Men of the Mountains

In the cloudy Pindus mountains, high above the sunny olive groves of central Greece, hard-bitten guerrillas sang the exploits of their hardest-bitten chiefs. Echoes drifted down to Cairo, where Greeks in exile wagged tongues over a pair of Nazi-killing swashbucklers:

P: Athanasios Klaras, known as Ares (Greek god of war), gives tenuous allegiance to the Leftist EAM, biggest of the Greek guerrilla factions. Before the war he did time in jail for forgery and worse. When the Germans came, he collected a gang of thugs, escaped to the hills, impartially harried Nazis and political opponents by slitting their ears and rubbing salt into the slits. A Greek who recently saw him describes Ares thus: "A swarthy face spanned by a handlebar mustache. ... He scorns rank, wears a uniform of which every piece is from a dead enemy. Around his fat waist he carries half a dozen knives. ... On his head he wears a tall black hat which makes him look like one of Napoleon's marshals."

P: Stephanos Saraphis, ex-colonel in the Greek Army, led a guerrilla band liquidated last year by the jealous EAM. As an example to other rivals, EAM paraded Saraphis in chains through the Greek hinterland. Then, by some yet unexplained persuasion, Saraphis sold himself as a general to the Leftists. Now he commands, with distinction, a big guerrilla force eyried in the Pindus.

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