232 • HARLING
HARLING.Code name for the firstSpecial Operations Executive
(SOE) mission to the mainland ofGreece, in September 1942, led
by Brigadier Edmund Myers of the Royal Engineers.harlingre-
sulted in contact with the Communist-dominated Greek army of na-
tional liberation,ELAS, and the demolition of the Gorgopotamus
bridge in November. Myers was an unlikely candidate for the mis-
sion, his only tenuous connection with SOE being that he was court-
ing, and was later to marry,Bickham Sweet-Escott’s sister Louisa.
A professional soldier who had recently been through the Middle
East Staff College in Haifa and the Combined Operations parachute
course at Suez, in September 1942 he had been scheduled to return
to England. Instead, Colonel William Hamilton, an acquaintance and
senior member of SOECairo’s staff, persuaded him to volunteer for
harling. Myers spoke no Greek and his local knowledge was ‘‘lim-
ited to a few hours in Athens and Dubrovnik.’’ Nevertheless, Hamil-
ton assured him that this was plenty of experience by SOE’s
standards and gave him four days to prepare himself for his mission.
Myers’s objective, the Gorgopotamus viaduct, was one of three
bridges that carried the main railway through Greece to the port of
Piraeus. The Afrika Korps was heavily dependent upon this supply
route, and the Royal Air Force had been unable to prevent its supply
ships from dashing across from Crete to Tobruk and Benghazi under
cover of darkness. Having failed to sink General Erwin Rommel’s
ships, GHQ Middle East asked SOE to destroy the vital railway link
somewhere between Salonika and Athens. General Alexander’s re-
quest, in anticipation of the Eighth Army’s offensive at El Alamein
scheduled for mid-October, was relayed to SOE’s main source in
Athens, Captain Koutsoyiannopoulos of the Royal Hellenic Navy,
known asprometheus ii, who was operating a radio left by SOE
during the evacuation of Athens. His reply, received in Turkey and
couriered to Cairo in September confirmed that such an operation
was possible and recommended that about 10 parachutists equipped
with sabotage mate ́riel be dropped between the end of September and
early October.
Of the 12 SOE men due to land on the appointed evening from
three Liberators, only eight actually parachuted on the last night of
September, and of them only four could speak any Greek. The third
aircraft had failed to find the drop zone and had returned to Egypt.