“ANNOUNCEMENT - Part 03

days… But it was war. One day I received orders to fire five shells one after another at target number 3. The target was a tiny hill almost at the bottom of the gorge that looked like a turtle. It was densely covered with brush. I was told two enemy units were hiding in it. I fired the five shells. Then I was told that the units were nearly destroyed and there were many dead bodies left on the ground and in the brush... Then, one morning as I was looking down monitoring the terrain, I noticed enemy scouts coming out of the woods and crawling along the grassy open ground on the opposite side of the gorge. We were hiding in the shade while the early morning sun was shining brightly on top of the scouts. They decided to take a rest and bunched up behind some stones. I fired one shell and it fell right on top of them. When the smoke and dust cleared I saw nothing moving. Sometime later on, our opponent decided to destroy the dense forest on our side of the hill. He used about a dozen mortar cannons and began to systematically burn down our side square by square. He used a five-minute barrage on each square. “He wants to destroy your mortar cannon but does not know exactly where it is…!” explained Commander Hrisostomos. Initially mortar shells kept flying over us and landing somewhere around hill 110 where our supply corps was located in the upper line of bunkers. Hrisostomos decided to go to Headquarters while, from time to time, I fired shells at the seven targets one by one. Soon a critical situation developed. Square by square the barrage of fire came closer to us. Five minutes later we found ourselves inside the square that was under fire. It was terrible listening to the shells exploding, seeming like they were falling on top of us. Our unit commissar, a man named Spiros, a villager from Thessaly, along with the rest of the mortar staff, ran off to take refuge in the sleeping bunker. I yelled at them but they could not hear me from the noise. They even waited for me to go with them and became concerned when I did not arrive. I thought to myself: “If I continue firing they will think that I am somewhere else. If I stop firing they will think I am in this square taking shelter and burn it to the ground...” When the shells were incoming, I hid under my mortar cannon and after they exploded I quickly fired back at them in response on target number five. I didn’t stop firing and five minutes later they moved on to the next square. While being shelled, for the sake of our “greater” security, I continued to fire with the same rhythm. I only stopped when they passed on to a next square…!

When my unit attended the “dimokratiki sinkedrosi” (democratic gathering), Commissar Spiros and the other fighters praised me for my initiative and asked that I be recognized and decorated. But I did not want the attention so I said: “I was only doing my job…! If you really want to know, I did it out of fear! Yes! Out of fear because if we were discovered we would all have been killed…!” Fotis, the battalion commissar, in private later told me that he was obliged to make this request to General Headquarters on behalf of the fighters, even if I insisted against it. I reminded him that I was sent here to be punished and that this was a prison sentence for me so I needed to be careful not to send the wrong message! A year or two later while serving in a Moscow prison my interrogator, a man named Firsov, told me that Fotis had indeed submitted the request to General Staff for me to be decorated. Firsov said to me: “I see that you have shown yourself to be heroic in Gramos…!” Fotis was an honest and courageous fighter... He suggested, or I should say he “demanded” that I be recognized for my deeds… but they decided to label me a traitor and liquidate me! This is how it happened:

The date was August 24, 1949. The enemy artillery was thrashing us. A courier came over and said something to Commissar Spiros. He quickly gathered seven of the mortar cannon staff and left. He left me and a woman fighter named Maria, a Macedonian from Nestram, Kostur Region, to operate the cannon. About an hour later an officer from Headquarters frantically ran towards me. I don’t remember his name but I do remember he was a Macedonian from the village Aitos, Lerin Region. He jumped into the hole where the mortar cannon was resting and, while puffing, trying to catch his breath, in a panicky tone of voice told me that the bunker with the heavy machine gun below and directly under us had been captured and occupied by the enemy. Nothing could be seen from the trees where I was standing. He also told me that enemy soldiers had been climbing up hill 110, about 150 metres to the right of our position, and had captured the supply corps located about 300 metres above us. After he informed me he jumped out of the hole and ran back to headquarters from where he came. The direction to my left was still free so I could have abandoned the mortar cannon and I too could have withdrawn to battalion headquarters. But unfortunately no such order was given to me. I was only informed of the situation and left

there to decide on my own what to do. I had a handgun in my possession and a single thought. There was no way they were going to capture me alive. I decided that I would stand my ground and fight for as long as my ammunition lasted and then throw a grenade in the bunker to destroy it... I did not know Maria that well because we were together for only a few days. They sent her here from somewhere else but she was doing well on her own. Moments later I saw Hrisostomos, the battalion commander approaching. He came down into the mortar’s nest and told me the same thing - that the bunker below had been captured and that the enemy had climbed up hill 110 and taken over the supply corps. I asked him why he was not using his reserves to fight back until reinforcements arrived. He said the reserves were with Fotis and not accessible but he assured me that he would look into the situation and “see what could be done”. In the meantime he told me to keep firing the mortar gun at the gorge, and to make sure that I destroyed the bunker that was captured and occupied by the enemy. He then jumped out of the mortar nest and got lost behind the bushes on the way towards the headquarters bunker... And here is what really happened: The bunker below us and the supply corps were not taken by the enemy at all. They put the fear and panic into the Macedonian officer at headquarters and sent him to put the fear and panic into me. This was a “planned” event and they wanted me to act on it. But I found it interesting that they sent a Macedonian officer to inform me of the situation without any orders as to what I was expected to do. And then there was Hrisostomos telling me to bomb one of our own bunkers? That did not make sense to me! Had I left the mortar nest, like they expected me to, I would have been charged with “desertion”. I am not speculating about this. I know this for a fact because, even though I did not leave my post, they told my commander, young Micho Sarievski, that I had deserted on the night of August 29, 1949. Then, after the Party and the government made the decision to withdraw our fighters to Albania, they ordered Sarievski to hunt me down and kill me. In the meantime, after Hrisostomos became tired of waiting for me to bomb the bunker while hiding behind the bushes, he came back to face me again. He personally wanted to ambush me bombing our own bunker so that he could claim: “That traitor Rakovski attacked our heavy machine gunners to help the enemy.” Obviously this was well-planned to the last detail… On August 29, we were ordered to disable the mortar

and retreat. Only then did I find out that our bunker below had not been captured at all and what I was told a lie. The unit manning the bunker and their cheerful commander Georgios Hadzharas were all alive and well. Then when I met up with Hadzharas we had a nice conversation during which he asked me: “Why did you want to kill us, huh?” I took him aside and said: “Major Hrisostomos told me that you had been captured and killed by the enemy and that your bunker was occupied by the Burantades (a nickname for the enemy)”. He was surprised. He then said: “Why did that bastard want to kill us?” and after that he remained silent. Obviously Hrisostomos hid behind the bushes to ambush me, but seeing that his words had no effect on me he came back to taunt me. He stood on a pile of soil in front of the mortar cannon and began to conduct my firing like an orchestra conductor. Fire at the gorge… Fire at the bunker… Fire here… Fire there… In the meantime enemy cannon shells were passing over us and falling everywhere on hill 110. “Why do you expose yourself like this?” I called out to him. “Come down here before you get killed…!” He looked my way. Our eyes met. I still remember his long motionless killer look. He looked at me like he wanted to kill me… The next mistake they made was to send Micho Sarievski to kill me…

I was arrested on October 3, 1949 at the Bureli camp inside Albania, under the suspicion of being a “Yugoslav agent”. The same thing also happened to the following Macedonian NOF leaders: Malio, Hadziianev, Vera, Mitrevski, Fotev, Poplazarov, Kolentsev, Iurukova and Cholakov. They wanted to execute us there and then but the Albanian authorities intervened and took us under their jurisdiction. Our Greek comrades protested as follows: