Tonight i raise my pipe with E.Hoffman Company Distinguished Gentleman and a glass of Metaxa brandy for an
Australian soldier, it's Reginald Tresise (Signalman) of the 6th Australian Expeditionary Division in Greece.
The main German attack was on April 12 of 1941 where, with the help of light snowfall, the attackers managed to gain an advantage. Late in the afternoon allied administration realizing that it can not stop the Nazi power, gives the signal of retreat. The Australians who have received the main German attack so had the most of the dead on the battlefield.
The young Reginald Tresise, with some of his colleagues during the retreat, camped for a few hours at the Valtadoirio Gymnasium. As he says, the school is two-storey and bombed by the Nazis "the statue before the school entrance has been blown up. On the ground floor of the school between the dust and the stones of the small room there is a flag of silk with fringes and a cord." The soldier is impressed by the image that he faces, the shape and the colour of the flag. In order not to fall into the hands of the Nazis that head for the city, she decides to take her with him. He keeps this flag as an amulet, has it with him later in the Battle of Crete where he succeeds to survive while many of his fellow soldiers are injured or killed. As he said ''i came out from the Hell of Crete having only my life and this flag'' it passes to Egypt after Palestine and ends in the Syrian French sector still holding the flag. He is moving to the Pacific Ocean on New Guinea, where he survives after hard fighting with the Japanese while he is still has in his bag the Greek flag.
When he succeeded in returning to Australia one day in June 1959 he wrote a letter (thus we know the whole story), he sent the Greek flag back to the mayor with the case that he made, his military cap and some of its personal items.