Days of Victory

"Pliatsiko [loot]," grinned grimy, battle-worn Private Pavlides of the Third Rimini Brigade. He was at Pyxos, the former Communist headquarters of "Free Greece," which the Greek national army captured last week from the retreating Red guerrillas. Pavlides and his comrades were joyfully poking around among the neat little pine-board chalets (which had housed Nico Zachariades, John Ioannides and other Communist guerrilla leaders), looking for equipment and stores left behind by the fleeing Reds. They found everything from Czech motorcycles and electric sewing machines to frilly underwear for the andartissa (female guerrillas).

Pyxos was one of many towns and villages which the victorious government troops had taken from the Communists in the Grammos-Vitsi area of northern Greece. German, Rumanian, British and Russian arms and ammunition were everywhere. A stone's throw from the Albanian border stood the rebels' propaganda headquarters, supplied with cameras, film processing shops, and printing plants. There was enough pliatsiko left behind to keep 400 trucks constantly on the move shifting it.

But victory had its grim side. Except for a few old men & women, there were no inhabitants left in the region: the Reds had taken all able-bodied men & women with them. In Krystallopigi, 88-year-old Vassilis Claras explained: "The day before the government army came, the Communists gave us orders to cross into Albania, because the Monarcho-Fascists would kill us. I told them I was an old man and didn't care whether I lived or died--so I stayed."

In the ghostlike, empty village of Vronderon, near the Albanian border, one Lazanis Nestoridis, a private in the government army, pinned up a penciled notice on the front door of a two-story stone house. It read: "Friends, please do not remove the few remaining articles from this house. It's mine. I'm a soldier." Vronderon was Lazanis' home, which he had not seen in four years. The house was all he had left: his wife and children had been carried off by the retreating guerrillas. Lazanis told a visiting U.N. Balkans Commission team that 'his family was "over there," in Albania. "Please," he begged, "can't you get them back?"

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