FROM PREVELI TO PREVELLY
VASILIOS EVANGEL *
"Heat haze dances on the little Cretan church with its whitewashed walls and bell tower and terracotta roof tiles. It stands out from the green coastal scrub that surrounds it on the hillside overlooking a sparkling blue ocean. But the scrub includes banksias and wattle and the sparkling blue is not the Mediterranean. The church is at Prevelly Park where the Margaret River flows into the Indian Ocean. It is a personal tribute by a Western Australian survivor of the battles on Crete in May 1941 to the heroism of the Cretan people and a bond that time and distance cannot break."
Taken from the Australian War Memorial website:- www.awm.gov.au, and written by Brad Manera.
In this paper I will give a short history of the Battle of Crete and of the Monastery of Preveli and discuss the important role that the Monastery played during the Second World War.
We may then have some better appreciation of what inspired the late Corporal Geoff Edwards to build a Greek Orthodox Church on the hill above his seaside community in the South West of WA and name it after the Preveli Monastery on Crete. At the conclusion I will take you on a journey to Margaret River and show some images of the remote little church and the beauty and tranquility of surrounding area.
The Airborne Attack on Crete
On 20 May 1941 Germany launched a parachute and airborne attack on Crete on an unprecedented scale. The Germans intended to invade the island quickly and capture the airfields at Maleme, Rethymnon and Heraklion to consolidate these positions for the later arrival of major occupying forces. The speedy capture of Crete was important for the Germans because it would eliminate the ability of the British launching long-range attacks on their positions in the Balkans and on the vitally important Romanian oilfields. Securing Crete meant that the Germans could then concentrate on their planned offensive of Russia.
The allied forces on Crete numbered some 35,000 and were made up of British, New Zealand, Australian and Greek forces including local civilians. They put up a heroic resistance. They decimated the first wave of paratroopers as they landed and their stance was such that it took the Germans much longer than they planned to take the airfields.
On the first morning when the initial airborne assault began one soldier described the scene as follows:
"It was a spectacle that might have belonged to a war between the planets. Out of the unswerving flying fleet came tumbling lines of little dolls, sprouting silken mushrooms that stayed and steadied them, and lowered them in ordered ranks into our consuming fire. And still they came, till all the fantastic sky before us was filled with futuristic snow flakes floating beneath the low black thundercloud of the processional planes - occasionally flashing into fire as if struck by lightning from the earth", from a company commander with the 2/11th Battalion, Ralph Honner.
During the afternoon of the first day a second wave of German paratroopers was launched and again they were met with aggressive defense from the allied forces on the ground and by night fall the Germans had made no progress towards their objectives.
The mood at the German headquarters in Athens became despondent and desperate. The Germans then decided to concentrate their efforts at one point where they had established some sort of foothold instead of four points. They decided to throw everything into the Maleme sector the next day.
This proved to be decisive and gradually the balance began to tip in favour of the Germans. Their dominance in the air left the defending forces struggling against impossible odds. On the 22 May 1941 the British Navy was attacked form the air and many allied ships were lost. A failed attempt at recapturing Maleme dispelled any hopes the Allies might have had of defending the island. Over the next few days the Germans drove the Allies east to defensive positions around Suda, capturing the port of Chania on the way. By 26 May the position of the Allies was hopeless and an evacuation was ordered. The Royal Navy, despite suffering crippling losses (3 cruisers and 6 destroyers were sunk), managed to evacuate about 16,000 troops over the next four nights, but a large number could not be evacuated and without food or ammunition they were forced to capitulate and were taken prisoner.
On 29 May the Allies abandoned Heraklion and many lost their lives as an evacuating convoy was attacked by air. Meanwhile at Rethymnon the West Australians of the 2/11th and the New South Welshmen of the 2/1st Battalions, who were still fighting to defend the airfield, were cut off. The commanding officer of the 2/1st Battalion ordered his men to surrender whilst Major Sandover leading the 2/11th Battalion gave his men the choice of surrender or escape.
Many took the option to escape and evaded capture for many months hiding in the mountains with the assistance of the locals and monks from the Preveli Monastery who risked death if discovered. Between June and September a further 600 Allied soldiers were able to escape from Crete.
Allied losses on Crete amounted to some 1,742 killed or missing, 2,225 wounded and 11,370 captured while the Royal Navy had 2,000 men killed and 183 wounded. But the Germans also suffered devastating losses with some 7,000 killed. These losses were so severe that they never again mounted a major airborne attack against enemy forces.
The Monastery of Preveli
The Monastery of Preveli or Saint John the Theologian (Rear Monastery) is one part of a two building complex. There is also a Lower Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, but which is not in operation.
The monks of the Monastery have a strong tradition of active involvement in national causes and endeavours for freedom and education of the Cretan people. The Monastery holds a special place in the hearts of all the people of Crete and those who have been affected by it.
It is believed to have been founded during the Venetian occupation by a feudal lord known as Prevelis in about 1594 which is the date engraved on a bell, but it is possible the first core of the Monastery may have been organized around the 10th or early 11th century when other Monasteries were being established on the south coast of Crete.
In 1694 it was destroyed by the Turks only to suffer the same fate again in 1821 when the patriotic Abbot Melchissedek Tsouderos became involved in the secret revolutionary organization Filiki Etaireia and influenced other monks and locals to take up the struggle for independence against the Turks. In later years the "secret school" was run from the Monastery.
Later again, another patriotic Abbot Agathangelos Papavassiliou (1864-1871) also took up the struggle leading other monks and locals in pitched battles against the Turks. In spite of the extermination of monks in 1866 at the nearby Arkadi Monastery the Abbot continued his quest, but in 1867 the Lower Monastery was set on fire and destroyed again. The Rear Monastery was saved and continued its active role to the end of the revolution in 1869 and during various sporadic outbreaks to the end of the century.
In keeping with its tradition of taking up the national cause, the monks of the Monastery of Preveli assisted allied soldiers during the fighting around Rethymnon in organizing and taking supplies to the soldiers on a daily basis. After the Allies were evacuated, the German and occupying forces ordered very harsh reprisals against locals who were found to be sheltering or helping remaining allied soldiers who had not escaped or been captured. In spite of this the monks from the Monastery of Preveli and locals from neighbouring villages organized themselves into groups to guard the area and provide care and protection to many Allied soldiers who were dispersed in hideouts around the area. A committee was formed under the chairmanship of Abbot Agathangelos to secretly deal with the task of safeguarding the hiding soldiers and supplying them with provisions and information.
One group of Australian soldiers managed to escape by making contact with a British submarine. A further attempt by allied soldiers to escape by submarine came to the attention of the Germans who then came to the Monastery in search of Abbot Agathangelos. He and some of the monks managed to get away in time but the Germans caused serious damage to the Lower Monastery. The Germans then moved to the Rear Monastery where a number of monks were vigorously interrogated. The Germans returned a few days later and conducted further intensive interrogations of the remaining monks to ascertain the whereabouts of the Abbot and his associates and to find out details of their role in helping the soldiers to escape.
The monks did not give any secrets away and were arrested and sent to Firka prison, but with the intervention of the Bishop of Kydonias and Apokoronou, Agathangelos Xirouhakis, they were released. They returned to their Monastery only to find it almost totally devastated and so began the task of reconstructing it again with the help of sympathetic locals.
The situation remained very dangerous, especially with increased surveillance and scrutiny by the Germans, but the brave monks never stopped helping the allied soldiers still trapped in the area by supplying them with provisions and passing information on to the National Resistance Movement (NRM) whose activities were based in the mountains nearby.
The Monastery continued to be a source of information for those soldiers wishing to flee to the Middle East and to NRM fighters trying to avoid German capture right through to the end of the occupation.
The Greek Orthodox Church at Prevelly in WA
Corporal Geoff Edwards of the 2/11th Battalion's Carrier Platoon was one of those who escaped on the British submarine to Egypt with the assistance of the monks of the Preveli Monastery.
After being involved in heavy fighting on the Greek mainland he and his company left Greece and landed in Crete in Suda Bay. They soon learned that the Germans were planning to make their airborne invasion and target the three airstrips of Maleme, Rethymnon and Heraklion. The 2/11th Battalion was to defend the Rethymnon airstrip about 50 miles from Suda.
When the situation became desperate and they were unable to evacuate, the senior British officer raised the white flag and Edwards and others in his company were taken prisoners of war. He smashed his gun prior to capture so that the Germans would not take it. He and the others were marched to a prison camp near a village called Skines which the Greeks had built for Italian POW's. He was there until he and another soldier escaped on 11th June 1941.
The German high command had issued a proclamation that any Cretan found helping Allied troops would face a firing squad, but this did not prevent them from helping. A shepherd found them wandering through the mountains one day. He took them to his house and gave them food and directed them to the Preveli Monastery.
On the way they also met an elderly lady who thought the other soldier (Bill McCarrey) was her son returning from the fighting in Albania. After she realized it was not her son she was naturally very disappointed but treated them as if they were her sons anyway.
They knew they had to get to the Preveli Monastery, as it had become a rallying point for a few hundred soldiers sheltering in the nearby mountains. When they approached, they were met by a Greek man who took them to a hideout where there were other soldiers. It was dangerous work because the Monastery was being watched by the Germans.
Little did they know that it was the head monk Agathangelos Lagouvardos that organized the hiding soldiers who were split into groups and assigned to particular caretakers from nearby villages. He sometimes visited them at their hiding places in the mountains. They built up quite an intelligence network between themselves and the Monastery.
The British managed to land a secret service agent on the coast who made contact with the Monastery and about a week later in the middle of the night some 70 soldiers including Geoffrey Edwards were assembled on the beach in the little bay of Limni just bellow the Preveli Monastery to meet with a British submarine HMS Thresher and they managed to escape.
It was in the late 1960's after a visit to Crete and the Monastery of Preveli that Geoffrey thought about building the church as a memorial to all those who fell and to the bravery of the Cretan people.
After his return to Western Australia from the war he purchased a big parcel of land (see below) in the 1950's and established the Prevelly caravan park, named after the Preveli Monastery in Crete, in the beautiful Margaret River region of Western Australia some 290 km south of Perth.
He subdivided the land that now makes up the township. Some of the subdivision roads carry the names of Greek families who helped him on Crete.
After his visit back to Crete he later built the Greek Orthodox Church and named it Saint John the Theologian, the same name as the chapel at the Monastery. It was built on a spot that most closely resembled the one on Crete and so it was tucked into the hillside overlooking the ocean and part of the township bellow.
The Church was completed in 1979 and officially opened on 4 June 1979.
It stands as a permanent monument to remind those who visit, regardless of ethnic background, of the debt and gratitude owed to the Cretan people by the allied soldiers who fought during the Battle of Crete.
Geoffrey Edwards died on 11 April 2000 aged 81 just four days after receiving his Order of Australia medal from the Governor, Maj-Gen. Michael Jeffrey, at Government House in Perth for his services to the Greek community. He wrote of the Cretan people:
"... the Cretans had proved true and trusted friends, as they had so little yet they had shared it willingly with us. We had nothing to offer them yet they had risked their very lives for us. I promised them that I would never forget them. I think I have kept that promise and we all left the beautiful rugged island of Crete richer in feelings and memories of these indomitable Cretan people." ...
Taken from p.49 The Road to Prevelly by Geoffrey Edwards.
Copyright 2004. Greek Legal and Medical Conference