On a hilltop of the low-vegetated plateau near the village of Aspraggeloi, facing the Pindus mountain range in the Zagoria region of western Greece, stands a 6-meters-high steel statue of a woman wearing a head scarf and carrying a bag on her shoulders. She is the Zagorian Woman of Pindus.
The bag would contain food or blankets, socks and clothes, sourdough bread or detachable gun and cannon parts that were intended for the soldiers of the Greek army on the mountains, who were trying to repel the invasion of the Italian armed forces during the 1940 Greco-Italian War of WW2.
The Julia Division of the Italian army, with its 11 thousand men, invaded Greece through the Albanian borders at 5:00 AM on the morning of 28 October 1940, after Benito Mussolini’s ultimatum to the country to surrender to the Axis forces was rejected by the Greek Prime Minister, Dictator Ioannis Metaxas.
The conflict was carried out at numerous battlefields on the northern borders of western Greece, in the mountains of Pindus - the range known as the spine of Greece, since it runs vertically through the Balkan peninsula. Capturing the mountain passages of Pindus was crucial both for the Greeks and the Italians, in order to control the supply roads.
In addition, both armies had to face two more obstacles for their struggles to provide supplies to their troops: the harsh winter on the mountains and the destroyed roads - if any. For this effort, the Greeks had a crucial ally: the women living in the villages of Pindus.
Already living for decades in an isolated, if not forgotten, mountainous region of an extremely poor country, the women of Pindus were anything but soft. Thus, in extremely rough icy weather conditions during the War, walking for days with heavy loads on their backs or climbing steep ravines, they were managing to provide the soldiers with ammunition, food and clothing.
Returning from the front, they would carry the wounded to the inland, taking care of their wounds and encouraging them. They would accommodate the soldiers to their houses and sew their clothes, they would slaughter their whole village herd for the army - they would even work for the reconstruction of the roads and bridges, together with the elderly, kids, and priests.
‘In the battle outside Tsepelovo’, wrote P. Palaiologos, the war correspondent of ‘Elefthero Vima’ newspaper on 3 December 1940, ‘the army officer was fighting with men left unfed for four days, wearing shoes torn by the sharp rocks. He radioed his urgent need of food and shoes. The wires were cut; it would take a long time for the supplies to arrive from [the Division HQ at] Ioannina city. A telephone operator in Chepelovo village, realizing the needs, notified the residents and immediately the women of Chepelovo were loaded with shoes on their backs, and whatever food they could get, and they left for the battlefield.’
By 13 November 1940, the Greek army had successfully defended the country's borders, and in addition managed to persecute the Italian army and to advance deep into Albanian territory. It was a crucial early defeat of the Axis powers in the history of WW2, and to the women of Pindus belongs a large share of this victory against fascism.
Honoring the war epic of the Women of Pindus, the statue, crafted by sculptor George Kalakallas, was erected on October 1994 on Radovani point near Aspraggeloi village.
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