JANE'S MEMOIRS - PART TWO

Jane distinctly remembers the day that Italy declared war on Greece on the 28^th October1940.   Her parents, her uncle Socratis Panas and she were in the living room at their house in Argostoli.  There was a feeling of concern and anxiety among the grownups.   They were discussing if they should sail for Lebanon, as Port Said and the Suez Canal were occupied by the Italians, and then continue their journey by land to India.  But as numerous ships were being, daily, torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean, her parents decided that it was wiser and safer if they stayed in Cephalonia.  Jane rather fancied an adventurous long journey by sea, train, truck and.... camel-back to Karachi and she told them so, trying to convince them!

During the first day of the Greco-Italian war, Italian aircrafts bombarded airfields all over the country and the port and railway station of Patras.  Therefore, Jane’s family, with her aunt, Aimilia Simota, her husband and two daughters and her uncle Cosmetos Cosmetatos and his wife Evanthia, fearing the possibility that Argostoli could, also, be bombed, decided to go to the small village of Asprogerakas where they had a country house.

  

Jane promptly started exploring the grounds and was fascinated by the patitiri or linos, as it is called in the Ionian Islands, a traditional wine press, where grapes were piled on the surface, and people with naked feet stomped them in order to extract the must, clear of seeds and skin, which was then poured into aromatic wooden barrels to ferment.  All this resulted in a “foot made” sparkling wine which apparently was rather good!

Today, modern Greek winemakers, with the help of viticulturists, sophisticated presses, the appropriate know-how and vanilla-scented oak barrels produce the most excellent of wines.

Jane was then in the fourth class of elementary school, so a pretty young teacher called Sophia came daily to the house to teach her, Greek, and elementary Ancient Greek and Latin, mathematics, history, phytology and zoology.  Jane was a rather good student, but she preferred to play.  So, she often played with two sisters called Maria and Liza Travlos who lived nearby and with whom she became very friendly. They visited each other’s homes, scrutinized the surroundings and talked about the ghosts that they had surely seen just before dusk!  Later, Jane had nagging feelings of remorse about lying to her friends and wondered if they, also, had the same feelings, or had they, actually, seen a ghost?

London After the Blitz

Jane was constantly hearing about the woes of war, thousands of young men dying on the battlefield and 40 innocent people, mostly women and children, who were killed on Christmas day in Corfu by Italian bombers.  She, also, heard about the London Blitz carried out by the Luftwaffe which had killed 40.000 civilians and destroyed more than a million buildings, during the war.  She shed hot tears and started realizing, at this early age, that there could be nothing worse than war.

During April1941, the Ionian Islands were occupied by the Italians, so Jane with her parents and other relatives went back to Argostoli.  They were pleased to return to their homes but very unhappy and concerned about the painful and very difficult situation in which their country and they were, occupied by fascist Italy.


The 12 years of compulsory education, in Greece, was then split into four years in primary school and eight years in the gymnasium, so Jane, after giving the necessary exams, attended the first class of the gymnasium.  She was delighted to meet with her old friends, like Katy Tzouganatos, make new ones. As she studied adequately and methodically, she was a good student. Besides continuing piano and English lessons she also started learning French with her uncle Cosmetos Cosmetatos who spoke the language like a Parisian.   Her parents were very worried moneywise because the drachma had lost its value, and they started bartering jewellery and paintings for olive oil and pulses.  Jane’s mother made soap with aromatic herbs and prepared quite delicious, frugal dishes with pulses and cakes with a sweetening agent called stafidini, made out of currents.   Her uncle Cosmetos, who had a large farm in Krania two kilometres away from Argostoli. brought them a bottle of milk every day, and a basket of fruit and vegetables every week. Three days before Christmas the Italians requisitioned Jane’s house with the furniture, so they were obliged to leave.  Doctor Maratos, a good friend of her father's had an empty small flat in the centre of the town and he kindly let them stay there until the end of the occupation.  Jane and her family never forgot her uncle’s and the doctor’s kindness and compassion and were always extremely grateful to them.

Memorial of the Acqui Division Massacred by the Nazis in Cephalonia 

In September 1943, the Italian government decided to negotiate a surrender to the Allies.  The Germans tried to disarm the Italian Acqui Division in Cephalonia but the Italians resisted and a terrible, gory battle took place, during which, the Nazis bombed Argostoli with incendiary bombs that burnt countless of buildings down to ashes.  "By the 22^nd September, the last of the Italian resistance surrendered after running out of ammunition.  A total 1.315 Italians were killed in the battle and 5.155" were brutally executed in cold blood by the Nazis.  It was one of the "largest prisoner-of-war massacres committed by the 1^st German Mountain Division."  The most hideous of nightmares, what else can one say?    

  

In Memorium of the Second World War Dead

On June the 6^th 1944, the Allied forces invaded Normandy, codenamed Operation Neptune. often referred to as D-Day, which was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began by liberating France and later the rest of Europe and "laid the foundation of the Allied victory in Europe."

The amphibious landing was preceded by heavy "aerial and naval bombardments and an airborne assault, the landing of 24.000 American, British and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight.  The Allied infantry and armoured division began landing on the shores of France by 06.30." The stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into 5 sectors to facilitate the operation.  The men landed under heavy fire, a real massacre.  Also, the shore was mined and covered with metal tripods and barbed wire, which made it a very cumbersome and dangerous task for the cleaning teams.

The Allies did not achieve any of their goals during the first days of the invasion. "Many towns remained in German hands and Caen, a major objective, was not captured until the 21^st July.  German casualties on D-day were estimated at 4.000 - 9.000 men, while the Allied casualties documented were at least 10.000, with 4.414 confirmed dead."  A terrible death toll once more.

"The Allies had already started offensives in the Mediterranean Theatre Operation, where British troops were stationed since the middle of 1943" due to the campaign of North Africa.  The Allies then "launched an invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and the subsequent invasion of mainland Italy in September 1943."   By then the Soviet forces had won an important victory at the Battle of Stalingrad.

"Greece was occupied by the Nazis, the Italians and the Bulgarians and resistance movements began in 1942 and grew enormously in 1943 and 1944, liberating large parts of Greece’s mountainous interior and tied down considerable Axis forces."  However, there was political tension between the resistance groups, which, unfortunately, later culminated into a violent civil war that harassed the country until late 1949. 

The Greek government also formed armed forces of its own, which fought alongside the British in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy.  Also, "the contribution of the Greek navy and the merchant marine, in particular, was of special importance to the Allied cause".


(I wish to thank the Greek Reporter, Wikipedia, and the Greek press in general for the information for this post)

Mainland Greece was liberated in October 1944.  Jane still remembers how jubilant they all felt when the British troops came to Cephalonia.  The church bells were ringing joyously and many events took place to celebrate the happy event, where the mayor of Argostoli and other officials gave speeches, even she recited a verse of Lord Byron's poem: The Isles of Greece. 


                                             The mountains look on Marathon
                                             And Marathon looks on the sea;
                                             And musing there an hour alone,
                                             I dreamed that Greece might still be free,
                                             For standing on the Persian Grave
                                             I could not deem myself a slave.

Lord Byron, the Philhellene, who Died for Greece