British Forces

Medical evacuation from Greece to Italy

Imperial War Museum

RAF ground crews and American medical orderlies remove a stretcher bearing Lieutenant John Giannaris, US Army, from the rear cockpit of a Westland Lysander Mark III(SD) of No. 148 (Special Duties) Squadron RAF, at an airfield in Italy following his evacuation from German-occupied Greece. Giannaris, an American OSS officer leading a Greek guerilla group, was badly wounded while attempting to sabotage part of the Athens-Salonika railway line north of Lamia in central Greece and required urgent evacuation for treatment at an Allied hospital. Flying Officer N H Attenborrow flew the Lysander, largely unescorted, over 500 miles from Southern Italy to pick up the wounded officer on a landing strip prepared by the guerillas in the Pindus mountains. Victor Sierra