Greek Pride Day

 28th October 1940

Hitler ordered Mussolini to invade Greece. Mussolini gathered his army on the northern Albanian border and issued an ultimatum to Greece

Surrender and let the Italian forces walk in, or it is war.

The Greek Prime Minister replied with a resounding

'Ochi' 'No'

and 

'Alors, c'est la guerre'

So Greece joined WWII and the battle carried on with fierce fighting for 219 days.

To give you an idea of that resistance, look at how other European countries reacted

Norway 61 days of resistance

France   43

Holland 4 days

Denmark 0

The Danish king gave his crown to the Fuhrer's messenger to take back to Hitler as a sign of compliance.

Greece not only pushed the Italians back over the Albanian border but took back territory they had previously lost.

German forces invaded a few months later occupying the mainland and islands.

Every city, village, island, even the tiniest with a school of 1 pupil holds a ceremony with speeches and wreath laying followed by a parade of school child/children. They celebrate with pride the bravery of their soldiers and the resistance of the Greek people. The women fought as courageously as the men hauling ammunition and supplies .

We always fly the greek flag on National Days.  This time K hoisted a small NZ flag too.  The slight breeze caught the NZ flag nicely, but not the Greek

Poppi. Front left

Yesterday we went down to the harbour with most of the population to watch 2 of our grandaughters parade and enjoy a coffee with friends.

It was a beautiful sunny day.  Every man and his dog was out, most, like me, photographing our own school children.  I must have similar photos going back almost 20 years.

After coffee the men had a few beers and then we headed up to Paradise taverna in the hills near us.  Half of those men and dogs had migrated up there and we were lucky to find a table.  But we did, in the shade.  So after a litre of their wine and plates of lamb and rooster over big tubes of spaghetti we went off for a siesta.

Oldest Grandson, the one in the army, came up for a visit with his girlfriend and it made a very happy ending to the day.  K completed his celebrations with a few glasses of raki and listened to some of his favourite very eastern souding greek music along to a chorus of owls on our back balcony.  The rest of the neighbourhood slept, or tried to.

We woke up next morning to find that South Africe had beaten the All Blacks by one point and won the World Rugby Cup.  We had been talking about the match with Grandson G that evening.  Being a family of greek/kiwis (and Australians) we take our rugby seriously.

Rugby is unknown here and is never shown on greek tv or the european channels we pick up  

On one of the previous world cup finals, when the All Blacks did win we  all gathered in our living room with beer, and marmite, Marlborough sauv blanc, curried eggs and other kiwi snacks and all our kiwi paraphernalia to watch the match.  G  had somehow managed to find it online and streamed it to our television.

Next time.