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Yet Constantine's coup turned out to be little short of a comedy of errors. A few days before his target date, he ordered Olympic Airways to place two planes at his disposal—a tip-off to the junta's ubiquitous secret police that the King had some travel in mind. His method of heralding the coup was even less auspicious: he simply sat down at his palace desk in the Athens suburb of Tatoi and wrote a letter to Lieut. General Odysseus Anghelis, the army chief of staff and a junta supporter. In it, the King told the general that he had taken full charge of the government and armed forces, and warned him not to take orders from anyone else.
While a messenger was dispatched with the letter, the King bundled his royal clan, along with Premier Constantine Kollias and the commander of the air force, aboard the two planes at Tatoi airbase and took off for the north of Greece, where the bulk of Greece's 118,000-man army is concentrated along the Turkish border. Constantine's plan, such as it was, called for assuming command of those troops and making a triumphant march southward that would scare the junta into quitting.
Triumphal Reception. At first it seemed as if his plan might succeed. As his plane landed at the seaport town of Kavalla, 200 miles north of Athens, royalist army officers greeted him and put him aboard a helicopter for a flight to the town square, which was filled with a cheering crowd. Some men lifted the King to their shoulders and carried him in triumph to the town hall, where he spoke to the crowd from a balcony. Cupping his hands like a megaphone, he shouted, "United we shall win! United we shall win!" Then, accompanied by two tanks that rumbled along as a guard of honor, Constantine went to a local radio station and recorded a 15-minute speech. Royalist pilots flew the tape south to Larissa, a town in central Greece that had the only available transmitter.
"Greeks," the recorded speech said, "the moment has come for you to hear the voice of your King. Today I put an end to anomaly and violence. I ask the Greek people to assist me in re-establishing the moral values that were born in this land. The change that takes place today will not allow the prevalence of a spirit of revenge against those who committed errors. But I wish to make it clear to all that I will no longer tolerate any disobedience, which will be stamped out mercilessly."
It was a fairly stirring call to arms. Unfortunately, few Greeks heard it. Constantine had lacked the foresight—or the troops—to seize control of a regular radio station, and his message went out only on a weak short-wave station that was almost inaudible in Athens.
Tipped off about the coup by the King's letter to General Anghelis, the junta reacted swiftly, with military precision. Shoppers in Athens were startled to see armored personnel carriers take up positions around government buildings. Troops appeared on rooftops. Other military units set up a defense line north of Athens in case the King marched south. All telephone and telegraph circuits to the north were cut off. Athens remained totally quiet, and there was no report of any uprising anywhere in the south on behalf of the King. The junta radio boomed out messages for calm and claims that the situation was well in hand.