Our story back then…what life was like…Well, the Italians declared war on us and later on, of course, the Germans intervened when they saw that the Italians weren’t doing too well against the Greeks. The Italians started retreating, and we pushed them further and further back – all the way to Koritsa and beyond. But the Germans joined in, and they were much better soldiers…I don’t know, they were tougher fighters. And poor little Greece, tiny little nation it is…was up against two empires, and was forced to retreat and surrender….against our will, of course.

And the Germans entered Athens and paraded like conquerors in Syntagma Square and such like. I was just a little kid, and I remember going and staring open-mouthed at all that stuff. And then it was the Occupation and a time of great trials for the Greek people…especially for us here in Athens, in the capital…and people were dying of hunger, they had nothing to eat…nothing at all. There was nothing…the Germans had taken everything for the German army, and us poor wretches here would sit around with empty stomachs, trying somehow to find something. And the black marketeers were having a field day…villagers they were, from round about Athens, and they’d bring in a little wheat, or corn, or something like that. But back then, 4 or 5 kilos…hang on, it was okades then, not kilos…to buy 4 or 5 okades you’d have to give them a house. Really! And those "gentlemen" made a fortune out of those people’s houses. Because people were dying. Of course, all those unfair deals were cancelled and the houses restored to their owners after the Liberation, but a lot of people still made a lot exchanging food for starving people’s houses. Those kilos, or rather those okades of corn and wheat or a drop of oil…well, people died and there was no choice but to allow those people to keep the fortunes they’d cheated those people out of before their death. They got rich and did nothing to earn it, with the help of the invaders, and because of the hard times back then when we didn’t even have a crust of bread.

And I remember these bakeries in ’41 or ’42, that handed out a little bread, but it wasn’t made from wheat…I think it was made out of broom seeds - the seeds from the stuff we used to make our brushes with back then - and the Germans ground it up and gave it to us in place of bread and we ate it. We ate pip flour, as well. There was the carob and the pips, which we ground and put into a pot without any oil, without anything at all because we didn’t have anything. Anyway, we boiled it, and it wasn’t food, you know, it was almost like gelatine and we swelled up…our bellies were as tight as a drum outside, but completely empty inside, and we were hungry again.

Anyway, I was 12 or 13 back then. I had an uncle…he’s dead now, of course, God rest his soul…who worked in the Averof prison. Of course it doesn’t exist any more…they were demolished along with so much else….and he worked there as a carpenter. And he asked another guy to go and work with him there, a house painter, a Greek, because they were all Greeks that worked in there, and he said to him, "Can I bring my nephew here to get some of the food they hand out" and stuff like that. And so I went to work in the Averof prisons, too, as a painter who, of course, knew nothing about house painting. And all I did was sit in the head decorator’s cell and keep an eye on the paint and all the stuff we had in there.

Now, although the Warden was an Italian colonel, at that time it was an Italian master sergeant who was the real boss in the prisons – the colonel never even showed up, and if he did, he’d go into the yard, walk around a couple of times and then disappear again. And the Italian master sergeant…and I want to say this because - of course, he’ll be long dead because I was 12 years old and he was a master sergeant, and must have been around 30 back then – anyway, the sergeant sees me one day, comes over, sits down, and just stays there staring at me. He just kept staring at me. Now, seeing the Italian sergeant looking at me like that, I began to worry …it could mean a lot of trouble for me. And he said something to me in Italian, which, of course, I didn’t understand, and then he gestured to me to stay where I was, not to go away, to wait there. Now, I understood from the guy’s gestures that he wanted something, and I was right. He goes inside - into the Italians’ barracks…they must have had their kitchen in there, too - and brings me out a dixie brimming with macaroni! And this made me feel really uncomfortable, and I started to wonder why this man was treating me like this. And from then on, the Italian would bring me his food every day. Every single day. He’d go around the prison looking for the painters’ scaffolding, and if he didn’t find me, the whole prison could hear him shouting my name. "Philippo, Philippo!", he’d shout, and I’d shout back, "I’m here", and he’s come with the paniotta – something like a bread bun that the Italians had back then, like this they were…and the dixie. And he’d give it to me and I’d eat, and when I’d finished he’d take the dixie and leave. And every morning as I entered the prison to start work, he’d be there at the guard house door, and I’d say "Bonjuorno" as I went in, and he’d reply, "Bonjuorno, Philippo." I remember those scenes as if they were yesterday, even now at the age of 72, and I’m really moved. But what was going on with that Italian? One day, he sat down next to me and took a photograph of his family out of his wallet. Now, this Italian had two sons, and I was the spitting image of one of them. We looked so alike, it could have been me in the photograph. And that’s what made the man come to me, bring me food, and look after me. If he’s dead, may the Lord have mercy on his soul, and if he’s still alive, I wish him all the best. Well, all that’s past now…

And here’s another little thing I remember. Back then I went around barefoot…I didn’t have any shoes. I’d set off from Agios Giannis, here on Vouliagmenis, and I’d go to the Averof prisons on foot. I’d walk there and back barefoot. And it snowed in 1941, and there was I barefoot in the snow. It was then that my father, God rest his soul, found some money – I have no idea how – and we went and got a pair of shoes from one of the shoe shops in Monastiraki. And the very first day I wore them it rained, and the bugger we’d bought the shoes from had used cardboard for the sole, and it swelled up in the rain and dropped off, leaving me barefoot again, with the uppers dangling around my ankles. So there was me, poor bugger, barefoot again.

Anyway, when I got hold of some money - let’s say for example that we were paid for the week’s work on Saturday morning - by the time we got home at noon, it wasn’t worth a thing. One day, you’d say…I don’t know…that a coffee cost one million, but by the time you got home at noon it would cost you five times that if you wanted one! So money became completely worthless. There was so much money around that we were all millionaires…we were all rich but absolutely penniless, because the money the Germans gave us back then had no value whatsoever.

Now, Mr. Roper, a very good man and Foskolos’ father, was a contractor, and he got the job of building the airport at Megara. The airport hadn’t had an easy history. The English started it, but the Germans and the Italians invaded before they had time to finish it. The Italians took over the building work, but Italy signed a peace treaty with the Allies before they could finish it, and the Germans chased them out, too. In the end, it was the Germans who completed the job, and Mr. Roper took me there – 13 years old, I was – and he took me there to work, but as what? It was all nonsense. The point was that I’d get in and get the can of food and the hunk of bread the Germans gave us.

And that’s how that started, and I tried to get some money together to take to my family here in Athens, and I did some olives. The Germans had taken the olive groves. They wouldn’t let the people of Megara gather their olives because there were bombs and camouflaged planes in the grove…they’d hidden them there to protect them from the English and American bombers that bombed the airport occasionally. But we were free to walk around the area because of our job…though the actual olive groves were off limits…but I’d nip in secretly and pick a few. There were three of us kids who’d go in to steal the olives occasionally. Later on we did it more systematically…we’d take a sack each, we’d fill them with olives, hoist them onto our shoulders and get away. There was a little stream which ran out of the olive grove, and you could walk along the stream to the village, into Megara. And the villagers back then were so …I don’t know, they were tough people…that they preferred…"You’re stealing our olives", they’d say. "How are we stealing them, since you can’t go and pick them? The Germans take them, load them onto aeroplanes and fly them to Germany. And what do we do? We take the olives so they don’t end up in Germany, bring them here and sell them for five shillings, and we get the five shillings, and you get your olives." "No." They preferred – some of them, of course, not all of them – they’d rather the Germans took them than us.

Anyway, one of us three kids made a mistake one day. Instead of coming out of the stream where we usually did…because the stream ran along next to the airport and we’d walk unnoticed along the stream, very slowly and carefully because there were German guard posts up above, and the sea at the end of the stream….the one kid makes a mistake, and instead of coming out at our usual place, he came out right opposite a guard, a German. The German fired and killed him….right away, without saying a word. And the two of us didn’t know what to do…we were scared. We said, "What shall we do? The guards will stop and kill us, too." But hunger just won’t let you be…you saw the olives over there and you said, "I’m going to pick them." And in the end we didn’t stop. We kept on stealing olives and lived to tell the tale. The airport job finished, and we went back to Athens…to a life of hunger, anguish, and misery.

And then it was the time of ELAS, the liberators of Greece, let’s say. And in Agios Giannis where I lived, they got me in - a thirteen year old child I was at the time - to do my bit for the struggle. Of course, I was young, and I thought I was doing a good thing, and I’d go with another kid who was illiterate but a little older than me with a deep voice, and we’d sit in the corner, I’d read the news to him – a guy from EPON used to bring it to us all written down - and he’d repeat it to everyone else through a megaphone…What’s happening on the Front, how are the English doing at El Alamein in Egypt, all of that stuff, so we could draw enough strength from the news to get us through the war till we’d won our freedom.

But one day some ELAS boys – there was a unit of them – killed three Germans. The Germans were going down Vouliagmenis Street on their way to the airport which was at Chasan then. And the Germans came along, and they got them, and then they shot a fourth German on a motorbike who managed to escape with his life and inform the Kommandatura, and two trucks packed with fully-armed Germans arrived and made no distinctions whatsoever. If they saw you, they killed you. They left no one…they killed 250 people that day. Anyone they found walking along the road was shot dead, and that was the end of it. In one café the customers didn’t have time to go to their homes, and the 7 of them hid behind a fridge. In goes the German and executes all 7 of them on the spot. It was a blood bath. And what had those ELAS men achieved? They killed three Germans, but they did for 250 of us. That’s the sort of story we have from the war…our tragic war stories. Anyway, we had to struggle in every way we knew to stay alive.

Back then I remember I lived in Artemonos Street in Agios Giannis. There was a turning a little further up which the German trucks took to get to Matsiotis’ factory. They built German planes there, and they took broken engines there to be repaired before sending them back as well as producing ammunition. All of us little kids – 13, 14, 15 years old – would wait on the bend, and just as the truck slowed down to turn, we’d jump in the back to see what we could find. Sometimes we’d find a loaf of bread or something edible, but a lot of the time we found death, too, because if the Germans cottoned on, they’d stop and shoot you.

I remember I jumped in one time and pulled out…it was a parachute I got. I had the chance so I took it. And I took it to…but it was made from silk which we made into shirts. We didn’t even have any clothes then…we were dressed in rags. Naked, we were, and barefoot, and hungry. Anyway…we came very close to leaving this world for a better one. But Fate seems to have wanted us to live. It seems that God…I just don’t know. We survived. And now we’ve reached the age we are today, 72 or so years old, so we can relate the things that happened to us back then.

I remember one time…it was after the Liberation, and the warships had docked at Faliro. The ELAS boys were still…they’d got really big because they didn’t face much resistance – the Germans had withdrawn and were trying to get out of Greece and get back to Germany…and the situation was really awful. Anyone with a pistol could just shoot you down if they felt like it. It was a tragic situation. And we heard Scobie – he was an English general – threatening that if ELAS didn’t stop committing those crimes – because they’d hit the English, too, from time to time – "We’ll bomb Athens." And we got up and left Athens because of that threat. We left Agios Giannis in Vouliagmenis on foot and went to Voula.

When we got there we found ELAS in charge again. One of them stopped us and asked us who we were, and we told him this and that, why we’d left Athens, and that we didn’t have anywhere to stay. And he came up and said, "Come on. I’ll take you", and he took us to a nice villa, kicked the door down and said, "Go in". We went into the villa and stayed there until the situation had simmered down a bit.

Anyhow, that time brought with it a lot of pain and hunger for us, and we learnt to appreciate the value of life. Because when you get up, a kid of 12 or 13 I was back then – and go out of the house to go somewhere and walk through the streets, with almost no one about, and you see corpse after corpse to the left and to the right, their bellies blown out from hunger. People were dying…they’d be walking along, and then slump down at the side of the road and die. You saw stuff like that every day. It was a real catastrophe, a disaster. It was indeed. It was…anyway, we nursed them and looked after them.

We’re another breed. We’re a different people from the Italians. They didn’t get on with the Germans. That they had that madman Mussolini stirring them up and sending them to fight is another matter entirely. They didn’t want to fight. They’d come over…they’d come over here to fight with guitars and violins. Is it possible for a soldier to hold a mandolin instead of a gun? And a guitar? Well, the poor bastards suffered a rout at our hands, but what were we supposed to do? We were defending ourselves…and our homeland. And I can remember so many Greeks bringing in whole loads of prisoners…whole armies of them…and they’d line them up and lead them down from the Front. Yes. How I hope nothing like that ever happens again. There’s nothing good about it. May it never happen again. And if possible, and this is the wish of someone who’s lived through so much…if possible, let those atomic weapons become a thing of the past.