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The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

On the night of November 25, 1942, a group of Greek partisans and British saboteurs blew up the Gorgopotamos River viaduct, in one of the first major acts of resistance in occupied Europe.

By Desolation Road

March 3^rd, 2021

Inside a hut of the village of Viniani in the mountainous Evrytania of central Greece, and while the whole country was experiencing the terrorism of the occupying forces of the Axis, on November 12, 1942, the leaders of the two largest resistance organizations in Greece, Aris Velouchiotis of ELAS and Napoleon Zervas of EDES, went through the door.

The two men sat facing each other; with their small bearings, their long beards, dark eyes and tight lips, with Sam Brown belts, long awkwards and black boots. Velouchiotis with his crossed cartridge belts, his black beret and his leather vest, and Zervas with his English khaki uniform over his Brooks shirt, with his revolver on his belt and his military cap with the EDES logo.

That day, in the hut of Viniani, Zervas requested from Velouchiotis the cooperation of ELAS for blowing up the railway bridge of the river Gorgopotamos, about 115 km east of Viniani, near the city of Lamia.

"Operation Harling", planned by British allied forces in Greece, aimed to cut off Nazi Germany's supplies to Marshal Erwin Rommel's forces in North Africa, where the Germans were battling the Allied Forces in their struggle to reach the oil fields of the Middle East.

In the weeks leading up to November 12, Velouchiotis' partisans had provided shelter in the mountains to Major Cooke's British commandos, who had been parachuted into the Viniani area and the town of Karpenisi for the needs of Operation Harling.

Napoleon Zervas (left), leader of EDES, and Aris Velouchiotis (right), leader of ELAS

Meanwhile, other members of the British mission were hiding from the Italian guard in Greek homes in Karpenisi, before seeking contact with Zervas in early November.

In the hut of Viniani, Velouchiotis agreed for ELAS to participate in the operation to blow up the bridge, despite his initial reservations. And thus the ELAS partisans, mostly ordinary villagers, most of whom have never carried a gun before, found themselves swimming very early in deep waters: they set off to sabotage a large bridge, heavily guarded by German and Italian soldiers.

From rural life to a large sabotage

The Resistance movement in Greece was only a few months old, at the time. It had only begun in the Spring of 1942. In the first year after the German invasion of Greece in April '41, only small guerilla groups existed. They consisted of farmers who were members of the Agricultural Movement before the war, by teachers, doctors and other officials, usually at the initiative of Military officials who had fought and repelled Mussolini’s forces in late 1940 - early '41 and were strongly dissatisfied with the capitulation of the Greek leadership to the Germans.

These guerilla groups aimed to protect villages and agricultural production from imposition, moving underground to avoid persecution by the Italian occupying forces. But, in February 1942, the Communist-led National Liberation Front (EAM), a political formation rapidly gaining ground in Greece in the absence of the old political establishment, decided to officially form its own military wing, ELAS.

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

Immediately, led by Velouchiotis, ELAS set off to organize all these groups and to put up a coordinated resistance movement against the forces of Germans, Italians and Bulgarians who occupied Greece. Soon, the network of supply, security, weapons concealment and protection of the guerrillas began to develop - but still, in the autumn of 1942, the expansion was no greater than a number of scattered guerrilla groups.

Nevertheless, these groups were manned at a rapid pace. More and more men decided to join the Resistance, due to the enormous difficulties of survival caused by the imposition of goods by the conquerors, due to their beliefs and the huge impact of EAM during the years of Occupation in the cities and in the province, but also due to the revolutionary turmoil risen from the successes of the first resistance groups.

At the time of Gorgopotamos, in November 1942, ELAS numbered about 500 guerrillas and EDES about 100. The vast majority were young people aged 15-25, cattlemen or peasants who owned a small piece of land - growers of wheat, vines, potato. They had no masters, they had learned to live independently, and they had already faced several difficulties that had hardened them and made them think fast.

They were accompanied on the mountain by a percentage of military personnel, as well as office workers, doctors, teachers and lawyers from the cities. The inhabitants of the cities, especially of Athens and Piraeus, had been led there by the dramatic situations and the great famine of the winter of 1941-’42. The German orders for the requisition of all kinds of goods and the unbearable taxation they imposed, left behind tens of thousands of dead in the cities, as the price of bread jumped from 70 to 2,350 drachmas and the black market flourished.

And yet, the dramatic economic hardship on the brink of absolute poverty was not the greatest psychological difficulty the partisans faced. There was a greater fear: the danger they posed to their family by their actions in the Resistance. It was not uncommon for news to reach the mountain about the torture of their families and the rape of their wives or sisters, or about the burning of their homes, by the fascist occupiers and their Greek collaborators.

Never, until the Autumn of 1942, had the guerrillas engaged in anything as large as the operation of the Gorgopotamos bridge. Until then, they engaged in battles with the Gendarmerie and disarmed them, burned the tax records, arrested and punished the collaborators of the occupiers, defended and fairly distributed the harvest, stopped the animal theft, talked to the villagers about the importance of the Cause and invited young people to join the Resistance.

ELAS had not yet transformed into an organized regular army, did not have strict discipline, nor did it obey unabated centrally and impersonal violence. It was a group of fighters who acted with the charismatic personality of the meek but tough Velouchiotis, and their kinship networks.

On the other hand, the British in Greece were officers and soldiers, who had been seconded to ELAS and EDES as radio liaisons, in order to exert influence, organize and train the guerrillas. Fully militarily coordinated, they gathered information for the British Intelligence, plotted sabotage acts against the Axis forces, and observed the guerrillas' supply needs. But even for them, the blasting of the bridge was an operation of unprecedented size.

These two opposite worlds, the Greek guerrillas and the British soldiers, mingled to blow up the Gorgopotamos river viaduct. Operation Harling, designed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Middle East, would involve 86 ELAS and 52 EDES guerrillas and 14 British commandos - under the command of British Colonel E.C.W. "Eddie" Myers and Major Chris Woodhouse.

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the explosion

The bridge was guarded by about 80 Italian and 5 German soldiers, heavily armed. Personally researching the area, Colonel Mayers found that the valley of Mount Oiti at the point of the Gorgopotamos bridge offered ideal access, cover, concealment and escape routes to the saboteurs.

The operation would take place on the night of November 25, 1943. The plan to blow up the bridge foresaw that an ELAS unit (4 groups, 60 guerrillas) led by Lieutenant Kostoulas and a group of 30 EDES men would attack the two outposts simultaneously, in order to neutralize the garrison. At the same time, 8 Zervas guerrillas would go to the machine gun above the outpost, to neutralize it and then descend to reinforce the ELAS men on the southern podium.

At the beginning of the attack, smaller groups of guerrillas would cut the telephone cables and then take up positions on both sides of the railway line, as well as on the wooden bridge of the road, to destroy them and cut off any reinforcements that the Germans or Italians would send from Lamia or Athens.

After neutralizing the guard, the British saboteurs with the help of three guerrilla groups would set off the explosives and blow up the bridge. At the end of the operation, they would light a green flare on the right pedestal, a green one on the left and a white one on the bridge, to signal the retreat to the forest point known to the guerrillas as the Chondrogianni lumberyard.

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

"As soon as the reading of the order was over, we took our oath," wrote rebel Costas Gekas after many years, in his book ‘A Young Partisan from Palaiokastro’. "Our leader told us that our mission was to capture the outpost as soon as possible. ‘Tonight we will tear down the bridge. If we do not tear it down, we will not go back. Will we?’, he said.

When the night fell, each group took its guide, a local shepherd. We walked a little further and reached an embankment about 100 meters from the outpost. We immediately scattered to our places and crawled even closer. We approached the barbed wire and waited for the signal.

Then, a shot was fired and the ground started to shake by machine guns and automatic weapons. With a jump we found ourselves in the barbed wire. The soil was jumping in front of us, the machine guns were hitting. I moved next to the barbed wire, with two other guerrillas. We see a glow of a machine gun, and the guy next to me threw a grenade. Shouting a war scream, the others passed through the barbed wire.

The machine guns were silenced. When S. threw a grenade inside, we understood. The outpost was occupied in 18 minutes. We did not know what was happening. We waited there for 2-3 hours, until at some point we heard whistles - a signal that the explosion was imminent. We had to leave. [...] The bridge fell and the land shook. We saw the red flares and retreated to the mountain. We returned to Chondrogiannis' lumberyard full of joy for our achievement", added Gekas.

The two blasts of the bridge took place at 1:30 and 2:21 AM. The central pillar and two spans of the bridge collapsed. The Italians did manage to send reinforcements to the spot, but were ambushed and stopped by the guerrilla group that was on the railway line.

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The hours that Gekas stated that he was waiting were actually five, because the completion of the mission and the departure for the Chondrogianni lumberyard took place at 4:30 AM. Only four partisans were wounded.

Returning to the lumberyard must have been a moment of strong emotion for the partisans; not only had they struck a spectacular blow against a much more powerful and formidable enemy, they also -maybe without realizing it, then- succeeded in accomplishing one of the first and most important acts of resistance in occupied Europe during World War II.

Deep inside this gorge of Mount Oiti, the Gorgopotamos bridge stands to this day. It is 30 meters high, 250 meters long, and is regularly crossed by the train of the Greek railway company. It stands there, with its iron leg that seems to eternally remind that this was a place where giants once walked.

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

[Sources]:

-Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 (Alexandria, 1994)

-Menelaos Charalabidis, The Experience of Occupation and Resistance in Athens (Alexandria 2012)

-Kostas Gekas, Α Young Partisan from Palaiokastro (Vivliorama 2006)

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

The night of the Giants: A glorious WW2 bridge sabotage

Footnotes

Copyright © Desolation Road / Panos Diamantis

FootNotes

Copyright © Desolation Road / Panos Diamantis

© 2026 Desolation Road

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