In 1940, I was living in Gouva, at Damareos 160, with a cousin of mine called Ioannis Alevras, who was a policeman. A police officer from the Ymetos station came round at 3 in the morning and told him to go round to his station. And I asked him, "What’s going on, Ioannis?", and he said, "Things aren’t good. We’re going to war." And at 6 that morning, the sirens really did start up…we went to war. I got up, too, and set off to find out where I had to present myself. I went to the city police headquarters at Sokratous 60. They told us to present ourselves there the following day, and they took us to a school at Patision 93, where they trained us for two or three months as reinforcements for the city police. And we came out of there police officers.

When our front collapsed, we were formed into two groups of motorcyclists…one group patrolled up and down Patision Street, and the other went to Kifisias Street, because we were waiting for the Germans to enter the city. And we’d formed these groups to stop the Greeks doing anything extreme against the Germans, because that would have made things worse. And the Germans did come into the city and I went back to my station, the 21^st police station in Kaisariani.

After a while - the Germans were now in the city… the people in Patras protested that the city police had been ransacking their shops along with the Italian conquerors. The shop owners had fled into the mountains, and when they called for them, "Come back and open up the shop so we can get some shoes! Open up so we can buy some clothes!", they didn’t come down, and the police broke the shops open and looted them. So when the people of Patras came back down to their shops and their homes, they protested, and the police officers - everyone from the rank of sergeant down - were replaced, and they were transferred to Athens. I was one of those sent to Patras, and I served there for 9 or 10 months.

When I got back to Athens, via a mutual transfer, I went to the 12^th police station in Palaio Faliro. There was a German police station there, the Kommandatura, and 10 of us police officers were appointed there under the command of the late Georgios Ladas. We worked with the Germans, but our co-operation didn’t work in favour of the Germans, it worked in favour of the Greeks, because Officer Ladas was a patriot, to put it mildly, and when he got an order from the German’s interpreter to go and arrest a Greek or to go somewhere with the Germans to do something against the Greeks, Ladas would send another officer ahead on his motorcycle, while the officer who was with the Germans would take them the long way around to delay them, and we’d tell the Greeks to get the hell out of there because the Germans were coming to arrest them.

And about three years passed like that before we were liberated, but during this time, I had a lot of adventures.

One time, I had a fight with some Germans in Vangelis Mourikis’ taverna. Two Germans came in, and there was a group of friends sitting by the door with a guy wearing a police uniform. Now he’d been on the wine, and he got up and offered to buy the Germans a drink, and we were sitting there, too. Then one of the Germans went over to the counter, took a squeezed lemon, and hit the policeman in uniform with it. Now, when I saw this happen - I was in civvies, I wasn’t in uniform - I got up, went over to the German who’d thrown the lemon, and punched him twice in the face. He went out, but the other one stayed in the taverna. And right then, because these were Germans, and I knew that if he pulled out his pistol and killed me there and then he’d get away Scot free, I got my pistol out, and still holding it, put it in my trouser pocket so that if they started beating me I'd kill them first. The other German, who’d gone out, went and brought the Gestapo, and two men dressed as Gestapo came in and asked for an explanation. Luckily for us, though, an Austrian friend of ours was there, who we knew well. Now, he spoke German perfectly, of course, and he stood up and undertook our defence…and he said that it wasn’t the policeman’s fault at all, it was the Germans that started it, that this and that had happened, like I said before, with the squeezed lemon, the police officer, and the rest of it…"and he got up and hit him, and the officer who hit him works in the Kommandatura and co-operates with the Germans, and he couldn’t accept this unfair behaviour towards his colleague." And the officers and the Gestapo listened to all of this calmly, and one of them slapped me on the back and said, "All right! Gut, gut!" and slapped me on the back again, you see, and they got up and left, and I did the same. We’d expected all…the taverna owners had gone white as a sheet…and we’d expected all hell to break loose in there, you see, but in the end there was none of that. No, there was a nice compromise, you see, and that was the end of that.

Another time, I was sitting outside the taverna with the owner, Panagiotis Mourikis, and we were drinking an ouzo together. We caught sight of one of the officers from our station dragging two German soldiers in uniform along the tram lines - because the tram back then went as far as Rendi - but they weren’t Germans, they were Italians…it was after they signed the treaty, and they’d put on German uniforms…and he was pulling these two Germans in uniform along to the Kommandatura, which was opposite the station in one of the "Fix" buildings…We had our own office in there, too. And as soon as I saw that officer in uniform pulling those Germans along - and the Germans taking two steps backwards instead of two steps forwards each time, because they wanted to go to the Italian Kommandatura at the end of the road, next to the Hippodrome - I got up and went over…I was in civvies…and asked the officer, "What’s going on? Why won’t these gentlemen go into the Kommandatura?" And he says, "They stole a watch from the lady" – there was a lady there with a small child – "They stole a watch on the beach, and I told them to come with me to the Kommandatura, but they won’t come because they want to go to the other one." And then I told them, "Get moving!" in a very fierce way, and I gave them a couple of kicks each, "Get moving into the Kommandatura!", and they went in like little lambs, with their heads hanging low. And we took them in to the German commander, a sergeant he was, and we searched them. We found the watch, gave it to the lady and thanked her…then she left. Do you see? And the German commander had a word with the Italians, in those German uniforms, and we all went our separate ways.

The next day, the interpreter called for the police officer - our man, the Greek - and told him, "Mr. Ladas, inform your employees not to behave in that way towards Germans in uniform, even if they are Italians", because they wore a German uniform, do you see? And Ladas told us, you see? But it was a matter of justice. We, I, hadn’t been unfair in any way…I was completely just, since he told me that they’d stolen the watch from the people, and we found it.

Anyway, that was the end of that.

Well…other adventures of the sort…?

As I said, there were ten of us police officers assigned to the German headquarters, and three or four of us were partisans with the Greeks against the Germans…we never helped the Germans. One of the Germans, a teacher, said he’d teach us five German words a day, and we should teach him one word of Greek, so that in three months we’d all be speaking perfectly. Us, German! And we said - me, most of all - "Scheisse!" Do you know what that means in German? Shit. "Scheisse Deutsch!" "Fine", he said, "You’ll remember this." And I swore at him, "We don’t want your German language. Do you understand? "It’s shit." See?

Another officer, from this gentleman’s village - had a thing about women…Whatever woman went with a German, he’d keep them under observation, and when the German took her back home, after they’d had their orgies and what not…once the German had taken her home…the Greek would knock on her door, show her his ID, and take her down to the station. Do you see? And once again the interpreter told us not to go to these sort of lengths. "I", said the officer, who spoke with a bit of a village accent, "I’ll arrest all those whores and I’ll make sure everyone knows they’re whores." And the duty officer down at the station really would record all their names and send them to the Syngrou hospital the next day for some tests - you know, to make sure they didn’t have any diseases - and then they could go.

The ten of us police officers in the German guardhouse got some porridge to eat - a big basin they used for sardines full of porridge for all ten of us. But only 2 of us actually took the stuff. One officer, Nikolouleas, had 2 or 3 children and a niece at home to feed, and another one - Alevras was his name - was the second in command, and he had a family and children to feed, too, but he never interfered in our work with the Germans. You see, we followed the Germans around wherever they went to make sure they did no harm to any Greeks. Whoever did harm a Greek…

I forgot to tell you that when I kicked the 2 Germans around - the two Italians dressed as Germans - and went back to Mourikis’ taverna, to another taverna opposite, they’d asked around to find out who the guy was - because I was out of uniform - who’d punched the Germans, and they told them that he was a policeman, one of our own Greek police, and they’d told the owners to give me a beer or two and a snack on them next time I came in, because I was a Greek policeman who’d behaved towards the Germans like that. Do you see?

We were celebrating the engagement of a guy from our village to the daughter of the people who had the Mourikis taverna. And there was me and another officer at the engagement down on Aiolou Street. It was a real shin dig, it really was, and we pulled out our pistols and started firing – it was absolute bedlam! And the Gestapo showed up and asked what was going on, and as I said before, the German, that Austrian friend of ours, was at the engagement, too, and he spoke up for us and told them that Mr. Aggelakos was celebrating his engagement to Miss Mourikis, and that it was a tradition in their parts to fire pistols. "So, if you’d like us to offer you a drink, sit down and drink…if you don’t want a drink, then leave." And one of the Gestapo said, "So it’s like that, is it?", and we gave them a few beers and they got drunk, too, and started firing their rifles into the air. It was absolute chaos! Can you see it? Because they embraced the customs and traditions of our home land.

There were lots of informers living in my area. There was one, a certain Xanthopoulos, who lived right opposite my house. They had ship yards and they built ships in Lavrio. And when the Germans came, he started making ships out of cement with another guy called Katsiropoulos…they’d load them up with gravel, take them out to sea, sink them, and say that the English, the Americans, or someone had sunk them. As we said that those two - Katsiropoulos and Xanthopoulos - were accused of being collaborators, and after the German collapse…I’d been transferred and was serving in the "Collaborators’ Bureau" in Athens, and our department had been transferred to Stournaras Street. And when the orders telling us who to arrest, we gathered in the afternoon in the Collaboration Room in the station, and our superintendent gave us the orders, and he gave the arrest warrants for Xanthopoulos and Katsiropoulos to three colleagues of mine. When I heard their names, I said, "Excuse me, sir, I live opposite Xanthopoulos, and I know both of them." "You go with them in the morning, then." And we went the following day, but there was nobody there. Do you see? We found a Jew further up, who gave us lots of sovereigns not to arrest him - to give him a couple of days to sort out his affairs. But we arrested him and took him down the station as an collaborator, because that’s what he was.

Gouva Area of Athens

Ymetos Area of Athens

Patision Street and Kifisias Street Main avenues of Athens

Kaisariani Neighbourhood of Athens

Patra City in the north-west Pelopponese

Palaio Faliro Posh area of Athens by the seaside

Rendi Area of Athens

Syngrou hospital Hospital for dermatological diseases

Lavrio Area in the south of Attika by the seaside