Against the tide

In a small Greek village, Kiwi soldiers are remembered each year for their part in the brutal Battle for Crete in 1941

- CAT MCGREGOR

Turn inland from Kalamaki, a beach resort outside the ancient city of Chania, and the road quickly starts to rise straight and steep. As you go further, the tourist apartments give way to modest homes with bougainvillea and branches of lemons spilling over their garden walls. If you keep going, you pass olive groves and small herds of goats, remnants of the era before tourism came to this spectacular stretch of coastline on the northern side of Crete.

It was here, near the top of this hill, that on the evening of May 25, 1941, several hundred New Zealand soldiers waited for the order to march into the village of Galatas. The brutal fight to retake Galatas from the Germans was among the final engagements of the Battle for Crete. It was also one of Germany's first defeats of World War II, and would come to be seen as a defining moment in New Zealand military history.

Eighty-two years later, I walked the road to Galatas, where every year a smattering of New Zealanders join the locals to commemorate the fight for the village. It's also a celebration of the bond between the people of Crete and those of New Zealand, other small, earthquake-prone islands on the opposite side of the world.

GRAPES AND GRATITUDE

The ceremony is held in the Galatas village square, in front of the war memorial that sits between the street of Neozilandon Polemiston - New Zealand warriors - and the church of Agios Nikolaos.