As they drive along Syngrou Avenue, ruler-straight and terminally shabby, they keep passing Sherman tanks and armoured cars. The fighting seems to be going on in small pockets on both sides of the avenue. Machine guns are firing not far away in the direction of the Acropolis and there is the familiar flat thump of mortar rounds exploding. The tin cup of strong, sweet tea the crew have made him tastes strongly of petrol, but he sips it dutifully. Once or twice a bullet pings off the armour. ‘Not trying very hard,’ is the verdict from the crew. There is not much ambiguity inside the armoured car about ELAS: murdering gangsters, the lot of them, says the driver. Communist thugs working with German deserters, the wireless operator agrees.

‘You can’t really say anything good about either lot,’ says the commander, an older man from Yorkshire. ‘Say what you want about ELAS, at least they gave Jerry a run for his money. The ones on our side prancing around in Jerry uniforms … no, they’re all bloody savages, sir.’ The turret traverses while the commander and the gunner decide whether or not they’ve seen an ELAS mortar team or women with baskets full of laundry. ‘The people stuck in the middle, though, the ordinary Greeks: they’re lovely people who don’t deserve all this bloody nonsense. I was in Normandy and I’ve never seen so many dead civilians.’

They drop Tom off outside the Hotel Grande Bretagne – the Fortress, as the commander calls it. Like most soldiers he doesn’t quite know what to make of this scarred and limping paratrooper captain with the purple and white ribbon of the military cross and a green War Correspondent patch over the wings on his sleeves. ‘It’s where they’re all staying: photographers, correspondents, the top brass. I’ve heard,’ he adds, as the armoured car pulls up in Syntagma Square, ‘that ELAS don’t shoot at the Yank journalists. Everyone else is fair game, though, sir …’