222 • GREEN INK
Instead of returning to Greece, Myers was posted to the STS at
Haifa. While Myers had been in London, the king of the Hellenes
had issued an ultimatum: If Myers was sent back to Greece, the king
would abdicate. This was proof enough for London that SOE had
been meddling in local politics, and Lord Glenconner was replaced
as head of SOE Cairo by Major General William Stawell.
Altogether about 400 British officers and other ranks went to
Greece, but a proportion of the casualties were the victims of interne-
cine strife rather than enemy action. An SOE officer in charge of a
stay-behind network had been captured early on, soon after the evac-
uation from Athens; a second, Mark Ogilvie-Grant, was caught after
a clandestine landing by submarine in the Peloponnese; and another
was arrested on Antiparos ‘‘in conditions that brought disaster on
several Greek agents in Athens.’’ Some 120 partisans were trans-
ported to concentration camps following the discovery of an arms
dump on Andicythira, and another large cache fell into enemy hands
on Samothrace, near the Turkish coast. Later, Michael Cumberlege
was captured while preparing to block the Corinth Canal, but it was
the death of a New Zealander, Lieutenant Hubbard, shot by ELAS
forces at Triklinos at the beginning of the civil war, that really created
a furor, both locally and in the House of Commons; Hubbard had
apparently been shot accidentally by an ELAS gunman but, accord-
ing to Woodhouse, he had been killed ‘‘by criminal negligence.’’ In
addition, Sheppard was blown up when he stepped on one of his own
mines, also at the outbreak of the civil war, soon after he had firmly
given his support to the Communists.
When the Germans finally withdrew from Greece in the autumn of
1944, ELAS launched an offensive, not against the retreating Wehr-
macht columns but on EDES. Using weapons and money largely sup-
plied by SOE, ELAS tracked down numerous EDES groups and
engaged them in battle, thereby sparking off the Greek Civil War,
which nearly caused postwar Greece to become a Communist state
and Soviet satellite.See alsoHARLING.GREEN INK.One of the traditions of theSecret Intelligence Service,
inherited from Mansfield Smith-Cumming, is that the Chief writes,
and signs his name, in green ink.