GREECE: Kai Pali Grammes

Perched on orange-colored canvas chairs atop fern-scented Mount Ammouda, smiling King Paul of the Hellenes, grim U.S. General James Van Fleet and several Greek army commanders awaited the signal for the attack. At daybreak, newly arrived U.S.-made Helldivers cut across the pale blue sky to unload their cargo of Napalm fire bombs. In a few minutes, the sleepy purple mountains seemed ablaze. At week’s end, King Paul and his party could celebrate a smashing victory.

In a three-pronged attack, Greek government troops had shattered Communist forces in the Grammos region and had captured 8,000-ft. Mt. Grammos, long a formidable guerrilla stronghold. Government artillery commanded the whole northern ridge. All that remained, announced Athens, was to cut off the rebels’ line of retreat to the Albanian border, and mop up.

The Grammos offensive was part of the government drive, launched at Vitsi three weeks ago, to wipe out the guerrillas this fall. The Communists had fought back hard. Even after being bombed and shelled, many stuck to their pinelog pillboxes, engaged the advancing government troops hand-to-hand. At nightfall, as a weird calm settled over the battlefields, U.N. observers spotted the dimmed lights of Albanian truck convoys moving up & down from the border, carrying off the wounded and bringing in reinforcements. Outside a Greek headquarters tent sat forlorn groups of Red prisoners awaiting interrogation. One of them, a former member of the Greek seamen’s union, told of his odyssey. He had been recruited by the Communists in France, then shipped on to join the rebels via Prague and Yugoslavia. “What could I do? I had no money, so I joined up,” he explained. “Kaipali Grammos” (Grammos once again), said one hardbitten, stunted little Greek soldier to a U.S. correspondent. Like many of his comrades, the soldier remembered last year’s unsuccessful “Operation Coronet,” in which the Greek army had tried and failed to wrest Grammos from the Communists. This time, Athens was confident that its troops had come to rugged Grammos to stay.