Elias Eliascos, a former teacher of English at Athens College (a
joint U.S./Greek institution) described to me how he came to be a
news-reader at Radio Cairo in 1941 together with his brother
Patroclos.
"When Hitler declared war on Greece and after the collapse of the
front in northern Greece and in Albania, my brother Patroclos and I
were summoned to the British Embassy in Athens and told that owing to
our close ties with the British Council (of Cultural Relations), it
would not be prudent for us to remain in Athens or even Greece after
the German army had occupied the capital. We were told that we would
be helped to leave Greece together with the British Embassy staff, the
staff of the British Council and all the British nationals in Greece.
"The British Consul-General provided us with the necessary
documents for my brother and me to board the last evacuation vessel
sailing from the port of Piraeus. It was the s/s 'Corinthia' which
left Piraeus on the 18th of April 1941. It happened to be Good Friday
according to the Greek-Orthodox calendar. About five days later
Hitler's army marched into Athens.
"The ship was packed and the British Embassy staff carried most of
the Embassy files with them. One of the passengers was David Balfour
who was the vicar of the little chapel attached to the Evangelismos
Hospital, an impressive tall figure of a man sporting a large black
beard. Although he had been ordained as a priest of the
Greek-Orthodox Church he was a British national and it was widely
rumoured that he was an agent of British Intelligence. His official
title was 'Father Dimitrios'. He was also the spiritual father of the
Greek Royal family. I refer to David Balfour because recently the
'ATHENIAN' which is the only English language magazine in Athens, in
its issue dated January 1988, published a feature article about him,
saying that even before the Germans had entered Athens he had shaved
off his beard and divested himself of his clerical robes.
"I can say quite categorically that this was not true. When the
'Corinthia' sailed he was still 'Father Dimitrios' and in fact he
officiated at a Resurrection service while we were still at sea. On
the voyage we carried out lifeboat drill on two occasions, once when
it was thought that there was a U-boat in the vicinity, and another
time when an aircraft flew overhead which turned out to be friendly.
I shall never forget how I was moved with emotion when I saw the women
getting into the boats, most of them carrying babies or children in
their arms, calmly singing hymns in low voices.
"Some time later I met David Balfour again in Cairo, and this time
he HAD shaved off his beard, and he was wearing the uniform of a Major
in the Intelligence Corps which is a regular unit of the British
army."
Eliascos said he would like to quote a little more from the
sensational article written by J.M. Thursby in the 'ATHENIAN'.
"Several years before war was even declared, the Abwehr (German
military intelligence), along with the Nazi civilian secret service,
had highly trained undercover agents operating in Greece. With
consummate skill they had catalogued all military and civil
information that could be useful to the Third Reich, and organised spy
rings throughout the country. As war became more and more inevitable,
it also became increasingly imperative that Britain and other
anti-fascist countries should gain specific and accurate knowledge of
these operations.
"During this period a monk, who had embraced the Orthodox faith in
Warsaw, arrived from Poland via Mount Athos, to join the monastery of
Pendeli, just outside Athens. According to his biographer John
Freeman, his registration at Pendeli reads,
Cell 102 Serial number 75
Secular name David Balfour
Ecclesiastic name Dimitri
Place of birth England
Age 35
Inscribed order of His Holiness the Archbishop of
Athens.
Coming from the Russian Church.
Archbishopric ordinance number 3197 of 9 May 1936."
"Father Dimitri was obviously a well-educated and very courteous
person. He had studied in various parts of Europe and spoke several
languages fluently. These included ancient, Byzantine and modern
Greek, not to mention colloquial 'mangika' (slang). When a vacancy
arose for a priest to serve the chapel at Evangelismos Hospital in
central Athens, who should be more suitable for this post in the heart
of the select neighbourhood of Kolonaki than the well-educated,
well-bred, charming and conscientious Father Dimitri."
(David Balfour died aged 86 on the 11th of October 1989.)
"Anyway, let me continue my story of the 'Corinthia trip",
Eliascos went on. "We celebrated Easter on board and when we arrived
at Alexandria some of us were sent on to Cairo and others went to
India. My brother and I presented ourselves at the offices of the
Press Department of the British Embassy in the Garden City. We were
received by the well-known Byzantine scholar Stephen Runciman who was
in charge of all foreign language broadcasts directed to Europe, that
is, the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland and
several others. One of our colleagues was Lawrence Durrell who later
became the famous author of many successful books like the banned
'Black Book', 'Bitter Lemons', 'The Alexandria Quartet', 'Prospero's
Cell' and others. But at that time, he used to entertain us daily
with a fresh episode about his Aunt Agatha with the wooden leg."
Eliascos continued: "My brother Patroclos and I were told that we
would be attached to the section producing the broadcasts in Greek
directed towards occupied Greece, acting as translators, editors and
newsreaders. The Head of this section was George Haniotis the sports
editor of the Athens newspaper 'Elefthero Vima' who used to sign his
sporting articles 'GEO'. Under him was the well-known literary figure
of Dimitri Fotiadis, who died in October 1988.
"When the broadcasts began early in May 1941 I was the principal
newsreader. Later when Haniotis was posted to the Greek Embassy in
Washington D.C. as Press Attache, my brother was appointed Section
Head. At that time the Prime Minister of the Greek government in
exile was Emmanouil Tsouderos, a former Director of the Bank of
Greece. The foreign language broadcasts from Radio Cairo were under
the over-all control of the Political Warfare Executive (P.W.E.) of
the British Ministry of Information. Later, in conjunction with the
Americans, the title of the unit was changed to Psychological Warfare
Branch (P.W.B.)
"Every evening we had two broadcasts, at 7.30 and 10.30 pm, which
went out on the medium wave transmitter of Radio Cairo at Abu Zabal,
run by the E.S.B. (Egyptian State Broadcasting). The transmissions in
eleven foreign languages were also relayed by three short wave
transmitters, two belonging to the telegraph company Cable & Wireless
(callsigns SUV & SUW), and an experimental transmitter of 7.5
kilowatts belonging to a British army signals unit, with the odd
callsign JCJC, operated by young corporal Rowley Shears G8KW, a radio
amateur friend of Norman Joly.
"The Greek broadcasts began in May 1941 and went on to the end of
January 1945.
"During this period many important personalities broadcast from
Studio 3, which was also used by well-known war correspondents of the
B.B.C., the N.B.C. and many other news organisations. The people of
occupied Greece were addressed by Mr Tsouderos, Crown Prince Paul of
Greece, Sofoclis Venizelos, son of the famous Cretan politician
Eleftherios Venizelos who had played a leading role in the political
fortunes of modern Greece, and Panayiotis Kanellopoulos Minister for
War. After the naval mutiny in the port of Alexandria Admiral
Voulgaris spoke to the officers and naval ratings of the Greek Royal
Navy."
Eliascos described in detail the negotiations of the Lebanon
Conference which resulted in the appointment of George Papandreou
(father of Andreas Papandreou who was recently Prime Minister), as the
new Prime Minister of the Coalition government in exile. He can be
seen at the famous R.C.A velocity microphone type 44BX which was used
throughout World War II and many years after. This ribbon type
microphone had a very large and heavy permanent magnet embodied in the
design and must have weighed about 1,000 times more than a modern
electret lapel microphone.
"I must explain that these war-time broadcasts were carried out in
the presence of a Switch Censor who sat on the other side of the news
reader's desk and was able to turn off the microphone in a split
second if it ever became necessary. During the three and a half years
of the broadcasts this was done only on one special occasion and
certainly not because the newsreader had gone berserk or something like
that. The Chief Censor was Professor Eric Sloman who had been the
first Director of the Police Academy in Kerkyra (Corfu). Then there
were censors for the eleven languages used in these broadcasts. The
censor for the Polish broadcasts was the Countess Walevska,
grand-daughter of Napoleon's lady friend. The Countess was a rather
large lumbering woman who always came into the studio carrying lots of
parcels. One evening she came in and sat in an armchair on the other
side of the studio to wait her turn for the Polish broadcast which
followed the Greek. As I was reading the news bulletin I suddenly
became conscious of a regular ticking noise in the headphones I was
wearing. I made a sign to Mr Joly who was acting as switch censor at
the time, and he got up and walked over to the Countess. He whispered
in her ear and asked her what was in her hand bag. The Countess
blushed and replied that she had just collected her alarm clock from
the watchmaker. I don't know if any sharp-eared listener had heard
the ticking and thought that we had a time bomb in the studio.
"Having mentioned my good friend Mr Norman Joly I must record that
he was the technical supervisor for the foreign language broadcasts,
handling such things as wavelengths for the short wave relays,
training the newsreaders (of whom there must have been over 30) and
acting as studio manager and switch censor for some of the languages
which he knew.
"A regular broadcaster in our studio was Francis Noel-Baker who
later became a Labour member of Parliament in the British House of
Commons, like his father. The Noel-Baker family are well-known in
Greece because for several generations they have owned a large
property on the island of Euboea (Evia in Greek). Francis speaks
fluent Greek, and his mother was related to Lord Byron. In recent
years he has switched his allegiance to the Conservative Party led by
his personal friend Margaret Thatcher.
"Major Patrick Leigh-Fermor the writer who had kidnapped
Major-General Heinrich Kreipe in Crete and spirited him away to Allied
headquarters in Cairo, came to our studio and described how this
audacious operation had been carried out by him and Captain William
Stanley Moss, ex-Coldstream Guards, with the considerable assistance
of the Cretan resistance movement partisans.
"Purely by coincidence, it was the Greek news bulletin from Cairo
which first announced to the world General Montgomery's victory over
General Rommel at Alamein. I must explain that during a broadcast the
two doors leading into the studio were kept closed and an armed
officer of the Military Police sat outside (in civilian clothes) to
prevent anyone from entering for any reason whatsoever. I was in the
middle of reading the news when suddenly, without warning, the inner
door opened and a young despatch-rider, still wearing his crash
helmet, walked in waving a piece of paper. Mr Joly immediately
switched off the microphone and asked the young man what he thought he
was doing. 'Most Immediate sir', he said. (This is the army's
highest priority classification.) 'To be broadcast at once.'
"Mr Joly handed the document to me and I saw it was written in
English. Taking a deep breath I began translating the text into
Greek, with some excitement and trepidation owing to the difference in
syntax between the two languages. Forty-six years later Mr Joly gave
me the identical sheet of paper, which he had kept as a souvenir. It
is printed here in full. At the Editorial offices, where they were
monitoring the newscast, they thought I had gone out of my mind,
because the communique had not reached them yet. When they tuned in
to the short wave service of the B.B.C. they heard the communique read
out more than an hour after our Greek broadcast. A world scoop, if
ever there was one. Years later when I returned to Athens, many of my
friends told me they had heard the first broadcast of the thrilling
bulletin and they could still remember the excitement in my voice.
"The Greek section was the first to inaugurate the transmission of
personal messages. Many people were escaping from occupied Greece in
sailing boats across to the shores of Asia Minor, ending up in the
Middle East, mostly in Cairo. They had no means of advising their
relatives and friends in Greece that they had survived the perilous
journey. We used to broadcast pre-arranged messages like 'John
informs Mary that he has arrived at the village'.
"As I mentioned above, George Papandreou came to our studio and
spoke to the people in Greece about the formation of the government of
National Unity, which had been agreed by all parties meeting in the
Lebanon, including the representatives of the Partisans operating in
the mountains of Greece. Papandreou and the government in exile moved
to Naples in Italy for a short period and then returned to Athens on
October 12th 1944 for the Liberation.
"Finally, I would like to say that in the dark days before
Montgomery's breakthrough at Alamein, when it was quite on the cards
that General Rommel might take Cairo, Mr Joly and I were sent to
Jerusalem to make arrangements for the foreign language broadcasts to
be continued from there. Fortunately the situation changed and we
were recalled to Cairo, where we arrived just in time for me to
broadcast the historic communique announcing the victory at Alamein,
which marked the turning point of the war in the Middle East.