Vol. 23 No. 12 · 21 June 2001
pages 42-43 | 3441 words
Diary
Tim Salmon
‘What’s happened to Armàki?’ There used to be a huge lone pine on the slope where Miha sets up his first summer sheepfold. It is all split and scorched.
‘The Albanians burnt it,’ he says.
We are driving along the top of the Grèklu ridge above Samarìna, Greece’s highest village. A flock of sheep slides over the bare ground. The turf, unable to renew itself for want of rain, has begun to break up under daily nibbling and the scurrying of so many sharp feet. We park the pick-up on a knoll overlooking the upper edge of the forest. It looks like a Marlboro advert, its chunky profile silhouetted against the sky. I take the food. Miha brings his World War Two German rifle. It’s an illegal weapon, but then most of what Miha does is at the limit of what is legal: a legacy of the old mountain traditions of brigandage and independence.
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Letters
Vol. 23 No. 17 · 6 September 2001
From Peter Mackridge
Tim Salmon (LRB, 21 June) claims that the arrival of Italian troops on the Grèklu ridge in the Pindus drew Greece into the Second World War. On 28 October 1940 Greece rejected Italy's ultimatum – to allow Italian troops to occupy Greece peacefully, or be attacked – and then repulsed the invasion forces, which came via occupied Albania. The Italians occupied rural Greece only after the defeat of the Greek forces by the Germans in April 1941. Incidentally, the Communist-led army that fought the Government forces in the Civil War of 1947-49 was called the Democratic Army of Greece.
Salmon also writes of the Cypriot War of Independence. The struggle waged in 1955-59 by Eoka was for the union of Cyprus with Greece. The fact that Britain, Greece and Turkey imposed independence on Cyprus in 1960 is another matter.
Peter Mackridge
St Cross College, Oxford
Vol. 23 No. 18 · 20 September 2001
From Tim Salmon
Peter Mackridge criticises me for calling the Democratic Army of Greece the Communist Democratic Army (Letters, 6 September). The Army is normally referred to in Greek as the 'dhimokratikos stratos'. Translate that into English and you get 'Democratic Army', a title that does not make clear that it was a Communist force.
Mackridge also objects to my referring to Eoka's struggle in Cyprus as a war of independence from British colonialism. But that is how many Greek Cypriot participants saw it, as did the last of the British National Servicemen who were fellow students of mine at Oxford and who had the misfortune to be involved in that dirty war.
Finally, he takes me to task for claiming that the arrival of Italian troops on the Grèklu ridge drew Greece into the war. I know that, strictly speaking, it was Greece's rejection of Mussolini's ultimatum on 28 October 1940 that was the casus belli. But since Mussolini's reaction was to order his troops to cross the Greek-Albanian frontier immediately and Samarina is the first settlement of any consequence you come to, some ten hours' walk from that frontier, the appearance of Italian troops on the Grèklu ridge was to all intents and purposes simultaneous with the outbreak of war for the people of Samarina, as indeed for most Greeks.
Tim Salmon
London NW3
