We came today to the national memorial of the crosshair of Machairas to pay tribute to one of the most heroic figures of modern Greek history, the deputy leader of EOKA Gregory Pieris Afxentiou. To the fearless fighter who, when fate brought it, declared himself thunderously present, sacrificing his life without any hesitation for the freedom of his homeland. His charred body is a medal and a reward for all future generations.
Just as the great poet of Romanity, Yannis Ritsos, wrote in those days of March 1957:
"Take, eat, this is my body
the body and blood of Grigoris Afxentiou
of a poor boy, 29 years old, from the village of Lysi
who learned at the Great School of Struggle
only enough letters to make the word
e l e u t h e r i a...."
His sacrifice is scarcely sung. Countless are the hymns and poems extolling his greatness. But it was to him, to Afxentius, that the great poets owed it. With the poems and stories of heroes, he became a man from his school days. On March 27, 1948, a senior student of the Greek Gymnasium of Famagusta, he starred in the role of the hanged martyr Archbishop Kyprianos, when his school staged a dramatization of the 9th of July 1821 of our national poet Vassilis Michaelides, celebrating the national anniversary of the Greek Revolution of 1821 in British-occupied Cyprus.
Ladies and gentlemen,
After the end of the Second World War and especially after the annexation of the Dodecanese Islands to Greece in 1948, Cypriots' aspirations for union were rekindled. The establishment of the United Nations and the promises of the Greats for freedom and self-determination of small peoples raised the hopes of the enslaved Cypriot people that liberation was imminent. They also ignored with great contempt the Unionist Referendum of 1950, where 95.7% of the Cypriot people voted for Union. They pronounced in the parliament in London, the "UNDEFEN" freedom for their colony Cyprus.
This event was the fuse that lit the fuse for the beginning of the processes for armed action, for the throwing off of the foreign occupation and the union with metropolitan Greece. The aim of the armed struggle of EOKA was not just a slogan called Union, but through it, the survival of Cypriot Hellenism in the homeland, a Greek land, a homeland with 3,000 years of Greek history, when the Mycenaeans decided to settle in Cyprus, passing on the Greek civilization.
Gregory Afxentiou of Pieris and Antonous was born on 22 February 1928 in the now occupied Lysis. He attended the Greek Gymnasium of Famagusta and early on embraced Greek Christian ideals and values. A good student, he studied Greek history avidly, often expressing feelings of pride in the nation's struggles. Mother Greece was his great love.
In 1948 he went to Athens to attend the Military School of Evelpidon. He failed the examinations, but refused to give up his efforts. He managed to enter the Reserve Officers' School, fulfilling his dream of becoming a Greek officer. With the rank of Reserve Second Lieutenant he served his motherland with pride, as an officer in the 613th Infantry Battalion on the Greek-Bulgarian border.
At the same time he followed the events in Cyprus and in the aftermath of the Unionist Referendum, on 19 February 1950 he stated the following in a letter to a friend: "our freedom, the ideal of our ideals, I too have signed it, not only on paper, but wearing the honoured uniform of a Greek soldier and I will sign it any time our Cyprus demands it with my blood."
He returned to Cyprus in 1953. On 20 January 1955 in a secret meeting with Grivas he took the sacred oath and undertook to organise the Famagusta Sector.
Chief Digenis, seeing his ethos, patriotism, leadership skills and sharpness in battle, rightly anointed him deputy chief of EOKA. He went by the nicknames Zidros, Aias, Ares, Antaeus, Zotos and Rigas and was the top wanted man, since the British put a bounty of 250 pounds on his head and later the exorbitant sum of 5,000 pounds for the time.
At the beginning of the liberation struggle on April 1, he led the attacks on the Dhekelia power station and the Cyprus Radio Service. After his bounty he escaped to the mountains of Pentadaktylos where he organized a guerrilla group, developing a rich activity.
In October 1955 he moved to the mountains of Pitsilia and Troodos. In between, on June 10, he married his beloved Vassilou in the monastery of Achiropoyotou, with the fiery EOKA razor-bearer Papa Stavros Papagathangelou as his priest.
On December 11, he proved his excellent military skills in the famous battle of Spilia, giving him enormous prestige and recognition in the eyes of his fellow soldiers and the entire Cypriot people. As the British were ascending towards his hideout, penetrating among them, he managed to mislead them by shooting, succeeding in clashing with them with great losses and finally giving the fighters the chance to escape.
After this battle his fame spread everywhere and he became the great fear of the British.
After this battle his fame spread everywhere and he was the great fear of the British. His successful actions led Digeni to entrust him with the sectors of Pitsilia, the villages of Orini and Machairas and from July 1956 the Crassochoria of Limassol. On 16 March 1956, on the Chandrias-Agrou road, he organised and directed a painful for the British ambush against a military convoy near the village of Agridia, near the village of Agridia.
On 16 March 1956, on the Chandrias-Agrou road, he organised and directed a painful for the British ambush against a military convoy.
On 16 March 1956, on the Chandrias-Agrou road, he organised and directed a painful for the British ambush against a military convoy, near the village of Agridia. There the guerrilla Christos Tsiartas was sacrificed. Hiding in the house of Pope Christodoulos Augustis in Agros, Afxentios and his fellow fighters celebrated Christmas 1956. The last Christmas of his life. They drank a glass of wine, danced, sang and heard him tell them, among other things:
"Now that the English have thrown everything against us, we do not know what the struggle and everyone's fate has in store for us."
But whether we live or die, one day there must be a prize for the dead and the living.
That Cyprus may become Greek and live free and happy.
And let those who survive not expect, or even worse, not seek other rewards and titles, for services to the homeland cannot be redeemed."
On December 31, New Year's Eve, his group was surrounded in the village of Zoopigi.
On December 31, New Year's Eve, his group was surrounded in the village of Zoopigi. A fierce battle ensued, Afxentios was wounded, but he and his lads managed to escape except for his beloved friend Makis Georgalla, who fell dead.
The mountains of Machaera would be the last stop on his glorious march. A short distance from the monastery he had organized his hideout. The monks provided him with every possible assistance. He himself, in order not to be noticed wearing the robe, pretended to be a monk. He happened to meet inside the monastery with the British who were looking for him and offered them refreshments without being recognized.
There, in the holy monastery of the Virgin Mary, where Afxentius and his partisans found a hospitable refuge, the then abbot of the monastery, the Kerynian Archimandrite Ireneos, remembered a few days before the battle Afxentius saying: "I will turn your monastery into a coogie."
But the grip began to tighten dangerously. On 1 March 1957, the British returned for the umpteenth time to the area of Machaera, persistently searching for Grigory and his lads. After treachery, they discovered his hideout. Afxentiou with his companions, Andreas Stylianou, Augustis Efstathiou, Antonis Papadopoulos and Phidias Simeonidis were in their hideout. The British approached them and surrounded them, asking them to surrender.
The fullness of time had arrived, on March 3, 1957, Grigoris Afxentiou would write with his blood his own golden page in the history of the Greek nation. In the mountains of Machaera he uttered a stentorian "Molon Lave" that was recorded by newspapers all over the world and heard by the foreign journalists who were brought here by Harting to capture his supposed triumph, arresting the most dangerous terrorist, according to him, of the EOKA.
Afxentiou had already made his decision. He ordered his fellow fighters to leave and surrender. "Get out, I must die" he shouted at them when they refused to obey. His battle lasted a full ten hours against dozens of heavily armed British. At one point Augustus returned, sent back by the British to ascertain his supposed death after a grenade was thrown inside the hideout.
Hours passed and the two fighters remained steady in their positions, causing embarrassment and frustration to the British. This desperation led them to use the most despicable method of extermination by burning them alive. They transported by helicopter dozens of petrol cans with which they surrounded the hideout. This was followed by the throwing of incendiary grenades, turning it, seconds later, into a burning furnace. Augustus quickly emerged with burns to his body and face. It was not long before Augustus was engulfed in flames and turned into a holy lamp of freedom, passing forever into eternity.
The heroic deputy leader of EOKA, the pride of Cyprus, not only showed how heroes fight. He had proved this many times over during the previous period, when he had participated in countless battles against multiple forces. He taught us how heroes die for their ideals and their country.
And at that moment the humble cave-sacrificial altar of Afxentius shone and reflected the desire for freedom of an entire people, the beliefs of an entire nation of thousands of years of history.
"I could never have believed that the narrowness of a cave could have so much spaciousness, could fit the homeland with its olive trees, its shores, its sufferings (....), the world with its flamboyances, its dreams", the poet Yannis Ritsos quotes in the hero's hypothetical monologue in "Farewell".
His charred body was first identified by his father in the British military hospital in Nicosia. "
The hero's body was buried in the Central Prison the next day, after the colonialists refused to return it to his relatives, fearing popular outcry and possible riots.
His mother, Antonou, facing for the first time the den where her child was sacrificed during the first memorial service, bid him farewell, graphically giving the grandeur of the EOKA struggle.
"A mother of such a hero in insult to cry, she insults her levain, a jihadist she will enjoy. [MY SON, MY SON, MY LIFE, IS THE JOY OF MY FATHERLAND, AND SINCE HE HAS PERISHED, HE HAS REMAINED, HE HAS BEEN CUT OFF, LET HIM EAT MY JOY.
As we ascend in a little while today, to the mountains of Machaera and walk along the road to the hideout, we will reflect:"
And we will reverently close our wounds, worshipping the greatness of his soul and sacrifice. The blue and white flag waving proudly in front of the entrance of the hideout reminds us of our national duty for the survival of Hellenism in the homeland.
His majestic statue outside the monastery overlooking the Pentadaktylus makes us realize the debt we all owe to the wonderful generation of fighters of 55-59, who gave their lives to fulfill the age-old desire of liberation from the conquerors. Their struggle is not over. As long as our homeland remains divided, as long as the Turkish conqueror illegally occupies half of our homeland, this struggle must continue until the final vindication.
Greeks,
We must work collectively, with all our strength, to finally end the illegal occupation and reunite our island.
Achieving a viable solution that ends the occupation and colonization and frees our country from the anachronistic system of guarantees, interventionist rights and the presence of foreign troops remains a constant goal.
Unfortunately, Turkey is an obstacle to achieving our goals with its intransigent and unyielding stance. It ignores any concept of international law and continues its illegal actions in the Exclusive Economic Zone and Famagusta, while at the same time showing its true intentions for partition.
We remain loyal to the effort to restore our historical continuity in the land of our fathers. Let the lessons of the sacrifice of our heroes be our guides on this difficult path of liberation and vindication.
Only in this way will we fulfill our debt to the sacrifice of the hero Gregory Afxentiou.
Honor and glory to you, great Gregory Afxentiou.
Honor and glory to you, great Gregory Afxentiou. May your memory be eternal, Immortal Stavraete of Machaera.
(MΓ)
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
Source
