THE Anglican church of St Paul’s is tucked away at the end of the aptly named Filelinon St, literally friends of the Hellenes. It’s October 13, 63 years to the day since Athens was liberated from German occupation. Inside the small space, with its highly polished pews and stained glass windows, old soldiers, Greek and British, have gathered to commemorate the life of George, Lord Jellicoe, who died this year at 89: the man who liberated Athens on a bicycle.
It’s a charming image and it fits the colourful life of a gentleman hero who, by the age of 26, had been awarded an impressive array of military honours including the L?gion d’honneur, the Greek Military Cross and, as a member of the SAS, a DSO for his part in an attack on a German airfield at Heraklion and an MC in a parachute operation in Rhodes – a ‘Boy’s Own’ style hero, flamboyant and pleasure loving. Back in Civvie Street, he went into politics, but had to resign from the Heath government following indiscretions with call girls. Nevertheless, he became leader of the House of Lords, Chancellor of Southampton University and a highly eminent businessman as chairman of Tate and Lyle, and had eight children and two wives.
But as one senior British military officer official whispered to me, when I commented that there don’t seem to be characters like this any more, “We’re not allowed to be.” And that rang true: those maverick soldiers who lived by the SAS motto of “Who dares wins” would probably find themselves today being court marshalled, or pilloried in the press and held accountable for breaking the rules.
Sitting a few pews in front is another old soldier, still handsome at 93, with a face that has lived a thousand tales, Paddy Leigh Fermor. Famed for his travel writing, like his old friend George, during WWII he had infiltrated deep behind enemy lines. Living incognito as a shepherd in Crete he had worked with the Greek resistance until he was able to expel the German commander. In fact, I remember as a kid watching an old black and white film in my Grandfather’s sitting room in Staines on a Sunday afternoon. Dirk Bogarde, in “I’ll Met by Moonlight”. It told Major Leigh Fermor’s story.
We sing the old hymns in the service, Jerusalem and I vow to thee my country, stirring patriotic tunes, stirring tears of remembrance in the eyes of the veterans around me, but lines from Durrell’s Bitter Lemons when Leigh Fermor visited him in Bellapais return: “After a splendid dinner by the fire, he starts singing, songs of Crete, Athens, Macedonia. When I go out to refill the ouzo bottle… I find the street completely filled with people listening…
Everyone seems struck dumb. ‘What is it?’ I say… ‘Never have I heard of Englishmen singing Greek songs like this!’” And I reflect that what marks these old soldiers out, like Byron before them, is the fact that they weren’t just fighting for their own country, they were fighting for someone else’s that they loved just as much.
