By Summer's End

The Greek National army last week launched another all-out drive against the Communist guerrillas. This one looked as though it might really be the last.

The Communists had been cleared from the Peloponnesus, Central Greece, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. Only 17,000 were left in the mountain strongholds of Vitsi and Grammos. Government generals sent the first units of their 65,000 U.S.-equipped troops into the Grammos sector, where the guerrillas had been expecting the main push. Five days later the government's main forces struck at Vitsi, split the Communist positions and cut off their westward retreat routes to Albania.

The rebels, having lost most of their fanatical, hard-core Communist capetanios, pressed even children and old men into service. Said a Communist artillery commander who last week surrendered along with his Tommy-gun-toting mistress: "How could one have faith in an army of young boys and girls and of old men leaning on their sticks?"

Supplies to the guerrillas from Tito's Yugoslavia had ceased completely, but Albania was still sending a steady stream of canned beef, jam, sugar, macaroni, guns & ammunition to the Communists' mountain positions. A U.S. officer inspecting the government's crack 9th Division in the Grammos sector saw heavy artillery fire directed against Greek forces from Albanian territory; a Dutch U.N. observer sitting on an upturned ammunition case neatly noted the positions of Communist guns in Albania. The Tirana radio last week charged that Greek government troops had invaded Albanian territory.

"Fantastic,"snorted a government spokesman in Athens.

In the tiny villages on the steep cliffs of Vitsi, Greek peasants, freed from Communist rule after four years, crossed themselves reverently and gave thanks to To Thavma Tis Panagheias (the Miracle of the Virgin), which they thanked for their liberation. U.S. officers predicted that summer's end would see Greece free of all organized guerrilla warfare. On the Vitsi front, Lieut. General James A. Van Fleet, head of the U.S. military mission, said: "This is the beginning of the end . . ."

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