Re: Going Hungry to Feed the POWs

Date: June 25, 2004

"VETERAN HOPES QUEEN WILL HONOUR WOMEN

Second World War veteran Alf Smithard owes his life to a group of brave women who helped him survive a prisoner-of-war camp. Matthew Croshaw reports on his call to have their efforts recognised by the British establishment

Just a few crumbs of bread helped Alf Smithard live through each day in a prison camp.

But the meagre rations were not handed out by his German captors.

A brave band of women native to the Greek island of Crete endured blows of rifle butts from Nazi soldiers to feed the starving prisoners.

Now 84, Mr Smithard believes he is only alive today because of the selfless generosity of the women who went hungry to feed him and some of his fellow 10,000 PoWs in the camp near the town of Chania.

In May, after years of searching, he finally met Anna Loupasaki, who threw bread to him over the barbed wire.

Now he is campaigning for official recognition from the Queen and Tony Blair for the women who did so much to help the Allied troops.

Mr Smithard, of Canada Drive, Cherry Burton, said: "I said I would like to buy her something to thank her and she said, 'No way.' This is the Cretan way.

"The only thing I would like is for the British Government or the Queen to send her a plaque on behalf of us Britons, Aussies and New Zealanders."

Mr Smithard, who has three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, was born in Portsmouth in 1920 and left school at 14 to train as a hairdresser.

He joined the Army at 16, after lying about his age, and was enlisted in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, which supplies soldiers with everything but food.

He went out to Palestine in October 1938 and was sent to Egypt and on to Sudan after the Second World War broke out in 1939.

In 1941, on his way back to England, expecting promotion to lieutenant, the 21-year-old warrant officer was diverted to Crete after the Germans invaded mainland Greece.

But he was captured along with 10,000 Allies on June 1.

The prison camp was nothing more than a field with a single strand of barbed wire and armed German sentries keeping the prisoners in.

Ms Loupasaki was joined by about 20 other women in throwing food to the prisoners to supplement the tiny helpings from their German captors.

Eventually, they used children to pass it to the PoWs as they knew the Germans would be reluctant to beat them.

Despite four years and two more stints in PoW camps, Stalags 7a and 383, in Germany, Mr Smithard escaped and was helped back to England by American forces.

He maintains he owes his survival to the end of the war to Ms Loupasaki and her friends.

After the war, Mr Smithard was invalided out of the Army because of back injuries suffered through beatings by German soldiers.

He later became an instructional officer, teaching new recruits how to drive, coming to East Yorkshire in 1977 when the driving school was established at Normandy Barracks, Leconfield.

He retired in 1983 and has gone to the Greek island every year since 1989 as a member of the Crete Veterans and Friends Society.

Mr Smithard broke his ankle in March and was told by doctors not to go on the annual trip in May.

But he was determined not to miss the visit - his way of thanking the Cretan people.

He met Ms Loupasaki for the first time in more than 60 years through British-born woman Helen Makrakis, who had married into a Greek family.

After the tearful reunion at Ms Loupasaki's Cretan home, the pair vowed to make the event an annual date."