From March 8 to 23, 1941, up there in the mountains of Albania, young children from Trikala and Karditsa taught an incredible lesson to the proud Italians, their planes, their cannons and, above all, the leader himself them, Mussolini.
Agis Verutis
They were the members of the 5th regiment of Trikala (s.s. HP, he was the commander of the II/5th Battalion), commanded by Major Dimitrios Kaslas, who beyond any practical calculation, military logic or paranoid hope, not only managed to resist the attacking Italians, but managed to counterattack.
Major Kaslas's last order can only be compared to the mother's laconic wish to her son:"Either then or later":"We will defend the occupied positions until the end. A furious attack by the enemy is foreshadowed, which will certainly be repulsed and crushed. Only then will the enemy pass from our location, when we all die in our positions. No one will move backwards. Everyone will die in their positions".
In short, the Italians were not dealing with ordinary soldiers, but with men on a suicide mission. Men who had decided to die. And precisely because they had made that decision, they were invincible. What happened at Hill 731 the day after the order was beyond imagination. The Italians had 400,000 men, 400 cannons and 200 planes in the area. Such a concentration of animate and inanimate matter in such a small space has never been done before in world history. The hill received more than 100,000 cannonballs in 5 days.
One hundred thousand shells!!
The density of fire can only be compared with the bombing of Verdun in the first world war. After the first bombardment, the Italians believed it was almost impossible to have even one living soldier on the hill.
And yet...
When they got dressed they were faced with an unpleasant surprise. The defenders of the hill from Trikalin and Karditsio were there and were literally harvesting them. The place on the slopes of the hill was filled with bodies of dead Italians. The same scene was repeated in the following days.
Such was the fury of the Italians that they bombarded the hill at the same time as Italian soldiers charged, with the result that many were cut to pieces by their own shells. The ammunition of the Greeks was running out and they faced the Italians with bayonets, Molotov bombs, with stones, with their bare hands. Major Dimitrios Kaslas is always first in battle. Along with his soldiers. As another Leonidas.
Scene of an ancient battle in a place of a spithamami!
The hill stood, it did not fall. The defenders of Trikalin and Karditsio "entered the legend girt with flames" to paraphrase what was written by the academic and soldier in 1940, Angelos Terzakis. Hill 731 no longer exists. Or, rather... it exists, but it's called 726. It lost five meters to the Italian bombs!
So if the current Greek government wants to change the name of the 5th Trikala Regiment and rename it in order to honor the name of a left-wing officer, let it choose the name of the heroic and hunted post-war Brigadier Dimitrios Kaslas. The name of a real hero and not one, as Georgios Kartalis did not hesitate to characterize him and tell him to his face, "general by deployment"! (dipping=snoring)
Some respect, anyway! You will not destroy all the sacred and faithful because you entered the government!
SOURCE:LIBERAL