10. The Liberation of Greece

While Churchill considered it most important to regain the Balkans, Roosevelt thought that no American troops should go there, saving them all for the main European theatre. As a result, Churchill said that the British would attack the Germans in Greece alone.

After studying all the information provided by their secret service in the Balkans, which was really efficient, they planned to send a small force, consisting of only one parachute brigade, ours, and one armoured brigade from Italy. This was considered enough to defeat the Germans, since they had secretly reduced their troops, sending most to the eastern front.

Two Top Secret operation orders were prepared. One was genuine, and was sent to us. The other was a fake, and was given to a double agent who then put it into the hands of the German secret service. Their order showed us as being parachuted on the Athens airport, with the armoured brigade landing at Piraeus, and two infantry divisions being brought from Italy, where they were actually fighting at that time. This was to frighten the Germans, and make them hurry northward out of Athens.

However, since they were sure that we were coming, the Germans, according to our agents, had planned to blow up the Marathon dam, which holds the water in a lake, acting as the reservoir for Athen’s water supply. Once fires were started in that city, the town would burn with no water. So the British dropped enough gold to pay off the people who were supposed to blow up the dam.

We all looked forward to the Greek operation. None of us spoke that language, except our padre, who had taken Greek at college. Several of us had taken Latin, and it wasn’t much use in Italy. It turned out that modern Greek isn’t the same as the ancient variety either!  I’m afraid that we had a terrific party the night before, since this was to be a daylight drop, and there were quite a few hangovers.

Our flight over on October 14th was uneventful, and we enjoyed looking down on the Corinth Canal, before fastening up our parachute straps. As we approached Megara, the little town on whose airfield we were to drop, and from which the German parachutists had flown to attack Crete, the pilot told us that it was pretty windy, and we might have rough landings. How right he was!  Many suffered fractured arms and legs, concussions and so on. I had a sore neck for quite a while but couldn’t x-ray it to see if anything was cracked. There were no Germans to be seen, and we were soon met by a group of Greek citizens, who welcomed us.

My first meeting was with a young man, who introduced himself as ”Aristotle”. I immediately remembered my course in Logic and Scientific Reasoning...Aristotle is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore Aristotle is mortal...This was known as a perfect figure, with three absolutes ...A-A-A. We had to remember this by thinking of BArbArA, who had a perfect figure!  In any event, Aristotle told me a lot. He said that the Germans were now concentrated around Athens, and were planning to move out, only fighting a rearguard action to keep us from catching up too fast, blowing up the bridges and cutting the power lines and telephone wires. He thought that the communists would try to take over, so the Russians would win politically rather than militarily. How right he was!

As we moved toward Athens, the population came out by the hundreds of thousands, waving and cheering. Our General Scobie moved his headquarters into the Grande Bretagne Hotel and we had a small post on the Acropolis to prove that we had won. Their currency was almost worthless, nothing less than a 500 drachmai note being of any value. We had new British Greek money, which soon became accepted as official currency.

We had few casualties, other than those hurt jumping initially. Some of the troops moved up the eastern coast of Greece, while my section went with an assault group who were to take Salonika. We had to pass through minefields, and this was fun, in a way, since nobody got hurt, and they blew up the mines as they were located in front of us.

We landed at the harbour without much shooting, and found the town in a pitiful state. The Germans had eliminated the entire Jewish population, which had been large and had destroyed their cemetery, bulldozing it after taking the best stones for use in walls. The rather nice house that I was allotted for my section had been some sort of army headquarters, and they had poured cement, about a foot thick on the upper floor, to make it safe against bombs below. As a result, the doors upstairs had all been shortened, cut off a foot above the floor, and the ceiling seemed lower.

A tragi-comedy  was the decision that we should collect all our ”escape money” American one dollar bills (they were the only ones accepted as being equivalent to silver) given to us before leaving Rome. My section being very democratic, thought we should buy a musical instrument that all would enjoy, several playing the guitar. Accordingly we afforded one and it had no sooner been purchased when it was stolen. Immediately a search went on for the culprit, the friendly Greeks coming to our assistance. In no time, a young chap was found with the guitar. He was promptly shot. Whenever I heard the soft strains of music, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry.

After Salonika, our little group went through Drama then Kavalla, close to the Turkish border and not far from Bulgaria. We were in communist territory and just tolerated because my group consisted only of engineers to repair the bridges and my medicals, who helped look after the civilians. There was practically no medical care other than midwives and nurses. The Red Cross sent medical supplies but when they arrived, there was no doctor to tell people what to do with them. There were some real nightmares.

In one village, we heard that the communists were holding a regular Greek Army officer, considered a Royalist, prisoner, and were killing him slowly by kicking him. We were told that we mustn’t interfere or we would just disappear. Since the communists were in control, our presence was just barely tolerated.

We soon moved back to Athens, where it was decided that all our troops were needed to control the communists there, or they would seize power.

At this time, Churchill heard how dangerous the situation was, and brave man that he had always been, decided that he should fly to Athens, to meet with the communist general, who had previously received help from the British, and had fought the Germans through the underground. His flight is described in “Clementine” the biography of his wife, which is beautifully written. In any event, the communist general was not prepared to meet Churchill unless his safety could be guaranteed, and I was asked to send an ambulance for him.

I kicked myself afterwards, that I hadn’t gone as co-driver or something, in the hope that I might just see the dignitaries, at least. Their meeting must have had a good effect on the E.A.M., the communist party and its army, the E.L.A.S., since things quietened down afterwards.

It is hard to imagine what the fighting was like in Athens, since the communists usually wore no uniform, or else they wore one of ours, taken from a soldier, or officer they had killed. One of these was a fellow medical officer and friend, Capt. Phillip Irwin, whose body we never recovered.

When we returned to Athens, we first went to Rouf Barracks the night of December 5th a fairly secure block of buildings, easy to defend. We had an operating room and a few rooms for patients. There was often gunfire outside, and I remember one night, while I was giving an anaesthetic for a patient with a bullet in his brain, there was a shot and a bullet came through the window and hit the wall above my head.

I was most interested to read “On Wings of Healing”, the very complete story of the Airborne Medical Services, by Lt-Col. Howard N. Cole, OBE, TD, FRHistS. Describing our experiences while we were operating in the barracks, he quite accurately related “The next day, Captain A.L. Kerr, acting as CO of the field Ambulance decided to try and make contact with the RMOs with the battalions in the Piraeus area in order to make arrangements for the evacuation of casualties back to the ADS in Rouf Barracks. It was a difficult task in a city under the tense atmosphere of civil war. He passed through several road blocks guarded by heavily-armed ELAS “troops” but was unable to get through to the Battalions”. What he didn’t report was that they nearly made me prisoner, but by pointing to my “Canada” badges and the Red Cross, they remembered the Red Cross Hospital that Canada had given Athens, and let me go free. (Incidentally, I had my ‘45 well hidden. I was sitting on it.)

He again quite vividly described the subsequent trip, “Later in the day, whilst crossing Omonias Square, he was fired on by ELAS”. Incidentally, the jeep suffered only a few bullet holes, none life-threatening and all missed me.

We moved from the barracks to Athens University, on December 14th, which was in a safe area and had more room for our operating room and wards. We were also able to acquire the services of two excellent nurses, “Sally” or Miss Salonopoulos and “Pappy” or Miss Papandreou. Both spoke English, Sally with a Canadian accent, having trained briefly in Toronto and Pappy with a New York accent, having trained at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

We did all kinds of major surgery, abdominal, thoracic, many compound fractures and a couple of brains. Our results were excellent with no infections, except for the compound fractures, since our operating room was so free from infection. We did many transfusions, taking blood from our own volunteers.

At Christmas, our nurses brought decorations from their families and friends, and in spite of the heavy workload, we all had a good time. Our most important visitor was Field-Marshall Alexander who was glad to make rounds and see all our patients. Meeting him years later, as our Governor-General he remembered that occasion vividly. We even had some unusual helpers, a dozen Russian soldiers, who had arrived mysteriously, and we used as gravediggers, since they had to be given “safe jobs”. As soon as peace was agreed upon with the Communists, they disappeared, presumably back to Russia by some route.

Returning to Greece with my wife about ten years ago, I asked about our casualties, but the embassy was able to tell me nothing, and it was a long way out to the little British cemetery, so we didn’t see it.