HMS Ajax Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

8 October 2020 Comments 1 Comment

“There’s a lot of ruin in any nation…”

The Greeks are still not laughing about their mid-1940s civil war, so levity may be inappropriate. Nor was at the time was Winston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “responsible for building up the nest of cockatrices for EAM [communist partisans] in Greece.” (His vocabulary was broad: A cockatrice is a mythical, two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a cock’s head.)

Nevertheless, the peace deal Churchill brokered between warring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilarious moments that, 75 years later, we may be permitted to indulge in lighter aspects.…

Athens 1944: Not Churchill’s Finest Hour? Hmm….

4 January 2019 Comments 0 Comments

Question:

A r eader writes: “Rather late in the day, I have been reading The Spectator (UK) Christmas Special dated 15/21/29 December 2018. Page 28 refers to one Ronnie Boyd, who had been a teenage Ordinary Seaman aboard HMS Ajax in December 1944, when Winston Churchill arrived in Athens to try to end the ongoing civil war.

“British forces ‘helped put down, with considerable force of arms, a perceived partisan/communist uprising—the so-called Battle of Athens, or the Dekemvriana in Greece,’ the article states. There follows the extraordinary statement ‘Not Winston Churchill’s Finest Hour, it has to be said.’…