Mario Modiano at the Acropolis

This picture of me was taken when I was twenty years old, in 1946. It is at the Acropolis in Athens, in front of the Parthenon. Here you can see someone who is going to be a monument behind, eh in front of another monument. This picture was taken after the occupation. I was an assistant working for the American Joint Distribution Committee, in their offices on Mitropoleos Street at the time. In the early days of January 1945, after the end of the uprising, there was a call for interpreters in the Greek Army. I falsified my birth date on my German identity card and pretended I was old enough for the army as an interpreter. But I was still only seventeen. I was accepted and given the rank of second lieutenant. I served first in Kalamata and then in Tripoli in the Peloponnesus. At that time there were still clusters of communist guerrillas on the mountains. I worked as an interpreter with the British military mission, which was instructing the newly recruited Greek army in all military drills. I was translating some of the manuals of the British army for the use by the Greek army, and I was demobilized about two years later. That's when I started working for the Joint, where I made many friends.