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My father George Mavroleon rose to Major in the Royal Engineers during the second world war. Born in 1915 in Port Said of Greek parents he came to the UK to study marine engineering at Newcastle University during the late 1930’s. He volunteered but was turned down at the beginning of the war by both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Surprising perhaps that the Royal Navy should turn away a young man with a degree in marine engineering, but early in the war foreigners were treated with understandable suspicion. The Army proved more open-minded and a career that took George through North Africa and Italy began. On their way up Italy, the allied forces depended on supply by sea. Ports had been damaged or destroyed by bombing from both sides and had to be brought back to efficiency as a matter of urgency. George was involved in the recommisioning of the port of Brindisi. Being a person with a neat and tidy mind who liked to see things ordered in a mathematical way, George lined the port’s mobile cranes in a guardsmen like rank. The inevitable happened. The port was visited by Stukas at dawn the following day. George awoke to the sound of falling bombs…………….
God smiled and the cranes remained intact…with a palpable sense of relief George went on to other ports in Italy finishing at Venice and enjoyed the experience of ‘riding in Musso’s armoured train from Venice to Ancona’. He never lined up cranes in a row again though, and was demobed in 1945 to begin a life as a superintendent engineer for Greek Shipowners. He died in 1999.

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