An Idyllic Place...

continued...

We laughed together as we surveyed the beautiful scene before us. It was so idyllic but all of this beauty hid a darker past. Kostas spoke of his father, whilst standing on this very same shore during the Second World War, watching a ship being bombed and sunk in the straits between us and the mainland. How could such a beautiful place have seen so much tragedy.

Papa Spiro then beckoned us toward the seashore.

“It is here they crash.” He pointed to the narrowest of beaches I had ever seen.

I looked down the line of the shore with the mountains of northern Greece and far off Albania in the distance. It was Albania to the North from where they had come after their bombing raid on Durazzo.

 “Here!”

“Yes, here.”

Kostas spoke Greek again with Papa Spiro.

“The area was used to make salt at the time of the war, so was flatter and more open. They would have seen this from the air, but there were ditches to drain the water away which they had to avoid, so the beach was the only option. Lots of people would have been working in the fields, and more people would surely come to see. No wonder they said there were hundreds of people to greet them.”

We wandered more down the beach and I looked at the achievement of safely bringing down a plane without wrecking it completely.

“These were exceptional people” I said to Kostas and Papa Spiro. “None of us know what they went through in these days. None of us. If I didn’t think my uncle and all those men were heroes before, then I do now!”

“The people of this island are so grateful to the British and Americans who helped to save our island. The servicemen who crashed here, yes there were others, were greeted like heroes… once Fokion had put his gun down of course.”

#Kavos #corfu #GeraldsWar #EmotionalJourney #HistoricalFiction #WarTale #HistoricalNovel #HiddenTruths #WartimeSaga