1 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.5 I was in Tríkala, with the 1st Tríkala Battalion of the National Guard. Velouhiótis was already in disfavor with the KKE.6 He’d had a falling-out with the Central Committee and they expelled him. He had disagreed about the Várkiza Treaty and all that.7 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.8 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