The battle of December 1944 lasted 33 days. I participated in the entire duration, at the beginning as a platoon leader and from the battle of Makriyannis to the end as captain of the First Company of the First Battalion of the First Regiment of the ELAS Reserve based in Ano Nea Smyrni.
Our armament was simply rifles, grenades and 2-3 mortars and mortars in each platoon. Our training was rudimentary and was basically done during the Occupation and through our clashes with the Germans and especially the battalion commandos. There we applied guerrilla warfare tactics avoiding head-on confrontations due to the overwhelming superiority of our opponents.
But in December we were faced with the British Army, the Indians, the Sheikhs, the collaborators of the Germans, gendarmes and the “Choliades”, equipped with twenty times more equipment than us, well trained and supported by tanks, air force and the guns of the British fleet from Faliro. I cannot know exactly how many we were, but in general our strength was estimated at 20,000 in Athens, Piraeus and the districts. The permanent ELAS was practically absent.
And yet we of the ELAS Reserve showed that we had the strength not only to resist but also to throw the English into the sea during the first ten days, if the General Secretary of the KKE had not prevented us. The reason they did not let us was that they still considered the English to be allies and that is why we had the express order not to shoot the English soldiers until the 22nd, when they started their own attacks from the beginning of the conflict.
I personally witnessed these orders of the W.W. which came to us through the Achtida Committee in Kallithea, since I was often the link between our Regiment and the Achtida Guidance, which was in constant contact with the members of the W.W. In the end we fought without knowing what our final objective was, with the only order to move as far as possible towards the centre of the city, where the Government was based. For those prisoners we captured, Greek and English, we were instructed to let them go free, And as for the important political, military and financial personalities we knew belonged to the opposing camp, there was absolutely no decision as to their fate. And generally there was the impression that we should leave them alone and safe. As it was. This fact proves that there was not even a trace of class-ideological struggle but a general and vague feeling that the character of our struggle was at bottom nothing but a protest and a revenge for the innocent victims of December 3 and 4.
As for the prospect of seizing power, there was not even a hint of thought. For if that was their aim, why would they keep Mars with its tens of thousands of experienced rebels scratching their beards awkwardly hundreds of kilometres from Athens, while the fate of Power was supposed to be decided there. We amused little children would judge such a serious problem as the seizure of the Authority.
The average age of the children of the Reserve Police was about 20 years old. The Colonel was 25, the Major was 23 and the Captain like me was 19! Our bullets were counted, our clothes were tattered, our shoes were torn, our food at the end non-existent. But we held on only out of stubbornness, while our losses in killed and wounded exceeded the 50% of our forces. And since I mentioned wounded most of them died lying on the ground helpless, with rain and snow covering their groans and wounds.
Those caught were killed on the spot. Inside the houses we avoided going inside so as not to disturb. Most of us in my company were high school seniors and college students. We had ideals. We loved people. In Nea Smyrna we caught 200 policemen, all of them went home. I took the security officer to his house myself. But four years later he came himself and arrested me at my house. That's how we were. Maybe stupid... Probably, because we lived with our minds in a different Greece. And those of us who lived it then, but unfortunately survived, regret every moment of the evil that befell us.
In the districts that we controlled, we knew, as I said, where a and b important political, military or economic figures were sitting. Where he belonged and what role he would play if he were in our position. And yet we didn't touch a hair on their head. Why would we do that? Did our party aim at red power, as we are accused, in which the first to be exterminated were then under our absolute rule? And of course when these gentlemen gained power and authority and we found ourselves naked in their hands, we were cut to pieces for thanks And we were filled with mud, that we were supposedly butchers when we were simply idiots because we still believed with the party that the Battle of December was nothing but a parenthesis and that we would be reunited with Papandreou and the English thanks to national unity, whereas, according to Churchill's plan, we had fallen well and truly into the great trap he had set for us to divide our people definitively and lead us into fratricidal war.
We were romantic, naïve and immature, easy and simple toys in the hands of disengaged colonialists, like the English diplomats who ran half of humanity for centuries. And I am afraid that this is still the case today, as it was yesterday and the day before yesterday, so that we do not reach the 21st century.
The battle of December steeled me first and foremost as a human being, like any war in which one is forced to take part in order to defend one's ideals. At every moment I was sure that I was defending the Greek people in the overwhelming majority, which I found in practice, because we ELAS fighters were literally swimming in the love of the people.
After all, how could we have withstood 33 days of the British, the tanks, the planes, the mortars that enveloped us in every battle in a fiery hell, if we had not had the fanatical support of all our people, wherever we were.
It is impossible for me to describe the expressions of love we received, not only in the slums and shacks but also in the city houses, where everyone was willing to support us in every way. And this steeled my character, my will and my faith in the true Greek people. And that is why I have since then decided to dedicate my life and my work to it, without ever deviating from the path I have chosen. All the rest that I was obliged to do was insignificant compared to the steel axis that the Great December created in me.
But I knew that this axis came out of my conviction that, between 1940 and 1945, another, new and different Greek people was born, as I had created it in my imagination by reading and listening to the top eras of the Greeks from antiquity to the Balkan wars. The EAM was for me such a great, unique moment with a people free and at the same time dangerous for those who had believed - like the English - that they had until then been dealing with little people who trembled before power. And to make a long story short, I rushed headlong into the furnace - from the Decembrists to the present day - striking with all the forces at my disposal the same enemy that I fought in the Great December and who to this day still fears and counts us , for he alone knows that this wild people, whom he knew so well in the battles of December, remains alive, ready to show his handsome face again at the first opportunity that comes before them.
Source: Theodoracism
