LOOK. This is what the trial of a lifetime looked like to 2,100 men-those who lived to clamber ashore. Hard still to imagine that the enemy photographer and a victim, Infantryman Spence Edge, were less than 100 yards apart 40 years ago.

"No doubt about when they were taken," he says, "since the storm died away overnight."

Here we publish for the first time extraordinary pictures,

 just obtained by an almost equally extraordinary coincidence, of a terrible event on the bitter coast of Greece, December 9, 1941, when in a torpedoing 44 NZ POWs, desert captured, lost their lives among 500 dead desert soldiers. This was abroad the Italian POW ship Sebastoian Venier on her doomed trip from North Africa to Italy.

She is known incorrectly in NZ official war history books and elsewhere, as Jantzen,

but for the sake of fellow POWs, our unofficial historian uses the latter name for his account.

Another torpedoing tragedy followed near Greece in mid-August 1942, when POW ship Nino Bixio, torpedoed by the submarine Turbulent, killed an estimated 400 desert soldiers including 118 NZers. These two ships account for more than one-third of the Kiwi POWs who died "from sickness, accident, and other causes"....torpedoing not specified.

Cameraman watched as Jantzen grounded

ON THE night of December 8, 1941, an Italian cargo ship Sebastiano Vanier, left Benghazi for Italy with 2000 Commonwealth POWs battened down in her five holds. At 1435 hours the following day the Jantzen- as she was remembered by many who sailed in her - was torpedoed by HM Submarine Porpoise (Lt Cdr E.F. Pizey) four miles west of Point Methoni which lies on the south-western tip of the Greek Peloponnese. Five hundred men, 44 of them New Zealanders, died in the bloody shambles of the ship's two forward holds.Jantzen did not sink. but she was promptly deserted by her Italian Captain and all but a few crew members who were not fast enough to keep up with their fleet-footed skipper.

The 1500 men who survived the torpedo's blast would almost certainly have drowned but for an unknown German marine engineer who remained aboard to take command of the crippled ship.Two hours later, in a gathering storm, the gallant German ran the Jantzen hard aground and beam on to a narrow beach which lay below the high seawalls of a ruined Venetian castle.The ships plight had been observed by Italian occupation forces stationed in the area, the survivors will remember that

  100 or more of these men were waiting on the beach and along the seawalls to greet the first prisoners who struggled ashore  before an ill-fated life-line had been rigged. One of these men was a young officer, a keen photographer who had gone down to the Venetian castle earlier in the afternoon to photograph the high seas which were bursting into inverted Niagras of foaming water against the seawalls. he had seen the Jantzen vaguely in the distance but, unaware that disaster had overtaken her, took no further notice of the ship until he realised that she was slowly heading for the coast stern first. Then, as the ship drew closer, he saw with astonishment that she was well down by the head and obviously in serious trouble.Only when the Jantzen swung slowly to the north before beginning her final run for the shore did the Italian notice that hundreds of men were jammed tightly together on the deck over her stern. He watched in awe as the ship came steadily on to finally run hard aground at his feet. Since there was very little else he cothe young officer began to photograph the stranded ship. Few men have ever been better placed to film the death throes of a gallant vessel.uld do

The war dragged on and the Jantzen was forgotten by

nearly all but the men who survived her tragedy.

Italy capitulated and Germany finally went down in total defeat. The young Italian officer returned safely to his home in Genoa with his much prized photographs of a stranded ship. And there but for one chance in a million, the photographs would have remained unseen by any prisoner who sailed in Jantzen on her last voyage. Before he left Greece the Italian fell in love with and eventually married a young Greek girl from Methoni.Thirty seven years later a Jantzen survivor who had never lost his interest in a remarkable experience wrote to the New Zealand Embassy in Athens asking if it would be possible to obtain a recent photograph of the beach over which 1500 men scrambled to safety so long ago. By great good fortune his letter was handed to Mr. Percy Holdaway, the embassy's marketing officer and himself an ex-serviceman who had served in Greece. Through the local Methonian Society Mr Holdaway met a young lawyer named Mr Kostakis who had been born in Methoni after the Jantzen incident. He knew her story from his parents.Mr Kostakis could remember seeing Jantzen cut up for scrap in the early fifties but he promised to contact a client and

 a close family friend whom he was sure would have some interesting information for Mr Holdaway. This promise must rank as a great understatement, since the friend of Mr Kostakis spent much of his time in Methoni visiting relatives. He was, incredibly, the son of our Italian officer and his Greek wife. He had seen his father's photographs of Jantzen and, when contacted, promised to obtain them for Mr Holdaway to copy. I am deeply indebted to all these gentlemen, and the still unnamed Italian officer, for all their assistance.

This astonishing information reached me in New Zealand in due course with an assurance that the photographs would be copied and sent on. An agonising 18 months went by with no further word from the embasy in Athens, and assuming that something had gone wrong I gave up hope of receiving copies of the Italian's photographs. Then out of the blue came another letter from Mr Holdaway. He regretted the delay but was pleased to say that he had the photos, which were being copied. They arrived a month later-40 years after a young Italian officer took them from the seawalls at Methoni.

Spence Edge, ex POW Whangarei.