A British engineer officer drawn into Greek resistance politics
On 25 November 1942, Myers's party blew up a span of the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct with support from about 150 Greek partisans.
Edmund Myers was a Royal Engineers officer who led the Special Operations Executive's British military mission to occupied Greece during the Second World War. He planned and commanded the November 1942 operation that destroyed the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct, coordinating cooperation between the rival ELAS and EDES resistance groups. His military assignment became entangled with British intervention in Greece's postwar political order, and he later recorded the experience in his memoir Greek Entanglement.
Also known as: Eddie Myers · Edmund Charles Wolf Myers
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1926Commissioned into the Royal Engineers
- 1942–1944Head of the SOE British Military Mission to occupied Greece
- 1942Commanded the Gorgopotamos viaduct operation
- 1943Took part in the destruction of the Asopos railway bridge
- 1944Commander Royal Engineers, 1st Airborne Division, at Arnhem
- 1955Published the memoir Greek Entanglement
Related historical events
From sabotage to political entanglement: the monarchy and the Cairo talks
Myers's mission was conceived as a military operation to sever the German supply lines feeding the North African front before El Alamein, but he was soon drawn into the political problem the British most feared: the rivalry between the communist-dominated EAM/ELAS and the republican EDES, and British designs to restore the monarchy of the unpopular King George II after liberation. Myers earned the trust of the Greek partisan leaders, and EAM/ELAS in particular trusted him. Seeking cooperation among the guerrilla factions, he arranged in August 1943 for a delegation of resistance representatives to visit Cairo. The delegation demanded that King George II not return to Greece until a plebiscite determined the monarchy's future; the King refused the ultimatum, and Churchill stood by the British guarantee of the throne. The Foreign Office criticised Myers for what it judged too favourable a treatment of ELAS, and he was removed from his post, succeeded by his deputy Chris Woodhouse. The memoir he published in 1955, Greek Entanglement, distils this experience of a sabotage officer watching his assignment founder amid the political fissures of the country he was sent to help.