UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Hellenopoula
By JAMES M. MATTHEWS (Brasenose College, Oxford)
AHELLENOPOULOS is a little HeIlene. British children are simply children ; they are not Britonlets or Anglets. But a Greek child is a Hellenopoulos from birth, and something special, as he well knows. l'm not sure exactly how I expected this national distinctiveness to show in the forty children who filed
decorously on to the platform at Victoria one morning at the end of June. They didn't look like English children, for all their bright dresses, neat little shorts and blazers and British hair-cuts ; but neither did they look particularly Greek. And the last thing they looked like was refugees, though six months ago they had haggard eyes and wasted bodies. They looked most like a party of well-fed, well-behaved schoolchildren returning from an English holiday. In fact, for them it had been a holiday ; and, all through our exhaust- ing journey home, it was only the occasional glimpse of a withered arm or a twisted foot or a leg-length scar that reminded me that their holiday had not been from school but from fear and hunger.
So, in holiday mood, the children were ushered into the train. Little Vassilakis—five tough years old, but with a soft heart—had already started attracting the attention which he held until we reached Piraeus. Wearing the tiny overcoat which nothing would ever persuade him to take off, he was crying on the platform, so small that no one noticed him at first and so grief-stricken at leaving his cosy foster-home in England that he would not speak. He was entrusted to the lavishly sympathetic care of the other children, and then we waited for the train to leave, I feeling something of an impostor with my arm-band declaring me a Leader in the Inter- national Help for Children Organisation. There was a pause ; then a transformation. Photographers appeared—amateur photographers, Press photographers and television photographers. The school out- ing dissolved, and forty true Hellenopoula crammed themsebies into the carriage windows cheering and waving, kissing and shaking hands with the various dignitaries who were seeing us off. No Greek could ever resist a camera. The children were born models ; they knew exactly what was expected of them. In a burst of song, with Hellenopoula toppling out of the windows, the train left.
Thereafter I knew I was with Greeks. I was seized on and questioned. What was my name ? Where did I live ? How old was I ? Was I coming to Greece ? Did I speak Greek ? Did I know their names ? And then, at every station we passed through on the way to Newhaven: Were we in France yet ? When would we be in France ? Was this Marseilles ? At Newhaven we dis- covered that the luggage-van was in a state which only Greeks, with their .deep contempt for organisation and their confidence in work- ing it out right, could have created. An entire van was packed with the children's luggage. And pell-mell in amongst the trunks stuffed with presents and the shining new suitcases were untidy paper parcels with the string falling off and little bags of sticky sweets and miniature toothbrushes wrapped up in grubby towels. The porters despaired, but Oliver Jones, who was a true stalwart of the I.H.C., firmly put this right, as he had to do again at Dieppe and again at Paris and again at Marseilles before he left us, forgoing the trip in the Greek corvette to Piraeus. And meanwhile the two Greek leaders, Maria and Soula, whose word was lkw with the children, formed the party up in twos and counted the numbers, as we did about every half-hour for the next eight days.
Vassilakis cried himself dry- during the Channel crossing, and contemplated me with wistful, rebuking eyes. While the other children were cheerfully being sick and then attacking their sweets again and climbing over the furniture, Vassilakis was simply being sick. We got two words out of him: " No " and "Auntie." He could understand the Greek that was spoken to him, but nothing would get him to use it. He did not want to be a Hellenopoulos.
From Dieppe to Paris I seemed to hear only two words from the other children. One meant "I am hungry,'' the other "I am thirsty." In fact, until the moment when I said goodbye to the
children at Piraeus, these words could always be heard somewhere in the hubbub. I never really knew what to do about it. When they cried, "1 am hungry" only half an hour after eating a gigantic meal, the obVious answer was, "Don't be silly," which they cheer_ fully accepted ; but then the sight of hunger far back in their eyes, which perhaps they knew was there, or of a hand with three fingers missing encouraged a quite irrational impulse to give them all the food that could be found. "Perhaps," the thought would whisper, "they really need it. In a few days they will be living on bread 4nd olives again." If! had dealt with children in this condition before, I might not have been susceptible to this kind of doubt. I think it is a matter of experience.
In Marseilles I was left to look after the boys for a couple of hours in the garden of the Pharos. On the steep-sloping lawns there were hoses perforated to water a newly-planted patch of grass, "I am thirsty," shouted the eighteen boys, and started drinking from the jets of water, trampling the grass. Then they tugged the hose out of position so that it sent a generous shower of water over the passers-by on the path below. A massive gardener let out a bellow of protest and addressed me in colourful French. The boys gathered round me in sympathy and then sat angelically beside me on the steps of a building in the shade. For a full twenty minutes they made a superhuman effort to sit still and be good ; then they all started fighting.
The Greek colony at Marseilles heard that our digs in the Old Quarter were disappointing, so they instantly took the children into their homes for two nights. They brought them to the corvette on the third day. One boy was brought before the appointed time and, unattended, climbed a strut, fell and broke his leg. Corvettes indeed, however great the honour of their attendance, are markedly unsuitable for transporting children. There was the sweltering heat downstairs and the infinitely dangerous deck above to choose between. We may have exaggerated the perils of the deck. There were few places where one might fall over unintentionally ; but the children knew to a nicety how to make our hair stand on end.
The sailors helped somewhat ; but Vassilakis, now speaking Greek again and ready to fight anyone, wrung their hearts, and they had eyes for no one else. Then on the third day we came on deck and saw Kephallinia and lakinthos looming in the morning haze behind us, and soon we were passing Missolonghi and Patras. The children became a little quieter ; they lost none of their bright-eyed sharp- ness of wit, but the girls danced their folk-dances longer round the gun on the fore-deck and argued less, and the boys spent more time looking over the side and combing their hair.
In the evening, as we neared Piraeus, a sailor prepared the flag in the bow for hoisting when we arrived. The children, generously patriotic, as they were totally generous always, stood stiffly to attention, even persuading Vassilakis to stop bullying the officers and to stand still, uncomprehending, while they sang the Greek National Anthem over and over again, waiting for a flag that would not be unfurled for another hour. That night they hardly slept, but next day they were all smiles of welcome for their last battery of photographers and all appreciation for their last celebrities, the British Ambassador's wife and a Cabinet Minister. Only, among them, quietly, were one or two crying because they were coming home.
Some of their parents were there, and sisters and brothers, all in their best clothes, with here and there a taxi mysteriously procured. The faces of some of the parents were lean and strained ; some looked fierce with emotion. Watching- these curious reunions, wondered how each of the forty Hellenopoula—the first group of many—whom I now knew as individuals, would remember their fantastic months in England, and with what feelings—the lavish prosperity of it all, the parties, the food, the presents, the photo- graphers, the comfort and the affection ; and the journey back, the half of which I have not described They have great powers of adjustment because they are children, and proud. The dream they have just lived may be refreshing to remember when they are full- blown Hellenes ; or it may be the sort of dream the awakening from which is painful and the memory haunting.
Previous page
