The story of Mrs. Euphrosyne, who on August 6, 1974, dug up the lifeless body of her 19-year-old second lieutenant son, Menelaos Menelaos, in the village of Kontemenos, in order to bury it with due honors, in her hometown of Limassol. After 44 years, the burial was completed today, with the burial and trisagion of part of the bones recently identified by the DNA method.
Lieutenant Menelaos Menelaou was one of the first dead of the National Guard during the Turkish invasion, when on July 20, 1974, the 281st Infantry Battalion launched an air attack on Kontemenos, while heading towards Myrtos.
Next to him, the soldier Christodoulos Christodoulou is wounded, whom Menelaos carries with his hands, about 500 meters, to a safe place, before he falls dead from the rockets of the Turkish warplanes that hit the unit again.
This incident became known only about five years ago, by the soldier Christodoulou himself, who was present today at the cemetery of Agios Nikolaos in Limassol, to honor Lieutenant Menelaos, who saved his life and who then ended up in a mass grave with others. his comrades-in-arms.
The shocking events that followed today were witnessed by the daughter of the hero's sister, Melina Vryonidou, during the burial of the bones, in the presence of his comrades from the 281st Infantry Battalion and representatives of the political, military and religious leadership of the place.
When Menelaos' mother is informed of her son's death, she dresses in black and without hesitation, in the middle of the war, takes a taxi from Limassol to the village of Kontemenos to find the body.
"As an ancient Greek woman, taken from the verses of Homer, she wanted to bury her son with the proper honors and Christian manners", said Melina Vryonidou and adds that his friends and comrades ran to her to help her, in the most difficult moment of a mother's life, to bury the dead body of her 19-year-old son, who gave birth and grew up with so much love and so much devotion ”.
The mother dug with her own hands, refusing to accept any other way that would further injure the body of her dead son, “she dug and tried to feel something familiar, until somewhere in the soil she found a tuft of your hair and then your stars, in your military clothes ".
"You were lying face down, as if you were kissing the holy soil of the homeland for which you sacrificed your 19 years", said Melina Vryonidou and remembers the tragic mother of the undefeated Menelaos telling her "I do not know how I did it, I did not shed a single tear . I made my heart rock and I stood strong in my son, as he deserved ".
After wrapping the lifeless body in a sheet, he returns to Limassol where the burial takes place on the same day, a burial that took 44 years to complete, as part of his bones were only recently found in the mass grave and which were identified with the DNA method.
"We are deeply proud of you but also of the mother who gave birth to you and nurtured you with the high values and the Greek Christian ideals", added Melina Vryonidou, who, as she pointed out, bears the name of her uncle, while she herself became a philologist. as he wished to happen "if the Turkish planes did not stop your dreams on that sad morning of July 20."
Uncle Menelaos, whom he had never met but had heard so much about, wanted to teach children history, "but he himself became a page in the history of our blood-stained homeland."
Source: KYPE