The Greek War Relief also had an office in Greece. It wanted to send two Greek Americans to Greece with the two Congressmen to act as interpreters, and to try to reorganize the Greek War Relief Office. It had been opened the year before when the Germans evacuated the country. The office was to distribute food, clothing and medicine. It also furnished five medical units, each having a doctor, a dentist and two nurses, travelling throughout Greece. This was critical because transportation was extremely difficult due to the damage done during the war. People could not receive medical attention except in Athens, and those in the countryside could not get there.

I was chosen as one of the two men to go to Greece with the Congressmen. The other man was from New York. We left Washington, D.C. just a couple days after the surrender of Japan. We traveled on a military plane with a diplomatic passport. The plane was small and did not have the ability to travel as far and as fast as planes do today. We stopped in Bermuda, Paris, Italy, and finally in Greece.

When I arrived in Greece I saw the most deplorable conditions that a person could imagine. I saw a picture of destruction that can never leave my mind. Many sections of Athens were destroyed by the retreating Germans. Other parts of the city were destroyed in the fighting during the Civil War when the Leftist tried to take over the Government. Greeks were fighting Greeks. This created a division which I find painful to discuss. I don't want to side with either faction. Nor do I wish to mention this sorry subject again.

When the Germans evacuated Greece, they sank ships in the harbors of Pireaus and Thessaloniki, closing them to allied shipping. The bridge over the Corinthian Canal was destroyed. The railroads were inoperable due to bridges destroyed and tracks torn up. Transportation in general was very difficult and dangerous.

We traveled to the North and the South of Greece in all kinds of vehicles, by jeep and by car. The roads were terrible, hardly passable. We usually couldn't go more than ten miles an hour. What we saw was a picture of utter disaster that cannot be described. As a result of the suffering, people looked twenty-five years older than their true ages. Their faces showed the agony of five years of foreign occupation. We heard many stories of atrocities committed by the Italians and especially by the Germans. Each time a German was killed the Germans would turn around and burn an entire village and often massacre the entire male population.

We heard stories of young children from orphanages, who had wandered the countryside in wolf packs, often living off the land. To survive, they stole everything insight, usually from the Germans. The Greeks didn't have anything worth stealing. Their favorite targets were German supply trucks, rumbling up and down Greece on those miserable roads. They served as the theme of a motion picture that I later produced, called the BAREFOOT BATTALION.

We visited the Island of Crete. We visited the Peloponneese, which gave me the opportunity to visit the village where I was born. We visited Kalavrita, the place where the flag of liberation from the Turks was raised on March 25, 1821. We found the whole town burned to the ground. There wasn't a living soul around except for a few women and children. All the men of Kalavrita were executed by the Germans because the partisans had ambushed three or four German soldiers nearby.

When the time came for us to leave for the United States, we couldn't get a flight out. There were very few planes leaving. The few seats that were available were taken by high priority passengers. At that same time, I received a wire from my wife that we had a fire at the restaurant and for me to come home immediately. I wired back and said that I was very sorry, that I would love to return, but that I had no way to get there until space could be found on an airplane. She and my partner, George, would have to do the best they could without me. We ended up staying in Greece from August of l945 to February of 1946.

Incidentally, while I'm on the subject of my partner George Paulson, I had bought him out in 1936 when he filed bankruptcy. He then worked for me for a number of years as night manager. During the war years the restaurant made a lot of money. Most of the profits were going to the government in the form of income taxes. Around 1942 or 1943 I asked my attorney to turn half the ownership of the restaurant back to George. He was working hard for the place and I felt that I was taking advantage of him. When I bought him out during the depression the place was in deplorable condition. We were losing money and he couldn't afford his end of it.

The attorney said that the government might raise an issue over the transfer, claiming that I was trying to avoid taxes by sharing the profits. I convinced the attorney that my intentions were honorable and correct. He prepared the partnership papers. They were executed and the change of title went on the record. Fortunately, we had no problem with the government. George became a full partner again, at no cost to him, in a restaurant that was coining money beyond our wildest expectations.