The "Archangels of the Savior" are the nine chosen heroes of the community who fell in the field of honor and duty, defending the homeland or were lost and since then their fate is unknown. They are the ones who hover between the life of death and their own experience this prolonged state of uncertainty and agony.
Mr. Panos Myrtiotis in this very careful book records the events, after carefully cross-referencing the testimonies of people who had a direct relationship with the people he biographies, while the text is framed with commemorative photos of the heroes. A feature of the book, moreover, is the fact that the descriptions of the war events were reinforced with topographic plans of the battle areas.
At the end of the book, five survivors and rescuers of the Savior record their experiences from Turkish prisons and the history of their captivity.
In the foreword, the author dedicates to the nine biographed heroes an excerpt from the poem by Andreas Kalvos "To the Holy Lochon":
"It simply came to our notice then
the cloud, and the wind
hard let's not scatter
the blessed soil
that covers you "
What impresses, though, is the cover of the book. Instead of another design or image, the eyes of the nine young men came in.
Brilliant, beautiful eyes, dreamy. Eyes of young people gazing at the future with optimism and hope, dreaming of a life given to the red earth that God has ordained for them to live.
Next, I would like to mention a few facts from each hero:
The first hero is the protagonist of Mr. Panagiotis and Mrs. Stavrini, Christofis Anastasis, a tall husky young man, low-key, pious, patient and affectionate. A soldier in the Glykiotissa camp disappeared on July 20, in the area of Pikro Nero. There are some testimonies that they last saw him on July 20, shortly before the heavy gunfire around them began.
His mother, Mrs. Stavrini, matched the following verses to him:
I am Stavriani, who was sent to the village of Sotira, the mother of a missing person, by fate.
For the sake of the son I lost, my heart burned, we don't really have, with my son, with my children. I went to cities and villages, Cyprus from one end to the other, but I did not find him anywhere, yes, I shed a black tear.
Thirty-year-olds, I want him to come in again, to enter the door of the house, tall like a mast. It is enough for me to see the lessons of my life again.
Then the Archangel, let him take my soul.
I am Stavriani, the village of Sotira.
Mother, you are giving up, my Creator, for my own destiny!
Panagiotis Paschalis, Zouvanis and Chrystalla are second in the choir of the heroes of the Savior. A child of a poor family, he also had an anatomical problem in his leg, which did not allow him to walk normally. But he never thought of getting rid of the army. A good-natured character, devoted to his work, he performed the duties of a barber in his unit. He served in Karavas. He has been unaware of his fate since July 20, when they were attacked by enemy planes.
Adamos Adamou is the third hero, son of Kyriakos and Efthymia. A plumber by profession, he got a good living wage. On August 5, 1974, they went to Lapithos to mine the area. The next day, trying to escape through a reedbed, the Turks ambushed them and decimated them on August 6. He has been missing ever since.
A child of farmers, Kostas Lysis, of Christofis and Maria, studied at the Technical School of Varos and at a Private School in the field of Radio Electrical Engineering. Smart, consistent and hardworking, he helped like all his other parents in the fields. He was cold-bloodedly killed outside Mia Milia in the Industrial Area in a pear field by Turkish soldiers in a chariot with Greek insignia, when he approached voluntarily to verify that it was indeed Greek.
The fifth hero of the Savior, Antonis Pantelis, of Andreas and Anastasia, studied until the age of sixteen in the High School and then he chose sewing and started working in his father's tailor shop in the village. A peaceful and timid teenager from Bogazi is in Mia Milia and on the 14th of August, thinking that in front of him was his own retreating battalion, he walked unsuspectingly towards them, to make contact. Then the Turkish soldiers speared him and the "tailor of the Savior", as they knew him, fell dead, while the others were arrested later. I really liked the poem his mother wrote about him:
"I wish you well."
My son, my beloved, wherewith thou wilt bless me,
You were lost in the war and you took my joys.
You yelled at me with a sigh "mother, I will fight, if you mean me yes I will go back.
But inside me I heard a voice shouting at me: "Stress,
something will happen to your son, but you are calm. " I was sitting, my lavender, on burning coals
Yes, I was getting up at night with muddy eyes.
..................... ..
If it's you are alive, joy, oh let me wait, but what if you were hit? If you are killed? My Maker please, my eyes before I close,
to lie on my head, my son, to kiss you.
If we are to meet, in the other world, my son,
where will you see me, even if you wear it, tell me, my dear.
In black clothes jai sialin black in my jeep,
my yoke, this is how you will find me, where to eat my eutzia!
Then comes Kyriakos Potamou, Christofis and Thekla, who worked in the fields with his parents in times of poverty and deprivation, while at the age of nineteen he supported his widowed sister and her orphans. In 1962, when she was only twenty years old, she got engaged to Eleni Antoniou Meleti, and they were married in March 1964. Difficult years for the newly formed Republic of Cyprus, which invited her children, along with Kyriakos, to the National Guard. In 1974, on the 14th of August in the area of Karaolos, the Turks, who were fortified in the walls of Famagusta, were pounding our national guards. There, at the outpost, around six in the morning, Kyriakos said to a friend:
-Dear Dimitris, I think I will die today.
(The same premonition was mentioned to his wife during the truce period, between the first and the second invasion).
In a few minutes he asked a fellow villager passing by the keys to his van to move it to a safer place, because in the event of an evacuation, this car would be the salvation of many soldiers. As he sat in the driver's seat, two bursts were heard before he could begin. They had played him and he got out of the car, crawling.
"My dear, they played with me," he said to his friend, who held him in his arms. Shortly before they reached the area of Agia Zoni, on the way to the hospital that was temporarily housed in a hotel, Kyriakos cooled down in the hands of his friend. His funeral took place the same day in Sotira.
Seventh in a row from the Archangels of the Savior is Nicolettis Kallis from Lysis, Andreas and Maria. His family hosted wanted militants during the EOKA struggle, and Kallis once carried messages from the guerrillas about Fotis Pittas, Elias Papakyriakou, Michalis Sialos and others.
He married Eleni Elias from Sotira, they had two children, and during the truce between the first and second invasion he was in Agios Pavlos, Nicosia. A friend of his remembers sitting sadly in a corner, and when he asked him what was going on, he replied with a complaint: "Re Giannaki, I wanted to see my babies. I have a premonition that I'm not going to see them again. "
On August 15, on Hatzigiorkatzi Street in Agios Pavlos, behind the windows of a house, the Turkish fire was repulsed. While Kallis was placing his martini in the loophole, a deafening shot was heard from a Turkish gunner and fell to the ground. His death was instantaneous. He was temporarily buried in Lakatameia and in the summer of 2000 the identity of his remains was confirmed by the DNA system. The body was buried on October 8, 2000 with military honors in Sotira.
Then, eighth in a row, the leventopedo George Athanasis, Stavrinos and Eva. Beautiful, wicker, always smiling. He followed his parents to cultivate the fields. And he, like the previous hero, Kallis, is on the line of confrontation of St. Paul. As soon as he saw Kalli dead, he said:
"It's good to be young, to be remembered.
When everyone left the house where they were fortified, George, despite the persistent urgings of his lieutenant, refused to leave and stayed there and waited for them with his machine gun and grenades.
The mother could not bear the misery of her son.
Last in line from the Archangels of the Savior is Efstathios Efstathios of Petros and Despina, from the village of Stylloi, in the province of Famagusta. Orphaned from the age of 15, he supported his family and in 1971 he got engaged to Eleni Marti from Sotira. In June 1979, his wife Eleni gave birth to their daughter, giving him countless joys. After his family fled to Styllos, he supported them and, hearing that the Turks had not yet entered the village, went with his brother on August 16 to transport some things from their house. Inside the village they fell on an English patrol and after their arrest, they put them in a car heading towards Famagusta. Somewhere between Gaidoura and Styllos, they were ordered to descend and then came a Turkish Cypriot teacher from the village of Aloa, who threatened to kill ten Greeks for his two brothers who had disappeared in 1964 in Sakaria, Famagusta. According to the testimony of a survivor, Efstathiou was among them. He breathed his last, looking at his community, so unjustly, a victim of the intolerance and fanaticism of those years.
The book "Archangels of the Savior", in addition to the dead and missing, as mentioned above, also includes the captives of the community:
Loukis Michalis, Poleos Christofis, Asiotis Kyriakos, Christodoulou Petros and Dimitriou Andreas.
Optionally, I was shocked by Mr. Panos Myrtiotis' book "The Archangels of the Savior", because, in order to borrow the poet's verse:
"You kill an island in many ways;
But how do you kill memory?
The memory, wherever you touch it, hurts ".
Indeed, I wonder how the relatives of all our unfortunate young men endured their death, when, after three decades, we who read them feel such pain and suffering? Only God sent them the consolation from above and the Virgin Mary the Fairy Tale covered them with her wings. The pain is heavy and unbearable as if the parents are losing their children. Their only consolation is that they gave their lives for our country.
Here we will remember Olympios Pericles, who in the Epitaph of Pericles mentions the following about the heroes:
The work "The Archangels of the Savior" by Panos Myrtiotis is a valuable work that will remain the property of "es aei". To be honored by the modern and to be admired by the younger. And when the residents of Sotira want to brag "our place is like that", they will say.