"The Top of the Pot"

In Salonika last week, the huge concert studio of Radio Macedonia had been turned into a makeshift courtroom. Fenced in by a net of chicken wire, 128 rebel prisoners, captured after the shelling of Salonika last month, hunched together in close-packed seats. The judges, nine army officers, sat on the stage. Around them was stacked the evidence: rifles, machine guns, grenades. A mountain howitzer poked its muzzle out beside a grand piano.

During court lulls, three of the rebels talked to a TIME correspondent. Yannis Fotiades had been ill with tuberculosis; he had joined the Markos rebels when they promised hospital treatment in Yugoslavia. While still convalescing he was returned to Greece for "light duty." The light duty turned out to be the raid on Salonika. "I was very tired with all that marching," he said, "so I fell prisoner."

Was he still a Communist? "I suppose I am. On paper it is a good idea. In practice maybe it's different." He jerked his head toward the hills. "Anyway, it's different the way they practice it there."

George Molvithis, 32, a former philology student at Salonika University, had played in amateur theatricals in the Communist Youth movement. Then he had gone to the hills to join the guerrillas. "Up there," he said, "two people may not even talk together. Brothers are posted to different units. The captains take all the good things. When we ate macaroni, they took the top of the pot."

In her home village of Yannitsa in Macedonia, chestnut-haired Chryssoula Ransou, 19, had joined the Communist Youth because "it was fashionable." Chryssoula had been ordered to duty at a rebel base hospital on the Yugoslav border. There, Chryssoula, who had promised to marry a boy in Yannitsa, learned about the new rebel marriage rules.

"There would be weddings between the boys and girls," she said, "but without the church." She blushed. "You understand? You see the danger I was in?"

To escape, Chryssoula volunteered for front-line duty. In the retreat after the Salonika action, she marched until exhausted and fell into a ditch. "The captain I was most afraid of," she said, "came up and pointed his pistol. Then the airplanes came over. Everyone scattered. I got away."

As the trial continued, General Markos Vafiades hurled a. threat over the rebel radio. Unless the Salonika prisoners were released, he warned, a group of captured Greek army officers would be shot.

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