How I hate puttees. I have never understood the purpose of them. I hated having to wrap them precisely in the regulation manner. Now I hated them for the way that they accumulated glutinous clods of yellow earth and filtered the freezing water down into my boots. The skin of my feet turned white and began to peel away. The hooves of the mules softened and flaked, but still they kicked up the slush that beslimed us from head to foot. Francisco and I entered a house with a photograph of King George and General Metaxas on the wall. We looted a raincoat and dry pairs of socks. There was a half-finished meal, still warm, and we ate it. Afterwards we spent hours worrying over whether or not it might have been poisoned and left deliberately. There were no Greeks, we were winning without fighting. We forgot about how some of us had used to shout anti-war slogans at the Fascist militiamen and beat them up whenever we encountered them in the dark.
We reached the River Sarandaporos and found that we had no bridge-building equipment and no engineers. It was a swollen torrent laden with a flotsam of blown-up bridges and the carcasses of mountain sheep. Francisco saved my life by coming after me when I was swept away during an attempt to get a gun across. It was the first time that he held me in his arms. We heard that someone had spotted some Greek troops vanishing into the forest. ‘Cowards,’ we laughed. We repeated the hell of the River Sarandaporos at the River Vojussa. Francisco said, ‘God is against us.’
I hate puttees. At one thousand metres of altitude the water in them froze solid. When water freezes, it expands. This is an unremarkable commonplace, no doubt, but in the case of puttees the effect is twofold. The ice weighs pounds. The ice constricts the legs and the flow of blood to the feet is cut off. All sensation is lost. We longed for the squalid hovels that we had left behind us in Albania. We realised that our heavy guns had fallen miles behind and would probably never catch up. ‘Athens in two months,’ said Francisco, twisting the corners of his mouth in the spirit of irony.
War is wonderful, until someone is killed. On November 1st the weather improved and a sniper shot our corporal. There was a crackling sound from the trees, and the corporal stepped back and flung up his arms. He pivoted towards me on one heel and fell back into the snow with a bright glistening spot in the centre of his forehead. The men threw themselves into prone positions and returned fire whilst a platoon circled up into the pines to find an enemy which had already disappeared. A mortar snapped, there was a whoosh as the bomb fell amongst us, a scream as the shrapnel tore through the legs of a poor conscript from Piedmont, and a terrible silence. I realised that I was covered with gory scraps of human flesh that were already freezing fast to my uniform. We gathered about the wounded and realised that we had no way to get them back behind the lines. Francisco put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Shoot me through the head if I am wounded.’
The misprised Greeks had manoeuvred us into positions where we could be surrounded and cut off, and yet we very rarely saw them. We were trapped in the roads and tracks at the valley floors, and the Greeks flitted like spectres amongst the upper slopes. We never knew when we would be attacked, or from where. The mortar shells seemed at one moment to come from behind, at another to come from the flank or in front. We whirled like dervishes. We fired at ghosts and at mountain goats.
We were confounded by the heroism of the invisible Greeks. They rose out of dead ground and fell on us as though we were the rapists of their mothers. It shocked us. On Hill 1289 they terrified our Albanians so greatly that the latter fled, firing on the carabinieri who attempted to stop them. Ninety percent of that Tomor Battalion deserted. Our whole line was swivelled anti-clockwise with us as the pivot, cut off from both arms of our front. No air support. Greek soldiers in their British uniforms and Tommy helmets machine-gunned us, mortared us, and made themselves invisible. ‘Athens in two years,’ said Francisco. We were completely alone.
The Greeks took Samarini and were behind us. We ate nothing but dry biscuits that flaked like scrofula. Our horses began to die, and we began to eat them. The little Greek horses carried their cavalry above us, and were too tough to die. We were ordered to retreat to Konitsa and had to fight our way backwards through the soldiers that had encircled us.
We had become anonymous. We grew immense beards, we were buried in storms of sleet, our bloodshot eyes sank deep into our heads, our uniforms disappeared beneath an encrustation of icy clag, our hands were torn as though by cats, and our fingers curled up into leaden clubs. Francisco looked the same as me, and I looked like everyone else; our life was neolithic. Within the space of a few days we had become skeletons, rooting for food like pigs.
We saw an Italian bomber at long last. We waved to it, it circled, and it dropped a bomb that narrowly missed us, but killed three of our mules. We cut off their flesh in strips, and ate them raw whilst they were yet warm and quivering with life. The radios packed up. It became clear that the Greeks were massing their troops in the very places where we were most weak. They began to pick off isolated detachments and take them prisoner. ‘Lucky bastards,’ said Francisco, ‘I bet it’s hot in Athens.’ At night he and I slept huddled up together for warmth. I was too exhausted for lust. We all slept like that. I wanted only to protect him.
Our commander was sacked and replaced by General Soddu, whom, inevitably, we nicknamed ‘General Sodomia’. Visconti Prasca then lost his post commanding the Eleventh Army. How the mighty are fallen! He was a meteor who had turned out to be an incandescent fart. All our commanders were incandescent farts, starting with Mussolini who picked them.
We retreated towards Konitsa like a wounded giant tormented by wild packs of infuriated dogs. It was an inferno of machine-guns and artillery, mortars and ice. The civilian population hunted us with sporting rifles and slings. An entire week passed without food or respite. Battles at point-blank range were fought for eight hours at a time. We lost hundreds of comrades. The mountains became a congregation of the dead. We fought on, but we lost our hearts. A great darkness had settled across the land. Francisco talked to his mouse even during the ambushes and sudden enfilades, and all of us were on the verge of madness. We reached our old position at Perati bridge, having sacrificed in vain a fifth of our number. I looked around and felt the palpable horror of the irrecoverable absence of the men that I had to come to love and whose indomitable courage nobody should ever doubt or carelessly impugn. War is a wonderful thing. In movies and in books. Gladiators, Wellingtons and Blenheims began to appear in the sky over our heads, and so the British added their strength to the Greek daggers twisting in our wounds. General Soddu inspected us and compared us to granite. ‘Does granite bleed,’ asked Francisco, ‘on Golgotha?’
16 Letters to Mandras at the Front
(1)
Agapeton,
I have heard nothing from you for such a long time, you have not written since that sad day that I saw you off from Sami. I have written to you every day, and I am beginning to suppose that you never got my letters, or that your replies do not reach me on account of the war. Yesterday I wrote the best one, that said everything perfectly, and believe it or not, the goat ate it. I was furious and I beat it on the head with my shoe. It would have made a funny picture, and I know that you would have laughed if you had seen it. All the time I see things, and wish that you were here to see them with your own eyes. I try to see things for you, and remember them, and I have a fantasy that if I concentrate hard enough I can send them to you so that you might see them in your dreams. If only life could be like that.
I am so terrified that I am not getting letters from you because you have been wounded or taken prisoner, and I have nightmares that you are dead. Please, please write to me so that I can breathe again and so that my heart can find some peace. Every day I wait for people to come back from Argostoli with the post for the village, and I run out, and every day there is nothing, and I feel desperate and helpless, and I am burning my brains with worry. Now that it is December the days here have turned very cold, there is no sun, and it rains almost eve
ry day, so that I fancy that the sky weeps as I weep. I shudder to think how cold it must be in the mountains of Epirus. Did you get the socks that I made for you, and the fisherman’s sweater, and the scarf? Did you think it clever of me to dye them khaki? Or was I stupid not to make them white? I hope that you got the coffee and the jar of honey and the smoked meat. My poor darling, how you must suffer in that cold, in that place so far away and wild that it is almost a foreign country. How you must miss your boat and your dolphins; did you realise that I knew about your dolphins, who have no friend to feed fish to them until you return?
Everything here is much the same, except that we are beginning to go short of things. Yesterday I couldn’t get oil for the lamps, and last week there was no flour to make bread. My father has made lamps by threading a wick through a cork and floating it in a bowl of olive oil, which he says was what we did in ancient times, but the light is poor, they are very smokey, and the smell unpleasant. Who would have thought that one could get nostalgic for kerosene?
Everyone comments on how silent and dismal the place is now that all the young men have gone, and we all wonder how many will return. I have heard that Dimos was killed and that Marigo’s fiancé was taken prisoner. Whenever I hear such things I thank God that it wasn’t you, even though it’s a terrible thing to wish that misfortune should choose to fall on others. I couldn’t bear it if you were killed. I think that I would die myself. I think that I would make an offer to God to take me in your place, if only you might live. We women are ashamed that we can make no sacrifice comparable with yours, but each one of us would take up a rifle and join you if only it were possible or permitted. Papakis has given me a small pistol, and I sleep with it under my pillow at night, and have it in the pocket of my apron by day. If this island is invaded, there are women and old men here who would fight to the death with broomsticks and kitchen knives, and already we are accustomed to doing those things that used to be done by the men. The only thing we don’t do is sit around in the kapheneia and play backgammon. We go to church quite a lot, and Father Arsenios has made many fine and moving speeches to us. He tells us that an icon of the St John appeared all by itself outside a cave that was used by Gerasimos, and it has been declared a genuine archeiropoietion. Even God, it seems, sends us messages and shows that we are in the right. Somebody pointed out to me the other day that we are the only country still fighting, apart from the British Empire. When I think of this, I take heart, because it is the biggest empire that the world has ever seen, and, if this is so, how can we lose? I often see the British warships, and they are so big that you would think that it was not possible to sail them. I know that we will win.
All the news from the front is so good that our victory seems already assured. Every day we hear of more Italian armies driven back or defeated, and we feel the jubilation of David with Goliath dead at his feet. Who would have believed it only two months ago? It seemed an impossibility. We sent you away to resist them for the sake of honour, but without hope of success, and now we wait to welcome you home as conquering heroes. All of Greece is bursting with pride and gratitude for our men who are greater than Achilles and Agamemnon put together. There is talk that you have won back all the land that was disputed in past times and that the Italians have been virtually expelled from Albania. How great you are, your names will live eternally in the hearts of Greeks, and the world will remember forever what happens when anyone dares to wound us. We are so proud, my Mandras, so proud. We walk with our heads high and remember the glorious past that was taken away from us by Romans and Turks, and which you and your comrades have returned to us at last. The day will come when we and the British Empire will stand together and say to the world, ‘It was we who made you free,’ and the Americans and the Russians and the other Pontius Pilates like them will hang their heads and feel ashamed that all the glory came to us.
Everybody here has been moved by the spirit of the war. Papas, who hated Metaxas so much, and Kokolios, who is a Communist, and Stamatis, who is a monarchist, are all united in acclaiming Metaxas as the greatest Greek since Pericles or Alexander, and all are united in praising the military success of Papagos. They work together to collect parcels for the troops, and my father even offered to go to the front to be a doctor. They turned him down when they found that he had learned everything on ships and has no qualifications on paper. You should have seen his fury. He stamped about the house, and I have never heard him say ‘heston’ so much or with so much venom. I am glad that he cannot go, but it is unfair, because even the rich people come to him instead of going to college doctors. He has a gift of healing like the saint, he only has to touch a wound and it begins to cure.
Mandras, you would be amused by the outbreak of fortune-telling that has occurred since the war began. Everyone consults their coffee cup to find out whether and when their cousins, brothers and sons will return, it has turned into an industry. Kokolios’ wife read my cup and told me that someone would come from far away and change my life forever, and she said it so seriously, as if she didn’t know that I know that she knows that I am waiting for you to return from far away.
There have been bad things happening to the Italian families on the island, and the authorities have had to intervene to prevent house-burnings and other such stupid acts of violence. Some hotheads in Lixouri even beat up an old man who has lived here for forty years and who hung our flag from his window. Why are people such animals?
You will be glad to know that Psipsina and the goat are both well. I’m glad anyway, and since we soon will be one, that means that you must be glad too. I hope that you will be glad to know that I have decided to make my own dowry. I think that my father has no sense of shame, and sometimes I feel very angry with him for refusing the very thing that is normal for every other girl. He is not fair because he is too rational. He thinks that he is a Socrates who can fly in the face of the custom, but I feel embarrassed every time that I meet a member of your family, and I cannot allow it to be thought that you are disapproved of, even though you aren’t. I began to crochet a big cover for our marriage bed, but I had to unpick it because it went wrong and began to look like a dead animal. I am no good at womanly things because my mother died when I was too young, and now I am having to try to learn all the things that I should have grown up with. I am beginning with things for the bed, because that is where our life will begin, but afterwards I will make other things for the house to use on feast days and for when we have visitors. I get very bored with the crochet, but my comfort is that when you return you will find all the evidence of my love before you. I am thinking that it would be a fine thing if I made you a waistcoat embroidered with gold thread and flowers made in feston and fil-tiré so that you flash in the sunlight when you dance.
On Christmas Day the Italians bombed Corfu, and even my father was shocked by their godlessness. On the radio we hear that the British have sunk many of their ships. I hope it is so, but I hate to hear of such things nonetheless, because I cannot bear the waste of life and because my heart is heavy when I think of all the old whose children go to the grave before them. I have seen your mother in the agora, and she tells me that she has had no news of you either. She is so worried and her face is more lined than it was before. Please write to her, even if you do not write to me. I believe she suffers more than I do, if such a thing is possible.
Mandras, we haven’t had fish since you left, and I am beginning to miss it. We eat nothing but beans, like the poor. My father says that they are very good for you, but they make the belly swell. On Christmas Day we had to do without kourabiedes and christopsomo and loukoumades, and it was a bleak occasion even though we did our best. Father Arsenios surprised us all by not getting drunk.
Remember that there are those here who love you and pray for you, and that all of Greece marches with you wherever you may be. Come back to us after the victory, so that things might be as they were before. Your dolphins wait for you, and your boat, and your island, and I wait for you too, wh
o loves you so much and misses you as though you were a limb of my body that has been cut off. My darling, without you nothing is complete, and even when I feel happy my happiness hurts me.
Your loving fiancée, Pelagia, who kisses you with these words.
(2)
On St Basil’s Day
Agapeton,
Still no word of you, and strangely enough I am beginning to get stoical about it. Panayis came back from the front with a hand missing, and he told me that it is too cold at the front for it to be possible to hold a pen at all. He says that he hasn’t seen you, but I suppose that that is entirely unsurprising, since you aren’t in the same unit. He is petitioning the King for the right to return to the front and carry on fighting, as he says that anyone can use a rifle with one hand. The potter on the road to Kastro says that he will make Panayis a new hand in clay that will look better than the original one and will be very strong, and Panayis told him to make it frostproof for when he returns to the battle. In fact he asked for two versions of the hand, one as a bunched fist for fighting with, and the other with the fingers curled so that he can use it to hold a glass. It wouldn’t surprise me if he asks for a third one with a bayonet-fitting, he has such spirit.
This St Basil’s Day has been better than Christmas. My father gave me a book of poems and political writings by Andreas Laskaratos, saying that it was good for my soul to read things by someone who was excommunicated. I quoted that proverb to him ‘mega biblion, mega kakon’ (big book, big evil) and he threatened to take it away and give me a smaller one. I gave him a nice clasp-knife. We counted the seeds of a pomegranate to see whether or not this year would be plentiful. Not too bad, it seems. I managed to make a vasilopeta by swapping some ingredients with your mother, and my father gave me an English gold sovereign to put in it. He was very pleased when it didn’t turn up in the slice for Christ or the one for St Basil, because he doesn’t like to give money to the church. It turned up in mine, and so I get all the good luck for this year. Isn’t that wonderful? I am hoping that it means that you will return.
Corelli's Mandolin Page 14
