We and many other families spent one night on the merchant vessel where there was no sleeping accommodation. Next morning we were transferred to a large hospital ship called MAINE. All day we watched small groups of the Turkish and Greek armies skirmishing on the sea-front and in the evening many fires broke out in the town. In the middle of the night while we were sleeping the hospital ship sailed away to an unknown destination. After two or three days we arrived in Malta, where most of us stayed for the next four years. It was in Malta that my interest in wireless telegraphy was first aroused. We were housed in some military 'married quarters'. Close by there was a wireless station which produced bright greenish-blue sparks and crackling noises. Its antennas were supported on three very tall wooden masts painted bright yellow. I soon discovered that it was GYZ belonging to the Admiralty. Malta was then (1922) a very big base of the British Navy, in the good old days when England had an Empire. I bought a kit of parts and assembled a small receiver and being so close to the powerful spark transmitter that was all I ever heard. In 1926 when I left school my family moved to Greece and my brother who was 7 years older than me, opened up a shipping office on the island of Mitylene, in the Aegean sea. My father and grandfather had been in this business in Turkey. It was in Mitylene in 1927 that I constructed my first short wave receiver. It had 3 valves with 4 volt filaments, heated by an accumulator (storage battery). H.T of 130 volts was obtained from a bank of small accumulators in series. As I had not learned how to make a charger I had to carry these two units to a local garage regularly for re-charging. Apart from commercial telegraph stations there was little else to hear. I had still not heard about 'amateur' radio. The B.B.C. was carrying out test transmissions from Chelmsford for what became the Empire Service (now the World Service) using the callsign G5SW. There was also G6RX which stood for Rugby Experimental, operated by the British Post Office. They were experimenting with ship-to-shore telephony, and after setting up a circuit the operator used to say "over to condition A" (and sometimes B) which was very frustrating for me because the voices then became scrambled and quite unintelligible. When I first began transmitting six years later, having 'discovered' the amateurs, I chose the callsign RX as I had been a listener so long, and also remembering the excitement of listening to G6RX.