The stories of Bazospiros and Tsopanogiorgis are forever etched in Cretan history. There have been numerous mantinades sung about them. Reports in foreign press about the two guerillas graced front pages all over the world. In 1975, the two comrades, appeared in Leuka Ori, the mountains of Crete, after hiding there for 26 years.
Towards the end of the World War II – in April 1947 – a conflict between rival resistance groups in Crete culminates with a civil war in parts of the island. In a battle in the Samaria Gorge, the communists are defeated and many guerrillas are betrayed by the locals and killed. The survivors establish hide-outs but during the next decade most of the communist fugitives are eliminated or in exile. But not Tzobanakis and Blazakis.
On Monday 24 February 1975, the story, accompanied with the photo of the two partisans ending their mountain resistance, was on the cover of The Guardian and many other foreign press, and remains a true urban legend still being retold in Crete. Yet their story has never before been told in English – until now.
It was a wintery night in Canea (Chania) in 1995, when English born Colin Janes came across an elderly man being interviewed. He watched as the man told his life story about his time with his fellow comrade, and the book they wrote together.
This was a well-know story for Cretans – about George Tzobanakis, a communist in the civil war in Crete who had been hiding in the mountains for three decades, until receiving an amnesty. But for Janes, who lived in Crete from the late ’80s to 2003 – and was an organiser of walking holidays throughout the Greek and Cretan mountains – it was the first time he had heard this story.
The interview was enough of an incentive for the King’s College graduate to make his way to Canea library in search of the book 35 Hronia Antistasi. The story was fascinating, and soon after Janes found himself in the village of the former guerrilla, Tzobanakis.
The result of this and many other encounters was the book The Eagles of Crete: An Untold Story of Civil War, published in June this year. Based on local newspaper reports and books written by those who took part, as well as visits to other former guerrillas, the account given by Colin Janes is unbiased and factual.
The book by Tzobanakis and Blazakis, Janes tells Neos Kosmos, was autobiographical, concerning the German occupation and the civil war. But it did not attempt to tell the whole story of the civil war in Crete.
“At first I was simply curious about the story and had no intention of writing a book about it,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
It was years afterwards, when he had collected much detailed information, that he decided to publish an account of it. His reason, he says from his home in Dorset, England, was simple.
“There are many books in English which give an account of the civil war (1946-49) that took place on the Greek mainland following World War II.
“But, nobody had previously written a book about this period of Cretan history in English, therefore the story was completely unknown.”
The newspapers in Canea library, which covered the period from 1946-75, were the author’s main source of information that gave a correct chronology of the events. Several books, written by those who had taken part in the civil war, were published 30 years or more after the events took place but often missed out details.
“The books written by the communists who had taken part in the civil war were of great interest because they referred to events – meetings that were held in the mountains, whereabouts people were hiding – that would not be in the newspapers.”
For a man who started learning Ancient Greek at Oxford at the age of twelve, and at the age of eighteen went to King’s College in London to read for a degree in Classics, the language was not much of an issue.
“I first visited Greece in 1968 and decided to return one day. It was not until March 1973 that I found the job leading walking holidays to fairly remote places. There were not many Greeks who spoke English where I went so I picked up the language quite quickly,” Janes explains.
Personal encounters with the guerillas
Apart from the story of the two guerillas, who were pardoned by the Ministry of Justice in 1975, the author gives an account of the experience of Nikos Kokovlis, leader of the banned communist organisation in Crete from December 1949, and his wife Argiro. In 1962, Nikos and Argiro had fled Greece with four others in 1962 into exile to Tashkent. They returned to Greece with amnesty in 1976.
Eleftherios Iliakis, who was captured in November 1950 and received an amnesty in 1964, was another former guerrilla whose personal accounts of the civil war are described in Janes’ book.
“My first meeting with the Kokovlis couple was planned for a Sunday afternoon one winter but I ended up staying for dinner. We met many times afterwards and they encouraged me to write a book about the civil war in Crete,” says Janes, who later obtained signed permission from the couple to use extracts and photographs from their books in the book he planned to write.
“When I felt I had collected enough material to write a detailed account of the civil war in Crete I decided to go ahead. The books written about that period were only available in Greek and some of those were out of print.
“The more I read about the story the more interested I became in it. I’d been walking in Crete for several years and realised that I knew the areas where a lot of the incidents of the civil war had taken place. I’d been lucky to come across the story and to be so familiar with the area. It seemed a complete waste for me to have all this information and not do something with it.”
With the book being published in June this year, and the second edition now available on Amazon, the author received positive remarks from the Cretan people, such as that his research was ‘a long overdue, helpful contribution to Cretan history’.
“I had no wish to retell history that has been written before. I start my book in 1941 and the civil war in Crete started six years later. My story records the events that took place in the civil war in Crete and I did not wish to get bogged down in the politics behind the story.”
In Crete, the two fugitives, George Tzobanakis and Spiro Blazakis, became known as ‘the Eagles of Crete’. The final chapter of the book by Colin Janes is about the two men, who remained alone in hiding for many years – after the capture, surrender and killing of all their comrades and the departure of the six into exile to Tashkent.
“All the guerrillas in Crete deserve the title Eagles of Crete,” the writer says about the title of the book.
The research and in-depth account of the civil war in Crete, the last bastion of which, Nikos Kokovlis, died in 2012, at the age of 92, took much of Janes’ spare time. So much so that, though excited about his first book being published and the good feedback he received, the author says he is not planning to write another book. Ever.
“Herodotus said that he wrote his Histories so that the stories he had come across on his travels would not be forgotten. I felt that the story of the civil war in Crete would be completely forgotten if I made no attempt to write an account.”
The book is currently available online from www.amazon.co.uk, as a paperback and e-book. For more information and to purchase the book The Eagles of Crete, visit www.civilwarincrete.co.uk