34 Liberating the Masses (3)

34 Liberating the Masses (3)

It was an humiliation and an embarrassment to be carpeted by Lt-Col Myers, but it had happened to Hector and to Aris, his commander, so many times that it had

become almost a game. All you had to do was profess ignorance or indignation or penitent horror every time your andarte group was reported to the British for misdemeanours and atrocities, and then say that you could not sign any agreements without permission from the committee in Athens, and for that you would have to send a runner who might take two weeks to get back. You could always say that the runner had been caught and killed by the Italians, or the Germans, or one of the other resistance groups, or you could even blame the British, saying that they obviously favoured EDES. You could even blame the Greek villagers whom the Germans had armed so that they could defend their chickens against the relentless requisitioning of the patriotic ELAS guerrillas. This had the advantage of being occasionally true, and nearly always unverifiable.

Hector adjusted his red fez, and stood before Lt-Col Myers, feeling like a naughty schoolboy. He had left Mandras outside, unwilling that he should be a witness to his discomfiture. Mandras watched the British Liaison Officers coming and going, and was once again struck by their great height, their red and peeling noses, and the great pleasure they took in banter. Some of them were New Zealanders, and Mandras guessed that this must be a special place somewhere in Britain where soldiers were bred specially for the purpose of parachuting out of Liberators and blowing up viaducts. They always had colds, but were capable of incredible endurance, and they made incomprehensible jokes whose irony was completely lost in translation. They made sincere efforts to learn Romaic Greek, but delighted in mispronunciation; if a woman was called Antigone, they all called her 'Auntie Gonie', and Hector himself was known as 'My Sector'. Mandras could not have known that this was because `This is my sector' was the standard ripost of his mentor when confronted with his double-dealings, his dishonesty, and his barbarity.

`This is my sector,' said Hector to Myers, 'and my orders come from Athens, not from you. Are you Greek, to be giving us orders all the time?'

Myers heaved a patient sigh. He was not trained in diplomacy, had not been told that ninety percent of his job would be the prevention of internecine war amongst the Greeks, and was longing for a simple life in which all one had to do was fight the Germans. He had nearly died of pneumonia, and was still very thin and tired, but nonetheless he had the moral authority of someone who refuses to compromise an ethical principle in the name of an ideal. All the ELAS leaders hated him for making them feel like worms, and yet they never dared to defy him too much because he was the source of all the weapons and gold sovereigns

that they were storing up for the revolution, after the Germans had gone. They had to keep him quiet by going along with some of his plans, by occasionally performing minor warlike acts against the Axis troops, and by enduring the lectures that he always delivered with blazing eyes and unanswerable certainty.

The colonel straightened up, 'How many times have I got to remind you that in this war we have a common enemy? Does it ever even cross your mind that we are fighting the Germans? Do you really think it's enough to have blown up the Gorgopotamos viaduct? Because that was the last useful thing that ELAS ever did, and that was the last time you ever co-operated with EDES.'

Hector flushed, 'It's Aris you should talk to. I get my orders from him, and he gets his orders from Athens. It's no use going on at me.'

The colonel felt a surge of contempt, and wanted to strike the duplicitous andarte, but he restrained himself. As he talked he enumerated his points on his fingers. 'Firstly, last Friday there was a drop to EDES, which, let me remind you, has been the only major group that actually fights the enemy. You and your men

attacked EDES, drove them away, and stole the entire drop.'

Myers was almost fit to explode. He nearly said, 'The villagers,' but realised that this would invite further Communist reprisals. Instead he said, 'One of our officers saw it.'

Hector shrugged, 'Lies.'

Myers went cold, 'British officers don't lie.'

He ruefully regretted the necessary hypocrisy. He glared with patrician disdain at the andarte leader; the trouble with these red Fascists was that they were not gentlemen. They had no sense of personal honour whatsoever. 'Thirdly,' he continued, 'you have been preventing villagers from high in the mountains from entering EDES areas in order to buy wheat, without which they will starve. Is this patriotic? You are not letting them through unless they join ELAS first, and then you are doling out the death penalty for "deserters", even though you do not have the authority. Fourthly, you have brought reprisals against a village by

taking potatoes already requisitioned by the Italians. Fifthly, you personally misdirected one of our Liaison Officers when he was looking for Aris with the intention of complaining about your actions. Sixthly, you have been following a policy of disarming other andarte bands, and murdering their officers.'

Hector was adept at diversions, and he counter-accused: 'We know the British policy. Do you think we are stupid? You are going to bring back the King without asking the people.'

Myers slammed the side of his fist into the table-top, sending a glass tumbler toppling to the floor. 'Seven,' he roared, 'you kidnapped and murdered a chief of gendarmerie who was arranging a mass defection of his own men to EDES, and you made them defect to you on pain of death. Eighth, you have proclaimed that anyone not joining ELAS is a traitor to Greece, and will be shot. Ninth, you are giving the funds we give you to EAM, who give it to the KKE in Athens, and instead of payment you are giving empty promissory notes to the peasants. Tenthly, some men of your unit disgracefully attacked an EDES unit on the flank when they were engaged in a pitched battle with a unit of the SS. This is a blot on the good name of Greece, an infamy that must never be repeated. Is that clear?'

The colonel paused and took up a piece of paper from his desk. 'I have here an agreement which has been signed by EDES and EKKA and the EOA, who have all agreed to adopt it as a code of practice. I am going to get Aris to sign it, and I want you to read it and give me your word of honour as a gentleman that you will abide by it. If not, we will have to consider cutting off your supplies.'

Hector looked back defiantly. The colonel had tried this tactic a hundred times. 'I cannot, and Aris will not sign anything unless we have orders from the committee in Athens. We will have to send a runner. Who knows how long it will take?'

`A load of shit,' answered Hector. `What you've got to understand about the British is that they are Fascists, and they just want Greece for their empire, and people like Zervas and his lackeys in EDES are helping them to do it. That's why he's got all the supplies and we haven't.'

`We've got tons of stuff,' said Mandras. `We've got enough to blow up every Nazi in Greece.'

Hector ignored him; he was young and would learn. He said, `Those villagers reported us to Myers. I think we should go and teach them some lessons. Collaborating bastards.'

`There were some nice women,' said Mandras, smiling.

`We'll teach them a thing or two as well,' replied Hector, and the two men laughed in conspiratorial pleasure. These villagers were all petit-bourgeois sympathisers, Royalists, republicans who only pretended to be opposed to the king that everyone contemptuously referred to as `Glucksburg'. They were all Fascist fellow-travellers, and all of them spat on scientific socialism. It was good to get those traitor women screaming and squirming underneath you, and you didn't have to trouble your conscience about it because it was the least they deserved; a new and better Greece was about to be built, and you did what you liked with inferior bricks that were going to be discarded anyway. Likewise, when you made an omelette you threw away the shells.

Up in his cave Myers thought again about requesting to be evacuated. Cairo ignored everything he told them about ELAS and did not seem to understand that sooner rather than later the Communists were going to start a civil war. He was just wasting his time. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief and ran his fingers through the itching beard that was still a novelty to him. Tom Barnes came in, having trekked for five days after destroying a bridge with the aid of Zervas' men. He sat down heavily on the old wooden chair, took off his boots, and inspected the raw blisters on the soles of his feet and on his toes. Myers questioned him with one raised eyebrow, and Barnes looked up and smiled. `Top-hole explosion,' he said in his New Zealand drawl, 'absolutely ripping. Cantilevers all over the shop. It'll keep the wops and jerries busy for weeks.'

`That's the trouble with bad hats,' said Barnes, `they always jolly well end up at the head.'