THE SHELLS WHINE and burst furiously around and amid the eleven remaining men under the command of Lieutenant Takis Panayotopoulos, most of them wounded. Still, they grimly determine to fight till the last drop of their blood, till the last breath escapes their shattered lungs hurting awfully from the blasts of the infernal explosions caused by the incessant Turkish artillery barrage.
Panayotopoulos’ machine guns, legendary French St. Etienne’s, grow red hot from continuous firing and the men urinate upon them in an effort to cool them somehow and prevent them from malfunctioning. The Tenth Greek Infantry Division is decimated by the waves of Turkish attacks. But the Duz-dag Hills have to be defended or else Proussa, only twelve miles to the west, will fall.
A terrible deafening explosion hurls Panayotopoulos yards away from his smashed machine gun, his right index finger still pressed on the trigger….his right arm separated into a mess of torn flesh, bones, and blood. The eleven men who only hours ago were 130 are now three, and no machine gun fires anymore.
Has it been minutes, hours, days, or an eternity since that hell of an inferno when Takis Panayotopoulos feels strong enough to open his burning eyes? He can hear no sound, but no wonder to that, the blast next to his ears has probably deafened him. It can’t be… he is hallucinating, or he is dead and landed in Paradise… there are no angels with beautifully deep violet blue eyes in the mountains of the Turkish hinterland. He tries to focus, his eyes and everything else hurt so much…. he is in a room with whitewashed walls, and he is lying in a blood-stained bed, but yes, next to him stands a cherub, or rather a girl, the most divinely gorgeous girl he has ever seen in his life, dressed in the uniform of a Greek Red Cross nurse.
She pauses, looks at him with angelic blue eyes, large and intelligent blue eyes, and it seems to him that they are filled with sorrow, tears ready to descend the alabaster face.
“Are you real, or am I in Paradise?”
She starts at the sound of his voice, and hastens out of the room, a ward of the field hospital set only three miles from the front. In a few minutes she is back with Surgeon-Captain Nicolas Prossas.
“I have both good and bad news for you, Lieutenant, or rather Captain Panayotopoulos,” says the smiling doctor. “Your stubborn resistance on top of the hill saved the day for us. The Turkish offensive has been broken, Proussa is safe. The Turkish dead at the foot of the hill you defended count in the hundreds. You have been promoted for outstanding bravery and so have your surviving men. As soon as you recover enough to withstand travel, we are to ship you to Athens where the King is to decorate you with the Order of Valiance. The gold medal. His Majesty himself!”
The smile faded, “Now for the bad news. When your three boys dragged you here, they also brought along what was left of your right arm. But I am a simple surgeon, not a magician, and I don’t know how to stitch it back together.”
“It’s alright, doctor, don’t blame yourself." Moving his head, his eyes follow the girl. “But I have something to ask you. Since when do you have angels in your hospital? From what part of heaven did she come?
But suddenly an appalling piercing ache overtakes him and also the realization that he is missing his right arm, pain and nausea, and the world turns black. He is unconscious.
Thus, my father met my mother.
