The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [1]
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