olonel Napoleon Zervas. They
called themselves the National Republican Greek League (Greek initials
E.D.E.S.)

I met Zervas personally years later when he was Minister of the
Interior (and therefore responsible for the Police). I was then
acting as interpreter for the Assistant-Head of the British Police
Mission to Greece. I remember vividly with what relish he described
to Colonel Prosser his method of torturing E.L.A.S. prisoners, which
left no physical marks on any part of the body.

It was in the course of a secret visit to Athens that young Chris
Woodhouse found out the real chain of command, when he was introduced
to George Siantos, the Secretary of the Greek Communist Party (Greek
initials K.K.E.). The K.K.E. controlled E.A.M., the National
Liberation Front which, in turn, ran E.L.A.S. But with a title like
that (National Liberation Front) it was easy to see why E.A.M.
enjoyed such widespread support, not only in the countryside, but also
among the intelligentsia in Athens.

But the task of the S.O.E. officers was made very difficult for
various reasons: Winston Churchill had given orders that they were to
support, as far as possible, only those guerrilla leaders who favoured
the King--but there were none, or very few. The S.O.E. units had
orders to cause the maximum disruption to the German occupation of the
country. And that was impossible without the support of E.L.A.S.,
which was controlled by the Communists. At the outset, it became
obvious to the S.O.E. officers that military and political priorities
were already in conflict.

E.L.A.S. forces were getting stronger every day and very soon they
began attacking fellow Greeks in non-communist Andarte units. The
successful attack on the railway bridge over the Gorgopotamos river on
the 26th of November was the first and last time that ELAS and EDES
co-operated against the common enemy under the coercion and technical
guidance of the British.

1943: Friction between EDES and ELAS continued to increase. When
Eddie Myers told them that he had been instructed to destroy the
bridge over the Asopos river, ELAS said it was too dangerous a target
and refused to help, so this became an all-British operation. A
24-year-old demolition expert of the Royal Engineers Captain Ken
Scott, was sent from Cairo. He was dropped by parachute, and planned
the successful attack on the bridge. It took the Germans four months
to rebuild it.