GREECE: The Protector

The story came to light last week during a formal Greek army court-martial. It happened at Klidi, a mountain village on the strategic Kozane-Florina road. Klidi’s 600 inhabitants are mostly illiterate and know little of democracy; as for the civil war, many of their kin fought with the government, many with the guerrillas. The only thing the people of Klidi knew for sure was that they wanted to hold on to their rich cornfields. For that reason, they had collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation; for that reason, they obeyed the rule of their proedros (village president), Dimitrios Follokos.

Namesake of a Queen. Dimitrios was in excellent standing with the Greek army, which considered him a loyal nationalist and supplied him with arms for his village guard. Dimitrios, in turn, denounced as Communists many of his fellow villagers. The army never noticed that most of those he denounced were husbands or fiances of pretty village women. Nor did the army find it suspicious that, whenever the guerrillas attacked in the region, Klidi was spared.

Dimitrios played a double game. He maintained a secret organosis of villagers who acted as informers for the Communist guerrillas and laid mines to blow up government transport. For three years, day & night, peasant women had sneaked through fields, hiding mines beneath their wide woolen petticoats, and dreamy-eyed shepherds had leaned on their crooks, watching for government convoys.

For three years Dimitrios went on regularly turning in men whom he called Communists; their womenfolk usually became his mistresses. They had little choice, for Dimitrios had power enough, if they resisted, to bring harm to their hornes, their children or their cornfields. Recently, the situation was complicated by the fact that Dimitrios fell in love with his son’s girl. He solved that problem, as the court-martial investigation showed, by denouncing his wife and son to the Communist guerrillas as “fascists.” The guerrillas killed both. Dimitrios married the girl and, as a good patriot, renamed her Frederika, after Greece’s Queen.

Death of a Stoic. Recently, the army came across more & more mines near the village. There were many casualties. Last week, an army truck was blown up by a mine just outside Klidi. The wounded driver saw one of Dimitrios’ men, Basilis Stoikos, lurking in the bushes and arrested him. To make him talk, government soldiers tied him up and put a mine at his feet. Terrified, Stoikos told all he knew about his boss and his organosis; then he cut his own throat with a broken bottle. A doctor sewed up the wound, but stoical Stoikos tore it open again and bled to death.

Dimitrios was arrested—but he was not yet through. He turned King’s evidence and denounced 60 villagers who, he said, had worked for him in the pro-Communist organization.

Their heads shorn, their eyes red-rimmed, the 60 faced the court-martial last week. Seven were sentenced to death, 14 to life imprisonment; the rest were set free. Dimitrios got off with a life sentence. Said Anastasia Hadsis, whose husband was executed by a firing squad: “Judas has betrayed us and lives on.”