Revolt in the Desert

This was the story, outlined by Winston Churchill (see International) and long suppressed by the Cairo censor, of a Greek Army mutiny in the Egyptian desert :

For Unity. For dreary months last winter, in a dreary wasteland camp, 5,000 men of the Greek First Brigade trained for battle service. Many were tough veterans, evzones who had doffed their exotic petti coats and pomponed slippers to fight frost bite and Italians in Albania's wild mountains. They had escaped from the homeland when the Germans turned the tide. Now they chafed to get back into the fight against the Fascists.

While they chafed, soldiers talked politics. Egged on by smuggled pamphlets and haranguing junior officers, the men grew angry over the reluctance of their Cabinet In Exile to form a national Government with representatives from the fighting factions in Greece. Last April they sent a truculent delegation to Cairo with a demand for political action. The royalist Greek Cabinet, with British support, remained unmoved.

Out in the desert camp mutiny flared. The disgruntled Greeks swiftly took control from officers loyal to the Cairo regime. Sternly British General Sir Bernard Paget ordered the mutineers to lay down their arms, submit to authority. The Greeks argued that they were merely staging a political demonstration. The British said that mixing politics with soldiering was a breach of discipline. When words failed, General Paget moved up a British armored force, issued an ultimatum.

The mutineers were defiant. They had plenty of food: from neutral Bedouins they bought sheep at $20 a head. They had artillery, mortars, tommy guns, armored cars. They waited. Just before midnight of the ultimatum's deadline their outposts heard British troops advancing.

For Discipline. Neither side had their hearts in the quarrel. The Greeks fell back, firing at random. A stray bullet killed a British officer, the affair's only casualty. At 3:45 a.m. a grimy mutineers' delegation asked for terms; above all, they wanted Greek political unity. Tight-lipped British officers listened politely, then told the delegation to go back, get properly cleaned up and return with an unconditional surrender. By the dawn's half-light the Greeks were back, clean and submissive.

All next morning (April 24) disarmed, crestfallen Greeks filed into waiting trucks for internment behind the barbed wire of an ex-German prisoners' camp. They were still there last week, an unsolved problem for the British and Premier George Papandreou, who had come out of Greece to form the sort of coalition government the mutineers wanted.

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