Orthokostá (6 page)

—Tóyias was there?

—He was the camp commander. Tóyias from Mesorráhi. He was killed. And Stratís Karadímas. The General, we could say. He came
in, he put a fright in me, We'll cut off your hair, you.
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Why cut off my hair, just put a bullet in me. And Tóyias says to me, No, you're a hostage, we're holding you because of your brothers. We'll cut the hair off the other women. Thirty-six days I was a hostage. I wouldn't eat. They'd give us watery soup with flies in it and a tiny piece of bread. Like a piece of
antídoron
.
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They'd tell us: Any of you don't eat your bread, you take it with you. I didn't eat. I was going out the door one day. Why don't you take your bread with you, the General asks me. You think we give a damn that you don't eat? I didn't answer him. Then that Tóyias gave us a speech. They gathered us in the church. And this is what he said, I heard every word of it. Like for example, if Makrís, Yeorghía's father, does anything for the Germans right now, of course his daughter will pay for it. He said that in his speech. Three days later they took me to be questioned. There was a hunchback there in a large cell, with firearms in it. He says to me, Come over here, are you going to tell us the truth or do you want to go to the hole. I got scared. I didn't know about holes, didn't know what they were and what they did. I found that out later there. But I was scared. Very scared. He was a deformed man, that interrogator, a hunchback. He says, Who were your brothers with, what was their relation with the Germans? I say, Our men were at home, they didn't have relations with anyone. They arrested me in Kastrí, and I found out that they left. I don't know what happened in between. He says, Did they say anything in defense of the Germans? In our house, I say, never. Never heard any talk like that. And he says, If we give you a gun now will you go and kill your brothers who went with the Germans? I say, No, I won't go. Why, you afraid of the blood? I am, and especially of my brothers' blood. He kept trying to get me on his side. One hour of questioning. It was crazy. Finally he says to me, If we give you a position will you work? Yes, if you give me one, I say. I mean, if we send you to a hospital. I say, If you send me there I'll go. And then when they sent us to Prastós and Lyghítsos's wife Eléni came down with typhus, they put me in charge of her care, I had her, and I had Themistoklís. His care was different, rubdowns and salves for Themistoklís.

—To the village of Prastós?

—To the village of Prastós.

—They took Themistoklís there?

—And then they took us up to the mountains. They made Panayótis, Iraklís's brother, play the clarinet. And they danced. Well, anyway. It's all a muddle.

—And when the Germans came they took you.

—When the Germans came we went and gave ourselves up. But we had got some water earlier. There was a drinking fountain. Look, girls, down there down by the wild pears, one of them said. We got water. Someone, a tall man, says, Who's that girl, and Vasílis Tóyias said, She and her whole family are in deep with the Security Battalions.
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About me. We took the water, and on the road the man who had asked about me stopped us. He tells us, I'm Alímonos, and he turns to me, he tells me, I killed Ioannítzis from your village over there. Right there, he says to me. He showed me a hillside. A beautiful hillside. His head is planted under a pear tree. That's what he said. Then I was really frightened. They took us farther up. It was hot. We tell Panayótis, Play a song. I told him that. To cheer us up. I will, he says. But first I'll play a funeral dirge. We all gave a shudder. No, no, Panayótis, don't do that. I don't remember if he played anything. And that night, at twelve o'clock, they killed him. They kept them behind, they sent us away. The men took us there, the rebels, along the way they began to talk. What are you saying, what's going on? Nothing, stay close to us. It was pitch dark. They took us to those shepherds. I couldn't reap grain. I didn't know how. They wouldn't give me anything to eat. Chrysanthe went and reaped the grain for me. Later we saw the Germans. They were swimming in the stream. We gave ourselves up; they took us back to Orthokostá. Kalabakóyiannis comes in, he tells us, Tonight they killed Braílas's mother, and Maraskés, and Themistoklís. And Panayótis Polítis. They were killing them all night, and that woman from Trípolis, they smashed in her head with the butt of a gun, left her dead on the spot. I got out safe. From Orthokostá they took us to Leonídio. I went to the school, the Boínis sisters were in there. Prisoners. Alexandra and the other one. They were crying. I ask, What's wrong with them, someone tells me, They found out their
brothers were killed. I felt sorry for them, I went over to them, I say, Don't cry, girls. I said that like a good Christian, they didn't answer me. I go outside, I run into Iraklís Polítis. Yeorghía, are the Boínis girls in there? No, I tell him, and he didn't go in. He believed me. We went to the seafront. There were people in line waiting to get into the caïques. Lots of people. From the Orthokostá detention camp, people the rebels had taken to Xerokámpi. I found Tasía Kambýlis there and Matína Lymbéris, Chía's sister, I found Tasía's brother Stamátis. Iraklís comes in angry as can be, I could kill you now, Yeorghía, in front of your brother, who cares? Just because I hadn't given away the Boínis sisters. Go away, I tell him, get away from me, leave me alone. And then I see those very women, they're escorting them somewhere. They took them away, and they disappeared among the vegetable plots. They took them. Much later I learned they had executed one of them. From Leonídio we went to Náfplion. And from Náfplion up to Eleohóri. To Másklina. They come and tell me, They want you. They had taken someone in. My aunt tells me, You'd better go in case it's someone innocent and they kill him for no reason. I go out into the street, Chrysanthe tells me, It's that man. The one who told me at the detention camp I should be crying those tears for my brothers. Well, there he was again, right there in front of me. Lígdas says to me, We're counting on you. Lígdas from the Security Battalions. As we're talking I hear a voice coming from downstairs at the school. They were holding him in the basement. Hey, Yeorghía, it's me. Who's that? Yiórgos, don't you remember me? Oh, Yiórgos, it's you. You're holding
him
prisoner, I say. In the end, they let the man go free. The next day we get on the train to go to Trípolis. Our parents stay up in Eleohóri. They stayed with our uncles. Kákos Barbitsiótis was on the train. So was the man they'd let go. He says to him, You should light a candle for this woman as long as you live. Because now you'd be hanging from a plane tree, at the hands of those Germans. We went to Trípolis. The Germans left, the Security Battalions left, they went to Spétses. Then the rebels came in. One day there's a knock on our door. Someone says, I want Yeorghía. It was him. He says, If they harm you, if they bother you in any way, you let me know
immediately. I'll be at the jail. I'm a guard. He was grateful for my kindness to him. But nothing happened to us. No one bothered us. Except for that man who wanted to marry me.

—Was he in the detention camp?

—He passed through once. A kapetánios.
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Kapetán Farmákis. And he saw me, and he came to Trípolis looking for me. He found out where I was, got directions, and he came looking for me. To marry me. And he was so insistent. He'd come in one door and I'd be out the other. I'd go to Aryíris's place. To Yiórgos's, and hide. I can't, I'd tell them, I just can't. And there he'd be again. Asking for my hand. He finally gave up.

They burned down Ayiasofiá around harvest time. We were still in Koubíla. We didn't go up there, how could we go there, but all night long we heard the crackling of the fire. And the smell of the smoke kept coming down to us, making us choke. We found out later that Anghelís Lambíris's mother had stayed behind. The man with the blacksmith shop. The others had gotten out and gone across from there. The kapetanaíoi
¹
show up. Where is your son, where's your son? She says, What do you want with him, dear man, an invalid with six children. He was missing an eye. Lost it in Albania.
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He knows how to hide, they say. They pressed her to say where he was but she wouldn't tell. With the villagers watching from the distance. And as she stood there leaning up against the wall they shot her, and that's how they found her. Standing, just as she'd been. She didn't fall down. She was propped up on her cane, she was thin, she didn't fall down. And they found her there dead.

His brother Kyriákos was killed that day. They had gone down to Stólos to look around. The Stólos villages. Most likely his own fault. He had an Italian rifle. He tried to do something, and the rifle went off and killed him. Well, Mihális took that loss very personally. On that same day they had brought Tsígris to Trípolis. He was a commissioned major, from the Reserves I think. He belonged to ELAS.
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The ELAS Reserves. They arrested him, brought him in, and he was in Lýras's custody. I worked in Lýras's office. The 2nd Bureau. Lýras was a captain and a graduate of the Army Cadets Academy; at the time he was chief of Intelligence for the 2nd Gendarmes Corps Headquarters. Under Papadóngonas,
²
that is. The 2nd Gendarmes Corps Headquarters. That was its official title. Lýras was from Ayios Andréas, or rather from Karakovoúni. A fellow villager, and among the first to come down. Why I had come there is a different story. At any rate, it was all uncharted waters for me. The Battalions weren't formed in Trípolis only. They were in all the towns of the Peloponnese. Those were times of national emergency. No Greek ever liked the Germans. Or wanted to collaborate with them. That's when the Peloponnese Battalions were created. In the spring of 1944. When it was becoming clear that the Germans were losing the war. And it was also becoming clear how dangerous it would be for anyone who might find himself at the mercy of ELAS after the German collapse. After they cleared out. And that's precisely where things led for them. Inevitably. The push had started, however, very early on. At a time when no one suspected anything. After the Albanian front had crumbled. The first
seeds of doubt were sown. They kept saying that only the reservists had fought. That the commissioned officers were only interested in their stripes. This is all lies, of course. I should know. I served in the critical center of the theater of operations. The 13th Regiment of the 11th Division. I was at the most forward point of the front. Toward Beráti. And that's where we came under the German onslaught. Immediately the 11th Division—ours, that is—and the 13th Regiment where I was serving were issued an urgent order to leave. I was in the 2nd Machine Gun Battery of the 2nd Battalion. Platoon officer. We had to leave urgently and get to Katára to establish a line of defense. To cover the rear of the Epirus Corps. The corps that was already operating in Albania, so as not to be outflanked by the Germans. We arrived at Katára, where we had to set up our line of defense. Just above Metsovo, exactly at Prophítis Ilías.
³
But everyone could already see that it was hopeless. Thousands of soldiers and officers were marching in from western Macedonia toward Yiánnina. An army in disarray. We were right on that line when the armistice was signed. We stayed in Prophítis Ilías until Easter. Luftwaffe planes were flying overhead. They bombed Yiánnina. The armistice was signed there, at Bodonási. Archbishop Spyrídon arrived, accompanied by Generals Bákos and Tsolákoglou.
⁴
They signed the armistice with the Germans. And I was one of the last to arrive at Kastrí. And that's how it all ended. And then of course they started saying, The reservists did all the fighting, the COs just looked after their stripes. From that far back. There was Yiánnis Velissáris, who was no leftist and no anarchist either. He was just an objector. To everything. If our group had only trusted him, Kyreléis and the rest, they would have had him join up. He wouldn't have ended up where he did. Like so many others whose isolation pushed them over to the opposite side. Yiánnis was a good man. We were close friends, and I thought it was a terrible misfortune that he was executed. I was now back in the army. A lieutenant at that time and on a manhunt for Aris.
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I was in Tríkala, with the 1st Tríkala Battalion of the National Guard. Velouhiótis was already in disfavor with the KKE.
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He'd had a falling-out with the Central Committee and they expelled him. He had disagreed about the Várkiza Treaty and all
that.
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Well, he was trying to get papers so he could leave for Yugoslavia. He was just hanging around waiting for them. We had a platoon stationed in Kalambáka, up in Kourtsoúfiani. The platoon leader let us know that Aris, with about forty men, had gone up to Mount Kóziakas. Kóziakas is right next to Tríkala. At Pýli we had another platoon. Pýli, at the foot of Kóziakas. The Portaïkós River runs right by there. It's about fifteen kilometers away from Tríkala. We had a platoon over there with a second lieutenant. They had got hold of some firearms, the kind that were easy to get back then. They had formed teams to defend themselves, and also to get back at ELAS. To get even with them. Well, the Pýli second lieutenant sent us a message. Second Lieutenant Nikoláou of the Reserves. He had heard that Aris was spotted at Týrna, a village on the slopes of Kóziakas. This was his message to the Battalion: Am setting out with my platoon in pursuit of Velouhiótis. Send backup and food. He's going after Aris. Let him go. Half the National Guardsmen we had then were leftists. They were half-and-half. They were 10 percent, at the very least. They joined up on purpose so they could get arms. At any rate, the base commander sends Nikoláou a message to turn back. But he was already advancing through the Ágrafa Mountains. A region where no government had ever set foot. An unwritten law. Since the time of Katsantónis.
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He had to get back to base because they were all afraid Aris would cut them to pieces. He even sent an officer to Pýli, but he didn't get there in time, and he was reluctant to go on. The base commander sent a second envoy, same story. So at around midnight they come and wake
me
up. Get up, the commander wants you. I go over to their headquarters. Lieutenant, I'm sending you on a mission. What's going on? Here's the story. It's Nikoláou. He needs to turn back right away. But, Sir. No buts; I'm assigning a sergeant to your detail who knows the terrain. All right, I say. But in my opinion the outcome of this operation is very uncertain. They gave me a Jeep and I made it to Pýli. The sergeant and I each had a tommy gun. We went to Pýli. Pýli was fortified to the teeth. They had learned that Aris was prowling about in the area. They had posted double patrols all around. Made up of locals. Armed civilians. We went inside, and I say, I'm
looking for Dervénagas. Dervénagas was in charge of those teams. He later became an MP. He was from Pýli himself. He's asleep, they tell me, We shouldn't wake him. Pýli had been burned down by the Germans. Everyone there was living in rundown shacks. They wake Dervénagas, What's going on, Second Lieutenant? I tell him, I need to find Nikoláou. He knew that Nikoláou had left in the morning. He asks me, How will you get through the lines? My men let you through and you got in all right. But the men from Mouzáki are out there. That's Mouzáki, by Kardítsa. They'll try to stop you. I tell him, If I managed to get in, I'll find a way out. Okay, he says, If you want to go, go. He didn't tell me anything about the situation. That Aris was somewhere around there. I didn't know that then. So I took my sergeant and we got going. Just the two of us. No car this time. We exited Pýli. We came to a ravine. In the area near Kóziakas. Wooded terrain. The river and the road down below. A mule path. We kept moving forward. We found our way by the light of the moon. I kept hoping that that idiot Nikoláou would notice that no reinforcements were sent and turn back. But we kept on. Just before dawn a grenade exploded in the distance. There was a bridge there, I was told later on. We came to the road and waited. It got quiet. We kept going, we had no choice. Day was breaking, the wind brought us the sounds of shuffling feet. We took cover. I thought to myself, Maybe it's Nikoláou coming back. It was him, all right. I saw him. He was walking ahead of the others. He was startled by our being there. There we were with our tommy guns in hand. I tell him, I ought to bash you one, you clown, you. By morning we were at Pýli. The cold was unbearable. They'd put out large pots, the patrols came down and gathered there to get something warm to drink and so on. Dervénagas shows up. He tells me, You're back. I am. Are you ever lucky, if you only knew, poor man, where you've just been. Aris was right there near you all along. Across from Týrna. A soldier threw that grenade as a warning. The National Guard was full of leftists. I already said that. In the meantime our Battalion was replaced. There was a general of the High Command, Avramídis, and Pangoútsos had complained to him. Pangoútsos of the Agrarian Party. He collaborated with the left. He set
up an organization, brought in some farmers, farmers that Soúrlas's
⁹
groups wouldn't give free rein to. So he complained. He cabled the Communist newspaper
Rizospástis
, which wrote it up on the editorial page, and Avramídis was furious. He was an officer of democratic persuasions. Plastíras was prime minister at the time. And he ordered the replacement of our battalion. We had to go down to Lárissa. Then various other units closed in on Aris. Did his own men execute him or did he kill himself, no one knows. The whole story is still murky. The fact remains that he expected the Office of the Prefecture to okay his leaving for Yugoslavia. So we went south to Lárissa. We spent all the time until the fall of 1946 in Lárissa and in Vólos. Then came the plebiscite.
¹⁰
And later on, when the rebellion started and the first skirmishes had occurred at Litóchoro and Pontokerasiá,
¹¹
our battalion had already been disbanded. The National Guard was disbanded, units of regulars were now being formed, and conscripts were being drafted. Hard times were beginning and all that came with them. The courts-martial and all that. Yiánnis was tried and convicted in Trípolis. I didn't hear about his execution until later. His uncle Mítsos Kapetanéas, his mother's brother, had tried to get him to reconsider. There was still the chance to renounce his former allegiance at the time. But Yiánnis was hardheaded. He was the kind of man who would never compromise. And his sacrifice was a waste. A lively character, and kind too. He could even have proved useful. Though he did us great harm, me and my brother. Aside from burning down our home, he had denounced us and cursed us as traitors and criminals. When, in fact, he could have become one of us. But the spirit of dissention had prevailed. I could see that there was a deliberate priming of the ground from that time on. Just after I got back from the Albanian front. At any rate, I stayed in Kastrí until 1943. The summer of '43, when we had gotten our core group together. When Márkos Ioannítzis arrived. Then things started going wrong. Márkos was extremely naive when it came to conspiracies. Although he knew full well that the opposite side wanted to monopolize everything. One evening we got together at Réppas's house, and he was going on and on. Talking openly. I remember Harís Lenghéris getting all tearful. Or pretending
to. He took me aside. Please, teach me to become a fighter. As the oldest of a twelve-member family he'd never been to boot camp. Haroúlis
¹²
Lenghéris, the notorious Communist. I'm trying to say that Márkos didn't cover his back. He had come equipped with military maps, he had become a member of the Peloponnese Resistance network. He had men in many different places. On his last night, before leaving for the hills of Mount Parnon, we met just below the square. At Ayía Paraskeví. At the chapel. At night. We were all there, me, my first cousin Márkos Mávros, Chrístos Haloúlos, Kóstas Kyreléis, the whole group. About ten of us. And he gave us our final instructions. He assigned the Laconía sector to me. I was to meet a certain justice of the peace in Gýthio. That was the first leg, the other would be the Sykiá airfield, in Moláous. There was someone at the airfield whose name I don't remember. Mántis, I think. But a disabled vet, at any rate. From these two I would gather information, among other things. He tells me, You'll get started as soon as I come back from Mount Parnon. That's when you'll contact them. He never came back. He had gone to Mount Parnon to meet the British. To convince them to reinforce
him
too. And he ran into Látsis and someone else. Communists he knew. And they're the ones who killed him. In the meantime he had connected our local cell with RO, the Radical Organization of Athens. Twice I had carried information memos to Athens. The memos were assembled by officers in Trípolis. I dropped these off at a side street off Agámon Square. Chrístos Frángos, from Kastrí, had a pastry shop there. I think he was a waiter. RO was trying to get the British to make supply drops in the area around Mount Parnon. And to create a cell operating a wireless radio. So that we could make use of Stámos Triantafýllis's forces. And Kontalónis's too. Kontalónis I knew from my school days in Trípolis. He was a second lieutenant, a Cadet Academy graduate. He had formed a group but fell into the clutches of the Communists. Of Leventákis and the others. He had started out as a royalist. We were hoping he would work with us. But of course there was nothing he could do then. He was already in the stranglehold of the Leventákis-Prekezés group. Later on he changed sides. They persuaded him to attack a small German
unit. They were driving to Aráhova to get potatoes. To Aráhova in Laconía. And he attacked them. They were an easy target. There were either three or four Germans, they'd left their weapons in the truck. But that was his mission, to attack. The Germans burned down the village. That's what drove the villagers of Aráhova up to the mountains. Our group, through the RO liaison, was expecting to be supplied by sea. I went to reconnoiter a submarine approach. Márkos had given me a map of the region. I set out from Kastrí. But we were under close surveillance. By Magoúlis and some others. I took Ilías Darláras as my muleteer. His house was below ours. He was Galioúris's brother-in-law. He took me at night as far as Meligoú and left me there. I went down to Astros. I met Yiórgos Stratigópoulos there, a law student. He was from Ayios Andréas. His mother was from Kastrí. He was a leftist, but he worked with us. Exceptional fellow. I found him at Astros. We went to Ayios Andréas together. I did my reconnaissance. Coordinates and all. I noted everything on the map, so we could ask to be supplied from the Middle East Command. We went back to Astros. I delegated Níkos Farmakoulídas to set up the submarine reception. And since my being there seemed strange, I let it be known, confidentially, that Níkos was in the process of arranging a marriage for me. That was soon to take place. I went back to Kastrí on a truck, a gasogene truck. Yiórghis Réppas was driving it. There were no other means of transportation then. I found it by chance. It was summer. It must have been June. Late June. Because we had picked apricots as we drove through the fields. And they weren't ripe yet. We arrived at Kastrí, I sent my report to Athens. With the point where the submarine could approach and its coordinates. But all of this, the drops and everything, was controlled from Cairo. Paradrops were made to groups favored by the British. And they wouldn't reinforce leaderless or isolated groups. They made drops to Zérvas,