Page 31 - The News for the three villages October 2018

An Instrument of Reverence
By George Panos
An object of very special value to me is my late father’s beloved mandolin. Beautifully made in Catania, Sicily, more than one hundred years ago, it
now bears the ravages of age but more tragically the sufferings of a disastrous war adventure which took place ninety-five years ago.
Personally, the mandolin is the only remaining physical item that links me to my father whom I faintly remember. Sadly he died in 1942 aged forty-four when I was five years old. On a national plane the story behind the mandolin represents a chapter of history which binds the country of my birth, Greece, to U.K. my adopted country. The protagonists of this chapter, which took place immediately after World War One, were Prime Minister Lloyd George and the then Greek Prime Minister E. Venizelos. Together they concocted a c o n t r o v e r s i a l a n d d a r i n g ( s o m e s a y fo o l h a r d y ) p l a n t o b r i n g a b o u t t h e c a r v i n g - u p o f t h e crumbling Ottoman Empire and allow the Greeks to realize their long-standing dream of liberating their long-lost lands. The plan culminated in the hasty occupation of Asia Minor by the Greeks with British backing in 1919. A savage and destructive war ensued which claimed the lives of untold thousands, combatants and civilians, with the subsequent defeat of the Greeks in the hands of the Young Turks. This resulted in the sacking of the city of Smyrna and the mass up-rooting and exodus of Greek population from Asia Minor in 1922. My father, a small-town shopkeeper with a deep love for a mandolin he had from his youth, was conscripted to take part in this expedition. This was to be a war of liberation and, no doubt, he thought there would be call for music and celebrations, so it would not be unreasonable to bring along his mandolin. His romantic expectations were fully met in the early phases, as the troops made significant advances, but then the fortunes of war changed. Exhausted and overextended the Greeks were defeated, and soon the defeat turned into a rout. For my father and many other survivors it was every man for himself. To avoid capture in enemy territory he had to discard everything military, but not his beloved mandolin. He lived in hiding off the land for weeks until he secured some sort of transport to one of the Aegean islands and back to the mainland and home, the mandolin always with him.
Since then, the mandolin has acquired an almost religious relic status in the family, especially since my father’s passing. Since it came to my possession in the 1960’s, it has followed me to the U.S.A., where I was living at the time, then back to Greece in the 1970’s, and now it enjoys pride of place in my house in Edington, frail, battered, unable to produce the beautiful sound it once did, but continuing to enjoy the affection my father had shown it, along with the reverence its history deserves. Interesting that almost one hundred years later, all machinery and other paraphernalia of that war have long vanished. What endures is this small instrument of peace.
thenewseec@gmail.com EDINGTON, ERLESTOKE & COULSTON 29