Denaby Gunners Greek Bride – Girl Helped to Rescue Him from Gestapo (picture)

June 1945

South Yorkshire Times June 9, 1945

Denaby Gunner’s Greek Bride
Girl Helped to Rescue Him from Gestapo

June Img093 Greek

A Denaby Main soldier, Gunner Ernest Hand, of 43 Maltby Street,  has  returned home, bringing with him a Greek girl, 19-year-old Anastasia Papadolouli, as his bride.

Behind this wartime romance is a remarkable story about Gunner Hand escape from the enemy and moved undetected among the Greek people after having been saved from the Germans by the girl he eventually married.

Gunner Hand was taken prisoner in Crete on June 1, 1941, and after 13 days managed to escape and was free for seven months. He was taken again in June 1942, and placed in a civilian prison where he was held until the following March when he was taken to Greece. After 60 days captivity he managed to escape again and  was thence free until October 26, 1944 when Greece was liberated and he was able to contact British forces.

He was befriended by a Greek woman who had previously helped several English prisoners to get away to Egypt. Gunner Hand hoped to do the same, but the Gestapo pressed him so hard that he dared not leave the house. He had to lie low for 12 months during which he never saw daylight, being kept in an underground room and provided with food by Greek friends amongst whom was Anastasia, who was a schoolgirl at the time at a Secondary School in Athens. She helped to teach the Greek language during his enforced period of inactivity, and when he was able to leave the house, wearing civilian clothes, she took him about seeing the sights and visiting cinemas.

Spy Danger

Gunner Hand told a “times” reporter that he was chased by the Gestapo to Athens, but eventually lived in a small town just outside called Kallithea. He tried to teach Anastasia English, but had to give up because the danger of being overheard by spies was so great that he dared not even use his own language. Although he knew another Englishman there, they never dared conversed together except in Greek. Gunner Hand found when he contacted the British Army that he had almost lost the habit of using his own language, and began telling the British officer in Greek that he hailed from Yorkshire.

Gunner Hand and his young bride have been given a warm welcome in Denaby and are very happy together. Anastasia is now making good progress with her English and was able to tell the “times” representative, “I like the English people much, but not your weather. It is melancholy. I want the son of Greece to shine. It always shines there. The people here are very nice, but not your weather.”

Mrs Hand’s father died when she was two, and her mother died through illness in 1942, and since then she has lived with an aunt. They had told Gunner Hand, after their betrothal, that Anastasia had said, when she was quite a small girl, that she would marry an Englishman. She’s a good singer, and her ambition is to be an operatic singer. Gunner Hand painted a number of pictures, many of them views of Grecian ruins, during his stay in Greece. These watercolours evince commendable artistic talent. The couple were married in Greece on February 15 of this year.

Gunner Hand said conditions in Greece had been very bad and the treatment by the Germans was very cruel. He had seen a boy shot by the Germans because he gave a prisoner of war two cigarettes