Authors: Leon Uris
The Angry Hills
THE ANGRY HILLS
LEON URIS
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1955 by Leon Uris
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4532-2571-4
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
Many years ago I was fortunate to come into possession of a most unusual diary belonging to my uncle, Aron Yerushalmi of Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Mr. Yerushalmi had been a member of the volunteer Palestinian Brigade of the British Expeditionary Force which fought in Greece before America’s entry in World War II. His extraordinary adventures took him through several captures and escapes and led him from one end of Greece to the other.
Although the characters of this book are fictitious, I was able to draw background and historical events from the diary which made this novel possible.
For
Uncle Harry
and
Dad
Contents
Part 1
ONE
O
NLY FIVE DAYS AGO
the Kifissia Hotel had been almost deserted. Now it bulged with British Empire troops. In the lobby a crowd in khaki uniforms set up a steady bass hum in the variety of tongues of an international army. The uniforms were of the same drab wool but the shoulder patches told a story of the gathering of Aussies and Britons and New Zealanders and Arabs and Cyprians and Palestinians. From the bar, which stood to the right of the lobby, there came a continuous tinkle of glasses intermittently punctuated by the clang and sliding drawer of the cash register.
Over in the corner by the window, a lone civilian sat slumped in an overstuffed chair, oblivious of the hustle and bustle about him. His feet were propped on the window sill, his hat was shoved down over his eyes and an unlit pipe hung upside down from his teeth. He wore an expensive but unpressed tweed suit which looked quite in place, and his heavy wool tie was loosened at the throat. He was neither awake nor asleep—aware nor unaware—he was a study in boredom.
Perhaps, if you moved in literary circles or were just an avid reader of minor novels, you would recognize him on sight. Michael Morrison, an American, was one of those “bread-and-butter” writers found on every publisher’s list. A writer with a small but faithful band of readers which grew slightly with each new work. The income from his four books had been augmented by regular contributions to magazines and he had written himself into a steady and comfortable income bracket of about fifteen thousand a year. It had not always been this way, to be sure. Morrison’s rise was the typical writer’s story of many years of struggle for acceptance, bitter disappointments and the rest of the frustrations and fears that plague that supposedly charmed profession.
A chorus of singers from the bar caused Morrison to stir. He yawned, shoved his hat back and glanced at his watch. It was still some time before his appointment. He dropped his feet from the window sill, arose and stretched and went through the business of lighting his pipe—still ignoring the assemblage of soldiers. Even at the age of thirty-five he showed traces of his earlier athletic career, for his six-foot frame carried some two hundred pounds with obvious ease. Although his face retained a little of the eternal boyish look, there were also unmistakable etchings of hardness and cynicism. In all, Michael Morrison bore a remarkable resemblance to the public’s conception of a writer.
He eased his way through the crowd out to the sidewalk and stood at the curb for several moments looking for a taxi. Then he decided to walk a few squares up where the taxis were more plentiful. He was somewhat miffed at the last-minute change in accommodations forced on him which landed him in a hotel in the suburbs. All the downtown hotel space had been grabbed by the inpouring British.
As he walked, his eyes dimmed with sadness. The trip to Greece had fanned the bitter embers of memory into a flame. How often had he and his wife planned the trip! They had talked of it for years. It was to have been the honeymoon they never had. Ellie’s uncle, a Greek importer, had left her a legacy of some nine thousand dollars. But each year something new arose to prevent their taking the trip. And during those years their great fear was that the money would be spent for necessary groceries instead of the purpose for which it was intended.
When at last Michael had written his way into a respectable bank balance the plans for the trip began to take real form—then exploded in an automobile accident in the fog on the Golden Gate Bridge. Ellie had been killed instantly.
It took more than a year for Morrison to find life again. There were the first months of guilt, of utter despondency, loneliness and fear of sleep because of the nightmares. Then came a period of self-pity and drink. And then the slow resurrection, with the help of his parents and many good friends but, mainly, through the love for his young son and daughter.
He would have left the money in Greece for many more years. The idea of coming to Greece without Ellie repelled him. But this was April of 1941 and the floodgates had opened. In the north, the invasion had begun. His bank and agent advised him to claim the inheritance as quickly as possible as the European situation was becoming more and more uncertain. And so, the quick trip to Athens. Morrison wanted desperately to return to San Francisco. It was no honeymoon without the bride.
“Petraki, 17,” he told the cab driver and they whisked away toward Athens. Now, nearly everyone in Athens had a relative in America and this driver was no exception. In this particular case it was a brother in Cleveland. After Morrison assured the fellow that he had never been to Cleveland but would certainly look up the man’s brother if he ever got there, the conversation switched to the more pressing subject of the moment.
Everything hinged, these days, on the ability of the newly arrived British Expeditionary Force to halt the German advance in the northern provinces. Only last winter the little Greek Army had run the Italians from the country, and the cab driver reasoned that if the Greeks could beat the Italians, surely the British would stop the Germans. Besides, the driver added for good measure, America would soon be in the war.
Morrison wasn’t too sure of that. First, there was a big ocean, and, second, in the spring of 1941 most Americans felt there was no reason to become involved in this thing. Of course, Mike Morrison had no sympathy for Hitler. It was just, well, the type of thing the Europeans had been carrying on for centuries. It simply wasn’t America’s affair. He wondered about the British stopping the German advance. The Germans owned a copyright on warfare called “blitzkrieg” which had a way of crushing all opposition. And there was the undercurrent of nervous laughter all around him which seemed to imply that the British were in for a pasting.
The driver shifted his attention from politics and war to locomoting his vehicle through the congested area around Kifissia and Alexandra Streets. The traffic made him even angrier than the thought of the German Army in the north.
The shops were filled and, as in any cosmopolitan city, the citizens walked with that brisk and wonderful air of being in a hurry. But beneath the external signs of normalcy one could sense the tension, doubt and fear. British uniforms were in evidence everywhere. Young Greek males were nowhere to be seen. They were all up north or on the Albanian front. It was obvious to Mike that the enchanting Greek women were giving their British “saviors” a welcome in the best tradition. Nothing was too good for “Johnny” who had come to do combat with “Jerry” and drive him from the country.
As the cab moved south they could hear the distant wail of the air-raid sirens. The Stukas would be coming in to work over the docks at Piraeus where the B.E.F. was unloading. The British camps outside Athens were getting bombed heavily too. Morrison reckoned the Germans were kept well informed from within Athens and that the British had better get some planes in the air if they were going to make a show of it at all.
The cab came to a halt in front of the outsized yellowstone house at Petraki, 17. Morrison paid the driver and thanked him for the most interesting discussion and crossed the street.
The brass knocker beat a thunder through the ancient mansion of Fotis Stergiou. In a moment its equally ancient butler, Tassos, led him into the home of the attorney. Tassos rapped softly, then ushered him into the office of Mr. Stergiou.
The old man looked up from his all-encompassing desk and smiled a wrinkled smile of recognition. He was a quaint old duck. A shock of gray hair stood straight up from his head, a large scarf was wrapped around his shoulders and a pair of square-cut glasses were balanced precariously on the tip of his nose.