The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece: A Personal ViewJoly, Norman F.
History
The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece: A Personal View
Joly, Norman F.
Radio broadcasting
In the latter part of April 1941 the German army marched into the
northern suburbs of Athens at 11 o'clock in the morning. At 3 o'clock
in the afternoon of the same day, a strong unit of the Gestapo arrived
in the southern suburb of Kallithea and surrounded the block in which
my house was situated and broke into it, looking for me and my
transmitter. Of course I had dismantled everything 19 months
previously and even taken down the antenna. So after this long period
of QRT how did they know where to find me? Well, FOUR YEARS EARLIER I
had won the first prize for Greece in the D.A.S.D. DX Contest for
1937 and the German society had sent me a nice certificate. You can
draw your own conclusions. I heard later (because I had left a few
days earlier for Egypt with the staff of the British Embassy) that the
Gestapo had visited all the active amateurs and had managed to arrest
only one of them, Nasos Coucoulis SV1SM (later SV1AC) and put him in a
concentration camp in Italy for nearly a year.
I would like to sketch briefly the turbulent events of the
following three years with some extracts from my diaries.
One year earlier, in 1940, following the invasion of Greece by the
Italian army operating from Albania, the broadcasting authority in
Athens (ETHNIKON IDRIMA RADIOFONIAS) began a news service in English
which was beamed to England and the U.S.A. on the short waves. In my
capacity as a member of the Press Department staff of the British
Embassy I took part in the first programme, and in fact read the first
news bulletin, which went out at 3 a.m. Athens time. As I said
above, early in April I was transferred to the British Embassy in
Cairo, Egypt.
1941: Very small contingents of the British army landed in Greece
to help the Greek army. But they proved totally incapable of standing
up to the onslaught of the German army which followed soon after. The
Greek army laid down its arms in Epirus (north-western Greece).
General Tsolakoglou became the first 'Quisling' Prime Minister of
Greece. King George and his government, under Premier Emmanouil
Tsouderos had left for Cairo.
1942: In North Africa General Rommel had advanced to within 100
miles of Cairo, but his supply lines had become very long. One of the
most important was the railway link through Greece, so the British
strategists decided that attempts must be made to disrupt it. The
Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) in London, despatched two small
groups of saboteurs (about a dozen men altogether) under the command
of Brigadier Eddie Myers and Major Chris Woodhouse who had the task of
linking up with the various bands of 'Andartes' (Resistance movement
fighters) which had started forming in the mountains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account