A working-class area in a provincial town in 1939. A precursor of war - the requisitioning of livestock by the army in case a war started, like it did. What made an impression on me was the anguish of the people when they took their livestock away and branded them on their haunches. What animals were they taking? Horses and mules for military use.

Then came the sinking of the battleship "Elli" on August 15 and everything was now….the countdown had started to the outbreak of war.

We left Leivadia because my father changed job and we came down to Athens, to Kifisia to be exact…Kato Kifisia. That was where I experienced my first aid raid by Italian planes on the day war was declared on October 28. There was a small bombing raid the next day, but it was a farce - totally ineffectual - because our boys had had time to drag those canvas-winged planes of theirs to hiding places among the pine trees, and there were no planes on the airfield, so what were they shooting at?

Those are the first and most lasting impressions I have of the war…the requisitioning, the people’s anguish at losing their animals, and that bombing raid – the noise and the sirens were an unfamiliar sound to a child.

Then my mother started knitting socks for the boys on the Front, for our warriors, and I learnt to knit socks with 4 needles, too - as they’ve done traditionally in Greece for so many years, and I imagine everywhere in the world where poor people have to make their own clothes, grow their own food…everything. War is usually worse for the poor than it is for the rich. War brings with it something even worse than death – hunger, wretchedness, and relaxing our moral code just enough to ensure that next bite. And I, little kid that I was, got a job waiting on tables in a taverna.

The Occupation starts. Of the invaders, it is the Italians who frequent the taverna…more good-natured, of course, than the Germans, more Mediterranean…something like us. They liked fish - all we heard was "Pesce, pesce".

Rain, misery, hunger, and my father going to collect snails. He gets wet, catches a cold which turns into pneumonia and they take him into the public hospital. And my father’s from…he was born on the lagoon at Aitoliko…so he loves fish, but where could you find fish? But the taverna had some for the Italians, and I thought I’d slip a couple of fried fish in my pocket to take to my father when I went to see him. Of course, it wasn’t just the fish that left the taverna…so did I, and for good.

That was when the struggle started…the struggle - and I mean that quite literally - for survival. Four younger brothers and sisters, and a mother with no chance of finding a job because, at that time, women didn’t go out to work. And now with my father ill, it was up to me to get the whole family through this.

I had a little trolley, and I’d move stuff from place to place.

One time a German stopped me to carry his stuff to Larisis Station. It must have been 2 or 3 kilometres away, but we made it. He took his stuff and got ready to leave. I asked him…"Money…", and he gave me a kick. The Italians would give you a crust of bread.

I remember the Germans when we’d go up to Goudi…..they’d be there, peeling potatoes - it was a fatigue in the army to peel potatoes, so the peelings were very thick…food for us. And we’d go and pick them out of the rubbish, to make them into….to wash them and make a potato soup. When they caught on to us, they’d go and piss on the rubbish…as if that made any difference - we’d still take them and wash them.

And that’s what happens…how hunger makes people cheap, because hunger’s even worse than death.

Of course, my job was moving stuff from place to place on my trolley, which I would pull myself. I remember taking some wood up to Pikermi, in Ymitos, on that trolley, so we’d have something in the house to burn because my mother had to boil water to do the washing, and we needed something to cook over, too. I took my younger brother, Panos, with me. And on our way to Ymitos, we went through Goudi again, past the place where the Italians kept their mules – those huge mules used by their mountain artillery units. And like all Mediterranean people, they wanted their fresh vegetables, so they’d planted kitchen gardens wherever they could - with tomatoes, aubergines, and courgettes - all well-fertilised with mule manure.

Now, I used to leave a hollow space under the wood on my trolley, stop, pretend to be taking a leak or something, jump in among the vegetables, and pick whatever I could. An Italian guard saw me one day and turned away so I could go on stealing.

That’s the difference between the North and the South, maybe even during times of war when there’s no kindness left…but no, the Italians kept theirs. And they gave me bread – "Paniotta. Una paniotta".

The three and a half years of the Occupation went by…and with them the people’s reaction…because they wanted to mobilise the population but it never happened because a huge crowd of people went down to Syntagma - Syntagma Square - to declare their opposition to it.

One of the many jobs I did with my father - who’d recovered from his illness now - was to buy clothes from the Italians…underwear from their barracks. They’d take off their underpants, vests, and socks and sell them to get some money together to go to a taverna or buy a glass of wine or who knows what else…and we’d buy them and my father would go to Leivadia or Corinth and exchange them for some wheat or beans…and, in Corinth, for raisins. They were a treasure because they kept the family alive. I can remember Nicola, an Italian, who sold us his boots and went back to the barracks in a pair of slippers because he could get some new ones in there.

And the difference I was talking about – and it wasn’t me that discovered this -there are obvious differences between different peoples. In other words, the Italians were fine…they fought as much as they could without their hearts being in it…."Why am I fighting?"…but I don’t think a single German ever asked themselves… "Why are we fighting?" while they were powerful and the Axis was advancing. He just fought because they told him to.

And during the Occupation, we did whatever we could just to stay alive…we struggled for a crust of bread. Apart from pushing my trolley around…I’d steal… when I found something edible. Only stuff you could eat, mind, never for financial gain. No one was thinking about money.

And I got a job in a shop selling "domestic products and livestock". In other words, in a shop selling animal feeds in Ambelokipoi. It was on the way out to the Mesogeia villages and all their livestock…they used them to get around and do the farm work, and lived off them, as well. The shop owner - who was from Thessaly - had some connection with the resistance. I remember he brought me a radio which I hid in the hay and had to move around on my trolley from then on - my trolley, my own private means of transportation. Every time the radio was switched on…when it was working…the Germans could locate it with their radio detectors. Costas Sophos was in charge of the radio. I don’t remember what he was exactly, but he was in the air force…he was probably a radio operator…and he was from my part of the world, from Leivadia. He trusted me completely, and every time he had to move to a new base, I’d stage a move with broken chairs, those rag mats the women used to make, baskets, and I don’t know what else, with the radio underneath. And we moved from Polygono to Pangrati, from Pangrati to Kallithea, and so on. Every time he sent messages to the outside world, the radio had to be moved because the detectors would know its approximate location.

Another story from that time…from ’43 when I was 16 going on 17. Costas Sophos comes up to me - the guy we talked about with the radio - and tells me that the Italians have signed a peace treaty…they’ve surrendered. In the meantime, the Italians are selling everything they have, and we go to buy what we can – pistols, hand grenades, those Italian rifles. They’d set up a market in Goudi, and it was, "Quanto costare, siniore", and… "Dodici".

And when we say "dodici" or "dieci", we’re talking about millions - or billions I think it was at the time - because of the inflation. Just think - one and a half billion for the newspaper, the two-sheet, tabloid newspaper!

So, we went and filled sack after sack - those Italian sacks, because the Italians gave us those as well…those ones that had AM written on them. Now, what that meant….the AM that is…I don’t know. So, we cut thyme and dried out bushes and filled the sacks, because that’s how we used to transport the kindling we used to get the bigger wood lit – that was the ruination of the forest on Mount Hymettus, but we replanted it afterwards…we reforested it. And we’d stick a couple of rifles - things like that - into the sacks. And I’m going over to stick the sacks in my mother’s wash house, and she says, "Bravo, son, you’ve brought me some wood for the washing", and she goes to pull two brooms out of a sack, and out pops a gun barrel. The woman went crazy and started shouting, and I had to take her away and leave her round a friend’s house. But back then, the houses were single rooms round a common yard…so I explained it away by saying, "I found some bars of soap" – soap was a big thing back then, and very hard to find - "A case of soap somebody had given me…" and they all asked me for some soap, but what could I give them, hand grenades?

And the weapons were moved to a number of different places until they fell into the hands of a political group the resistance was suspicious of…they suspected them of collaborating with the Germans. And I had to lead the resistance to them so they could get the guns back - which they did. One of the worst things of all was how successfully they drove wedges between different groups. "Divide and conquer" is a guaranteed way of pulling a nation apart. And we paid for that later with the civil war and all the rest of it.

That’s why we say war has tails trailing after it…it doesn’t just finish and that’s the end of it…it leaves behind scars…it leaves behind wounds. It leaves situations behind which are verging on the pathological, and the worst thing of all is the hatred and the passions it leaves behind. That’s why there must never be another war. It’s been said a thousand times before, but it’s well worth saying again.

It was difficult to dress yourself then, too. Where could you find the cloth? Shoulder pads came in because the daughter - anyway, the female of the family - would make her father’s suit into a two-piece. She would – she’d turn the trousers into a skirt, and shoulder pads date back to the war, when they were in fashion for men. I made a suit out of German flour sacks. They made them out of synthetic silk and something else like warp. The cloth was synthetic silk…very nice it was, too…and clothes made out of it hung very well. Anyway, I made a suit like that - which we dyed dark blue so the caramel colour, the shimmer of the sack wouldn’t show - and somewhere on the back, or on one side of the trousers - it depended on how you sewed it - there was the wing from the German eagle…a Gestapo, a small piece from the circle with the swastika which went a much darker blue than the cloth when you dyed it, and came out almost black. And I say that because…from the job I do, I can see differences in the way nations dress. Besides, what is a people if it isn’t how they eat, how they live, and how they dress? And we, despite all our difficulties - and there were worse to come - we found ways to dress. After all, "poverty fashions the arts"…

And just after the defeat of our army, men started coming back who were from places they couldn’t get to, for example from an island. How could you get to an island with a war on, and you wounded or just defeated? Athens filled up with men in military uniforms. The German conquerors didn’t want that, and they said, "You can wear your uniforms, the tunic and the trousers, but you have to dye them black or brown or blue." And suddenly there were men around with their clothes dyed really patchily because they’d done it very quickly and carelessly in some water with a little powdered fabric dye. Their clothes might have been patchy, but they were walking around very proudly, because the first winter of the Occupation was the worst winter this country has ever experienced. We’re talking about a terrible winter. I mean that it snowed in Athens, which is really unusual, and it was 0 degrees…so you see what a blessing those clothes were, how proud the men were of them, and how jealous everyone else was of those men who were dressed warmly because military clothes are always made out of the best materials. In other words, the cotton’s cotton and the wool’s wool…they really look after the men they send to the slaughter. Of course, they don’t do anything to stop them getting killed, but at least they make sure they die warm. Just another crazy fact about that crazy thing called war.

During the Occupation, I managed…because I’d stopped going to school so I could work…I managed to go back…to continue going to school. I went to the Practical Lycee. It was there that I joined the Resistance…one of the resistance organisations…which I liked a lot. The Germans closed the schools because they were just centres for organising the resistance, which at the time meant writing slogans on walls to give everyone else a boost early in the morning as they walked down the road and saw "CHIN UP! FREEDOM’S ON ITS WAY", "THE HOMELAND…" and one thing or another. And I’d - because I could draw well - I’d draw a flag as well, or a sketch…an evil conqueror stamping on a good patriot’s foot…all of those clichιs which came in very useful back then. And my father - a man who’d fought in the past, and had certain human, ethical values - asked if he, too, could join the Resistance.

At that time, my mum had a job in a school as a caretaker – not as a cleaner – so we lived in the school. And the local organisation decided to…it was ’44, May ’44, and the occupation was nearing its end. The oppressed nations had already risen up, and the Greek people had organised itself very well indeed, and had headed off the Bulgarians descent into Macedonia.

My father was going to come with me to a meeting to organise a future operation they’d asked me to take charge of - it wasn’t anything exciting, just keeping watch while some others did some graffiti. Anyway, the time came for the meeting, and for me to meet some people - but it wasn’t that 50 people were supposed to meet in a particular place, because if all 50 people knew there was sure to be a leak. No, five or six people were charged with bringing three or four people each …so no more than five people knew what was going on…simple rules of conspiracy. And we met at the Nirvana cinema at 3. I was armed with a Smith 36 revolver, with just one bullet in it, though…just enough to kill yourself. We didn’t have any more…where were we supposed to get them? And with that in my pocket, I met the other three and took them to the meeting.

Arriving round the back of the school, I saw that the door – which opened outwards, probably so the kids could get in and out more easily – was wide open. So I nipped into a empty lot and buried my pistol under some stones, because, as we said, a pistol with only one bullet in it is no use for anything except suicide, and you’d need some luck even for that. I got rid of the other three – "Get away! Go over there!" – and I went over, playing it cool in my German sack suit with a bit of the eagle here and another bit over there…and I get to the door, walk past it, and have a look inside. What did I see? Trouble, beatings, and the rest of it. There’d been a road block – someone’d snitched. Luckily, we hadn’t all arrived by then, so I make out as if I haven’t seen a thing and continue on my way, a little further down where?? I could find a safe place to hide.

Two riflemen and two blackshirts – the blackshirts! now there’s another story for you…Greeks who collaborated with the Germans – jumped out and grabbed me, "Where are you going?" "To Mesogeion Street. A bit further up…to Mrs. Adamantia’s…that’s where I live." "Let him go", says the one of them, "He’s only little." – I always did look younger than I am – "No", says the other one, "We’re looking for so-and-so’s son." …and so-and-so’s son was me. And the two of them grabbed hold of me, one on each side, and since they didn’t have any handcuffs, they tied me and my father together with a tie - with my fathers’ tie, in fact.

When we got to the end of Ambelokipoi, we started down Alexandras Street towards their – what do you call it – their headquarters. And they were in civvies because they were part of the special security forces. They were Greeks…Greek collaborators…part of the infamous unit led by two mad torturers called Minas Kathreftis, and Parthenios…the ones who burnt down the "Electra". And as we were getting to the end of Ambelokipoi, a German patrol caught sight of the group of us…"Halt!". And immediately, "Grek Politsai - these here are Communists"…they said whatever came into their heads. And the Germans laid into us…my jaw must have grown by 20 cm with all the punches. Me and my dad didn’t say a word, but we got this message across right enough – "If you can get your hand free when we’re walking past the bench, I’ll pretend to fall down, and the two of us’ll make a run for it. Get away if you can." But I couldn’t get my hand free and we arrived at our destination, and they started what they call the investigation.

But you couldn’t call it a scientific investigation…it had nothing to do with the sort of organised police work, with its own set of rules, which starts this way and moves on in an orderly fashion…there are different stages in an investigation like that, but the only stages in our investigation were the belt, the club, and humiliation. "Clothes off!", he said. Do you know what that’s like? Man, woman, or child…"Clothes off!" You have to be naked so you don’t feel like a human being any more…anyway, it was off with our clothes, followed by the systematic torture of my father who stood up to them, probably because he wanted to teach me a little about being brave, courageous…human. And he kept it up until I had to stop it by going out and telling them, "The man you’re looking for...the man whose name you’re trying to get out of my father through there…that man is me."

And I’m glad I did it. Maybe I should have done it sooner, but on the other hand, I’m thankful I got the chance to see how my father faced up to them, and admire his ability – an ability shared by so very few – to somehow retain his humanity and his dignity in the face of violence. He spat in the face of violence…he spat at them and he swore at them, and he threatened the torturers, telling them "Don’t think things aren’t going to change…I’ll get you for this!’. Can you imagine how mad that got them? And a guy, as short as me and very paranoid – because you can’t do that sort of work if you aren’t – came over for me…for my turn. "Know something?", he said, "I’m Jimmy from Mexico". "Right", I said, and he gives it this and says to me, "Box, do you?" and he came in with a punch. Now, without thinking I give him one back…he was just a kid like me…I saw him as a friend, as a sparring partner…and that was all the excuse they needed to get stuck into me.

And it wasn’t the last time…I’ve been interrogated on other occasions, but there was always some kind of system…they’d start off psychologically, playing with the threat of violence before actually using it. Yes, that’s what it was…the use of violence, not just a beating or torture. And everyone knows that there are infinite ways of exercising violence. They’d start with psychological violence, because one time when I gave in to them, it was in the face of psychological, not physical violence. "We’ll chuck your mother out of her job", and I broke and agreed to…"Just let her keep her job"…Do you see?…because if she lost her job with my father sick and bedridden after all that had happened to him…how would the kids have survived? So you say, "There’s only one of me…I’ll sacrifice some of my dignity so five can live."

My father? Well, we went from prison to prison, to the Chatzikostas Prison in the buildings of the Chatzikostas Orphanage – where the IKA is today…the little chapel’s the only bit left of the old orphanage-turned-prison. Well, they’d bricked up all the windows, and filled the wards with prisoners, and it was from there that they sent men off to Chaidari, and the concentration camp in Germany, and it was there that they carried out the mass tit-for-tat executions for acts of sabotage or resistance. That’s something else fascism taught us, "You did it, but the whole village is going to pay for it." Get it? "We’re all tarred with the same feathers", as the saying goes. So there were between 100 and 120 men in each ward, with hardly room for all of them to lie down at once. Sure, we did a play or two, and…

Anyway, the guard on the door was a police man who happened to know my father because my dad had done the last few months of his military service – his eleven years of service, what with the Asia Minor campaign and the rest of it – in Leivadia as a sergeant. Because he was literate, he’d got promoted to chief of the station, and this guard had been one of his constables 25 years before. Anyway, the guy was my father’s age, but was still just a constable, because that was what he did. "Is that you, sergeant? In here? It’s Taris." – I can even remember his name. And he’d bring us newspapers, and this and that, because nothing was allowed inside the jail.

Liberation was getting closer, and my father kept his spirits up as he had done right from the start, even though he couldn’t lie down on his injured back…despite that, he never lost heart…never lost any of his humanity, right up to the end. You can see that, because just a few days before liberation, when the Allies had landed on the Peleponnese and the Government of National Unity – in inverted commas – had left Egypt and was in the Peleponnese, too, all marching North, you can understand that they all got a little jittery and started releasing prisoners. And Simana, the SS colonel, shows up, sticks his sallow face into the cell – still the proud conqueror, he was – and says, "Which of you have more than 4 or more children?" Now, my father had 5 kids. Τhey were all to be released, including my father. “You’re all free”, he said. Just like that. He had the power to give amnesty like that. And my father said, "What? I’m free. I have to get my son with me too". He tried to shush him up…"You get out first…you’ll all get out soon…" And in the end he agreed to go out without me. I got out 3 or 4 days later because a whitewash was already under way to clear the Greeks who’d collaborated with the Germans of any blame, and it was them that were guarding us…they were the guards in the prison. And in the meantime, local people had started gathering outside the bricked up windows, shouting, "Let the prisoners out!"…and they – because the people who collaborate with those in power and use violence are, as a rule, just bullies who can’t take it if they know there’s a chance they’ll be beaten or punished – well, they got hold of all the charges, and went through a curtailed version of all the procedures with a committee here and a committee there – because we’d been charged with all sorts following our arrest - organising gangs, murder, anything they could think up...the only thing they forgot was to charge us with having tanks in our back garden! I’d been forgotten - there was just me left, and a guy called Kypraios - when suddenly they called for me…and a little later they called for Kypraios, too. "What are you in for? OK. Get out of here. Take one of those Red Cross parcels and go home." It was a care parcel with chocolates and biscuits in it, and powdered milk, and…which could be sold for a tidy sum. So I went into Athens and sold it, so I could take some money home with me. And I went home and my father had laid out a suit and some clothes for me to celebrate my release in.

And then it was time for Liberation and celebrations…and the tails we said war leaves trailing behind it which caused Greek to hate Greek, and then a national split…the Royalists on the one side, and the Communists on the other. As far as the Resistance was concerned, the others were traitors…but even if they were, they should still have let bygones be bygones, but they didn’t…the leaders made mistakes…there were so many mistakes made…and brought the most hateful thing in the world down upon our heads…brother fighting brother…civil war.