Mr John Nikolopoulos

John Nikolopoulos was born in Thessaloniki in 1924. He finished elementary school there and attended only five years of high school in Athens due to the outbreak of the Greek–Italian war. During the first months of the German–Italian occupation, he was an active member of an organisation which helped British soldiers trapped in Athens to escape. In September 1941, aged just 17, he set out on his journey to the Middle East from Piraeus, via the island of Samos. After an adventurous two-month trip, he arrived in Palestine where he enlisted in the Greek Army of the Middle East in Beit Lit/Kfar Iona camps. He served in active units (1st and 3rd Field Artillery Regiments) until 28 November 1945. He fought in El Alamein, Rimini, and, in December 1944, in Athens, as a soldier, and was promoted from Corporal to Sergeant to Sergeant Major. In the 1950s he emigrated to Cameroon, Africa. He married in 1954, in Athens, and in 1960 returned to Greece, where he became a businessman until his retirement in 2008.