GREEK WOMAN HELPED BRITONS IN CRETE

Wanganui Chronicle, 4 November 1949, Page 5

GREEK WOMAN HELPED BRITONS IN CRETE

LONDON, Nov. 3 (Recd. 6 pm).— A Greek woman, now the wife of a British naval officer, who helped to build up a chain of agents in the villages and mountains of Crete, and took a prominent part in getting some 400 British servicemen safely away to TjJgypt, has just been awarded the M.8.E., Civil D'vision. She is Mrs. Catherine Nicholas Phillips, who was known to Hundreds oi servicemen as "Catina. ’ Speaking at her home in Salisbury, she recalled two years of underground work which ended in her escape with a party of prisoners as the Germans were about to arrest her. She said: "I and two men decided to help British intelligence and start an underground movement. We hid British prisoners in villages and mountains until motor*launches were ready to take them away.” Before the occupation, "Catina's” father had run a local newspaper. The Germans forced her to print their sponsored paper. "But I also used the press to print our own underground news,” she said. By acting as an interpreter for the German commandant, she picked up information which she passed to British intelligence.

"Once I was able to tell them about a convoy in the Mediterranean and 16 ships were destroyed.”

When the Ges; apo approached her home to arrest her, she slipped away. She escaped to Egypt in a boat with 20 British prisoners.—Special N.Z.P.A. Correspondent.