Ioannina, March 28th, 1943
Napoleon Zervas raised the Greek flag over the central square. Much of the town including the building of the
Zosimaia school had been heavily damaged by over two years of fighting. North of the town the regiments of Zervas VIII Infantry Division, were still pushing northwards against the Italians. Almost half of Epirus was still occupied and if anything in even more chaos than the actual frontlines as bands of the Greek army of the Interior, were fighting it out with Italian occupation forces and thousands of collaborationist troops recruited by the Italians from Greece's Albanian minority.
Mount Vermion, March 31st, 1943
Ares Makedon had been driven to tears by the tongue lashing delivered by Sklavainas. Someone might wonder why someone of Ares apparent abilities, accomplishments and actual power, after all it was Ares who had created LAS as a fighting force at a time the communist party was still ambivalent of the Greek war against the Axis in the first place would stand to a relative nobody, Sklavainas had been a successful trade unionist and unsuccessful candidate for the parliament. But party discipline run strong and Ares has an almost religious devotion to Zachariadis...
Epirus, April 3rd, 1943
The port town of Parga was liberated by the Greek II Infantry Division. The Greek advance north continued slowly but steadily all along the front, Igoumenitsa and Kalpaki would be liberated in April 9th, by the time the Greek offensive temporarily halted in April 12th, the Metsovon pass was cut off and Axis troop movements between Epirus and Macedonia would need to go through Korytza further north.
Athens, April 5th, 1943
Aca Stanojevic had led the government of Yugoslavia since Christmas 1937. It had been a thankless job for the 91 year old prime minister, between conflicts within his own cabinet, pressures from the throne, both young king Peter II, who had come of age the previous year and prince Paul who had effectively ruled Yugoslavia since the death of king Alexander and pressure from the allies. The Yugoslav government in exile had to its credit a large, mostly Serb, army in Greece that had performed relatively well for the past two years. But it also had to deal with increasing complaints both from its allies and within the exiled army over the activity, or lack of activity of the Chetniks under Draza Mihailovic back home. Mihailovic had been generally idle against the occupation forces fearing mass reprisals against the Serb population planning instead a mass uprising at some nebulous point in the future when the Allied armies in the Balkans would advance north to liberate Yugoslavia. At the same time several units of his Chetniks as well as armed bands claiming affiliation to them had not been idle in fighting the partisans and often working together with the Italians and Croatian Ustashe in doing so. It was hardly a situation either the Greeks who were hosting the Yugoslav government in exile or the British or its own soldiers were willing to accept when their own armies were bleeding on the front and supplies and reinforcements reached the Axis forces with little trouble though Serb railroads. With the increasingly geriatric Stanojevic unable to cope with the pressures a new government under Slobodan Jovanovic had been appointed. The situation back in Serbia had to be dealt with, without any further delays.
Ravna Gora, April 8th, 1943
Lieutenant colonel
Zaharije Ostojić hopped off the Westland Lysander that had carried him to occupied Serbia. Draza Mihailovic along with
Dragutin Keserovic his chief of operations, and
Zvonimir Vuckovic, warned over the radio were waiting for him. Ostojic handled to Mihailovic the enclosed envelope with the orders from the government in exile. Mihailovic turned white as he read the orders.
"I'm recalled to Athens?"
"For consultations with the new government sir. I have orders to replace you during your absence."
Mihailovic looked towards Keserovic and Vuckovic. "Do you think I should go?"
Keserovic the regular officer of the two looked mildly scandalized. "It's the crown orders sir. What else should you do?"
Mihailovic boarded the waiting plane...
Cairo, April 9th, 1943
The Egyptian, a lowly secretary in the Allied General Headquarters pulled out the small camera and start photographing the documents the English major had brought him. He did not know nor cared why the Englishman was betraying his country. Money? Blackmail of some kind? Ideology? He had no need to know. By nighttime the photographs would be in the hands of the right people...
Sivas, April 12th, 1943
The intelligence coup in Cairo, had been huge. Now it was up to Erwin Rommel and Fevzi Cakmak to take advantage of it. Apparently Winston Churchill had managed to convince everyone to have another go at Gallipoli. Only this time it would be done right, the plans MAH agents had managed to get their hands on in Cairo were talking about 5 or 7 Allied divisions landing in Gallipoli and he Allied armies in Thessaly attacking north. It was a plan characteristic of the Englishman and the Greeks had apparently enthusiastically supported it, after all Pangalos was a dye in the wool Venizelist and Venizelos has insisted for two decades what great opportunity had been lost at Gallipoli when Constantine had refused to participate. One had to agree that just like in the last war it made sense, if it succeeded it could knock Turkey out of the war and create a domino with Bulgaria following and the Axis position in the Balkans collapsing. If it succeeded. If it failed it could be as much a quagmire for the Allies as it had been in 1915. German reinforcements were already on the way, three more divisions would be available by the end of the month. Cakmak was confident of victory. And a victory at Gallipoli
could well give Turkey the opportunity to extricate itself from the war on reasonably good terms, the first inquiries Turkish diplomats had made in Switzerland had not been entirely promising. He kept that last thought to himself...
Berlin, April 13th, 1943
German radio made known to the world the finding of mass graves containing the bodies of thousands of Polish officers massacred by the NKVD back in 1939. The Soviet Union would deny the accusations. Not many, particularly among the Poles in exile, would take her denials at face value, even though the other Allied governments, the Poles excepted, officially accepted the Soviet position. The work of Wladislaw Sikorski, already difficult, had just been made even more so...
