Neil Churches - The Greatest Escape: A Gripping Story of Wartime Courage and Adventure

For Lucy

The Slovenian language uses the Latin alphabet. There are some differences from English in pronunciation.

C is pronounced ts

(Latsko is written Lacko)

is pronounced ch

(Cholnik is written olnik and Semich is written Semi)

is pronounced sh

(Shentilj is written entilj)

is pronounced zh

(Ozhbalt is written Obalt)

Sydney, Australia, in late spring. Standing at the door is a tall stranger, asking for my father. Its 1972, a Saturday afternoon; Dad is playing golf. Mum is out the back, gardening. Its 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.

Ive 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.

Im now beyond my pay grade. I bolt through the house and down the stairs to the garden. Mum, theres this guy with an accent looking for Dad. He wants to wait until Dad gets back.

From then on, it is Mums 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 Dads 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, its olo. Ive 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. olo gives the photo to Ralph, my dad.

Thats me on the left, vejk, Franjo, then you and Les.

The party that follows lasts two days, Dad insisting that olo 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 wont give a straight answer to any of my questions, but olo 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 olo brought had been taken during the escape.

The whole episode was an official secret, and Dad was under orders not to talk about it. olo 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. Id stayed behind with Dads 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 theyd 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 evapi, rich Balkan minced sausages.

During all these reunions one person had been missing. Even though he was a Partisan war hero, olo 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, hed decided he could now go back and visit his family. There hed renewed many friendships, which had eventually led to an extraordinary conversation with his old comrades.

Ive been looking all over Australia for Ralph Churches, but Im 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! Heres his address!

So olo 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 Australias 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 Dads 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 Tolkiens 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.

Ralph Churches worked hard to put his farming childhood behind him. He did not talk of it much and he was not interested in nostalgic visits to where he began life. He enjoyed camping expeditions in the Australian wilderness but avoided anything agricultural that wasnt a vineyard. Most Australians of his generation were urban and dreamed of life in the bush, but Ralph knew the bush well and wanted to put himself as far as he could from it. He took pride in being a multilingual sophisticated European bourgeois. He created that identity through one escape after another, the first being from his roots.