With Will to Win

(See Cover)

Georgios Papageorgiou of Zoumerka is a private in the Greek army, 9th division, 43rd brigade. He can hardly remember a time when there was peace in his country. He has fought the Italians and the Germans, now he fights the Communists. A veteran of two years' warfare against the Red guerrillas, he has seen action at Konitsa, in Epirus, in the Grammos mountains, in the Peloponnesus. He does not know what became of his family; like hundreds & thousands of other Greeks, they fled from Red terror. They may be in a refugee camp; they may be dead. Some day, though he cannot imagine when, Georgios hopes to return to his native village, marry and settle down. Like most of his comrades in the army, he pins his hopes on American aid, and wishes there were more of it. "We have the heart," he told an American correspondent, "you have the means."

Last week, Private Papageorgiou's heart was high, his spirits soaring. The Greek army was slowly beating back the Communist guerrillas who, more than once, had been close to engulfing the whole country. Georgios and 200,000 Greek soldiers like him had accomplished this feat with the help of a soldier from a foreign land with a heart every bit as stout as theirs. He was Lieut. General James Alward Van Fleet, combat infantryman, sometime U.S. division and corps commander and now head of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory and Planning Group (JUSMAPG) in Greece.

Van Fleet commands neither Private Papageorgiou nor any other Greek soldier. His job is to give advice and to supervise the flow of U.S. arms and supplies (nearly $300,000,000 had been authorized by December 1948) to their army. But he has given the Greeks a great deal more than that. He has given them hope.

Last week, the guerrillas' 105th brigade attacked government positions near Florina. It might be a diversionary attack to harass Greek army groups successfully mopping up Red pockets in central Greece, or it might be the beginning of a major spring offensive by the Communists. At any rate, the Greek army, which has heeded Soldier Van Fleet's advice, was ready. The attackers at Fiorina were driven back, with government troops in hot pursuit.

Private Papageorgiou and his comrades knew that there was bitter fighting ahead, and many a defeat. But almost for the first time since they began their weary marches, they believed that they would win.

In the dramatic victory of the Western Powers at Berlin, and in the catastrophic defeats in Asia, Greece's victories and defeats in the war with communism had been all but forgotten by the West. Yet it was in Greece that the U.S. first publicly took a stand in aggressive resistance to the Red tide. Van Fleet holds a vital flank position in the battle between communism and the West. Says he: "This war in Greece is a first-class war of international communism. It's a war of annihilation with no respect for the rules."

The Wounds of a Nation. This war's most pitiful victims are Greece's people. While the rest of Europe, on either side of the Iron Curtain, has been allowed years of respite and reconstruction, the Greeks have known only more killing, have been touched only by tragedy. Last week from Athens, TIME Correspondent Mary Barber cabled:

" 'Kathenas chei to pono tou--everyone has his wound,' say the Greeks. Greece is bleeding from a million wounds. It is a country of refugees and prisoners. Vast hordes of peasants have left their meager land to escape the Red terror. In ramshackle huts on the fringes of provincial towns, they sit hungrily day after day. When a foreign newsman appears, they gather around him. Why does the U.S. not send a torrent of aid? Most of those who ask this question have kin or acquaintances who came back rich from America. To them the U.S. is a bottomless well of wealth.

"Still more wretched than the dispossessed are the peasants who cling to their village. Thousands of them were impressed into the guerrilla forces. Some died horribly in the mountains, some who would not fight were penned like cattle in Albanian and Bulgarian camps.

"Many who did fight were captured and are in government prisons. In an old Turkish jail at Ioannina there are 300 such captives. I spoke to some of them who had belonged to the guerrillas' crack Ypsilanti Brigade. One, an 18-year-old officer, trained in Bulgaria, said he was told by the Communists that the U.S. wanted Greece for a colony. 'Sometimes when losses were heavy,' he said, 'we wondered if perhaps we had made a mistake.'

"There were about 90 women guerrillas in the prison. One of them had lost both legs because of gangrene following battle wounds. 'I was an only daughter,' she said. 'My parents kept me like a jewel. I was not brought up for this.'

"Even Greece's children have their wounds. About 23,000 were carried off by the Reds to the 'people's democracies' for Marxist education. A few managed to escape and joined 17,000 refugee children in homes organized by energetic Queen Fredericka. One half-starved, trembling boy at one children's camp said: 'They came at night . . . We hid in the cellar but they dragged us out. They shot father outside the village, took mother away, and left me there.' When I asked him if he would rather be in some other place than his camp, the boy said, 'Is there a place better than this?' "

That is the country West Pointer Van Fleet must help to peace and order.

The Legless Men. When Van Fleet arrived in Athens 15 months ago, the Red rash was still spreading across the pockmarked face of Greece. After the first guerrilla victories, Russia had seen a chance to harass the West with turmoil and terror in Greece and to win a great Mediterranean base for communism. The obedient satellites on Greece's north provided arms and other material aid, sanctuary for hard-pressed guerrillas, hospitals, training bases. Whether they fought voluntarily or under duress, the guerrilla soldiers were Greeks. For Russia it was a cheap try for big stakes. In March 1946, the guerrillas had only 2,500 soldiers. Two years later they had upwards of 20,000.

The floundering Greek army seemed to have bogged down in a defensive war, wasted men to garrison towns against Communist hit & run attacks. The government commanders needed to be shaken out of lethargy, timidity, bickering, and antiquated tactical ideas. By unrelenting pressure, Van Fleet has changed their ways.

Van Fleet quickly discovered that one trouble with the Greek army was a shortage of trained junior officers. He set up training schools to increase the supply. The schools are running well now, but the first Greek reaction to them flabbergasted the U.S. general. An apologetic Greek general appeared to explain why the prospective trainees had not showed up: he had not been able to persuade his division commanders that their men needed further training. To Greeks, "face" is almost as important as it is to Chinese.

While Van Fleet was still feeling his way, the rebels infiltrated more & more of the country and stepped up their terror campaign. They seized towns and held them for days, plundering, murdering, kidnaping, burning, dynamiting. Town and village people became afraid to be seen talking with government soldiers, for fear of guerrilla reprisals. The fine new roads that U.S. engineers had built under the U.S. aid-to-Greece program were unsafe almost everywhere beyond the city limits of Athens and Salonika. Government troops suffered heavy casualties from the anti-personnel mines which the guerrillas received in seemingly limitless quantities from across the northern frontier. Half of all Nationalist casualties have been caused by land mines. "There are," said an American grimly last week, "a great many legless men in Athens."

Turning Tide. Last summer, urged on by Van Fleet, the Greek army attacked the rebels' main stronghold in the Grammos mountains, cleaned it out completely (TIME, Aug. 30). In the first flush of success, the Grammos operation looked as if it might be the key to final victory. But thousands of guerrillas got away, across the Albanian border, where they rested and rearmed. Within a month, they were back in Greece, attacking Kastoria. Van Fleet began to realize that Greece was up against a fight to the finish.

With Van Fleet's hearty approval, King Paul appointed 65-year-old General Alexander Papagos as Greece's new commander in chief. A tall, majestic man with huge hazel eyes, Papagos is Greece's most esteemed soldier, the hero of the nation's World War II victories against Italy. Papagos took the job only on condition that he be free to command absolutely, without interference from the politicians. To Van Fleet, that seemed the only way to run a war; Papagos was just the man Greece needed.

Soon after Papagos took command, the Greek army won a smashing victory at Fiorina. The next government triumph was the cleanup of the Peloponnesus.

Guerrilla recruitment had fallen off by nearly 50%. Guerrilla leaders were having trouble maintaining their total force at 20,000; some 40% of the Red fighters were reported to be women (whose morals seem to be sternly watched by their commanders. Said one Red amazon: "They shot any man who accosted us"). Meanwhile the government forces were growing; besides 150,000 in the regular army, Athens had 50,000 militiamen and 21,000 more in the tiny Greek navy and air force. By the beginning of spring the guerrillas were outnumbered ten to one.

On top of their other troubles, the Greek Reds were still haunted by the specter of Markos Vafiades, the hard-bitten guerrilla commander with the fierce mustache, who had been purged for Titoist leanings (TIME, Feb. 14). Nicholas Zachariades, secretary-general of the party, had found it necessary time & again to issue orders against the singing of old party songs about "my dear little Markos." There were still no songs about the new guerrilla commander, Georgios Vrontissios, alias Goussias, a former printer whose mustache is considerably less impressive than his predecessor's. According to the likeliest of many conflicting reports from the frontier regions, aid to the rebels from Tito's Yugoslavia seemed to have stopped almost entirely, although Bulgaria and Albania were faithfully carrying on.

Even with the most successful summer campaign Van Fleet does not think that the guerrillas can be finally defeated this year, but his plans call for cleaning them out of all Greece except the northern frontier areas. Actually, some military observers believe that Van Fleet is too optimistic, that the guerrillas will continue tormenting Greece as long as they are supplied and equipped from abroad. Last week Van Fleet still stood by what he had said when he first came to Greece: "My advice to the rebels is to give up now. Either stay and get killed or get out of

Greece and stay out--forever." The Communist radio called him "Chief Butcher Van Fleet."

Doughboy Colonel. James Van Fleet has little knack for the soldier-statesmanship of an Eisenhower or a MacArthur. He is first and foremost a combat soldier who has thoroughly learned his trade. In World War II, under the incomparable George Patton, he learned the value of speed, surprise, audacity. In his imposing collection of medals the one he likes best is the Combat Infantryman's Badge.

He was born (1892) in Coytesville, N J., of Dutch stock. When he was a baby, his family moved to Florida, where his father was a pioneer railroad promoter and financier. He had a healthy, uneventful outdoor childhood, played football as a halfback at West Point (classmates remember him particularly as being "good on the defensive"), was graduated 92nd out of 168 in the star-studded class of 1915, whose roster included names like Ike Eisenhower (class standing: 61) and Omar Bradley (44). In World War I, he went to France as an infantry major. Between wars, he taught infantry tactics at Fort Benning, served in Maine, San Diego, the Canal Zone. Of his classmates, a dozen or more had won stars while Van Fleet was still a chicken colonel. But he prided himself on being a "doughboy," ran the obstacle course with his men and beat them at rifle marksmanship.

World War II was two-thirds over before he got into it. His regiment was the first in the 4th Infantry Division to hit

Utah Beach on Dday, and it had hard fighting all the way to Cherbourg. Van Fleet was wounded, left the hospital to get back to his outfit while Bradley was on the way there to give him a medal. Bradley caught up with him, gave him the medal, and some advice: handle the next fight from a command post and stop working up forward on the firing line.

Van Fleet rose like a rocket after he had shown what he could do; in a few months he won his first star, then a second. He took over the green goth Division, whipped it into one of the best combat divisions on the Western Front. Van Fleet spearheaded the U.S. drive across the

Rhine from the Remagen bridgehead. On V-E day he was all the way across Germany, near the Austrian border.

"I Love Him." In Greece, Van Fleet spends about half his work week in the field. "Morale," he says in a combat soldier's aphorism, "is always better up front." When the arguments and orations of his Greek colleagues become too lengthy, he says impatiently: "Let's get on with it, gentlemen. I would like to arrive at a decision." He has profound admiration for the rugged fighting qualities of the Greek soldier. "I love him," said Van Fleet last week, punching the air with his fist. "I get mad when he is not trained or used properly."

Private Papageorgiou and his friends do not exactly love Taskmaster Van Fleet, who pushes them on to the limit of their stamina, but they are deeply grateful to him. Except for "Barba" (uncle) Harry

Truman, who first told the Greeks that they would not have to fight alone, Van Fleet is the most popular American among Greeks, who pronounce his name Van Flit, and pun that he is giving them Flit guns to fight the Black Crows (guerrillas).

From his suite in Athens' sumptuous Grand Bretagne hotel, where he lives quietly with his wife Helen, General Van Fleet has a close view of the cafe tables on Constitution Square. Here the volatile Athenians sprawl at ease on sunny afternoons, propping elbows and feet on two or three extra chairs in the unbending faith that the mind functions best when the body is relaxed. While they sip sweet Turkish coffee chased by glasses of cold water, they argue, declaim, weep, excoriate the government, the King, the rich profiteers, the British and sometimes even Van Fleet. Said one Greek: "We get angry with him--but we get angry even with our fathers." Says Van Fleet good-naturedly: "Only Greeks could get so much out of a cup of coffee and a glass of water."

James Van Fleet has won many Greek hearts through his particular affection for the infinitely patient little Greek donkey, indispensable to either side in mountain fighting. The donkey goes places the American "mechanized donkey" (the jeep) cannot go. Under JUSMAPG's enlightened policy, which instituted the bell mare* system for army donkeys, the animals are spared many a beating from their drivers. In his desk drawer at Athens, Van Fleet keeps a favorite quotation: "It is hoped that if there be a paradise it be full of Greek donkeys and if there be hell the generality of Greek donkey-drivers are roasted forever in its flame . . ."

The Prima Donnas. There are enemies in Greece which General Van Fleet cannot meet. The biggest of them is poverty. Amid the sunbleached skeletons of their ancient culture, the Greeks were poor long before war and civil strife wrecked their country. For hundreds of years the Greeks had been shrewd traders, but World War II had left almost no market for their exports. Some rich merchants lived abroad on their fat investments; others stayed home, hoarded gold and dodged taxes.

The Economic Cooperation Administration assumed responsibility for aid to Greece last July. In areas not harassed by the rebels, ECA teams have started relief projects for refugees--roads, drainage, ditches, airports. But reconstruction proceeds slowly. Since war's end, the Greeks have built and repaired only 14,000 houses; more than 200,000 had been destroyed. As long as Greece's civil war continues, her economy cannot even begin to mend.

But there are some feasible reforms which the Greeks, as tough but also as stubborn as their little donkeys, have again & again refused to tackle. Whenever U.S. officials have tried to set up efficient taxation, price controls and rationing, the Greeks have quietly sabotaged the measures. Recently, when Greek businessmen were informed that henceforth they must keep proper books (an effort few Greeks ever found worthwhile), Greek shops simply closed down and did not reopen until the measure was withdrawn. "We are bad-mannered children," Athenians say. "We have been told to wash our hands before meals. We just don't."

Most urgently in need of a good scrubbing are Greece's politicians--the prima donnas, as the people call them. But the Greeks are proud and sensitive folk, full of historic nostalgia; not since the ancient days have they known anything but a caricature of democracy. The present Greek government includes representatives of Greece's two major parties because the U.S. insisted that it must be broad and representative. Actually it is neither broad nor particularly representative of anything but party interests. Many of the men who ought to be Greece's leaders are a sad and selfish lot, with little vision and less discipline. Many of them are apt to blame all of the nation's tragic troubles on the war and on insufficient American help.

Notable exceptions are War Minister Panayotis Kanellopoulos, whom many Athenians consider too upright to be a good politician, and wise Premier Themistocles Sophoulis, whose frail health and great age (88) keep him above the daily political intrigue.

The Old Maids. Outside the government, the most arresting figure is Spyroa Markezinis, leader of the small but highly articulate "New Party." He has a somewhat satanic profile, sports a silver cigarette case with the inscription "Machiavelli," was recently involved in a black-market scandal (he was cleared by one court, still faces action by a higher tribunal). Greece's older politicos watch him nervously; he says: "I feel like a debutante being discussed by the ugly old maids in a corner of the ballroom." His ideas on how to straighten out Greece's economy are at least provocative. He once told a U.S. official: "Income tax? Hell, no. It would never work in Greece. I'd go where the money is--for example, the Federation of Greek Industries [Greece's N.A.M.]. I'd say, 'I need 20 million drachmae by next Wednesday.' And I'd get it."

Many of the 686 Americans who work in Greece for the Military Mission or EGA are as apt to blame Greek politicians for the Greek situation as the Greek politicos are apt to blame the Americans.

This is merely a way of dodging the hard facts of U.S. responsibility and interest in Greece. Sober American observers feel it makes little sense to expect good democratic behavior from a nation which has never had a fair chance to give democracy a try.

Van Fleet, who has a soldier's impatience with political monkeyshines, leaves most of the dealings with the Greek cabinet to Ambassador Henry F. Grady, who heads the American mission for aid to Greece. Van Fleet is inclined to agree with Greek soldiers like Private Georgios Papageorgiou who sometimes says that, when he finishes with the Communists, he will go to Athens and settle the politicians' hash.

"God Bless Him." A fighter whose job it is to help the Greeks fight, Van Fleet has shortcomings both as a diplomat and as an administrator. He has had his full share of criticism. He has been accused of being naive, bossy, publicity-conscious. His relations with Ambassador Grady are on the cool side, but he gets along well with Generalissimo Papagos. King Paul frequently joins the U.S. general on inspection trips to the fighting areas. Greeks who like Van Fleet, and most do, say that he is sincere san paidi--"like a child."

Athenians do not quite understand his earnestness, candor and energy--they say hard-working Americans do not know how to live. To Greeks he typifies the vast and somewhat incomprehensible power of the U.S. A few days ago, near Van Fleet's headquarters, an old woman in black pushed past a guard and asked the general's aide if that was "Van Flit" coming down the steps. When the surprised officer nodded, the woman crossed herself, murmured "God bless him," and hurried away.

When Van Fleet is not working, he likes to stroll about Athens' ancient hills, or to sit and watch the setting sun throw a rosy gleam over the Parthenon. Most of all, he likes to browse through the Athens Archaeological Museum, where he invariably stops before a bronze statue, by an unknown Greek sculptor of the 3rd Century B.C., which seems to symbolize his own character and task. It represents a horseman leaning forward on his steed, "With Will to Win."

Van Fleet's indomitable will to win over the Communists has gone a long way to strengthen Greece's stout but weary heart. Recently, he visited Premier Sophoulis and wished him many more years of life. The feeble old man ignored that. He said to Van Fleet: "You must take care of yourself, for you have to live now for Greece."

*The donkey's equivalent of a lead cow.

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