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A page for you to write your reviews of books you've read, films you've seen, music you've heard... anything that keeps us culturally up-to-date and widens our experience!
A page for you to write your reviews of books you've read, films you've seen, music you've heard... anything that keeps us culturally up-to-date and widens our experience!
Colin Janes, The Eagles of Crete, 8.62 from www.amazon.co.uk.
Keith writes:
This is a remarkable book. On the one hand it is dry and detailed reportage of the civil war in Crete which followed the second world war. But it is amazing for its detail, and absolutely fascinating to anyone who knows something of Crete.
The genesis of the civil conflict is traced from rivalry between resistance groups towards the end of World War II. In doing so some of the “catastrophes” that befell villages towards the end of the German occupation are described.
For instance, in a village neighbouring ours, Samonas, there is a memorial in the grounds of the church. We have seen it often, but had not known what happened. The book gives details of the ambushing by communist guerrillas of a patrol of gendarmes. These gendarmes were Cretans armed by the Germans, supposedly to keep order. We are told that the ambush happened towards the end of March 1944 on the track between Kambi and Samonas. (We remember this as a track, though it has been tarmaced for over 10 years.) It seems that the gendarmes surrendered without a fight, were marched barefoot into the hills to be harangued about their collaboration, and were then released – with the exception of one who was summarily tried and executed for earlier killings of guerrillas. The Germans then burned Samonas in reprisal and took 35 inhabitants to the prison at Agia.
In most of the descriptions there is a little more narrative detail given than that in my paraphrasing above. For instance, we are told that the Samonas ambush was started by a young guerrilla stepping in front of the patrol, informing them that they were surrounded and demanding that they drop their weapons. But that serves to illustrate the weakness of the text – it is neither an imaginative narrative nor academic reportage. There is a bibliography, but there are no references, and we are left wondering about the origin of the detail.
Nevertheless, one believes it, and some makes for unsettling reading. As one after another guerrilla leader was killed, heads and hands were cut off and displayed on the Kladissos bridge on the western outskirts of Chania – not something that would have been fabricated, and redolent of Elizabethan England. There is an uneasy mix of the gentlemanly “English” ideal of warfare, along with sickening brutality. The roll call of the murders goes on and on, right up to February 1975 when the last two communist guerrillas, the so-called Eagles, finally accepted an amnesty. It beggars belief that two men could survive on the run for so long, spending much of their time in caves and isolated hideouts in the Lefka Ori, and enduring extraordinary privations.
Many, even most, of the reported events were located in Apokoronas, and some of our now sleepy villages were at the centre of the conflict. The two Eagles were from Apokoronas, Spiro Blazakis from Gavalohori and George Tzobanakis from Kokkino Horio.
The book certainly influences one’s perceptions and understandings of the Cretan outlook, and in particular of the apparent need for the comfort of firearms!
P.S. On the memorial at Kambi, and elsewhere, the description “traitoris” sometimes follows a name. This sounds bad to us, but in fact is ancient Greek for “fighter”. Odd that the meaning of our derived word should be so counter to that of its original.
Keith writes:
This is a remarkable book. On the one hand it is dry and detailed reportage of the civil war in Crete which followed the second world war. But it is amazing for its detail, and absolutely fascinating to anyone who knows something of Crete.
The genesis of the civil conflict is traced from rivalry between resistance groups towards the end of World War II. In doing so some of the “catastrophes” that befell villages towards the end of the German occupation are described.
For instance, in a village neighbouring ours, Samonas, there is a memorial in the grounds of the church. We have seen it often, but had not known what happened. The book gives details of the ambushing by communist guerrillas of a patrol of gendarmes. These gendarmes were Cretans armed by the Germans, supposedly to keep order. We are told that the ambush happened towards the end of March 1944 on the track between Kambi and Samonas. (We remember this as a track, though it has been tarmaced for over 10 years.) It seems that the gendarmes surrendered without a fight, were marched barefoot into the hills to be harangued about their collaboration, and were then released – with the exception of one who was summarily tried and executed for earlier killings of guerrillas. The Germans then burned Samonas in reprisal and took 35 inhabitants to the prison at Agia.
In most of the descriptions there is a little more narrative detail given than that in my paraphrasing above. For instance, we are told that the Samonas ambush was started by a young guerrilla stepping in front of the patrol, informing them that they were surrounded and demanding that they drop their weapons. But that serves to illustrate the weakness of the text – it is neither an imaginative narrative nor academic reportage. There is a bibliography, but there are no references, and we are left wondering about the origin of the detail.
Nevertheless, one believes it, and some makes for unsettling reading. As one after another guerrilla leader was killed, heads and hands were cut off and displayed on the Kladissos bridge on the western outskirts of Chania – not something that would have been fabricated, and redolent of Elizabethan England. There is an uneasy mix of the gentlemanly “English” ideal of warfare, along with sickening brutality. The roll call of the murders goes on and on, right up to February 1975 when the last two communist guerrillas, the so-called Eagles, finally accepted an amnesty. It beggars belief that two men could survive on the run for so long, spending much of their time in caves and isolated hideouts in the Lefka Ori, and enduring extraordinary privations.
Many, even most, of the reported events were located in Apokoronas, and some of our now sleepy villages were at the centre of the conflict. The two Eagles were from Apokoronas, Spiro Blazakis from Gavalohori and George Tzobanakis from Kokkino Horio.
The book certainly influences one’s perceptions and understandings of the Cretan outlook, and in particular of the apparent need for the comfort of firearms!
P.S. On the memorial at Kambi, and elsewhere, the description “traitoris” sometimes follows a name. This sounds bad to us, but in fact is ancient Greek for “fighter”. Odd that the meaning of our derived word should be so counter to that of its original.
