Eleni

by Nicholas Gage

  Eleni’s waking fears crept into her sleep, and one night she had a dream that frightened her so, she told the family about it the next morning. As she slept, it seemed that she was awakened by the brr of the hand-turned bell on the gate. She saw herself get up in the darkness and go outside to undo the bolt. Standing there in the path, frosted with silver moonlight, was the round, smiling figure of her long-dead mother-in-law, Fotini.

  The old woman reached out and touched Eleni’s cheek with icicle fingers. “Hello, my little bride,” she said fondly in a rustling voice like dry leaves. “I’ve missed you! I was passing by up the path and knocked to tell you to prepare your things, because I’ll be coming for you soon. But now, go back and finish sleeping. There’s still time; I have to go and get Tsavena first.”

  Eleni brooded over the dream all day. Tsavena, the old crone who had seen Nikola emerging from his homemade swimming pool, was the mother of their next-door neighbor Marina Kolliou. “It means I’m going to die, and Tsavena before me,” Eleni said to Nitsa. “Perhaps a bomb while I’m working on fortifications or a bullet while I’m carrying wounded. If I die, what will become of the children?”

  “What do you know about dreams?” scoffed Nitsa. “I should hope Tsavena’s going to die before you; she’s ninety years old! Her oil is nearly burned up. You were probably just sleeping on your left side again. How many times have I warned you it interferes with digestion? Your mother-in-law was probably just a fried onion that went down the wrong way.”

  • • •

  The code name that the government forces selected for their carefully planned attack on the “impregnable” Mourgana was “Pergamos,” an ancient Greek city in Asia Minor where the Greeks defeated the Turks in 1919 against crushing odds. Operation Pergamos was scheduled to begin on February 25, 1948.

  Seven battalions of the government’s Eighth Division—nearly 3,500 men—were assigned to Operation Pergamos to attack the four battalions—about 1,400 Communist guerrillas—entrenched in the Mourgana villages and the foothills below, one of them commanded by Major Spiro Skevis.

  The government troops planned to attack the Mourgana in a pincer movement, three battalions and a squadron of mountain commandos striking from the north, and three battalions and a double company of irregulars coming up from the south and moving toward the large hills below Lia. The northern prong of the pincer would start moving down first, clearing out the guerrilla concentrations on the opposite side of the Mourgana peaks from Lia, while the southern prong would launch attacks to “soften” the ground in the foothills below. The driving wedge of the attack from the north was to be an expert group of specially trained commandos called LOK, an acronym for the Greek words meaning “Squadron of Mountain Commandos”—nearly 300 men trained in scaling mountain heights. Their assignment was to sneak through the enemy lines and secure a small but critical hill called Skitari within guerrilla territory, only two miles northeast of Lia but hidden from sight of the village by the peaks of the Prophet Elias and Kastro.

  As soon as the commandos signaled their success in reaching the hill, the seventh battalion, moving in from the southeast, would rush to link up with them, and if the surprise worked, the guerrillas would be effectively sliced into two groups, forced to flee northwest into Albania or be crushed by the closing prongs of the pincer, which were to come together in the village of Lia.

  On February 25 the three battalions of government soldiers in the north began to move down from the Pogoni area, pushing through the hills, sweeping the guerrillas they encountered either into Albania or toward Lia. The villagers could see nothing of this: the mountain peaks above them blocked their view, but they knew that an attack was under way because the government troops poised to the south, on the opposite edge of the valley that stretched below them, began the “softening up” of the area they planned to take, bombarding the three high ridges forming the southern rim of the bowl of mountains and the foothills below. For three days the villagers watched as a constant rain of bombs, mortar fire and artillery in the distance pushed the guerrillas slowly back toward them.

  On February 28 the massive force of government troops from the south began to move down into the foothills, while the guerrillas, vastly outnumbered, could only back up, trying to nip and snap at the enemy with ambushes and night attacks. “Heavy and mechanical is the sound of the hardheaded moving enemy forces. They are the lifeless mass crawling along,” wrote Greek novelist Demitrios Hatzis, who was one of the Communist fighters in the Mourgana. For three days the guerrillas desperately fought to hold back the irresistible advance of the government fighting machine. But Operation Pergamos was proceeding exactly according to plan; the pincers slowly closed from both the north and the south. The commanders of the Communist forces, who had been stationed in Babouri, decided to move their headquarters to the mountain heights above Lia, where they would be better protected by large numbers of their men to the east and west, and the natural indentation of the mountain range into which Lia was nestled. In case the worst happened, they could retreat all the way up to the Albanian border.

  Ever since February 25 when the heavy bombardment broke out in the foothills below, Eleni had kept the children in the house, watching from the windows as government planes strafed the guerrilla positions to the south, and mortar and artillery fire made a fireworks display in the night sky over the lowlands. But on the morning of March 1 a procession appeared, moving up the path outside the Gatzoyiannis gate, that brought the whole family out of the house to stare. The three leaders of the entire Epiros Command, flanked by their staff and equipment, were riding by on horseback, heading for the relative safety of the mountain cliffs above the Perivoli.

  To my eight-year-old eyes they were the grandest men I had ever seen—the ultimate commanders of the whole guerrilla army; at least the half of it occupying Epiros. The horses they rode seemed to tower higher than elephants. The grim parade moved silently between the rows of our neighbors, who searched the faces of the three officers for a clue to the outcome of the battle. The one who resembled a bulldog, a square fortress of a man with curly hair and great bushes of eyebrows, was Yiorgos Kalianesis, the chief of staff. The sleek, fox-faced one with the small charcoal mustache, thick matted black hair and a dashing military coat thrown over his shoulders like a mantle was Kostas Koliyiannis, the political commissar. Riding next to him was the military commander, Vasilis Chimaros. I don’t remember him very well, but I remember Kalianesis’ gleaming pistol in his belt holster and the leather of his accouterments shining in the sun. Behind and in front of the three commanders came their retinue: mules loaded with arms and equipment, the headquarters staff, radios, provisions, and bodyguards surrounding their war lords. As I watched the procession pass, it seemed that there could be no greater embodiment of success than these three all-powerful men.

  God is an ironist; the next time I saw Yiorgos Kalianesis, thirty-three years later, the magnificent martial presence had been reduced to a harassed night clerk behind the desk of a third-rate hotel in Yannina. The balding, heavy-jowled former major general was almost pitifully eager to describe his wartime exploits to the American reporter who seemed so interested, but his tales of glory were constantly interrupted by shabby tourists with backpacks demanding the keys to their rooms.

  The appearance of the three commanders outside the Gatzoyiannis gate set off a flurry of activity inside. Lieutenant Colonel Petritis hurried to join his superiors in the mountain heights, and as soon as he, his aide and orderly were packed, they left, never to return to the house.

  Eleni stood on the veranda watching the column of battle-weary guerrillas retreating up the path toward the heights, some carrying wounded comrades, and imagined that she could read defeat in their faces. Just a glance to the south made it clear that the government troops had already taken the distant height of the Great Ridge as well as its two neighbors: Plokista and Taverra. The line of battle had moved into the foothills, ever closer to the village. She knew that men
from Lia would be approaching with the government troops, perhaps among them some of those who had fled to Filiates: her father and her brothers-in-law Foto Gatzoyiannis and Andreas Kyrkas.

  The moment was approaching that would decide her family’s fate, for if the soldiers reached this high, Eleni knew she could escape with the children behind their lines, down into the foothills, across the Great Ridge and on to Filiates, where relatives and help would be waiting. From Filiates she had only to telegraph Christos, who would send them the money to come to America. But first they had to cross the battle line.

  As she watched the retreat of the guerrillas past her door, Eleni was working out a plan. As soon as it became clear that the government soldiers might reach the edge of Lia, she would take her family down to her mother’s empty house in the lower village to be that much closer to the soldiers and farther away from the guerrilla headquarters. If anyone questioned them, they had a logical excuse for the move; the Haidis house, in a small hollow in the hillside, was much less exposed to the nationalist guns, which would be aiming at the guerrilla headquarters in the Perivoli and above.

  The whole family lay awake that night, listening to the sounds of battle approaching from the south, not suspecting that the most critical phase of the battle was taking place silently just to the north of them, on the other side of their own mountain. There, as soon as darkness fell, the three hundred expert commandos of the LOK brigade crept through the guerrilla lines led by an elderly shepherd who knew every foothold on the almost sheer face of the cliff called Skitari. The commandos had been equipped by the Americans with fur-lined jackets, heavy sweaters and rubber-soled boots that clung to the rocks and made no sound. They were divided into four companies, one led by a lieutenant named George Vorias. Just before dawn on March 3, his company achieved the summit of Skirtari, directly across from the tallest peak of the Mourgana range.

  As the mountains’ silhouettes began to take shape against the deep-purple sky north of Lia, the darkness was suddenly alight with swooping green flares, arching across the heavens, washing the startled faces of the guerrillas in the trenches and the sleepless villagers in their windows with a deathlike pallor. It was the signal to the nationalist reinforcements that Skitari had been taken. Now the link-up with the approaching 628th battalion had to be quickly made, and the back of the guerrilla forces would be broken. The battle was all but over.

  The villagers stared at the green flares in confusion, but the guerrillas were galvanized into action. They realized that the nationalist forces had crossed their lines and come upon them from the north while they were concentrating on the south. A desperate race began; the guerrillas from all over the Mourgana dashed for Skitari, trying to surround and isolate the commandos on the height before reinforcements could reach them. Even the security guards protecting the three commanders were thrown into the race, sprinting over the top of the Prophet Elias toward Skitari.

  When Eleni saw the green flares and the panic of the guerrillas she understood that the moment for escape had come. She shook the children awake and told them to get ready to move down to Megali’s house in the lower village. She warned them to take nothing, only enough food for a day, so as not to arouse the guerrillas’ suspicions. But when their mother wasn’t looking, Olga tucked her favorite red kerchief in the bosom of her dress and Kanta put on two lace shifts under her clothes.

  Just as they were ready to leave, there was a knock at the door. A guerrilla was standing there with a heavy bag of flour on his back. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

  “We were moving down to my mother’s house in the lower village, where we’ll be safer from the mortars,” Eleni replied.

  He made a sound of exasperation. “We’re fighting for our lives here! The men need food as much as ammunition and every house in the Perivoli has to provide bread today. Now get to work!”

  As soon as he was gone, Eleni sent the rest of the family on ahead, with instructions to wait for her at the Haidis house. When she was finished baking, she would join them. They could escape that night after dark. With Megali and Nitsa in the lead, the children started down the path, drawing together every time a mortar from the distant ridge made its screaming arc over their heads, to explode in the cliffs above the Perivoli.

  While Eleni and the other women of her neighborhood baked bread, the LOK commandos on top of Skitari fought for their lives. The Communists had arrived within an hour of the flares, surrounding the hill at dawn with several units. One unit climbed the peak directly across from Vorias’ company, and so close they could shout across the void that separated them. Lieutenant George Vorias frantically telephoned for the reinforcements expected from the 628th battalion, but was told that it was pinned down three miles below in the foothills.

  The guerrillas on the opposite peak included many andartinas, some from Lia. They found a ration tin on a dead commando with chocolate inside, and one of the young women guerrillas ate the candy and shouted, “Hey, ass-kissers of Frederika! You fight on chocolate rations, I see! Tonight we’ll have you all eating shit!”

  As the day passed, the commandos stranded on top of Skitari suffered heavy casualties, but the guerrillas, who had far more machine guns, could not cross the narrow incline that separated the two peaks. Vorias counted eight of his eighty-five men dead and twenty-four wounded, including a soldier from Skiathos named Katsibaris, who had a gaping wound in his chest and was bellowing with pain, the sound of his cries demoralizing the trapped commandos even more than the heavy fire. “Don’t yell so loud,” Vorias ordered the soldier. “The guerrillas can hear you!” The prone figure fell silent, then gathered the last of his strength to channel his cries of pain into defiant singing. He shouted out a klephtic song. “Somewhere a mother sighs,” he trumpeted, and kept singing until he died.

  The commandos radioed for air support, but when their planes tried to drop ammunition, heavy winds carried the bundles northward, into the hands of the guerrillas. As the sun passed its meridian, they rationed the supply of ammunition. The guerrillas on the opposite peak began to plan a nighttime attack on Skitari.

  In the cellar of the Haidis house while they waited for their mother to join them, the Gatzoyiannis children huddled together, separated from the skittish goats and sheep by a wooden divider. They tried to ignore the sibilant passage of the mortars overhead, rising from a distant low whine into an ear-shattering scream before the sudden detonation shook the ground beneath them. Kanta was clenching her hands in her lap to hide their trembling. All the terrors of her guerrilla training had returned with the artillery barrage. She kept imagining a mortar falling short of the target and landing on the roof. But she knew her mother was in far worse danger in the Perivoli. Olga tried to amuse the younger children with tales of what they would do once they got to America. Nitsa kept interrupting with groans that the trauma of battle would drive her to a miscarriage. Megali rocked back and forth in a corner, addressing her absent husband. “Soul of the devil!” she wailed. “How could you leave me to die like this?”

  By late afternoon the mortar shells were pounding the Perivoli with unrelenting fury as a cover for the nationalists’ 625th battalion, which had crossed the foothills, climbed the haunch of the Mourgana and was launching a direct attack on the village of Lia.

  The government soldiers approached the village in two groups, one entering at the easternmost point, near the Church of Aghia Paraskevi (St. Friday), the other creeping up below the burned-out shell of the Church of the Virgin on the southern boundary, just above the house of Eleni’s sister-in-law Alexo.

  When the sunlight began to fade from the Haidis cellar, the wan glow of the one kerosene lamp gave a comforting intimacy to the faces grouped around it. Nikola thought it was a fine adventure. A war raged outside, where mighty deeds were being done; inside, he lay on a blanket spread over a compost heap of manure and straw which gave off a comforting warmth that made him drowsy. The heavy odor made him think of roasting chestnuts as he li
stened to the high-pitched singsong of his eldest sister’s voice hymning the wonders of America. His only concern, teasing at the edge of his consciousness, was the absence of his mother. As soon as she arrived, his circle of security would be complete and he could fall asleep.

  A great thump on the cellar door brought them all to their feet. Olga opened it to find two excited, dirt-stained guerrillas holding guns. “We’re evacuating the lower village!” they shouted. “Everyone has to leave and move in with someone higher up. The fascists are nearly here! Get out now!”

  The door slammed, leaving the family in a frenzy of indecision. If they climbed back up to their house, they’d lose their chance to escape; besides, no one wanted to hazard the mountain path in the dark under that blitz of artillery shells. Megali flatly refused to abandon her house, and Nitsa set up a keening wail. Olga suggested they make a run for their aunt Alexo’s house, at the very bottom of the village, but Kanta insisted that it would be suicide trying to cross the battle lines. Finally someone thought of a solution that seemed safer. They would go to the Botsaris house and ask for sanctuary. It lay just above them and to the east, right across the path that divided the upper village from the lower.

  Since Alexandra Botsaris had brought her starving children there, fleeing the 1941 famine in Athens, the hovel had been patched up. Angeliki had moved in to be with her widowed mother after her husband fled to join the nationalist forces. Angeliki still faced life with the same irrepressible spirit that had made her a favorite with the British commandos. She, too, would be hoping to escape to her husband on the other side, the Gatzoyiannis children knew, and would surely help them get away when the right moment came.