How I Won the War (19 page)

T
HE POSITION WAS SERIOUS
when we landed in Greece in December 1944. The Allied Forces in Europe held the Grande Bretagne Hotel and its environs in the centre of Athens and enjoyed the occasional use of the airport. The ELAS rebels held the rest of Greece. Colonel Plaster called a Montgomery-meeting of all officers and N.C.O.’s to drive home the full gravity of our situation.

“… supplies are very difficult. All our dumps were located on the outskirts of Athens and the blasted rebels have got the lot. The N.A.A.F.I. warehouse held two hundred gross of whisky, three hundred of gin, and God only knows how much beer. It is rumoured that the first United Nations
relief consignment contained twelve hundred bottles of
bourbon.
Intelligence believe that at R.A.F. Headquarters there was a secret Mosquito with its reserve tanks full of brandy…. And now everything is lost … all supplies have been cut off.” He spread his arms in naked despair. “But we must not give in. We must grind back these ragtag and bobtail fellers as we ground back the Boche. I look to the Musketeers to be in the forefront of the battle and to recapture as rapidly as possible the vital supply dumps upon which depend the
success
or failure of any campaign…. The only stock at present held by the Allies consists entirely of the local wine, retsina, which tastes strongly of pine disinfectant …” He pursed his lips and shivered delicately at the memory. “The flavour comes from the pine resin which is smeared inside the barrels before the wine is put in. When the Turks conquered Greece they tried to discourage the national pastime of drunkenness by ordaining that the wine should be made unpalatable by adulterating it with pine resin. But our ancient and gallant ally, the Greek, defied this atrocity of his teetotal oppressors. They applied themselves to this coniferous brew, they proudly persevered over the years, and finally succeeded in developing a taste for wine with pine resin in it…. What the Greeks can do, the British can do. It will be hard at first but we must keep trying. Until our efforts are blessed by the Lord Mighty in Battle with success and the recapture of the hard stuff, we must emulate the Greeks and acquire a taste for retsina…. And may God be with us all!”

With the reinforcements of the Division, it was the plan steadily to expand our perimeter until the enemy was pushed out of Athens, and to combine this process with special sorties into the suburbs to relieve beleaguered places of
importance
. During our initial week of skirmishing around the West End, Major Arkdust returned beaming from a
conference
at R.H.Q.

“C Company, with under command one phalanx of the Greek National Guard, is to make a sortie directed on the district of Coralos, twelve miles out. We will be allocated armoured trucks for transport and since the enemy have no A.P. weapons or artillery, life should not be overly difficult. We will split into three columns, one under Captain Croker
directed on the waterworks, one under Lieutenant Goodbody to relieve the 812th General Hospital, and one, commanded by myself, will recapture the Herodias Brewery.”

From the detail of his orders I learnt that the 812th General Hospital had been cut off since the first day of the rising six weeks before. It was assumed that I would find that the building which housed it had been sacked and the fifty nursing sisters had suffered fates worse than death.

“… and now,” said Major Arkdust at the end. “Any questions?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Could I have a map of Athens?”

“Very sorry, Goodbody, but we’ve still only one map per company. Platoons will have to make do with the tramways guide for a bit longer. You can’t go wrong for Coralos if you start at Omonia Square and follow the No. 7 route. The line finishes at the Coralos depot.”

I took my task back to the platoon and gave out my own battleplan.

“Nurses, eh?” said Corporal Dooley. “Ought to be a bit of all right when we get
there.”

“Those poor girls, Corporal Dooley,” I said, “will have been through six weeks of pure hell. It is up to us when we get there to behave like English gentlemen.”

“Nobody won’t be there, sir Lieutenant,” said Spiros, my interpreter, a gloomy, thirty-year-old monarchist moulded on Mickey Rooney. “Them ELAS bastards take the women to the mountains and burn down the hospital. You see. I know for these things. I know Greek peoples.”

My Anglo-Greek column formed up at dawn by the No. 7 tram stop in Omonia Square. As we drove out towards our perimeter, machine guns started to rattle on street corners and the day’s warfare began. I watched the lamp posts anxiously for No. 7 tram stops, and we went well for the two miles to the borderline. There was a brisk skirmish going on over the final crossroads. On our side, two hidden Brens chattered red streaks of tracer from the fire-blackened shell of a police station, and rifle fire crackled back across the square from the shops opposite.

“That’ll be the para-boys,” said Corporal Dooley.

“How do you know?” I asked. There was nobody in view.

“That’s a jeweller’s shop. The para-boys fight their
revolution
from jeweller’s shop to jeweller’s shop. Some of them got that many rings they can’t bend their fingers.”

A red-bereted paratroop sergeant crept out of the police station behind the screen of my armoured truck.

“Where are you heading?”

“Coralos.”

“Best of luck. We’ll ease up while you go through.” He ran back and a few moments later the firing from our side died away. But the Greek bullets swept unabated across the square. Although we were armoured I saw no point in risking a stray one through a slit or a shot-up tire at this stage and waited back between the cover of the corner buildings.

Spiros stood up and yelled a long protest in Greek. An answering voice came back from the enemy and after a bellowing conversation their firing ceased and all was silent at the crossroads.

“What did you say to them, Spiros?”

“I say we’re not interested in their battle. We got to go and fight some other place. We don’t want no jewellery out of their shop. Sooner they let us get on our way sooner they can get on with their battle.”

Carefully spaced at fifteen vehicles to the mile and
travelling
precisely at the official speed of fifteen miles in the hour, my column of twelve trucks rolled majestically over the cross-roads.

“Thank you very much,” I cried politely to the
paratroops.

“
Efaristo!
”
shouted Spiros to his countrymen.

The No. 7 tram certainly took a tortuous route thereafter and I had to be extremely alert to catch its convolutions.

“Strewth!” said Gripweed, who was driving, after twenty minutes of twisting and turning. “I’m getting dizzy. If we turn left once more we’re going to be treading on our own tail.”

He wasn’t quite right, but after two more turnings we found ourselves cruising back the way we had come to the jeweller’s shop junction. The battle was waging hot and
strong again, but as we came into sight, the firing slowly faded away and my convoy sailed solemnly back over the crossroads.

“Blimey,” said the paratroop sergeant. “But you’ve been quick.”

“So sorry to interrupt you again,” I said. “But we seem to have taken the wrong turning.”

A derisive Grecian voice boomed out of the jeweller’s best bedroom. Spiros cat-called in reply.

“Bloody damn cheek!” he said. “He say why we come running back to Winston Churchill so soon. We see
bogeyman
or boy with popgun?”

I stopped and studied the tramway guide.

“If we turn right here and then right again,” I decided, “we can pick up the No. 7 route without passing that
cross-roads
again.”

Gripweed followed my directions and sure enough we picked up the No. 7 signs and proceeded on our
complicated
way.

“Oh, Gawd stone me gently!” he said ten minutes later. “We’re coming up to Mary’s house again.”

Impossibly, we were bearing down on the crossroads once again, coming this time down the northern arm, at least from a direction we had not used before. The gun fire trickled once more to silence as I led my parade rumbling across the square. The paratroop sergeant began swearing most
unpleasantly
as we went by and I can only assume that he had not noticed my rank. I leaned out to mollify him.

“I really am most awfully sorry, Sergeant, to break into things again. There must be something wrong with my map.”

“Get out of it,” he yelled. “Get off up to Coralos and leave us alone.”

Greek jeers came out of the jeweller’s and Spiros spat in a silent disdain.

“Funny bastard over there. We trying to make out we a big army, he ask, by driving round and round like on stage? We don’t fool him, he say. He recognize us every time.”

I held a study group with Spiros over the tramways guide. Unfortunately he didn’t know this neck of Athens, and the
map only showed main streets. But he worked out a route off to the left which would get us back to No. 7 without interfering with the warfare up the road.

It worked beautifully and we picked up the tram signs again and were well on the way to Coralos when Gripweed began to laugh hysterically.

“Oh! No! It can’t be? We must be on the ancient Greek Inner Circle or something….”

We came round a hairpin bend and on to the crossroads again, this time from the south. The crossfire tailed away rather grudgingly as I urged Gripweed to spurt across, thus keeping the interruption to the minimum.

“Please accept my sincerest apologies,” I cried as we passed the paratroops, “but this interruption is caused by circumstances quite beyond my control.”

The sergeant was dancing up and down in the doorway of the police station and hurling stones at my trucks as they went by.

“You come round here again, we’ll bloody do the lot of you! We’ll teach you to take the mickey out of the airborne…. We got a war on here. We ain’t got time for your blasted ring-o’-roses …”

Equal fury bawled out from the ELAS.

“He say what the hell we trying now,” said Spiros. “The psychological warfare? Are we trying to drive him
god-blasted
mad by going round and round in circles? He say if he gets his hands on you, sir Lieutenant, he personally
castrate
you.”

I stopped the column and Sergeant Transom, who was travelling with the National Guard, came up.

“I’m on to their game now, sir,” he said. “There’s a couple of kids keep switching the tram signs about on the lamp posts. I caught sight of them last time round.”

“How diabolical,” I said. “The indoctrination of
children
.”

“I don’t know about any indoctrination. They were killing themselves laughing last time we went by…. But we’re going to be all right now, ain’t we, Aristotle?”

With him had come a round, beaming National Guard in a
greatcoat three sizes too large and a cap, in the same ratio, too small.

“O.K. boss. All hunky-dory. Coralos, right away! Ding, ding!”

He pulled the string of an imaginary tram bell.

“You speak bloody Greek,” said Spiros to him,
half-drawing
his revolver. “I’m the interpreter round here.”

Aristotle was a No. 7 tram driver in civilian life. The only way to Coralos, he announced, was back over the crossroads and straight on. The battle for the jeweller’s shop had settled down again and volleys were spanging back and forth across the square. I turned the column and once more we advanced on our objective. As we reached the junction, the firing politely died for a few moments. Then, just as we were in the middle of the crossroads, the paratroops stood up in the shell of the police station, the ELAS came to the windows of their shop and both sides, their true enmity sadly forgotten, turned their combined fire towards us. As the bullets whined over the top of the truck and Anglo-Greek imprecations echoed against the armour, Gripweed put his foot down and we ran through the international gauntlet and out on our mission of mercy up the Coralos road.

Once out of the range of both friend and foe we bowled steadily along under Aristotle’s guidance. We were hindered on our way by roadblocks built French-fashion of cobbles and carts, old men dropping petrol bombs from third-floor balconies, blackbearded priests with grenades in their
cassocks
, and the young lady captured in Kalamaki a week before with a gun up her skirt. We weren’t actually attacked by any damsels so intimately armed, but the official report of the young lady of Kalamaki was taken as licence by
Corporal
Dooley and others to lift the skirts of any presentable woman we encountered just to make sure. Except at the roadblocks, where we had to drive off small defence parties, the main ELAS forces, probably disliking the weight of my column, confined their efforts to attack by incendiary-tram.

We met the first of these secret weapons when we were about three miles from Coralos.