners in there. You must get yourself out of sight, young lady. You should not be here,’ he said, lifting his hand as if to make her disappear. ‘But I’m bloody glad you are.’

  Under cover of darkness they examined each cave in turn, with surgical masks on their faces to weaken the force of the stench, which was unbearable.

  ‘Any port in a storm, eh?’ said Dr Forsyth. ‘What do you think, Ellis?’

  ‘Nurse George is right: it’s out of the wind, sun and rain, and we can hide the entrance with sheeting. This one’s for us and for the operating table, the others for patients, and the supplies had better stay here, what’s left of them. We’re running short of basics but how the hell do we make this sterile?’

  ‘We can get the troops to help us scrape it out, wash it down with salt water, put duckboards on the floor?’ Penny was thinking on her feet. ‘We did something like this near Arta when the wind tore down all our tents.’

  ‘Hell’s bells, a hospital in caves! I’ve heard some outlandish schemes, but what’s the alternative: move inland and start again? I’ll get onto HQ,’ said Forsyth.

  ‘Let’s just hope our lot hold them off, hold the airstrip and send them back to Athens,’ said a young Scots orderly, his eyes were full of fear. ‘Come on, Sister, time to round up anyone on crutches to shovel out as much muck as we can before Jerry comes for breakfast again.’

  Penny rolled up her sleeves to join him, her back aching, her ears ringing with the sounds of bombs and gunfire. The sky was still black with planes not stars. They were trapped on the beach, exposed, outnumbered and in fear of their lives, but there was no time for regrets. There was a job to do, a filthy rotten job but it might just save her patients from certain death. She may be the only woman left on the beach but she could handle a shovel and muck out with the best of them. That was something she’d done since she was a child She smiled thinking of Hector, her pony, and the stables at Stokencourt. Little did she dream then how she would end up here. Suddenly her heart lifted. Nothing like sweat and purpose to keep you strong. They were all one team now, working against the odds and it felt good.

  A girl in a thick cloak picked her way through the rubble, making slow progress through the smoke and broken glass, the scattered remnants of houses, searching for survivors, staring up every few seconds in fear of the raid resuming. She had to make it uphill to Halepa. She was already late for duty, as many others would be who had endured the bombs. She could hear the weeping of women as they searched through the stones, crying for their families. The body parts were already beginning to rot in the heat. The smell of the battlefield had come to Chania that morning. She must hurry – there would be so many wounds to treat – but who would treat the broken hearts, the grief, the fear of what was to come? To her relief this part of town had been spared and already there was a queue waiting outside the Red Cross clinic.

  ‘Nurse, Nurse,’ shouted an old woman, tugging at her arm. ‘Come, find my husband, come and help me find my little birds.’ The woman was half-crazed with grief.

  ‘Nurse, you have to help my wife. She’s in labour, she�
�s bleeding . . .’ A young man in a tattered shirt supported his fainting wife.

  She helped the man gather up the girl and together they pushed with her through the crowd. ‘Let her pass,’ she ordered. It was fortunate that the clinic was nearby. The door opened and they fell into the vestibule.

  ‘Thank God, you’ve made it, Nurse. We’re so short of staff,’ the doctor said wiping his blood-stained hands on his white coat. ‘Who have we here?’

  Yolanda gave the doctor details of the patient as they carried the girl forward to the treatment room and closed the door. But when they laid her out, she realized the poor girl was dead.

  Yolanda wanted to cry out at the injustice of such a cruel fortune but there was no time. Even as they covered the young woman’s face and escorted the weeping man to the door they heard the screech of bombers overhead. It was time to get the patients under deep cover again.

  She sat crouching with her patients in the basement until the worst of the morning raid on Chania harbour was over. Her mind was not on her work, however, but on whether her parents were safe in the cave under Uncle Joseph’s printing works. There’d been enough alarms now for many local families to flee to their family villages, or to find reliably safe shelter. Kondilaki Street, with its Jewish quarter, was only a few rows back from the ancient harbour, the Venetian limani, with its warehouses, and a large arsenal full of weapons and stores where Uncle Joseph’s sons had gone in vain to beg for more rifles to defend themselves should an invasion come from the sea.

  Since her unexpected arrival, Yolanda had hardly left the quarter. Her parents were so relieved to have her by their side, they insisted she be chaperoned and introduced to the other families of their Sephardic community. The printing works had been busy printing newspapers for the British troops. Papa was helping translate the Crete News from English to Greek so the compositors could lay down the text correctly.