Vassa Solomou Xanthaki was just six in April 1941 when a group of Anzacs came to her village, Ambelakia, in Greece. Perched on the mountain Kissavos, opposite Mt Olympus, Vassa’s village overlooks the Tempe valley. River Pinios runs through Tempe, the fabled home of the Muses.
Vassa, despite her young age, was acutely aware that the war would be at her doorstep in a matter of hours.
“I ran up and down the village telling people not to be afraid if they hear loud noises. We expected the Pinios bridge to be blown up,” she recalls sitting in her Athens home as she speaks to SBS Greek.
It was 17 April 1941 and the Nazis had broken through the Greek defence lines after six months of relentless attacks.
“The war was upon us,” says Vassa. And then, a small group of Allied soldiers, including Australians and New Zealanders, led by a young man from Wales, came to their village to spend the night.
Vassa Solomou Xanthaki in her Athens home. Source: SBS/Dina Gerolymou
When 'the war was forgotten'
“We carried chairs from the neighbours to our house so we could fit as many as possible around the table,” says Vassa.
“I remember my parents being unhappy with the poor offerings they had to put on the table for the soldiers, neighbours pitched in with what they could but still, there was not enough.”
The soldiers brought their own supplies to the table and the feast began.
“My father had a flute on a shelf, and David, the soldiers' commander, took the flute and started playing. A few soldiers had harmonicas and soon everyone started singing and dancing. Everyone became one that night, the Greeks, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the British, we had all become one soul," recalls Vassa.
“For a few hours, the war was forgotten.”
The house where the allied soldiers feasted with the locals in Ambelakia. Source: SBS Greek/Dina Gerolymou
Vassa and her two older brothers were sitting at a separate table with all the other children, according to the custom. During the meal, her father waved to her older brother Yiorgos, and he left the table. Her father took young Yiorgos aside and whispered something into his ear.
She says it didn’t take much effort to persuade her brother to divulge the father’s words.
“Make sure you remember everything from tonight. Tomorrow these young men will die” he was told.
“We froze when we heard those words,” says Vassa. “I’ll never forget them as long as I live”.
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Later on, that night, a thunderous noise filled the air and little Vassa got such a fright that she fainted.
“There I was, telling everyone not to be afraid and it was me who fainted,” she said describing the demolition of the Pinios bridge.
Knowing full well what was to come, the men of these battalions stood their ground until their units were broken into fragments by the weight of panzer fire. The men who died fighting Nazism in this way deserve to live in our memory.
When she regained consciousness, she was presented with a needle case and an icon of Christ by an Anzac from New Zealand. She still treasures the presents and keeps them safe in her family home in Ambelakia.
It is with much pride that Vassa shows her wartime keepsakes to a select few. One of them was Kate Logan, former ambassador of Australia to Greece.
Vassa Solomou Xanthaki with the former Australian Ambassador to Greece, Kate Logan, in Ambelakia in 2018. Source: Supplied
"David's 30"
“We remember them as another Thermopylae,” says Vassa Solomou Xanthaki referring to the epic battle between 300 Spartans and Achaemenid Empire nearly 2,500 years ago.
When the defenders knew that they weren’t going to win but stayed and fought and died doing their duty, defending all free people.
All but three soldiers died the next day fighting the Germans.
Military historian Peter Ewer, in his book 'Forgotten Anzacs: the campaign in Greece, 1941' concludes the chapter on the Battle of Pinios Gorge by saying: At that battle, three Anzac battalions took their turn to be smashed into pieces by German armour. Knowing full well what was to come, the men of these battalions stood their ground until their units were broken into fragments by the weight of panzer fire. The men who died fighting Nazism in this way deserve to live in our memory.
Vassa and her brother George discussed many times the Battle of Tempe or Pinios Gorge and based her bookThe Tumulus mostly on her brother’s recollections. George had helped his father and other men of the village to bury the soldiers the day after the battle.
"David had told us that we need to evacuate the village, so we left on the night of the 17th of April and took shelter in the mountains,” says Vassa.
“But my brother and his friend left secretly and returned to the village where a handful of men had stayed, among them my father. They were the ones who found the dead soldiers and buried them.
“We buried them outside the village, close to the old windmill…David and his soldiers, must have been about thirty of them. Because of them, the place was known later as David’s 30."
The remembrance
Vassa's father wanted to build a memorial to the soldiers but he died two years later before the war came to an end. The tumulus was forgotten and wasn’t built until 2018 when the Australians went to Ambelakia to collect soil from the former battlefield.
A memorial was built in 2018 to honour the Allied soldiers who died fighting the Nazi forces in Ambelakia in WWII. Source: Dina Gerolymou, SBS Greek
“Ever since the monument was erected, often we find wildflowers, in spring we find poppies there,” says Vassa insisting that the whole village kept the memory alive.
The Anzac Corps was formed for the second and last time in March 1941 specifically for the Greek campaign.
Vassa says that everyone from her generation remembers and honours the soldiers who fought and died at Ambelakia. She has kept their memory alive and penned them in her book titled 'The Tumulus'.
