Alan Ogden

“As Major Derek Dodson left Fillipaioi in early October 1943, he wrote in his diary: ‘Behind [me] the bare mountains were almost pink against the background of blue sky and pinkish clouds. Walking along in front of the guide I thought of home, of afternoon tea on a silver tray in the little garden, of the peace and rest and coolness of English summer. Crossing the valley there was great peace. We seemed in so remote a place with only the distant ring of the sheep bells to break the silence’.”
― Alan Ogden, Sons of Odysseus: SOE Heroes in Greece

“I could only bow my head. They had no great claims on life. They were not dreaming of marble halls or the glittering tinsel of victory. Their simple village lives had been disrupted by foreign invasions and their consequences. In response, they had given all that was best within them: their courage and instinctive guile, their refusal to submit, their intelligent and critical reserve about the motives of some of their leaders, their solidarity with their compatriots in Epirus and their readiness to sacrifice all they had in the cause of liberation.”
― Alan Ogden, Sons of Odysseus: SOE Heroes in Greece