The Gorgopotamos viaduct blown up

During the night of 25–26 November 1942 a party of British sappers and officers of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), together with Greek partisans from two rival organisations, the communist ELAS and the republican EDES, attacked the Italian-guarded railway viaduct over the Gorgopotamos river in central Greece, south of Lamia. While the partisans pinned down the guards at both ends of the bridge, explosive charges destroyed two piers and the central spans. The only railway line linking Salonika (Thessaloniki) with Athens and the port of Piraeus was cut. The action, which the British called Operation Harling and which is known in Greece as the Battle of Gorgopotamos, was one of the first sabotage operations in occupied Europe and the largest up to that time.

The strength of the attacking force is given in different ways. According to the most frequently cited figures, based on British accounts, some 150 men took part: twelve Britons, 86 ELAS partisans and 52 from EDES. Other studies speak of more than 200 partisans, and some local Greek sources of just over a hundred directly involved in the attack. The viaduct was defended by an Italian garrison of about 80 soldiers.

The SOE plan

The operation was planned in the summer of 1942 at SOE’s Cairo headquarters. Its aim was to cut the route by which supplies for Erwin Rommel’s forces in North Africa passed through Greece: by rail from the north to Piraeus, and from there by ship to Libya. Three tall viaducts in the mountainous area of the Brallos pass, south of Lamia, were identified as possible targets: Gorgopotamos, Asopos and Papadia. Cairo preferred Asopos, which would take longest to rebuild, but the final choice was left to the commander.

The mission was led by Lieutenant Colonel Edmund “Eddie” Myers of the Royal Engineers – in the words of his deputy, Major Chris Woodhouse, the only regular sapper officer in the Middle East with parachute training. The team numbered thirteen men divided into three groups, each with a commander, an interpreter, a sapper and a wireless operator. The sappers included two New Zealanders, Captains Tom Barnes and Arthur Edmonds, and the mission also included a Greek second lieutenant, Themis Marinos. Once the task was done the British were to be evacuated; only Woodhouse, Marinos and two wireless operators were to stay behind to maintain contact with the Greek resistance.

The first attempt at a drop, on 28 September, failed because the agreed signal fires had not been lit on the ground. During the night of 30 September–1 October three B-24 Liberator bombers dropped two of the groups in the Giona mountains and the third, under Major John Cooke, near Karpenisi in Evrytania.

The British and the Greek partisans

The British in Cairo knew little of the resistance movement that had been taking shape in the Greek mountains for several months. The strongest force was ELAS, the armed wing of the communist-dominated National Liberation Front (EAM), whose first band Aris Velouchiotis had led into the mountains of Evrytania in June. In Epirus, in the Valtos area, operated the EDES bands of Colonel Napoleon Zervas. In the towns, underground groups were active, such as the PEAN organisation, which in September had blown up the headquarters of the collaborationist organisation ESPO in Athens.

After the drop Myers’s main group spent several weeks hiding in the mountains, moved from place to place by local peasants to avoid Italian patrols. Cooke’s group, dropped near the strongly garrisoned town of Karpenisi, made its way into the mountains and came upon Velouchiotis’s partisans. Meanwhile Myers and his interpreter, Denys Hamson, guided by a Greek, reconnoitred all three viaducts. They chose Gorgopotamos: its Italian garrison was relatively small, and the ground gave the attackers a convenient approach, cover and a line of retreat. On 2 November Woodhouse set out into the Valtos mountains in search of Zervas, and on 14 November he returned with him and 45 of his men. That same day Cooke’s group joined Myers with news of its contact with Aris.

Zervas readily agreed to take part in the action from the start. Velouchiotis hesitated longer, because the EAM leadership in Athens did not yet appreciate guerrilla warfare in the countryside and did not want to tie itself to the British. In the end, according to participants’ accounts on his own initiative and against instructions from Athens, he decided to join the operation. Myers took overall command, and the two Greek leaders worked together, even though almost everything divided their organisations.

The night of 25 November

The attack was set for 11 p.m. on 25 November. Two eight-man partisan detachments were to cut the track and telephone lines on either side of the bridge and block the approaches for reinforcements. About a hundred partisans attacked the posts at both ends of the viaduct, while the British sappers, divided into three teams, waited upstream until the garrison was pinned down. The Italian soldiers resisted more strongly than expected, and Myers sent the sappers in before the fighting was over. A further delay arose because the steel girders were a different shape from what the reconnaissance had indicated, and the sappers, led by Tom Barnes, had to cut and reshape the plastic explosive charges on the spot.

At 1.30 a.m. on 26 November the first explosion destroyed the central pier and sent two spans crashing into the gorge. The sappers then laid charges on the second pier and the remaining span, which went up at 2.21 a.m. Meanwhile a partisan outpost stopped a train carrying Italian reinforcements towards the bridge. By 4.30 a.m. the whole force had withdrawn to the agreed rendezvous. The attackers suffered only four wounded. The losses of the Italian garrison are not known precisely, and the numbers of dead given vary considerably.

Consequences and reprisals

Estimates of how long the Salonika–Athens railway remained impassable differ. According to Italian sources, a railway battalion of the Italian army (IV Battaglione Ferrovieri) rebuilt the bridge within 19 days. British accounts and some studies speak of an interruption to traffic lasting about six weeks. The original purpose of the action had largely lapsed: by the time the sappers blew up the bridge, Rommel was already retreating from El Alamein, and his army’s supplies were travelling mainly through Italian rather than Greek ports. The political and propaganda significance was far greater. News of the destruction of the viaduct spread through occupied Greece and raised the population’s morale, and in London and Cairo it convinced commanders that the partisans could carry out tasks of strategic importance.

The occupiers responded with reprisals. According to local Greek sources, two days after the action the Italians took fourteen political prisoners from the prison in Lamia. Seven were shot in front of the destroyed bridge, and the other seven in their home village of Kastelia in Parnassida, together with ten inhabitants of the village. In the months that followed, the execution of hostages after partisan actions became the standard practice of both the Italian and the German occupation authorities in Greece.

The action also changed SOE’s plans. The Harling mission was not withdrawn; Myers was ordered to stay in Greece and to form from its members a British military mission to the Greek partisans, whose task was to coordinate sabotage, supply weapons and gold, and maintain communications with headquarters in the Middle East. Woodhouse, who spoke Greek, became one of the key figures in these contacts.

Place in the war

Gorgopotamos was the first and last instance of such close cooperation between ELAS and EDES. According to some historians, the first incidents between them occurred within a few weeks, and in 1943 there were open clashes that foreshadowed the Greek Civil War. The British, supporting both organisations, grew increasingly wary of the growing strength of the communist ELAS, while EAM viewed with suspicion British policy towards King George II and the government-in-exile in Cairo.

In 1943 the British military mission grew to several dozen officers, and its communications network covered most of the Greek mountains. In June 1943 British sappers, this time without the partisans, blew up the neighbouring Asopos viaduct, and a series of sabotage operations in Greece was meant to convince the Germans that the Allies would land in the Balkans rather than in Sicily. Myers was recalled in August 1943, after he had brought a delegation of partisans to Cairo, and Woodhouse took over the leadership of the mission. In post-war Greece the memory of Gorgopotamos became a matter of dispute: the left emphasised the role of ELAS, while the right for years played it down. Today the action is regarded as a symbol of the Greek resistance and one of the most successful acts of sabotage in occupied Europe.