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They were Prepared 03
GREECE
WHEN therefore the first call came from the War Office for volunteers to go abroad, the G.I.S. were able to offer a General Relief Team, trained and equipped, consisting of nine Guiders and two Scouts, in the khaki uniform provided by the army, but bearing the G.I.S. flash.
It was June, 1944 — that fateful month when, in the King's words, "the great crusade" went forth "to set the captives free". The war was by no means over. Italy had not yet capitulated. The Mediterranean was not "healthy" as the troopship carrying the eleven G.I.S. workers passed through it. The team hoped that their destination was Greece. But Greece, which had withstood the enemy so valiantly before it had been overrun, was now in the throes of an even more bitter war, divided against itself. So the ship berthed in Port Said, and for seven months the team stayed in Egypt, working in refugee camps, and carrying on their training in driving and car maintenance, hygiene, sanitation, and the Greek language.
When at last they were able to land in Athens in January, 1945, they found the city completely disorganised, the streets littered with rubbish ranging from burnt-out buses to millions of paper drachma, thrown away as worthless. Food was so scarce and so dear that it was beyond the reach of the majority of Greeks: two members of the team joined the transport pool of voluntary workers who drove truck-loads of flour and fish from the docks to a distributing centre. Many people had been arrested on political charges: three of the team were given charge of a temporary prison, where a thousand or more women had been herded together for four weeks awaiting interrogation. With in- sufficient food, no change of clothing, inadequate sanitary arrangements, and no artificial heating in a building devoid of window-panes, these women were in a pitiable plight. For three days the G.I.S. members toiled to improve the conditions as best they could, and, having got supplies of food and some semblance of order, they handed the prison over to other workers, and passed on themselves to different jobs.
People who had been taken to the hills as hostages by ELAS were streaming down to the capital, starving, and with swollen and blistered feet: two members attended to their needs; another went forty miles up country to collect more of the hostages. Villagers who had lost everything when their homes had been burned down by Italians or Germans, or both, needed clothing and medical supplies: team members took these and other necessities up mountain paths by pack-mule.
In May, 1945, the team were given their hardest assignment. After having been in charge of an area comprising two to three hundred villages, they were moved to Athens, and, at half-an-hour's notice, expected to house and feed 250 soldiers in a building with no water, light, fuel or sanitation, and with no stores of food. By nightfall they had fed the soldiers and 36 women and 10 babies as well, having induced the British Army to provide them with food—two days' rations for 200 people—and twelve dixies. A British soldier brought along an army water-cart. The Greek caretaker lit' a fire: the team did not ask where she got the wood (they were grateful to her for solving the fuel problem), but they noticed that many of the shelves were missing from cupboards. They managed to get 400 blankets from the Red Cross, so were able to bed down their charges that night. Then they held a conference to decide what they should do in an emergency. They had discovered that six of the women were pregnant. The situation was grim — and ridiculous. They had only their personal pocket first-aid outfits until the G.I.S. box could be got from up-country.
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