Written by Konstantinos Konstantinidis Amphiktyon
At that time I was a 10-year-old student in the 1st grade of the eighth-grade high school of Kyparissia, Messinia. In the morning the sirens went off and in the blink of an eye the message went out: “War – War”
We went to school and were told to gather at the “Holy Trinity”, the church in the upper town near our school. Our teachers went to the recruitment centers and only the female teachers and the principal remained. As I remember that day we didn’t have school. We had many children gathered in the courtyard of the church, while there were speeches about the war and victory by various people. Suddenly we hear the hum of planes coming from the Ionian Sea and soon we see swarms of planes flying at high altitude to the north in formations. We mistook them for Greek and burst into cheers, thinking they were going to bomb Italy, when everything looked like they were Italian and flying north. We were so excited that if an expert had told us it was Italian we would have laughed at him. In the evening we were informed that Patras was bombed with several dead and great destruction. And consider that in Patras there was an Italian community and the Patrinoi had a strong Italian cultural influence especially in music and language. After a few days they also bombarded Kyparissia with few casualties. Because the steamer “Agia Zoni” had been overturned in the port of the city due to rough seas, it had become a permanent target of the Italian air force. Our house was on the beach and every time the Italians bombed we hid in the olive grove. We fear the failure of the Italians who never found the target. Later, the Germans hit “Agia Zoni” with Stukas and almost half sank her, but her corpse remained for many years. . There was excitement and joy everywhere as if we had won. The young men ran with smiles on their faces to the railway station to Kalamata to enlist in the 12th Regiment. Throughout the days of the war, the Kyparissia school was under-functioning due to a lack of teachers. We learned the victorious news from the bells that rang demonically when a city of Northern Epirus fell. My father, editor of the newspaper “AGOΝ TIS TRIFILIAS” made an emergency. issue with war in single column. We learned the world news from the Athenian newspaper “ASSYRMATOS” that my father used to buy. From October 28 onwards we lost our childhood youth and innocence and became men. Instead of a game, we anxiously watched the victorious operations of our army and later of the Germans and Allies, We often receive inflated information from hearsay. And then the disinformation and propaganda of the 5th Phalanx from various centers raged. And then there were Italian and German agents spreading propaganda to lower our morale. At the same time, food began to become scarce because they were going to serve our army in Albania and the popular sissitia (food distribution)began to function. The few cars had forced even the animals (horses and mules) and our life began to become austere, hard and irregular. We covered the lights with smoke and blacked out and put tape on the windows to protect us from shrapnel in case of bombing. An inner anxiety possessed us for the final outcome of the war because Italy was then powerful and we had superiority only in our levity and high morale. Then we had complete UNITY and SYMPATHY and this saved us from worse suffering. Our first concern was the victory of our army. Then we do not imagine how much of a global effect it would have on the evolution of the war. For us it was a normal event. Then our tribe relived the glorious pages of Thermopylae, Marathon, Salamis, Suli, etc. where the few and free in spirit did not count the numerous enemies and the number of weapons and our parents and older brothers said ΟΧΙ (NO) to the invader, even if the numbers were very unfavorable for us. This is how I experienced the first hours and days of World Historic “OXI” NO (October 28, 2024)
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF “OXI” END