Sparking a Revolution
August 31, 1956 - 00:20 hrs [UTC+2]
Near Fisini, Lemnos
Lemnos Penitentiary #3
(39° 48' 38" N, 25° 20' 48" E)
"We must speak in English for our Soviet brothers," whispered Vasilis to the man crouching beside him, "Greek is for us. They will not understand us," he continued, chiding the man. "Do you understand Spiridon?"
"Yes Vasilis, I do, I am sorry," Spiridon replied. In the fading moonlight of a clear and otherwise delightful night in southeastern Lemnos, Vasilis, Spiridon, and thirteen others crouched behind a low wall made of stacked rocks, just fifty meters from the gates of Lemnos Penitentiary #3. Tonight was to be a night of daring heroism for Vasilis and his cause, which was heralded under the banner and title "Lemnosian Communist Commune" or LCC for short. "Vasilis, I am nervous about this. What if…"
"Spiridon, no more 'what ifs' please, we are going to be successful. Lieutenant Zuyev assures me that his men will be able to perform as we have practiced. We did not accept the Soviet Spetsnaz for nothing you know."
"I hope he's right then," Spiridon continued, worrying still, just as he'd been doing for the past four weeks while the LCC and their Spetsnaz allies trained for tonight's mission, which would ignite a new chapter in the island's somewhat tumultuous history.
Lemnos, the Republic of, existed in modernity for only one hundred and fifty-six years, despite history dating back beyond Antiquity. In 1800, Lemnos was under Byzantine rule and popular discontent against the Byzantine government rose and fermented for twenty years. Desirous of a representative democratic system, Lemnosian citizens staged protests, wrote articles and missives denouncing their Byzantine rulers, and focused on building a rebellion. Initially dismissed by the Byzantine government, the Lemnosians ushered in a rebellion against the Byzantine government forces on the island on June 9, 1820 and until February 16, 1824, the Byzantine government and the Lemnosian people fought a bloody rebellion where guerilla warfare was the name of the game. After forty-four months of fighting though, the Byzantine government gave up, despite having killed more Lemnosians guerillas than they lost in men.
On February 27, 1824, the Republic of Lemnos was declared and it included not just the island of Lemnos but also Agios Efstratios. The Republic of Lemnos grew slowly after its split with the Byzantine government but by 1880, reconciliation was beginning. Just as it took twenty years to foment a rebellion so too did it take twenty years to achieve reconciliation between the Byzantine government and the Republic of Lemnos. Then, in 1932, due to its strategic location in the Aegean Sea, which put it at the mouth of the Dardanelles and thus the entrance to the Black Sea, the USSR began to court the Republic of Lemnos. The USSR's communist ideals did not initially appeal to the Lemnosian people, despite their largely agrarian society. In 1935, support for the USSR was a paltry 5% but the USSR did not throw in the towel and through propaganda and continued effort, that number grew to 35% by 1950. All of this worried the Lemnosian government.
In April 1949, as a move against the USSR, the Lemnosian government invited the Eurasian military to set up a radar, reconnaissance, and communications base on the island, which would be oriented towards the Dardanelles. The base's primary purpose would be to watch and catalogue Soviet shipping entering and exiting the Black Sea, a move that incensed the Soviet leadership. As a result, the Soviets continued to focus on building a communist guerilla force, which would, per their hopes, take over the government by whatever means necessary and toss out the Eurasians, a sworn enemy of the USSR. The back-and-forth continued and in 1951, a new administration took over the Lemnosian government. Ardently anti-communist, this administration was led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Argyris, who had resigned from the military as a colonel in order to run for the small country's highest office. His party, the Independent Lemnos Party, the ILP, took over 65% of the seats of Lemnos' Parliament in the 1950 elections. The ILP was a right-wing party focused on opposing the Soviets and aligning with the anti-Soviet powers of Europe, including the United Eurasian Federation. However, the ILP expressed a strong desire to remain an independent nation. Their opposite, the Lemnosian Progress Party, the LPP, was a left-wing party that aligned with the USSR. The LPP was led by opposite leader, Lavrentios Zabat, a man that Prime Minister Argyris was particularly at odds with daily.
To counter the influence of the Soviets, Prime Minister Argyris instituted a series of executive orders and directives that authorized the police and the military to crack down on pro-Soviet and other leftist groups. The first raids against these organizations occurred in late 1951 and by 1956, five years later, Lemnos' prisons were full of Soviet supporters and pro-Soviet groups were considered illegal and subversive. Through disputed measures, Prime Minister Argyris held new elections in April 1956. Perhaps due to his crackdowns, the LPP was unable to garner more than 10% of the vote and thus Lemnos' Parliament was over 90% ILP. By then, a civil war was brewing and it was only a matter of time before it went from the planning stages to full on ignition.
Tonight's event was meant to be that watershed. Since the crackdowns began, the pro-Soviet and leftist groups had been increasingly driven underground. Splintering and fracturing occurred at first while groups disagreed on how to proceed. As more and more prominent leaders were arrested and jailed, where torture and kangaroo courts were standard procedures, the groups were forced to consolidate. Slowly, the LCC was formed but it was only meant to be misdirection. This was going to be the public banner, the civilian wing of a paramilitary organization consisting of Lemnos' pro-Soviet guerillas and their Soviet allies. The true name of the organization was the Lemnosian Independence Brigade, the LIB. This was the organization, which made contact with the Soviets, and in early June of 1956, received one squad of soldiers from the newly formed Spetsnaz GRU.
Vasilis was the LIB's go-to man. He wasn't the organization's leader but he was the man who would lead the missions. A former army sergeant gone AWOL, Vasilis Katsaros was thirty-two years old. He was no marksman nor was he a specialist. He was a regular, army sergeant. He didn't stand out in any way except for one. Men who fought under him trusted him and they would follow him into battle no matter where he went or whom he fought. The shaky Spiridon was one such example. Despite being in the army too, he wasn't much of a soldier. Like Vasilis, he wasn't remarkable in any way but he was another gun and on a night such as tonight, numbers mattered. It also helped that Spiridon was one of Vasilis' closest confidantes. He regarded the man as a good luck charm, so to speak and with battle looming, luck was needed above all.
Vasilis reflected on the series of events leading up to tonight. He and his men had been training for a month now, using the remote and unfriendly terrain of Agios Efstratios to practice their assault on Lemnos Penitentiary #3, where they hoped to spring seventy-two captives, all of them political prisoners who would never see the light of day again. Lemnos Penitentiary #3 was notorious amongst the leftist groups and the seventy-two captives that Vasilis hoped to free were all high-ranking and influential men within the pro-Soviet groups. Their liberation would be a major blow to the Lemnosian government and it would help ignite the revolution against Prime Minister Argyris' hostile and unfriendly regime. During the War of Independence in the 1820s, Lemnosian guerillas used Agios Efstratios to horde supplies, treat their wounded, and to retreat to when the Byzantine forces handed them military defeats.
Just as it had been a safe haven for the first guerillas, it too would be a safe haven for this generation of guerillas. They planned to make their way south to the island, which was just over twenty nautical miles away. It would be a refuge for them in this time and it was where the LIB had set up their camps, their supply depots, and conducted their training. Unlike Lemnos, Agios Efstratios was sparsely populated and that plus its terrain suited the LIB just as it had suited the original guerillas. Unfortunately, for the LIB though the original guerillas were rolling in their graves that their sanctuary had been corrupted by pro-Soviet groups.
Vasilis thought only vaguely of the makers of history, falsely assuming that they would have looked upon him with respect and he was pulled out of this train of thought by the whispered and accented voice of none other than Lieutenant Vladimir Zuyev, the Spetsnaz squad leader. "Vasilis, are your men ready?"
"Yes Lieutenant, when we are ready Stylianos will neutralize the first guard tower while Dimitris will take the second one. Our rocketeers will lead the way through the gate just as we practiced. Are your marksman in place?"
"They are Vasilis; they are waiting only for the signal. This is the time of triumph for your brothers Vasilis."
"Thank you Lieutenant, then we should go before something goes wrong. We cannot wait here forever."
"No we cannot, two minutes. Give the order."
"Yes Lieutenant," Vasilis said as the Spetsnaz lieutenant ran back to his position in line. Two minutes later, Vasilis extended the antenna on his SCR-536 radio, and whispered into it, "Stylianos, are you ready?"
"Yes Vasilis," came the hushed reply.
"Thirty seconds."
"Thirty seconds, copy," came the reply and Vasilis rushed to fold the antenna and get the radio back into the backpack that Spiridon was lugging. He'd practiced doing this maneuver repeatedly but now that he was nervous, with sweaty hands, it took him eighteen seconds tonight, not the usual ten. He had only just enough time to raise his rifle when the loud report of an RPG-2 shoulder-fired, anti-tank rocket echoed across the otherwise quiet and still plain around the jail. The small, 82-millimeter rocket streaked forward for one hundred and seventy-five meters before the contact fuse impacted the meaty part of the main watch tower, detonating the high-explosive, anti-tank warhead. Originally designed to knock out or disable tanks, the Spetsnaz had shown the LIB guerillas that they could be used effectively against static defenses as well. Five hundred had been brought to Agios Efstratios and the LIB guerillas using them tonight had each fired over fifty rockets before they had been considered proficient in the system. Thanks to the expert teaching of the Spetsnaz soldiers, they were able to use them effectively at their maximum range, which was one hundred and fifty to two hundred meters. Owing to that training too, just as Stylianos' rocket struck, Dimitris fired.
Both guard towers were neutralized with one shot a piece, the desired effect. The eight guerillas and eight Spetsnaz soldiers hiding along the low wall immediately popped over it and ran quickly to the main wall of the prison, hiding alongside it while Stylianos fired a second RPG-2 rocket into the main gate, blasting both doors off of their hinges. Dimitris, ready with another round, fired into the opening aiming his rocket to the ground, turning the RPG-2 from an anti-tank and an anti-defense weapon into an anti-personnel weapon. The fragmentation effects of the rocket tore through the weak flesh of the gate's guards, incapacitating all of them. "Men, now!" Vasilis ordered as the fifteen men ran towards the front gate, weapons shouldered. Between the eighteen men, there were two rocketeers, three light machine gunners armed with PPSh-41s, ten riflemen armed with AK-47s, one marksman with a Mosin-Nagant, and two submachine gunners with PPS'. All three of the latter were Spetsnaz soldiers.
Vasilis led the way into the prison and ignored the high-powered roar of the Mosin as the sniper took down a single guard climbing up the ladder of the main guard tower. That body fell just ten meters away from Vasilis, who brought his men up to the main entranceway of the prison. Lemnos Penitentiary #3 was a small facility, relatively speaking, with space for only one hundred and fifty prisoners. It was only half-full. Vasilis quickly tried the handle of the door to find that it was locked. Having planned for this eventuality, he brought his men back around the corner of the building while one of the rocketeers put an RPG-2 through the front door. Each rocketeer had only four rockets each, their loaded rocket and three reloads in a backpack. Each rocket weighed nearly 4.7 kilograms so the rocketeers were all too happy to get rid of them. Stylianos was down to his last and Dimitris had two more remaining.
With the door gone, Vasilis and his men returned to the opening but as the Spetsnaz soldiers trained them, they did not rush in to a slaughter. Instead, they threw in grenades. Knowing the layout of the prison helped. They were facing a twenty-meter corridor with nothing but walls on either side. It was for defensive purposes but it could be neutralized with hand grenades, especially when eight of them were thrown. Vasilis had the morose task of counting each one and with his already ringing ears, which was a chore. "Eight, let's go!" He finally yelled and he entered, crouched, and fired off a burst of AK fire, cutting down one wounded guard. Everyone entered behind him and together, the men moved down the corridor. They would split into two groups now, seven with Vasilis and six with Lieutenant Zuyev, each heading for a different cell block, Vasilis to A and Zuyev to B.
Thus far, the assault had neutralized the prison's two guard towers and killed eight of the guards, five outside and three waiting in the corridor. There were twenty more guards and as the assaulters moved into the cellblocks, two things happened, the guards called for help and they dug-in, ready to meet the assaulters. For the next eight minutes, while help was being assembled, the assaulters and the guards traded shots and grenades. In the end, Vasilis' group was able to move into Cell Block A, having taken down four guards and injured three more. Lieutenant Zuyev, on the other hand, was still pinned down though his group had been able to kill three guards and injure two. That left eight overall, five of which were holding Cell Block B. The other three were locked in the upper floors, communicating with their help, a military unit nearly ten kilometers away.
Time was ticking away and Vasilis' group moved into the cell block to free what prisoners they could. In the not too far distance, they could hear the gunfight in Cell Block B and the noise worried Vasilis who had no lost a man or a prisoner yet. As the minutes ticked away and worry came across his brow, Vasilis turned to Spiridon and put his hand on his shoulder, "Get these prisoners out of here. I am taking three men and going around to help the Lieutenant."
"Good luck Vasilis," responded Spiridon, who took to the task while Vasilis and three others, including one of the Spetsnaz soldiers, raced off towards Cell Block B. Thirty-two prisoners had been liberated.