"Father Dimitri was obviously a well-educated and very courteous person. He had studied in various parts of Europe and spoke several languages fluently. These included ancient, Byzantine and modern Greek, not to mention colloquial 'mangika' (slang). When a vacancy arose for a priest to serve the chapel at Evangelismos Hospital in central Athens, who should be more suitable for this post in the heart of the select neighbourhood of Kolonaki than the well-educated, well-bred, charming and conscientious Father Dimitri."

(David Balfour died aged 86 on the 11th of October 1989.)

"Anyway, let me continue my story of the 'Corinthia trip", Eliascos went on. "We celebrated Easter on board and when we arrived at Alexandria some of us were sent on to Cairo and others went to India. My brother and I presented ourselves at the offices of the Press Department of the British Embassy in the Garden City. We were received by the well-known Byzantine scholar Stephen Runciman who was in charge of all foreign language broadcasts directed to Europe, that is, the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland and several others. One of our colleagues was Lawrence Durrell who later became the famous author of many successful books like the banned 'Black Book', 'Bitter Lemons', 'The Alexandria Quartet', 'Prospero's Cell' and others. But at that time, he used to entertain us daily with a fresh episode about his Aunt Agatha with the wooden leg."

Eliascos continued: "My brother Patroclos and I were told that we would be attached to the section producing the broadcasts in Greek directed towards occupied Greece, acting as translators, editors and newsreaders. The Head of this section was George Haniotis the sports editor of the Athens newspaper 'Elefthero Vima' who used to sign his sporting articles 'GEO'. Under him was the well-known literary figure of Dimitri Fotiadis, who died in October 1988.

"When the broadcasts began early in May 1941 I was the principal newsreader. Later when Haniotis was posted to the Greek Embassy in Washington D.C. as Press Attache, my brother was appointed Section Head. At that time the Prime Minister of the Greek government in exile was Emmanouil Tsouderos, a former Director of the Bank of Greece. The foreign language broadcasts from Radio Cairo were under the over-all control of the Political Warfare Executive (P.W.E.) of the British Ministry of Information. Later, in conjunction with the Americans, the title of the unit was changed to Psychological Warfare Branch (P.W.B.)

"Every evening we had two broadcasts, at 7.30 and 10.30 pm, which went out on the medium wave transmitter of Radio Cairo at Abu Zabal, run by the E.S.B. (Egyptian State Broadcasting). The transmissions in eleven foreign languages were also relayed by three short wave transmitters, two belonging to the telegraph company Cable & Wireless (callsigns SUV & SUW), and an experimental transmitter of 7.5 kilowatts belonging to a British army signals unit, with the odd callsign JCJC, operated by young corporal Rowley Shears G8KW, a radio amateur friend of Norman Joly.

"The Greek broadcasts began in May 1941 and went on to the end of
January 1945.

"During this period many important personalities broadcast from
Studio 3, which was also used by well-known war correspondents of the
B.B.C., the N.B.C. and many other news organisations. The people of
occupied Greece were addressed by Mr Tsouderos, Crown Prince Paul of
Greece, Sofoclis Venizelos, son of the famous Cretan politician
Eleftherios Venizelos who had played a leading role in the political
fortunes of modern Greece, and Panayiotis Kanellopoulos Minister for
War. After the naval mutiny in the port of Alexandria Admiral
Voulgaris spoke to the officers and naval ratings of the Greek Royal
Navy."

Eliascos described in detail the negotiations of the Lebanon Conference which resulted in the appointment of George Papandreou (father of Andreas Papandreou who was recently Prime Minister), as the new Prime Minister of the Coalition government in exile. He can be seen at the famous R.C.A velocity microphone type 44BX which was used throughout World War II and many years after. This ribbon type microphone had a very large and heavy permanent magnet embodied in the design and must have weighed about 1,000 times more than a modern electret lapel microphone.

"I must explain that these war-time broadcasts were carried out in the presence of a Switch Censor who sat on the other side of the news reader's desk and was able to turn off the microphone in a split second if it ever became necessary. During the three and a half years of the broadcasts this was done only on one special occasion and certainly not because the newsreader had gone berserk or something like that. The Chief Censor was Professor Eric Sloman who had been the first Director of the Police Academy in Kerkyra (Corfu). Then there were censors for the eleven languages used in these broadcasts. The censor for the Polish broadcasts was the Countess Walevska, grand-daughter of Napoleon's lady friend. The Countess was a rather large lumbering woman who always came into the studio carrying lots of parcels. One evening she came in and sat in an armchair on the other side of the studio to wait her turn for the Polish broadcast which followed the Greek. As I was reading the news bulletin I suddenly became conscious of a regular ticking noise in the headphones I was wearing. I made a sign to Mr Joly who was acting as switch censor at the time, and he got up and walked over to the Countess. He whispered in her ear and asked her what was in her hand bag. The Countess blushed and replied that she had just collected her alarm clock from the watchmaker. I don't know if any sharp-eared listener had heard the ticking and thought that we had a time bomb in the studio.