BRAVE GREEK GIRL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 153, 30 June 1945, Page 9

BRAVE GREEK GIRL

NURSE UNDER NAZIS SAVES BRITISH OFFICERS By FLORENCE FEILER NEW YORK. In demure Anna Lazaridoa lies hidden strength—strength enough to recover from seven wounds she received in 1941 on the Albanian Front and strength enough to outwit the Nazis and safely conduct ten British officers from Salonika to Smyrna. The young nurse, wife of U.S. Army Capt. Edward W. Briscoe, has now arrived in the United States. Her story is substantiated by numeri ous military documents and citations | given her in February, 1944, when J she requested a discharge from the Greek Army Nurse Corps in Cairo. Anna Lazaridou, member of a well-to-do Cretan military family, was promoted to the "A" nurse rank after her Albanian service and joined a secret society which aided fugitive Allied prisoners. (Her first husband was killed defending Greece during the Italian invasion.) In Salonika late in 1941, she consented to work in a Nazi-administered hospital for war prisoners. Here the young nurse helped dozens of British war prisoners to escape. Nazi punitive measures against the Greek hospital staff failed to uncover the liberation channels. Then one day, Mme. Lazaridou had an opportunity to treat ten British officers in an adjacent prison camp. Executed Her Brother "I gave injections to make them ill enough to be removed to the hospital," she admitted. "More injections of condensed milk kept their fever high. Members of the society in the city used to help our staff when we smuggled the men out dressed as cooks, in laundry trucks, or through the morgue. Younger men climbed from the hospital's second storey to trees that overlooked the outside walls and city people led them to safety.

"We also used faked passes," she added. "Under the society's protection, the ten men were shifted from

Anna Lazaridou I one house to another until they reached the city limits. I met them there and received my instructions from the organisation." When the Nazis could not find Mme. Lazaridou they executed her brother, George Polichronakis, a Greek naval captain, while a GreekAmerican, Louis Couphopoulos, because of his American citizenship, was given only 20 years' penal servitude. A price of 400,000 drachmas (4000 dollars) was put on the nurse's head. Yet she dared to return to Salonika from a hide-out in the Macedonian mountains to rescue her six-year-old niece Calliope (Poppy).

The ten officers, still ill, remained hidden by day while the nurse searched out trails through the mountains to a seaport. Each night she returned to escort the men to the next post she had found. They journeyed in constant danger of capture till thev reached the coast. "I used my jewellery and silver to pay our 12 passages on a wheat ship. This vessel left us on an isolated island with just enough food for a week, but no water, to await another ship," Mme. Lazaridou continued. "The second ship left us on Chios during stormy weather, but returned for us a week later. Finally we reached Asia Minor. Ungenerous Treatment ,"The British Consul •at Smyrna sent nine of the men to Cairo, but arranged for Poppy and me to act as the tenth officer's child and wife, so I could go to Cairo as an English citizen. I never saw the other men again." Mme. Lazaridou's eyes flashed as she described her reception at the Provost-Marshal's office in Cairo. "I was asked to sign a paper there which charged the Greek Government 250 English pounds for my transportation from Turkey to Egypt! And here I had paid for the passage of ten British officers from Salonika to Smyrna." She clenched her fists. Sent without funds to the Repatriation Bureau at closing time on a Saturday, she and Poppy spent two nights under the office entrance stairs. An Arabian policeman gave them food and sent them to the Greek refugee camp at Kizira, where a Scottish sergeant took care of them since they had no food authorisation cards. Here. Captain Briscoe, in charge of English control troops, met Mme. Lazaridou and Poppy . and made arrangements for their suppor~ Eventually the nurse and captain were married. Briscoe transferred to the American Army in January, 1943. Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.