Cairo
which first announced to the world General Montgomery's victory over
General Rommel at Alamein. I must explain that during a broadcast the
two doors leading into the studio were kept closed and an armed
officer of the Military Police sat outside (in civilian clothes) to
prevent anyone from entering for any reason whatsoever. I was in the
middle of reading the news when suddenly, without warning, the inner
door opened and a young despatch-rider, still wearing his crash
helmet, walked in waving a piece of paper. Mr Joly immediately
switched off the microphone and asked the young man what he thought he
was doing. 'Most Immediate sir', he said. (This is the army's
highest priority classification.) 'To be broadcast at once.'

"Mr Joly handed the document to me and I saw it was written in
English. Taking a deep breath I began translating the text into
Greek, with some excitement and trepidation owing to the difference in
syntax between the two languages. Forty-six years later Mr Joly gave
me the identical sheet of paper, which he had kept as a souvenir. It
is printed here in full. At the Editorial offices, where they were
monitoring the newscast, they thought I had gone out of my mind,
because the communique had not reached them yet. When they tuned in
to the short wave service of the B.B.C. they heard the communique read
out more than an hour after our Greek broadcast. A world scoop, if
ever there was one. Years later when I returned to Athens, many of my
friends told me they had heard the first broadcast of the thrilling
bulletin and they could still remember the excitement in my voice.

"The Greek section was the first to inaugurate the transmission of
personal messages. Many people were escaping from occupied Greece in
sailing boats across to the shores of Asia Minor, ending up in the
Middle East, mostly in Cairo. They had no means of advising their
relatives and friends in Greece that they had survived the perilous
journey. We used to broadcast pre-arranged messages like 'John
informs Mary that he has arrived at the village'.

"As I mentioned above, George Papandreou came to our studio and
spoke to the people in Greece about the formation of the government of
National Unity, which had been agreed by all parties meeting in the
Lebanon, including the representatives of the Partisans operating in
the mountains of Greece. Papandreou and the government in exile moved
to Naples in Italy for a sh