"Shall I notify your father, Miss?"
"Yes, please do. Tell him that I am all right. I must really go now. I have to reach Maleme before it gets dark. I know they need nurse assistants very badly. That's where I am going."
"But you look exhausted, Miss. Please stay and rest for a while."
"There is no time to waste." Anna lowered her head. "Death is running rampant, snatching young and old alike. We must save as many as we can!"
Anna quickly resumed her journey back to the main road. The lieutenant was calling after her, "Miss Anna ... Miss Anna … " hoping she would tend the wounded men there, until the medics arrived. But Anna was already gone, and she couldn't hear him.
A heavily bandaged man in the next room painfully called out "Anna! Anna!"―his right fist clenched tightly around a gold cross hanging from his smoke-blackened neck. It must have been something very precious to him. Nobody knew who he was. He had simply been left there when the battle was over. After Anna's departure, he made no other movement, but lay back, exhausted, just repeating in a faint voice, "Anna! Anna!"
***
Anna came across a German parachutist entangled and hanging from an olive tree. Out of mercy, she cut him loose and bandaged his wounds. Some of his comrades were not so lucky. Four of them lay still on the ground, their eyes frozen heavenward. None of them was more than twenty years old. After she reluctantly accepted two bars of chocolate from the grateful German soldier, Anna continued on her way, bandaging and providing first aid to many: Greeks, Germans and British. She treated so many wounded that she lost count.
The dead were all around her, with nobody to bury them. She closed the eyes of many of them with a prayer and held some in her arms as she mourned. Tired and hungry, her clothes soaked in blood, she spent the night at a farmhouse with an old woman, who washed her clothes and offered her a meal of warm lentil soup, olives, and dry bread crusts. Anna was so exhausted that she could not eat.
"You must eat, daughter," the old woman insisted. "You need the nourishment. Hopefully, tomorrow will not be as bad as today ... but I am afraid … "
The bombardment had continued all day, but stopped at nightfall. The German paratroopers landed at Souda, Akrotiri, and Maleme, amounting to thousands of soldiers marching toward Sfakia and the Samaria Gorge. Very few people knew what was going on other than that they were being invaded and were in danger.