Standing in the Mururika soldiers' urupa (cemetery) at Ohinemutu an emotional Evangelia Kenellis marvelled at the coincidence that brought her there exactly 75 years after the Battle of Crete.
Visiting Rotorua with her son George and his family from Raglan on Sunday, she had vivid memories of the day Germans invaded the island that's been her home all her 80 years.
Among the most vivid were the members of the Maori Battalion who her village sheltered and fed on horta, Crete's equivalent of puha.
"We were starving, there was nothing for us to eat but horta, but when the Maori soldiers came we went out into the fields and gathered it for them; we survived on that and olive oil so that's what they survived on too."
She told how the Cretans literally gave the clothes off their own backs to disguise battalion members attempting to make their way to the coast.
