which had brought him from the airport. Next day,
when he attended a meeting of all parties, the ELAS representative
walked in wearing a military-style uniform with crossed bandoleers
across his chest, and carrying two pistols. Churchill turned to his
interpreter and said quietly: "Tell him to leave his toys outside, or
I fly back to London immediately, to spend Christmas properly with my
family."

1945: On the 1st of January Archbishop Damaskinos was appointed
Regent. (It had been agreed that the King should not return to Greece
until his position had been clarified by a plebiscite). Plastiras
replaced Papandreou as Prime Minister. After the Varkiza agreement
the guerrilla war (or civil war) was officially brought to an end.

Years later in a broadcast, Chris Woodhouse summarised what the
S.O.E. mission to Greece had achieved.

1. It had provided the technical expertise, such as the
handling of explosives, without which the major sabotage successes
would have been impossible.

2. It had provided the tactical planning and supplied the
communications which successfully harnessed the courage of the Greeks
to the strategic requirements of the Allied commanders.

3. Most important of all, in the long run, it assured that
no armed force in occupied Greece would gain a monopoly of power on
the day of liberation. The final aim of the mission was to leave the
Greeks with a free choice at the end of the war--a choice between a
Monarchy, a Republic or even a Communist regime if they wanted it.
But the recent dramatic events in the closing months of 1989 in
Poland, the U.S.S.R., Hungary, the East German Democratic Republic,
Czechoslovakia and finally Romania have proved that the last choice
would have been an unwise one if the Greeks had also opted for
Communism.

1946: Following a plebiscite King George II returned to Greece at
the end of September and appointed Panayis Tsaldaris as his Prime
Minister.

When I returned to Athens in October 1944 on H.H.M.S. AVEROF I
had been appointed Radio Monitoring Officer of the Anglo-Greek
Information Service (A.G.I.S.) with a staff of about 25 W/T operators
and typists to assist me. My unit was a section of the Press
Department of the British Embassy. I think the choice of title was a
rather unfortunate mistake. The English words 'information' and
'intelligence' have only one equivalent word in Greek pliroforiesq.
And most Greeks