Panourgias Panourgias

Panourgias St. Panourgias, the fifth-generation descendant of the Phocis chieftain Panourgias, was born in Athens in 1917. Following in the military footsteps of his ancestors, he graduated from the Military Academy in 1937 and received further training at the schools of Cavalry, War, Intelligence, Armoured, National Defence, Tanks (USA), and Staff Command (USA)

He served as an Armoured Corps officer (commander of a battalion, a brigade, the 20th Armoured Division, etc.), a lecturer at the National Defence College, a staff officer at the Coordination Directorate of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff, Armed Forces attaché at the embassy in Bonn, Chief of Staff of the Aegean Military Command, Director of the 2nd Staff Office of the General Staff. He took part in the wars of 1940–41 as commander of a cavalry squadron. In February 1943, he fled to the Middle East and served in the Sacred Battalion. He was wounded on Milos in December 1944 during a skirmish with the Germans. He took part in all the battles in the Peloponnese during the Civil War as commander of an armoured brigade.

With the imposition of the military dictatorship in 1967, he was discharged with the rank of Major General. He was actively involved in the resistance as a co-founder of the organisation ‘Free Greeks’, and was arrested and exiled on several occasions.
Following the transition to democracy, he was reinstated and retired with the rank of Lieutenant General, and was appointed military adviser to Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis. He was elected Member of Parliament for Fthiotida with New Democracy in the 1974, 1981 and 1985 elections. He served as Deputy Minister of Transport (1974–76) and Chairman of the National Defence Committee. He retired from politics in 1989.

He was awarded the Gold Medal of Valour, the War Cross (four times), the Gold Cross with Swords of the Order of St George, 1st Class, the Cross of the Order of the Phoenix, Order of St George, First Class, Senior Brigadier of the Order of Honour, Cross of Distinguished Service (West Germany), Military Merit Medals, 3rd and 2nd Class, and commemorative medals for the wars of 1940–41 and 1941–45.

He wrote the tribute in memory of his brother Mimi: Dimitrios-Nakos Panourgias, 1999, Ikaros Publications, the publication Cyprus: The withdrawal of the Greek Division on 29 November 1967 – National Tender, 2003, Kardamitsa Publications, based on the diary of General G. Peridis, as well as the history of his family, Panourgias: The History of a Family from the Years of the Greek Revolution of 1821, Ikaros Publications, 2012. In recent years, he had been working on the volume he was preparing on the ‘Free Greeks’.