Greek War Heroine Awarded British O.B.E.

Chronicle (Levin), 4 November 1949, Page 5

Greek War Heroine Awarded British O.B.E.

LONDON, Nov. 3. A Greek woman, now the wife of a British naval officer, who helped to tmild up a chain of agents in the villages and mountains of Orete and took a prominent part in getting some 4.00 British servicemen safely away to Egypt, has just been awarded the M.B.E. Civil Division. She is Mrs Catherine Nicholas Phillips, who is known to hundreds of servicemen as "Catina." Speaking at her home in Salisbury she recalled two years of undergroimd 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 the British Intelligence and start an under ground movement. We hid British prisoners in villages and mountains until motor launches were ready to take them away." Before 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." By acting as interpreter for the German commandant she picked up information which. she passed to the British Intelligence. ' 4 Once I was able to tell them about a convoy in the Mediterranean and 16 ships were destroyed." When the Gestapo approached her home to arrest her she slipped away. She escaped to Egypt in a boat with 20, British prisoners.