Vasiliki and I sat holding hands in her beautiful lounge while we conversed through Nancy. The house was cool and a real oasis from the heat outside.
One of the first things Vasiliki told me was that Snow (Percy) would cry each day because he missed his sister, Peggy, who was of course my mother. He was considered a son by Vasiliki's father and Snow called him Dad. Snow worked in the olive groves and often he and Ernie Clarke would sleep out in the groves if German or Italian troops were known to be about. The locals had a really simple way of knowing this: their dogs would bark if a stranger came anywhere near. Snow and Ernie would usually live in Vasiliki's
or Georges' parent's houses. They would not stay in one house for long, but would move around.
They would frequently "go bush"and range over a wide range of land around Pylos and Koukounara. That is why, for me, it was so poignant to be walking over the same ground, avoiding snakes and scorpions just like Snow and Ernie. Not only that but most of the trees were the sames trees as those he wold have pruned, picked and tended.
One morning the dogs started barking when Snow and Ernie were still in bed at Vasiliki's house. Snow had not hidden his rifle and to be found with a rifle meant death. So Vasiliki's father put on his overcoat, placed the rifle inside, along his leg, picked up a bucket and went outside in front of the Italian soldiers, to the village well, where he dropped the rifle. Vasiliki said she heard the splash as it hit the water. He came back to the house and said, " Now even if they find it they won't know how long it has been there."
However after 10 months or so, the Italians got wise and were waiting in the groves when the villagers went to work. They picked up Snow and another soldier (not Ernie). There was an informer in the village. Ernie mentions in his book Over The Fence is Out, that one informer was found strung up in a tree, having been rewarded by the Italians with a presentation of money.
The villagers continued to shelter allied soldiers and around 1943 twelve houses were burnt to the ground as a reprisal.
The pictures above show
top left: Snow either in Egypt, Greece or Italy.
top right: Snow, Peggy and Ivan at Stanley Bay, Auckland circa 1939. Ivan also became a POW but survived the war.
botton left: An old building in Koukounara which Snow and Ernie would have known.
