John Colville: diary (Colville papers) 22 Sep­tem­ber 1940:
The PM gave vent to a most hor­rif­ic dis­play of abu­sive epi­thets when he saw a telegram about Sir S. Symes,​*​ Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of the Sudan, who is said to be “bored with the war.” So strong­ly did he feel that he had to call me back and say, “Don’t put it to Cado­gan in quite those terms.” (The report had come from [Ambas­sador Miles] Lamp­son at Cairo.) Dis­cuss the Egypt­ian bat­tle which now seems to be open­ing. The PM is full of con­fi­dence and says that we have enough good troops out there to do what is nec­es­sary “unless, of course, our men fight like skunks and the Ital­ians like heroes.” But he feels the oppo­site is more like­ly to be the case.

Alexan­der Cado­gan, Per­ma­nent Under-Sec­re­tary for For­eign Affairs (1938-46), was a fre­quent crit­ic of Churchill’s. As a civ­il ser­vant he was rel­a­tive­ly insu­lat­ed, and WSC was care­ful with his lan­guage where Cado­gan was concerned.

Possible origins

Of course the “Greeks” phrase might have escaped my search and have been said on some oth­er occa­sion. Churchill was attract­ed to good turns of phrase and retread­ed and revised them often.

*Sir George Symes DSO

George Stew­art Symes (1882-1962) entered the Army in 1900. He saw active ser­vice in South Africa (1902), Aden (1903-04, DSO), and on the West­ern Front in the First World War, where he was men­tioned in despatch­es. He was Assis­tant Direc­tor of Intel­li­gence, Sudan, 1918-19; Gov­er­nor of the North­ern Dis­trict, Pales­tine, 1920-25; Chief Sec­re­tary, Gov­ern­ment of Pales­tine, 1925-28; Res­i­dent and Com­man­der-in-Chief, Aden, 1928-31; Gov­er­nor and Com­man­der-in-Chief, Tan­ganyi­ka, 1931-33; and Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al of the Sudan, 1934-40. He was knight­ed in 1928.

See also:

“Athens 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Seri­ous Sit­u­a­tion” (2020)