Sydney, Australia, in late spring. Standing at the door is a tall stranger, asking for my father. It’s 1972, a Saturday afternoon; Dad is playing golf. Mum is out the back, gardening. It’s left to me to tear myself away from Tolkien and answer the door. I am fourteen. A man is waiting there, dressed to the nines: a grey silk suit, sky blue tie, tailored shirt, and Italian shoes. His grey hair and moustache are perfectly groomed, his nails manicured.
I’ve met many well-dressed salesmen by now; our house is often full of them, drinking, smoking, dancing, telling unlikely stories, paying court to my father. This man is not like that. The stranger is quiet, with an edge of nervousness.
‘I am calling to see Mr Ralph Churches.’ His accent is middle European.
Mr Churches is playing golf, I explain – might be out for a while.
‘I wish to wait for him.’
I’m now beyond my pay grade. I bolt through the house and down the stairs to the garden. ‘Mum, there’s this guy with an accent looking for Dad. He wants to wait until Dad gets back.’
From then on, it is Mum’s show: the polite enquiries and rituals of welcome – the weather, coffee, or tea? – while the stranger perches on the edge of his chair, ready to spring up. Fascinated, I hang around. This is far more interesting than Frodo moaning through Mordor.
Half an hour later, we hear Dad’s car turn into the drive. He must have won, as he is singing to himself in German. The key turns in the door; the stranger is on his feet. Unsettled, he is feeling all his pockets, as though he has lost something. Mum goes to the door and has a quiet word with Dad. By the time Dad enters the living room, the stranger has relaxed again. In his hand, he holds a small black-and-white photograph showing a column of men climbing a hill. The stranger reaches out his other hand. The handshake is firm, his eyes intense.
‘Ralph, it’s Čolo. I’ve been looking for you for over twenty-five years.’
Dad processes, brightens, then roars with delight. A bear hug turns into a shuffling dance. Mum brings out three glasses of slivovica. Čolo gives the photo to Ralph, my dad.
‘That’s me on the left, Švejk, Franjo, then you and Les.’
The party that follows lasts two days, Dad insisting that Čolo stays with us. It is during these two days of revels that I hear the ridiculous news. My boisterous, sarcastic father is a secret hero.
The story comes out in fits and starts. The photo: Dad has seen it before; Mum has seen it before. It shows a young version of Dad, wearing a slouch hat, in a pine forest. There are at least fifty men strung out down a hill behind him. Dad won’t give a straight answer to any of my questions, but Čolo and Mum become a double act to line up the bones of the past. Dad fleshes out a detail here and there. A lot of it sails straight over my fourteen-year-old head. I knew that Dad had been in the army during the war. That was the limit of my knowledge.
That day I learned that the Germans captured him in Greece. Why he had been in Greece was a mystery to me. He was held as a prisoner of war in a camp in what I knew as Yugoslavia. With his gift for mimicry, he taught himself German and was elected camp leader, negotiating on behalf of his fellow prisoners. He escaped, and in some woods came upon Partisans who were fighting against the Germans. He persuaded them to come back with him and liberate his camp. Then, a real adventure began. The photograph Čolo brought had been taken during the escape.
The whole episode was an official secret, and Dad was under orders not to talk about it. Čolo was one of the Partisans who had helped Dad: he was free to talk.
Now the last six months made sense! Over the previous winter Dad and Mum had taken their first long-haul trip together. He took three months’ long-service leave for a tour: Greece, Yugoslavia, Germany, France, and the UK. I’d stayed behind with Dad’s eldest surviving sister Claire.
Before his apprehension, villagers in Greece had helped Dad evade capture by the Germans, so on their grand tour Dad and Mum had thrown a thank-you party in every Greek village that had sheltered him. The Yugoslav consul in Sydney had given Dad introductions to officials in Yugoslavia, which enabled Dad to be reunited with the Partisans who had helped him all those years ago. The food, wine, stories, and dancing had gone on for days.
In the three months since they’d returned, the family diet had changed. Mum now made salads with feta cheese and olives; she cooked garlic lamb. We had bottles of imported mineral water at the table; Dad was barbecuing ćevapi, rich Balkan minced sausages.
During all these reunions one person had been missing. Even though he was a Partisan war hero, Čolo had fallen foul of the post-war regime in Yugoslavia and fled via Austria, settling in Melbourne in 1947. There he had established a thriving market garden and nursery and become a wealthy man. In 1972, by now an affluent Australian citizen, he’d decided he could now go back and visit his family. There he’d renewed many friendships, which had eventually led to an extraordinary conversation with his old comrades.
‘I’ve been looking all over Australia for Ralph Churches, but I’m damned if I can find him . . .’
There was an outburst of laughter.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Ralph and his wife were here a week ago! Here’s his address!’
So Čolo came to our front door, and I left Middle Earth.
In 1977 my parents returned to Yugoslavia for another round of parties. Then, in 1985, Yugoslav television wanted to make a documentary about the escape story. With Australia’s SBS TV they developed the story, and then they approached Dad. Sorry, he told them: he was still bound by the Official Secrets Act. Eventually, after some negotiation between SBS and the Australian Army, Dad was allowed a special release to talk about his experiences. Later, I began to nag Dad to write his story down for his family, and the memoir he wrote became a book, A Hundred Miles as the Crow Flies. Dad made some enquiries of the Australian and UK authorities to clarify some details, but although he was now free to speak, officialdom would not, which he found incredibly frustrating.
Now some official records have opened a little, and more of the story can be written. Given Dad’s capacity for elaboration, I expected to be correcting his narrative. However, extraordinary research by Edmund Goldrick through the UK National Archives, and those of Slovenia, Australia, and New Zealand, shows I was wrong to doubt Dad. Edmund and I have pieced together evidence of a wild adventure, even though some details are still classified – Dad was true to his word to protect official secrets to the end. His yarn made Tolkien’s words pale for a fourteen-year-old boy in 1972. How a bloke from the Australian bush charmed his way out of prison, and then went back for his mates.