Ted's bottle: here's to you anyway, pal

By JIM SULLIVAN

Perhaps there is no more poignant memorial to a fallen soldier than Ted's bottle. It is an unopened bottle of Ballins XXXX green-label beer behind the bar in the Waihao Forks Hotel.

The pub is perched on the banks of the Waihao River, near Waimate in South Canterbury, and for 60 years the bottle has been a reminder to the locals of Ted d'Auvergne, the soldier who never came back.

Having travelled to Timaru to enlist just three days after recruiting for the First Echelon began on September 12, 1939, he was passed fit in spite of a hearing loss which many thought would keep him out of the Army.

Although d'Auvergne was 33 and older than most volunteers, his 13 years' Territorial Army experience with the Canterbury Yeomanry Cavalry made him an ideal recruit. Within two weeks he was in camp at Burnham and three months later was sent home for final leave.

Early in the new year, d'Auvergne set off back to Burnham. The local legend - sometimes disputed - is that he thumbed a ride on the local goods train. There is no doubt that while he waited to leave the tiny settlement, publican George Provan called him into the pub for a drink.

The Ballins beer bottle left behind was one of a pair pulled out for the farewell drinks. Time was short and the second bottle remained unopened. "Save it until I get back," called d'Auvergne.

Nine days later he was on the Sobieski, sailing from Lyttelton for overseas service with 27 (Machine Gun) Battalion. For once, the Army got it right - the man who loved motors was posted as a driver.

Through Egypt, Palestine and Greece, d'Auvergne drove his truck until the New Zealanders came to Crete in May 1941. At the lost battle for Maleme airport many New Zealanders died, some were taken prisoner, some escaped after the battle and headed south, and others hid for months in the island's steep hill country - but no one knew what had happened to d'Auvergne.

In the battalion's official history his is the only name on the roll of honour which bears no date of death. By June 1941, his family and the whole of Waihao Forks learned that he was "missing." By July the message was "missing, believed wounded."

All the while the unopened beer bottle stood on the shelf in the pub. Each Anzac Day George Provan placed a poppy beside it and after his retirement he ensured that his successors kept up the tradition. The poppy gesture became more significant from 1946 when all hopes of d'Auvergne's surviving as a prisoner of war or hiding out in the hills of Crete were dashed.

The full story reached d'Auvergne's family in a letter from Takovos Kalionzakis, a Cretan who had discovered the wounded d'Auvergne in the fields near Maleme. The Cretan took d'Auvergne to his house and for two days did what he could for the dying New Zealander, who had managed to write a letter for his family.

The machine-gun bullet did its work. Kalionzakis buried the soldier in his garden, hid his papers in his house, and tried to deliver the last letter to the Red Cross or any New Zealand officer he could find.

Instead, he was taken by the Germans, who confiscated the letter and sent him to work camps in Europe for the duration of the war.

In 1946, Kalionzakis retrieved d'Auvergne's hidden papers and wrote to the family confirming what they had most feared. Kalionzakis is still alive in Crete and was "discovered" last year by Christchurch photographer Kerry Walker, who became intrigued by the story of Ted's bottle.

Attempts to track the man who buried d'Auvergne initially floundered because his first name was really "Yakovos" - not Takovos.

Ted d'Auvergne was reburied at the Suda Bay cemetery on Crete, and over the years at Waihao Forks the brown bottle, now in a glass case with the battalion insignia, and gradually being smothered in a red flood of poppies, has kept the d'Auvergne story alive.

Present publican Bruce Wilson believes a booklet, to be launched today, will help visitors understand the part "Ted's bottle" plays in local traditions.

Each Anzac Day, while other New Zealanders gather at stone plinths, granite towers and memorial gates, the Waimate RSA members gather at the Waihao Forks pub to stand in silence for a moment before an unopened beer bottle.

* Dunedin broadcaster Jim Sullivan is the author of the booklet Ted's Bottle.