Noose – Chapter 16

Noose – Chapter 16

End of the war: After being involved in a hellish war for eight hundred and seven days and after the Greek Civil War ended, I was disarmed in Vitkuki, Albania on August 31st, 1949. After that the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) gave me a one-way ticket on a boat trip to the USSR (October 24, 1949).

1.

It was past midnight when we passed through the village Breznitsa. We hiked uphill and behind us we left the church and cemetery where we buried Traiko Bogdanov and his son Giorgi. The moon looked serene as it radiated light over the land and was occasionally abstracted by dark lines of black clouds, smoke and dust. We were very tired and felt like the last ounce of strength had been sapped out of us. We maintained our courage and before dawn we arrived in a dense forest above the village Besfina. This was our designated destination. The next day we were expected to be at Peroo to mine the bridge after the withdrawal of our fighters, in order to stop the Burandari (government soldiers) from passing. There was no need to place guards on duty as we were far from the front line. But, as we lay there tired and exhausted, no one gave it a second thought to remove the backpack from his shoulder, loosen his belt of bullets, remove his boots, or express interest in finding a nice comfortable place to lie in the dense forest. Once we were given orders to rest, we all immediately dropped to the ground and fell into a deep sleep. The next day it was already noon and no one in the camp had awakened from their deep sleep. We continued sleeping as if we were intoxicated by some strong narcotic. The rays of the August sun were mercilessly beating on our bodies, especially on my uncovered left leg. The sun was baking our bodies and our exposed faces. I was hot from top to bottom and still I was unable to wake up. It was perhaps because I felt that I was alive. It seemed to me as if I had fallen from the sky or from some unknown world, unable to sober up and find where I was. I made an effort to open my eyes, but without success. My eyes remain closed, glued. One of my arms and both of my legs had fallen asleep, they were numb and stiff and I could not feel them. They felt like they were not mine. I could not move them at all. Suddenly I had this subconscious fear and hurriedly attempted to move my fingers but they felt as if they were not connected to me. I continued to struggle, attempting to move my legs but they too refused to obey me. In the absence of my arms and legs, I felt much lighter and if I had wings I felt as if I could fly. Of course, that’s what happens to a person when he finds himself relieved from his incomparable past mental and physical fears, which we experienced in the past seventy days and nights in the front line of Gramos and Vicho. But now we found ourselves in the rear and far from the front line. I managed to get rid of the stiffness but with much difficulty. I struggled to recover and sober up quickly. I felt sluggish, afraid and hopeful, hopeful because I had slept for so long. Everything around us was lukewarm, impersonal, lacking conflict, lacking passion, no one was celebrating yet I was overcome with joy, as though reflecting the environment. Perhaps this was the most beautiful moment after the long battles at Gramos, where the sun had darkened, the soil had sunk and the land seemed to open up and swallow all that was creepy, crawly, swimming and flying in the face of the earth. Now it seemed like the good life was back and present all around us. We had all experienced bad days at the Gramos front line and we had left many of our comrades there forever.

* * *

The sun began to set over the peak of Mount Vrba. It slowly disappeared behind the mountain. The night that followed was hot and full of dark and eerie shadows cast by the dense trees in the moonlight. It seemed as if they were all watching us, staring at our faces. One of our miner (saboteur) platoons, under the command of Colonel Vratsano, was dispatched down the stony ground near the village L’k to take several rowboats and go to the bridge in Peroo. We managed to mine the bridge with more than enough explosives, just before dawn. After that we lay the cable under the road to a safe distance away and camouflaged it. We worked like it was just another ordinary job, even the refugees who walked by us ignored us. At that time the lake water level was low and a lot of mud had collected below the water and on the shoreline. In some places the mud was green with grass, reeds and young willow trees growing out of it. The water was clear and calm as it flowed from the little lake to the big lake in Lake Prespa. After that we hid in temporary trenches that we had dug for ourselves and stayed there until we received orders to activate the explosives.

2.

A decrepit, shaky old bald man, tired and exhausted from walking, passed by us and when he saw us sitting there said: “Run, flee to save yourselves, you are young and don’t deserve to die. The Burandari (government soldiers) are coming, burning villages and killing people...” It is impossible not to have compassion for people suffering while fleeing from the war. A column of people all dressed in black walked towards the Yugoslav border. They were all silent and from time to time their dry eyes, that could not shed any more tears, shed a drop of blood. Fear of being beaten or even killed by the Burandari, the refugees kept coming, marching in an endless column. I looked at the bluish smoke hovering in the distance and wondered what was burning. Then I remembered: early in the grey morning I had heard noises and the crowds began to appear, dark figures mixed with domestic animals running together. The crowd steadily grew larger like a ball of snow rolling down a slope. In the distance, people and animals flowed together like a colourful river as they crossed the narrow strip of land between the Prespa lakes. They fled their homes half-dressed and dressed themselves as they ran down the road. There were women and children running as well as old people unsteady on their feet. Many of the old and very young looked weak and sickly. They roamed the stony and dusty roads screaming, crying and moaning with tortured souls and lacking sleep. They had left everything and fled in panic: before the burning, before the hanging and before the death of their loved ones. Thick smoke lingered above the ground burning the nostrils of all living beings. They fled slumped forward and left the bare hills, the brooks, the burning trees behind them. In their paths lay the bodies of mutilated dead fighters. The tongues of flames in the burning fires seemed to wave like the scarves of fairies at play. People, singed by the fires, coming out of the smoke were asking themselves, “Where to now?” The soil looked wet, as if blown by the dry winds of spring which melted the snow over the black earth and soaked it with moisture. The people too were victimized by the war, beaten, killed and driven out of their homes leaving the soil soaked in blood. I heard noises, it was the crowing of ravens and death was slowly creeping along the ground following a man. Wrapped in a cloak of horrors, indifferent, impersonal, mute, a raw black hand reached for the man, but he fought back armed with determination, stepped up to the light of life and with the blood of his heart, moistened his lonely, unfamiliar long road… The fleeing women walked very slowly and often stopped when one of the mothers carrying a child retreated into the roadside bushes. I watched the women: frantic and hopeless, some dazed in confusion. They looked at each other with long faces and misty eyes but they did not speak. They all took something out from their bags, put it in their mouths and squeezed their jaws seeming as if they did it without blinking their eyelids. For those who were not suffering from dysentery, the journey had turned into an endless, tiresome wait by the roadside, under a heavy trickle of rain. The air grew thick and grey and there was no place for happiness or sadness; everyone was plagued by despair. There was no one in the roadside meadows. One of the saddest sights was the case of the refugees when a woman told me: “When they were calling that the Burandari were coming my husband took two of our children and I took the other two. We fled to escape. But in the scramble I dropped my youngest, that I was carrying. I could not go back quickly enough to save her. Now I had lost my husband and the other two, I don’t know where they are.” The woman cried and chewed her nails, walking aimlessly in circles, forgotten even by the wind that waved her skirt above her knees, forgotten by those fleeing. She kept shouting: “I love her, I love her,” over and over again telling us about the poor little trampled baby.

She was holding the other one in her arms. She left during the night and died further up the road. An eerie restless silence covered our stretch of the road. The women looked frightened, confused and desperate. “What did the woman die from?” asked a pompous woman in uniform belonging to the AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front). “She has no wounds, she must have died of exhaustion,” replied another woman walking barefoot and nodding her head. “Who is she?” asked another woman while staring at the dead body. The AFZH woman ordered the women to bury her at the side of the road and to continue walking while it was still night and before the airplanes come back and start attacking. But no matter how much one hurries, a person would want to hear, see and understand: “Why does man torment man?” There will never be happiness for these people; the every day kind of happiness experienced at home is gone forever... They no longer have a place to call home, a homeland. The most needed place, right? But be it as it may, none of them will forget to shout: “Where are you, where are you my homeland?” None of them had left of their own will... And behold, they ceased to be trees with deep roots in their homeland. They ceased to be fertile roots. Up until then they were only interested in their piece of land, on which they had grown like trees with deep roots. They loved their piece of land immensely because it nourished them. And now the wind had blown them everywhere like leaves ripped out from a tree... suddenly these people were gone like water spilled on sand... they mourned their expulsion that carried them like clouds in a violent windstorm. It is not okay for a person to have his thread of life torn apart. But what can he do? What can he do when his experiences are strung like pearls of various beads, white, black, heavy and light? These kinds of pearls are unique, unlike any other, but may resemble those of many other people, but not by weight and colour. And now these pearls will be strung out of this life... and it will be difficult for a person from one country to build a nest in a new country.

3.

The wind was blowing from the south carrying the loud explosions of weapons, giving us headaches, insomnia and causing us great irritation. The bomber airplane was flying slowly. The noise it made came in hard and distinct waves. It circled above Peroo and then dropped a few bursts at the column of refugees and partisans as they were withdrawing from the front lines. At the same time we could hear several anti-aircraft guns firing and a moment later the plane dropped something black from its tail and began to lose control. Moments later there was an explosion. After 12:38 pm, after the airplane had crashed in the rocks above the bridge, there were no other bombers for a long while and the column of refugees continued to climb the uphill unabated. The only thing boiling after that was the sadness in the people for having to leave their homes.

* * *

A large column of tanks and armoured cars appeared under the village Rabi on August 14, 1949 at 15:30 pm and headed straight for the bridge. Less than 5 minutes later Colonel Vratsanos, stationed at a monitoring point, in a sharp tone of voice gave the order to immediately activate the explosives. Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light as if the heavens had just opened up and dropped hell down on the ground. The entire place became hot and I felt like I was standing in front of a burning outdoor village oven. Then a strong explosion was heard that shook the earth. It frightened me and I thought this was my end. By instinct I jumped onto the soft soil, grabbed hold of some reeds and ended up on top of some bulrush, alive and well. Stones, reeds and other debris, pushed by the explosion, flew over me as I lay there silent, staring at the bridge slowly falling into the water. The beams holding up the bridge broke and the bridge fell into the water. Water from the small lake quickly rushed in, mixing with blood, dead bodies and military equipment. The collapse of the bridge robbed our opponent of the opportunity to pass his great army in pursuit of our extermination. It also robbed all those people hiding in the reeds from the opportunity of escaping. Everything in the people broke down after that; their love and hate, their joy and sadness, their happiness and pain and their hope and hopelessness. I left the trench that I was in and walked down a road that led to an unknown world. I was touched by time as I drifted across the expanse looking for an exit to escape. I watched my own hand go down and touch the soil as I prayed looking for answers... And then, strangely I did not ask myself, and now I wonder why and for who did we blow up the bridge that linked our people together! At one point it seemed to me that I too was involved in that great evil. We were responsible for cutting short the lives of those who stayed and of those who fled. Before the bridge detonated and went down, a woman in black stood at the chasm for a long time holding a slender bundle of flowers. She stood there in silence with her eyes open and arms spread out, desperately waiting for someone to return without losing hope. I wondered: “Whose mother was she?” The night became black and still she waited in darkness with a painful desire, but for whom? I don’t know. I also don’t know why the person she was looking for crossed the bridge and she stayed behind. This bothered me and it stayed with me for years making me wonder, “Who was that woman? Was she a mother looking for her child?” Sometimes when I hear someone scream my thoughts return to that time and place and I find it difficult to escape it, to forget it. I hold my ears until they turn blushing red and say: “My hands are clean.” I repeat so that my homeland can hear me: “My hands are clean!”

* * *

We lived alienated lives, just waiting for time to pass. I could not forget those days, not even in the deep winter during dry nights in Tashkent... There was no night that I was not reminded of the smell of sweat and blood on things scattered all over the road. People walked barefoot on broken glass and the wounded and crippled, sitting like rocks on the roadside, prayed for a quick death. Only the mothers were active, going with their children looking for shelter. Here we witnessed a man’s painful steps, sorrowful and uncertain of his next station in life. In front of him were human footprints stretching forever, they were going somewhere... wounded and mutilated people hid in the reeds in a daze, looking like frightened frogs that had just jumped out of the water and rolled in the mud and hid in the ooze while red-hot bombs were falling in the lake. Like a migrating flock of birds in spring, the refugees, numbering in the thousands, lined the edge of the Albanian border and turned their eyes towards their homes. And as they looked at the billowing smoke in the distance they said their goodbyes... they were very sad, fatigued and exhausted... They lay on the rocky ground in the heat of the sun for days waiting for morning to get warmed and for the evening to get cooled, sunburned they waited for their destiny. Most of them were homeless people whose houses had been burned to the ground; they were elderly people, women and children and a fighter here and there separated from his or her unit, demolished in battle. The days dragged on and the people were getting hungry. The blowing wind howled and screamed and brought the taste of ash to our mouths. The howling wind made us feel infinite sorrow. The wind howled and whirled all around us, smelling of burning. In the distance we could see what looked like a lit torch, it was the movement of the water in Lake Prespa. Several rocks, as if wanting to witness the horror, poked their heads out of the water disturbing its bright surface. Abandoned fishing boats lay in the sand being splashed by the lake’s waves. At that moment I felt like my heart was filled with great sorrow. This was the first time I ever heard the womb of the earth speak to me saying: “Farewell my son, farewell my child, know the time has come, you must go, go… go.” The big guns went silent. The dogs stopped barking. I turned north and left everything behind. It was night. I looked at the stars and took the starlit road. Step by step I walked. I ate a whole bag of green apples and with fear in my heart I boarded the ship "Krasnaia Zvezda" on the way to the USSR. All I remember was my love for my native home.