One is the tale of Ted’s bottle.
I first stumbled across Ted’s bottle on my first visit to the Waihao Forks pub way back in 1998 and 26 years later it’s still with me. You probably know about the bottle of beer. It was left at the pub in 1939 by Ted d’Auvergne, a local man about to set off to war. "I’ll drink it when I get back," he told publican George Provan. George put the bottle on a shelf awaiting Ted’s return but Ted never returned. He was killed in Crete and is buried at Suda Bay. George Provan and the publicans who followed him have kept the bottle in the bar and it now holds a special place as New Zealand’s most unusual war memorial.
Publican Bruce Wilson told me the story during my first visit, by which time the bottle was enshrined in a glass case put together during Jimmy Lines’ days as publican in the 1970s. Bruce admitted he had told the story so often he wondered if a booklet would be a good idea. I agreed and after recording people who’d known Ted for a radio documentary, a small book was cobbled together. Since then, it’s gone through several editions, each time growing larger as the story took on a life of its own.
Akaroa photographer Kerry Walker found Yakavos Kalionzakis, the Cretan who had nursed the wounded d’Auvergne for several days before the soldier died. The next edition carried his picture of Yakavos and later a copy of that book was handed over with some emotion to Yakavos by Annie Villiers, a Dunedin woman going to Crete on holiday.
In 2018, Ted’s great nieces, Rosa Westgarth and Jan Gibson, travelled to Crete but found that Yakavos had died just few years earlier. They visited Ted’s grave and learned that local historian Costas Mamalakis visits the cemetery each year on the anniversary of the battle for Crete and places an unopened bottle of Speight’s next to the headstone.
All the while the story’s telling was growing like the ever-widening ripples in a pool when a stone is lobbed in. Naseby poet Ross "Blue Jeans" McMillan’s The Soldier Who Never Returned was set to music and recorded by country singer Dusty Spittle. The bottle featured in a couple of television programmes and Ron Palenski gave it a chapter in his Men of Valour, New Zealand and the Battle for Crete. During 2018, the Waimate district raised $50,000 for a statue of Ted by sculptor Don Paterson which is now outside the Waihao Forks pub.
During all this time, the Waimate RSA has been holding an Anzac Day service at the pub and placing a poppy next to the bottle in its cabinet.
Getting to Waihao Forks takes you through some fine country, the backdrop of the video. For the filming, the bar had been darkened and a smoke machine generated the atmosphere of a 1930s public bar. A small crowd had gathered, locals and a few from further afield who knew the story, and they were recorded singing the new song about Ted’s bottle. The tune is toe-tapping and the words are simple and moving. They echoed for a poignant half hour around the bar that Ted once knew.
I didn’t join in the singing and those who’ve heard me sing will know why but, in the eerie haze of a re-created old-time bar, I shared the emotion the singers felt as they belted out the chorus:
Don’t open that beer my friend,
More than just a brew,
Been here since Ted left home,
We’ll keep his memory true.
Keeping the memory is a responsibility which comes with owning the pub. Shane and Sndy Doolan ensured the bottle's safety for almost 20 years and for the last couple of years Mark Tagney and Sue Tily have been the guardians of Ted’s story.
The new video will pop up on various platforms and a new generation will learn of the soldier who never returned and of a story which never goes away.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
