CHRISTMAS FARE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21604, 5 January 1945, Page 3

CHRISTMAS FARE

HIGH PRICES IN ATHENS TURKEY OFFERED FOR £l2 SYDNEY, Dec. 28. The population of Athens spent Christmas cowering in cellars behind locked and barricaded doors, while the battle for mastery of the city raged overhead, reports T. Southwell Keeiy, Sydney Morning Herald war correspondent. There was no tacit truce and no relief from the three weeks’ agony of the civil jwar. Chattering machineguns and the spang of snipers’ bullets still spelled death in the streets, while the deeper-throated mortars and the 75’s spread devastation. Koionaki, which is the wealthiest suburb of Athens and is in the liberated zone, has become a marketplace for poorer classes. On. December 24 the fashionable square was thronged with kerbside stalls and crowded with thousands of people trying to buy some food for Christmas.

There was only one turkey offering, at an equivalent of £l2. Other prices were: —Oranges, 4s each; milk, £G a tin; the cheapest wine, £2 a bottle; fowls, £5 each; eggs, 4s each; English cigarettes, 10s a packet. Only the wealthiest could afford to buy.

A sudden burst of machine-gun fire from a near-by building cleared the square in a moment, and sent people tumbling to shelter.