“THE SAND WAS COVERED IN BODIES”: THE SHIPWRECK OF THE ORIA
“THE SAND WAS COVERED IN BODIES”: THE SHIPWRECK OF THE ORIA
Description
One morning the shepherd Vangelis Dunas goes to the beach of Charakas and is confronted with a macabre image that haunts him to this day.
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DOWN BY THE SEASIDE
Tags
Credits
Interviewee
- Baggelhs Ntounas
Interview by
- Stayros Blaxos
Podcast Producer
- Stayros Blaxos
Sound Designer
- Dhmhtrhs Palaiogiannhs
Sound Editor
- Dhmhtrhs Papadakhs
Video Director
- Stefanos Mpertakhs
Voiceover
- Duncan Skinner
I was born in Parnitha. My mother had me under a pine tree. My father was a herdsman. I had asked my grandfather... I asked him where we came from. And my grandfather told me that his great-grandfather had come from Agrafa, during the Ottoman times. They were great herdsmen and they left there and came to Attica. Here everyone led a herder’s life—a farming community—everyone bred animals. My father had—he used to take me with him—two hundred sheep.
During the occupation, there were Germans and Italians: more Italians. To the right of here, on a small hill, they had their camp. They had gun posts, opposite here, on some peaks. There were a lot of them. How could I not remember them...? I played with the Italians, I wasn’t afraid of them, and they didn’t bother us, of course.
That night, I remember... We were five hundred metres farther up, where we kept the sheep. And in the evening, around eight or nine... The weather had never been so bad. The sea was higher than the waves in winter... At some moment, we heard some loud bangs, you could hear them in here. But I heard the grown-ups saying: ‘There’s a shipwreck happening’, they said. Nothing else.
When day dawned, everybody took their sheep and went to different places to graze them for the day. My father took his sheep and went to Charakas; he went on that same day. And he took me with him. When we got near the shore, a hundred metres farther off—I don’t know exactly—my father saw that there were bodies on the beach. He said: ‘The sea has washed up drowned people!’ he said, word for word.
I ran off to the beach, onto the sand, about three metres away. And I looked along the whole beach... I looked... For people to be like that... People... One on top of the other... The sand was covered in bodies. I kept looking like this. There were also some Germans there... They began to chase me off... They chased me off, so I left.
The whole beach... You couldn’t see the sand! If you wanted to cross it, you would have to walk on bodies. So many! Like that, one on top of the other. As I am telling you now, I remember it exactly as I saw it; I’ve never forgotten a thing. I saw those drowned people. Some were dressed, some naked, and some half naked. Such a sight, you can’t imagine.
At some point—I don’t remember now if it was the same or another day—machines came and dug on the beach where there are some olive trees higher up—if you have seen them—and they dug a long pit. Now, how many metres it was: seventy? Eighty? A hundred? Who knows? I was watching from a distance. And it was deep; they were digging there for days. And they picked up the Italians and threw them in. We didn’t go there every day, of course, but we watched from a distance.
After they had collected them, and after some days—I don’t know how many—bodies kept washing ashore. As soon as the sea came a little from the south, it kept washing bodies onto the beach. The Germans went and collected them. I was small, of course, and I heard the grown-ups saying: ‘One has been washed up!’ ‘Another one has been washed up!’ They picked up others; the shepherds buried them in the sand.
For the first few years, I remember, no-one here ate fish. Because we had seen that the drowned men who had washed ashore were half eaten by the fish. Some fishermen fished here. They came here to sell their fish; nobody bought any.
The grave was here for some years, and then the Italians came and dug them up. In fact, some men from here went there for the work. Now, how much time passed? One year passed, two, and at some point, it was forgotten... Everything began to be forgotten.
Those poor Italians were victims. Look, there are some things... Of course, eighty years have passed since then; how long ago was it? And now, as I am telling it you, in my imagination, I see it in front of me. You can’t forget. You can never forget something like this. You see something else, something like a car accident... And that’s not easy to forget. But to see 4,000 drowned men on the sand? In piles... They took days to bury them... Now, at your age—I think—you see all this as some kind of legend. But it’s all true.