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Part two of a two-part documentary.
Fifty years after the Battle for Crete in May 1941, a party of 74 New Zealand ex-servicemen return to the island to renew the bond they forged with the Cretan people.
(The veterans in this programme asked not be identified by name.)
Producer Alwyn Owen introduces recordings made in Heraklion, Crete in May 1991. A Cretan man talks about his feelings on seeing the New Zealand veterans return.
In the village of Galatas, Alwyn Owen describes the elderly local people watching the memorial ceremonies. The Last Post is heard. A man from the 20th Battalion talks about his memories of Galatas and the help he received from the people while hiding from the Germans. He has kept in contact with the family who sheltered him and describes his feelings. He introduces a woman, Despina, who was aged 6 during the war.
She says the Germans arrived on 24th May 1941 and on 25th they dropped a bomb on a cave where her family was hiding. Her brother was killed, her father was badly wounded. She was badly injured and needed surgery in the United States to repair her mouth. She says seeing the New Zealanders again is like having her family return.
Recordings of singing and celebrating in Galatas. The New Zealand military band plays "The Long, Long Trail" - a song from World War I.
In a tiny village named Vilandredo, a small group of veterans recall hiding out. A man named 'Fred" who had jaundice, remembers hiding in the hills when two young men came from Preveli to tell them of an Allied submarine offshore. But when the New Zealanders arrived at Preveli it had already left the night before.
They were guided to a village named Frati by some young Greeks and hid there for 21 days. The Germans found they had been hiding there and shot all the men and boys of the village. He believes a girl who had been consorting with the Germans must have told them the village had been hiding the New Zealanders. Eventually they were able to make it to the submarine and escape.
In Vilandredo, Fred presents a plaque from the New Zealand Returned Services Association to a man named Evangelos from the village.
At Maleme, a local man who sheltered Allied servicemen, Elifarias Signakis (?) talks about being taken hostage by the Germans during the war. He describes the Greek resistance and the consequences for the people. The Germans killed his mother and brother and he says he has not forgiven them.
A New Zealand veteran "George" describes eluding the Germans, and being in the platoon which helped get the King of Greece out of Galatas, over the mountains, which took about a week. He tells a story about coming under fire and having to throw away a suitcase of the King's which he later learnt contained a lot of money.
A man talks about getting confused about the landscape around Hill 107 at Maleme. He describes his actions on May 20, 1941, watching the German parachutists drop from planes. Another man "Ron", recalls watching the hundreds of German parachutes land and his rifle getting hot through being fired continually.
A man says he was ashamed when the island fell and they were ordered to lay down their arms. He escaped from a German transit camp and hid in the hills. Alwyn Owen describes the rugged conditions and the trek the men had to make to get to the south coast of Crete where Allied ships could rescue them at Sfakia.
Alwyn notes that 671 New Zealanders died on Crete and 25,000 Cretans died as a result of resistance action during the German occupation, many as a result of helping Allied servicemen.
A man says the Crete campaign made a deep impression on the young New Zealanders, and the return has been one of the greatest events in his life.