When the Italian ultimatum expired in the early hours of October 28th, 1940 Greece's hurried resistance began which would culminate in an ‘unexpectedly tenacious resistance’ against the invading army. Among those thrust into the opening days of the Greco-Italian War was a young officer from Chalkida, the main city on the island of Euboea. Newly commissioned as a second lieutenant, Ioannis Pezas joined the equally new 193rd Mechanized Regiment.
The 193rd was part of the 19th Mechanized Division, the only such formation in the Hellenic Army at the time. It was a short-lived experiment in motorized warfare, hastily organized with French tanks and British trucks of varying reliability. In theory, the division was to serve as a mobile reserve, held back to counterattack where needed, but in practice, the muddy, snowy roads of Epirus confounded any notion of speed.
Pezas and his fellow officers faced a logistical nightmare. What little armor they had was frequently immobilized, and resupply convoys were easy prey in the narrow mountain passes. Orders were relayed by motorcycle when the radios failed, and shelter was whatever stone hut or collapsed barn could be found along the front. The 193rd became more infantry than mechanized within days.
The regiment saw its share of bitter engagements along the Kalamas River and in the heights of the conifer laden Pindus. Italian columns that had advanced with bravado were soon stalled by stiff Greek defenses and miserable terrain. As a platoon commander, likely overseeing both vehicle support and dismounted infantry, Pezas maintained what little mechanized strength remained, ensuring guns could be emplaced on rocky slopes and that his men were warm, fed, and moving.
Their efforts were enough to stop the Italians within a few kilometers of the border and push them back into Albania in the ‘first Axis setback of the entire war.’ But by March 1941, with German intervention looming and the 193rd Division severely understrength, the mechanized experiment was fully abandoned and the division dissolved before the end of the campaign. Greece would ultimately fall the following month, but for officers like Pezas, the war was far from over.
The fall of Greece in April 1941 scattered its officers across oceans. Some went underground, some fled to Turkey or Crete, and others like Ioannis found their way to the Middle East. In the deserts of Egypt and Syria, the shadows of an army began to regroup, and by January 1944, Ioannis had reemerged as a First Lieutenant and posted to his home island of Euboea.
Greece was still under German occupation and Euboea, like other parts of the Aegean, was entering a volatile twilight in the final months before Axis withdrawal. Both German stragglers and local partisans prolonged the war and to counter, the newly reconstituted Evzones set ambushes, curfews, and checkpoints across mountain villages and coastal roads. Pezas served in one such Evzones battalion – elite light infantry tasked with maintaining order and asserting the authority of the Greek government-in-exile. The battalion operated amidst civils strife, caught between loyalty to Athens and the rising influence of the leftist resistance.
As liberation swept through the mainland in October 1944, the Evzones presence on Euboea represented the fragile reassertion of national order. The uniform, the parade-ground drill, and the fixed bayonets were symbols meant to remind civilians – and themselves – that Greece was still a country with a cause.
*
As Europe rebuilt, the problems Greece experienced internally during the war years culminated and left the country among those to unravel in the immediate post-war years. The mountains of Macedonia ignited with renewed conflict under a Communist-led insurgency. The Democratic Army of Greece controlled the ridgelines and forests of Macedonia and the National Army, still rearming with British and American assistance, was tasked with retaking the country inch by inch.
The civil war demanded patrols along remote trails, night sweeps through ravines, and manned outposts that could be encircled and sabotaged in a matter of minutes. Villages were cleared and fortified while others were emptied altogether. Every encounter with a civilian had potential to be a warning or a trap. In Macedonia, weather and terrain were as dangerous as ambushes. Supply lines failed with the snow and medical evacuation was often impossible. But it was still the sniper’s shot, mined road, or burst of gunfire to remind Ioannis that the civil war was more than just policing.
By late 1949, the tide had turned. Backed by American matériel and firepower, the Hellenic Army launched its final offensives into the Grammos and Vitsi mountains. Infantry battalions advanced behind artillery barrages, supported by tanks and armored vehicles brought into the highlands with immense effort. Pezas witnessed firsthand the results of the transformation of the national army into a modern fighting force. What unfolded was no longer a guerilla war but a conventional one. A full-scale campaign of coordinated assaults, air support, and mechanized flanking movements – unknown to those on the eve of the Korean War, something of a rehearsal for the kind of warfare that would soon greet them in the Far East.
*
The Hellenic Expeditionary Force had already earned a reputation in Korea when Major Pezas arrived with the 14th Relief Section. In that March of 1953, the war was in its final, punishing phase. Pezas, appointed as an Armor Adviser, joined the battalion as it rotated into positions north of Vanggez-mal, where the ground narrowed into a series of steep ridges and forward outposts.
Though the Greek contingent was almost exclusively infantry, American armor was frequently committed in its sector. Tank platoons from the 15th Infantry Regimental Tank Company moved forward to support company positions or reinforce threatened approaches. Pezas’s role placed him between these formations to coordinate armor and its movement across mined trails and narrow draws across contested valleys between trench laced ridges.
Throughout March and April, the battalion endured repeated shelling, patrol clashes, and night alerts that were characteristic of the stagnant line. The Greek companies rotated through the forward arc around Outpost Harry, a bare knob of earth whose value lay entirely in its view over the approaches to the Missouri Line. The enemy tested the outpost constantly, and Pezas’s work centered on moving the armor support into position after bombardments, coordinating recovery or repositioning of tanks under fire, and working with American liaison teams to keep approach routes open despite near-daily artillery.
By early June, the Chinese forces began concentrating for what would be their last major push before the armistice. The battalion’s perimeter felt the change in heavier probing, nighttime movement on the slopes below Harry Hill, and even more sustained artillery on the Greek and American forward companies.
The assault came on the night of June 17th to 18th. Two Chinese regiments struck Harry Hill and the surrounding outposts under a rolling barrage. The Greek 3rd Company held the forward trenches. The fighting collapsed quickly into close-quarters work – grenades hurled across parapets, flares sinking into the smoke, and repeated charges against the battered wire.
While the rifle companies fought hand-to-hand on the crest, Pezas worked from the battalion command post and the rear approaches, managing the movement of reinforcing vehicles, coordinating with the American tank elements where possible, and helping route ammunition forward along tracks that were under continuous shelling. Stretcher teams and supply carriers used the same narrow paths, so maintaining any order in that traffic required constant adjustment.
By dawn the Greeks still occupied the outpost. The Chinese dead lay in the approaches, and the battalion’s own casualties were heavy. The action became one of the defining stands of the Hellenic Expeditionary Force.
The fighting continued through July, particularly during the July 24th to 26th battles northwest of Piekeiomg-Niog, where the battalion again repelled repeated attacks supported by heavy artillery. Armor played a quieter but still essential role in these days – escorting supply movements, reinforcing threatened positions, and helping steady the line during withdrawals or counterattacks. Pezas remained in his advisory post throughout, helping integrate the armored support that the Greek infantry relied on to absorb and break these last assaults.
Even after the armistice, the battalion held its positions and continued training and coordination duties into early 1954. For his conduct during the critical months of June and July, Pezas received the Bronze Star from the United States, a modest recognition of steady service in a harsh and uncertain environment. Though he remained in the Hellenic Army for decades – to become a brigadier general – the War in Korea was the final campaign of his long military career, culminating years spent on hard frontiers from Epirus to the Aegean, and at last on the scarred hills of Asia.