So they stood their ground as the planes circled back.

  And then they felt the ground shake under them.

  Costa peered over the top of the section of the wall that they were hiding behind and saw the Panzers climbing the mountains in front of them.

  “How many?” Alexei asked him.

  “Too many.”

  “Let’s set it up.”

  They had a 120MM mortar cannon between them that they’d been shown how to aim and fire. Alexei loaded a shell into the barrel while Costa held it in place and made his calculations: it was spring powered, and Costa flexed his muscles as he pulled the trigger down towards the ground, settling on the distance and range that he wanted, and then he let go.

  Thunk.

  The mortar went flying high overhead and they watched as it sailed through the air and landed on a Panzer—kaboom!—and the whole Greek Army cheered as the tank exploded in flames.

  “Holy shit.”

  “I hit it.”

  “Yeah.”

  And then from overhead—

  Kaboom!! Kaboom!! Kaboom!!

  The wall was rocked by bomb blasts from the Luftwaffe that had circled around again, and Alexei and Costa were both blown off their feet and thrown heavily to the ground, their ears ringing, and they looked at their arms and legs and saw that everything was still intact, so they painfully crawled back towards the wall and their cover where their cannon lay behind the barrier.

  They started loading it again.

  They launched ten mortars and hit three more tanks before the day was over, but their small victories were short-lived because when darkness came the Germans didn’t stop their attack. They shelled the Greek position throughout the night, and for the second straight evening none of the Greek soldiers were able to sleep.

  Then, dawn came.

  And the Germans kept coming.

  The Greeks had run out of mortars and artillery so they couldn’t stop the Panzers any more. All they had were rifles and pistols and not enough bullets for either. And it was on the second day that the Germans launched their strongest offensive.

  Alexei and Costa shared a canteen of water, taking small sips so that their supply would last, their faces caked with dirt and mud and every piece of their bodies aching with pain and exhaustion.

  And then there were more explosions.

  Kaboom kaboom kaboom!!!

  More screams filled the air.

  Costa looked down the wall to his right and saw part of it get blown away by a tank blast, and then there were German soldiers with swastikas patched onto their arms pouring through the breach.

  Costa grabbed his rifle, about to fire, when—

  “Costa!”

  He heard Alexei shout and turned back to see more German soldiers coming at them, over the wall, directly on top of where they were. One of them raised his rifle, taking aim at a Greek soldier, but—

  Bang!

  Alexei dropped him with a single shot as another German launched himself from the wall to tackle Alexei.

  Costa ran towards them.

  Alexei rolled on the ground with the German as his adversary pulled a knife and Alexei struggled against him. The larger German was quickly overpowering him—he got a punch in to Alexei’s face—then raised his hand that was holding the knife.

  Costa knew he had no other choice.

  He dropped to one knee and took aim—

  Bang!

  The shot found its mark and the German’s head exploded in bright pieces of bone and flesh across Alexei’s face.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you sure? You’re covered in blood.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  Costa looked further down the wall to where more Germans had breached the defenses and the Greeks were fighting back. There were more German bodies than Greek that lay in the mud.

  Then, the Greeks let up a cheer.

  The Germans were retreating.

  “Come on,” Costa said.

  And they crawled towards their part of the wall. They peered over to see the German soldiers running back to hide behind the safety of their tanks, and Costa and Alexei loaded their rifles.

  Bang bang bang!

  They shot Germans in the back as they ran.

  Bang bang!

  More Germans fell.

  Soon, the rest of the German soldiers that had survived all made it back behind the Panzers, and out of range, and then they retreated further back down the hill. Alexei and Costa were breathing heavily. They were covered in even more dirt, and mud, and blood.

  But they were alive.

  They smiled.

  They’d beaten the odds, once again, and they’d won the day.

  That night Costa built a small fire.

  They sat around it at their section of the wall and other soldiers came to warm their hands. In those mountains it was hot days and cold nights, and so the fire was especially welcome, even though every hour the Germans would lob more shells at their position to make sure that no one slept for another night.

  And then, when the dawn came again, more death came with it.

  The Germans attacked at first light, and their offensive was stronger this time, reinforced by more troops that had made their way from the north, the full force of the German war machine bearing down on Greece now.

  For twenty-four hours there wasn’t a single moment not marked by a violent explosion. The air smelled of burnt powder and putrid flesh. The dragon’s teeth and pits that the Greeks had dug stopped the tanks temporarily, but without any mortars or artillery left, Alexei knew that it wouldn’t last for very much longer. Every so often they cautiously peered over the wall and fired their rifles whenever they could see a German. They didn’t hit many, but they kept the German soldiers pinned behind their tanks and below the position the Greeks were holding at the Line.

  At least for the moment.

  “Look,” Costa said.

  “What?”

  “There.”

  They looked over the wall to see a company of Germans running across the battlefield. They nodded and jumped up along with the other Greek soldiers next to them.

  Bang bang bang!

  They fired at the Germans as they ran, and two of them stumbled and fell. They were reloading, when—

  Bang!

  A shot rang out and the soldier next to Alexei flew backwards, lifted off his feet, and Alexei looked down and saw the bullet in his skull.

  “Get down!”

  Alexei grabbed Costa and pulled him to the ground.

  “What happened?”

  “They’ve got a sniper.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We have to find him.”

  “We barely have any ammo left. Let’s just stay down for awhile.”

  Costa bit his lip, then he saw something—

  “What’s that?”

  Alexei followed Costa’s eyes to where he was looking in the distance. There were more German soldiers behind them where there shouldn’t have been German soldiers.

  Then the air exploded in gunfire—

  Bang bang bang bang bang!!!

  “Shit!” Costa and Alexei swung their rifles around along with the rest of the Greek Army to fire on the new enemy that was somehow behind them now, too.

  But it wasn’t going to be a battle.

  Because it was already a slaughter.

  Alexei saw a Greek commander giving the orders for surrender as Greeks were being cut down everywhere, the brown mud turning red and sticky underneath their feet.

  “Down!!” Alexei yelled to Costa.

  “What?” Costa yelled back, his ears ringing from the guns and the canons.

  “Put your rifle down!” Alexei said. “It’s over!”

  Costa either couldn’t hear him or he just didn’t care so he kept shooting at the Germans until Alexei grabbed the rifle from his hand and threw it to the ground as far away from them as he could.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Costa yelled.

  “Look around! It’s over! They’ve taken the wall!”

  Costa looked to see the Greeks dropping their arms and putting their hands in the air. He was breathing heavily. This wouldn’t be easy for him. It wouldn’t be easy for any of them.

  He slowly put his hands in the air, and Alexei did the same.

  Soon the whole army had surrendered and the gunfire stopped.

  “We could have held them longer. We pushed them back yesterday. We could have held our ground.”

  “They were just waiting, I think, because they knew that the rest of them were behind us.”

  “How’d they get behind us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Five Germans soldiers walked towards them.

  They pointed their rifles at Alexei and Costa and yelled something in German that neither of them could understand.

  “Surrender,” Alexei said in English, the universal language of war.

  He gestured towards their weapons that were on the ground in the distance, and repeated himself, saying “surrender” again. The Germans understood now, and the one who was their leader nodded towards them.

  “Surrender,” he repeated.

  The Greek survivors were herded into the middle of their camp.

  Alexei and Costa watched as their general Konstantinos Bakopoulos met with the German Field Marshall in front of both armies. Bakopoulos stood before the German, bowing and formally surrendering their position. Alexei looked next to him and saw the bodies of his countrymen lying where they’d fallen, not very far from where Bakopoulos now stood, and Alexei couldn’t stop staring at all the lifeless faces around him.

  Next to him, a soldier was crying.

  And then more soldiers started to weep.

  Alexei was nineteen years old, and it was the first time that he’d ever seen grown men cry, and he cried with them.

  The German Field Marshall turned to the Greek survivors.

  He told them in a loud voice how bravely they’d fought. He told them how he’d already marched through all of Europe and fought against every type of soldier that had stood in his way, and the Greeks were the only adversaries that hadn’t panicked and broken their lines when the Luftwaffe had flown overhead of them. He told them with truth in his eyes and the tenor of his voice that of anyone the Germans had fought against, the Greeks were the most fierce, the most courageous, and the most noble of them all. And he told them that their courage would be rewarded, and that the Germans had respect for the pride of Greece.

  Alexei and Costa looked at each other.

  They wondered what that meant.

  Then the Field Marshall gave an order and the German soldiers came forward to inspect the Greek survivors. They were all exhausted, their skin caked with dried blood and dirt, and Alexei and Costa watched as the Germans walked down their lines, passing over each soldier they walked in front of until they came to one in particular and started to roughly haul him away.

  “What are they doing?” Costa asked.

  Alexei knew the soldier they’d pulled out. He remembered talking to him while they worked on the wall, before the Germans came. They’d been digging the pits, their shirts off, and Alexei remembered the Star of David that he wore around his neck.

  “Take your cross out,” Alexei said.

  “What?”

  “Your cross.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Even in 1941 the whole world had heard the rumblings across the continent about the Germans and the racial war that they’d waged on their own people and the people that they’d conquered. Alexei reached under his shirt and took out the orthodox cross that every Greek wears on a gold chain around his neck, and Costa did the same.

  Alexei let his cross hang on the front of his uniform.

  His cross had belonged to his father, and Iannis had given it to him when he was thirteen years old, and had told Alexei to wear it until he had a son of his own, and when his son turned thirteen he’d give it to him in the same way.

  Alexei hadn’t asked any questions, he’d just nodded.

  The Germans pulled out five more Greek soldiers before they reached Alexei and Costa. When the Germans stood in front of them, Alexei and Costa watched as they examined their ears and noses. They saw Alexei and Costa’s clear, sapphire eyes, their fair skin, their soft features, and the crosses that hung around their necks.

  “Good,” the German said in accented English, patting them firmly on the chest. “Very good.”

  Three more Greek soldiers were pulled and sent towards the German lines. The rest of the Greek soldiers were held as prisoners for seven days until word came from Hitler himself that the Greeks were to be treated with the utmost respect. On his orders, the Greek officers were given their side-arms back, and the rest of the Greek soldiers were released and given a crust of bread and allowed to leave the mountains and go back home in peace. Hitler respected the way the Greeks had fought, he said, and he thought that the Greeks had been broken now, and that like everywhere else he’d conquered, they would submit to his occupation without any further question or struggle, but he’d underestimated them. He saw their courage and their pride in the history of the land that they fought for and defended, but he didn’t recognize just how deep it went, and how far they’d go.

  He didn’t realize the Greek resistance was only just beginning.

  15

  April 10th, 1941

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR NEWS to reach Agria.

  Philia was at home when she heard. Her father had tuned the radio and she listened to the broadcast describing the Greek defeat and how the Germans had overrun the Metaxas Line and her breath went from her and she had to sit down. She asked her father what it meant, and he told her that the Germans would now make their way south, and soon they’d be in Agria. It was a port, and a good one, and the Germans needed as many Mediterranean ports as they could take.

  And so soon Agria would cease to be a free city in a free land.

  The worst thing, though, Giorgos told her, wouldn’t be the loss of freedoms, but the lack of food: the Germans honored wartime conditions for the enemies that they respected, and they had all heard how Hitler had respected the Greeks in their bravery fighting and beating the Italians, and how their soldiers didn’t cower before the Luftwaffe like every other German opponent had, but even with that respect, when an army occupies a city, they take all the food.

  “What about Alexei?” Philia asked.

  Giorgos told her that any soldiers that survived would be taken prisoner, and they’d be held by the Germans until they decided what to do with them.

  Would they release them?

  Giorgos didn’t have that answer.

  But he could tell that no matter what he said, his daughter was going to hold on to hope that one day soon she’d wake up and see her husband walking down the small dirt road that they’d walked down together so many times, coming back to her, bloody from the war and perhaps wounded, too, but still alive and still whole and still hers.

  Soldiers soon came to Agria, as Giorgos said they would.

  But when Giorgos walked out of his house to see the soldiers marching past, he saw that it was the British who had arrived before the Germans did.

  They were bloody.

  They were covered in dirt.

  But they were proud, and they still marched with their heads held high.

  Giorgos told Philia to stay in the house, and he followed the soldiers as they marched straight down to the harbor. The merchants of Agria that kept their boats in the city watched as the British came to take them. They protested, Giorgos among them, but how much could they protest against armed men with rifles pointed at them?

  The British officer came forward to explain.

  They’d fought the Germans at Thessaloniki, and their lines had broken there, and the Germans came flooding into the city and then up into the mountains behind the Greek Army fighting at the Metaxas Line, which is what had finally broken the Greek ranks, and won the day for the Germans.

  So the surviving British made their way south.

  Their orders from Churchill were to evacuate to Crete at any cost. They’d keep fighting from there, he promised, they’d continue helping the cause by keeping the Germans pinned in Greece for as long as they could, but Churchill wanted his men to avoid the slaughter that was now sure to come to the mainland.

  That was why they needed the boats.

  So the men of Agria could do nothing but watch as the British loaded everything they could and sailed out of the harbor, and once they were a ways out, they turned and headed south, towards Crete and the islands.

  Philia didn’t listen to her father.

  She left the house and walked the dirt road to town. But before she left, she went upstairs to where Giorgos kept a large pile of drachmae for any emergencies that might arise and she took all the money. If food was going to be as scarce as her father had told her that it was going to be, she’d find whatever was available for her to buy.

  But the agora was empty again that day.

  Stores were locked up.

  The taverna was closed.

  She looked down towards the harbor where Giorgos and the other men were watching their ships sail into the distance. She felt the large sum of money in her pocket that she’d taken from their house, knowing that before all this it could have bought her half the city. But now money was useless because you can’t eat gold or paper. It was amazing, she thought, the way that things can change. Her father, who had once been the richest man in the city, had been reduced to the stature of a commoner in a matter of a few hours.

  Everyone in Agria was the same now.

  “Philia?”

  She turned, when she heard her name, to see Thanos standing behind her, the baker who’d given her and Alexei sweets on her first day in Agria.

  “How are you, dear?” he asked with a smile.

  “I don’t recognize my own village,” she answered, with a sad look.

  “Neither do I,” Thanos said. “And I’ve lived here longer than you have. Much longer. What brings you into town?”